MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation
04/08/2015
Jennifer Haselberger
Over the weekend I had a conversation about the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis that left me more than a little despondent. My conversational partner was someone whom I can generally trust to have a fairly good read of the state of things in the Roman Curia, which is why the information he had to impart troubled me more than most of what I hear. For, after speaking for a while about the different personas of Pope Francis- the much-loved public persona as opposed to the actual man himself- the person I was speaking with assured me that the ‘real Francis’ was extremely unlikely to take any action regarding the situation in Saint Paul. In other words, barring some unforeseen development, Archbishop Nienstedt was here to stay.
For months journalists have been telling me that the ‘unforeseen development’ has to be for Nienstedt’s accusers to make public their sworn affidavits (something I think we have all realized that the Archdiocese, despite its claims of transparency, is extremely unlikely to do). Proponents of this argument will point out that the difference between Saint Paul and both Scotland and Chile is that in the other scenarios the victims had gone public with their claims. That is, of course, true, but I am adamantly opposed to the idea that the cure for what ails us must rest on the shoulders of those whom have already suffered. Those men- whether there are ten or twenty of them- offered sworn statements at considerable risk to themselves. In response, at least some of them have been harassed by the Archdiocese and its never-ending pool of lawyers, who apparently have been tasked with discrediting them. We cannot ask anything more of those men.
But we can ask for quite a bit more from another group of people with a stake in the outcome of the investigation into the conduct of the Archbishop, as well as in the broader troubles plaguing the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. This group is our clergy, and most specifically our Archdiocesan priests. To be fair, many of these men are not in a position to provide any assistance to the cause beyond minor acts of rebellion, and we should also recognize that there are many priests who fall into this category and who have demonstrated through means large and small their opposition to the current holder of the See and his methods of governance. At the same time, I have not heard of any letters signed by a majority of the presbyterate calling for the Archbishop’s resignation and removal (as was done in Chile), although back in 2003 more than 100 of them were willing to sign a letter calling for a discussion of mandatory celibacy, and in 2006 nearly thirty signed a letter to Archbishop Flynn promising to oppose any attempts to pass a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage.
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