The Man with a Golden Tongue and a Steel Spine

If you’re like me, you probably have the distinct impression that our Church lacks courageous leadership these days. Do I need to prove my case? Just read any Catholic news source and that should be proof enough.

It’s not that our ecclesiastical leaders aren’t good men (most are). It’s that they are not courageous men. And that virtue—one of the four Cardinal Virtues—is the very essence of leadership.

Courageous Saint-Bishops

It’s also the reason why we have a church calendar full of righteous bishops throughout history who exercised that virtue in a heroic way, many of whom are martyrs because of it. The Church proposes the good ones throughout history as role models for its ecclesiastical leaders, who admittedly have a tough job. Which brings me to my point:

If our ecclesiastical leaders need a model of courage for the present day, they should look to an extraordinary archbishop of the late 4th century named St. John Chrysostom (347-407 AD), so called because he was a wondrous preacher of the true faith in a time of human wickedness and political corruption.

(Chrysostom in Greek means “golden-mouthed.”)

When you read his writings—most of which are transcriptions of his sermons—you come away with the sense of a man whose intellect was rapier sharp. Sometimes his tongue was just as sharp, but mostly his preaching was smooth as silk, imaginative, pious, practical, and impactful.

Chrysostom gained great fame and popularity with the people wherever he served because he taught them the pure and simple truth of the Scriptures, and he did so in a way that the common man could understand. In other words, he was a true shepherd of souls.

A Patriarch and Prophet

He first served as the Bishop of Antioch (from 386–397 AD) but then was chosen as Patriarch of Constantinople, the most important position in the Eastern Church. And when he arrived in the capitol of the Eastern Roman Empire, he shook it up.

• He immediately discontinued the tradition of holding lavish social gatherings for members of the elite society. He spent his time with the poor instead. The elites hated him for it.

• Then he introduced reforms of the sluggish and corrupt clergy of this larger diocese, demanding that they actually live in the parishes they had been assigned. Imagine that! And they hated him for it.

• Most of all, he was hated by the nobility because he preached against their abuses of power.

He was also fearlessly critical of the scandalous lifestyles of the imperial family, especially the worldly Empress Eudoxia, whose favor he lost in short order.

This magnificent painting by French artist, Jean-Paul Laurens (1893) expresses in the clearest terms the fantastic courage of a cleric “speaking truth to power” as we would say today. Judging from the look of the woman glaring down at the preacher from her lofty perch, the haughty Empress was not pleased with the uppity cleric.

As a rule, Chrysostom was accustomed to denouncing the extravagant feminine fashions of the day, and the diva Empress always seemed to interpret his sermons as referring to her (guilty conscience, no doubt), though he never mentioned her by name.

Still, she was so incensed by his preaching that she exiled him from the city in 403. However, there was such a popular uprising at this (and believe it or not, an earthquake struck the capital city on the very day he was sent away) that the Emperor had to call him back and reinstate him. But that little victory was not the end of the conflict, by any means.

Thou Shalt Not Provoke the Church

Soon, the “powers that be” erected a large silver statue of the Empress Eudoxia in a flowing gown (!) half a block away from his cathedral, which also became the central spot for the pagan sports games that rocked the city on a regular basis.

Chrysostom rightly took it as a provocation and an insult to the Church and (of course) preached against it. One of his biographers mentioned, rather discretely, that the Patriarch might have handled this situation a little differently:

“Now while it would have been proper to induce the authorities by a supplicatory petition to discontinue the games, he did not do this, but employing abusive language he ridiculed those who had enjoined such practices.” (Sozomenus)

Well, her royal Highness was greatly offended by the “abusive language” and ridicule from the pulpit (of course), so the next Sunday Chrystostom added insult to injury and gave the sermon that effectively ended his career.

He compared the well-dressed, party-happy Eudoxia to the biblical jezebel figure, Herodias, who manipulated Herod to chop off John the Baptist’s head:

"Again Herodias raves; again she is troubled; she dances again; and again desires to receive John's head in a charger."

A man after my own heart. American Catholics have been hoping in vain to hear a sermon like that about Nancy Pelosi, but even after five decades of her corrupt politics we’re still waiting. Where’s the modern-day Chrysostom when you need one?

Death by Abuse

Anyway, the die was cast. As if to confirm Chrysostom’s Herodias analogy, Eudoxia proceeded to manipulate a bunch of corrupt bishops to convene a synod and symbolically chop off the head of her enemy.

And instead of defending the most orthodox man ever to stand in that pulpit, those abusive clerics denounced one of their own as a heretic and deposed him from his position as Patriarch of Constantinople.

In gratitude for all he did for the sheep of his flock, the Empire soon issued a decree forcibly removing Chrysostom from his diocese and sending him into exile hundreds of miles away, where after three years he died from the abusive treatment and harsh circumstances.

True to form, the holy man’s last words before he died were a summary of his whole life:

“Glory be to God for all things.”

Amen. But there’s a moral to this story.

Have you ever heard of a guy named Arcasius of Tarsus? Me either. He was rewarded with the top job as Patriarch of Constantinople after he participated in the coup to remove Chrysostom from power.

But Arcasius is a historical nonentity. He was a political stooge and a traitor to his Church. He served for one year and then died in office, leaving a legacy of nothing. No one remembers him because no one respects or remembers false shepherds.

But everyone remembers churchmen who have the courage of their convictions.