Tim Drake wonders….

…whether the USCCB will act like the Bourbons, remembering everything and learning nothing, by mindlessly electing a guy who knew a seminarian was a pervert but went on to ordain him anyway–leading to a brilliant career molesting 23 boys.

Asked about it, Bishop Kicanas essentially said that he would do it again.

“It would have been grossly unfair not to have ordained him,” Bishop Kicanas said shortly after being elected as vice president of the USCCB, in a quote that appears in the deposition of Cardinal Francis George. “There was a sense that his activity was part of the developmental process and that he had learned from the experience,” continued Bishop Kicanas. “I was more concerned about his drinking. We sent him to counseling for that.”

Let us pray that decades of suffering visited on the Church by bishops who thought like bureaucrats  and not fathers and shepherds are over and that they will, as Tim says, hold “an honest conversation not about the voting practice of the previous era, but about who is the best person to lead the brotherhood of bishops at this time and place.”