Essays in Idleness

People — even bishops — sometimes do what is required of them, without having been ordered to do so by their immediate superiors. It is a rare event, but an inspiring one. Mostly it inspires loathing in their opponents. Such enterprise will be noticed by the boss; though as the average drudge in any corporation knows, or learns if he did not know already, promotion will not follow. There is a question of loyalties: whom do we serve? In my limited experience, the average boss understands only personal loyalty to himself. It is human to confuse the corporate interest with one’s own, especially when conflicts are not visible to subordinates. It is also unambiguously wrong.

When a boss myself (in small insignificant ventures), I became acquainted with the supposed virtue of “decisiveness.” Let us say I made a foolish mistake — the result of allowing my mouth to get slightly ahead of my intellect. (This can easily happen.) Now what do I do? Climb down, and be perceived as weak and indecisive? Or damn the torpedoes?

On the other hand I have served (briefly but memorably) bosses who were utterly sleazy and contemptible. Though I name no names.

A sleazy boss will look for more alternatives. For instance, disown the mistake. Claim to have been misunderstood, or misinterpreted. Balance each mistake with its opposite. Blame the innocent, and sack them. Or, do nothing and wait patiently for everyone to forget what you said or did. Later, fire anyone who remembers. I belonged to the climb-down school, which is perhaps why my career got nowhere; that, and making what I believed at the time to be hysterically funny jokes. For “leadership,” I was soon told, requires taking oneself seriously, and carefully guarding one’s amour-propre.

Let us place Robbie Burns here, in opposition to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The one wished we could “see ourselves as others see us”; the other preferred the “who cares?” of amour de soi. Christian writers reject both, and recommend trying to please God. Since God, having created the universe, cannot be so easy to impress, it is the least satisfying short-term option.

Gerhard Cardinal Müller, before being relieved of the office without warning or reason, was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He was every inch a Ratzinger appointment: learned, solid in doctrine and faith, diligent, incorruptible. But not humourless, and hardly robotic.

The CDF was the very office to which Pope Bergoglio was bound to turn, when five urgent Dubia were hand-delivered to him, from Cardinals Burke, Brandmüller, Meisner, and Caffarra, on May 6th, 2017. By Catholic tradition, the pope was solemnly obliged to respond. Two of these men have since died (heartbroken, according to reports); all four were among widely admired stalwart defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, in vivid contrast to the pope’s inner circle of dubious friends. But Bergoglio was already in the habit of ignoring Müller — and said he’d never heard of the Dubia, until he saw them mentioned in a newspaper. (Behaviour I associate with low characters.)

The pope had been asked to clarify Roman doctrine, straightforwardly by Yes or No to each question, with precise qualifications if any, in light of numerous statements ranging from the absurd to the heretical that he had uttered, both formally (in e.g. Amoris Laetitia) and informally (in his frequent aeroplane media scrums), leaving a billion poorly-educated Catholics haplessly confused about what the Church is teaching, and has always taught.

God bless Cardinal Müller for the four pages of his Manifesto of Faith (English text here). He has given us the answers that a reckless and irresponsible pope owed to us: the Catholic answers, to which we as Catholics, and indeed all men have an absolute right. (Flaccid leftist tweets and posturings we can get from anywhere.)

Four pages take four minutes to read. Ten, perhaps, with a sip of tea and full attention.