c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

(UNDATED) Last spring, the Monsignor Moron Award was given, as saints were first named, by popular acclaim. It went to Monsignor Richard Sniezyk, who was then holding the fort in the diocese of Springfield, Mass., after its bishop departed under the cloud of the sex abuse scandal.

The good monsignor may therefore have been pressured when he told the Boston Globe in February that, as a young priest, he had heard about priests having sex with young men but that “no one thought much about it. …. They did good ministry … but they had no idea what they were doing to these young men they were abusing.”

Some readers have suggested, however, with a mixture of sympathy for and amazement at Sniezyk’s offending victims, good priests and Catholics in general in one sentence, that the award’s name should be changed because it is unfair both to monsignors and to morons. They are at least half right.

So we have a newly named honor, the “Falling Short of All We Hoped They Could Be” Award. It comes from novelist Henry James’ description of a hotel in “A Little Tour of France” as “falling so far short of all that I hoped it would be,” thereby triumphing over vulgarity (“What a dump!”) while still expressing his own disappointment perfectly.

That phrase captures how many Catholics feel when church leaders say or do something that, like a father’s drinking too much at Christmas, upsets them but does not destroy their sense of being in the same family or their affection for him.

The field of contenders is crowded for the “Falling Short of All We Hoped They Could Be” Award because Catholics still expect that priests and bishops will tell the truth, will act like pastors rather than policemen, and will not confuse power with genuine authority. When leaders fall so far short of all that Catholics hope they would be, they disappoint more than they enrage.

Contenders for the Falling Short Award include San Jose, Calif., Bishop Patrick McGrath for summoning “four police cars to disperse or arrest five Catholic men praying the rosary” in front of his palatial residence. The police said the men “were well within their rights” and that the bishop had no right to drive them away, according to St. Joseph’s News Service.

Bishop Robert Vasa of Baker, Ore., seems to be looking for trouble by demanding that all lay ministers sign “a two-page affirmation of faith,” insisting that “any extramarital sexual relationships are gravely evil … (including) premarital relations, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of pornography and homosexual relations.” Many reputable theologians would not agree with this sweeping statement.

His spokesperson, Father James Logan, gets a Nice-Try honorable mention for claiming that the document is really “an internal checklist they would read through.”

Archbishop Andrew Burke of St. Louis joins the sin-shooters when the credibility of bishops on sexual questions is low, telling the St. Louis Review that “it is a serious sin” for Catholics to vote for a candidate who advocates abortion and that they must show “true repentance” and go to confession before they can receive Communion.

Burke also gets nominated for writing that “the Apostles understood that the Sacrament of Holy Orders, which they had received in its fullness, was to be handed on in three grades …. Bishops … Priests … and … Deacons.” This really is falling short of the knowledge that Catholics have a right to expect from their bishops as sacramental theologians such as Kenan Osborne make clear that we know little, if anything, about ordination in the early days of the Church.

But the Falling Short Award goes by acclaim to Austrian Bishop Kurt Krenn who, when 40,000 images of child pornography, along with sexually explicit pictures of faculty and students, were found at his seminary, dismissed them as “schoolboy pranks,” akin to people kissing under the mistletoe at Christmas.

Kiss this, Bishop Krenn, and take it with you into exile, making the other nominees look like doctors of the Church by falling so far short of everything that the People of God had a right to expect you to be.

MO/PH END KENNEDY