Vatican tells U.S. bishops not to vote on proposals to tackle sexual abuse, spurns lay and civil investigations
The Vatican stymied a plan by America’s Catholic leaders to confront sexual abuse, insisting in a surprise directive on Monday morning that America’s bishops postpone their effort to hold bishops more responsible in the abuse cases that have scourged the church.
At the same time, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United States suggested that bishops should not look to lay people in the church or law enforcement to confront the church’s sexual abuse crisis.
Thus the bishops of America’s 196 Catholic dioceses and archdioceses were left scrambling
We are only beginning to make sense of all this:
1. When the heads of the bishop conference approached the Pope about an Apostolic Visitation, he rejected it along with some of their other ideas. He advised them to spend their whole meeting in November as a retreat to get their act together.
2. They decided to give him one day of prayer at the beginning of the meeting, then scheduled a retreat for the first week of January in the windy city.
3. The bishops put together three proposals to be voted on at this November meeting, but they did not have them finished until October 30th, when I suspect they sent them to Rome. One of them was so poorly put together that they decided not to vote on it at their November meeting. Evidently some of the proposals caused a lot of concern among the Congregation for Bishops who asked them to put off voting until after the February summit on sexual abuse in Rome.
4. Francis met with the Apostolic Delegate on Saturday, likely saw the concerns as responsible, and left him bring back the message to the Bishops.
5. I was not impressed by the Apostolic Delegates speech to the bishops, far too general, too religious. Rome did not seem to understand that he needed to give the American people, not the Bishops a simple message.
6. Bottom line the Vatican and the Bishops are digging themselves a deeper hole.
THE MEETING CONCLUDED BY SHOWING THAT THE BISHOPS WERE BASICALLY IN DISARRAY ABOUT THEIR OWN PROPOSALS.
CARDINAL DINARDO AND SEVERAL PAST CONFERENCE BISHOPS ARE GOING TO TRY TO ORGANIZE THE DISAGREEMENT IN SOME FASHION FOR A FUTURE MEETING PROBABLY IN JUNE IN BALTIMORE..
THE ONLY THING THEY SEEMED TO AGREE ON WAS THAT SOME EXPLAINATION OF MCCARRICK'S RISE WAS NEEDED, BUT THEIR RESOLUTION ON THAT ISSUE, DESPITE SOME FINE TURNING, FAILED!
I GUESS THEY CAN HOPE PEOPLE WILL BLAME THE VATICAN MORE THEN THEM FOR THEIR INEPTITUDE.
Cardinal Cupich is feeling the urgency to act; he's proposing that the bishops take a non-binding vote.
ReplyDeleteThe optics of this situation could not possibly be worse.
What's more, the situation just seems the diametric opposite of Francis's ecclesial spirituality. The American bishops seem to be attempting to act synodally here (on a regional basis), but a Vatican dicastery unilaterally halts it. Francis desires less clericalism and more collaboration with the laity, but this 'request' is that the laity may not collaborate in governance and decision-making.
The American principle of "one strike and you are out" is still not accepted by many bishops conferences around the world. It did not find its way into the Youth Synod document.
DeleteI can imagine that there are many countries with authoritarian governments in which putting a lot of power into the laity and the civil authority would be extremely threatening.
Synodality means walking together, both bishops with Pope, and both the bishops and the Pope with the people. It is not the same as collegiality, bishops acting together, or as subsidiarity. Bishops solving their problems regionally is really collegial subsidiarity. I plan to have a couple of posts on this issue in the future.
I would say that there is no reason that every region or country in the world must have a uniform set of laws regarding this problem. Francis is in favor of that sort of subsidiarity: (re)-empowering bishops' conferences. As you note, the specific circumstances of the issue may not be the same in the US as they are in Chile or China, so let the specific sets of solutions be tailored to the specific problems. If there is some regional variation, that doesn't thereby make it less synodal.
DeleteFor what it's worth: I haven't seen a report yet that indicates that Francis personally has had a hand in this decree out of the blue.
Jack, that thought occurred to me, too. In a lot of countries I wouldn't want to trust the civil authorities to do the right thing. Not that they're above criticism here. But at least there is some credibility.
DeleteI'm not so sure that, in this day and age, we in Trumplethinskintinyhandserialadulter's America can trust the civil authorities to do the right thing in many instances!
DeleteFrom what we know now -- and we may know more later -- our leaders have found a new bottom below the Marianas Trench: Don your armor, gird your loins, clash your swords, summon up the courage of a lion, and charge into the chapel to pray that the Vatican will come up with something by January.
ReplyDeleteWhich it won't.
If I were trying to destroy the Catholic Church, this is how I would do it if I were clever enough to think up such a ridiculous scenario, which not even Hanna Barbera would green light.
Right wing Catholic sources are having a cow about it. I don't want to be a contrarian, but is that possibly a sign that waiting until January isn't such a bad idea?
ReplyDeleteTo help provide context for how devastating this week's intervention is from the Vatican, I'd refer us to this post from this past Friday, November 9th, on just how momentous this week's meeting of the bishops was set to be. The author, JD Flynn, editor of Catholic News Agency, had considered that this week's meetings "may be one of the most important in the history of American Catholicism", and then proceeded to make a credible case as to why that was so:
ReplyDelete"The American bishops are the subjects of federal and state investigations into sexual abuse and cover-ups. Some are accused of sexual abuse and coercion, others of standing by as priests and fellow bishops engaged in abuse. Some bishops could face indictments, or charges of a criminal conspiracy that reaches all the way to the Vatican.
"As a body, the bishops are accused of failing to police themselves, failing to keep their pledges, and failing to take seriously the teachings of their own faith and the responsibilities of their offices. By their own admission, they have lost credibility with the shrinking cohort of Catholics who actually practice the faith.
"The bishops hope to use the Fall General Assembly to restore trust among Catholics who are sickened by the Church’s “summer of hell.” They also want to persuade criminal investigators that they are part of the solution to problems they say were caused mostly by their predecessors."
Flynn, like the bishops themselves, didn't foresee that the Vatican would proceed to cut the legs from under this ambitious and desperate program. I presume that embarrassing and hobbling the American bishops was not the Holy See's intention, but it's difficult not to conclude that this was the primary effect of this week's intervention.
Flynn's post is here:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/11/restoring-trust
I don't think Flynn understates the stakes. There would be some consolation if the Vatican had a reputation like Caesar's wife ("I am told she had her moments, too" -- Andrei Gromyko), but it's in deep trouble, too. Just as one sour apple in the fruit salad, Cardinal Vigano thinks he is Emile Zola and the Curia is the Army Officer Corps, but even in the more likely case (that he is a disappointed careerist), he doesn't leave the place smelling of roses.
DeleteSo it is not like, to really mix up the metaphors, John
Wayne leading the cavalry to the rescue. The Vatican acting as if it has a better idea of how to save the wagon train is more a cause for alarm than a relief to us settlers.
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