Get Rid of the Old Yeast: Responding to Clergy Sexual Misconduct
Conclusion: How then shall we live?
As I mentioned in the last post, clergy sexual misconduct offends not only against the moral law and the Cross but to the life of Christian friendship. The fathers took over the classical understanding of friendship and“Christianized” it and put it at the service of, among other things, both evangelism and the spiritual life.1 To conclude our conversation here let’s ask what does the sad reality of clergy misconduct suggest about how we should live our shared life in Christ?
Aristotle distinguishes between two (or sometimes, three2) forms of friendship one more perfect and less common, the other less perfect but more common.
The more common form is the friendship of utility. Today we might call these our work buddies. This is a friendship that revolves around a shared interest or project.
The utilitarian character of these relationships is not in and of itself a morally bad thing. Certainly, things go easier when we get along with our co-workers. And, certainly, we can develop real friendships with people around common activities—say, rooting for the same sports team or being a fan of a particular tv show or actor.
More darkly, however, these are also the kind of friendships shared by thieves.
Whether the purpose is moral or immoral what matter for this type of friendship is that we are united by an activity and the friendship only continues as long as we share this common project or interest. When the activity ends, or when I lose interest in it, the friendship ends.
Let’s turn now to the less common but more perfect form of friendship rooted in moral virtue.
Here what we share is not a common love of an activity or project but a shared love of moral goodness. More specifically, we are friends because we see in each other a love of the good, the true, the beautiful, and the justice. And it is this love that serves as the foundation for the cultivation of virtue in our lives.
If friendships of utility are about doing things together, friendships of virtue are about sustaining and encouraging each other in a life of moral goodness. In other words, they are not so much concerned about doing things but together becoming morally better.
Like friendships of utility, however, virtuous friendships end when the common love between friends withers away. Usually, this means that one friend turns his back on the life of virtue. When this happens, I may still love my friend and even encourage him to return to a virtuous life. But until he does, there can be no mutuality, no camaraderie.
For Aristotle, it is tragic when a virtuous friendship ends. Why? Because no matter how deep my affection for him, when my friend forsakes the life of virtue, there can simply be no shared love between us because we no longer love the same thing.
This brings us to a theme closer to our concerns here; how the fathers “Christianized” the classical view of friendship. Building on the friendship between human beings, the fathers added a new kind of friendship: God’s friendship with us and, audaciously to the Greek mind, our friendship with God.
Even though we are sinners, God in Jesus Christ calls us His friends. Moreover, he does so not metaphorically but actually. We can be friends with God in fact and not just in name because we love the same thing as God: ourselves. God,3
I love myself and God loves me. To be sure, God’s love for me is wholly good while my love of self is marred by sin. That my love of self falls short of God’s perfect love for me doesn’t invalidate our friendship. Why? Because like all perfect friendships, it exists to foster virtue.
That God possesses all virtues and I possess none is likewise no obstacle to our friendship. After all, even between human beings, one party often demonstrates good qualities that are undeveloped or even wholly absent in the other.
But that’s the point of the virtue of friendship: to help my friend become the morally better version of himself. And the mutuality of friendship, what of this?
Here again, the fathers Christianized the pagan concept. The mutuality of friendship is found in the fact that God loves what I love: me. He also loves my neighbor which is why even neither my sin nor my neighbor’s isn’t necessarily an obstacle for friendship.
My loving God doesn’t make God more loving but it does make me more loving. And by loving God, I also fulfill the will of God that I love him with all my being. Put another way, while I don’t add to God, I can be the friend of God because I can give Him the one thing He wants from me: me.
Having done this, I find myself able to sacrifice myself in love for the well-being of my unrepentant neighbor or my fallen brother or sister in Christ. This doesn’t mean I support my neighbor’s immorality or vice. It does me, however, that I can work to foster repentance and amendment of life by becoming a friend.
Our frequently inadequate response to clergy sexual misconduct suggests that for many our friendship with Christ and the church is not a friendship of virtue but utility. Miscreant clergy are reassigned and their misconduct is concealed in order to “protect” the reputation of the church. We don’t, after all, want to upset the faithful, make waves, or invite a lawsuit or outside scrutiny.
Yes, all of these are important. They are also all secondary. What value they do have they take by serving the good work of the Gospel. Put another way the reputation of the church is only worth protecting if what unites us are virtuous friendships.
If, however, the only thing that unites us is the church as a common project (however noble) then we risk running afoul of Jesus’ words in Matthew (23:16-22):
Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.’ Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the gold? And, ‘Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.’ Fools and blind! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? Therefore he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. He who swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it.
The sexually miscreant clergyman has betrayed not simply his office but his friendship with God and his neighbor. He has become the “fool” Jesus refers to above and the road back to moral wholeness will be arduous for him. But if he is to travel this road it must be as a layperson and no longer a clergyman.
For more see, Mike Aquilina, Friendship and the Fathers: How the Early Church Evangelized (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2000).
Some identify a third form of friendship of pleasure. For our purpose here, I’ll simply fold this into a friendship of utility since in both cases the bond between friends is external to the friends themselves.
For more see, Bernard of Clairvaux. On Loving God: Pathways To The Past. N.p.: Parables, 2020.