Render Unto Rome_ The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church - Jason Berry [125]
A key factor behind those figures was the release of Ratzinger’s decree in support of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, on November 18, 1995, which all but said to the incensed Catholics of Austria and his homeland, Your views don’t matter:
This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium.39
Ratzinger’s insertion of “infallibly” as part of the magisterium, or teaching office, caused bonfires of criticism. The Cambridge divinity professor Nicholas Lash decried the infallibility reference as “a quite scandalous abuse of power.”40 Sister Joan Chittister, the prolific Benedictine lecturer from Erie, Pennsylvania, wrote with surgical precision:
Can an office of the Vatican declare a papal statement infallible?
And can they do it ex-post facto? Any time they want to? Maybe hundreds of years after it was written?
Why is it that when bishops all over the world ask for this issue to be discussed, they are simply ignored?
I am now more convinced than ever that this subject is not closed, in fact it has not even been opened. It has only been suppressed.41
Chris Schenk was feeling numb when a call came from Auxiliary Bishop P. Francis Murphy of Baltimore, who had found sympathetic bishops with whom the women’s ordination advocates could have dialogue. In 1991, after ten years of internal discussion, the bishops’ conference was finishing a pastoral letter on women when Ratzinger demanded strict language against female priests. “For the first time in the entire history of the conference,” writes David Gibson, “the bishops spiked the entire project.”42 On October 27, 1995, three weeks before Ratzinger’s decree, Bishop Murphy had spoken at a dinner for FutureChurch. “It is critical that we who hold some authority in the church listen to the base, to the people much more than we give directives,” he declared. “I have grave concerns that the official teaching church has forgotten about learning.”43
Now on the phone, Frank Murphy said gently, “How are you doing?”
“Angry and depressed,” replied Sister Christine Schenk.
“So am I,” said the bishop, with a ragged sigh.
When Murphy died later of cancer, at sixty-six, she wept for many reasons, not least the loss of so committed an ally within the hierarchy.
THE CHURCH’S MONEYMEN
As Charlie Feliciano’s influence receded on the handling of abusive priests, so did his distance from Pilla, who had taken to working in an office suite that was adjacent to an old dormitory of St. John College, formerly a nuns’ teaching facility, behind Cathedral Square. The college was torn down; the diocese leased the land to investors who built an office tower. The bishop who had once dined at his home was remote. Feliciano, his secretary, and an assistant shared space in the chancery. Pilla had a kitchen cabinet that included Sam Miller, a Jewish real estate developer and Democratic Party potentate, and Patrick McCartan, a managing partner of Jones Day.
Joe Smith, the diocesan treasurer, had a sideline business, Tee Sports, that organized golf tournaments and corporate events. Smith organized the Bishop Pilla Golf Classic that raised money for inner-city school scholarships. One day Father Wright’s secretary let slip that Joe Smith was getting paid to put on the golf event. Feliciano’s brother was a partner in Baker Hostetler, one of Cleveland’s biggest law firms. “Joe wanted me to sell them an