Today the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops begins its annual meeting. This year the top item on its agenda is the horrific sexual abuse by clergy, especially the disgraced ex-Cardinal McCarrick.
The Holy Father began by stopping the bishops. They have been in a hurry to pass reforms that will save their face in the media. Pope Francis wants them, first, to slow down, to make sure that their reforms are good ones. The bishops have a retreat scheduled in January, and there is an international meeting of bishops–an “Extraordinary Synod”–in February on this exact topic. True reform of the Church requires doing things thoughtfully and prayerfully, not rushing to impress the media.
The politics of this age is very complicated. In the United States at least, we are used to thinking of everything as conservatives vs. liberals. So often those ways of thinking fail to appreciate the real dynamics of the Church. There are, to be sure, many people thinking as conservatives and liberals–but to the extent that they think that way, or as anti-conservatives or anti-liberals, they always fail the deeper mission of the Church. We need to think as Catholics, not according to secular categories.
This is a big part of why things are so messy with Pope Francis: because the American Church, at least, insists on seeing everything as conservative vs. liberal, and Pope Francis–the real Pope Francis, not the Pope Francis of the conservative and liberal media (including blogs: those are media too, and all the more inclined to use secular categories)–just doesn’t fit those labels.
One place that is very true is on the issue of “lay review boards.” I’m not going to try to think through everything in a quick blog post. But it needs to be said: the bishops are the ordained leaders of the Church. In the late nineteenth century, the fabulous Pope Leo XIII (who himself is impossible to label as conservative or liberal) refused a movement called “Americanism.” Americanism was precisely the idea that lay people should run the Church. That Americanism is returning with a vengeance today. Ironically, it is the Right that has turned, in secular as well as ecclesial politics, to strange sorts of anti-authoritarianism–always with new kinds of authoritarianism mixed in, in hopes of preserving their libertarianism. Many Catholics of the Right are shouting “down with the bishops, down with the Pope” (unless he’s my preferred bishop or pope). But whether that comes from the Right or the Left, it isn’t Catholic.
Look, as a lay person working in the Church, I rage against clericalism more than most. There are lots of false authoritarianisms in the Church that I think should be denounced. But the Pope remains the Pope, the bishops remain the bishops. Like it or not, Catholics, we don’t believe that Christ established an egalitarian government for his Church.
Anyway, all of this is too much introduction for the nuncio’s fabulous talk to the US bishops today. It is well worth a read. Watch for his denunciation of “delegation,” in phrases like, “we must show that we can solve problems rather than simply delegating them to others”; “The exercise of authority is a real service and governance should not be a privilege or a position, but a responsibility to be neither ignored nor totally delegated.” Mixed with lots of things about how the bishops should “listen”–yes yes yes–and should be close to the people. But no, the bishops cannot delegate away their authority, and make it lay people’s responsibility to take care of clerical abuse. The bishops need to take responsibility, not delegate it away.
Here is the nuncio’s excellent address.
Click to access ga-2018-fall-nuncios-address-pierre.pdf
ps – I would be happy to discuss this issue further, in the comments or private messages.
