Seeking a Better Way

We may not have seen anything quite like this since Europe in the eighteenth century. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there is the by now familiar circumstance where a bishop is charged with mishandling the case of a priest charged with the sexual abuse of minors some ten years ago. The bishop is said to have sent him away for treatment, was assured by experts that he was no longer a danger to minors, and appointed him pastor of a parish. The earlier allegations were not reported to civil authorities. Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma immediately declared himself outraged, saying this is precisely the kind of episcopal misbehavior that the Dallas meeting of bishops last June promised to stop. As governor, Keating is the chief law enforcement officer of the state. As head of the national review board authorized by Dallas, Keating is the chief enforcement officer of the bishops’ “zero tolerance” policy. With respect to episcopal misconduct, Frank Keating is in the curious position of being the chief executive officer of both Church and state. That’s the kind of thing we have not seen for a very long time.

In Austria it was called Josephinism, after Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, who, under Enlightenment influence more radical than Gallicanism in France, basically took over the Church in order to correct abuses. The policy in Austria lasted until 1850. For two centuries, and throughout a large part of Europe, the Catholic Church engaged in a turbulent, and finally successful, struggle to secure its freedom to govern itself. That great victory was won under the banner of libertas ecclesiae. America is not Europe, and Frank Keating is not Joseph II. Observers with a sense of history and some grasp of the department of theology called ecclesiology, however, may discern interesting similarities.

The embarrassing pusillanimity of the bishops in Dallas, discussed in the last issue, is likely to produce other troubling consequences. Already lay agitations-directed by familiar dissenters who are now joined by some of the confusedly angry faithful-are newly energized in a campaign to “democratize” the Church along the lines of Protestant denominationalism based on congregational government. While trying to build a national movement, and doing so with some success, the epicenter of this effort is Boston, where leaders are working with the professional agitators (they consider the term a compliment) associated with the Industrial Areas Foundation, or IAF. (For a reflection on the goals and tactics of IAF, see “The Uses of Confrontation,” Public Square, April.)

While worried about some unanticipated repercussions, many bishops may feel gratified that the Dallas exercise in damage control, choreographed by hired public relations experts, has taken the scandal off the front pages. Not off all the front pages, to be sure. To get your mornings off to a stomach-churning start, you can click on www.poynter.org for a daily listing of scandal-related stories in papers around the country. But after Dallas it is not the story it was. For the time being. According to the count of the Boston Globe, it was the second most heavily reported story of the past year, next only to September 11 and the war on terrorism. It will almost certainly pick up again. Hundreds of civil and criminal cases go to court in the months ahead. They involve some very big defendants, such as the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which may soon challenge Massachusetts for the title of trial lawyer’s paradise. It continues to be more than possible that in the next year we will see a bishop or two, or more, in jail.

In the last issue, I described how the bishops, in what can only be called their fearful abdication of responsibility at Dallas, managed to sin against both mercy and justice. One reporter quipped that the headline following the Dallas meeting should have read, “Bishops Do What We Told Them to Do.” That, unfortunately, would have been accurate enough. Under a relentless media assault, they hastily abandoned the native language and practice of the Church of Christ for the alien vocabulary of “zero tolerance” and “one strike and you’re out.” Already more than two hundred priests have reportedly been removed from ministry on the basis of claims, frequently vague and unsubstantiated, about something they did, usually in the distant past. I have received a surprising number of messages from readers protesting my argument for mercy and justice, especially my argument for mercy. Don’t I know that Jesus said such scoundrels should have a millstone put around their neck and be tossed into the sea? Yes, I know. So maybe we should pass a law that anyone charged with the sexual abuse of minors is to be promptly drowned?

Of course there must be zero tolerance of sexual abuse. How many times does that have to be said? As John Paul told the cardinals and bishops in their April meeting in Rome, people who would harm the young have no place in the priesthood or any other ministry of the Church. Period.

Even if a once wayward priest poses no danger to children, it would seem that there are some offenses so heinous, so repugnant to common sensibilities, that if committed only once, and no matter how long ago, they would preclude the exercise of ministry. The priest is an icon who acts “in the person of Christ.” If, for instance, it was publically known that a priest had, no matter how long ago, sodomized a ten-year-old boy, that icon is irreparably shattered in the perception of most of the faithful. Ontologically, of course, he remains “a priest forever.” He may be a forgiven sinner and, transformed by grace, even a saint, and there are many good things he can do in service to Christ and his Church. But the egregiousness of his offense is an insurmountable obstacle to his effectively representing, in the eyes of the faithful, the priesthood of Christ. In the above instance and perhaps in others-homicide, dealing in drugs, or abetting an abortion-the icon is in terms of ministerial effectiveness, although not in sacramental reality, irreparably shattered. One can argue that this should not be the case. Against the Donatists, St. Augustine argued for the continuing ministry of those who had committed the ultimate offense of denying Christ in times of persecution. But then there are times when an argument aimed at magnifying grace results only in magnifying scandal. This is such a time.

My objection, and the objection of many others, is to an ill-considered and hastily enacted policy that violates justice by making a law of retroactive application, by removing the presumption of innocence, and by denying due process to the accused. The same policy, in direct contradiction to the Pope’s direction in the April meeting, violates the fundamental teaching and experience of the Church with respect to forgiveness, conversion, repentance, and amendment of life. The bishops in Dallas called it a Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People. It is that, in part. In larger part, it is a tactic for getting the bishops off the media hook. Temporary escape is purchased at the high price of scapegoating priests to whom the bishops are called to be fathers, and of resigning a large part of their apostolic responsibility for governing the Church. The bishop is charged with the discipline and care of his priests. Abandoning their care cannot be the right answer to having failed in their discipline. At the time, many bishops said they were voting for the Dallas plan with an uneasy conscience. I expect the more reflective among them are now having long and troubled second thoughts.

The Missing Gospel

In all this, there is shame upon shame. I believe future historians will record that the greatest shame of Dallas is that-when it came to the crunch in a time of crisis, when the eyes of the world were upon the Church in a way truly unprecedented-the leaders of the Church failed to articulate the gospel of Jesus Christ. The failure was in both words and actions, inviting the inference that, in the real world of public relations and damage control, the gospel of Jesus Christ is not relevant. The great issues before the bishops were sin and grace, justice and mercy, and the call to faithful discipleship. They are issues about which the Church of Jesus Christ presumably has a distinctive way of speaking and acting. They are not issues of great concern to most people in the media, but they are the issues that ought to be of greatest concern to the Church. That did not appear to be the case, and some may pardonably conclude that it did not appear to be the case because it was not the case. The media precipitated Dallas, the media intimidated Dallas, the media controlled Dallas. The bishops did what they were told.

Consider again the definition of sexual abuse that the bishops borrowed from their episcopal brothers in Canada, who in recent years have had even greater troubles over raging sexual malfeasance: “Sexual abuse includes contacts or interactions between a child and an adult when the child is being used as an object of sexual gratification for the adult. A child is abused whether or not this activity involves explicit force, whether or not it involves genital or physical contact, whether or not it is initiated by the child, and whether or not there is discernible harmful outcome.”

There are certified experts who claim that one out of four girls and one out of six boys are sexually abused, usually by an adult family member or relative. By the Canadian definition, that seems plausible. There are also experts who agree with radical feminists that a majority of American women have been raped at some point in their lives, whether they know it or not. That, too, is plausible, if one employs an expansive enough definition of rape. The key phrase in the Canadian rule is “sexual gratification.” But who is to say whether sexual gratification is involved, however subliminally? It is a deeply dumbed-down psychology or moral theology that would deny the pervasiveness of the erotic in human interactions. The unlimited elasticity of the Canadian rule is such that a substantial minority, if not a majority, of adults might be deemed guilty of sexual abuse. Almost all the current scandals, however, have to do with sexual acts between adult men and postpubescent or older teenage boys. It should not be necessary to give graphic descriptions of what is meant by sexual acts. They are what sensible people mean by sexual abuse, for which, they rightly insist, there must be zero tolerance.

Consider this application of the Canadian rule. Almost twenty years ago a priest in the midwest was ministering to a family whose father had just died. The fourteen-year-old daughter was utterly distraught, sobbing that God did not care. The priest, with the mother present, held the girl in his arms, assuring her, “It isn’t true. God loves you. The Church loves you. I love you.” I expect every priest or minister has done that more than once. As have doctors, teachers, fathers, uncles, and innumerable others in similar circumstances. They are comforting, they are caring, they are trying to help. The girl in question has subsequently led a most unhappy life, with two divorces, multiple affairs, and a serious drug problem. She has now charged the priest with sexual abuse, citing that embrace of almost twenty years ago. The priest, a beloved parish pastor, has been publicly shamed and removed from ministry, for the rest of his life. The bishop says he acted reluctantly, “But Dallas gave me no choice.” In other words, “Dallas made me do it.” Such is the product of panic.

As of this writing, the report is that more than two hundred of the 46,000 priests in the country have been removed from ministry. It is possible that many, perhaps most, of them should be removed, but the worry about justice grows, and is evident across the usual divides. Well before Dallas, the leftist National Catholic Reporter saw what was coming and editorialized, “Now, under the hot, bright lights of the East Coast media, church authorities look bewildered and panicked as they attempt to show they are dealing with the issue in solid fashion. Where they once shielded priests, they now feel compelled to rush to the other extreme, providing no access to due process for them either in the Church or the courts.” “Why are you so concerned for the abusers rather than the victims?” a reader writes. That quite completely misses the point. There is no “rather than.” Our concern must be for the boys (and, as sometimes happens, the girls) who are abused, for they are the most vulnerable members of the flock. And for the abusers, who continue to be brothers in Christ. And for the innocent who are falsely accused. All of which is to say that our concern must be for the integrity of the Church as it is constituted by, and accountable to, Christ. Admittedly, attending to all these concerns at the same time is no easy task. The dismal failure of Dallas must not be accepted as the last word. The bishops, who are chiefly responsible for the crisis and for its resolution, must find a better way.

Almost unmentioned in the public discussion to date is what will happen with offending priests in religious orders. About one-third of the priests in the U.S. are members of religious orders, many of them working in parishes and other pastoral ministries. The superiors of the orders were not party to the Dallas deal, and it is clear that most of them will not go along with it. It is no secret that some orders have a much higher incidence of homosexual priests, and possibly a higher incidence of sexual abuse, than is the case among diocesan clergy. (The best estimate seems to be that one to two percent of all priests are likely abusers.) Viewed more positively, orders typically have a greater sense of solidarity with, and responsibility for, their weaker brethren. Unlike diocesan clergy, members of orders take a vow of poverty and most of them are totally dependent upon their community, also economically. The superiors will not adopt a rule of “one strike and you’re out,” and they have the opportunity to demonstrate to the bishops that there is a better way-a way that combines justice, mercy, and zero tolerance of abuse.

All Our Children

The eminent lay moral theologian Germain Grisez wrote a long and thoughtful memorandum for the bishops prior to Dallas. If it was read, it had little effect. “The crisis that began in January 2002 is not about sexual abuse,” Grisez wrote. “It is about some bishops’ behavior over many years: they tolerated clerical sexual offenses and even seemed to facilitate them, covered them up, made untruthful statements when cases came to light, and persistently evaded their responsibility for what they had done and failed to do. . . . The degeneration of priestly fraternity into self-serving clerical solidarity and the prevalence of managerial concerns over authentic pastoral charity are systemic evils.”

Grisez notes that lay people expressed puzzlement that bishops did not evidence impassioned outrage when the children of the Church, for whom the bishop is to be a father, were maltreated. He suggests that a false clerical solidarity “blinded bishops to the victims.” “Of course, they were visible, but they were tiny, nebulous, and marginal. Clerical sexual offenders, by contrast, were big, solid, and near the center of the bishops’ field of vision.” This is pathetically illustrated by Bishop Joseph Imesch of Joliet, Illinois. A lawyer involved reports that during a deposition in a civil law suit, the bishop was asked, “If you had a child, wouldn’t you be concerned that the priest they were saying Mass with had been convicted of sexually molesting children?” The bishop responded, “I don’t have any children.” But of course they are all his children. (One notes that a 1996 pastoral letter issued by the national bishops conference, which was both celebrated and protested for being “gay-friendly,” was titled Always Our Children.)

In addition to their own national review board, the bishops are now relentlessly monitored by several organizations of “victim/survivors.” (The play on “Holocaust survivor” has struck some observers as unseemly.) Nobody should downplay in any way the real wrongs done many years ago, and their possible long-term consequences. Nor should we ignore the fact that these victim organizations are led by activists following a time-honored American tradition of seizing upon a legitimate grievance in order to advance a cause. Every time the Church addresses the issue of sexual abuse-whether it be an individual bishop or the Pope speaking to the World Youth Day in Toronto-reporters reflexively turn to representatives of these victim organizations and ask if they are satisfied. They are not likely to get the answer, “Yes, we are satisfied. We are laying off our staff, dismantling our websites, returning millions of dollars in contributions, and congratulating ourselves on a job well done.” To say that victim organizations have an institutional interest in keeping the scandal at full boil is not to criticize them. Every such organization has an institutional interest in the grievances that brought it into being. That is as true of the ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League as it is of the Catholic League. Moreover, victims are understandably reluctant to surrender their Warhol-apportioned fifteen minutes of fame. Convinced, as many of them are, that what was done to them and others was all-destroying, they feel they have a moral duty to maintain their protest at fever pitch.

An Idea With a History

Outrage is both legitimate and necessary, but unbounded outrage lends itself to distortions and hysteria. The understanding of the seriousness of the present crisis should not be muddled by disputes over whether claims of injury are sometimes exaggerated. Of course they are, and not infrequently. Michael Bailey, professor of psychology at Northwestern University, has first-hand experience with those abused by priests. The accuser or plaintiff is typically in his thirties or forties and has had a life filled with truancy from school, poor social relations, and erratic employment. “In all these cases,” writes Bailey, “the plaintiff reaches the same conclusion with the help of his therapist or his lawyer: the abuse caused all problems. Healing, he is told, depends on suing. Given the monetary incentives, he complies. But it often turns out that the abuse explanation is filled with holes. The poor school performance predated the abuse. For years before the abuse, he related poorly to his peers. In some cases, the problems the plaintiff attributes to sexual abuse are more plausibly due to nonsexual physical and psychological abuse in his family, or to bad genes. And yet the abuse is singled out as all-explanatory and as a basis for seven-figure awards. This occurs because sexual abuse is sensationalistic, all-explaining, and financially enticing. This itself is a form of exploitation. Unfortunately, the current climate encourages the suspension of any critical scrutiny regarding claims concerning the universal and extreme harmfulness of childhood sexual abuse.”

As he undoubtedly knows, Prof. Bailey is on dangerous ground here, making himself a prime target for the charge of “blaming the victim.” It is a charge that the victim organizations routinely employ. Bailey is trying to counter widespread, and sometimes self-serving, hysteria with a modicum of calm deliberation and simple honesty. In today’s climate, to indicate the slightest skepticism about “the universal and extreme harmfulness of childhood sexual abuse” is also to lay oneself open to the accusation of sympathizing with the homosexual advocates of “man-boy love” and “intergenerational sex.” In the case of Prof. Bailey and others who are trying to restore a measure of clear thinking, that is a vile slander that should be forthrightly condemned.

Clear thinking and honesty also requires a word in defense of the bishops, as unpopular as that may be at present. For all that bishops have done wrong, they are usually not wrong when they say that they acted in accord with the expert opinion available at the time. Dr. Joseph Davis, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, reminds us that ideas about the sexual abuse of children have a social history. In the late 1930s and again in the late 1940s, there was intense outrage over a number of highly publicized sex crimes and states passed draconian and ill-defined “sexual psychopath” laws aimed at predatory sexual offenders. The 1960s brought a campaign against such laws, which was part of a movement against the commitment and forcible treatment of mental patients. In the 1970s, the pendulum was given a swing in the other direction, mainly by feminists leading the “anti-rape” movement, joined by some child protection advocates. In its extreme form, the anti-rape activists contended that heterosexual intercourse is typically a form of rape, and most women are rape victims whether they realize it or not.

In this everybody-is-a-victim (except white and straight males) ideology, it was argued, writes Davis, “that the [1960s] view of the child victim was morally flawed by a victim-blaming approach. Using the model of physical child abuse, which was already established as a social problem, they reframed the victim category as pure victim. . . . Sexual abuse was a thoroughly moral category. It denoted a status of complete ethical innocence for the victim and it indicated injury. To have been sexually abused was to have been psychically harmed as a child, and typically in ways that persist into, and are even magnified in, adulthood. Hence the notion of ‘survivors.’“ This constituted a major change.

In the 1968 case Millard v. Harris, U.S. Judge David Bazelon stated that the confinement of a compulsive exhibitionist was scarcely justified on the grounds of “harm” because the behavior affected only “unusually sensitive women and small children.” As late as the mid-seventies, the standard psychiatric textbooks either scarcely mentioned pedophilia or emphasized that it was typically a one-time activity. The second edition of the authoritative Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry has a short section on pedophilia, including this: “The pedophile is usually visualized as the ‘monster on the corner’ who is ready to pick up innocent children. . . . However, by far the greatest amount of pedophilic behavior is in families or among friends and neighbors. Often it is a one-time activity.” The 1978 Harvard Guide to Modern Psychiatry does not even mention pedophilia. The much respected priest-psychologist Benjamin Groeschel says that, in all the years he studied psychology in the sixties and seventies, he never once heard the word.

But now “everybody knows” that pedophilia is an incurable disease, that the diseased are incorrigible predators, and that there is no such thing as a “one-time” offense. That is where the pendulum of established opinion is this season. With respect to many, if not most, of the scandals that have come to public attention recently, the fact is that bishops were acting reasonably and responsibly on the expert opinion of the time. This is not to say that bishops were not complicit in the various wrongs mentioned by Grisez above, but they should not be blamed for believing the certified experts who denied the “universal and extreme harmfulness” of childhood sexual abuse and the inevitability of recidivism among offenders. In many cases, bishops undoubtedly acted in good faith. (Although, then as now, they acted in uncritical obeisance to psychological expertise. See the discussion of “the triumph of the therapeutic” in the Public Square of the June/July issue.) In many cases the bishops also acted in good faith, if mistakenly, in paying “hush money,” which is more accurately described as conditioning an out of court settlement upon a confidentiality agreement-an everyday practice in the corporate, medical, and other worlds. In many cases, too, they acted in good faith in reassigning priests who, they were expertly assured, had been cured. In many cases.

The Dallas Morning News examined available records on the 194 dioceses of the country and concluded that two-thirds of the bishops heading them have been involved in the practices now, in retrospect, so roundly condemned. That retrospective judgment is, I believe, unfair. It is the case that some bishops have committed heinous acts that are both gravely sinful and seriously criminal. Some of them facilitated or covered up such acts committed by others. A few of these bishops have resigned and I expect more will. It appears that most bishops failed to respond pastorally to those who were abused. It is the case that many, if not most, bishops have been complicit in tolerating or fostering widespread and institutionalized dissent from the Church’s teaching, including the Church’s teaching on sexuality, and especially on homosexuality. The result is an ambiance of moral laxity and infidelity without which the present crisis could not have happened. And it is the case that at Dallas the overwhelming majority of bishops-only thirteen voted no-adopted a course of action that is, I am convinced, incompatible with justice, mercy, and pastoral responsibility, and that has severely confused and crippled the exercise of the apostolic office to which they are ordained.

What the Bishops Have Created

This brings us back to Governor Keating and the National Review Board. It has twelve members with a “core group” of four. The much respected Mary Ann Glendon, professor of law at Harvard, was asked to serve on the board. She declined, explaining her reasons in a memorandum which I cite with permission. In the memorandum, Prof. Glendon expresses her concern about a number of public and “injudicious” statements by Keating “creating the impression that bishops will be held accountable to lay people and otherwise confusing the distinction between advice and governance.” In fact, Keating has been reported as saying, “Martin Luther was right,” although it is not clear exactly what he thought Luther was right about. He has also said that it is the job of his board to root out “corrupt” bishops. On the very public op-ed page of the New York Times he wrote, “I envision the commission as apart from the conference of bishops, answering first of all to the laity we represent. We will coordinate with local parish and diocesan councils to ensure that the voice of the laity is heard.”

In fact, the National Review Board was created by the bishops and its members are appointed by the bishops, with the mandate to monitor diocesan compliance with the charter adopted at Dallas and report its findings to the conference of bishops. It is from beginning to end, at least on paper, an instrument of the bishops conference, designed to do what the bishops believe they are not trusted to do, and apparently do not trust themselves to do. At least that is how it was in its beginning; how it will end nobody knows. The bishops have put themselves in the bind of creating a board that is to serve them but may well turn against them, and, if they are perceived as trying to control the board, a new media firestorm is a certainty. In any event, and contra Keating, the board is in no way “apart from” the bishops, nor is it to be “the voice of the laity,” competing with activist groups such as “The Voice of the Faithful” whose denominational rallying cry is “Take back our church!”-forgetting that the Church is not ours but Christ’s, and Catholics believe that Christ intended that it be governed by bishops.

Acquiescing in the judgment that they are not morally credible, the bishops cast about for leadership that is held in highest public esteem. As odd as it may seem, they decided that politicians and lawyers fit the bill. In addition to Keating, there is Robert Bennett, champion of Bill Clinton in his battle against charges of low crimes and misdemeanors. As Prof. Glendon notes, Bennett has no conspicuous record of devotion to the Catholic cause. Then there is Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and aggressive defender of abortion on demand, including partial-birth abortion. Other appointments are similarly dubious, along with one or two of real credibility, and a handful of unknowns.

Oh, yes, there is Michael Bland, a psychiatrist, former priest, and victim of childhood abuse. The victim organizations, interestingly, are on record as protesting Bland’s inclusion because, despite his experience of abuse, he is still an observant Catholic. The mark of being authentically concerned about abuse, we are given to understand, is that one is alienated from the Church. Governor Keating says that Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the bishops conference, had suggested a larger board that would include non-Catholics. “We felt it was important that the Catholic Church-and one out of four Americans is a Catholic-heal itself and not call upon outsiders to do so,” said Keating. The members of the board will be Catholic, even if, in some cases, marginally or dissentingly so.

Was it only a few years ago that the bishops issued a forceful statement that public figures who oppose the Church’s teaching on abortion should not be given a platform or positions of responsibility in church institutions? Now prominent pro-abortionists have been elevated by those same bishops to the position of overseeing the episcopal governance of the Church. We should not be surprised that some pro-life Catholics are saying that, come the crunch, the tactics of public relations trumped the bishops’ devotion to the gospel of life.

There are other, and very big, problems. Prof. Glendon writes: “I think you can see from the foregoing why I fear that the bishops may not have informed themselves adequately concerning whether the members of this important board understand and accept the Church’s basic teachings on ecclesiology, the role of the laity, and human sexuality. I also wonder whether they have carefully considered the likely role of the politicians: they are well-known public figures with ready access to the national media and they are intensely concerned with their public images. Thus the risk that they will wish to cast themselves as policing the Church is high, and may affect their ability to be impartial. Indeed, it is hard to imagine them casting themselves, or allowing themselves to be perceived, as defenders of the Church. That being so, even if my participation were not precluded by other commitments, I would be most hesitant to accept the invitation to serve. I would not only fear that I would be part of a very small and ineffective minority, but that my presence might be used to lend an appearance of diversity, or-even worse-that my membership might lead some people to believe that I approve of activities that may turn out to be harmful to the Church.”

Political Stratagem(s)

At the end of July, the National Review Board met with victim organizations, and that was followed by a press conference with Bishop Gregory. Governor Keating allowed, and Bishop Gregory agreed, that the board was not authorized to discipline or remove bishops directly, but it had other means at its disposal. The board would be making a report on bishops who failed to comply with the Dallas plan, and, as Bishop Gregory put it, “No bishop would want to see his name on that list.” He expressed his confidence that also those bishops who voted against the plan or abstained on the vote (about 15 percent of the bishops did not vote for it) would comply rather than risk public embarrassment. The media, he noted, would make sure that there would be such embarrassment. Such is the threat by which it is proposed the bishops will “rebuild trust” in their leadership. (Webster’s: “blackmail-extortion or coercion by threats esp. of public exposure or criminal prosecution.”) So in a time of crisis, who is in charge of the governance of the Catholic Church in the U.S.? Certainly not, or so it seems, the bishops. The National Review Board-responsive to victim activists and representing “the voice of the laity”-will issue a report card on the bishops, and a bad report will have severe consequences. As with the beginning of the crisis, so now it is structurally entrenched that the final judge and jury are the media. Such is the radical change in status and responsibility of the episcopal office in which the bishops have, knowingly or not, acquiesced. The work of the review board will apparently not be finished when it issues its report card on episcopal behavior. Asked how long the board will stay in business, Gov. Keating indicated that it will be needed as long as it is evident that the bishops are in need of supervision.

In terms of ecclesiastical politics (usually not an edifying subject), the national conference of bishops (USCCB) has much to gain in this arrangement. While it may be surrendering episcopal authority more generally, the conference is gaining a large measure of long-sought power over individual bishops in their dioceses. Going way back to the early years of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago, major players in the conference have worked to put it in the position of speaking and legislating for the Church in America. This has been resisted by some bishops who, with the support of Rome, have insisted upon the traditional Catholic teaching that the bishop is the head of “the local Church,” meaning the diocese. Now, operating through the National Review Board, the bishops conference will, like the Lord High Executioner in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, “have a little list” with which to bring recalcitrant bishops into line-on the disciplining of clergy and, in principle, on anything else of consequence. How Rome will respond to these dramatic transformations in Catholic ecclesiology is still to be seen. As I discussed in an earlier installment, if Rome vetoes this or other aspects of the Dallas plan, it is possible that the media criticism will be directed away from the American bishops and toward the Vatican, which might suit some bishops just fine. Bishops who make no secret of wanting greater independence from Rome tend to be those who favor expanding the authority of the USCCB, a goal that would be served by cooperating in the portrayal of Rome as using its heavy hand to prevent the American bishops from doing the right thing. Nonetheless, as of this writing there is reason to believe that the Holy See will not accept the Dallas plan as presented. The intention is to work with the U.S. bishops in crafting a response to the crisis that conforms to the requirements of justice and mercy-and, not incidentally, to the Church’s doctrine and discipline. We shall soon see.

The politics of the USCCB and Rome’s response aside, the consequence of the Dallas plan is that the bishops have in important respects surrendered their office. They have not the right to do that, and they probably did not intend to do that, but they did it. It would appear that there is not in the American episcopate anyone with the stature-or, if anyone has the stature, then the inclination or courage-to call them back to the exercise of the responsibilities for which they were called by God, ordained by the Church, and respected by the faithful. In their partial but far-reaching abdication, they have opened the way for the laicizing of church leadership under a national review board run amok, for increased defiance of bishops by priests and parishes who no longer trust them, for newly energized agitations to remake the Catholic Church in the image of liberal Protestantism, and for, not inconceivably, schism. Maybe Rome will effectively call the bishops back. Maybe not. Maybe God will spare us the most dire consequences of what was set afoot at Dallas. Maybe not. Meanwhile, we must be braced for a rough ride in the months and years ahead.

The Courage to be Catholic

Just in time, George Weigel, author of the papal biography Witness to Hope and regular contributor to these pages, has come up with a bracing tonic that I most warmly recommend. The Courage to be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church is now out from Basic Books and available everywhere. Carefully and convincingly, Weigel explains what went right and what went wrong following the still unimplemented Second Vatican Council, which is the necessary background for understanding the present crisis. Why did many thousands of men abandon the priesthood, and how does that connect with the “clericalizing” of the laity by the multiplication of “ministries” that dilute the distinctive identity of the priest? He has some provocative, if painful, answers to that question and many others. He provides a chronological commentary on developments leading to the present crisis, and fresh insight into the “Truce of 1968” when Rome failed to back bishops who were prepared to discipline those who publicly rejected the encyclical Humanae Vitae, thus institutionalizing the “culture of dissent” and creating the myth that rejection is “loyal opposition.”

Weigel surveys the various, and often contradictory, interpretations of Vatican Council II, and casts new light on John Paul II’s efforts to implement the Council-efforts sometimes resisted, but more commonly just ignored, by many of the American bishops, notably by some of the most active in the politics of the national conference. Weigel is a lifelong student of the Catholic Church in this country and elsewhere; he has a firm grasp of the dynamics and players driving the national conference and the episcopal fraternity. He gained unprecedented access in writing the biography of John Paul, and has an intimate knowledge of the papacy and its supporting-and frequently obstructing-Curia. His narrative of Rome’s responses to the current crisis, and especially of events surrounding the April meeting with the Pope, provides a unique and sometimes disturbing insight into how the Church is governed today.

As the subtitle indicates, The Courage to be Catholic is much more than “insider” journalism. Weigel lays out a course of reformation in everything from catechesis and liturgy to the formation of priests and the ways in which bishops are chosen. It is a reformation that, he persuasively argues, was mandated by the Second Vatican Council and has been tirelessly advocated by John Paul II. Out of the evils that created the present crisis, God may be working the great good of an irrepressible sense of urgency in implementing, at long last, the authentic and thoroughly Catholic reformation for which the Second Vatican Council called. A great strength of Weigel’s book is that he understands that the present crisis, and the crisis of the last thirty-five years, is, above all, a crisis of fidelity. For the Church of this time and every time, the question is that of Luke 18: “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?”

Form and Reform

Which brings us back to Christ, and how Catholics believe he formed his Church, and how, therefore, the Church must be reformed. In that understanding, the bishops are the successors to the apostles, with and under the successor to Peter. That understanding was not reflected, that understanding was gravely compromised, at Dallas. The bishops cannot restore their credibility by abandoning their responsibility. Dallas cannot be the final word. Somehow, the bishops must recover their nerve to be bishops, rather than the frightened CEOs they have made themselves appear to be-scurrying to follow scripts written by public relations experts, lawyers, and related masters of damage control. They must accept, as the bishops that they are, responsibility for what went wrong, and for putting it right. What went wrong is the entrenchment of patterns of infidelity-evident also, but not most importantly, in sexual infidelity and related abuse-and it will not be set right without the courage to be found only in conversion.

The bishops should meet again, and soon. Not under the auspices of the national conference with its built-in bureaucracies and biases, but freely, as heads of the local churches they are called to govern. Not in a posh hotel in order to get through a predetermined agenda on schedule, but in a monastery or retreat in order to pray and deliberate. Not under Robert’s Rules of Order with a few minutes allotted for disjointed interventions terminated by the flashing of a red light, but under the guidance of the Spirit in a way conducive to conversation in depth, and to the making and hearing of arguments. Not to adopt guidelines and procedures, but to wrestle with truth revealed. Not under the glare of the media, but alone with one another, and with God. Not for two or three days, but for as long as it takes. Maybe for a month, and then, later, for another month. Do they have anything more important to do than to recover their credibility and authority as bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ?

The goal would be to act on the invitation, and to follow the example, of John Paul II in fully embracing, fully teaching, and fully implementing the Catholic reformation of the Second Vatican Council. The result of such an extended period of prayer, deliberation, conversion, and resolve might be a renewed confidence that the Church has bishops again. It might instill a measure of courage in contending for the recovery of libertas ecclesiae, the right of the Church to govern itself. It might prepare the bishops to lead in showing the world that there is a distinctively Christian, and Catholic, response to sin and grace, justice and mercy, and the call to holiness. All these are matters not unrelated to the question of whether, when the Son of Man returns, he will find faith on earth.