Notebook What has been lost
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
RNOTEBOOK WHAT HAS BEEN LOST The church after Dallas Surveying the battlefield of the sex-abuse scandal, I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church in the United States will never be...
...We could fail to negotiate this turning point...
...Catholics with a turning point in our history...
...In the meantime, how does this add up to a loss of trust in the bishops...
...First, most of us trust our leaders until we have compelling reasons not to...
...Today, their silence seems one more cause for mistrust...
...It was a necessary trust: there were no real mechanisms for knowing or analyzing why or how bishops made decisions...
...It is too soon to talk about restoring a sense of trust (after all, there is probably more hard news to come...
...What of the funds given to the church without the need for an accounting, or more to the point, the lack in most dioceses of a published, audited financial statement...
...is limited to matters of sexual abuse and subject to the readiness of each diocesan bishop to report to the national office that the commission will establish...
...A good deal has been written about the need for accountability and transparency in diocesan transactions, financial and managerial (see, Mary Jo Bane, March 8,2002...
...we all commit sins...
...Especially: What happened to abusing priests who could no longer serve in parishes...
...How do we begin...
...Some, of course, had...
...At the same time, we must also come to a deeper understanding of the cultural and political ethos of a hierarchical church, in order to both respect that ethos and reshape it...
...As historians are fond of saying about certain periods (for example, Germany in 1848), X reached a turning point and failed to turn...
...Most Catholics thought that the first scandal (1985-93) had put in place rules and review boards that removed a priest who abused children, that their bishop had handled the problem...
...others quietly ignore the bishops' preachments...
...True, some Catholics drift to other churches...
...They do not say what they think...
...Doesn't the church's about-face on the death penalty make threats to politicians who favor it seem facile...
...nor do they address priests or lay people as if they too were troubled by at least some of these matters...
...Without doubt, the fact that there is a second scandal contributes to the collapse of confidence...
...we all are capable of malfeasance and even malevolence...
...Something essential has been lost: simply put, basic trust in the bishops...
...Some Catholics appeal to Rome over the heads of local leaders...
...How has the furor and shame over what now constitutes the second sex-abuse scandal precipitated the nearly complete erosion of trust Catholics have had in their bishops...
...We all make mistakes...
...Yet neither has this criticism significantly reshaped lay attitudes toward episcopal authority...
...In some measure, their Catholic identity held, including living within a hierarchical structure without bothering much about it...
...We still don't know the complete answer to this and many other questions...
...Does this need more input and scrutiny from a diocese...
...How have the events since January changed this passive acquiescence in episcopal authority...
...Nonetheless, the life of the church, of communities, organizations, and institutions goes on-and we are all responsible for ensuring that it does...
...Such a loss at this point in time seems surprising, doesn't it...
...This is a good place to start because these are mechanisms widely understood (if not always observed) in our society and widely in place, including in other churches...
...Adult Catholics with a mature sense of trust surely ought to be able to learn how to bring order and good governance to their local church without denying the central importance of papal and episcopal authority-even when that authority is sometimes abused...
...bishops, if they want to regain the respect and trust of their people, will have to stand up to such intransigence...
...Decades of double standards and forms of doublethink have eroded Catholics' trust in their bishops, and the sex-abuse scandal has finally made that loss of trust complete...
...Any adult Catholic who does not accept that, after this overwhelming scandal, seems as reckless as the bishops who allowed it to happen...
...In the weeks since, and as I have thought more deeply about the consequences, I have become even more convinced that the first six months of 2002 have presented U.S...
...I said that to the bishops in Dallas on June 13 (see: www.usccb.org/bishops/index.htm...
...And yet, who hears in public words of doubt or misgiving from a bishop...
...There soon came to light, however, other subjects previously unnoticed by most people...
...Many lay people and priests are weary of being told we are not a democracy (though it was illuminating to watch the bishops vote and debate their Charter in Dallas), nor are we a constitutional monarchy (though it is always interesting to have the canonists pipe up with limitations on papal or episcopal power...
...As we now painfully understand, that cannot be the responsibility of priests and bishops alone...
...By that I mean a form of quiescent confidence that those who lead do so with integrity and to good purpose...
...What of the men the Vatican chooses to name bishops...
...What of a bishop's own propensity, as corporation sole, to misuse or misappropriate church funds...
...The commission appointed by Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the bishops' conference, and headed by Governor Frank Keating (R-Okla...
...And what should be done about it...
...Margaret O'Brien Steinfels...
...Despite both great and petty disagreements with the specific decisions of their ordinary, most Catholics did not question a bishop's authority to make decisions...
...A mature and authentic form of trust must emerge...
...Perhaps the commission, established in June by the bishops, will eventually tell us...
...Nonetheless, the U.S...
...Sadly, Rome is likely to balk at even these modest reforms...
...Even if that basic trust I described above was dictated by the lack of choice, it would be irresponsible for any Catholic to return to a quiescent form of trust that simply relied on a bishop to do the right thing...
...others leave altogether...
...In any case, the kind of trust that now seems required is not the kind that has been lost...
...Don't some find the ban on artificial contraception unreasonable...
...Now we find that some bishops seriously abused that authority in lying to laypeople and priests as well as misleading their fellow bishops, for example, in recommending Paul Shanley for service, as Cardinal Law did to other dioceses...
...We have assumed our bishops are honest...
...There are certainly more than a few bishops at odds with the Vatican's pronouncements on other Christian denominations and other faith traditions, on liturgical translations, on the roles of women in ministry and administrative positions...
...Second, some critics would argue that our trust in the bishops has long been misplaced...
...But what of the men bishops ordain...
...After years, even decades of insistent criticism from Catholics, left, right, and center, the tensions generated by the reforms of Vatican II and the counter-reforms of this papacy have not been resolved...
...We could learn from others...
...RNOTEBOOK WHAT HAS BEEN LOST The church after Dallas Surveying the battlefield of the sex-abuse scandal, I have come to the conclusion that the Catholic Church in the United States will never be the same...
...Nor could there be effective lay involvement in basic decisions about planning, allocation of resources, or assignment of pastors, much less decisions about responding to sex-abuse victims, handling sexual predators, or making financial settlements...
...And yet as we look back, what choice was there...
...Does this need more oversight from priests and laypeople...
...The list goes on...
...Many on both left and right find congenial niches in which to worship, focusing their religious lives on the small church rather than the large one...
...it is the responsibility of the whole church...
...Nor should we forget that further information about other actors in this drama-plaintiffs' lawyers, treatment centers, physicians, and the media-may modify our view of the scandal...
...Third, the litmus test that the Vatican applies to episcopal candidates makes many duplicitous...
...Catholics may not like many things about the man who governs their diocese, or his decisions-a sentiment often shared by priests-but, in reality, this has had little effect on the day-to-day life of the local church...
...It is important for us to acknowledge that, and to calculate what such a turn may require...
...Even Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, where the abuse question re-emerged in January, seemed at first to be dealing with old cases...
...There are still no mechanisms for taking part in decision making-none but the cudgel of withholding funds...
...Can we reasonably continue to make such an assumption...
Vol. 129 • July 2002 • No. 13
