MINNESOTA
Canonical Consultation
07/11/2015
Jennifer Haselberger
Since yesterday afternoon, when various media outlets began to publish the first person-to-person interviews with Archbishop Bernard Hebda, the new Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, several people have contacted me to express their disappointment in what was said- and wasn’t said- by the Archbishop. Faithful and clergy who were anxious for transparency and a clear break from previous media-spin were obviously disappointed, as well as others who were looking for an indication of more concrete policy changes.
For my part, I wasn’t at all surprised. It is unlikely that the message will change as long as those who are crafting the messages remain the same. At the same time, I was disappointed with some statements that appeared to be a little too carefully crafted to be representative of the type of ‘transparency’ that many of the faithful feel entitled to.
Take, for instance, this exchange between the Archbishop and MPR news:
BARAN: Has the archdiocese turned over everything to police and prosecutors that they’ve asked for?
HEBDA: In the time that I’ve been here, nothing’s been asked for. We haven’t had that situation. My understanding is we’re, everything that, we’ve been working very closely with the authorities. And also obviously there’s always a judge or a court that’s able to decide those things as well.
BARAN: Would you say to the lawyers and the other people who work in the chancery: Look, if the police or the prosecutors ask you for any information, please turn it over?
HEBDA: I think obviously we have to be cooperative. We also have to recognize that there are some documents that are privileged. And that’s very fair I think from both sides, and so certainly being cognizant of the parameters of the law, that we want to be able to cooperate fully.
As far as I am aware, Archbishop Hedba was not dishonest anything that he said in this exchange.
However, it also did not provide the faithful or other individuals following this drama with the information they would feel entitled to. A more transparent response, in my opinion, would have been to acknowledge that prior to his appointment a warrant was executed at the Chancery, and that in the course of that execution documents were recovered relating to the Greene Espel investigation of Archbishop Nienstedt (though not, I believe, ‘the report’, if such a report even exists). And, while the warrant was executed prior to his appointment, it was after his appointment that the Archdiocese appeared before the court to assert that the document(s) were privileged and therefore should not be provided to prosecutors.
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