Advice and anger

Not that there’s too much chance of it anyway, but I sure wouldn’t want to be a bishop. Not today. Not on the eve of Dallas.

The upcoming meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Dallas (June 13-15) arguably is the most important gathering of American bishops ever. That’s due to the unprecedented sexual-abuse scandal that has overtaken the church, its hierarchy and faithful this year.

I wouldn’t want to be a bishop because everybody—and I do mean everybody—is telling the bishops what to do, how to do it, when to do it and why. And sometimes with an expletive.

Advice has come from the left, from the right, from the center. And many of those suggestions, demands, challenges, or just plain spittin’ angry words—are contradictory. Everything from lock ‘em up and then defrock ‘em to just keep them away from kids.

So I’m not about to give them any advice, not here. They don’t need more.

What the bishops do need, however, is a sense of perspective. As do we all.

This pre-Dallas issue of The Catholic New World contains much information about that meeting: predictions, promises, background, opinion, commentary and news. But not every page or every word focuses on the Dallas problem. That’s because other things—good things, for the most part—that happen day after day in the church: the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, the Gospel is proclaimed.

And the people who accomplish that are often themselves flawed and wounded and forgiven. That’s always good to remember.

Despite the hopes and demands, Dallas won’t resolve our problem completely. It won’t go away overnight, just as it wasn’t created overnight.

Nor will it likely address issues beyond the immediate: protecting children. That’s Dallas’ main charge: to seek to make certain that never again will a child be subject to a willful attack, especially by a trusted priest.

Dallas Coadjutor Bishop Joseph Galante, who spoke last week at the national Catholic Press Association gathering in Minneapolis, put it better than I can.

“We echo the Holy Father, who said there is no place in the priesthood or religious life for anyone who harms children. The church must be transparent and open in dealing with this. The question of secrecy has killed us, and some still see that as a principle to be upheld.”

That’s where the discussions in Dallas are going to get dicey, because the church does not always do “transparent” well. Some places, of course, do better than others. Which is why Boston is only now going through the scandal that Chicago endured a decade ago.

Bishop Galante acknowledged what angers Catholics—and non-Catholics—most: He said the crisis has hurt the church “in part because of a failure to live up to what we profess.” That’s the complaint of many people in the pews, that the church’s focus on “pelvic theology” makes its own failings all the worse.

Galente cautioned, though, that despite the public’s “legitimate” high expectations of the Dallas meeting, there was not likely to be a cure-all to every problem. Protecting young children is the focus, he said. (For a full story on his talk, see Page 7).

But what likely won’t be on the table are issues some see as related: married clergy, ordaining women, homosexuality among clergy, celibacy.

There almost certainly will be a national policy of zero tolerance toward clergy who harm children. There almost certainly will be debate on exactly what “zero tolerance” means, and how to implement it on a nationwide basis.

That’s where “perspective” comes in, both for the bishops in Dallas and for those of us in the pews who are watching with such compelling interest. We must always remember the children. And we must never forget the Gospel.

Tom Sheridan
Editor and General Manager