Correspondence 'The' church's 'The' crisis
CORRESPONDENCE Bishops 1, Cardinals 0 Regarding your May 3 editorial "When in Rome": The Protestant churches seem to manage nicely with only bishops. Who needs cardinals anyway (except for Saint...
...As a piece of informed, balanced, and reflective journalism, it is without par among anything I have read to date in the U.S...
...Our political system is only beginning to absorb the implications of his ambition...
...Living in a foreign country can stretch your limits and cause a growth of understanding and acceptance...
...However, the mandatum will not give theologians assurance that they are teaching with the "approbation" of "church officials...
...April 5), Robert Egan analyzes the ambiguities surrounding the application of the mandatum to theologians...
...JOSEPH WOODS Pound Ridge, N.Y...
...As America heads into the prospect of eight years under the Bushes senior and junior, and their reordering a world of terror, we should ask ourselves: Do we want to spend the rest of our lives under the protective shield of unlimited military storms...
...or British press...
...I was there, fully immersed, and married to an Italian...
...I must agree with Jane Vitale's letter, "Reader Blowback" (Correspondence, April 19...
...Yet even now the response of these members of the prelate class is muted and laced with concern for "the reputation of the church...
...While Bishop Thomas Daily of Brooklyn regrets his decisions in dealing with priest sexual predators, he states that he made these decisions in good conscience...
...ALFRED CAVANAUGH Kenwood, Calif...
...The answer to this scandal lies, as it does for other organizations, in transparency, in truthfulness, and in being accountable to its members...
...He wants to reorder the world...
...However, it is by no means clear that they have the breadth of knowledge needed to turn the church around on this or, for that matter, a number of other issues of mixed spiritual and secular concern...
...Balance & trust Kudos to Peter Steinfels for his excellent summary on the sex-abuse crisis confronting the church...
...Let the critical self-scrutiny begin...
...Rather, they will continue teaching "in their own name in virtue of their baptism and their academic and professional competence...
...No kidding...
...Catholic universities cannot teach students to think critically about themselves and the world, while refusing to do it themselves...
...Have they forgotten that Lumen gentium starts with the premise that we are all "people of God" and that our various ministries are in service to them...
...Whatever one's view is on the causes and character of the current crisis, one's thinking about these matters could only be improved by reading this article...
...Spread the word I would like to add my voice to what I am sure will be many writing in appreciation of Peter Steinfels's fine essay...
...His ears seem perfectly tuned to me...
...At the parish level Peter Steinfels's April 19 article is masterly in its approach to the child-abuse scandal...
...DORIS R. ASMUNDSSON East Elmhurst, N.Y...
...What is at fault is the church's ongoing conflict concerning full implementation of Lumen gentium...
...The same applies to the church and its leadership...
...This ambiguous policy allows the bishops to declare their compliance with the Vatican's insistence that they impose canon law, while at the same time they can claim to respect the university's autonomy and the faculty's legally enforceable contractual rights...
...Courage needed Peter Steinfels ("The Church's Sex-Abuse Crisis," April 19) takes seven pages to conclude: "There is a terrible vacuum of leadership at the highest levels of American Catholicism...
...If Catholic political thought can only echo the Pentagon or State Department, then there is another crisis in the church apart from the one Steinfels analyzes...
...This will guarantee the bishops' immunity in any resulting lawsuit that a dismissed professor might pursue...
...Input from a few ordinary parents, whose anger over these abuses is not fully appreciated by men whose claim to the title "father" is at best a metaphor, would have challenged the assumptions of the clerical culture that pervades this decision-making process...
...While I agree with Egan that the church needs desperately to face modernity, it also needs to face its social reality as a religious tradition that has always been denominational, one Christian church among many, in spite of its historical struggle to present a "one-size-fits-all" unified presence to the world...
...Since the publication of the American bishops' "Implementation Document for Ex corde ecdesiae," administrators at Catholic universities have responded similarly to faculty concerns about the intrusion of the local bishop in campus policies...
...This culture, but certainly not every priest, exudes an aura of certitude that as such sees no need to listen, to learn, to change...
...Vail, Colo...
...He pinpoints secrecy as the principal cause and suggests a way out, namely a national commission...
...Maybe Peter Steinfels should be the one to head up a commission to deal with the many needed reforms in the church...
...We Americans have the nasty habit of thinking that there is no place as good as America...
...A gloss seems in order, however, on one comment, that "it is always hard to know how thoroughly changes at the top filter through the ranks and translate into decisions on the ground...
...McKinley's imperialist program favored taking (Continued on page 27) (Continued from page 4) over Cuba, Mexico, and the Philippines...
...Who needs cardinals anyway (except for Saint Louis...
...Many bishops do not seem to have shown much familiarity with these areas at the times when it would most have made a difference...
...Many members of the American hierarchy still don't get it...
...But over the past two months, Americans-Catholics and non-Catholics alike-have been given every reason not to...
...A red hat Steinfels for cardinal...
...That may be what the Holy Spirit is in fact telling us...
...FRANK ANTHONY Windsor, Vt...
...The laity is not going to return to the past era of "trust us" just because bishops tell us that "things are far more complicated than you can understand...
...Self-scrutiny now Having taught theology for twenty-eight years at Georgetown University as a theologian who happened to be Protestant in an ecumenical and intellectually honest department, I read with great interest Robert Egan's perspective on the mandatum and "full communion within the church...
...This strategy bears too many distressing parallels to the bishops' response to the allegations of clergy sex abuse...
...We haven't had it for years...
...Bush's ambition E. J. Dionne's column, "War Politics" (April 19), makes a thought-provoking comparison of Presidents McKinley and Bush: Dionne relates how, in 1896, Republican McKinley defeated popular Democrat William Jennings Bryan and "built a new Republican majority on the rising industrial elite...
...For over two hundred years, the American bishops have used pragmatic accommodations to reconcile their responsibilities under American law with their accountability to the Vatican enforcers of canon law...
...GEORGE R. FITZGERALD, C.S.P...
...The view from abroad I want to applaud Commonweal for having Jo McGowen as a columnist...
...Only Catholic theologians teaching in Catholic institutions are required to request a mandatum...
...While his approach may put to rest the sex-abuse issue, it will not resolve the overall credibility question...
...Trust us, the bishops have argued, because we alone are in the position to navigate the Byzantine corridors of the Vatican and at the same time represent the peculiarities of the American experience...
...What well did he dip into to recommend the need for a Lincoln or a Churchill to "make the necessary stand and speak the necessary word...
...BART MERELLA Bowie, Md...
...Tensions and potential conflicts will always exist between American legal and cultural practices and the authority structure of the universal church...
...Keep it up...
...REV...
...The time has come for both the hierarchy and the laity to discuss openly these contradictions and shape more forthright and unambiguous responses...
...JOE FARRY Collegeville, Minn...
...As Dionne writes, "Bush is going much farther then McKinley ever did...
...A practical first step would be regular parish forums in which members can raise issues, questions, gripes, and praise, and in which the church administration need not be the "answer men," with a proprietary need to defend, but instead be free to merely listen...
...The clerical culture values appearance over truth, and manipulation in secrecy as the means to control those appearances...
...I'd like to think that it is on the desk of every bishop in America, and that a few complimentary copies are on their way to the bishops conferences of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world...
...I used to joke with Rabbi Nathan Abramowitz that he and I might be the only members left in the department once the mandatum came down (down being the appropriate directional metaphor...
...The bishops have certainly shown much concern and are demonstrating their intent to take appropriate action...
...JAMES W. THOMASSON Mentor, Minn...
...As an American woman, I lived for almost ten years in Rome, not attached to the American Embassy or military base...
...Had that been more in evidence, this crisis would not be facing us today...
...Thank you for reminding me of that...
...McGowen's reflections resonate with my own when I was in Rome, especially those in her piece "Making Do" (March 22...
...Dealing responsibly with clerical child abuse calls for knowledge of the law, some insight into clinical psychology, sensitivity to public opinion, and detailed acquaintance with what was actually going on at the parish level...
...For this scandal to be resolved, the church administration must be open to the voices of others...
...Trust us-and our friendly local bishop...
...The horror of these sexual abuse cases cannot be overstated...
...JOHN HALDANE Washington, D.C...
...No doubt that is true...
...People like the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, joined by Archbishop Rembert Weakland (of Milwaukee) and Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen (retired, of Seattle), who tried to open some serious dialogue with lay people about crucial issues confronting the church, were shot down by fellow bishops and cardinals whose ears were too attuned to Rome...
...Let's talk The grave scandals now facing the church are, I believe, an outgrowth of the decades-old unresolved issues of church life, such as the qualifications for priesthood and the role of bishops in the organization of the world church...
...Trust us' In his "The 'Mandatum': Now What...
...Your editorials must be taken from the teleprompters at Fox Television...
...Peter Steinfels has brought a comprehensive understanding of the tragedy not found in other coverage of the sex-abuse crisis...
...These accommodations have mostly proved successful, but their success rested on the fact that in times of conflict between the two juridical systems, the bishops' plea to "trust us" was accepted by both the American laity and Vatican officials...
...The hierarchy (Roman and American) has not yet been able to overcome the historical division of clergy and laity and seems to be still operating on a "we/they principle...
...The credibility of church authority to formulate moral directives for others in matters where the prelates have little or no experience, such as the birth-control practices of married Catholics, is profoundly weakened when bishops throughout the country are blind to the moral obligations in areas within their own purview and responsibilities...
...julie donati Sugar Land, Tex...
...The bishops renounce any intention to tamper with the hiring, promotion, or dismissal of any theologian, whether they have the mandatum or not...
...Bryan opposed imperialism and was beaten by a larger majority vote margin in 1900...
...If college authorities choose to make the mandatum a condition of employment, the bishops are saying that they will not be involved in the decision...
...That bishops could cover up and expose other children to such abuse in good conscience grows from a culture of groupthink, where contrary opinions aren't allowed to be expressed, where one is answerable only to the next administrative layer above, and where secrecy prevails...
...That indicates the depth of the problems now facing the church, which arise from a clerical culture of secrecy...
...I hope Commonweal will recover some of the courage it once had...
...What about a Francis of Assisi or a Pope John XXIII, or perhaps Catherine of Sienna or Dorothy Day...
...The organizational structure of parishes and dioceses is not a divine formula...
...T. DUNN Laurel, N.Y...
...I join him in his indictment of the hierarchy for its vacuum of leadership "at the highest levels of Catholicism...
...What we need is more focus on "lower-archos" and less on "hier-ar-chos" so that an inclusive balance (Continued on page 4) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 2) and trust can be established between us and we can better serve God's people...
...It is time for the American church to reject its traditional strategy of "managing differences" through obfuscation and stop viewing the American tradition of respecting individual rights as undermining the Catholic tradition of respecting human dignity...
...Republicans won six of the next eight presidential elections...
Vol. 129 • May 2002 • No. 10
