WHEN BISHOPS DISAGREE A story worth telling

...3) minimizing the appearance of conflict...

...It was disconcerting for me to learn that when Archbishop Laghi approached Hunthausen about Rome's desire for a visitation, he did so informally, almost as if in passing, between other meetings...

...Showing fraternity is a strategy that draws on the fraternal relationship that bishops enjoy...

...The central question guiding my investigation was, what coping strategies are observable in center-periphery conflict discourse...

...Though Hunthausen during his address to his fellow bishops made a rather dramatic critique of the Vatican's use of secrecy, he himself was never entirely free of the bishops' tendency to keep "the hierarchy's business" within the hierarchy...

...Catholics love mystery and otherworldliness and invest their ordained leaders with these qualities while forgetting the human susceptibilities that never disappear with ordination...

...I pray it is so...

...Fortunately for the bishops, they can draw on a long tradition testifying to the investiture of their office with God-given authority, a tradition that Catholics, in general, seem comfortable with...

...I intended to give the full range of positions in the case (Hunthausen's, Rome's, third parties') as fair a hearing as I could...

...If bishops aren't willing to make a thoroughgoing confession and reform accordingly, why would they expect the average Catholic in the pew to do so...

...Having pressed through it all now, I am still assessing the effects, including the consequences for my faith and my view of the church...

...The laity, for its part, paid the bills and looked the other way...

...I had the idea that if I knew how such conversations work I might be able to make some modest suggestions for improving them...

...The bishops (and the pope above all) still hold all the trump cards, and they are the ones with the immediate power to grant decision-making authority...

...These strategies are: (1) showing deference to the structural order and mindset of the church...

...At that time I had seen two priests removed for reasons of sexual abuse from my hometown parish in Washington State...

...This request was denied, but Hunthausen was provided with a more positive-sounding version of the letter, composed by Archbishop Laghi, that he was allowed to release to the press...

...Then there was the secrecy that Rome, Hunthausen, and other bishops practiced in relation to the public, which often took place in private correspondence and meetings, including the closed executive session of the bishops' conference...

...In July, Hunthausen learned that indeed he was to have given the faculties to Wuerl...

...In the Rome-Hunthausen conflict, Hunthausen was careful never to do or say anything that in an outright way contradicted the pope or church norms...

...Perhaps the structural elements of this conflict discourse could be revealed...

...Would Hunthausen be open to receiving the visitation...

...In conflicts, this strategy is not so much about winning as staying in the game...

...As for the bishop of Rome, he is, of course, first among equals within the hierarchy, with an unmatched authority and power of governance, including the power to depose other bishops...

...Over time I saw that too much was at stake-for me, for the church, and for the people the church serves...

...Almost always the broader public was left with a summary report of decisive exchanges that had already taken place, or with argumentation that bishops presented not with other bishops as their directly intended audience but with potential pressure groups as the intended audience...

...For those who are not acquainted with the Rome-Hunthausen conflict or no longer recall it clearly, I offer the following capsule summary...

...In plain English, what strategies do bishops apply in conflicts involving the central authority in Rome and one or more local bishops (with special attention given to their use of language...

...Note that this is also a strategy that calls attention to the exclusivity of the hierarchy...

...The ones who are really opposed to it have already left or never joined...

...Moreover, though conflict-at least in the sociological and therapeutic domains-has a better name than it used to, it appears that the church continues to associate love (our chief command) with harmony...

...That is one reason for calling an investigation of a local church by the friendlier name "visitation...

...This is a natural tendency and for the most part a healthy one...

...These are manifold but they lie particularly in their control of financial resources, their (still limited but nonetheless real) access to ecclesial decision-making forums (bishops' advisory boards, pastoral and finance councils, etc...

...Betrayal of one's own family is a terrible taboo and comes at the expense of one's own (previous) identity and sense of belonging...

...Bishops regularly refer to one another as brother bishops...

...For some time I thought I could pursue these questions in a detached way...

...Suddenly they saw value in showing personal vulnerability and opening up to the public...

...What I found to be problematic in the Hunthausen case, however, was that often courtesy provided bishops with a rationale and means for keeping the discussion and treatment of messy matters contained...

...That bishops will want to argue persuasively in conflict situations is stating the obvious, but we should not overlook the obvious...

...For some time I have been asking myself, what can I (dare to) say to the bishops on this issue that they can actually hear...

...Who has access and how do we train our leaders...

...8) arguing persuasively...

...At the same time, membership in the brotherhood can be constricting and even suffocating...

...I consid-ered myself enough of a realist and enough of a student of human nature to have presumed that human failure and corruption are part and parcel of the whole enterprise...

...The best extended description of the affair had appeared in Kenneth Briggs's Holy Siege, which placed the conflict in the context of contemporaneous events in the American Catholic Church...

...This requires being very clear about the structural mechanisms that have allowed these evils to transpire...

...Laypeople, to my mind, have a special duty to understand how their church works-including its mindset, laws, organization, and practices...

...For bishops this is doubly true...

...I proposed researching a topic that I could pursue successfully in Seattle, while communicating primarily by e-mail...

...For I believe that the call for greater transparency and participation is a genuine sign from the Spirit at work in our times...

...More to the point, leaving it to the one in charge- because juridically, in most instances, there really is just one- is much easier than investing oneself in the complexities of theology, church order, and human relationships...

...2) associating one's own efforts with the best interest of the church...

...In his essay in the February 14 Commonweal ("How to Solve the Church Crisis"), David O'Brien argued that the laity needs to overcome its disorientation and start to work constructively...

...Deafness to this call comes at the peril of the church...

...More significant, however, it poses the possibility of a loss of faith and of entering into despair...

...In sum, the desire to protect the power and appearance of the church and of the bishops' own position strongly colors how bishops handle conflict...

...This leverage should not be relinquished once the current crisis-one day, God willing!-dies down...

...I then tested these expectations against the empirical example of the Hunthausen case, a six-year-long exchange involving dozens of bishops in the United States and Rome...

...The U.S...

...What I didn't anticipate, and what I probably couldn't, was that I would also undergo a trial of the spirit and a test of my own commitment to Catholicism...

...their role in carrying out the church's pastoral and educational work, their dominance of the press, the universities, and the secular political forum, and perhaps most especially, their sheer practice (being present and active and praying in the church...

...Resolution of the controversy brought temporary rearrangements without structural reform...

...Employing secrecy is a strategy that relates directly to the question of access (to information, decision-making forums, etc...

...Shortly after Hunthausen distributed the Laghi letter, the Vatican announced the appointment of Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh as auxiliary bishop of Seattle...

...Although I see the proper completion to this work in a theological analysis of the findings, I limited the scope of the dissertation to a social-scientific analysis...

...Courtesy, of course, has tremendous social value as a basic stance that recognizes and respects others...

...This was true of the delegate/nuncio (Laghi), the visitator (Hickey), the Vatican auxiliary bishop appointee (Wuerl), and the assessment commission...

...It was this support (which was prompted to some degree by Hunthausen's level of public support) that eventually induced Rome to change its course...

...What are God's ways to the future...

...Catholics love to have a final decision-making authority (the hierarchy) in place because then matters may be resolved seemingly for good, not as in the Protestant churches where, we argue, the lack of a last word leads to endless schisms...

...I see no reason to believe this is the case...

...Some even suspected that the Reagan administration had asked the Vatican to put pressure on Hunthausen, in exchange for the establishment of the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington in January 1984, but this claim has never been proved...

...It is possible that the bishops are already inwardly convinced of the need for real change and will implement the kinds of real change that, in the short term, only they have the power to initiate...

...Moreover, since my wife is Dutch and we made semiannual trips to Holland from Seattle, it did not require much to arrange regular meetings in person at the university...

...After interviewing seventy persons, Hickey left and submitted a report, which Hunthausen did not see...

...Laypeople invited into the inner sanctum have to avoid tactfully and prayerfully the risk of becoming part of the problem: enjoying the exclusivity of newfound access so much that they become uncritical apologists and guardians of the clerical preserve...

...As an extension of this inclination, bishops place a premium on having their employments of power (appear to) be legitimate, according to the normative standards of the church...

...I say "we" advisedly...

...Presumably the pope had the intention of remaining above the fray, but it seems to me a rather large conflict to ignore publicly...

...Pursuing the degree at a Dutch university offered the advantage of vastly reducing my costs, compared with what I would pay in the states...

...Despite the national outcry the case generated, the pope preferred to keep his distance, never mentioning it really, even though it dominated the American bishops' conference meeting and received extensive global press coverage...

...Before my proefschrift and before the church cri-sis, would have told myself that I harbored few illusions about the church I love...

...In November, Archbishop James Hickey of Washington, D.C., arrived in Seattle to conduct the visitation on Rome's behalf...

...In retrospect, it was obvious we had not...

...We as a church allowed it to happen...

...Coming to terms with this is disappointing at least...

...How do church leaders, in whose office we concentrate so much institutional power, manage the tension between authority and freedom, between centralized control (established in Rome) and the peripheral pressure for autonomy that often turns up in the Timothy P. Schilling defended his dissertation, Conflict in the Catholic Hierarchy: Coping Strategies in the Hunthausen Affair, in Utrecht in January...

...bishops...

...The laity and the press turned their attention elsewhere and Hunthausen retreated into what I would call a "dispirited" silence, no doubt chastened and exhausted from his experience of speaking out...

...The church has so much power to do good or ill and the bishops have such a monopoly on how that power is used that the management of conflicts at this level presents tremendous risks for the church organization and its ability to be of service to the world...

...How do bishops confront one another, managing their own preferences for autonomy and control, and the preferences of the others they are accountable to...

...Most of them, I hope, understand that this disaster is about real people undergoing terrible suffering as a direct consequence of leadership decisions in the church, for which the bishops bear primary responsibility...

...I myself was to be put to the proof...

...The resulting damage to the victims, their families, and to the church as a whole is immeasurable...

...6) employing secrecy...

...Bishops become bishops by means of a rigorous selection and training process, and logically want to provide for the organization that has provided for them...

...Only Hunthausen regularly showed his personal as well as official side, and this proved to be one of the keys to his effectiveness at winning widespread support in the press and among the public at large...

...They do not do so in settings where the public is witness to impassioned convictions and heated arguments that might suggest that bishops don't always coolly and infallibly know the proper course to take...

...Hunthausen complied...

...and (9) asserting personal identity...

...Though a decisive majority of Seattle Catholics lined up with Hunthausen's position against the Vatican, I didn't presume he had a monopoly on truth...

...He currently works at the Center for Parish Spirituality in Nijmegen, the Netherlands...

...Always there were more dioceses, more priests, more bishops implicated...

...Hunthausen, for his part, was also not eager to appear to be in conflict with Rome...

...I laid the groundwork for answering the question by conducting a preliminary survey of theoretical literature, which generated several expectations about the kinds of strategy bishops would use to manage conflict arising within the hierarchy...

...The same appears to be true in the sexual-abuse/leadership crisis...

...How do bishops talk to one another and what does this conversation look like when it is under pressure...

...The purported purpose of the visitation was to look into conditions in the archdiocese, following upon letters of complaint about Hunthausen's leadership that the Vatican had been receiving for some time...

...One proves his or her ability to do scientific work while testing a proposition...

...The Vatican made no reference to the visitation when announcing Wuerl's appointment...

...Personally, I doubt my own faith would survive a disillusionment on this scale a second time...

...In May 1983, Archbishop Pio Laghi, then apostolic delegate (and later papal pro-nuncio) to the United States, approached Hunthausen about the Vatican's wish to conduct a "visitation" of the Seattle Archdiocese...

...The pope in this case, as in the Hunthausen case, has mostly kept silent and has tried to manage the affair behind the scenes and within the confines of the hierarchy...

...Week by week during the last year of writing my dissertation, I watched the crisis unfold and watched how the use of the same strategies I was pointing to yielded far more disastrous consequences than had emerged from the painful Hunthausen case...

...This strategy also relates to the desire to promote the appearance of unity and common purpose, but it does so with reference to the specific advantages and constraints flowing from membership in the "brotherhood of bishops...

...I had thought the problems had genuinely been addressed in the early 1990s, when the same issues of abuse had been confronted on a national scale...

...In July, Hunthausen learned that indeed he was to have given the faculties to Wuerl...

...The strategy of recruiting allies comes into play when one's lack of self-sufficiency is discovered...

...Bishops and the pope above all have decisive power...

...In the Hunthausen case, Catholics at large and the press had roles to play, but the real action was confined to the offices of the Roman curia, the papal delegate/nuncio, and to the closed-door meetings of the American bishops' conference...

...The strategy of asserting personal identity-that is, departing from one's institutional identity, however briefly, to assert one's personal character-was used consistently by Hunthausen in his conflict with Rome, but most other bishops involved, on the Rome side and as third parties, employed the strategy only selectively...

...5) practicing courtesy...

...The actions of bishops reflect the church thought and practice that have conditioned them and that continue to guarantee their power...

...He also argued passionately for his convictions, getting out of the dispassionately declarative style that so many bishops opt for in their public pronouncements...

...Typically, however, they were able to participate in the inner-circle information exchanges only when one party or another let them in-often by leaking information that could put public pressure on the opposing side...

...What I learned from the Hunthausen case was that, while bishops retained all the legal authority and they ultimately made the final decision, public pressure had a very significant effect on the course that was adopted...

...Still, if one takes the findings seriously, they eventually raise ecclesiological questions not only on the level of practice (How do bishops solve problems and exercise leadership...

...Moreover, this stance appears not to be something consciously adopted so much as a reflexive behavior, the product of social conditioning...

...Months later when Hunthausen announced the imminent visitation, he said that he welcomed it...

...Practicing courtesy in their public exchanges with one another serves the strategic purpose of saving face for bishops and the church organization (by glossing over criticism) and subtly reinforcing the existing order (by employing an internal code that maintains distinctions of power and inclusion...

...There was the secrecy that Rome practiced in relation to Hunthausen (and the public too, of course): for example, Hunthausen was never allowed to see Hickey's visitation report and was kept in the dark for nearly two years about Vatican deliberations concerning his case...

...Ultimately we are left with questions such as: In which authoritative forms do we recognize God's presence...

...An interesting development in the case was the inclination Laghi and Wuerl showed in asserting personal identity once they themselves came under pressure from public criticism...

...I was mistaken, though, in thinking that I could simply write a long, neutral description of the ways bishops use diplomatic language to resolve conflicts, and draw up a balance sheet at the end...

...Associating one's own efforts with the best interest of the church is a related strategy, actively personalizing the approach of strategy 1. Whereas deference to the church order can be shown simply by not making waves, bishops justifying their actions in tense exchanges with other bishops will want to make clear that they are acting primarily for the good of the church...

...What I knew early on was that I would write about former Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen's conflict with Rome (1983-89...

...So when bishops disagree among themselves, we find a concerted effort to pretend that the conflict isn't there, at least as far as the public is concerned...

...Maybe the illusion was that I could put almost as much confidence (or the same type of confidence) in my church as I put in God...

...So what happens in conflict situations...

...This desire to save face by covering up is an understandable human tendency but a dangerous one...

...Though the bishops affirmed their loyalty to Rome and did not take Hunthausen's side outright in their public statement on the matter, they did not abandon him either...

...Quinn is a rare bishop who has spoken forthrightly of the fear of Roman congregations, for example, that often prevails among bishops...

...Secrecy often has a bad name because it offers the possibility of hiding misconduct, but we should be careful to recognize its positive aspects as well...

...That is to say, given the church's limited ability to enforce compliance with its wishes (through brute force, for example) on a societal and even on an in-traorganizational level, and given the moral expectations that are intrinsically tied to the bishops' authority, the hierarchy must rely primarily on persuasion and the (perceived) strength of their own moral and religious authority to generate compliance...

...In cooperation with Hunthausen, the commission came up with a resolution that was implemented in May...

...In other words, conflict is to be avoided...

...Hunthausen had already been a favorite among church progressives and political liberals for his principled opposition to the Reagan administration's nuclear-arms buildup, which he protested by refusing to pay half his income tax, and for his soft-spoken and open-minded pastoral style...

...At the beginning of this article, I wrote that conducting this research amounted to a personal test...

...This strategy can only be abandoned at one's peril...

...I myself had spent three years in a priestly formation program, so I had enough access to priests and bishops to be conscious of their limits...

...My research showed that most bishops, when acting at the request of Rome, function in a self-effacing way...

...Over the six-year period, we find almost no occasions where the bishops actually argue their (theological, pastoral) positions vis-a-vis one another in public...

...Perhaps one can begin to imagine why...

...The ordinary is the chief executive, the supreme judge, and the guardian of doctrine...

...More unnerving still, as I watch the affair from Europe, is how the church on this side of the water appears to think the whole business is a failure on the part of the American church...

...This crisis did not just happen...

...For whatever reason, though (the vestiges of faith, including faith in the church...

...My findings, based on the literature survey and documentary evidence from the case, can be summarized as follows...

...When bishops really need to hammer out an issue among themselves, they do so in the curial chambers of the Vatican and in closed sessions of their own conference meetings...

...The worst of it for me was the sense of betrayal...

...Still, it is not enough for laypeople to press for transparency and reform...

...Thomas Reese, SJ (in Archbishop), and Patrick Granfield, OSB (in The Limits of the Papacy), had also offered short treatments, but analysis of the case had mostly been limited to articles...

...Within a diocese, there really is no such thing as a separation of powers...

...More disconcerting was Pope John Paul II's almost total absence from these public exchanges and his reluctance to engage Hunthausen in public or in private...

...Is God still speaking to us in the ways of old...

...Beyond these issues lie implications for the fundamental matter of leadership authority in the church and for the sacramental-theological questions (surrounding Eucharist and ordination, for example) that are so closely tied to our perspectives on leadership and office...

...Finally, in September 1985, Cardinal and Wuerl that they understood differently what Wuerl's role in Seattle was supposed to be...

...I am much in agreement and have some thoughts on what that might entail...

...Given the church's focus on establishing and preserving organizational unity and the symbolic weight attached to the hierarchy and to individual bishops themselves as signs and guardians of church unity, it is not surprising that bishops would want to avoid seeming to be divided among themselves...

...local churches and in the lives of individual churchgoers...

...Here I would add one caveat for those who do gain direct influence with the bishops themselves...

...But having walked along this road, I can only think that disillusioned is the correct descriptor of my current condition...

...The litmus test of successful integration will be if our awareness changes our practice...

...Catholics may complain about the practices or undemocratic character of the hierarchy, but they rarely say they want to overturn the hierarchy or surrender the concept of apostolic succession...

...Canon-ically speaking, all others in the local church are mere advisers...

...My assumption was that the ongoing tension, familiar to many organizations, between the desire to maintain centralized control, and the desire to exercise one's own autonomy in the peripheral position, would, given the church's unique culture and structure of leadership, lead to distinctive ways of handling conflict within the Roman Catholic hierarchy...

...To me, the controversy looked to be a fascinating study in Catholic conversation...

...Not all were pleased with Hunthausen's politics or with his tolerant approach to leadership, but his opponents were not able to command nearly as much press as his admirers...

...More unsettling still, given my own position as a layman, was how so much of this matter affecting the local, national, and world church was handled without input from the vast majority of church members with a stake in the outcomes...

...By the spring of 1986, however, it became clear to Hunthausen stature among his admirers...

...An outstanding exception to the majority tendency to make peace with the status quo has been Archbishop John Quinn, who has (politely) pleaded for structural reforms that could enhance dialogue within the hierarchy and within the church...

...Much of the time what one encounters in the public discourse among bishops is an invincible graciousness toward one another...

...What is interesting is how and when the strategies were applied...

...So the question remains: What now...

...For his part, Hunthausen said the two developments were related in some general way, surely, but he denied a direct consequential relationship between the two...

...Heightening the level of transparency and participation seems to me a much surer way of securing the future of the church and the authority of the hierarchy than does continuing to make all of the really difficult and important decisions within a small group behind closed doors...

...The perception that he was the victim in a Vatican clampdown only enhanced his When the divergence of understanding came to their attention, they sought clarification from the Vatican...

...Early in 1987 Archbishop Laghi announced that a commission of three American bishops-Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, and Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco-had been appointed to assess the situation...

...In conflict situations this suggests that they will show a (blood-level) clannish loyalty, which can be a most welcome and reassuring kind of support within the circle...

...When I began writing my dissertation on church structures at a Dutch university, I was motivated by the thought of writing a well-researched, rigorously constructed book...

...Laypeople and the press mostly had to claim access to the case aggressively...

...The strategy of minimizing the appearance of conflict reflects the hierarchy's fundamental disposition that conflict among the bishops is problematic and risky and to be avoided whenever possible...

...Hunthausen often spoke of his own feelings, at times admitting that he was suffering...

...Ultimately it boils down to the question of gospel credibility...

...Do we really prefer the truth to power, and are we prepared to empty ourselvesforfeiting as necessary our power, and appearance-out of love...

...Showing deference to the structural order and mindset of the church is a given...

...What was perhaps most unfortunate about the Hunthausen affair was that it did not seem to change much for the long term...

...Some pastoral reforms were implemented in the local church and there was some discussion among the bishops about handling intrahierarchical relationships differently...

...7) recruiting allies...

...Challenges to the church order within the hierarchy have a chance to succeed only if they are proved to be in the line of the existing tradition...

...Hunthausen's powers were restored, Wuerl was reassigned, and Thomas Murphy, then bishop of Great Falls-Billings, Montana, was named coadjutor archbishop of Seattle, with right of succession but no special powers...

...Ratzinger cited examples of specific problems and requested Hunthausen's cooperation in addressing them...

...The structures that have allowed this to happe are the same throughout the church...

...Some of them, I suspect, and maybe more than I would care to believe, may think that what has happened is first and foremost a public-relations disaster...

...A brief sketch of the use of each strategy follows...

...The lack of courage within the hierarchy in the handling of this whole matter has been truly disturbing...

...During the years of the Rome-Hunthausen conflict, courtesy broke down only after years of growing tension and only when Hunthausen's power and position were directly threatened...

...Seeing the arrangement with Wuerl as unworkable, but without blaming Wuerl, Hunthausen argued his case effectively at the November 1986 meeting of the U.S...

...Maybe it amounts to seeing in the church the same disappointing fact that I have discovered in myself after twenty years of taking faith seriously as an adult: the corruption we planned on getting past (the flaws, the evil) remains inside us...

...The Vatican's unwillingness to invite Hunthausen into certain private decision-making forums that had direct bearing on his future struck me as demeaning...

...Going forward will require absorbing and integrating the lessons of our recent history...

...The Hunthausen case showed that the really crucial allies for bishops are other bishops...

...The letter stated that while the Vatican had identified numerous positive aspects of Hunthausen's leadership, it also had concerns about practices in a number of areas, including the liturgy, the marriage tribunal, Catholic health care, priestly formation, the ministry to homosexual persons, and the handling of inactive priests...

...What I found in the Rome-Hunthausen case was that nine strategies were applied in pronounced ways-that is, decisively and repeatedly and, in most cases, across the range of bishop participants...

...I am at least as frustrated with the laity and with myself, because the rest of us underwrite arrangements and employments of power that allow such things to happen...

...If disagreements cannot be aired, how can they be resolved...

...Whereas both apparently understood that Wuerl had a special duty to work on the problem areas, Wuerl had been led to believe that Hunthausen would grant him final decision-making power in the form of special faculties to oversee the areas of concern identified by the Vatican...

...conference's level of discontent about Hunthausen's situation and the unworkability of the shared power arrangement in Seattle were apparently the key factors that caused Rome to reconsider its position...

...Joseph Ratzinger of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sent Hunthausen a letter detailing the Vatican's findings...

...I am not at all ready to give up on my commitment to the church and certainly not on my faith in God...

...If we don't actually change the way we do things, it is hard to imagine how severe the consequences will be the next time the church is called to account...

...Beyond this, laypeople must take full advantage of their existing powers...

...What I suppose the bishops understand in the present moment is that something has gone wrong...

...This is not a problem we as a church can simply blame on those who abused others and on those who covered up abuse...

...Yet Hunthausen's impassioned critique of the use of secrecy came to nothing, really...

...Hunthausen, however, believed that as archbishop he would retain authority in all areas...

...We had learned our lessons as a church, then, supposedly...

...News of the transference of power from Hunthausen to Wuerl precipitated a major controversy in the church in Seattle and across much of the church in the United States...

...When the divergence of understanding came to their attention, they sought clarification from the Vatican...

...Upon receiving the Ratzinger letter, Hunthausen asked to make it public...

...Hunthausen complied...

...Bishops in center-pe-riphery conflict, like the leaders of other kinds of organizations, act out of a basic inclination to preserve and enhance their own power and appearance and that of the church organization...

...What I found in the Hunthausen case, however, was that secrecy was consistently used not only for the sake of efficiency and discretion, but also to maintain control and keep up appearances, with damaged trust and feelings of betrayal (within the hierarchy and within the church as a whole) being among the more significant consequences...

...What I found intriguing in the Rome-Hunthausen case, however, and this brings us back to the strategy of secrecy, was how little of the real argumentation actually took place in the public domain...

...A society with no privacy, where all are invited into all domains, would be unlivable and wholly impractical...

...Hunthausen said he would, apparently without realizing the full implications of what he had agreed to...

...Most of the findings I have summarized above can also be applied to the handling of the sexual-abuse/leadership crisis: the (over)concern with power and appearance, the attempts to deny the problems and then minimize their appearance, the excessive dependence on secrecy, the fear of having real arguments in public and of inviting the broader public to participate in the problem solving, the personal costs and feelings of mistrust and betrayal...

...In the Hunthausen affair, there were various levels of secrecy...

...Generally speaking, real arguments have real value for problem solving...

...I wanted to write about the Rome-Hunthausen conflict because it was a fascinating case that I was familiar with and that had never been given the full-scale analytic treatment it deserved...

...4) showing fraternity...

...The bishops' answers to these questions (and the answers that the church accepts from the bishops) will have everything to do with what the world believes about Catholicism and its message...

...This total arrangement-the exclusivity of office and concentration of power within the hierarchy, the focus on maintaining the power and appearance of the church, and the resulting forms of problem solving-is more or less accepted by the church as a whole...

...but also on the level of church culture and socialization (What sort of leadership structure do we embrace...

...Curtailments on a bishop's power come, for the most part, from other bishops, though bishops obviously remain accountable to church law and teaching, and ultimately to their own conscience, to the people they serve, and to God...

...The laity and the press were able to influence the course of events in the Rome-Hunthausen conflict, and the solid support Hunthausen received from his own priests was crucial, but what really mattered for Hunthausen was that he was able to find allies within his own episcopal conference...

...For twenty-two months, Hunthausen was left to wonder what the outcome would be...

...Are we as a church about what we say we are about...

...It is unsettling that bishops do not dare to criticize one another in public and make criticism of the pope taboo...

...And I suppose I was enough of a theologian to see in the failure and weakness of the church (theoretically, at least) the promise of God's presence...

...I continue to be amazed by how few convincing expressions of contrition I have heard from the bishops-how few forthright statements of personal culpability-and how little time has actually been spent in the presence of victims...

...Only possession of this technical knowledge, grounded in a foundational awareness of church history and theology, will induce the hierarchy to take the laity seriously as fellow leaders of the church...

...For myself, and for others too, I suppose, it means first working through our grief and recognizing our own responsibility in what has transpired...

...We cannot change that fact but we can build a better future...

...Another interesting thing about bishops as institutional leaders is the concentration of intraecclesial, legal power in their office...

...The commission remained in place until April 1989 to see that the archbishops carried on in addressing the pastoral concerns in Seattle...

...Nobody does...