Mistakes of the Bishops

Patheos blog

June 15, 2019

By Msgr. Eric Barr

The U.S. Bishops had an unimpressive week at their biannual meeting. That means this first paragraph will be boring. But take heart! It shall get better. They approved three measures to help alleviate last year’s iteration of the sex abuse crisis, namely, the ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick controversy. First, they approved a way for a bishop to discipline another bishop within his diocese. Next, they approved norms to codify Pope Francis’ February Conference on Sex Abuse results. And finally, they approved a non-binding agreement to deal with bishops and have the same expectations of bishops as they do of their priests and deacons. Yawn. Boring and not very satisfying, and fairly useless in fixing the bishops’ mistakes concerning the sex abuse crisis.

FIRST, LET’S KILL ALL THE LAWYERS–OKAY, NOT REALLY
For sure, the measures will be somewhat helpful. But they do not undue the first mistake the bishops ever made concerning the issue of sexual abuse. That was the embrace of the legal system, both ecclesiastical and civil, as the first response to the crisis. Sexual abuse by priests did not begin in 2002, but the Church stood on the cusp of a major decision that year. How would the episcopacy treat this concern? The bishops tried their best but failed. Why? Of all the choices before them on how to handle the situation they decided to lawyer up. They forsook their role as shepherds and cast their lot with lawyers, seeing themselves as CEOs with a need to protect the institution.

What happened next was not the lawyers’ fault. They were simply doing what they had been asked to do by the Church. Apply civil law, protect the institution, and keep the amounts dictated by lawsuits low enough to not bankrupt individual dioceses. The bishops, of course, also tried to apply pastoral justice, trying to care for the victim and punishing the perpetrator. It did not work out very well. Casting their lot with the lawyers simply exacerbated a trend that had appeared decades before. The bishops were relinquishing their role as shepherds and becoming CEOs, executives of their individual companies (dioceses) under the umbrella corporation of the Universal Catholic Church. Simply take a look at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ meetings. In their black suits and with somber demeanor, the bishops do not look or act like shepherds. They look like Chief Executive Officers at worst and at best like those elderly bankers in the original Mary Poppins movie, totally out of touch with real life, anxious only to protect the wealth of the bank. That sounds terribly harsh but the optics are clear–these meetings stress law and order, not pastoral care and practice

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