Celebritergy and Their Enablers
January 1, 2012

It is unknown whether or not he was ordained, but itinerant preacher and authority on scripture, Apollos, was, according to Acts of The Apostles 18, a man of eloquence, full of spiritual fervor. It seems that long before there were Catholic TV or radio networks or podcasts, Apollos became one of the earliest Catholic celebrities.

One can imagine simple Corinthians exclaiming, "Apollos! I just love him! Did you hear the other night how he set those Jews and pagans straight?!" Others also gathered in rapture around St. Paul and a man identified as Cephas ("Rock"). Very likely this was St. Peter.

This hero worship was another of the many things about the troublesome Corinthians that annoyed St. Paul and prompted him to write two long epistles to them. In 1 Cor. 3 the apostle reminded his readers that it's not about Apollos, not about him, not about Cephas but about Christ.

So far as history knows, Apollos, who had shown himself to be humble enough to accept correction, agreed with his deflation. If his worshippers were heaping denarii at his feet, he did not file a lawsuit to keep it going. He did not hack off a splinter church or claim that heretics who had infiltrated the Corinthian community were trying to bring him down because of all the great work he was doing. Scripture records no occurrences of protests in Apollos' behalf, no casting of Paul as a mean ol' meanie. An early Catholic celebrity Apollos may have been, but, if he was ordained, he was never a member of the "celebritergy."

Celebritergy are Catholic priests or other religious who find celebrity and revel in it for egotistical or material gain. Or even, in some cases, because they think that they can make the Kingdom come faster.

Fame is inevitably thrust upon some members of the church. The pope becomes, by the prominence of the pontificate, a celebrity. However I've heard that popes tend to cry tears rather than cry "ka-ching" when they learn that they've been chosen. As George Weigel wrote of Pope John Paul II in The End And The Beginning, "his task was not to point to himself but to make himself a pointer, directing the people and the world to Jesus Christ. 'Don't look at me, look at Christ; don't look at me, look at Christ'-- that had been his message in a extraordinarily diverse array of settings through out the world."(1)

When they are being watched, the authentic, in humility, will direct the gaze beyond themselves to Christ, but the phony bastards will encourage cults of their personalities, host $5000 cruises and shill for any business or political interest that waves money in front of their noses. When they are umasked, they cry that they are being picked on by progressives because they are pillars of the faith. They may even get Catholic punditry's best pit bulls to come to their aid.

In the millennia since the early church of Apollos, there have no doubt been many Catholic celebrities who either pointed the way to Christ or who were out for themselves. I've just been reading about the fakers who took advantage of Catholic parishes in the early United States (ca. 1800-20). Some had been kicked out of other dioceses. One was not a priest at all, but a cigar salesman. All were charismatic. Being charismatic is common among these guys; it is a trait that they share with clerical boy-buggers. Their charm attracted loyal followings.

Until the past century, celebritergy and their antics have been confined to small corners of the faith. Lately they've been able to extend their reach through mass print and electronic media and innovations in the church itself.

Before we examine a few examples of contemporary celebritergy, I want it understood that I'm not claiming that every priest, nun or brother on TV, radio or in any limelight is an out-for-himself/herself, out-and-out mountebank. However clergy and religious with a large, loyal and loving fan base face special temptations.

One of these temptations is to fall into thinking that their holy work places them above moral and canon law, obedience to their superiors and the unglamorous aspects of religious life. Also I think that a couple of the benevolent have done disservices to the church by endorsing sheep-shearing individuals and their clip-joints.

Catholic celebrities, like all superstars, are beset by those aforementioned, money-waving business or political interests who are always looking for big-name endorsements. In green-room pitches new institutions, Catholic dating services, charismatic communities and lay apostolates all sound like great ideas. It's easy for a well-meaning priest, even a pope to say "Terrific! I support it!" to propositions that in practice and details turn out to be not so great.

Also being a focus of attention can be intoxicating. One doesn't want to disappoint one's fans by not having an answer to every question, by not being the wise, omniscient father that they think one is. Like the chaplain who wants to be the expert on love and marriage and so regurgitates Men Are From Mars etc., one cribs somebody else's answers even if they don't fit into the Catholic rubric. Or one teaches stuff that one just makes up without thinking.

A Modern Archetype

One Catholic celebrity who certainly struggled with temptation and fell (It is only Heaven who knows if he got back up) was Thomas "Fr. Louis" Merton.

In terms of following and sales volume, the talking heads of EWTN have nothing on the Cistercian. Merton remains the biggest member of the celebritergy ever. His mega-best-seller The Seven Storey Mountain was published right at the zenith of The Catholic Moment, the late 1940s. That was a time when The Catholic Church was enjoying fidelity, respect, cultural and political influence that are inconceivable today.

Merton, at least, admitted his weaknesses, one being that he had a big ego that had followed him into the Gethsemane cloister. In his autobiography, he writes this ominous passage about himself, a characterization that could be applied to other and recent celebritergy:

"He is a businessman. He is full of ideas. He breathes notions and new schemes. He generates books in the silence that ought to be sweet with the infinitely productive darkness of contemplation.

"And the worst of it is, he has his superiors on his side" (2)

Merton's superiors gave him special privileges--his hut in the abbey woods being one. He chafed when he couldn't get more. It appears that in later years, the businessman had Fr. Louis pinned down. He adjusted his marketing accordingly when he saw that religion, including the Catholic faith, was being equated with social activism. Or being trashed as a burned-out light bulb. Merton's long-time interest in Eastern mysticism enabled him to get on the same wave that The Beatles were riding when they adopted the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as their guru. When he was let out of the cloister for medical reasons, he tried to have an affair with a nurse.

Lay Apostolates: Tailor-made For Sharpies and Suckers

Another priest/businessman/satyr was the late Marcel Maciel-Degollado.

Mexican-born Maciel was kicked out of two seminaries but then used family connections to be ordained to the priesthood. We can conclude from this that it was evident that he was unfit to be a priest even in his youth. He exploited a flawed type of religious organization that developed in the Twentieth Century: the lay apostolate.

Whereas orders of old relied on the toil of easily-identifiable priests, nuns and brothers to provide sustenance, the apostolates of recent decades are made up largely of lay people, some of whom take vows of celibacy, most of whom live and work in the secular world where they avoid sticking out.

When it comes to supporting their apostolates financially, these lay people, working as professionals, go way beyond the average Catholic's throwing a buck in the basket. Thus the apostolates or "communities" accumulate huge amounts of cash to invest, to buy legitimacy, especially in those nooks of the church where money talks loudly. Unfortunately those nooks are many.

The best-known is JoseMaria Escriva de Balaguer's Opus Dei. Maciel's was the Legion of Christ/Regnum Christi. It is never noted that LC/RC was very much a me-too, Opus-Dei imitation of which Maciel made himself generalissimo. Like Escriva, the Mexican stamped a Hispanic personality, that is, one with the DNA of Moorish Islam, on his institution.

Every new apostolate and charismatic community that I know of has gotten into trouble in part or in whole. They are flawed for the following reasons. When you have laypeople bucket-loading money into the coffers, and show a preference for higher-income earners as recruits, the virtue of poverty really means nothing. When you have members with one foot in celibacy like nuns and the other in Jimmy Choo's buying fancy pumps, that is "consecrated" people masquerading as bourgeois, you encourage and create a culture of deceit. And then there are the cultures of secrecy found in all these apostolates. Secrecy, enriched with pious preaching about calumny and speaking no ill, is the con-artist-faker's oxygen.

Apostolates also tend to be cliquey, like frats on the Catholic campus. The New Oxford Review called it "The Super Catholic Syndrome,"(3) this behavior of constructing "churches within the church." These "parallel structures" abuilding alongside traditional parishes get their bricks baked and mortar mixed mainly by the certain type of personality that they attract. This personality tends to be a weak one that goes along with the group and looks the other way. It's comfortable with secrecy. It's life can be run. It may be fiercely anti-pornography or anti-abortion, but it is ignorant of comprehensive morality (which is why it looks the other way). This personality is fearful and susceptible to believing that the plain old church and its institutions are somehow inadequate, even corrupt. This personality happens to be that of the celebritergy enabler as described in the right column.

Beware of Builders

Let's come now to contemporary celebritergy including three fallen stars of the Eternal Word Television Network: Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, Fr. Frank Pavone and Thomas A. Corapi. Euteneuer and Corapi were caught having affairs, the latter also doing drugs. Pavone is one of those who thought that his pro-life work exempted him from rules and accountability. His bishop thought otherwise.

Euteneuer and Pavone seem to have quietly vanished which, in their cases, is a good sign that reconciliation and regularization may be possible.

I cannot think about Euteneuer without thinking of his predecessor at Human Life International, the late Fr. Paul Marx, OSB. Marx fit the celebritergy pattern as a builder of fancy buildings and as a crier of "Liberals are out to get me!" He was brought down by an uproar over remarks he allegedly made about a certain ethno-religious group's dominance of the abortion industry.

However a far more interesting and revealing story, I think, one that has never been told, was how the Benedictine spent much of HLI's kitty on constructing the multi-million-dollar headquarters in Front Royal, Virginia. HLI survived the unwarranted extravagance, but the gothic, cross-shaped HQ on a few acres continues to be more space than the organization apparently requires. A wing of it is leased to private secondary school.

Marx took HLI out of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC muttering something about people in it who were inimical to his cause. Perhaps he wanted to build his pro-life palace in Montgomery County, MD, but perhaps the late James Cardinal Hickey asked the right question: Why does a pro-life organization need to spend millions on a building?

The last thing the pro-life movement and the church itself need are more and new buildings. Existing structures are aplenty. I know of one pro-life organization that does just fine in what was a doctor's office in an old DC apartment house.

Marx's architectural ambitions were nothing compared to those of Fr. Frank Pavone. Pavone's progress was attended by several circumstances common to celebritergy. He is the businessman breathing schemes a la Merton. Like the Cistercian, he also had the support and latitude granted by his superiors, two bishops of Amarillo, Texas. No doubt both looked forward to the money Fr. Frank would be bringing into the diocese in his effort to build a $138 million pro-life seminary for his new religious order.

Again, was anybody smart enough to ask, "Why does the pro-life cause need a new $138 million seminary? What does the pro-life cause need with $138 million for anything?!" The answer of guys like Pavone and his supporters would include the typical justification of lavish ventures: Because existing seminaries are corrupt playgrounds for sexual deviants and they turn out priests who are soft on abortion, if not in favor of it.

The very name of Pavone's organization, Priests For Life, smacks of what marketing people call "positioning." It suggests that other brands of priests are not for life.

If it is even half-true any more that a scandalous number of the clergy/hierarchy are Bernardins when it comes to abortion, it is becoming more of a lie all the time. Just wait a decade or even a few years or so and the JPII generation will have taken full charge of old, established religious orders and seminaries. If any new orders and seminaries are necessary, they can be established in old empty schools or convents or former doctors' offices. They don't have to be built from the cellar up.

OK, I'm Redeemed. Now Where's My Makeup Guy?

John A. Corapi's downfall is surely the most dramatic of the three. After being suspended, he has started a web site, http://www.theblacksheepdog.us/, the home page of which is topped with "My Account," "My Wishlist," "Checkout," "Store," "Shop On-Line."

Corapi is another businessman who also had the blessing of his order, the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT), before he was caught. SOLT is headquartered in Texas and has one U.S. mission in North Dakota, yet Corapi was allowed to live and operate alone in Montana far from superior oversight. Strange considering that SOLT considers teamwork to be part of its charism. A priest who is off his reservation should always be a cause for concern.

Corapi's was very much a redemption story: homeless drug addict becomes priest. Redemption stories are hot stuff among the faithful these days. I was an atheist, I worked for Planned Parenthood, but then I saw the light.

Redemption is wonderful, but what people don't understand is that redemption is not necessarily a ticket to go anywhere or be anything in this life that one pleases, that penance may be more than a few Hail Marys. Moses, so the Lord promised (Deut. 32:48-52) was saved after he repented of breaking faith. Moses went to heaven, but on earth, he could not enter the land of Canaan. Because of the way Moses had screwed up, he was not privileged to have the temporal role of leadership.

Corapi was ordained by Pope John Paul II, but one wonders if he would have been admitted to a post-JPII seminary. It is likely that no evaluator asked "What character traits led him to being a homeless drug addict?" Before his stint in the gutter, Corapi lived a big-spending West-Coast lifestyle financed by success as an accountant. He chose a profession chosen by people who are primarily interested in making money and who are not given to thinking about matters of faith. Where aside from (perhaps) his mother were the models of holiness in his life that would have taught him to be something more than a CPA with a Roman collar? How could priestly formation attach itself to the formation of a bookkeeper?

Thus, after becoming a priest Corapi turned out to be everything he was before he became a priest.

So there you have them: builders, businessmen, cult personalities, opportunists, charlatans. Who will be next?

(1) p. 194, The End and the Beginning Pope John Paul II -- The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy, Doubleday, NY, 2010

(2) p. 440, The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1948

(3) "The Super Catholic Syndrome," New Oxford Review, December 2011