Spain Follow-Up + Answering CIASE Criticisms

Shepherd One, where El País handed over the info

The Spanish newspaper El País has collected testimony from well over a thousand victims of clergy sex-abuse. Earlier this month, one of the reporters presented 385 pages of information to Pope Francis. On Sunday, El País made all of this public. The paper added: The Vatican and the Spanish Bishops’ Conference will investigate all the cases.

I expressed some misgivings about El País’ confidence in an ecclesiastical investigation. On Monday, the Spanish Bishops’ Conference confirmed my skepticism. The Spanish bishops published a defensive, less-than-honest press release. They referred to a “lack of rigor” in El País’ investigation. The bishops offered multiple justifications for not investigating anything.

Juan Cuatrecasas, president of the Stolen Childhood victims’ association reacted with outrage:

That these gentlemen speak of rigor is offensive. Let them interview each victim in that report and tell them face-to-face, looking in their eyes, that what they say is not ‘rigorous.’

Speaking of embarrassing ecclesiastical defensiveness, I promised to consider the criticisms that a group of French Catholic intellectuals have made against the comprehensive report on sex-abuse published in October–the Rapport Sauvé, or CIASE report.

The CIASE report gathers the testimonies of sex-abuse survivors; it reviews the records of dioceses and prosecutors; and it reports the results of an on-line survey of the general population of France, about sex-abuse.

Based on these various sources of information, the report estimates that 216,000 young people have been sexually abused by French Catholic clergymen, since the 1950’s.

The French-intellectual critics insist that this staggering total cannot be supported by the information that is actually available. They point out that the percentages garnered by the on-line survey are too small to be extrapolated from, since they are smaller than the margin of error.

This is, no doubt, a valid point, in and of itself. But it is not a convincing criticism in this case.

First, because the CIASE report freely acknowledges that the extrapolated total does not tally easily with the hard data collected by other methods of investigation. CIASE estimates a maximum of 3,200 abuser clerics during the time period. To reach a total of 216,000, the average abuser would have over 60 victims–not a conclusion that is easy to feature, as the CIASE itself acknowledges.

The critics insist that the CIASE should have reported 24,000 victims, starting with 3,200 abusers and multiplying by the CIASE’s own estimate for average number of victims per criminal, which is 7.5.

But this would disregard altogether the insight given by the on-line survey of the general population.

Let me put it like this: the Catholic intellectuals’ criticism here is unconvincing because:

1. 24,000 victims is itself a staggering number.

2. The problem might not be that the total of 216,000 is too high, but that the estimate of 3,200 criminal clergy abusers is too low.

3. 216,000 actually fits reasonably into the overall picture of sex-abuse in France:

5.5 million French people have been sexually abused in childhood, since 1950. (This number is not in dispute.) If only 216,000 of those 5.5 million were abused by Catholic clergymen, that actually makes the incidence of Catholic clerical sex abuse lower in France, as a portion of total sexual abuse, than in other largely Catholic countries.

The critics dwell on the admittedly uncertain total estimate because they want to dispute the CIASE’s conclusion that sex-abuse of minors is a “systemic” problem in the Catholic Church. The Catholic intellectuals accuse the CIASE of inflating the number in order to shock the public into accepting the idea that the problem is systemic, without any further debate on the point.

Again, an unconvincing criticism, because: Even if the CIASE total is significantly off, would that somehow make the problem less ‘systemic?’ If there are actually only 108,000 victims, wouldn’t that still be a systemic problem? Or even if we stuck with the number that the critics themselves suggest–24,000. Isn’t that total enough to justify the conclusion that there is a systemic problem?

The criticism of the estimated total seems more like a quibble intended to obfuscate the matter, rather than an engagement of the real issues at hand. The clear fact is: criminals have hidden in the Catholic clergy for decades, in order to prey freely on minors, and then go unpunished for it by their superiors. Something definitely needs to be done about this. The question is not if something needs to be done; the question is what.

The critics further obfuscate the matter by trying to play both sides of the sexual-morality issue.

On the one hand, the critics rightly point out: It is precisely the teaching of the Church that tells us just how wrong the criminal sexual abuse of minors is.

This is true, and amen to it. No one has ever suggested that it would solve the Catholic sex-abuse crisis if the Church stopped teaching that sexually abusing minors is wrong and a sin.

But then the critics bring up the fact that, in the 1970’s, some prominent Frenchmen, including the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, publicly proposed that pedophilia be de-criminalized. It was part of the crazy ‘sexual revolution.’

(Pope-Emeritus Benedict used another version of this same argument in his unconvincing 2019 essay on the sex-abuse crisis.)

The critics then go on to suggest that the thinking of the 70’s influenced the Catholic clergy of the time–even though it contradicts perennial Church teaching, not to mention the basic moral instincts of the human race.

But if this were, in fact, true–namely that Jean Paul Sartre & Co. managed to confuse the French clerical establishment about sexual morality–wouldn’t that actually suggest an even-more-serious systemic problem in the Catholic Church in France?

The criticisms outlined so far, however, are all secondary issues in the dispute between the Catholic intellectuals and the CIASE. The central point of conflict is this:

The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers an image to explain the role of the clergy in the life of the Church. We clergymen exercise sacred ministry in persona Christi capitis. In the person of Christ the Head.

The whole Church of the baptized = the mystical Body of Christ. But we ordained clergy operate in the person of Christ the Head of the Body.

Now, not even Protestants say that this is out-and-out wrong. After all, you can’t have a community without leaders. Plus, in the Church, the leaders do something unique. We give Jesus Christ to the community.

That is something no human community could ever give to itself. The Son came from the Father, not from Europe, or Africa, or Asia. God incarnate was born of the Virgin in Bethlehem, in an altogether unique event. And that’s where this unique thing called the Church started.

All that conceded, the CIASE nonetheless recognizes: The image of in personal Christi capitis–used to identify what a Catholic clergyman is–it may be a necessary image, but it is still dangerous. The idea can be cruelly exploited, with disastrous consequences. The justifications that have been used to exploit the image must be identified clearly. And unequivocally condemned.

We read in the Rapport Sauvé:

The Commission believes that it is necessary closely to examine the hierarchical constitution of the Catholic Church in view of the internal disagreement concerning its own understanding of itself: between communion and hierarchy; between apostolic succession and synodality; and, essentially, affirmation of the authority of preachers and the reality of grass roots practices which are increasingly influenced by democratic practices.

Granted, these ‘discussion points’ require a vast range of reflection on the part of us Catholics. There are no immediately evident ‘action items’ here.

But who could deny that we do, in fact, very much need to reflect carefully on these very points? I myself have been meditating daily on these ‘internal tensions’ in our religion for the past three years. And it has done me an enormous amount of good.

But the French-intellectual critics of the CIASE can only dismiss this thoughtful recommendation with a sniff. They write: “We can hardly see what practical approach can be suggested by this motley enumeration.”

Motley? How about: Profound, insightful, and deeply challenging–for good reason.

The critics then proceed to poke holes in the CIASE’s concept of ‘reparative justice’ for sex-abuse survivors. The critics explain–with perfect plausibility–that the legal systems now in place, both civil and canonical, cannot be used to obtain the outcome that the CIASE envisions, because the cases are mostly too old.

Again, in their defensiveness, the critics only manage to beg the question. One of the CIASE’s contentions is, in fact, that the canon-law system we now have is inadequate to deal with the problem.

To conclude. In their essay, the CIASE’s critics make a fundamental mistake, the same mistake made time and again by well-meaning Catholics facing the sex-abuse crisis. They see an enemy, where a friend is actually trying to help.

Again, it all seems painfully familiar to me. So let me make a distinction, when it comes to “enemies” of the Church.

Publicly to “incite hatred or animosity” against the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or to “provoke disobedience against them”–this is a crime under canon law, punishable by severe penalties.

But isn’t this canon missing a necessary qualifying phrase? For a real crime to occur, wouldn’t the criminal have to intend to damage the Church?

Without this qualification, the law runs the risk of criminalizing virtuous acts. What if a bishop or pope does something unjust, or even criminal? Was it a crime against the Church when one of McCarrick’s victims went to a journalist in the early 2000’s, to try to get his story out–after he had been brow-beaten and gas-lighted by multiple prelates?

The Chancellor of the Diocese of Dallas, Texas, recently published an article interpreting the canon in question here (canon 1373). Chancellor Caridi tsk-tsks public critics of the hierarchy and suggests that we deserve penal sanctions. He writes:

The Church is not an institution instilled with the values of self-governance or a right to protest.

But wait. Isn’t this a straight-up contradiction of the teaching of all the post-Vatican II popes? Don’t we Catholics think that it is precisely our Christian vision of the human person that has given rise to the realm of free speech, open debate, and freedom of conscience that we have traditionally called “the Western world?”

We believe that the magisterium of the Church delivers to us the truths of Divine Revelation, in which we put our absolute faith. But that doesn’t mean that prelates cannot err in their acts of governance. There is no charism of infallibility when it comes to governance.

When it comes to clerical sexual abuse, our prelates have erred in governance–as a body–so grievously, and over such an extended period of time, that reasonable, good people have lost confidence in their judgment.

If open debate about this evident fact results in penal sanctions in the Church, that does not serve good order or Church unity. To the contrary, it only serves as further proof of ecclesiastical misgovernment.

 

Spotlight Comes to Spain?

(Netflix has a documentary on abuse in the Church in Spain.)

—

When the Holy Father flew to Cyprus two weeks ago,* a reporter from the Spanish newspaper El Pais approached him. The newspaper had spent three years collecting the testimony of survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Spain. The reporter handed the pope 385 pages of material.

(*The pope removed Michel Aupetit as Archbishop of Paris while on the same flight.)

This morning El Pais published this fact, as well as this news: supposedly the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, along with the Bishops’ Conference of Spain, will now investigate all the cases that El Pais collected.

Ok… <Ahem> We will see what actually happens.

Just last month, the Spanish Bishops’ Conference rejected a proposed investigation into sexual abuse in the Spanish Church. The bishops’ spokesman insisted, “There are only a few cases.”

(El Pais has uncovered 1,237, certainly just the tip of the iceberg.)

Also, the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Spaniard, recently hid behind a diplomatic technicality in order to avoid a French subpoena. Cardinal Ladaria had advised the then-archbishop of Lyons, France, to “avoid all possible scandal” in dealing with the serial pedophile priest Bernard Preynat. The Lyons archbishop then faced criminal charges for cover-up and had to resign.

One of Preynat’s victims, Francois Devaux, recently said of Pope Francis: “He is losing all legitimacy because of his terrible lack of judgment. This gentleman should reread the Gospel.”

So El Pais‘ idea that these same gentlemen will successfully “investigate” anything leaves you wondering. Perhaps, however, the publication of all this information will lead ultimately to the creation in Spain of something akin to the CIASE in France.

—

On the day that our Lady gave birth to our Lord in Bethlehem, the world swirled with plagues, cruelty, and spiritual confusion. But she held in her heart this longing: that God’s truth, His eternal love, would unite the human race in the unbreakable bond of holy communion.

We need to go spiritually to the exact same place. Our Church, as a world-wide institution governed by compromised men, will continue to appear to the eyes of most people for what it certainly is, considered from one point-of-view: a long-term criminal conspiracy.

But She has a center of gravity much more profound than the machinations of the mitered men. She has Her place immediately next to the manger. She will always have that place, and that’s where we belong.

The Fire in Paris

April 2019 screenshot from masstimes.com

In April 2019, we all looked to Paris, France, with sorrowful eyes. You don’t have to be a Disney musical fan to care about the Cathedral of Notre Dame. I had nightmares for a week, of burning wooden beams falling from soaring Gothic arches, crushed altars, and darkness in the church.

The fire occurred on Monday of Holy Week. The then-Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, celebrated Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter at the nearby downtown-Paris churches of St. Sulpice and St. Eustache. I remember tuning-in, to the Paris Archdiocese’s YouTube channel, to watch the archbishop’s sermons. I found myself comforted by his evident faith. He communicated an impressive sense of resolve.

To be perfectly honest: I had spent time in a few sacristies in France, on a trip when I was a seminarian–and they were highly unpleasant experiences for a straight man to undergo.

So in April 2019, when the world turned its eyes to Paris, I was amazed that the French church had managed to produce such a strong leader as Aupetit. Here was someone who could give the Christian world a real sense of hope, in the immediate aftermath of the Notre-Dame fire. It seemed like a miracle.

Turns out that I was far from alone in my esteem of Archbishop Aupetit.

Over the course of the past few weeks, Parisian Catholics, as well as others all over the world, have had occasion to express their appreciation of Archbishop Aupetit’s preaching. I have studied a great number of French-Catholic on-line comment boxes lately. Those comment boxes are full of remembrances of Aupetit’s good sermons.

But wait. Why now? Why are Catholics weeping for Aupetit right now? Because the Holy Father has rather suddenly, and rather inexplicably, removed Archbishop Aupetit from his post.

Paris’ Archbishop Michel Aupetit (back) takes part at the start of the procession of Easter’s Holy Thursday on March 29, 2018 at Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral in Paris. / AFP PHOTO / Ludovic MARIN (Photo credit should read LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty Images)

The general idea is: it has to do with a woman.

Last week, a French reporter asked Pope Francis to explain why he had removed Archbishop Aupetit. The pope spoke of Aupetit’s “violations of the sixth commandment.” But “not total.” He gave “small caresses and massages to the secretary.” And this, supposedly, led to gossip. So much gossip that Aupetit could no longer govern the diocese.

Problem here is: The Vatican press office later removed the words “the secretary” from the official transcript of the papal press conference. The pope had referred to rampant “gossip.” But no one in Paris had ever heard anything about Aupetit having an affair with his secretary. In fact, the general public had never heard anything at all about the Archbishop giving “little caresses and massages” to anyone.

Shortly after Pope Francis gave his explanation–which only served to cause further gossip–a Paris magazine published pictures taken with a telephoto lens, under the heading “Archbishop of Paris, Lost for Love.”

The pictures show the now-removed bishop on a walk in a park with an attractive woman. In an article accompanying the photos, the venerable Vatican reporter Caroline Pigozzi reports that: “Aupetit lied to the pope.”

Problem here is: The photos show nothing compromising. To the contrary, we see two friends walking and talking. Also: The woman in these photos is not the woman the pope had mentioned. Rather, it is a Belgian theologian named Laetitia Calmeyn, known by Parisian Catholics as a dear friend and confidante of the former archbishop. Both Aupetit and Calmeyn have since given forthright interviews, lamenting the bad intentions of the magazine Paris Match.

Archbishop Aupetit denies ever having had an affair with anyone. He has made his denials calmly and with a great deal of lucidity. And no real evidence of any affair has ever appeared, despite Paris tabloids promising for weeks now to “reveal it all.”

The pope’s press-conference answer about why he removed the archbishop apparently refers to this:

Over nine years ago, then-Father Aupetit “mishandled” the attentions of a woman who had grown overly fond of him. Aupetit acknowledged in an interview this week that he once massaged the woman’s shoulders, apparently at her suggestion. Aupetit practiced medicine before he became a priest and asks the reader to keep that in mind.

Aupetit said in his interview that he hasn’t had anything to do with the woman in question since 2012, and that he reported the whole affair to the then-Cardinal Archbishop of Paris. A report of the episode has been in Aupetit’s Vatican file for the past 18 months (if not longer.)

Now, is Michel Aupetit one of the most adroit liars ever to don a clerical collar? He would have to be. Or: His removal from office actually does not have to do with any actual immoral relationship with anyone.

In fact, it has to do with this: A circle of French churchmen and wealthy lay-people have conspired for some time to get rid of their archbishop. They have not seen in him the qualities necessary to lead the French church. He lacks the right “theological culture.” He is too interested in spending his time preaching the Gospel.

The Vatican nuncio in France has long agreed with this sentiment. He has been working for months, if not years, on getting Aupetit removed from office.

Aupetit became Archbishop of Paris almost exactly four years ago, with a mandate to govern for 9-16 years, depending on his health. (He remains vigorous at 70.)

Since his installation in office, the Church in Paris has suffered: the Notre Dame fire, the coronavirus crisis, and the release of the comprehensive report on Catholic sex-abuse in France.

I think you could roll up the leadership virtues of Julius Caesar, Nelson Mandela, and Winston Churchill, all into one person, and make that masterful person the Archbishop of Paris, and even he would have had a hard time dealing with the challenges of 2019-2021.

There is an enormous irony here–as there usually is, when it comes to high-level ecclesiastical decision-making. Apparently, Aupetit’s enemies feared a disaster for the Church in Paris, under the government of Aupetit. They convinced the pope to go along with their plan.

And now they have managed to make a much-greater disaster than any other disaster that could conceivably have happened.

The whole thing seems all-too-terribly familiar to me.

 

Interview with Dr. Christine Bacon

January 28, 1369 + Other Things French

Tomb of St. Thomas Aquinas, Toulouse, France

As the years have passed, my devotion to St. Thomas Aquinas has steadily increased.

I loved him decades ago; I loved him even before I became Catholic. Back in the 90’s, while studying at Catholic University in Washington, I went religiously every January 28 to hear one of the learned Dominicans give the St. Thomas-Aquinas-Day sermon at the Basilica of the National Shrine. A Dominican always gives the sermon that day, because St. Thomas was a Dominican priest.

Meanwhile, though, I knew perfectly well that St. Thomas did not die on January 28. Yes, we generally keep the feasts and memorials of saints on the anniversaries of their deaths. But St. Thomas died on March 7, not January 28.

In fact, the Church used to keep the Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas on March 7. His death day was his feast day for six centuries, from his canonization in 1323 until 1969. But after the Second Vatican Council, the Roman authorities decided to try to keep Lent as free as possible of festival observances. Since March 7 almost always falls within Lent, we needed a new day for St. Thomas.

As an aside, to keep anyone from hissing at the mention of Vatican II:

Today is an unusual exception to the death-day rule for saints’ days, of course. It’s the anniversary of the conception of our Lady in the womb of her mother, St. Anne.

More to the point, though: Yesterday we kept the Memorial of St. Ambrose of Milan. He did not die on December 7, but rather on April 4. But since April 4 always falls either within Lent or Holy Week, or early in Easter time, St. Ambrose’s feast day is kept on his ordination anniversary. And it has been kept on December 7 since at least the 1000’s. (As in, before the year 1100 AD.)

In other words, Vatican II did not invent the idea of moving saints’ feast days out of Lent, to an alternate anniversary date. That idea itself has a long, long history.

Back to St. Thomas Aquinas: In the revision of the festival calendar after Vatican II, they did not just randomly pick January 28 out of a hat. The date already served as a secondary feast day of St. Thomas, among Dominicans. It marks the anniversary of the arrival of St. Thomas’ relics in Toulouse, France.

The arrival of his relics in France. Hmm. How’s that?

I never carefully considered the question myself, until recently. But when you finally get the chance to visit the place where someone you love died, you start wondering about stuff like this.

St. Thomas died while on his way to an ecumenical council convened in Lyon, France, by Pope Gregory X. The pope called that council primarily to try to heal the East-West schism in the Church, which was then a couple centuries old. Pope Gregory personally requested that Thomas Aquinas come and participate, even though the 49-year-old theologian was not well.

Thomas accepted the summons. While on his way from Naples to Lyon, he took sick south of Rome. Thomas breathed his last in the Cistercian abbey of Fossanova.

The Cistercian abbey building where St. Thomas died, Fossanova, Italy (photo credit: yours truly)

The Cistercians of Fossanova eagerly retained St. Thomas’ mortal remains. They generously offered visitors the opportunity to venerate the holy man’s relics. The monks had no intention of parting with the great treasure that Providence had delivered to them.

But the saint’s brother Dominicans painfully wanted to entomb their eminent teacher’s remains in one of their own friaries.

The ensuing battle over St. Thomas’ bones lasted almost a full century. Meanwhile, events which we have recently considered here unfolded. Events involving the highly unstable late-13th-century papacy.

Schiaffo di Anagni

The pope who summoned St. Thomas on his final earthly journey, Gregory X: he had been elected only after a two-year deadlock between the French and Italian factions of the College of Cardinals. We discussed earlier how Pope Celestine V, who was also elected in a conclave that lasted over two years, renounced the papacy in 1295. We also covered how Celestine’s successor, Boniface VIII, died shortly after suffering an attack by the king of France’s henchmen.

Boniface’s death led to the brief papacy of Blessed Benedict XI, then to the world-changing Conclave of 1305. The sitting Archbishop of Bordeaux, France, became Clement V. And he never set foot in Rome. Ever.

Pope Clement V moved the Holy See to France, to the town of Avignon. There, Clement’s successor John XXII canonized St. Thomas.

Wait. Moved the Holy See to France?

[Click HERE to listen to a thorough and very-helpful explanation by the late Dr. Brendan McGuire.]

Now, Rome had become a dangerous place for a pope to live.

And the king of France had consolidated enough authority to dominate the Church.

But: Move the papacy to France? Really? I will have more to say about this. As far as St. Thomas’ bones and Toulouse:

Blessed Urban V traveled from Avignon to Rome in 1367, recognizing that he belonged in the city of Saints Peter and Paul. Sixty years had passed since the last time the Bishop of Rome had set foot in his own diocese.

Urban had good intentions, but his effort proved half-hearted. He abandoned Rome, and returned to Avignon, in 1370. In the meantime, the pope ordered that St. Thomas’ remains be moved from Italy to France. (The pope actually followed St. Thomas’ bones, when he returned to Avignon.)

Between August 1368 and January 1369, the Dominicans carried their brilliant brother’s remains in solemn procession, from near Fossanova to Toulouse, with a number of extended stops along the way. On January 28, they arrived at the original Dominican church, built by Dominic himself a century and a-half earlier.

Then they continued the procession, taking the bones of Thomas’ right arm north to Paris. That reliquary remained in a Dominican chapel near Notre Dame, until the French Revolution four centuries later.

Paris’ Archbishop Michel Aupetit (back) takes part at the start of the procession of Easter’s Holy Thursday on March 29, 2018 at Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral in Paris. / AFP PHOTO / Ludovic MARIN (Photo credit should read LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty Images)

…More to come on the Avignon papacy, as I mentioned. But for now let’s turn to more-current events. After all, as in the 1300’s, a great deal of Catholic drama has lately unfolded in France.

1. Two and a-half years ago, on the day after Palm Sunday 2019, the Cathedral of Notre Dame burned. It caused many of us a great deal of sorrow.

I remember the then-Archbishop of Paris rallying his people for Holy Week at the nearby church of St. Eustache. I was moved by the Archbishop’s evident faith and his fatherliness. A few months earlier, he courageously had appeared on French radio to defend the rights of the unborn child.

For the past couple years, Archbishop Aupetit has appeared on every list of possible candidates for Cardinal.

(Amazingly enough, there is not a single diocese in France right now with a sitting Cardinal-Archbishop. Pope Francis has only ever created one French Cardinal, and he is a Vatican official. We have come a long way from the French-dominated College of Cardinals of the fourteen century.)

But now Pope Francis has summarily relieved Archbishop Aupetit of duty.

I find the situation very hard to understand. It appears to have layer upon layer of intrigue, with none of the facts even remotely clear to the general public.

I intend to try to sort it out, and I will share my understanding of it with you, dear reader.

2. As we noted here, in October the independent commission erected by the French bishops’ conference published its report on sexual abuse. I read the English translation of the summary report carefully, and I look forward to reading the whole report, once the English translation becomes available. (The CIASE promised to publish a full English translation by the end of 2021.)

Now, however, a small group of French Catholic intellectuals has published a preliminary critique of the Rapport Sauvé.

[I made a Google translation of the critique; you can read it by clicking HERE.]

Pope Francis had a meeting scheduled for tomorrow with Jean-Marc Sauvé and other authors of the CIASE report, but the Vatican has postponed such a meeting indefinitely.

On the plane returning from a trip he took to Cyprus and Greece, the pope explained to a journalist that he had not read the CIASE report, but that…

“…in doing these studies we have to be careful in the interpretations that we do over long periods of time…A historical situation should be interpreted with the hermeneutics of the time, not ours… The abuses of 100 years ago or 70 years ago are a brutality. But the way they were living it is not the same as today.”

In September 2018, Pope Francis reacted in the same way to the Pennsylvania Grand-Jury report. I mentioned then that I find this position to be inherently dishonest. As a reporter put it to Donald Card. Wuerl at the time: “What could possibly ‘evolve’ when it comes to child sexual abuse?”

So the Vatican position on the Rapport Sauvé appears to have shifted as a result of the French Catholic intellectuals’ critique. I find the critique to be embarrassingly tendentious, small-minded, and defensive. But it nonetheless brings up some questions worth considering. Watch this space for more on this.