{"id":15145,"date":"2012-07-10T18:33:53","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T00:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/?p=15145"},"modified":"2016-09-30T17:06:25","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T21:06:25","slug":"the-most-thankless-job-in-christendom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/deaconsbench\/2012\/07\/the-most-thankless-job-in-christendom\/","title":{"rendered":"“The most thankless job in Christendom” — UPDATED"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

That would be \u2026 being a bishop.<\/p>\n

As fate would have it, I\u2019m attending the ordination of two of them tomorrow (including one who is my new pastor<\/a><\/strong>), so Joanne McPortland\u2019s plaintive post<\/a><\/strong> couldn\u2019t be more timely:<\/p>\n

Which Catholic job would I least want to have? Head of the Vatican Bank? President of the LCWR? Negotiator with the SSPX? Butler to His Holiness? Nope. Any of those would be easy peasey lemon squeezee, compared to the Most Thankless Job in Christendom:<\/p>\n

Catholic Bishop.<\/p>\n

Any bishop, anywhere, any day. And I say that with full disclosure of my secret ambition, egged on by my friends Michael and Brian, to be named, against all odds and for obvious reasons\u00a0in petto<\/em>, Titular Bishop of Puppi. (No disrespect meant to the current holder of that distinction,\u00a0ex petto<\/em>, the Most Rev Montfort Stima, an auxiliary of Blantyre, Malawi; the choice was purely because we get a 10-year-old boy snickering thrill out of saying \u201cTitular Bishop of Puppi\u00a0in petto<\/em>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Of all the no-one-expects-the-Spanish-Inquisition surprises that continue to accompany my revertigo, this is the surprise-iest, this surge of sympathy for the Church\u2019s management corps. But really, talk about your no-win position. I\u2019m not just talking about the usual perils of the episcopate, like the tendency of Chinese bishops\u00a0to disappear<\/a><\/strong>. And I don\u2019t mean the sort of generic political dismissiveness leveled against the USCCB, as in \u201cthe bishops, those socialist Obama bootlickers\u201d or \u201cthe bishops, those tools of the right wing\u2019s war on women and the poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, I\u2019m talking about the way we leap at the throats of individual bishops, in public and without a second\u2019s thought. From the left, from the right, from the pulpit, from the pews, from CNN to HHS, it\u2019s always His Fault. And it doesn\u2019t matter if he\u2019s a lowly auxiliary in Malawi or an exalted cardinal in the halls of Vatican power, he\u2019s damned if he does, damned if he doesn\u2019t.\u00a0And there\u2019s a kneejerk swiftness, fueled by Internet speeds, about the way we rush to judgment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You\u2019ll want to read it all. <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I may print it out and show it to a few people tomorrow, too\u2026<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> Check out what The Anchoress has to say about the bishops<\/a><\/strong>, too!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That would be \u2026 being a bishop. As fate would have it, I\u2019m attending the ordination of two of them tomorrow (including one who is my new pastor), so Joanne McPortland\u2019s plaintive post couldn\u2019t be more timely: Which Catholic job would I least want to have? Head of the Vatican Bank? President of the LCWR? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bishops"],"yoast_head":"\n"The most thankless job in Christendom" -- UPDATED<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"That would be ... being a bishop. 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