BishopAccountability.org

Doblin: a New Bishop for Newark on Election Day

By Alfred P. Doblin
The Record
November 4, 2013

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/230451471_Doblin__A_new_bishop_for_Newark_on_Election_Day.html

CHRIS PEDOTA

THERE IS a change coming in Newark, and it has nothing to do with Cory Booker's departure for the U.S. Senate. On Tuesday, Bernard Hebda is officially welcomed to the Archdiocese of Newark as a coadjutor bishop. Archbishop John Myers will no longer be solo at the helm.

Myers is only 72, three years shy of mandatory retirement. When the announcement came in September that the Vatican had named a coadjutor archbishop, Myers said he had requested one. Maybe so, but as a longtime observer of bishops and their relations with Rome, the odds of the Vatican sending in a second-in-command three years before a bishop's usual retirement for no reason other than a simple request for help are about as likely as Justin Bieber announcing he has a priestly vocation and is entering a seminary.

The Archdiocese of Newark is in need of a shepherd, not an autocrat. And Myers has been very good at the latter and not so hot at the former. The archdiocese may be on good financial footing; the cogs may be turning fine and dandy when it comes to processing money coming in and money going out. But when it comes to speaking to the people of his church, Myers has been less successful.

Today every Catholic bishop pays the price for what too many bishops failed for decades to do: stop pedophile priests from doing harm. Knee-jerk defenders of Catholicism contend that the media's refusal to let this issue die is proof that most journalists are anti-Catholic.

Defending children is about as Catholic and Christian a thing as there is. The media doesn't let the issue die because bishops can come and go, but the children who were scarred under their watch remain and someone has to shout to the heavens, "No more."

Myers is not the worst bishop in America. He is not in the same league as the former archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law. Myers is a small-time prince in a feudal system coming to an end. Pope Francis is forcing bishops to forgo the regal trappings of office and focus on their ministries. The church was never meant to be a business; the church is a mission.

What the Newark Archdiocese needs is a man comfortable walking among the poor, dishing out food at a soup kitchen and accepting the anger of hurt Catholics as part of his priestly duties. Hebda is coming to New Jersey from a sleepy rural diocese in Michigan, Gaylord. His roots in Pittsburgh will serve him well in a gritty city like Newark.

But what will make him an effective bishop will be whether he has people skills. Pope Francis is amazing Catholics and non-Catholics alike because he has this surprising ability to connect with people regardless of age, culture or faith. Whether Francis will be skilled enough as an administrator to reshape the Roman Curia, the administrative body that runs the Vatican and the world church, is yet to be determined. He seems to be a no-nonsense guy who wants results inside Vatican walls.

He also is talking more about the stuff I grew up on as a Catholic, the preferential option for the poor, the need to care for the least capable in society. That is a message that needs to be proclaimed from pulpits and from less-blessed sanctuaries, like legislatures and governors' offices. There is much talk about faith inside Congress and State Houses, just not a lot of action on anything other than reproductive rights.

There is a whole class of professed religious politicians who defend the rights of the unborn from here to the end of Obamacare, yet will deny those same beings once outside the womb a good many of the rights most religions would profess as equally important to the human condition.

That brings me back to my not-so-hidden joy at seeing Hebda coming to Newark. The pope has said that bishops have lost perspective on the total message of the Gospel, narrowing in too much on issues of sexuality and abortion. Francis isn't changing the message of the church, just its tone.

Archbishop Myers has been tone deaf. He doesn't hear it. Maybe that is why he does not respond to it. Maybe it is not that he is deliberately cold, but that he is incapable of seeing outside his chancery walls. These past months, when questions were raised about the lack of proper supervision of a priest who had entered into an agreement with a county prosecutor's office to stay away from children, Myers should have accepted that something went wrong on his watch. Instead, he deflected blame.

My guess is Myers will continue to scorn the media to the very end, believing we have an agenda against him. I have seen his type. He is obsessed with the splinter in our eye and ignores the plank in his own.

If first impressions matter, Hebda made a good one. Maybe he benefits from following someone so uncomfortable in front of a camera. Maybe that explains the world's love affair with Pope Francis. Time will tell.

Hebda will use the coming months to get a lay of the land, and probably assess how cooperative Myers will be with a coadjutor. But I hope Hebda reaches out to the media. We are in the same business: the proclaiming of truth.

Contact: doblin@northjersey.com.




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