This week we learned that the Pope will not accept the resignation of two Irish auxiliary bishops, Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field. The Murphy Report in 2009 implicated them in the larger failures of the Irish hierarchy to respond to sexual abuse by priest.
John Allen at the National Catholic Reporter offers an explanation why the Vatican is keeping these two bishops in their positions.
There’s no insider information, but rather a superb discussion of the reasons why Rome is generally loathe to let men step aside. He gives a number of reasons, each well explained. The fourth and final reason:
Fourth, and perhaps most fundamentally, the Vatican does not like the idea of a bishop resigning for poor performance because, in their view, it’s bad theology. As they see it, a bishop isn’t a corporate CEO or a football coach, who should be sacked when profits sag or the team goes on a losing streak. The episcopacy isn’t a job but a sacramental bond akin to marriage, with the bishop as the father of the diocesan family. In the early centuries of the church, it was considered almost heretical for a bishop to move from one diocese to another on precisely this basis.
Yes, a bishop is not a corporate CEO. It’s a very important point, obvious really. But easy to forget when the mainstream media applies the BP oil spill model to the scandals currently demoralizing the Catholic Church.
August 13th, 2010 | 2:53 pm
The problem is precisely that, because the Church has so long ignored the marital model for episcopal governance by allowing what amounts to divorce and remarriage in the form of transfers far afield, it has set up a more corporate model for episcopal governance.
More to the point, Rome has made it impossible for fellow bishops to discipline each other via organs of synodal, primatial or metropolitan governance, so that the only way to discipline errant bishops is have them resign.
Also, it’s not as if Popes have not demanded the resignations of bishops they really want out when they want them out. Consider the not so distant case of Jacques Gaillot, formerly Bishop of Évreux in France, now titular bishop of a swath of sand called Partenia…
Finally, I can think of few better ways for Benedict XVI to torpedo his Grail of the re-evangelisation of secular Europe than to refuse to remove bishops who cooperated in the coverup of sexual abuse of minors and other crimes. Those who support that quest for that grail should mourn this development, not defend it.
August 13th, 2010 | 2:58 pm
So why then does it excommunicate others for unsatisfactory performance?
August 13th, 2010 | 3:06 pm
Blaming this on the media again? The church is not demoralized; the church is betrayed. They are CEO’s when it suits them and claim fatherhood when it suits them. They are repugnant.
August 13th, 2010 | 3:19 pm
I liked John Allen’s column, and it does soothe me slightly, but nevertheless…
Why was prayer and penance not enough for Roger Haight and other theologians with problematic opinions (there’s much in Haight’s ideas that I disagree with, but still)? Why did they have to be disciplined, while bishops who covered up sex abuse don’t have to be?
One thing I was thinking about, by the way — it seems like in the early Church, in the patristic era, bishops were often deposed for heresies, etc. (I’ve always wondered, if they just retracted their opinion and realized they were incorrect, were they allowed to stay?). I.e., it seemed more common then for bishops to be “disciplined.”
August 13th, 2010 | 5:43 pm
Here’s a good analysis.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/case-against-bishops-lost-amid-the-hysteria-2295498.html
It appears that they were not as guilty as people suppose.
August 13th, 2010 | 7:02 pm
Yes, the theology is what it is, but at this point does it really matter. Try explaining even the rudiments of Christian dogma, not even the more complex issues of episcopal polity, to a totally secularized public. The vocabulary of faith itself is gone. Don’t blame that only or even mostly on the mass media. It’s been a long historical process: Enlightenment; Industrial revolution; mass education, the rise of science and a general distaste for. anything traditional. That’s why I’ve always shaken my head at the general euphoria among FT writers and supporters in connection with mainline Protestantism’s steady decline. The collateral damage to all other Christians is too often minimized or wrongly denied.
August 13th, 2010 | 7:07 pm
Whatever you may think the Bishops are, I happen to know, absolutely for sure, that no one thinks that way anymore. The Pope is blowing in the wind. The young people of today and even 10 yrs ago, who want to become priests or brothers, in this day and age, do not think of it as a religious calling by God(vocation) but as a Job.
I met a young priest who was going on a retreat with older priests and was told to bring a Roman Breivary.(sp?) He had no idea what it was and asked me.. I said how could you not know what that is? He said he wasn’t religious and didn’t really know what he wanted to be, a Dr., Lawyer or priest and found out he liked the idea of the priesthood. I was appalled.
He had a sail boat that he lived on at our marina in San Diego, where we kept our boat that we used to get out of the Az. heat. His ministry was to the Military. He said most of the new priests considered it a job. He was a gay fellow, as he had so many mens pictures in his boat covering the walls of the inside hull and not even a pic of his mother.This was in 2000. So whatever you think, this seems to be the true calling of priests now days. Even the old ones(in their 60′s) speak of “karma” etc. Certainly not a RC word. They’ve all gone to hell in a hand basket. We leftthe RCC.in 2001, on our 50 wedding anniv., just after “the you know what ? hit the fan”
August 13th, 2010 | 10:10 pm
Mrs. Sullivan,
Your view of the young people entering the priesthood seems a bit dated. These days the only people I see entering priesthood or religious life actually believe what it is about. My wife teaches college seminarians and finds them uniformly devoted to the faith. My experience teaching in the pre-theologate program at the local major seminary has been the same. They may have other problems, but those aren’t it.
I hope you are able to find your way back to the Church.
August 13th, 2010 | 11:39 pm
John Allen made a valiant effort here. Liam dissected his projected fourth point ably. Let me tackle number one.
Prelates have often taken unpopular stands. Archbishop Hunthausen opposed the nuclear buildup of the Cold War and Seattle fisheaters scored him a coadjutor.
Rome doesn’t mind receiving naughty stories about bishops it doesn’t like. Its problem is that it doesn’t dislike sex predators and their protectors enough.
“I hope you are able to find your way back to the Church.”
That seems to sum up the Vatican approach to re-enchanting a Christian Europe. Good luck with that.
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