Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville, TN has resigned, apparently at Pope Francis's bidding.
As reported at America's website:
Bishop Richard F. Stika of Knoxville, 65, has resigned from pastoral governance of the diocese. Pope Francis accepted the resignation June 27 and also appointed Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre of Louisville, Kentucky, as apostolic administrator of Knoxville until a new bishop is appointed and installed. ... The resignation of Bishop Stika was anticipated in a May 13 report by The Pillar in light of a Vatican-ordered investigation of sexual abuse cover-up and financial mismanagement. The article cited unnamed sources “close to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops,” who indicated that Pope Francis came to a decision on the embattled Tennessee bishop in April.
The allegations of sexual abuse cover-up, as usual, are disconcerting:
The bishop has been accused of sheltering and financing former seminarian Wojciech Sobczuk, who allegedly raped a parish organist. In May 2021, Bishop Stika confirmed to The Pillar he had removed an investigator appointed to the case by the diocesan review board, saying the former law enforcement professional was “past his prime” and declaring Sobczuk’s innocence. The organist has since filed a lawsuit against Bishop Stika and the diocese...The bishop allegedly used diocesan funds to cover Sobczuk’s tuition at St. Louis University, where the former seminarian enrolled following his dismissal from the seminary, according to a Knoxville News-Sentinel article cited by The Pillar.
A separate lawsuit filed in April 2022 accuses Bishop Stika of failing to discipline Father Antony Punnackal, a Carmelite of Mary Immaculate, who was arrested in January 2022 for sexually assaulting a grieving parishioner who had sought spiritual counseling two years earlier.
It seems the apostolic visitation which eventually led to Stika's resignation was preceded by a complaint by diocesan priests:
According to The Pillar, 11 Knoxville diocesan priests appealed in September 2021 to Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the U.S., for “merciful relief” from Bishop Stika’s leadership, which they claimed had been “detrimental to priestly fraternity and even to (their) personal well-being.”
This case has several parallels with a case we looked at here at NewGathering nearly five years ago, when Bishop Martin Holley of Memphis, TN resigned. Holley, like Stika, brought in a controversial outsider and gave him special treatment. Both bishops managed to alienate their priests. Both were accused of financial mismanagement. In both cases, the archbishop of Louisville was appointed as the administrator.
It is risky for priests to go over the head of their boss to complain about him to his bosses. We should be grateful for these priests' courage, and we should be grateful to the Holy See for responding. Having a bad leader is a nightmare; in the church, which has relatively few checks on the authority of its leaders, poor leadership can be especially trying.
Yikes, a lot of problems with this guy, good that the Vatican intervened. It's too bad that things got to this point.
ReplyDeleteThen there's the Texas archbishop, Joseph Strickland, who was on the receiving end of an apostolic visitation lately. Normally it seems like Pope Francis tolerates quite a bit of diversity in viewpoints among the bishops. But apparently this guy crossed a red line when he accused the pope of "undermining the deposit of faith". Did he just get a stern talking-to, or was his resignation asked for? Time will tell, I guess. Thankfully he doesn't seem to have been involved in cover-up of sexual scandals.
I wouldn't be surprised if this bishop would be the focus of an apostolic visitation if his actions result in the collapse of some diocese Catholic school systems:
"Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Oregon, has closed his archdiocesan Department of Catholic Schools amid backlash over a new gender identity document for students. The unexpected move appears to indicate that nearly all oversight of Catholic schools across Western Oregon will now be done instead by other chancery staff and parish priests." (from the NCR site)
It's pretty bad when you basically fire all your lay school administrators. I don't know what it is with these guys. Apparently they weren't this nutty to start with, but a little authority went to their heads.
It is unfortunate that peer admonitions either do not happen or are ineffective because they are private.
ReplyDeletePerhaps if synodality leads to more public disagreements among bishops, bishops will become less hesitant to speak privately or even in public about the actions of their fellow bishops.
There are likely too many problems for the Vatican to have the time and expertise to deal with them.
Perhaps we need to have an initial level of complaint at the archdiocesan level with the archbishop convening an investigation by bishops from other archdioceses serving as jury, or in the case of a complaint against an archbishop, the president of the bishop's conference convening the investigation with archbishops serving as jury. The apostolic delegate could serve as a referee to assure a fair investigation if the case ultimately is appealed to Rome for settlement. I think just having to go through such a system might deter some bishops for outlandish behavior.
"There are likely too many problems for the Vatican to have the time and expertise to deal with them." I'm sure that is true. As you said, more peer input and evaluation would be good. Also an avenue where laypeople could lodge concerns. As Jim said, having a bad leader is a nightmare.
Delete"Perhaps we need to have an initial level of complaint at the archdiocesan level with the archbishop convening an investigation by bishops from other archdioceses serving as jury, or in the case of a complaint against an archbishop, the president of the bishop's conference convening the investigation with archbishops serving as jury."
DeleteIf I am not mistaken, this is similar to the procedure that Francis actually put in place, for instances when a bishop is accused of personally committing sexual abuse: the archbishop of the ecclesiastical province is supposed to investigate, and make a recommendation to the Holy See. Our old friend Rita Ferrone wrote a great article - I believe in Commonweal - expressing some skepticism about this process.
But the more common problem has been bishops concealing sex abuse by their priests more frequently than concealing their own abuse of others.
DeleteThe Dallas Charter procedure in place for the last 20 or so years has not been perfect, but it's been successful. As the Stika case shows, bishops can try to put their thumbs on the scale, e.g. by controlling the composition of the Independent Review Board. But if the boards are allowed to do their work without interference, they seem to do their work reasonably well. No doubt there have been some misses here and there.
Delete"The Dallas Charter procedure in place for the last 20 or so years has not been perfect, but it's been successful." Jim, yes. It's good for us to remember that when everything seems like Groundhog Day all over again. Most of the allegations lately have been cases that went back decades. That doesn't mean that justice shouldn't be served. But we're doing a few things right, more than we used to.
DeleteBased on what I have read about victims, it’s probably too early to judge the success of the Dallas Charter. Experts in the field say that most young victims of sexual abuse - in the church or elsewhere- don’t come forward for decades. It might be that reports will begin climbing again in the coming years that include the last 15-20 years. . However, other factors may come into play also. The numbers of individual parishes have dropped dramatically, as have the numbers of priests. In the original John Jay report it came out that the majority of priests who abused were “ formed” before the end of Vatican II, even though the right wing Catholics liked to blame Vatican II for it. There are way fewer priests now than there were during that era, so one would expect a drop in abuse - there are far fewer potential perpetrators. Also there is heightened awareness now - more people might be suspicious if priests are being too attentive to the young in their parish, especially to boys, since 80% of victims were young boys 13 and younger. Many altar boys among them. Access. . The open door policies are a good idea - if followed. I also wonder how many abusive priests were forced out of the priesthood quietly. In my former parish there was a staff member to whom I took an instant dislike. I was very active in the parish then and knew the staff members pretty well. He was in charge of spirituality programs of all things and I couldn’t begin to understand why he had been hired for this. Our parish co- sponsored a nearby Catholic school. This man managed to get on the Board of Trustees there, which gave him access to being there whenever he wanted. A few years ago he was quietly fired from his job at my parish and from the Board at the school parish - very hush hush. It turned out he was a former priest of the Baltimore diocese and had just been arrested on abuse charges from those days. He was on the list recently released in Maryland of priests in that diocese credibly charged with abuse when they were priests. I can’t help but wonder if this is another way the bishops found to hide the true rates of abuse.
DeleteThe biggest weakness in the Dallas Charter was that there are no provisions to hold accountable bishops who protect abusers.
It seems to me that bad bishops usually are bad in a variety of ways: they mishandle sexual abuse claims, they mishandle finances, they alienate their priests, and they alienate their people. That was the case with Stika, it was largely the case with Holley, and it seems to have been largely the case with Michael Bransfield in Wheeling-Charleston, WV. Other bishops are better at some of these things than others, and by and large, they seem to be left in place.
ReplyDeleteThis article from the Pillar from a few months ago, contains some pretty telling quotes from priests and laity in Knoxville. It strikes me as good that, apparently, the visitors (visitators?) listened to them.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/stika-knoxville-diocese-to-face-apostolic-visitation
Makes me think of the "Peter Principal", in which people sometimes get promoted to their level of incompetence.
DeleteThe Church seems to be getting a better track record than the U.S. Government. I've NEVER seen an incompetent supervisor demoted or fired. There has to be some egregious corruption before anything happens. Being a bum or an idiot isn't enough. Sometimes they'll shuttle them off to a sinecure but that still requires something like sexual harrassment for them to act.
ReplyDeleteStanley, that’s my observation also. Landing a job with the federal govt is as sure as it gets. A friend of ours developed dementia. He was a PhD chemist at NIST. He retired there after 50 years - in his 70s- at least 3 or 4 years after it became hard to have a rational conversation with him. Obviously he had not been capable of intelligent work for several years. I don’t know how they convinced him to retire finally. Some of the others I’ve known through my work were simply lazy, putting in the time. Most of the actual work was done by the private sector contractors.
DeleteI see that Archbishop Alexander Sample has made a statement that the decision to close the archdiocesan office of Catholic schools and have nearly all oversight done by priests and chancery officials is "... is unrelated to the publication of A Catholic Response to Gender Identity Theory or to one school adopting a classical education model."
ReplyDeleteUh huh. If anyone believes that I have a bridge to sell them.
From a previous article it was my understanding that it wasn't just a matter of one school adopting a "classical education model". It was the desire of the archbishop to affiliate the schools of the Portland Archdiocese with the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education (ICLE). From their website: ICLE "...has launched a groundbreaking alternative to state teacher’s licensing requirements at a time when more and more states are codifying woke standards into their licensing processes. "
Delete"The Catholic Educator Formation and Credential (CEFC) program, which prepares Catholic school educators to infuse a deeply Catholic philosophy and anthropology into their teaching, is designed to replace the de facto need for state-approved licensure at Catholic schools across the country. "
He wants to bypass state licenture (teaching certification and accreditation, I'm assuming). Red flags all over the place.
I’m sure Douthat is cheering.
DeleteI see that Archbishop Sample was a Traditional Latin Mass advocate.
DeleteOff topic. For Jean in case she skims the blog now and then - an article about how the saints influence Robert Ellsberg at America,
ReplyDeletehttps://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/06/29/all-saints-robert-ellsberg-245549