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Last week, I wrote about Cardinal Cupich\u2019s letter, which was woefully incomplete in addressing the issues at hand.\u00a0 Today I\u2019m taking it a step further, with a letter addressed to the Cardinal.\u00a0 (Readers will recall that I live in the Chicago area, which is the reason for addressing him, not any particular reason to identify him as a culprit.)<\/p>\n
Dear Cardinal Cupich,<\/p>\n
Growing numbers of bishops are publishing their attempt at a letter to Catholics in the wake of the McCarrick scandal and the Pennsylvania grand jury report, and Catholics are sharing these on twitter and on websites such as Patheos, where I myself also write as \u201cJane the Actuary.\u201d\u00a0 We are all, collectively, scrutinizing them, asking ourselves of one or another bishop, \u201cdoes he get<\/em> it?\u00a0 Is he going to undertake meaningful action, or hope this all blows over and the famous American short attention span works in his favor?\u00a0 Worse, is he part of the problem?\u201d<\/p>\n Washingtonian Catholics are particularly angry at the actions of Cardinal Wuerl, who set up a website to offer his defense.\u00a0 He seems to be claiming his seat as a right, to be held onto at all costs, indifferent to the toll it is taking on Catholics\u2019 faith, unwilling to acknowledge that the only way he can continue to serve Christ\u2019s church is by resigning.<\/p>\n And Catholics everywhere are asking:\u00a0 \u201cwhat more is being hidden?\u00a0 Who else is guilty, and hiding their role, hoping that it\u2019s never uncovered, or, if so, perhaps only after their death?\u201d<\/p>\n How many Catholics will leave the church as a result of the scandal, I can\u2019t even begin to guess.\u00a0 To what extent the church will be irrevocably changed due to the loss of trust in bishops, how little willingness people will have to be led by those bishops in other matters, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n I am hearing from fellow Catholics, on twitter\u00a0and elsewhere, \u201cI am not leaving the\u00a0Catholic Church because it is the church of Jesus Christ, not of Cardinal Wuerl.\u201d\u00a0 And that\u2019s\u00a0reassuring. But the actions the bishops are, collectively, taking, making bland promises of more investigations, more commissions, more policies, are fueling anger.<\/p>\n You yourself, in your letter, have assured the Catholics of Chicagoland that we have in place policies to ensure that sexual abuse of minors is much less likely to happen and, if it does, it should be reported to the police immediately.\u00a0 But your letter fell far short in many respects.\u00a0 Here is what we need to believe that you are on the side of the people:<\/p>\n But beyond this, for too long, bishops, especially in large metropolitan areas such as Chicago, have been celebrities.\u00a0 They\u2019ve viewed the job as a\u00a0way to wield political influence, a way to build power \u2014 with the good intentions, of course, of impacting the wider culture, with initiatives around gun violence, immigration, and so forth, but it means hanging out with politicians, the wealthy, celebrities, and so forth.\u00a0 And when they come to parishes, it\u2019s as a celebrity, as a reward for having reached an anniversary milestone or having a new construction project completed.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s a good thing if this celebrity is lost, if Catholic bishops are no more power-brokers than a humble storefront pastor.<\/p>\n But a bishop\u2019s job is, first and foremost, to minister, and I\u2019m not seeing that in these corporate finely-crafted statements.\u00a0 If you, and your fellow bishops, don\u2019t start taking concrete actions, you will be overseeing not the renewal of the church, but its collapse.\u00a0 Even if people continue to attend mass, comforted that their local pastor is innocent of these proceedings, it will be a radical transformation into something much less universal, much more, well, Protestant, if each and every bishop cannot concretely act to assure everyone in his diocese that past sins against minors and ongoing abuses with respect to adults, are rectified.\u00a0 Will next year\u2019s Annual Catholic Appeal fall flat, as the people want nothing to do with anything that has to do with bishops?\u00a0 Will the announcement of a visit by a bishop result in parishioners worshiping elsewhere that day?\u00a0 Time will tell \u2014 but me, I wouldn\u2019t risk it.<\/p>\n\n