KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
By Michael Sean Winters
October 29, 2018
Two weeks from today, the bishops of the United States will gather in Baltimore for their most consequential meeting since Dallas in the summer of 2002, when the clergy sex abuse crisis at that time produced the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People and its zero tolerance approach to the sexual abuse of children. Are the bishops today, with the leadership they have, up to the task? And, what are those tasks?
The biggest difference between 2002 and today, and the first issue the bishops must confront, is whether or not they wish to remain Roman Catholics or if they will become Protestants. In 2002, it was unthinkable that a former apostolic nuncio, the personal representative of the pope to this country, would publish a long screed that ended by calling for the pope to resign. In 2002, it was unthinkable that a substantial number of bishops would issue statements attesting to their belief in that ex-nuncio’s integrity while not mentioning the pope at all or affirming their loyalty to the pope in the most meager of terms. In our Catholic ecclesiology, it is Christ who is the head of the church, but the pope is the visible sign of our unity as Catholics. Apart from Peter, there is no Catholic unity.
Some bishops were more fulsome in their support for Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò than others. “I can attest that [Viganò] is a man who served his mission with selfless dedication, who fulfilled well the Petrine mission entrusted to him by the Holy Father to ‘strengthen his brothers in the faith’,” enthused San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. “Although I have no knowledge of the information that he reveals in his written testimony of August 22, 2018, so I cannot personally verify its truthfulness, I have always known and respected him as a man of truthfulness, faith and integrity,” gushed Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, Arizona. Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo, Ohio was more weasely, stating, “Personally, this situation is made all the more gut-wrenching as I struggle to reconcile my knowledge of Archbishop Viganó, for whom I have a high regard, with my deepest love and respect for the office of the Holy Father.” The bishop loves the office, but not the pope himself? That is a level of dualism we haven’t seen since the 1950s.
Bishop Joseph Strickland had a letter ready to be read at all Masses in his diocese within hours of Viganò’s first attack on the pope, in which the bishop of Tyler, Texas said he found Viganò’s allegations “credible.” Was he part of the cabal that hatched and planned the dissemination of the Viganò statement, a cabal that we know included LifeSiteNews, Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register, conservative Catholic blogger Marco Tosatti, and conservative Catholic plutocrat Tim Busch?
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