![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2018\/07\/Theodore_Cardinal_McCarrick.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Regular readers will know that I have more ideas than I do patience for digging out the relevant links to document my claim.<\/p>\n
But here is my complaint:<\/p>\n
I dislike the idea of \u201cinstitutional sin\u201d \u2013 that is, the concept that sinfulness can reside in bureaucratic structures.<\/p>\n
And I dislike it because it exempts those who ought to bear responsibility, from genuinely taking responsibility.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019re seeing it again with the U.S. bishops, with respect to the twin scandals of McCarrick and reports of rampant sex and other misbehavior in seminaries.\u00a0 We are getting mea\u00a0<\/em>culpas\u00a0that follow the old, tired pattern:\u00a0 \u201cWe, as an institution, apologize for our collective failings, and for having not put in place the right sort of bureaucracy to have avoided this.\u201d<\/p>\n And then we get, again, the repeated claims:\u00a0 \u201cDuh, I didn\u2019t know anything myself personally; I\u2019m just apologizing on behalf of the bishops collectively.\u201d<\/p>\n So, look, maybe it is true.\u00a0 Maybe bishops are so focused on their own dioceses, and have no clue about anything else that happens.\u00a0 Maybe the stories about seminaries being hotbeds of gay sex are all just lies, or confined to so few seminaries that it\u2019s credible that virtually no one knew.<\/p>\n But as long as the confessions remain the bland sort of \u201cinstitutional sins\u201d \u2014 as long as no bishop, no one at the seminaries, is willing to say, \u201cI repent; I knew of these things but didn\u2019t want to risk the ire of others, didn\u2019t want to hamper my career, didn\u2019t want to impact the reputation of the church\u201d we\u2019re trapped in not knowing whether any of the bishops steadfastly denying that they ever knew anything that they turned a blind eye to, are being truthful.<\/p>\n And I know that this ends up sounding like a demand for Stalinesque show trials, but I don\u2019t see a path forward if all we get is bland mamby-pamby \u201cwe\u2019ll make up a new process\u201d over and over again.\u00a0 It was not \u201cthe process\u201d that sinned.\u00a0 It was individual people who sinned.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Image:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Theodore_Cardinal_McCarrick.jpg; By Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)www.swiss-image.ch\/Photo by Andy Mettler [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Regular readers will know that I have more ideas than I do patience for digging out the relevant links to document my claim. But here is my complaint: I dislike the idea of \u201cinstitutional sin\u201d \u2013 that is, the concept that sinfulness can reside in bureaucratic structures. And I dislike it because it exempts those […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":10348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1030],"class_list":["post-10572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mccarrick"],"yoast_head":"\n