Epitaph for a preserver of orthodoxy - tribute to the late Reverend James P. Higgins - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 4, 1993 | by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

They buried basketball coach Bob Knight's favorite cleric in the rolling greenery of south-central Indiana a couple of weeks ago. Bob Knight is, of course, one of the great coaches in sport. He is also one of sport's great characters, known for his adamantine principles and, not incidentally, his irascibility. Now, alas, when he blows, there will not be a ruddy-faced cleric in Roman collar standing by the bench, eyes cast heavenward.

The Rev. James P. Higgins was an unassuming priest who somehow left a profound mark on most of the eminences he encountered, though he was infinitely more at ease with ordinary people, ministering faithfully to their needs, spiritual and otherwise. His sudden death from a heart attack encourages me to enter a debate that I missed when the pope came to Denver and the American media treated orthodox religious views -- whether Catholic, Protestant or Jewish -- as quite shocking.

"A Troubled Church in Changing Times" was the theme of most of the coverage. It is a hackneyed line that has been resorted to by boob journalists for decades in reporting on orthodox institutions. "Times," of course, in this century have been changing since roughly August 1914, and the orthodox churches have changed hardly at all.

What did the commentators expect? Is the pope supposed to cheerfully relinquish centuries of teaching based on Scriptures held to be the word of God and take up the belief system of the modern American progressive? But what is that belief system? There was a day when the belief system of the American liberal was at least coherent. Now it is idiotic with contradictions: obsessed with child abuse, but also with introducing homosexuals into the Boy Scouts; insistent that women are the same as men -- strong and self-reliant -- albeit terrified by a lewd glance from the local sexual harasser. Show me a prized liberal value and I will show you a high-minded liberal pompously contradicting that value.

Even defenders of the Roman Catholic Church, such as columnist J. Dionne of the Washington Post, cannot defend the church as being anything other than a fine social welfare movement in need of a few corrections. Drop the bans on abortion and birth control, end celibacy, admit women to the priesthood and clean up this mysterious mess over child abuse, and, Dionne believes, the church will get on with its noble role of progress: guaranteed human rights (ever more human rights, and animal rights, too), educational opportunity, improved dental care, sex education and all manner of personal counseling. And what about infrastructure? Is the church sufficiently eloquent on the need for more highways and waste-treatment facilities?

Actually, it is doubtful that any of the orthodox churches of the country feel duty-bound to serve as an arm of the Democratic Party or, for that matter, the Republican Party. They are institutions of prayer, morality and, for those whose dogma includes it, salvation. Those churches that have entoiled themselves in political and social causes have steadily lost members. As they have denatured their theology into schemes for personal growth, they have become the stuff of jokes. Intent on making religion "rational," many have become asylums for kookery. At the services for Higgins, I actually heard a couple of liberal Catholic priests who offer "therapeutic massages" at the Indiana University Catholic student center. The priests claim to be trained masseurs possessing wondrous powers over diligently fingered bodies and souls. And they charge for their services! What's their price for baptisms?

An undercurrent of the "troubled church in changing times" saw is that the church is losing the faithful. Actually, orthodox churches everywhere are flourishing, as is the Roman Catholic Church in those dioceses where orthodoxy is preserved and the mystical masseurs are -- dare I say -- held at arm's length. There is in the republic a widespread demand for the spiritual labors of priests, ministers and rabbis. They are always overworked and their work is to bear the rites and teachings of their church to the laity. Those rites and teachings are not modern but timeless. They are beyond science and practicality.

Years ago, one of Higgins's parishioners was placed in a hospital's protective isolation room, having suddenly come down with a deadly leukemia and been given but a few days to live. Minutes after I telephoned Higgins with the bad news, I witnessed him rush through the hospital lobby, suavely pass a security desk and astonished doctors and nurses and enter our friend's isolation room to administer last rites. All hospital regulations had been trampled underfoot in God's work. Now Higgins will do God's work in a more exalted place. At his interment, a terrible grief creased the faces of his friends. No happy mystical masseur can banish that grief, only faith and time. This insight is what drives so many Americans from kookery to orthodoxy.