Baltimore, Md., Nov 14, 2018 / 04:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of the United States resumed their open-floor discussion on the recent sexual abuse scandals facing the Church in America Wednesday morning. In addition to debating the best means of institutionally responding to the crisis, the specific case of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick was raised by several speakers.
Bishop Richard Stika of Knoxville told the conference Nov. 14 that the allegations against McCarrick, and the scandal of his rise and fall, were not just affecting long-time Catholics. Many people in the process of entering the Church found themselves having the example of McCarrick throw at them by friends and family as evidence that they were entering an institution in crisis.
Stika said McCarrick, and the letters of former nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, were serving as “ammunition” to discourage people from entering the Church, and that many Catholics felt that bishops were only responding to the sexual abuse crisis when they were “forced to” by the media.
Several bishops spoke in favor of the USCCB acting as a body to speak out about McCarrick.
Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth told the conference hall that “we end where we begin.”
“So much of the outrage we experience – and I think it’s a rightful outrage – is prompted by the injustice that our people have experienced at the hands of predators, at the treatment of our seminarians and our priests who were entrusted to the care of former cardinal McCarrick, a trust that was not only violated, but was ignored by others who were responsible for paying attention.”
Olson observed that while Pope Francis had accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the college of cardinals and sent him to a life of prayer and penance pending a canonical process, the USCCB had yet to respond as a body to the scandal caused by one of their own.
“He is an emeritus [bishop of a U.S. diocese] and as such he is supposed to be a welcome guest here. He is not welcome and we should say it,” Olson said. He also questioned if the bishops’ reliance on structural and procedural reform was overshadowing their need to act with moral authority.
“We have said the Holy See should let us get some new norms, get a process together. Do we use this process as means of avoiding our pastoral responsibilities?” Olson asked, suggesting that the conference needed to condemn not just McCarrick’s alleged behavior, but also Vigano’s call for the resignation of the pope, which he called an attack on the Petrine office.
Bishop Liam Cary of Baker also insisted that the conference needed to respond to the McCarrick scandal as a body, saying McCarrick had “grievously offended” not just his victims but all Catholics, priests, and bishops.
By abusing seminarians “successively, over decades” Cary said McCarrick had left a “shameful residue” on all the bishops, and that while other institutions had revoked honors previously bestowed on the former cardinal the USCCB had taken no action.
Cary cited the example of bodies, like the U.S. Senate, which could pass resolutions to censure its members as one way they could respond, but insisted that some kind of action was urgently needed.
“What are people to make of our silence?” he asked. “How do we lead our brother to the mercy of God if we leave unspoken the demands of his justice?”
Bishop Cary echoed Bishop Olson’s concern that McCarrick was still technically qualified as a welcome participant at the conference.
“If McCarrick were to come to this microphone would he be allowed to speak?” Cary asked, noting that there was no open microphone for his victims.
In addition to the specific problem of Archbishop McCarrick, the bishops also discussed how they could proceed more generally in the light of the Holy See’s intervention to prevent them from voting to adopt the proposed Standards for Episcopal Conduct or to create an independent special commission to investigate allegations against bishops.
Bishop Kevin Vann of Orange summed up the dilemma facing the conference.
“We cannot just sit back and do nothing,” he told the bishops. If a deliberative vote was not possible, he said, the bishops needed to at least take “some sort of consultative vote” to show that the American bishops were firmly resolved among themselves.
Bishop Robert Christian, auxiliary bishop of San Francisco, expressed the frustrations of many bishops at the inability of the conference to act.
He pointed out that as several scandals broke over the summer “the leadership of this conference was blocked from either working in partnership with the Holy See or leaving it to us in the dioceses.”
Christian said that he was concerned by the Holy See’s intervention. He observed that it could take months for the Vatican to produce a final resolution after the February meeting of the heads of the world’s bishops’ conferences in Rome. This could mean, he said, that the U.S. bishops could find it still “impossible” to act in March, or even June, of next year.
“It is all the more important to vote today as if we were voting on a policy,” he said, so that both the faithful and the Holy See could see the clear mind of the bishops.
Despite the support of many on the conference hall for the original proposal for an independent commission to receive and investigate allegations against bishops, a few bishops have suggested they would prefer to see a different system altogether.
Bishop Gregory Hartmayer of Savannah proposed that Rome should instead be asked to consider amending canon law to give metropolitan archbishops an expanded role and authority for dealing with allegations against bishops in their province. His proposal was echoed by Bishop Robert Coerver of Lubbock.
Hartmayer noted that it might be better for accusations against a bishop to be considered by “a jury of their peers” since, he said, “no one understands a bishop so much as another bishop.”
He also said that bishops owed each other the “courtesy” of listening “to one of our brothers who has misbehaved in some way.”
While the majority of the interventions from the floor were concerned with what direct action the conference could take, others were more reflective.
Bishop Barry Knestout of Richmond gave a long and clearly personal reflection on the pain experienced by priests and laity alike in his former diocese, Washington.
Knestout said that he looked upon the current scandals on a continuum of previous crises, stretching back 50 years to the promulgation of Humanae vitae, saying that the rejection by many clergy of that document, and the Church’s teaching on the dignity of human life and sexuality, had caused “one long crisis of leadership and teaching” in the Church.
Despite the clear and forceful calls by several bishops for some clear statement on the case of Archbishop McCarrick, when the bishops resumed their seats after breaking for lunch they voted down a resolution to “encourage” the Holy See to release whatever documents it could on McCarrick.
As they debated the minutiae of the resolution’s wording, the bishops found they could not even agree on the inclusion of the word “soon.”
After the defeat of the proposal, one bishop remarked to CNA that “we cannot seem to speak clearly, even when we want to agree.”
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Pray for this woman to receive the gift of contrition.
Meanwhile – to her goes the coveted (?) award for oxymoron of the week/month/year/decade.
Nancy Pelosi has supported abortion rights for 40-50 years. At that rate, she’s prime matter for a committal reward ceremony (and judgment, God rest her soul).
Nancy Pelosi is out-of-date, on Ireland at least. Time to get with-it, Nancy. Ireland was a Catholic country. Was, past tense.
Hi Gilberta. Abortion is legal in only 8 of its 32 states in Mexico. The majority of the people don’t want abortion legalized, but, the government wants the American dollars to continue flowing into Mexico.
After a list of five influential persons, herself first, down to her significant other, finally god. Priorities matter, but God’s creation of man in his image was not given to brought into this world and subject to a variety of personal priorities to kill it or nurture it.
God we know judges the soul. We judge ourselves to condemnation when we kill the innocent, or endorse the killing of the innocent. Archbishop Cordileone went to great length to touch a hardened heart. What we do to others manifests what we are. If there’s any indication of the Apostle’s warning not to receive the Eucharist unworthily, it’s manifest in the shivering coldness of the Speaker’s disdain for those who love life, her unwillingness to protect them from harm. She prefers to praise drag queens for their creative expression of freedom. This administration, this culture is rapidly becoming [already is?] purveyors of sodomy and death. The two are intimately related.
Nancy Pelosi is everything that is wrong in this world. She is no true Catholic, and she will be judged by the one that matters – God. It will be a rude awakening for her on that day.
It doesn’t matter how Catholic you are, you are still killing a living human being which is a very evil thing to do and a mortal sin if you happen to be a Catholic. But then killing an innocent human being is a crime against nature itself and not simply a Catholic religious belief.. Killing a child, even if she/he is in the womb, is still killing a living human being. It is simply someone who happens to be alive inside of a mother’s womb. Is the logic of it that it is ok to kill a human being as long as he or she is in a mother’s womb? If you cannot actually see this person’s face then, it is ok to kill them? They won’t be missed. There wasn’t a space they filled. It is just easy to get away with doing it to someone who can’t resist you or fight back. It’s actually a sneaky thing to do. The absence of the murder victim will go unnoticed. It isn’t like you will see them one day and not the next because you never actually do see them. The mother and dad could see them through an X-ray but not actually be able to touch the person, hear their cry. It is a pretty impersonal killing of someone you never see, hear, smell or touch. It makes it easy when there is very little or no contact giving any pleasant sensual affirmation.
JimnEm above – not sure about the point of your comment but thanks for the information on Mexico. My comment was on Ireland specifically. Like many, Nancy Pelosi seems to operate under the illusion that Ireland is still a Catholic country.
I am throughly convinced that all the violence in our world is due to the lack of respect with life. Abortion is a disrespect. Those Catholics that disrespect life need our prayers as over the past 100 years our government has politicized morality and culture. Led by human law (lawyers) as politicians, creates victims and grievances that claim to have lost their pursuit of happiness. This trauma in society has created new progressive man made law that usurps God’s law. These schisms happened in the Jewish culture, the Catholic culture, and now the Christian Protestant culture. All of these cultures have been secularized, canceled, disregarded, and marginalized as people gradually have no God, no morales, and no faith. It’s all come down to money and convenience in our throw away culture that includes babies. Only 20% of US youth want children and this is why we have to human traffic 4-5 million migrants to fill the void for cheap labor, sex, and future Americans by policies that our second Catholic President in US history supports along with abortion, socialist collectivism and dividing Christians based on the color of their skin and sexual orientation. Freedom of religion, went to women’s rights, to civil rights, to sexual rights, to ???. Further division leads to further subgroups that have grievances. It will never end as lawyers and politicians need victims to perpetuate their existence. Just as monks, preachers, and priests can’t create God’s law into their box….men with power whether a dictator or elected, can’t create God’s law either unless they believe the Bible, Gospel, Torah, and Koran are living changing documents like the US constitution. They all have tried for hundreds of years and all that has been accomplished are more schisms, divisions, and war.