CDF Not Getting It, Prequel

Grant Gallicho’s compare and contrast at dotCommonweal draws a good bit of commentary. The 2002 CDF position, channeled by Cardinal Ratzinger, is up for a dollop of criticism. Here it is:

But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower. In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than one percent of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information or to the statistical objectivity of the facts. Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the church.

I’m disinclined to suggest the cardinal had more information 11 years ago and was just obfuscating. I’m more inclined to suggest Cardinal Ratzinger wanted these items to be true. He may well have had suggestions, evidence, or even a survey that contraindicated. But even a smart man can be toppled by his own wishes and hopes.

What he sniffs on that last conspiracy theory is the reality in modern media, even Catholic media, and even among high-placed believers.

Rather than blame ourselves, we will indulge the plank and suggest it is our opponent who is blinded.

The media doesn’t hone in on Catholicism alone. It is geared to sell product. In order to sell, it must, like advertising, draw attention to itself. It draws attention by trumpeting news of impact. When high-placed people do lowdown things (Bill Clinton’s affairs, Martha Stewart’s investment improprieties) it attracts attention. Sometimes, as in the case of Bill Clinton, the figure is brought to the brink of consequences. Martha Stewart went over, if you remember your celebrity history. But the financial geniuses who engineered the crisis of September 2008 were never dragged to the cliff. Draw what lessons, conspiratorial or otherwise, from that as you will. Maybe if money talks outside the Church, it speaks loudly from within its walls too.

Now, Cardinal Ratzinger went on to become pope. One can trust his present-day facts are a little straighter than they were before election. Father Oliver is two levels removed from the papacy. At least. So kudos to the press may not get a Ratzinger glare.

If only we can get an admission on the percentage of active bishops who have shielded predators. That number, I suspect, is in the double digits. And that, my friends, remains the crux of the Catholic problem of blindness to sin, institutional mismanagement, and the efforts of the antigospel. Good luck, I say, getting to the bottom of that cesspool.

 

Is Disinvite Ever A Good Practice?

It’s been brought up in discussion among various groups in my parish this semester. This person did appear via Skype last week and this person will speak in another week-and-a-half. Neither appearance is without controversy. Milwaukee priests want to disinvite the latest bishop for whom administrative misbehavior has been uncovered.

I’ve been a fairly vocal critic of the disinvite. Of course, the people disinviting these days are almost always Catholic conservatives and the disinvited are usually the liberals. Generally I believe a person should be permitted to speak, especially when the event has been engaged and the main parties involved, speaker and audience, have agreed. Speakers and organizers should live with the consequences unless something mutually agreeable is worked out.

However, I certainly think others have the right to protest speakers’ appearances. Maybe Milwaukee is a situation in which Father Connell and others offer their own criticism of their speaker, post-talk. Or the disapproving clergy absent themselves from the presentation. Or the laity of the archdiocese rally outside the building. Lots of possibilities. Disinvite seems a rather safe tactic.

 

CDF: Still Not Getting It

An extended feature up at CNS on a Boston priest assigned to the CDF as point-person on child abuse.

(The CDF) asked every bishops’ conference in the world to submit guidelines for assisting victims; protecting children; selecting and training priests and religious; dealing with accused priests; and collaborating with local authorities.

It seems they will continue to be caught flatfooted on episodes like the Gomez-Mahony flare-up as long as guidelines exclude dealing with the largest source of discouragement: the mismanagement of bishops.

Father Oliver said “three-quarters” of the world’s 112 bishops’ conferences have sent in guidelines, and the doctrinal congregation has just begun responding with observations and suggestions. Most of the countries that have not yet responded are in Africa, he said.

I believe clergy and laity want their bishops to be moral leaders, courageous and discerning. Willing to take more than ghost stands on imagined persecutions.

Missing from the CNS report was Fr Oliver’s praise for the media:

They helped to keep the energy … the movement going so that we would honestly and with transparency and with our strength confront what is true

 

“No Plans”

Can the institutional Church afford “no comment” on Big News like the Cardinal Mahony slapdown? Some seem happy to inhabit the conservative half of the blogosphere, where indeed the archbishop’s dust-up with Mother Angelica has not been forgotten. These folks are already Catholic. I’m interested in the commentary on the other side, where, supposedly, the evangelization (new or otherwise) will kick start. And where the institution hopes to make inroads among the youth to whom it admits it struggles to connect. This is a near-catastrophe for evangelization. Year of Faith? This is the Year of Losing Face.

The NCRep commentariat is expectedly skeptical. Long years of cover-up scandal cast a cloud of suspicion over a prelate who, by all media admissions, has done something unprecedented. Is he doing it to smooth the way for a quicker red hat in LA? Is this just a PR move for a guy who has had access to these records for the past two years–and only now makes a public move?

I’m inclined to go light on the guy. No way would he jump the gun on the legal process. It looks suspicious, but I think he had to wait. Unless he was willing to preempt the law and throw his cardinal to the wolves. I also don’t think Archbishop Gomez deserves any special kudos. He did nothing heroic, extraordinary, or something none of the rest of us would do.

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, told NCR that although he has received several requests for comment from news agencies, there are no plans at this time to issue a statement. Among other things, he said, the Vatican needs time “to better understand the situation.”

Rome does need time to understand what to do when an archbishop calls out a cardinal–whether or not they approved it. I’m not sure they did. If Archbishop Gomez “went rogue” on this, he’s in an almost invulnerable position, short-term. The Vatican is powerless to criticize him. The Vatican, however, was in a place to temporize. They could have issued a generic statement that the cover-up of wrongdoing in the clergy is gravely wrong. But it’s illustrative that Rome didn’t even say that.

My suspicion is that they have yet to recognize that their policy has long been seeped in moral relativism, to use the popular conservative term. If a priest is caught in predation, it can be justified that the deed is done. If the situation can be controlled, then keeping the offender out of circulation brings a moral satisfaction to predator-church relationship. Clearly, the victims are not at the center of the picture.

Additionally, this latest episode in California shows us that the prime sin is getting caught. Archbishop Gomez probably couldn’t make a move until his Church’s legal obstructions were depleted.

The institution in Rome comes off looking very bad–they must have been briefed on this. I wonder what their new Fox News bureaucrat would want to do …

The worse issue for Rome is the subjective way they handle scandal in the episcopacy. A long list of American bishops: Finn, Rigali, Bevilacqua, Law, McCormack, Walsh, Egan.. some cardinals, some well-respected–all with a strong stench of misconduct, if not actual sin. None disciplined. A few actually whisked away from consequences.

The worst part, if something like this were ever to break, would be if money were found to be at the bottom of any selective “fraternal correction” among bishops. The Legionnaires, Opus Dei, EWTN’s backers–these people have the money. Do they have the power behind the cathedrae, even if such power is exercised selectively against those not their own?

This is all evidence of a small (minded) church. The result for evangelization? Getting smaller.

 

Relieved of Duty

My wife got me the news before the blogosphere did: Cardinal Mahony relieved of duty in light of his mishandling of sex predators in the 80′s and 90′s. A retired bishop? What duties? Is the Frequently Misspelled One still on Vatican committees, and boards of directors stateside? Is pulling himself off the confirmation docket his own idea?

Thomas Reese, SJ:

This is very unusual and shows really how seriously they’re taking this. To tell a cardinal he can’t do confirmations, can’t do things in public, that’s extraordinary.

It’s a big change from 2002, that’s for darn sure.

The Frequently Misspelled One responds on his own blog. The man got bad advice from friends who thought he should speak his piece. He may well have cause to feel pounded by his successor. But there’s a prudent time and place for a talkback. I think this was a time for the cardinal to take one for the team. Talk to Archbishop Gomez over a beer–don’t air this dirty laundry out in the blogosphere.

Readers here know I’ve never been a fan of Cardinal Mahony. He’s too much of a JP2 bishop in the worst sense of that term. Still … it doesn’t seem terribly fair for some bishops to skip off to plum assignments in Rome, to continue sitting at the kingmaking table and all. It doesn’t seem very fair for one bishop to accept conviction for a serious crime and remain “in good standing.” What drives that? The money behind the throne cathedra?

Nobody ever said it was going to be easy for the US bishops to regain their shredded reputations. This is one small step for Archbishop Gomez. But it won’t be the last needed one. Others will need to come from other bishops. Some will need to come from Rome. And not veiled through the actions of a local bishop. And some bishops will need to man up and take their own initiative. Delegate confirmations to their parish clergy for a few years. Decline a red hat if offered. Recommend another bishop from a smaller see who has a good reputation.

I will comment that Archbishop Gomez, with or without the approval of Rome, has upped the ante considerably on the cover-upu scandal. Other bishops will be judged by his yardstick. I wonder if it’s a time of soul searching on the banks of the Missouri River tonight. Or maybe time for a lot of soul-searching at bishops’ residences around the world. Maybe that’s not a bad thing.

 

Sampling the Music Scene

Jeffrey Tucker calms down and pulls back from his elation on Tuesday:

Fixing this fixes nearly everything.

And today:

There are two errors to correct in the news that Bishop Alexander K. Sample is headed to Portland, Oregon. The first is that it means nothing. The second is that it means everything. As is often the case, the reality will be something in between.

The reality is always to be found between two expected extremes. If you believe the reform2 camp, it was all vocal cords and roses before Vatican II, and all guitar chords and crap afterward. That might not be as gross a caricature as it might seem. Jeffrey does talk about 1968-2010 as if it were a monolithic age of impoverishment. I found a 1983 Music Issue from OCP at the bottom of a box a few years ago. Not much similarity between that and the 2011 on my office bookshelf. It’s been a significant and steady upward crawl from there. Oh, wait: Jeffrey is already talking about that today:

The change won’t happen immediately. It might not even be detectable by anyone but the closest observers. It might takes several years. But it will come. And the Church and her liturgy will be much better off as a result. Making this change in Portland will spread change to the whole of the American Church and then to the whole of the English speaking world and then to the whole rest of the world. This is the center, the core, the spot from which a major problem that exists in the Catholic world can be rectified.

This is typical of my excitable friend. He starts off with a dose of reason. Change is incremental. Change happens slowly, and often with great resistance. Our life experiences in the Church and outside of us inform us of this.

Of course, the kind of change he’s been speaking of has been taking place in the Catholic Church over the past fifty years. OCP included. Comparing Music Issues twenty-eight years apart makes it seem like night and day. Anybody want to check on how many of the Hymnal for Young Christians are still in pews? Those red, sky blue, or orange Glory & Praise books? Tens of millions? Are you sure? Are all those Protestants still laughing at “Here We Are”? Really?

Jeffrey dreams big. Portland to all of America to the English speaking world to the whole planet. Suddenly Bishop Sample seems to be at the spiritual epicenter of “everything.” Oops.

There are a lot of false assumptions running up the spine of reform2. It’s one reason why the movement borders on dangerous–a lack of respect for history. You heard that right.

Jeffrey and his young CMAA turks think that we’ve all been languishing with Pete Seeger for the past two generations. The truth is that Ray Repp was exploring plainchant before most of these guys were born, and before Jeffrey could define “anarchism.” He concedes Bishop Sample’s approach of gratitude and gentle urging forward is wise and effective. And he’s right. Too bad many of his buddies don’t emulate it.

As for me, don’t criticize me because I choose not to fly in your flock. Just thank me for learning to read chant notation (1984) for improving my abilities as a singer and conductor (since 1983) for a theological education, for teaching plainchant hymns, propers, and antiphons to my choirs for the past two decades. Acknowledge that your contemporaries in American church music don’t betray chant by not programming it 100% of the time.

And here’s the thing: everyone knows that things must change. The problem with Catholic music is famous. I’ve never spoken to a group of Catholics where the problems are not well known and understood widely. You only need to raise a slight eyebrow on the subject to garner laughter. Everyone knows. More importantly, everyone at OCP knows too.

Of course things must change. That’s the whole point of reform. Of liturgical renewal. It was bad and worse in 1950. I don’t think the problem with Catholic music is “famous” so much as it galls a number of people who care. People have laughed at me for being Catholic for a lot more than their possible perception of poor church music. I was asked to play guitar at a friend’s wedding in a Protestant church many many years ago. “That was actually quite … good,” their music director said. I said thanks and I packed my instrument and left. I know I work on my musicianship, and even three years into playing, I was a far better than average guitarist. But I don’t need the regard of snobs to keep me afloat.

“Everyone” at OCP indeed knows. That’s why they offer a substantially better set of options today than they did ten, or thirty years ago. Perhaps if Jeffrey really talked with his “friends” at OCP and less with the bitter voices of resentment in CMAA, he might learn a thing or two. I suspect that if Bishop Sample is as described today, he’ll learn a thing or two in Portland too. Somewhere between nothing and everything.

 

More Jail Talk

A new legislative year starts, and bishops are lining up to go to jail over the HHS mandate which, as far as I can tell, is still in the negotiation stage.

It’s interesting to suggest one might go to jail for a just cause. Jesus, of course, suffered unjustly. And perhaps we like to think of the honor of sacrifice for a worthy cause–the end of the build-up of nuclear arms, the Occupy movement, the SOA campus in Georgia–causes not seen in the same light as the current majority ideology on the bishops’ bench.

Equally interesting and possibly illustrative that some of the same bishops are unwilling to go to jail for their own transgressions. Blame has been passed on to others, and prison sentences avoided.

It also strikes me that in the health insurance arena, we’ve been hearing about financial penalties more than we’ve been hearing about the Hobby Lobby CEO going to jail. Face it: if bishops aren’t going to wear prison orange for mismanaging sex predators, it’s not going to happen for idelogical resistance to the federal government. That’s a PR fiasco even the Democratic Party and its president are unwilling to risk.

I’d prefer seeing the bishops team up with the guys who have real insurance savvy, the Knights of Columbus, and drag along Catholic health care institutions and do what could have been done a generation ago: disentangle health insurance from employment and offer a real alternative. If the bishops want to go to jail to get that done, I’m all over that.

 

Sampling Some Bitterness

I see the Chant Cafe commentariat is excited about a new sheriff bishop riding into Portland. There’s a good bit about which to comment about this move.

Careerism, first. I remember feeling hopeful about Pope Benedict’s early episcopal appointments in Marquette and Nashville. Wasn’t Nashville’s bishop even baptized in the cathedral? In my thinking, it’s about more than tradition for tradition’s sake. There is a serious pastoral disconnect in the episcopacy these days. That’s not to say that skilled bishops are achieving success or fruitfulness in a third, fourth, or even fifth diocese. But the serious matter is the jockeying for plums, rather than contentment in serving one’s local church. I could understand a bishop being appointed from outside a troubled diocese to bring a degree of healing and order. But the pipeline of otherwise good candidates from small cities to larger doesn’t benefit those smaller communities, and seems to perpetuate a certain insular subculture, separating bishops from the laity. Not to mention the clergy.

Canon law, second. Bishop Sample is a canon lawyer. Ho hum. Is the Church well-served by having so many bishops with such similar resumes? If music is so important, what about a singer, a conductor, or even (gasp!) a person with a liturgy degree. Personally, I’d say the route from abbots and spiritual directors would be more fruitful. One doctor of the church came to us from the catechumenate. And consider: the main interface between canon lawyers and the laity are through marriage cases. What else do we need them for? Appealing to the Vatican on closed parishes? Maybe that’s the idea from the Congregation of Bishops: appoint an episcopacy that knows how to dot its ecclesiastical i’s and cross its episcopal t’s. Fair warning: lots of lay people have canon law degrees, too.

Music. Wow. A canon lawyer from Upper Michigan is going to “clean up” OCP? Are music publishers really, and still, on the list of the Church’s biggest problems. Declining inner city and rural parishes. Not enough pastors. Sex abuse and cover-up settlements. Priests in non-sexual bondage. Bishops have enough on their plates–I doubt they are aiming for church music publishers.

Some of the more humorous comments, especially from people who live nowhere near the Pacific Northwest:

This news makes me feel like when the lights go on at the Easter Vigil!

Really? Christ brings light to the world, rises from the dead, and frees us all from sin. I don’t usually make connections between ideology and the very stuff of salvation.

They had 1700 years of Christian art to choose from (for the Breaking Bread cover), and they chose a picture of an explosion in a confetti factory.

Nice. Not only does the music suck, but the bishop will reform the graphic art department.

Going to Portland is to go to the heart of the issue. Fixing this fixes nearly everything.

I suppose it fixes even the art department.

Speaking for myself, I was never into heroes so much. When I was in Catholic high school, I noticed a minority of teachers were petty gossips, or who had affairs with students, or who had little sense of the self-control, dignity, and honesty my parents tried to instill in me. I listened to teachers I disliked, and I learned from them. But I didn’t emulate them. And I didn’t have really high expectations of them.

I never expected such people to come to my rescue. I prayed to God. I relied on a Savior, not a savior.

If things weren’t working well in my parish, I would look to my own failures and fallibility. I would try to change the things I could: my own attitude, my deficiencies as a musician or a pastoral person. I didn’t need to blame Father N for being a bad pastor. I can’t control Father N. I can make an effort to reform myself.

Likewise with the situation of church music today. Like my friends at the Cafe, I find many aspects deeply disappointing. I don’t affirm everything I see in the major publishers. But I also don’t think they’re colonies from hell looking to seduce the faithful, even the orthodox, into pelagianism or Wicca or such.

When it comes to art, I don’t expect quick fixes. Especially from a canon lawyer-made-archbishop. You can’t legislate quality. You can’t persuade with a fist. Music, like any kind of ministry, is darned hard work. There are no short cuts. It requires prayer, persuasion, passion, and tenacity. It doesn’t happen because a human being has suddenly been transformed into a savior. Hoping for it is a sure path to disappointment. And with that disappointment, I see the bitterness of the Catholic Right continuing to deepen.

So I wish Archbishop Sample the best on the left coast. I think it would have been better had he stayed put. But that’s not something I’m looking to the next pope to remedy. It will remain, in my view, a serious flaw in ministry. But at the end of the day, I think about what I can control: loving and serving my family and engaging my sacramental life there and in the Eucharist, loving and serving my parish community by being the best liturgist and campus minister I can be. Such a life allows me to focus on personal reform and renewal, and bringing Christ (when I can get out of the way) to a relatively small circle of people. Which is as it should be.

 

Who Patrons Impasses?

Bishop Finn invoked Saint Francis de Sales. He’d like to be rid of the NCRep. Kansas City’s conservative Catholics are, understandably, upset with a situation of ecclesiastical impotence:

I have received letters and other complaints about NCR from the beginning of my time here. In the last months I have been deluged with emails and other correspondence from Catholics concerned about the editorial stances of the Reporter: officially condemning Church teaching on the ordination of women, insistent undermining of Church teaching on artificial contraception and sexual morality in general, lionizing dissident theologies while rejecting established Magisterial teaching, and a litany of other issues.

My predecessor bishops have taken different approaches to the challenge. …

More to the point, the main approach these days to ideological dislike is the pink slip. I haven’t seen much variance to the theme of hurting someone. Getting at opponents through their job is the modus operandi of modern politics. And it happens with such relish.

When early in my tenure I requested that the paper submit their bona fides as a Catholic media outlet in accord with the expectations of Church law, they declined to participate indicating that they considered themselves an “independent newspaper which commented on ‘things Catholic.’”  At other times, correspondence has seemed to reach a dead end.

The suggestions that Bishop Finn resign have also reached a dead end. The institution will not remove him, thus appearing to ally themselves with his opponents. I think my friends in Kansas City have a bishop for the next sixteen years. No other diocese would take him.

In light of the number of recent expressions of concern, I have a responsibility as the local bishop to instruct the Faithful about the problematic nature of this media source which bears the name “Catholic.” While I remain open to substantive and respectful discussion with the legitimate representatives of NCR, I find that my ability to influence the National Catholic Reporter toward fidelity to the Church seems limited to the supernatural level. For this we pray: St. Francis DeSales, intercede for us.

Life often brings us to an impasse. Uncomfortable, frustrating, disappointing, uneasy, and sometimes lingering for a decade or two. Just think of what God has to put up with in dealing with us.

 

Los Angeles Evasion

Is it about time LA’s ex-archbishop gets an expose in the LA Times? A few of my liturgical colleagues still give a nod or two when passing his shrine, but I’ve always counted myself as a skeptic where the Frequently Misspelled One is concerned. With records released yesterday that uncover questionable administrative decisions and policies, Cardinal Mahony offered up the index card:

I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day. As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story.

Cardinal Mahony was a JPII bishop. He brushed aside concerns about the size of his cathedral. (Thanks to the attacks on the architecture, many critics missed the mark on the one-foot-longer-than-NYC thing, and the sidelining of those protesting priorities.) He seemed intent on preserving the public perception of an institution with a corrupt underbelly.

The cardinal does concede that it was different in the 1980′s. And maybe it was. If so, it was victim advocates, lawyers, and Catholic protest groups who were ahead of the curve on the moral track in dealing with predation. That probably doesn’t set well with the “orthodox” crowd. But there you have it.

 

 

Skipping The Bishop Step, The Pastor’s Too

Msgr Eamon Martin has skipped the perfunctory step of being an “ordinary” bishop and appears ready to leap right into an archbishopric when Cardinal Sean Brady’s retirement puts an end to a scandal-scarred ministry. Irish Times reporter interpreted Msgr Martin’s quote as exemplifying shock at being named coadjutor for Armagh:

I am very conscious of the great trust that the Holy Father has placed in me, but in truth I have to admit it was with considerable nervousness and trepidation that I accepted his call.

I’m a little surprised, too. A red hat see gets a Monsignor, though the man is a diocesan bureaucrat. Usually a high-profile see gets someone who has seen at least two other dioceses. Sometimes as many as four. Msgr Martin, however, has spent almost all of his clerical career as a teacher or school administrator. Never as a parish pastor.

 

Still Conferencing

Posting will be light for a few days here …

We’re finishing up the campus ministry conference. It has been a rich experience in the usual ways for me: connecting with new colleagues, sharing insights with my friends on staff here with me, and the various presentations.

The liturgical experience here has been quite good. The music is mostly unfamiliar–lots of 2000′s stuff. No chant. No P&W. Hymnody and mainstream contemporary music. A bit of Taize.

Today’s keynote by Archbishop Chaput was competent. The man has a warm speaking voice. He began his talk with the illustration of the deep relationship between Thomas More and his daughter Margaret. That was excellent. Some attempts at humor are a little sharp. He can’t leave politics alone. Someone asked him a question about religious plurality on Roman Catholic campuses, and he readily conceded he had never considered the matter. To the surprise of some here, he asserted that business as usual will no longer work for the Church. And he’s right, of course. The main problem with that statement is that coming from a bishop, he rather controls the aspects of “t”radition that will be exempt because they touch on something of the ecclesiastical aristocracy, and not really matters that come from the Lord.

But overall, the Archbishop’s talk was genuine, candid, and pleasant. Drawing the correlation of Thomas More and his daughter to the campus minister and the college student was so thoughtful and moving. Kudos for that, in a big way.

Afternoon sessions on discernment (with Mike Hayes, Busted Halo co-founder) and technology (with one of our Iowa State graduates now in full-time ministry) were good.

I have a few things on my mind, so I went to my room early tonight. I have a full weekend of liturgies to get prepared, plus an all-afternoon leadership retreat on Sunday. I may drop in a post on Scripture Saturday if I get a moment. Otherwise, blogging will likely resume on Monday.

 

Parlour Games

At Eureka Street, Michael Kelly’s essay from last week is worth reading. The Australian Royal Commission is gearing into action. If they find a pit similar to the Americans, the Irish, and the Germans, they may well be setting into motion the jailing of a bishop for crimes against the innocent. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope Down Under bishops have been more sensible than American cardinals Bevilacqua, Law, Mahony, and George.

Fr Kelly offers a few suggestions. First:

First, from adolescence I have been guided by the advice of an old Jesuit who responded to my description of the pettiness, fear and cowardliness of some members of the Jesuit community I was in at the time. ‘You’re a strange sort of Christian if you are overwhelmed by the scandalous deeds of others,’ he told me.

This is wise. We cannot let the misbehavior of sister and brother believers overwhelm our outlook on and our practice of the faith. Some conservatives go on their merry witch hunts in the Church. It’s already colored some of them as off-balanced crusaders. How does a faithful believer lament others’ actions and feel shame? Then continue to present an attractive Christian life that draws on Christ for sustenance and urges others to do the same?

If you believe in an active devil, consider that discouragement and disgust is an appropriate reaction to scandal. But that we are still called, as difficult as it may be, to forgiveness.

The only reason Christians can look on human depravity and not succumb before it is that their faith is in a crucified Lord.

In a way, I feel that as a confirmed skeptic on human authority, I’m not likely to tailspin into the abyss. I’ve observed unfair and unjust behavior from my teenage days. Misbehaving school teachers, principals, and Scout leaders. In a way I wish I had been more vocal in standing up for sisters and brothers who had been oppressed. I don’t think my consistent criticism of bishops on this site and others have changed me. Conservatives seem to attribute it to some sort of anger. That’s a laugh. It’s really a lament. I feel sorry for these clueless bishops who have no public speck of compassion or contrition. Christ suffered and looked with lament on those who refused the Word. I know I refuse the Word in other ways. And it may be my experience as a parent coloring more my public words on these matters, but I’m not willing to hush up when others are endangered. It’s likely that innocent people around the world are endangered by some of the policies of active clergy, especially bishops. Saint Thomas Aquinas can be our guide here:

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.

This is the key. A victim may choose to forgive. A bystander is obliged to transcend the behavior of witnesses to the Passion, to cooperate with a transformation of a society stained by sin, yet called to grace.

Wrapping up. Fr Kelly shows that petty gossipmongers weren’t limited to the faculty of my Catholic high school …

Just look at the most outstanding instance of ‘disconnect’ in Church governance in the last year — the sacking of Bill Morris as bishop of Toowoomba. Morris was sacked on evidence that amounted, in the Opinion of a retired Queensland Supreme Court Judge, to ‘hearsay and gossip’. The Australian bishops promised to engage robustly with the relevant Vatican officials about the matter, but found that the officials weren’t open to discussion.

Such parlour games are seen for what they are, and show that incoherence, mismanagement and incompetence are right through the organisation. There won’t be healing of the community of faith until there is systemic change that fixes the culture in which mismanagement thrives and transparency is lacking.

Fr Kelly suggests the Church set up its own investigative commission. That’s hopeful. Maybe vainly hopeful. But lacking it, the bishops’ mishandling of abusers will continue to dog them. Australia’s “top” prelate, Cardinal George Pell, doesn’t see it. He blames the misbehavior of clergy. But most keen observers know it’s a fairly significant portion of bishops. Maybe a majority of prelates trained before Vatican II. Certainly more than the single-digit percentage of abusers within the ranks of the clergy.

Cardinal Pell is concerned with young people, but in this quote, I wonder if we don’t see a bit of psychologicla projection:

No longer is there any instinctive acceptance of moral truths, except perhaps in ecology or social justice.

One has to wonder if the good cardinal hasn’t himself fallen into the abyss of “relativism.” Could we say with likely speculation that in the hierarchy there is no instinctive acceptance of moral truths, except where other people’s morality is concerned. That would be a most unhelpful vector for a believer, let alone a shepherd.

 

Clergy Unrest in Kansas City

The NYT surfaces the concerns of Kansas City priests, several conceding that their bishop’s resignation would be a good idea. Fr Michael Clary:

I think it would be easier for us to move forward without Bishop Finn as our bishop.

Bishop Finn is not without defenders, like Fr Vince Rogers:

Yes, there is a divide in the presbyterate, but in my opinion it’s the same old tired divide that has existed from the day he arrived. In a word, some of the priests wish that we had a more liberal bishop, and they are willing to use any means to achieve that end.

On the other hand, some people might posit that having a discredited conservative bishop is better than having an effective conservative. Robert Finn continues to serve as an example that serious sin can be blind, and that committed Catholics who style themselves “faithful” or “orthodox” or “obedient” are no more inclined to be virtuous than those who pose questions, or who are unorthodox, or who otherwise think the Church is going in a bad direction with poor leadership and ministry priorities.

Bishop Finn’s more vocal defenders contribute nothing to the diocese’s practical unity as long as a significant portion of the community think the man should go. And there are concerns that the bishop’s apology seems ambivalent. Fr Matthew Brumleve:

Some say he has made that apology, he has said he’s sorry, but he hasn’t told us what he’s sorry for. Is he sorry he got caught? Is he sorry we don’t see things the way he sees them? Or is he truly sorry for letting down the children of this diocese?

Others think Bishop Finn has satisfied. Fr Angelo Bartulica:

I believe he’s accepted responsibility for what happened and he’s paying the price for it. I don’t understand what more people want.

Let me start a list: sincerity, contrition for specific offenses and the acknowledgement that children were harmed, and that faith has been damaged by scandal, a concession that this is a serious scandal, a disavowal of defenders who perpetrate myths about pornography, an open discussion about what his resignation would accomplish. Bishop Finn will need to symbolic leadership in the range of the witness given by many of his brother bishops of the previous, discredited generation: lifestyle choices and liturgical choices, plus a public ritual not unlike the one given by Archbishop Martin in Dublin.

Otherwise, I suppose I’m content to see him remain in office for what should be sixteen years with a far less effective ministry than it could have been. And if his agenda was more ideological than spiritual, maybe that’s not a bad situation. Too bad that a new Kansas City high school is looking at cutting fundraising expectations 62%. Too bad that sins of exploitation and sex have become a snicker and comedy material. In 2007, I think the bishop was right to focus on the scourge of pornography in the lives of men. I don’t find that effort at all sneer-worthy. Too bad it was limited to the sins of lay people in their homes. Maybe if it included a look at the burdens and temptations within Holy Orders, this episcopacy would have turned out far differently.

Another object lesson in speck, plank, eye. Something we all need to keep in mind. Does Kansas City have a bishop who can lead that mindfulness? And if you think Bishop Finn is the man, why would that be?

 

Before And After

What lessons to be drawn from this?

USCCB votes 203-14 to move on to the Liturgy of the Hours.

Bishop Brom of San Diego:

I’m hearing from the priests … that we not rush headlong into further translations and using the Roman Missal that we have now in its English version as the basis …

Bishop Matano of Burlington, Vermont:

I do think it is a bit counter-productive to go back in time and give a critique of the new Roman Missal.

USCCB votes 189-41 to move on to the Liturgy of the Hours.

Granted, there were speeches behind these comments, but let’s ponder some possibilities:

The bishops don’t care what their priests think, so what possibly could make anyone believe they are listening to lay people?

The bishops are tired talking about liturgy. They just want the MC to turn the page and point.

Twenty-seven bishops seemed to have changed their minds after the California intervention. But three bishops woke up and voted the second time who didn’t cast a ballot the first.

Is the curia thinking, “Thank goodness we have those Americans under our thumb. Now, what the bleep are we going to do with the Germans?”

Where does Father John “Slavish” Z fit in the notion that once a translation is complete, complaining about it “only opens the door to … disunity.”? I suppose it depend on if the Culture of Complaint is in its ascendancy or not.

PS: Nice work guys, on the economy. Four years into a depression and you can’t agree on a word of faith and hope. Do us a favor and don’t bother sending one out next time.