Another Vatican Disconnect

I was away last week to Priest Lake, Idaho, on an annual camping trip and family reunion. It was beautiful, really, even though we had to endure a nightly worry -- bears coming down into the campgrounds to forage for food and garbage. Worse, there was one camper across the road from us who shot off his gun a couple of times to scare one away. (It was a "retired sheriff" -- which shows you that even professionals can be stupid. The bears were indeed scary, but not as scary as someone nearby shooting off a gun in the dark.)

I managed to get my morning newspaper fix, even if it was only the Spokane daily paper, and I had to race up to the camp store early, before copies ran out. I kept up on the Seattle Mariner's progress (ok, that was a totally inaccurate word) and worked on my daily crossword puzzle. However, one item that caught my eye was a short little notice that the Vatican had declined the resignations of two Irish bishops, who had submitted them last December because of their publicized failures to deal with the priest sexual abuse situation in their dioceses.

I actually was surprised -- two other Irish bishops had already stepped down last November. Why not these? More, though, I was stunned, and angry. But I managed to hold off sharing this news with any other family members ... I didn't want to set off a "group rant" within the family -- which is unfortunately something that happens all too often with us Catholics these days, when we see news like this.

When I got back home, I sought out a broader perspective, so I looked up my favorite Vatican correspondent, NCR columnist John Allen, who writes a column called All Things Catholic. He indeed had posted on this story, last Friday, and you can read his entire column here.

Allen cites four likely reasons for the Vatican's refusal to accept the latest two resignations, and I found the fourth reason the most interesting:

"Fourth, and perhaps most fundamentally, the Vatican does not like the idea of a bishop resigning for poor performance because, in their view, it's bad theology. As they see it, a bishop isn't a corporate CEO or a football coach, who should be sacked when profits sag or the team goes on a losing streak. The episcopacy isn't a job but a sacramental bond akin to marriage, with the bishop as the father of the diocesan family. In the early centuries of the church, it was considered almost heretical for a bishop to move from one diocese to another on precisely this basis.

"That's the core ecclesiological reason Rome favors a bishop staying put in times of crisis: Like a father, or so the traditional reasoning goes, a bishop shouldn't abandon his family if he's let them down and they're feeling angry and betrayed. Instead, he should 'man up' and make things right."

Allen does go on to add this qualifying note:

"Of course, none of this means the bias against removing bishops is always correct; even if one accepts the sacramental view, there are times when an abusive father needs to be removed from a household. It does, however, suggest that the Vatican sometimes may have reasons beyond denial or arrogance for being reluctant to act."

Intersting, yes, but only in a somewhat detached sort of way. Of course, Allen doesn't actually know the reasons why the Vatican decided not to accept the resignation. No one does, because the Vatican isn't saying what the reasons are. Which really brings me to my point: isn't there a huge disconnect here? Why can't my Church speak plainly to us about things like this? I certainly hope that El Papa has made it clear to these bishops that he expects them to "man up and make things right," but why does Benedict not say so publicly? Why can we not change the culture of silence on this? In fact, why does he not say this publicly to all the bishops in the world, that he expects bishops to act as "fathers" instead of princes? Beyond the Church expressing public remorse for the thousands of victims of priests, how about public outrage for their enablers? For many of us, THOSE failures have been the greater ones, because they were systemic.

Let's take that "father" analogy a lot further.