In 1975, Father Richard Ginder, a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, published Binding with Briars. The book, though revolting at times, sheds more light on the clerical sexual abuse scandal than perhaps any other book has.
A 1954 article and a 1959 book jacket paint a picture of the priest’s broad influence on the Church in the United States. Father Ginder was editor of The Priest, My Daily Visitor, and The Catholic Choirmaster, associate editor of Our Sunday Visitor, a prolific author of pamphlets, and a widely syndicated columnist. For decades after his ordination in 1940, he was a conservative’s conservative, and thus he offered advice on how to “Crack Back at the Commies,” warned of “The Reds in Our Labor Unions,” and served on the national council of the John Birch Society. He was also consulting editor of the Maryknoll Sisters’ Catholic Children’s Treasure Box, which remains in print today.
Like many priests of his generation, Father Ginder blew with the wind. In Binding with Briars, Ginder, a former diocesan censor of books, assailed Catholic teaching on the Sixth Commandment as he chronicled his enthusiastic embrace of the theological dissent that erupted in the latter half of the 1960s.
Not surprisingly, that enthusiastic embrace was expressed in actions. His 1984 Pittsburgh Press obituary notes that “in 1969, he was arrested on morals charges after Pittsburgh police found photographs of teenage boys engaged in homosexual acts and diaries of his own sexual activities in his Squirrel Hill apartment. He pleaded guilty to the charges and for several years underwent psychiatric treatment.” The arrest and the guilty plea did not lead Bishop Vincent Leonard to suspend Father Ginder’s priestly faculties; that suspension came only in 1976, after the publication of the priest’s book and his television interviews, including an appearance on the The Phil Donahue Show.
A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article adds that in 1978, Father Ginder was “convicted of sodomizing two 16-year-old boys” and “sentenced to up to four years in prison.” After he died in an automobile crash, 50 priests joined the future Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua at his funeral Mass.
Five decades after its publication, Binding with Briars still speaks to the Church today. If Catholic teaching on the Sixth Commandment—articulated authoritatively in our time in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (nos. 2331-2400)—is a gem with many facets, then those who, like Father Ginder, would take a pickaxe to strike at any of its facets should not be surprised if the inevitable cracks spread to the teaching enshrined in no. 2356, which forbids the sexual violation of another person. Like Lot’s wife in the Book of Genesis, Binding with Briars is a warning, a portent; it is a pillar of salt for our age.
Father Marko Ivan Rupnik
So, too, is According to the Spirit, by the famed Slovenian priest Father Marko Ivan Rupnik. Born in 1954, Rupnik entered the Society of Jesus in 1973, was ordained in 1985, and cofounded the now suppressed Sisters of the Community of Loyola in the early 1990s.
In 2020, Father Rupnik was declared excommunicated for the canonical offense of absolving an accomplice in a sin against the Sixth Commandment; the excommunication was swiftly lifted. Three years later, the Society of Jesus expelled him following “credible accusations that he spiritually, psychologically or sexually abused some two dozen women and at least one man,” as one article notes. Father Rupnik was soon incardinated in the Diocese of Koper, Slovenia.
The numerous allegations have attracted much attention since they were made public in 2022—but as in Father Ginder’s case, there has been hesitation to suspend his priestly faculties. Msgr. Slavko Rebec, the Koper diocese’s vicar general, invoked the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) as he sought to justify that hesitation:
The Bishop of Koper admitted him on the basis of the decree of Rupnik’s dismissal from the Jesuit order and on the basis of Rupnik’s request for admission to the Diocese of Koper, and on the basis of the fact that Rupnik had not been sentenced to any judicial sentence: ‘Everyone who is accused of a criminal offense has the right to be presumed innocent until he is found guilty according to law, in a public proceeding in which he is given every opportunity necessary for his defense’ (Article 11). Until such time as the above sentence is pronounced on Rupnik, he enjoys all the rights and duties of diocesan priests.
As Father Ginder’s influence in the Church the United States was broad, so, too, has been Father Rupnik’s influence in the universal Church. He was director of the Centro Aletti in Rome from 1995 to 2020 and remains active there. In the decades since Pope St. John Paul II entrusted him with the renovation of the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, Rupnik’s artwork has come to adorn many a church around the world, including the Marian shrines of Fátima, Lourdes, and Aparecida. His artwork, too, is found in two of the most significant magisterial texts of our century: the third typical edition of the Missale Romanum (promulgated by Pope St. John Paul II in 2002) and the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (published at Pope Benedict XVI’s behest in 2005).
Father Rupnik has enjoyed the respect of three popes:
- Pope St. John Paul II named him a consultor to the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1999 (p. 127) and again in 2003 (p. 133).
- Pope Benedict XVI named him an expert at the Synod of Bishops on the Word of God in 2008 (p. 750), renewed his appointment as a consultor to the Pontifical Council of Culture in 2009 (p. 79), and named him a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization in 2012 (p. 542).
- In 2016, Pope Francis celebrated Mass in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel for the 25th anniversary of Centro Aletti (video), which had been inaugurated by St. John Paul II as part of the Pontifical Oriental Institute. In 2017, Pope Francis appointed Rupnik a consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (p. 98) and the Congregation for the Clergy (p. 333).
- Even after Rupnik’s brief excommunication and the imposition of some restrictions upon his ministry, Pope Francis reappointed him a consultor to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in December 2021 (p. 675).
In 2016, Pope Francis described a “lovely image” that Father Rupnik gave him and said that he keeps it in his office. This is likely the image about which Pope Francis spoke at some length in a June 2023 video message (1:37-2:13), six months after a Jesuit superior invited anyone abused by Father Rupnik to come forward. A different image by Father Rupnik was visible in the Pope’s apartment in August 2024 (video, 0:08).
Father Rupnik has also enjoyed the esteem of Vatican officials. He designed the logo and Book of the Gospels for the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy (2015-16); the logo “represents a summa theologiae of the theme of mercy,” enthused Archbishop Rino Fisichella, then president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, and now one of the two pro-prefects of the Dicastery for Evangelization.
In 2018, the Congregation for the Clergy launched the Clerus App and entrusted Father Rupnik with the task of editing the texts available each week via the app.
“Reading what Father Rupnik writes—I say this as a priest—is certainly edifying and represents a good model,” said Msgr. Andrea Ripa, then undersecretary of the Congregation. (Msgr. Ripa is now a bishop, the secretary of the Apostolic Signatura, and the president of Domus Vaticanae.)
The Vatican’s esteem for Father Rupnik was especially manifest on March 6, 2020, when Father Rupnik preached the customary Friday Lenten sermon to the Roman Curia. In doing so, he took the place of the Preacher of the Papal Household, who was ill that day. (It was not public knowledge at the time that Father Rupnik had, two months earlier, been unanimously found guilty of his excommunicable offense, though the declaration of excommunication would not be issued until May 2020.)
I asked Cardinal Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., the Preacher of the Papal Household from 1980 until November 2024, whether he, Pope Francis, or someone else had selected Father Rupnik to substitute for him in March 2020—and why Father Rupnik had been selected, rather than another priest. Cardinal Cantalamessa said:
He was not of course chosen by me. I had no authority for doing this and I lived away from Rome at the time because of a temporary illness. To tell the truth, neither do I know who suggested his name. I don’t think it was the pope personally, but probably the competent office of the Curia, knowing that there was little time for preparation and Rupnik was in Rome and was known for giving retreats and writing spiritual books.
The competent office of the Curia is the Prefecture of the Papal Household (Art. 229), led at the time by Archbishop Georg Gänswein, whose responsibilities had been reduced earlier in 2020. Now apostolic nuncio to Lithuania and two other Baltic nations, Archbishop Gänswein states he has no recollection of taking part in the decision to invite Father Rupnik to preach to the Roman Curia in March 2020.
The “archbishop does not remember any personal participation [in] that decision [in] 2020,” Father Vincentas Lizdenis, a member of the administrative staff of the Apostolic Nunciature in the Baltic States, said in an email.
Father Rupnik subsequently painted the official image of the Tenth World Meeting of Families (2022). The Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life first released the image in July 2021; lay representatives of the Diocese of Rome later said at a Vatican press conference that the “bellissima immagine,” or most beautiful image, as they put it, was prepared under the auspices of the diocese. That image also appeared on a Vatican stamp.
More recently, in June 2024, the highest-ranking layman in the Roman Curia vigorously defended the continued use of Father Rupnik’s images on the Vatican website. Removing Father Rupnik’s artwork from public spaces is “not a Christian response,” insisted Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication.
According to the Spirit
Well known for his artwork, Father Rupnik is less known for his published writings. His work as a writer reached its zenith in 2017 with the publication by Libreria Editrice Vaticana, the Vatican publishing house, of Secondo lo Spirito: La teologia spirituale in cammino con la Chiesa di papa Francesco. Two years later, Coventry Press, an Australian publisher, published According to the Spirit: Spiritual theology on the move with Pope Francis’ Church, an English translation prepared by the local Salesian province.
Secondo lo Spirito is not an isolated work, but one of eleven books in a series entitled La Teologia di Papa Francesco (The Theology of Pope Francis). Libreria Editrice Vaticana published all eleven books in Italian, and Coventry Press has published all eleven in English.
The publication of the series occasioned the well-known “lettergate” scandal, but less attention has been paid in the United States to the books themselves, perhaps because the translations were published elsewhere.
The editor-in-chief of the series was Father Roberto Repole, president of the Italian Theological Association from 2011 to 2016; he is now Cardinal Roberto Repole of Turin and Susa. I contacted his archdiocesan communications office to ask him why Father Rupnik had been selected as a contributing author to the series and whether he, Pope Francis, or someone else had selected him. I received no response.
According to the Spirit, an 189-page book, includes the preface to the series by Father Repole and an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion by Father Rupnik.
“By drawing on the competence and rigorous study of theologians of proven worth, coming from diverse contexts, the series has sought to research the theological thinking which supports the Pope’s teaching,” Father Repole wrote in his preface. “It explores its roots, its freshness, and its continuity with the previous magisterium” (p. 6).
Father Repole expressed hope that the series would “not only be a valuable aid for grasping the theology upon which Francis’ teaching is based,” but also serve as an “introduction to the key points of his thinking and teaching overall” (p. 7).
Judged by Father Repole’s criteria, Father Rupnik’s book is a failure. Apart from a brief passage in his introduction (pp. 21-22) in which Father Rupnik explores the relationship between St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises and the Pope’s apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, there is scant exploration of the roots of the Pope’s teaching.
Imagine if you or I had written a six-chapter book on badminton, sprinkled several of Pope Francis’s quotations on the value of athletics into our introduction, ignored Pope Francis in the text of the book, but entitled our book Pope Francis on Badminton. Readers who purchased the book in the hope of learning about the “roots” and the “key points of his thinking and teaching” on badminton would surely be disappointed.
Likewise, references to Pope Francis disappear from Father Rupnik’s According to the Spirit after his introduction. A book that had explored the roots, freshness, continuity, and key points of Pope Francis’s spiritual theology would have fulfilled Father Repole’s aim for the series. Because Father Rupnik failed to do so, According to the Spirit represents a missed opportunity to deepen readers’ understanding of Pope Francis’s spiritual theology, later expressed authoritatively in the apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (2018) and the encyclical Dilexit Nos (2024).
Although According to the Spirit sheds little light on Pope Francis’s spiritual theology, it is still a valuable book. Much as Binding with Briars is the written testament of a priest who was once influential in the United States, According to the Spirit is the written testament of a priest whose influence has been significant in the life of the universal Church.
Though disjointed—the six chapters have more of the feel of three or four separate books than of a single book—According to the Spirit has enough of a common thread to have been given a different title, such as From Individual to Person: The Spiritual Theology of Marko Ivan Rupnik. Though it differs significantly from the teaching of Pope Francis, and even contradicts it in parts, Father Rupnik’s spiritual theology deserves to be reckoned with on its own terms.
Portions of According to the Spirit evoke huzzahs, from an introductory criticism of the shallow reception of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and 1970s, to a middle chapter’s lyrical description of Abraham and Isaac on the journey to Mount Moriah, to a culminating vision of Christians, immersed into Christ in Baptism, living within the Church as sons in the Son. Father Rupnik’s quotations from the Eastern Fathers, and his less frequent quotations from the Western Fathers, merit prayerful reflection and exploration in their original contexts.
But much of According to the Spirit merits concern. Several paragraphs could be written about Father Rupnik’s dim view of human nature, including human reason. Several paragraphs could be written as well about his citations, which at times are inaccurate and at times bear scant relation to his own arguments. Here are three examples:
- On page 16 of his introduction, Father Rupnik asserts that the Second Vatican Council’s “most prophetic intuitions are still ahead of us and are just waiting for the right moment to bring about a real renewal of the Church.” In doing so, Father Rupnik cites a 2012 homily by Pope Benedict XVI. Although Pope Benedict did preach about the Second Vatican Council in the cited homily, Pope Benedict did not assert what Father Rupnik’s footnote might lead a reader to believe the Pope asserted.
- On page 86, Father Rupnik cites Genesis 12:21, a verse that does not exist.
- On page 156, Father Rupnik cites the fourth book of Nicholas Cabasilas’ The Life in Christ to support his assertion that “Baptism grafts us onto Christ in such a radical way that the life of Christ is more intimate than the life received by parents according to nature.” But Cabasilas makes no such claim about Baptism in that book; Cabasilas makes that claim about the Holy Eucharist.
Two major threads that run through Father Rupnik’s book merit particular concern: his theology of personhood and his polemic against religion and asceticism.
From individual to person
At the heart of Father Rupnik’s spiritual theology is his view that human beings begin their lives as individuals, fearful and prone to violence, and through Baptism become persons, communal, relational, creative, and marked by freedom.
Through Baptism, we accept “the manner of a personal existence” (p. 53) as a gift of the Holy Spirit (p. 54). Through Baptism, “we died as individuals and rose again as people [i.e., persons] according to the existence of God” (p. 139). Summarizing the heart of his spiritual theology, Father Rupnik writes:
Baptism is thus the sacrament in which what we have dealt with in the preceding chapters takes place, namely the passage from a life which leads to death to a life of communion, from a life according to nature to a life according to the Spirit, from isolation to communion, from the individual to the person. (p. 154, emphasis added)
Father Rupnik explains that the Persons of the Blessed Trinity live a communal, relational life; so, too, did Adam and Eve, created in the image of God. That life, however, was shattered by the Fall, a descent from the communal, relational life of the person to the fearful, angry life of the individual. Christ, by His Redemption, restored the communal, relational life of persons to those united to Him by Baptism. The baptized are grafted into Christ’s Body, the Church, and by living as communal, relational persons, they are a theophany, or divine manifestation, to nonbelievers. The beauty of their communal, relational, creative lives attracts others to life in the Spirit.
Father Rupnik avoids the word “grace,” and had he written of the life of grace instead of the life of persons, his spiritual theology of personhood would seem less like an asteroid that has drifted from the Catholic orbit. In the sixth century, St. Boethius famously defined a person as an individual substance of a rational nature, and thus in the Catholic tradition the term is broad enough, with the necessary distinctions, to be used in reference to the Three Divine Persons, the angels, and all human beings without exception.
Decade after decade, generation after generation, the Church’s voice resounds that every human being is a person, a person with dignity, and even infinite dignity, as the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith recently stated. If, in contrast, an individual becomes a person at Baptism, as Father Rupnik states (p. 154), then it is difficult to escape the conclusion that his spiritual theology strips the unbaptized of their personhood. Father Rupnik’s According to the Spirit reduces the unbaptized, including the unborn, to the level of potential persons, and not actual ones.
Where, then, does Father Rupnik’s spiritual theology leave the unbaptized? Father Rupnik writes that in non-Christian religions, the Holy Spirit’s work “is recognized through active charity, in experience as an expression of self-gift, as peace, motivation for creative, inclusive encounter” (p. 45). Later, he writes that “wherever the wind of the Spirit blows there is a flourishing, an opening to life, because the first sign of life according to the Spirit is openness” (p. 129). Father Rupnik is surely not developing a systematic list of signs of the Holy Spirit’s presence, but one notes the omission of joy, faithfulness, self-control, modesty, and chastity, traditionally reckoned among the fruits of the Holy Spirit (n. 1832).
In his chapter devoted to Abraham, Father Rupnik sees Abraham as mired in the life of the individual before God calls him to leave his homeland. Each time God intervenes in Abraham’s life, God leads him away from the life of an individual to the communal, relational life of the person. Abraham, alas, slips back at times into the life of an individual, as when he tells Pharaoh that Sarah is his sister (not his wife) and when he fathers Ishmael with Hagar. Yet God beckons Abraham again and again to live communally, relationally, as a person. If Abraham can gradually be transformed from an individual into a person, then perhaps Father Rupnik’s spiritual theology might somehow permit some non-Christians today, under the Holy Spirit’s influence, to become persons as well.
Commenting on how the Holy Spirit can work in the lives of unbaptized individuals, Father Rupnik offers a novel interpretation of Matthew 25 (p. 129). Father Rupnik sees the parable of the ten virgins (25:1-13) as addressed to Jews, the parable of the talents (25:14-30) as addressed to Christians, and the judgment of the sheep and the goats (25:31-46) as addressed to others.
Non-Jews and non-Christians thus have the opportunity to act relationally through their unwitting encounters with Christ in the least of the brethren. Father Rupnik’s exclusion of Christians from the intended audience of Matthew 25:31-46 is puzzling in a book ostensibly devoted to the spiritual theology of Pope Francis, as the Pope has repeatedly warned the faithful that the passage applies to them.
Polemic against religion and asceticism
The baptized, alas, can be dragged back from the communal, relational, creative, and free life of the person into the slough of the individual.
What drags them back—and more broadly, what diminishes the “flow of the Spirit, of authentic renewal” in the Church (p. 18)? Quoting Pope Francis, Father Rupnik cites Pelagianism and Gnosticism (pp. 14-16). As he sets forth his own spiritual theology, Father Rupnik also cites the “rationality” that he believes has “imprisoned” theology during the last millennium (p. 20). He cites as well the “centuries of cohabitation with para-imperial, para-state structures” (p. 29), the contemporary “socio-psychological approach” (p. 55), and the previously dominant “metaphysical approach,” with its “reference to abstract principles” (p. 55).
In his conclusion, Father Rupnik also takes a swipe at Scholasticism, when he speaks of the “tragic crossroads that has opened up in our history when we abandoned symbolic language and opted for the language of the summa … This opens up the tragic path to abstract and illusory knowledge that generates Christian nominalists, or plunges us into the nihilistic dynamics of idealism and moralism” (pp. 178-79).
For Father Rupnik, an even greater enemy of the life of the Spirit, it seems, is religion, with its accompanying ascetical and devotional practices.
Far from being a moral virtue, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 1807) and St. Thomas Aquinas have described it, religion in Father Rupnik’s book is a “manifestation of the impulse” for self-preservation (pp. 33-34). The “religious journey” is “very much bound up with human effort, with the asceticism with which the human being reaches out to a higher universe” (p. 45). Religion, Father Rupnik warns, is a proud act in which individuals assert themselves “through an idealistic, spiritualist, religious effort that offers salvation of itself without them needing to change” (p. 108).
“Thus it may happen that individuals can understand even the most exquisitely spiritual and faith-based language, but interpret it in their terms, that is, interpret it as something that helps them to pass into eternity as individuals, just as they are,” he continues, as he laments religion’s influence on Christian life. “For centuries our Christianity has been an individualist kind of Christianity, even when doing good, and asceticism has worked mainly on perfecting the individual” (pp. 108-9).
“Christian faith is not a religion, but a relational act,” Father Rupnik declares. “Religion, on the other hand, is an expression of the individual, an individual’s natural, instinctive need” (pp. 111-12). Religion gives rise to “very precise metaphysical certainties, a sort of creed” that demands fidelity to its “literal sense.” Religion “generates an ethic that regulates daily behavior, offering reassuring certainties to the self.” Religion “can be the last hiding place in which the individual self lurks so as not to have to give in and die” (p. 112).
Thus, Father Rupnik warns against “devotional practices of a religious mentality, where human beings decide to perform the exercises prescribed by religious ascetic practice” (p. 148). Much as Father Rupnik assails Scholasticism’s influence on Christian intellectual life, here, it seems, he is assailing the devotional and ascetical practices associated with various charisms and schools of spirituality that arose in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and modern times.
One hopes for a greater generosity of spirit in a Catholic theologian. Christ said that in His Father’s house there are many mansions, and within those mansions, there is surely room for the philosopher who writes a Summa, for the friar who fasts and keeps vigil, and for the grandmother who prays a daily Rosary and makes a weekly holy hour. Surely they are not new Hester Prynnes who deserve to be punished with a scarlet R, forever reminded that they have succumbed to the evil of religion.
Father Rupnik’s critique of religion and asceticism is puzzling in a book that is ostensibly devoted to the spiritual theology of Pope Francis. Father Rupnik’s critique of religion bears little resemblance to the Pope’s praise of popular Catholic religiosity, as well as his actions, texts, and well-known off-the-cuff comments about positive aspects in non-Christian religions. In Laudato Si’, written two years before According to the Spirit, Pope Francis welcomed Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s call for asceticism for the sake of caring for our common home (n. 9). More broadly, Pope Francis, unlike Father Rupnik, takes it for granted that “following Jesus involves asceticism,” even as he acknowledges that Christ was not “an ascetic set apart from the world” (n. 98).
In his broadside against religion, Father Rupnik frequently cites Against Religion, a 2006 work by the Greek Orthodox theologian Christos Yannaras (1935-2024). Unfortunately for the reader, Father Rupnik does not cite specific pages from Against Religion, and in his initial citation, Father Rupnik even misspells Yannaras’s name (p. 34, footnote 22).
In the section of Against Religion entitled “The Demonization of Sexuality,” Yannaras warns that “in religionized Christianity sexuality constitutes a threat” and that “natural, instinctive religiosity is usually (or rather, as a rule) hostile to sexuality” (p. 118). When “the ecclesial event is religionized,” St. Paul’s texts on sexual morality “are idolized and proclaimed (not only by Protestants) to be divinely inspired down to the letter” (p. 125). Yannaras explicitly criticizes the “Vatican line” on sexuality (p. 125)—one of several swipes Yannaras takes at the Vatican in his book (pp. 103, 141, 150, 155, 157, 179-80, 189).
Father Rupnik’s embrace of Yannaras’s critique of religion in Against Religion does not necessarily imply that Father Rupnik embraces Yannaras’s criticism in the same book of the “Vatican line” on the Sixth Commandment. But if Father Rupnik does disagree with Yannaras’s criticism of Catholic teaching on the Sixth Commandment, one wishes he had made clear his disagreement.
Conclusion
Commenting on Christ’s blessing on the pure of heart, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “‘pure in heart’ refers to those who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God’s holiness, chiefly in three areas: charity; chastity or sexual rectitude; love of truth and orthodoxy of faith” (n. 2518).
For these reasons, Father Marko Ivan Rupnik’s According to the Spirit speaks to the Church today. The book’s lack of generosity of spirit in its critique of Scholasticism, religion, asceticism, and devotional practices is a reminder of the importance of charity. The book’s unnuanced embrace of a work that deprecates Catholic teaching on the Sixth Commandment is a reminder of the importance of chastity. The book’s depersonalization of the unbaptized, in the face of Catholic teaching that every human being is a person, is a reminder of the importance of orthodoxy of faith and love of truth.
The love of truth leads me to invite Father Rupnik and his editor, Cardinal Repole, to respond to this review with their own contributions to Catholic World Report if I have misunderstood Father Rupnik’s spiritual theology in According to the Spirit.
I also invite persons who have accused Father Rupnik of abuse to offer their own reflections. “In Rupnik, the sexual dimension cannot be separated from the creative experience,” Gloria Branciani said of his work as an artist. Could a similar statement be made about his work as a theologian?
Like Binding with Briars, then, but for different reasons, According to the Spirit is a warning, a portent; it is a pillar of salt for our age.
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We read” [Rupnik] cites as well the ‘centuries of cohabitation with para-imperial, para-state structures’ (p. 29), the contemporary ‘socio-psychological approach’ (p. 55), and the previously dominant ‘metaphysical approach,’ with its “reference to abstract principles’ (p. 55).”
Far from the metaphysical, abstract, or ascetical, maybe the mysterious key to both Rupnik’s art and writings are the “credible accusations that he spiritually, psychologically or sexually abused some two dozen women and at least one man [!].”
Is this approximate numerology the code for his assault on the dozen apostles and St. Paul as representing, in his carnal “mind,” a cohabiting “para-imperial and para-state”—that is, the apostolic and institutional Church? In any event, the Rupnik thing exhibits the same kind of incoherent entropy woven into the natural religion of Islam…
The “socio-psychological” pluralism and convergence of levelized religions? In the context of “spiritually, psychological and sexually abusing” others, to repeat a recent posting:
“Islam [Rupnik?] has not wanted to choose between Heaven and Earth. It proposed instead a blending of heaven and earth, sex and mysticism, war and proselytism, conquest and apostolate. In more general terms, Islam [Rupnik?] proposed a blending of the spiritual and the temporal worlds which neither in Islam nor among the pagans have ever been divided” (Jean Guitton, “Great Heresies and Church Councils,” 1965, p. 116).
I am not “a person abused by Rupnik” but I will express my opinion nevertheless. A theologian is someone who is supposed to know something about God. Not necessarily a mystic who contemplates God, but psychologically normal enough to be able to perceive things of God without perverting them with own psyche.
It is a basic knowledge of the Church that an UNREPENTANT thick sinner is cut off from God. This is why an unrepentant sexual abuser/rapist cannot say anything meaningful about God; if he tries, it will be something like “a theology of threesomes” i.e. exactly what Rupnik created, for the purpose of corrupting religious women. A true theologian is one who knows that he is created in God’s image; people like Rupnik create God in their own image. Rupnik rapes – God must do it too; Rupnik engages in sexual acts with two women – God does it too, according to Rupnik. He is far from being unique in this perversion. Priests who seduced/raped children have often told their victims that “God wills it” or “your mother permitted me to do this to you” (a real quote from my recent study). Thus, they make their own theology which is anti-Christian.
And so, Rupnik cannot be a Christian theologian or an iconographer. Frankly, I am surprised that such a question is even asked.
Sound reasoning
The author states that “Rupnik’s art has come to adorn many a church around the world.” I’d suggested a more apt infinitive — “to disfigure.”
Agreed, Mr. Ken.
Whenever I read about Rupnick, I feel a strong urge to run and take a long shower.
The laity doesn’t know half of the story of moral violations of the 6th Commandment by members of the clergy. Most of our hierarchy could be justifiably charged with violations of the RICO statutes. Let me share only a slightly exaggerated opinion about the extent of knowledge of clergy sexual misdeeds in the Church: A majority of priests and bishops knew full well what was happening beginning in the 1960’s and for the next forty years. The NYC police were known for their “Long Blue Line” where police protect their brother policemen…where no one “rats” on another. I say the Catholic Church has its “Long Black Line” where clergy hear credible stories and say nothing.
Until Truth-telling become the watchword and part of the deeply-seated culture of the Church, these 6th Commandment violations will continue. I also happen to be of the mind that the unorthodoxy of this Vatican and the current Pope’s minions is used as the justification for the moral corruption in the Church. Not every cleric is a morally corrupt actor but so many clerics are part of the Great Wall of Silence.
The limits of polite “fraternal correction” and business-as-usual “fraternal collegiality.”
It might also be that at USCCB gatherings, individual bishops were disinclined to mention seemingly isolated abuses within their own dioceses, and therefore just moved things along with little idea how endemic was the moral gangrene that had entered the Church. After all, there were many social-gospel charities to supervise. Not an excuse, here, but just to notice that in addition to the “Long Blue Line” there’s also the stupidity of obtuseness and non-communication that also takes place routinely within the front office of any secular bureaucracy.
Priests are not trained in the seminary to be fraternal whistle blowers.
Take for example, and as an exception, a recent archbishop in my archdiocese (RIP) who noticed what was going on when he was still a seminary underclassman…he blew the whistle and was silenced. Damn whistleblower! Decades later, after the lid finally came off in the 1990s, he spent most of his purple-hat career (1997-2010) dealing with the dozens of mostly past homosexual abuse cases.
Peter, I know that speaking the truth in clerical circles if not easy to come by. But here, I refer to scripture: “If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.”
A sitting bishop was referred to me for treatment of his depression. He was referred by a priest who was his spiritual director. When I interviewed him, it became clear that he was appropriately depressed as he was engaging in sex with a number of priests who served under him. The reason I mention this is that I could only imagine that many clerics knew full well of this bishop’s failure in office. He continued as Ordinary of his diocese for many years until his death. Silence is deadly in these matters. We had a saying when treating families: “A family is only as healthy as the secrets they keep.”
And then there’s the problem how the sacramental seal (Penance) might be exploited by the cleric-perpetrator to prevent disclosure. Abusers identifying themselves as they confess sacramentally to their priest-victims or even to their bishops?
A somewhat similar situation, Rupnik was excommunicated (temporarily!) for absolving one of his sex accomplices…the tip of a broader iceberg? https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253079/jesuit-superior-says-that-fr-marko-rupnik-was-excommunicated-in-2019
Your comment DiogenesRedux is spot on. What the bishops do not understand is that their teaching authority and the respect for it has been greatly diminished by their inaction, cover ups, etc. This is one of the central reasons that many Catholics no longer pay attention to what they have to say on the various moral issues and ignore them.
Did you mean instead the *Thin* Blue Line? I have a “Thin Blue Line” flag sticker on my truck in honor of my late brother who served in law enforcement. The inspiration behind The Thin Blue Line wasn’t about institutional coverup.
No disrepect to your brother. I do remember a movie “The Thin Blue Line” (if I remember correctly) about how LEO’s and a prosecuoer’s misconduct led to a wrongful murder conviction.
There are some bad actors to be found in every institution and every branch of service. And institutional coverup can go along with that. But that wasn’t what the Thin Blue Line refers to anymore than Semper Fi does.
Our criminal justice system seems to let dangerous people back on the streets more often than they convict the innocent but that does happen sometimes. It’s one reason I oppose the death penalty. And a defendant’s finacial ability to retain decent legal representation can be the difference between a life sentence and lethal injection.
We’re Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI dupes when it came to Rupnik?
While I often profit from the articles here at CWR this particular contribution stands alone. This is what authentic Catholic journalism looks like. Fearless, probative, sober and illuminating. No excuses, calling out the names. It requires a very wide audience.
God reward Mr. Ziegler.
I second your comment James.
“As in Father Ginder’s case, there has been hesitation to suspend his priestly faculties”, likely speaks to fluent empathy from similar predilection.
We cite cite multifarious reasons why, but there’s one nomenclature. A cultural masculinity femininity crisis extends into the priesthood. We should look at our traditional program for accruing priests. It’s a form of hothouse organic vegetation growth. The garden variety priest formed by an already preexisting problematic priesthood. The result. The same vegetable type that existed with the same issues of disordered sexuality.
From this writer’s personal perspective the means for a better formed man to enter the priesthood would be to discard the system and seek men at a more adult level already experienced and formed in a relationship to a world they now seek to suspend for sake of something infinitely better, the life of Christ. Perhaps bishops could be actually, personally acquainted with and knowledgeable of candidates and far better equipped to make a prudent judgment. This model is closely identified with the calling of Christ to his Apostles.
In turn this calls for bishops who are adept at communicating, who actually preaches the Gospel to laity, priest, and candidate. To break the chain of futility. Rather than a man who’s good at business management and building maintenance. As was Christ, the Apostle Paul, men should be attracted to the bishop as his model.
Thanks to CWR and J. J. Ziegler for your perseverance.
God is Omnipotent and Omniscient . The Mercy God is His Justice.
“Hypocrisy is not protected under the mantle of religion.”
Bernanos, The Impostor
Rupnik embraces a “porno-mysticism” like that of the Dominican brothers Thomas and Marie-Dominique Philippe and their disciples like Jean Vanier. This evil also infected McCarrick, Zanchetta, and countless other predator who hunt victims in every age. We have to be on our guard to protect the vulnerable from being isolated by these malefactors.
Amoralist Laetitia is based on this evil philosophy, that sin can sometimes be God’s will, supporting all manner of pastoral heresies – like tolerating concubinage or “blessing” couples in an irregular relationship, etc. The horrible reality of this pontificate is coming into focus. The reform of this disastrous pontificate could take centuries.
“Cover Photo: Christ, Lord over Time, commissioned by the USCCB Secretariat of Divine Worship as the frontispiece of The Divine Office Hymnal” (GIA Publications, Inc., 2023). This cover photo for the 2025 online USCCB Liturgical Calendar is a welcome relief from the previous 2024 Liturgical Calendar queer rainbow cover. Perhaps a sign of the virtual universal revulsion toward Rupnik and his defenders. Virtual due to the exclusion of his defenders at the Vatican. As well as the Diocese of Koper.
Fr Marko Rupnik is an icon of pseudo mysticism and queer art. Not that he’s a homosexual as much as he’s a pervert. It can’t be denied that some of his work is attractive even if strangely so. Redemptor Mater Chapel commissioned by John Paul II, the recent official image of the recent 2022 Tenth World Meeting of Families have a charm about them, the Chapel in the ancient Byzantine like style, the official image the modern Rupnik. A strange warmness of color and form. Is it that we’re now viewing his art with jaundiced eyes? What of beloved saint John Paul II?
But that’s the magical allure of pseudo mysticism. It’s appealing until you’re intellectually raped, or physically like the nuns. What’s occurring at the Vatican shouldn’t be considered disproportionately outlandish. Because the contagion coheres with a predictable outcome of the principles contained in Amoris Laetitia.
How to make a man. Good parents can as long as dad is a true father, has courage, capabilities that appeal to boys. Definitely not a Mr Mom. Although, there are instances when it can’t be avoided it should otherwise be at all costs. Today’s Woke world considers the term insulting because of the dramatic narrowing between manhood and womanhood.
Apparently Oedipus Rex syndrome acknowledged in comments on celibate priests indicates Sigmund Freud, who invented the terminology in his analysis of dreams, isn’t dead yet. Freud also believed that homosexuality was a problem of lack of sexual emotional development. Immaturity And that sexuality is determined biologically [Freud began his research as a neurologist and came to this conclusion early on].
Otherwise God’s strong hand can bring out of us what he intended us to be as healthy heterosexual men and women. That’s why a manly, fatherly bishop compassionate, spiritually focused can be a great asset in preparing men for the celibate priesthood. Priesthood as manifest by Christ celibate, manly, and chaste.
For a red-blooded man surrendering his natural sexual relationship with a woman is a crucifixion. A means of virtuous merit, of mystical love, and example to laity in their requirement for chastity in marriage,
Can a conscience deemed the ultimate arbiter of good and evil invent anything more diabolically blasphemous than a trinitarian love fest between a priest and two nuns?
Parents killing their child by abortion.
A priest of course must be a psychologically mature individual whose purpose is to serve God and not to hide his immaturity behind an image of a priest. He must have an experience of working in the world and be able to emotionally connect with people on a real level. The problem is that for more than ten years spent within the Roman Catholic Church, I have seen precious few of such men. The majority had a very serious psychological flow which made them potentially harmful. Namely, because of peculiarities of their psyche, they were incapable of consistently relating to others on a true, deep and healthy level.
Almost all those priests have a certain imprint on their psyche, of a powerful mother whom they want to please most of all. The mother was more important than God.
I suspect such priests have an unresolved Oedipus complex, often expressed in their readiness to bend before a female (or a female principal) up to worshipping her, playing an absurd role of “an adopted son” with old ladies, often the powerful female members of a congregation and so on. They typically have problems connecting with fellow males. In an extreme case they lack a core; to function, they must be united with some woman, “a mother figure”. In the world such men are not usually popular among women, for an obvious reason – a man who did not separate from his mother emotionally cannot be a good partner. In the modern Catholic Church, however, he fits perfectly and he is often very popular among older ladies who feel not threatened by masculinity, absent in such priests. They are “sons”; hence we have a perversion here because a priest must be a father, including for the older ladies.
Add to this that an emotional enmeshment “mother – son” always includes manipulation, deception, lies – something that a boy absorbs as a norm and acts out, including in the Church. Such boys = priests typically do not see a problem with deceptions and quite flexible morals. Such a priest, in his mind, is a spouse of the Church who took the place of his mother. And so, if in the past he was allowed to do anything as long as he was “faithful” to his mother, now in his mind is allowed to do anything as long as he is faithful = remains a priest of the mother-Church. Being enmeshed with a mother gives huge privileges, so as being a priest = a spouse of the Church (in his mind). This may explain why the priest and bishops covered each other’s crimes.
“Privileged sons” naturally look at the laity as “plebes” and the plebes can be used and abused. By the way, such priests often have problems speaking of Christ who is the true and only Bridegroom of the Church; the enmeshment “mother – son” does not leave a space for anyone else.
Thus, flooding the Church with the sons enmeshed with their mothers = priests who can never be fathers, is the core problem of the Church in my opinion. Because it is a problem of family psychology, it must be dealt with as such. It appears that the cover of celibacy and especially a clean separation from laity makes priesthood so attractive for men with unresolved Oedipus complex/narcissistic personality disorder. The obvious solution then is to make priesthood attractive for those who are psychologically opposite to the enmeshed sons i.e. men who can be fathers including those who wish to marry. I know many Catholics loathe the proposition of married priests but you cannot overcome psychopathology via bureaucratic or whatever else means. If you have the deficiency of a true father you have to inject more of them/ create an environment friendly to normal = ordained by God relationships in the big family, the Church.
NB: ‘S of S’ did not push the option of married priests while we have “blessings of homosexual couples”. This only confirms my point.
Anna, you speak very wisely and are quite well-informed. I always enjoy reading your incisive analyses.
As a Catholic, I have no problems with married priests. The ones I know are fine men, if often anguished by their dual vocations. Marriage is not simply a solution to infidelity or any other inability to commit oneself. The Orthodox should know that a married priesthood is no guarantee of Holy clergy, any more than celibacy protects the episcopacy from sexual sin or power lust.
I have no problems with a celibate priesthood. So many deacons, priests and bishops I have known are true spiritual fathers. For an example, look no further than Fr. Fessio whose fatherly fidelity provided us with this forum at CWR.
So what is needed? The hierarchy must be populated with men who love someone else, beginning with God.
I agree with you, God’s Fool about a preference for a celibate clergy. But a celibate clergy will NOT work as long as:
1. There is a code of “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell in seminaries.
2. Seminaries continue to foster priestly vocations among males who are weak, immature, unable to hold their own with heterosexual males, are under the dominant influence of their mothers, had absent and unavailable fathers, were bullied by other males who sensed their weakness, relate more comfortably with older women than males of their own age or who have engaged in same sex activity in their teen years.
A celibate clergy will work so long as each and every individual clergy member remains educated, focused, centered, and in love with the persons of the Trinity, and in love with the Blessed Mother, the Daughter, and the Spouse of each Trinitarian person. All the rest is sociological, secular, and sophistical semantics. For more detail, there is this: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20111121_levada-celibacy-priesthood_en.html
Peitler I think your answer worsens the problems invested into in the discussion from both Anna and the “God’s Fool” writer who says he was at the “synodality” meetings. Some priests actually have none of those traits or histories you outline and never preach the Gospel; and when you see they ordain deacons just like themselves it comes as no surprise.
The doctrine on married priests is doctrine and it is not founded upon the immorality of either the un-redeemed or the redeemed. You may wish to say it is not doctrine but I tell you it is doctrine. It’s unfortunate that you and the writer with the tag “God’s Fool” throw yourselves in front of Anna.
One was bad enough and you both went to elaborate your lavishness.
Galy: perhaps you might offer us all an exegesis on the scriptural passage referring to Peter’s mother-in-law. And, while you’re at it, you’ll have to cite for me where I might find it in Church teaching that a celibate clergy is DOCTRINE before I’ll accept your assertion. Until then, I’ll continue to view your comments are puerile.
Peitler, you’re a good man.
So long as you see me and/or my comments i that light, God will not convince you of anything further. I’m not asking you to eat crow about that; when God wants to show you the truth on priestly celibacy, if ever, He’s the one to do it.
In response to DeaconEdwardPeitler’s 12 AM post of 1/15:
Rightly the deacon speaks of Peter’s mother-in-law in scripture, but the deacon neglects to note that scripture makes no mention of Peter’s wife. She may have been dead for many years. The average life expectancy in the first century was about 20-40 years. Many women died in childbirth. There were few medicinal cures and little surgery. The chances are high that Peter was once married but widowed before he began to follow Jesus.
Would our modern world, knowing Peter as a married man with a living wife, see him as a better or worse sort of man, knowing that he had left a wife to follow an itinerant preacher?
The link in my earlier post reasons through a celibate priesthood as a development of doctrine. A celibate priesthood is not divine law, but it was essential to Christ’s ministry. There is power in sacrifice; our current church discipline-doctrine of priestly celibacy needs all the power in sacrifice her priests can summon. Laxity is all around, and far too much. Why not hold up high standards? Where have high standards been shown to cause perversion? With trust in God all things are possible.
Scripture attests to men being distracted by wives. A man who wants to fully serve the Lord and His Church does best to give God his all. He offers himself, pure and sacrificially, giving all.
Anna: I do enjoy your analyses. Others enjoy being puerile.
Anna’s “Oedipus enmeshment” somehow justifying married priesthood when “the married man knows how to be a father”, is not what the Church was brought forth for, from Jesus Christ. Nor is what the sacrament of marriage was instituted for by Him. Or Orders.
It’s not merely abut preference and other subjective orientation either.
I do not always “enjoy” what Anna has to say for the simple reason that she is often trying to “solve Roman Catholic issues” using overlays and interweaving from Orthodox. What she is obliged to do from time to time is actually admit that “disclaimer”.
Elias, I thank God for your wisdom. I join in your understanding that men who ‘enjoy’ a woman’s conversation or writing is not always clear-eyed in their thoughts about her.
OTOH, Anna owes us nothing. Not even a disclaimer when her bias in writing is clear for those with eyes willing to see.
Edit: Men are, not men is.
Bless the Lord. Ever and ever!
From Anne, we read: “Add to this that an emotional enmeshment “mother – son” always includes manipulation, deception, lies – something that a boy absorbs as a norm and acts out, including in the Church. Such boys = priests typically do not see a problem with deceptions and quite flexible morals.”
The corrective action is not a married priesthood, but exclusion from the seminaries those applicants who have homosexual inclinations, because never having separated from the mother.
Without giving his reasons, a friend and Byzantine Rite priest once remarked to me that the Latin Church made a mistake by separating the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation, AND that the Byzantine Rite made a mistake by allowing a married priesthood.
Well yes that’s the narrative, but not only “duped” on Rupnik because apparently Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were also “duped” into appointing every single one of the 115 Cardinals that ended up voting for Francis to Pope.
Additionally, according to the mainstream Catholic narrative Pope John Paul II was “duped” into appointing Bergoglio, McCarrick, Cupich, etc. as Cardinals and we must not forget possibly the worst “duping” of all time, the promotion of “Legions of Christ” founder Marcial Maciel by PJPII despite overwhelming evidence that PJPII was warned throughout most of his pontificate about Maciel. The list could go on and on.
Anyway, it seems to me the narrative is Pope Francis has never been “duped” even though the previous popes mentioned, like the ones mentioned with Rupnik in the article, have done the same things as Pope Francis, sometimes not as bad, sometimes even worse, but for some reason we always hear the narrative that PBXVI and especially PJPII were ALWAYS “duped” while for some unknown reason Pope Francis NEVER is. I never heard Pope Francis get the benefit of the doubt like those two popes, not even once.
Unfortunately for our Catholic Church today, despite all this “duping”, the only bishop Pope John Paul II didn’t seem to be “duped” on was the faithful bishop, Archbishop LeFebvre.🤦🏼♂️
On a positive note, kudos for the writer for at least pointing out that Pope Francis wasn’t the only Pope that messed up with Rupnik while the majority of the time the writers don’t mention those kind of facts and, for that matter, neither do most of the commenters on here either pretending that Pope Francis is the only modern Pope doing destructive things while not being “duped” intentionally knowing all along he would be 100 % destructive.
Both Rubnik and his enabler Francis belong in prison.
Aside from his sexual crimes, Rupniks art is rather ugly.It wouldn’t be bad if he got away from those large eyes…Alien like.It seems that once the church decides that something is tasteful, we see it all over…
The most charitable word I can come up with to describe Marko Rupnik’s twist on the Christian spiritual journey is “peculiar.” The word that comes most strongly to mind is “disturbing.”
“Father Rupnik explains that the Persons of the Blessed Trinity live a communal, relational life; so, too, did Adam and Eve, created in the image of God. That life, however, was shattered by the Fall, a descent from the communal, relational life of the person to the fearful, angry life of the individual. Christ, by His Redemption, restored the communal, relational life of persons to those united to Him by Baptism. The baptized are grafted into Christ’s Body, the Church, and by living as communal, relational persons, they are a theophany, or divine manifestation, to nonbelievers. The beauty of their communal, relational, creative lives attracts others to life in the Spirit.”
Oh, so that’s what Christ really came to earth to do? To make it possible for human beings to live “communal, relational, creative” lives. That reminds me of some strains of New Age thinking. There is no sense of the Christian salvation narrative imbedded in the Bible that began in the Garden of Eden and culminated in the Crucifixion and Christ’s trumphant victory over death, on our behalf.
The “Holy Spirit’s work “is recognized through active charity, in experience as an expression of self-gift, as peace, motivation for creative, inclusive encounter.” More new-agey sounding blather. What is “self-gift?”
“Religion “can be the last hiding place in which the individual self lurks so as not to have to give in and die.” Of course someone who is chasing after becoming a ” theophany, or divine manifestation” will find ordinary religion, devotional and ascetic practices far too limiting for his magnificent self.
Many thanks to JJ. Ziegler for researching, analyzing and writing this outstanding article, i felt like I should read at least something of Rupnic’s theological writings, to complete my understanding of him. Now I have and I don’t need to read any more.
As a corrective, I am going to listen again to this week’s podcast on the life of St. Anthony by Bishop Eric Varden on desertfathers.com.
I should clarify my question “what is self-gift?” by adding “as used here,” e.g., in this particular context.. What is “self-gift” as used here, by Rupnic? Not that I expect an answer.
“The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine – but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.”
― Hilaire Belloc
That statement is as rigorously true as the Pythagorean Theorem. I wish it were not so.
Chapeau to the writer for his clarity.
Chapeau to the editor and the publisher too, for commissioning and for publishing this ever so necessary piece; which so many in the Church, especially those in positions of authority, would prefer never to have seen the light of day.
The way the “situation” is being treated seems to bear out a dishonesty. There is a broader theology movement at work aside from the issues of allegations against Rupnik. Is Rupnik’s thought being embraced as part of the movement or found useful for it to some extent? It could be very misleading to take these things in isolations. They would all have to be admitted so that with the identification of the wider movement it would be shown also if Rupnik’s contribution is taking a primary role or following role or moderating role; what the movement is; and who is involved.
A question that is raised is if some contributors on this page offer “leading” thought lines -baiting- as a way to stimulate the production of “angles” and “new depth” without disclosure. Should this be happening it is not possible to assess its significance without the sufficient measure of context.