MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation
09/18/2015
Jennifer Haselberger
If you have a ‘google alert’ set to tell you when news is posted about the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, your email inbox has likely been filling up quickly this week. With Pope Francis set to arrive in the United States next Tuesday, it seems as though every major media outlet in the country is running a story about the state of the Catholic Church in America, and no such story is complete without a reference to the place that has become, defacto, the Church’s current ‘ground zero’. In addition to the widely-circulated stories of the AP and Reuters, national and international TV stations have been sending crews to talk to people in Saint Paul and Minneapolis about the state of the church, and specifically about the bankruptcy, resignations, and sexual abuse by clergy.
With every news organization from Al Jazeera to PBS News Hour sending reporters and camera crews, producers and techinical staff, there is one conspiscious absence among the hubbub- Pope Francis. The Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis might be ‘ground zero’ in terms of the public’s perception of the Church, but we clearly remain flyover land in the view of those orchestrating the Pope’s visit to the United States.
Not that I blame them. Anyone with even a smidgeon of an understanding of how public relations works can understand that no good (in the PR sense) could come from Pope Francis visiting our beleagured Archdiocese. What has happened here (and continues to happen) is too obviously a reminder of Francis’s failures rather than his successes, and a visit would point out all the things that the Catholic Church is hoping will be forgotten once American Catholics are able to bask in the glow that is Francis himself. Why draw attention to the fact that we had abusive clergy in ministry for more than twelve years following the adoption of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People? Why higlight our declining attendance at Mass and a similar decline in financial contributions? Why raise questions as to whether the Archdiocese’s strategy in bankruptcy is consistent with a ‘victims first’ mentality? And why, oh why, give people a reason to dwell on the fact that allowing bishops to resign (an ecclesiatical form of ‘honorable discharge’) undercuts the accountability that Francis has promised?
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