Devoted Bishops

One of my regular blog reads is Ann Althouse, retired Wisconsin law professor. I don’t see eye-to-eye with her on all issues, particularly social issues, but at least once a day, she posts something interesting in a clarifying way. One of the tags she frequently uses on blog posts is “civility bullshit.”  As in: 

 …because the real motivation is political advantage. Usually, the civility-demander is trying to get opponents tone it down and not take advantage of whatever hot passion and energy they’ve got on their side.

And this is absolutely, one-hundred percent correct. It applies in all types of discussions, including churchy ones.

Related is what I guess I’ll call Collegiality BS. 

(In deference to those who might be offended…)

You might recognize it as the call for a Kumbaya moment. You might recognize it in calls for us to prioritize our sense of community – closeness, good feelings, acceptance at some level – above anything else. It’s a certain interpretation of the Christian notion of communion. The problem is that it’s superficial and theologically incorrect. For the Catholic/Christian understanding of authentic communion is rooted in Christ’s actions, not ours. All the baptized are already in communion with Christ and each other. We don’t do it. He does. Our call is to recognize that communion and build on it.

How to see the difference?

Imagine yourself sitting in Mass. Look around.

You could think:

We should really try to create some communion here.

Or you could think:

Wow. Jesus has brought me into communion through Him, with every single person here – the people I know, those I don’t, the people I like, the people I avoid, the people who are like me, the people who are very different – Christ has done this – what’s my response?

But communion-awareness can shift into Communion and Collegiality BS when those preaching it are really just trying to deflect, distract and move on from uncomfortable matters. Always be skeptical when someone frantically tries to “build community” with you.

Take, for example, Cardinal Mahony.

It’s appalling enough that he  spoke at this week’s weird and pointless (although not useless – see the difference? As in God can bring good out of anything?) bishops’ gathering.

And they all just sat there and listened. At least they didn’t applaud.

Anyway, Cardinal Mahony’s five minute talk said not a word about abuse or corruption. He was all about …our devotion to each other as members of the conference and the college of bishops. 

His point was that there’s a great need for bishops to support each other, afford priests space for prayer (he’s not wrong) and emphasize a collegial communion with particular attention to how “outside forces” can threaten that: “We must not allow outside groups of any kind…to interfere with or attempt to break the bonds of our collegial union.”

To that end, Mahony proceeded to hijack appeal to St. Charles Borromeo in a most interesting way, perhaps knowing that the reforming bishop-saint is being appealed to with more frequency these days. He characterized Borromeo’s mission as one of having to deal with “difficulties and problems” in Milan and that the saint worked at this by pulling the bishops together, reminding them that “we are not bishops alone or separate, but we belong to a college” and that one of the major threats to the mission and collegiality were “kings, emperors” and other “folks” who tried to interfere.

This is not necessarily, inherently bs, but here it is, and this is why:

• Episcopal collegiality and closeness is not the highest Christian value, nor is it a value in and of itself, apart from the core of faith in Jesus Christ and the responsibility of the successors of the apostles to live that out, protect the deposit of faith and evangelize. Catholic history is filled with bishops calling each other out, excommunicating each other and sending each other into exile. There used to be a formal ritual for the “degradation of a bishop” who had violated episcopal norms so severely that he was being stripped of office.
• Secondly, and most obviously, this is a deflection technique, just as civility bs is. Oh, you better not do anything to damage our collegial union. Shame on you, Bad Brother Bishop!
• More to the point on Borromeo. I suspect that if Mahony was basing his words on anything, it was the saint’s oration at the fifth provincial council from 1579. As I noted, the archdiocese of Milan was a mess – it wasn’t just experiencing “difficulties.” You can read about how bad it was, top to bottom, elsewhere. Charles Borromeo had a huge task in front of him, and what this oration reflects is the necessity of having all the bishops on board, not so they would feel good about themselves and content and secure in their mutual admiration – not so that Bishop X would know that no matter what, Bishop Y had his back (and would cover for him), but simply: Jesus Christ is One, the Gospel is One, His Church is One – so as bishops, you are called to act as One, as well.

“Christ the Lord wished the spirit of the pastors to be one, joined in one bond of charity and spurred on by one concern and solicitude. To this end he instructed us, when in today’s Gospel he entrusted the office of preaching and the curing of diseases to his apostles convoked together, and prescribed to all of them certain rules for that apostolic office.”

He finished with a prayer:

“You, Lord God Almighty, who ordered seventy elders of the people to be convoked by Moses at the entrance to the tent of the covenant, and ordered them to be present,
remaining together in the same place, and who deigned to grant one and the same spirit (cf. Nm 11:16-17); you who sent your Holy Spirit to your apostles gathered together in one place (cf. Acts 2:1-4), illumined their minds, and inflamed their hearts to the point that, burning with incredible ardor, when they knew and accepted that they were legates of the divine preaching, they carried out that mission most admirably, with one most burning zeal and with the same enactments of apostolic discipline over the whole world: we beg you today, be present to us who are called together into one in your name. Enlighten our minds with the splendor of your divine light, tend them with goodness.
Rule and direct them by wisdom, and cause us so to carry out the duties and tasks of our commission with one counsel, the same vigilance, the same admonitions and the same example. May we do so in such a salutary way that we and the faithful of our province, made one in you, may entirely enjoy that eternal glory which is in you, the one God. Amen.

For a welcome contrast to Cardinal Mahony’s defensiveness, I point you to Bishop Steven Biegler of Cheyenne, who walked into a situation in which his predecessor had been accused of abuse. 

Biegler was consecrated as Cheyenne’s bishop in June 2017. His first confrontation with his predecessor was before that, after he heard that Hart wanted to concelebrate the Mass of consecration.

“I went to visit him shortly after I arrived in Cheyenne, prior to the ordination,” Biegler told The Star. “And I said that I wouldn’t allow him to concelebrate because of the allegations and because Bishop [Paul] Etienne [who led the diocese between Hart and Biegler’s tenures] had already put a protocol in place regarding limitations on his public ministry.”

Although Hart was upset, Biegler did not stop there. Etienne had asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to open an investigation into claims against Hart in 2010, but when Biegler arrived in the diocese, he was told that investigation had been stalled. However, he gained Vatican approval to open his own.

Biegler hired a private investigator to review claims against Hart that had surfaced in 2002 in Wyoming. Wyoming does not have a statute of limitations for child sex abuse, and Biegler turned the investigator’s findings over to the district attorney.

Now, what Bishop Biegler said at this week’s meeting. He had proposed a section to the document they were considering that took on the perversion of episcopal and clerical …collegiality … head on:

As the Church seeks to be reformed, we need to address the root causes of the episcopal abuse of power in the sexual abuse crisis. A major factor was clericalism. Some bishops fostered a “toxic brotherhood” which caused them to overlook questionable behavior, ignore rumors of problems, believe clerical denials and seek to preserve a cleric’s ability to minister. At times, they acted to protect the reputation of the Church or clergy, while they shunned the victims/survivors of sexual abuse and their families. Bishops frequently ignored the voices of the laity who spoke up about sexual abuse and the mishandling of allegations; instead, they acted within institutional isolation. 

In his remarks, Bishop Biegler reflected on his experience of investigating his predecessor. He said what he had encountered was a dynamic of favoritism toward the accused, an attitude that infected law enforcement, the legal community, longtime parishioners and other bishops. He characterized it as an “unhealthy dynamic” and indicated that this was something he had directly encountered in his encounters with other bishops. He spoke quietly, but powerfully.

There are several remarks from bishops at this meeting that are getting attention, both positive and negative, but I think Bishop Biegler’s is actually one of the most important, for it’s one of the first times I’ve ever heard a bishop publicly note that other bishops will find ways to stonewall truth-finding and scapegoat truth-tellers – and that this is not an unusual, one-off kind of thing, but is a culture, deep and pervasive that hides under all kinds of disguises and pseudonyms.

Like I said…collegiality….bs.