Mark & I argue about bishops again

I thought I'd answered this column by Mark Shea, defending inaction by Pope JP2 and Pope Benedict XVI against derelict US bishops but the date on it is today, and a couple of you have forwarded it to me, so maybe not. I don't have anything fresh to say, really. But a couple of points:

To begin with, it's a straw man to say I have ever asserted that bishops exist in some special mystical state that the pope shouldn't threaten by merely removing them from office when they've failed spectacularly as shepherds. I'd have a rough time arguing that, since -- as I have repeatedly noted -- the pope has removed bishops from their office. With respect to the American situation, the "trigger" has usually been "active participation in the sin," as near as I can see. So when Cardinal Law tries to resign repeatedly, John Paul II refuses the resignation -- apparently because Law did not himself abuse boys but only reassigned priests who did. Same for other bishops (and not all did this, of course). But when O'Connell and Symonds down in Palm Beach are found to have actually been molesting boys? They're outta there like a shot.

So, there is no serious sin involved in covering up rape of children, and transferring around priests who raped children, to say nothing of using one's episcopal office to intimidate victims of sexual abuse and their families into silence and shame? What a low view of the office of bishop, to believe that as long as a bishop doesn't diddle an altar boy himself, there's no reason to remove him from office.

Mark and I are never going to agree on this. He thinks I make straw man arguments; I think he's willing to twist himself into pretzels to avoid finding fault with this or any pope.

Here's a relevant couple of passages from Leon Podles book "Sacrilege":

The Vatican helped set the stage for the abuse by cultivating a clericalist mentality that saw the clergy as the real church, and making the purpose of canon law the protection of the rights and reputation of the clergy, not the protection of children from abuse. The Vatican had also carefully chosen and appointed bishops who would not rock the boat, who would not discipline the clergy and perhaps create a schism. The Vatican — and this means Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II — sought to maintain a façade of institutional unity by tolerating heresy, dissent, and immorality, and got a Church (at least in the United States) in which the laity mistrusted priests, bishops, and popes; the priests mistrusted the laity and bishops; the bishops mistrusted the laity, priests, and the Vatican. In fact, it is hard to explain why bishops almost always followed the same policy of transferring rather than punishing abusive priests unless they had been so instructed by the Vatican — the pope must have either let the situation develop or set the policy himself.

More:

The Vatican -- the pope and the curial officals he appoints -- bears much responsibility for the sexual abuse of minors in the United States and throughout the world. Some of the failures were caused by flawed policies which inadvertently allowed sexual abuse to flourish. The Vatican created organizational conditions that allowed the abuse to go on with little or not correction. Some of the conditions grew up haphazardly as the Church was centralized.

[snip]

The Vatican also thought that the laity must be protected from the knowledge that priests were not perfect. In 1993 the Vatican saw that the main problem was not the abuse but the press: Pope John Paul II said that "it is unaccepetable for moral evil to be treated as an occasion for sensationalism" because "harm is done to the fundamental right of individuals not to be easily exposed to the ridicule of public opinion." That is, priests who molest children have a right to have their reputation protected and not to be exposed to public obloquy. Rev. Gianfranco Ghirlanda, dean of the canon law faculty at Gregorian University in Rome, wrote in the authoritative Civilta Cattolica that "a priest who is reassigned to a new parish after being treated because of a history of sexual abuse should not have his 'good reputation' ruined by having his background revealed to the new pairsh." The Vatican believe that clergy have the right to an undeserved good reputation.

The Vatican knew what was going on in the United States. It received complete dossiers with confessions of priest child molesters who were asking to be laicized. The pope or a high official reviews every case. No one in the Vatican, as far as is known, no pope, no cardinal, has ever expressed anything beyond generalities, has ever expressed any concern for particular victims or has ever inquired about their needs. [Obviously this book was published before Benedict met with victims in Washington -- RD]

The bishops took the failure of the Vatican to criticize their handling of abuse cases as implicit approval of the way they were handling those cases: give the priest every chance, year after year, no matter how many children he molested, no matter how many families had their faith destoryed, no matter how many boys committed suicide. ... Everything the bishops did must be directed to one goal: preserving the clerical career.

Lee Podles is not a liberal Catholic, but an orthodox one. Not that it should matter, but please, don't come back with, "He's got an agenda to destroy the Church." In fact, his previous book was an important critical examination of the "feminization" of the Church that was praised by orthodox Catholics.

Anyway, look, everybody should know that I like Mark, and our argument over this is not about personal animosity. I must say, though, that I find Mark's arguments to be rationalizations for papal inaction. I don't think Mark will ever, or can ever, find serious fault with the way this or any pope handles the sex abuse crisis and the US bishops' central role in it. I don't understand why, if the Catholic Church centralizes so much power in the office of the Bishop of Rome, giving him universal and immediate jurisdiction over the whole church -- which it certainly has -- it is somehow theologically off base to expect him to use that power to govern the Church for the good of the whole Church -- including Catholic children and families -- not just the interests of the clerical class.

Mark has said many times, and not only in disputes with me over this, that we Americans "get the bishops we deserve." Which to me sounds like, "Daddy beats you because you're bad."