COMMENTARY: A Need to See Voices Other Than Bishops’ as Faithful

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) America’s Catholic bishops, as I have observed many times, are good men who received […]

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) America’s Catholic bishops, as I have observed many times, are good men who received their regalia in what, in clerical terms, were Dickens’ “best of times” only to find them unexpectedly transformed into the “worst of times.”


They have arrayed themselves in the classic British military formation, the “square,” assumed for maximum defense and firepower when under heavy attack.

They perceive the “enemy” as their own people. These include Catholic groups, such as the Voice of the Faithful, Future Church and Call to Action, in whose existence they should take pride and from whose committed interest to the Church they should take comfort.

The Catholics active in these groups are not interested in undercutting or overthrowing their bishops. They are serious and theologically committed Catholics who want the church to survive and want their bishops to flourish as pastors of the flock.

In Europe, attendance, respect for and interest in the church, even as historically significant in the continent’s development, have waned dramatically. Theologian David Tracy observes that in many countries the churches are the new museums, in which visitors meditate on the artifacts of the past, and the museums are the new churches in which people seek spiritual renewal in the present.

In America, however, and despite a sex abuse scandal among the clergy that has not yet subsided, Catholic education has produced a generation of believers who are deeply committed to the church, its sacramental system, and its theological and social teachings. The Voice of the Faithful and similar groups are pledged to the good of the church and to its continued presence at the heart of their lives and those of their children and grandchildren.

Perhaps the bishops are still traumatized by the impact of the sex abuse scandal and their own attempts to deny and control rather than to open and drain its wound, that they do not understand what has happened in their relationship with their Catholic people.

Good Catholics are not attacking the authority of bishops from without. Bishops are attacking it from within, weakening it by putting it at risk as a novice gambler does his winnings when he hears voices telling him that he cannot lose.


They did that by overcoming their pastoral instincts and following the advice of lawyers and insurers to protect their assets rather than their people. The shadows of these “assets” fell across their people and, under the cover of that darkness, their children were violated. And their assets have not been protected as bankruptcies in Portland, Ore., and Tucson, Ariz., and a possible bill for $1.5 billion in Los Angeles tell us.

While bishops know that something is wrong, they think that the answer is to restore their power, that is, their control over the church. That explains their heavy-handed dealing with the National Review Board, the lay group whose work in assessing and tracking the origins of the crisis the bishops have tried to hamstring by a series of ham-fisted maneuvers. The latest is their ignoring the procedures they themselves set up in appointing Sister Carol Keehan to its membership. She is worthy beyond doubt but her effectiveness has been compromised by a move that, whatever their intentions, reveals how the bishops’ worst instincts betray their best intentions.

The problem is simple: The bishops have lost the trust of Catholic people who really would like to trust them. Instead of trying to heal that broken trust, the bishops are vainly trying to restore their power and control over their people and the church. Illustrated by their efforts to sink or seize the vessel of the National Review Board, the bishops make the barque of Peter seem less trustworthy.

They do not seem to understand what it means to trust a person in real life _ as when a husband and wife trust each other _ because they do not relate as persons who must be ready to change themselves to keep trust alive but as officials who think that everybody else must change to get along with them.

The Catholic people want to admire and trust their leaders. That cannot happen as long as the bishops take defensive positions that erode their own trustworthiness and leave them wondering how the best of times could have turned into the worst of times.

MO/PH END RNS

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