{"id":10635,"date":"2018-08-16T10:06:07","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T16:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=10635"},"modified":"2018-08-16T10:06:07","modified_gmt":"2018-08-16T16:06:07","slug":"how-stupid-do-the-bishops-think-we-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/08\/how-stupid-do-the-bishops-think-we-are.html","title":{"rendered":"How stupid do the bishops think we are?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve issued a statement now.\u00a0 It\u2019s as trite and useless as you\u2019d expect from a corporation, from bureaucrats, from a Hollywood celebrity hoping that some minor scandal will blow over soon enough and they\u2019ll be able to resume business as usual.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not from any of these groups; it\u2019s from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops<\/a>, and it reads, in part:<\/p>\n

As a body of bishops, we are shamed by and sorry for the sins and omissions by Catholic priests and Catholic bishops. . . .<\/p>\n

We are committed to work in determined ways so that such abuse cannot happen. . . .<\/p>\n

We pledge to maintain transparency and to provide for the permanent removal of offenders from ministry and to maintain safe environments for everyone. .\u00a0. .<\/p>\n

We pray that all survivors of sexual abuse find healing, comfort and strength in God\u2019s loving presence as the Church pledges to continue to restore trust through accompaniment, communion, accountability and justice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notice what they did not<\/strong> say:<\/p>\n

They did not say, \u201cWe call upon all bishops who have at any point in the past, whether before or after the institution of our new protocols, turned a blind eye to reports of such abuse,\u00a0whether\u00a0because those reports didn\u2019t follow bureaucratic protocol, or because acting on them would have been a source of embarrassment, or for any other reason, to resign.\u201d<\/p>\n

They did not even call for any such bishops to disclose what they knew and seek counsel from the community as to whether he ought to continue in office.<\/p>\n

And we are still missing the acknowledgment from the bishops collectively or from individual bishops that this is not a matter of having the right bureaucracy in place, and making statements as a collective, but of individual sins by individual people who need to confess their sins and be held to account \u2014 and a matter of bishops holding each other accountable rather than creating new forms of bureaucracy while they hang out with rich prospective donors and celebrities and politicians and promote their favored politics (as long as those politics are sufficiently progressive, e.g., climate change and immigration reform).<\/p>\n

(Is that last line uncalled for?\u00a0 Is the impression the bishops give of caring more about being celebrities and using their platforms to promote their preferred political policies than actually ministering, derived from news coverage of the former rather than the latter?\u00a0 Maybe so.\u00a0 But Chicago\u2019s Cardinal Cupich certainly appears in the news often enough in a manner that suggests that he thinks his job is some sort of honorary appointment to work for social justice, as if he\u2019s the head of some sort of foundation that just got a big grant for the purpose.)<\/p>\n

I am angry.\u00a0 I feel like the bishops are all playing us for suckers, thinking if they issue enough bland statements as a whole then they can protect each other, and that school will start up again and we\u2019ll be too busy supervising homework and volunteering to stay up late scrutinizing the local Greek Orthodox church\u2019s website<\/a> for any clear indicator of whether liturgies are in Greek or English.\u00a0 Do they not have any sense of public opinion?\u00a0 Do they not read, for instance, Megan McArdle\u2019s scathing response<\/a>\u00a0(knowing that her usual topics are business and economics, so if she\u2019s addressing this, you can tell that she\u2019s angry)?\u00a0 Are they really going to delude themselves into thinking that it\u2019s all about bureaucracy, that they can appoint another commission to tell them about more bureaucratic structures, and that, heck, none of them individually have any ability to do anything about the behavior of any other bishop (neither formally nor informally by private persuasion or public shaming), so it\u2019s completely out of their hands?<\/p>\n

McCarrick was an a** when he said, \u201cI apologize, and, by the way, I didn\u2019t do anything wrong\u201d at the start of this chain of events.\u00a0 Are we going to get the same c*** from the bishops, collectively and individually?<\/p>\n

And do they think that they can get away with it, that parishioner numbers will be unchanged, because those of us who have stayed, what with the major loss in religious identification numbers over the past two decades or so, feel ourselves committed and stuck, anyway?\u00a0 Or have they all given up already anyway, and begun to see themselves as charged with best managing the decline, so as to preserve the best architectural exemplars for a much smaller denomination?<\/p>\n

. . . . . . . .<\/p>\n

Sigh.\u00a0 Just as I was about to click \u201cpublish\u201d a new statement came across my twitter feed, the announcement by the USCCB<\/a>\u00a0in the name of Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, President of the USCCB, that they have, yes, created some new bureaucratic processes.\u00a0 Oh, boy.<\/p>\n

Because, again, they say,<\/p>\n

Because only the Pope has authority to discipline or remove bishops, we will assure that our measures will both respect that authority and protect the vulnerable from the abuse of ecclesial power.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Each and every bishop has the ability to call out other bishops and shame them for their misdeeds.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need the Pope for this.<\/p>\n

And again,<\/p>\n

Finally, I apologize and humbly ask your forgiveness for what my brother bishops and I have done and failed to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Enough with the collective and vague apologies.<\/p>\n

If you did something wrong, apologize for it directly, personally, and specifically.\u00a0 If you\u2019re going to stick to your guns and say you knew absolutely nothing at any time and never did anything wrong, then urge the other American Catholic bishops (and stop calling them \u201cbrother bishops\u201d when everyone feels that this sense of \u201cbrotherhood\u201d is part of the problem) to apologize for their own failings.<\/p>\n

Yes, I know it sounds like something from a Maoist collective struggle session.\u00a0 \u201cConfess your faults.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cNot good enough, confess some more.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWell, there was this one time when my mother complained we didn\u2019t have enough to eat, and I didn\u2019t turn her in.\u201d\u00a0 But we have had so many of these idiotic garbage apologies, that I have no tolerance for anything that remotely resembles them any longer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:United_States_Conference_of_Catholic_Bishops.svg; By Ng556 [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0) or Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They\u2019ve issued a statement now.\u00a0 It\u2019s as trite and useless as you\u2019d expect from a corporation, from bureaucrats, from a Hollywood celebrity hoping that some minor scandal will blow over soon enough and they\u2019ll be able to resume business as usual.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not from any of these groups; it\u2019s from the United States Conference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1030,1041],"class_list":["post-10635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-mccarrick","tag-usccb"],"yoast_head":"\nHow stupid do the bishops think we are?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"They've issued a statement now.\u00a0 It's as trite and useless as you'd expect from a corporation, from bureaucrats, from a Hollywood celebrity hoping that\" 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