Is criticizing priests forbidden to Catholics? In fact, we have a right to.

his is not anoth­er post about Fr. Pavone. Saints for­bid. But it was dur­ing a dis­cus­sion of that top­ic on Face­book that some­one made the claim that Catholics are “not allowed” to crit­i­cize priests. I am going to lim­it myself, there­fore, to that spe­cif­ic claim. I do not, here, address the top­ic of whether crit­i­cism of priests is impru­dent. Nor do I dis­cuss the extent to which we must do so in char­i­ty, or pri­vate­ly, with respect for the office, and so on. I address only the claim that it is “not allowed.”

As near as I can tell, this belief has its ori­gins in a sec­tion of the Pieta Prayer Book that quotes from a pri­vate rev­e­la­tion. Here is the key text.

One should NEVER attack a priest, even when he’s in error, rather one should pray and do penance that I’ll grant him My grace again. He alone ful­ly rep­re­sents Me, even when he does­n’t live after my exam­ple!

PPB attrib­ut­es these words to “Our Lord’s rev­e­la­tions to Mut­ter Vogel.” And the first thing one should know on this point is that Catholics are not bound by pri­vate rev­e­la­tion. They are not bound even to those the Church has approved. The con­science of Catholics is bound only to pub­lic rev­e­la­tion, and pub­lic rev­e­la­tion end­ed with the death of the last apos­tle. When the Church approves a pri­vate rev­e­la­tion, that only means she has found noth­ing con­trary to faith or morals there. Catholics may choose to believe it, but the Church does not com­pel them to. A Catholic who choos­es to believe “Our Lord’s rev­e­la­tions to Mut­ter Vogel,” can decide for him­self, “I will not ever crit­i­cize a priest.” But he can­not bind anoth­er Catholic to that under penal­ty of sin.

If Our Lord had thought that such a pro­hi­bi­tion should bind all Catholics, would he not have includ­ed it as pub­lic rev­e­la­tion?

Sec­ond, one should also note that the Church has nowhere approved “Our Lord’s rev­e­la­tions to Mut­ter Vogel.” In fact, Vogel is such an obscure per­son­age that I find no ref­er­ence to her in either the Old or New Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dias. One may think of these words as, at best, a pious sug­ges­tion, but they are cer­tain­ly far from an offi­cial stric­ture upon crit­i­cism of priests.

“But Alt!” you will say. “What about John 17:18? What about John 20:21? Or Luke 10:16?”

Okay. What about them?

In the first two, Christ says, “As the Father has sent me, so I am send­ing you.” The most this tells me is that Christ ordained priests to preach the gospel. He ordained priests to admin­is­ter the sacra­ments. But none of that is in dis­pute. To sug­gest that crit­i­cism of priests is the same as crit­i­cism of Christ is to read into the text what is not there. It is eise­ge­sis. Christ is sin­less; Christ does not make mis­takes. This we know. He sends apos­tles to preach the Gospel, but he does not make them impec­ca­ble. Not even the pope is with­out error in all things.

In Luke 10:16, Christ says the apos­tles, “Who­ev­er hears you, hears me, but who­ev­er rejects you rejects me.”

The prob­lem is that Christ is speak­ing about the apos­tles only as teach­ers of the faith. He means that any­one who rejects the apos­tles’ teach­ing has reject­ed Christ. But priests are not offi­cial teach­ers of the faith. They are, but only inso­far as they remain con­sis­tent with the Mag­is­teri­um of the Church—the pope and the bish­ops in union with him.

And not even bish­ops get such a priv­i­lege when it comes to their actions—their teach­ing yes, their actions no. Christ says noth­ing about whether we may crit­i­cize a bish­op for liv­ing in a big, roomy man­sion. (I do not say that is or is not a fair crit­i­cism, only that Luke 10:16 has no appli­ca­tion. To reject the bish­op’s man­sion is not the same as to reject Christ.)

“But Alt!” you will say. “What about St. Fran­cis? Remem­ber?”

The saint was close to the end of his life, unable to walk and suf­fer­ing from an eye dis­ease and the stig­ma­ta. As he was brought through a region, some peo­ple from a near­by town came to ask for his help with their parish priest. They had dis­cov­ered that their priest was involved in a scan­dalous rela­tion­ship with a woman of that town. The saint was brought to the town and placed before the priest in front of every­one. They thought that the saint would upbraid the fall­en priest. St. Fran­cis instead fell to his knees, took the priest’s hands into his own stig­ma­tized hands, kissed them and said, “All I know and all I want to know is that these hands give me Jesus.” It was said that the priest was con­vert­ed.

This sto­ry dates to the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, accord­ing to the Reg­is­ter arti­cle which quotes it, and it is cer­tain­ly a very pious tale. I would not wish to dis­pute the truth of it. But the most it tells us is that St. Fran­cis was not in the habit of crit­i­ciz­ing priests. We may cer­tain­ly choose to emu­late his exam­ple, but there is no rea­son to think we are bound by it.

“But Alt!” you will say. “St. Cather­ine of Siena is a Doc­tor of the Church! In her Dia­logues she tells us that Christ warned against crit­i­cism of priests! What say you?”

Yes. She did. And again, this is a pri­vate rev­e­la­tion to which Catholics are not bound. You can say that we ought to take St. Cather­ine’s sug­ges­tion seri­ous­ly. You can say that the fact that she is a saint, and a Doc­tor, gives her words a par­tic­u­lar weight. But what you can­not say is that the con­science of Catholics is bound by St. Cather­ine’s Dia­logues. What you can­not say is that the Dia­logues are mag­is­te­r­i­al teach­ing.

In fact, go to the Code of Canon Law 208–223, and you will find it says much about the oblig­a­tions, but also the rights, of the faith­ful. Canon 212 tells us that Catholics must “show Chris­t­ian obe­di­ence” to their pas­tors. But you will also find these words:

They have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keep­ing with their knowl­edge, com­pe­tence and posi­tion, to man­i­fest to the sacred Pas­tors their views on mat­ters which con­cern the good of the Church. They have the right also to make their views known to oth­ers of Christ’s faith­ful, but in doing so they must always respect the integri­ty of faith and morals, show due rev­er­ence to the Pas­tors and take into account both the com­mon good and the dig­ni­ty of indi­vid­u­als.

When it “concern[s] the good of the Church,” Catholics may cer­tain­ly crit­i­cize priests. They even have the right to do so pub­licly. Now, the canon does say that the crit­i­cism must be in keep­ing with Church teach­ing, and that Catholics must “show due rev­er­ence.” In oth­er words, they must obey the law of char­i­ty.

But not only are Catholics not for­bid­den to crit­i­cize priests, they actu­al­ly have a right to—when it involves the good of the Church.