Good Times Aren't Ahead for US Church

By Michael Sean Winters
National Catholic Reporter
January 4, 2019

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/AbuseTracker/

What will 2019 bring in the life of the church? Will Pope Francis be able to lead the way to a new era of episcopal accountability? If so, how will that cohere with other of his objectives such as increased synodality? Will the church in the United States begin to confront the degree to which some of its ministries have become a counterwitness to the Gospel and others a mere extension of the Republican Party, with all the ugliness that entails in the Age of Trump? Will the bishops even begin to know how to cope with the decline of Trump, in whatever form that takes, and prepare for the tsunami that awaits them once he is hurled from office? Will the Catholic left mature into the kind of force that can remain distinctively Catholic but also make an impact on the life of both church and state?

The clergy sex abuse mess has prompted more heat than light in the year just past, but I anticipate we will see a clear rejection of faux and foolish reform efforts and an embrace of some real ones. Nothing will come of the efforts of conservative zillionaire Tim Busch, who organized a conference on "authentic reform" of the church in which laypeople like himself, well-heeled in the wallet and a little light in theological depth, would come to the rescue and make the church in the U.S. into their own image, an image they know well from admiring it so much.

Equally barren will be some of the calls for reform from the left, such as that of former Rep. Tim Roemer whose solutions veered remarkably close to advocating lay trusteeism, which doesn't work and isn't Catholic. Fr. James Connell gets the prize for the worst single idea: He wants to take away the inviolability of the confessional. His argument rests on canonical analysis, not theology, most especially the theology of conscience which Pope Francis is so keen to revive. I can confidently predict that the pope will not let our venerable sacramental theology be tossed overboard by ideologically driven canonists.

Instead of these faux reforms, I will echo Mark Silk's prediction at RNS: I am betting Pope Francis is going to find a way to make the February meeting of the presidents of all the episcopal conferences in the world work. I predict that meeting will yield some concrete proposals for adoption, with some variation, by local episcopal conferences and that in the course of the year, some clearer methods of holding bishops accountable at the Vatican will emerge. The February meeting may disappoint some in the U.S., even though it may advance the cause of child protection throughout the world. That may say more about the myopia of the U.S. church than it does about the pope's determination to protect children.