Catholic Bishop of Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, First to Be Investigated Under New Church Guidelines

LITTLE ROCK (AR)
Bilgrimage blog

Sept. 16, 2019

By William Lindsey

The bishop of the Catholic diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, Michael Hoeppner, is now under canonical investigation for allegedly interfering with civil or canonical investigations of clerical sexual abuse of minors. As Jean Haselberger states in the report I have just linked, Hoeppner is the first sitting bishop to be investigated under new Vatican protocols for reviewing and disciplining bishops in such matters.

As I read this news, I keep flashing back to the open letter I wrote on this blog at Thanksgiving time in 2012. The letter addresses the Catholic people of the Crookston diocese. Crookston is the diocese in which my husband Steve grew up and has deep roots, deep Catholic roots.

Many of us like to imagine that the roots of the abuse horror show in the Catholic church run solely to rectories, chanceries, houses of religious communities, and the Vatican. In my view, however, these roots run much deeper, and my experience with my husband’s birth diocese, Crookston, over many years has helped convince me of this.

The corruption in the Catholic church that manifests itself in church leaders is shared by the laity, who have all too often sought to turn a blind eye to what they do not wish to see happening in their church, and who have also sought to find scapegoat groups — notably the LGBTQ community — to blame for the abuse crisis.

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