Commentary on U.S. Bishops’ Meeting: “The Moral Credibility of Catholic Bishops in the United States Is in Tatters”

LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimmage

November 17, 2018

By William Lindsey

Barry Blitt’s “Welcome to Congress” cover for New Yorker, 9 November 2018

Now if a knock-off cover could only be produced, showing all those whited-out men in suits as the Catholic bishops at their latest meeting….

My major takeaway from the recent USCCB meeting: the bishops convened it with a huge deficit of moral and pastoral authority, and they have even less moral and pastoral authority now that it’s over. Something has finally given way within American Catholicism — a willingness to tolerate the vain show any longer, to make one more excuse for Father. There’s no going back to the obediential culture the EWTN crowd wishes to cultivate — as long as the pope is not Francis.

I frankly felt a thousand miles removed as I read commentary about the USCCB meeting. In many ways, I could not care less about anything the Catholic church is now discussing — and, above all, about the stale, incestuous, airless, parochial commentary of the mostly straight, mostly white, mostly male U.S. Catholic commentariat. Here’s commentary I have found worth reading, however:

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