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IF I WERE A NEW BISHOP . . .
. . . And my diocese were in trouble, or even if it weren’t
by Msgr. George A. Kelly
As the final years of John Paul II’s pontificate slowly pass into Church history,
and my own four score years plus four groan a little more each day, my heart goes out to
the fragile Pope. He stands on the brink of judgment, confessing that the Church, of which
he is Christ’s Vicar, has been badly weakened by the misuse of the Second Vatican
Council, not only in faith but in moral behavior.
Since John Paul II regularly asks bishops to take better charge with him of their diocesan
communities, I wonder, now and then, how I might respond to him, beyond chattering, if I
were also an object of his passionate entreaties. I was ordained a priest almost six
decades ago in a Church that was a model for the older Churches in Europe. I would like to
help John Paul II’s renewal, but all I can do is dream.
Perhaps it is a bit ridiculous for an octogenarian priest to wonder what he might do if he
were a bishop. When I was young they once made a bishop out of a priest with
septuagenarian status, and that was an absurd idea even then. Twenty years ago John Deedy,
Commonweal’s editor then, I think, was happy that I was not his bishop after he read
a book of mine. In my seminary days, most of us inching up on the priesthood would have
thought it obscene, in spite of St. Paul, for any priest to lust for the miter. (Some did
nonetheless, and fortunately only a few of those made it.)
Readers may think that musings like this are the fancies of a frustrated bishop, except
that I never remember being frustrated. I learned early that the worst thing that can
happen to a priest is that God gives him what he wants. My Catholic faith tells me that
God rules the world, and Christ rules the Church, which means, in effect, that the Pope
and bishops run the Church, too. And to make myself perfectly clear– they run it to
lead the people of God to their eternal salvation, not to be prime movers of other
people’s psyches, as if they were social workers, or to pamper them like doting
mothers, or to bully them like martinets.
If I were John Paul II’s last new bishop, I would want to do three things before I
died– to help the Church hold onto the faith, to hold onto her own holiness against
the godless world of the West, and then, to enlarge Christ’s influence on American
culture. Forging or reforming a Christian company comes first, as it did for Christ, so
I’ll write about that first. Later I’ll devote an article to Catholicity in the
public square. John Paul II knows how severe the Catholic crisis is, enough for him to
moan more than once, “We must begin all over again.” The Pope seems to worry how
many of his bishops are competent to deal effectively with the unbelief and disbelief in
strategic Catholic dioceses. But this is a separate question, because naming the right
kind of bishops for a major culture war is his responsibility alone.
So permit me, in this article, to explain what steps a new bishop might take to reinforce
or restore that diocesan discipleship without which Christ the Savior is poorly presented.
The suggestions are drawn from reading most of what three popes have had to say, and from
listening to bishop friends.
As a minimum, he must do five things:
1. Rebuild his diocesan priesthood and its
discipline.
2. Evaluate his inherited diocesan bureaucracy to
insure its Catholic effectiveness.
3. Restore pastors to their place of honor and
responsibility.
4. Insist on Christian discipleship among those who
administer Catholic institutions.
5. Guarantee everywhere the integrity of Catholic
faith as taught and represented.
1. Rebuilding the priesthood
Priestly morale is at a low ebb.
Without priests, there is no Catholic Church. We do not need John Paul II to tell us this,
as he did in Pastores Dabo Vobis. Americans received their first bishop in 1789 because
priests were unruly, and they remained so as long as vagabond priests fled Europe to
wander willy-nilly across the free praying field of pre-Civil War America. They were a far
cry from the 384 priests ordained for New York during my seminary lifetime (1936-1946),
among whom, in a recent study, I found only twelve failures. For modern priests to defy a
bishop’s authority, or to tell churchgoers on Sunday that Christ did not walk on
water or multiply the loaves and fishes, would have been unthinkable. Varieties of such
villainy are quite commonplace today, raising questions for bishops about what has
happened to priestly discipline, if not to priestly faith.
Rebuilding his priesthood is a new bishop’s top priority, although moving young
married couples to recovered pride in Catholic family life, in having babies and raising
them in sufficient numbers and quality that a priest-son is a by-product, is even more
fundamental. Bishop Glennon Flavin of Lincoln, Nebraska was eminently successful with his
families and priest-sons, who became his sons, too. A new bishop is headed for disaster if
he neglects those “priest-sons.” One bishop pushed a laity-first movement on his
arrival, and has not yet regained the confidence of his clergy.
Common sense dictates that the new bishop make direct contact with his priests as soon
as possible. There are many ways of doing this, of course, not the least of which is a
convocation of some kind, depending on how the new bishop assesses his own talents and
preferences. The choice is his. However, one thought stands out above all others. He needs
to meet his priests, not as a matter of good public relations, nor to deal with
“bread and butter” issues, but as their spiritual father. When John Wright
arrived as Bishop in Pittsburgh in 1959, he told his priests, “I come to you In
Nomine Domini.” Today, the job of a new bishop, therefore, is to restore
priests’ faith in their mission– and in their “watchman,” the root
meaning of episcopos. A priests’ retreat just might help do it, at least for those
who have eyes to see, and ears to hear.
What better way than a common retreat, or part of a going retreat, for a new bishop to
give his priests a first-hand glance at what the Pope has conferred on them– in
exchange for the “reverence and obedience” they owe their new bishop? What
easier way for a bishop to lay bare his faith in Christ and in the Lord’s Mystical
Body? To explain what he thinks of the priesthood, and of his own expectations for the
diocese? To let priests observe the persona of a bishop in his working flesh, and in his
fraternal vision of his priests about their own charism, he will have done them a service.
At the retreat’s end, he will have time to socialize with his priests, but he also
will have established himself as their “vicar of Christ.” And all of this within
the spiritual framework of what a retreat is intended to accomplish.
Of course, the presumption underlying this proposal is that the bishop has appropriate
communication skills. Perhaps the times demand that all candidates for the episcopacy
possess such talent. Some bishops, in this era of disobedience, think that large
assemblies of priests are potentially trouble making. Nor do bishops like to pose as
“holy Joes,” and for that reason alone might skirt a priest’s retreat. Yet,
what other instrument than a retreat provides a bona fide opportunity for a face-to-face
introduction of priests to their new bishop? Certainly a one-day clergy conference will
not accomplish this.
Given the secularist’s culture, a priest’s retreat led in part by a new bishop
may be misunderstood or misinterpreted. The bishop comes to speak of “one Lord, one
faith, one baptism,” and one priesthood, to some priests who think the modern Church
is better served by division, by priests autonomous from bishops, by bishops standing up
to the Pope. The retreat bishop ought not feed into those suspicions, and he ought to know
how to deal with disrespect. Still, five days of retreat are a unique opportunity for him.
Malcontents, congenital or cultural, if they are civilized at all, will have ample time to
give the benefit of the doubt to the new bishop, and to meditate on his spiritual message,
if they still have a sense of the sacred. They certainly do not have to depend on gossip
to know what he is like. They will have seen him in action.
2. Evaluate his diocesan machinery
Obscure bureau officers not infrequently are at odds with the Magisterium.
The only reform a new bishop can carry out is that which roots out malfeasance in the
administration of Catholic institutions. After a first impression that he knows how to
make friends, the second he must create is that he knows how to run a diocese.
The Catholic Church has difficulties, in part because it is likely to be the least
self-investigated institution in the United States. The President has Attorney and
Inspector Generals. Congress has probers of every case. Courts of appeal and judicial
watches are everywhere. But, up until the present crisis, groups like the American
Institute of Management heaped praise on the Church for the freedom with which lower
authorities exercised their office, and also for the integrity of the lower officeholders.
The recent public scandals about priests, which have cost dioceses abundant millions of
dollars, are noticeable mainly because in the United States they have been so rare.
Bishops were good then at maintaining priestly discipline, even if the testy characters
were unhappy with the restraints. A new bishop, however, can no longer presume that his
pastors, religious superiors, or college presidents are on his or the Pope’s
wavelength. He must know where his problem situations lie.
Whether he likes it or not, the modern Church is managed by bureaucracies, by office
managers, usually professionals of one kind or another, whose intricate daily doings are
rarely observed by presidents or bishops. (Following the Council, catechists, theologians,
and canon lawyers ran away with Chancery bureaus before bishops realized the harm they
were causing.) Since bureaucracies provide goods and services, like a paycheck or a
miracle cure or an inexpensive Catholic education, they grow. The problem arises for State
or Church when badly supervised bureaus become “blooper” prone, or harm the
well-being of society or the Church without anyone being able to explain how it happened.
Today bishops oversee their own bureaucracies more than they used to, and much more than
they measure the conduct of parish priests. But episcopal control of religious
congregations has been weakened. The early 20th century complaints against Catholic
agencies were that they were second-rate, insufficiently financed, managed by inadequately
trained staff, or unsupervised. Today, the problem may be that they are not fully
Catholic, either in design or in practice. Episcopal influence, which once helped Catholic
institutions upgrade their public acceptance, may also unknowingly have produced
subordinates who “matured” to think more secular, less Catholic. A priest-hero
of WWII, assigned to Catholic Charities as a reward, quit his diocesan post after a year
because the social workers under him, trained at the local Catholic university, thought
like secularists. By 1965, provincials of religious communities, hospital directors,
college presidents, and school superintendents within the Church were turning deaf ears to
complaints from the bishop’s office. By 1975 the secularization of those Catholic
institutions was well underway when Rome began to intervene, fruitlessly it seems, on
behalf of recapturing Catholicity within many of those institutions. The most notorious
example of such evasion was the Jesuit autonomy maintained after John Paul II had placed
them in receivership in 1983.
The prescription that a new bishop do nothing for a year but observe the diocese is bad
advice, as is the temptation, for appearance’s sake, to run around the diocese
willy-nilly to say hello to as many people as he can. After all, a bishop is not primarily
a “hail-fellow-well-met,” but a decision maker. A bishop’s first year,
including the important friendly aspects of his mission, should involve fact-finding with
a view to making informed long-range decisions by a prelate whose persona has been
well-established everywhere within his jurisdiction. As lovable as he might become, the
bishop must early acquire respect as the chief guardian of the faith and of its moral
structures. He is a teacher, but one duty-bound to “teach them to observe all that I
have commanded you” (Mt. 28:20). He is no mere classroom professor, but a Church
teacher with Christ’s authority and the ability to unify his diocese around that
teaching. He is one likely to be resented, as Christ was, by those whose flesh is weak
(Mt. 26:41) or by those who are weak in faith (Rom. 14:1).
In our time, the weak in flesh or in faith, especially pedagogues, often speak of Catholic
tradition as “a tool of repression,” and of the Pope’s Curia as
“intimidators of theologians,” and of authoritative bishops in the Christ mold
as “authoritarian against the people.” Old-time bishops, whom seculars credited
with running a first-rate Church like an open shop committed to one faith, would be amused
by these slanders. Today’s bishop faces coercion from those who insist on their
Catholic identity, but not on having the “obedience of faith” applied to them.
Nor on the kind of life that should follow from living the faith, especially within
religious houses. A new bishop must, therefore, choose diocesan officials — his
Vicars especially, his Vicar General above all — who will make the administration of
his diocese true to its mission from Christ. Wrong choices, hastily made, can do him a lot
of damage. He should feel no embarrassment or shame when his parishes and institutions
function in accordance with Catholic policies or laws. He must reward his best priests, if
only with praise for work well done. This is especially important for parish priests whom
he rarely sees at work. He must be talented at neutralizing efforts to paint his
administration as regressive or undemocratic, as if virtue can ever be found in
lawlessness. And he must proceed in union with the Pope. But first, he must know what he
is dealing with, even something as simple as the fidelity of the Catholic press in his
diocese.
3. Restore pastors to their place
The pastor’s role has been denigrated.
The most important priests in a diocese are the pastors. Very few Catholics really know
the bishop, ever meet him personally, or call upon him in need. The diocese is truly a
properly functioning body of Christ only if its neighborhood pastors are very much about
Christ’s business. Once upon a time Bishop Boyle of Pittsburgh preferred to appoint
parish “administrators,” rather than pastors, because administrators were
readily removable. The Pope told him to stop.
The belittling of the episcopal role in modern times has also demeaned the dignity of the
local pastor, too, often with the unwitting collusion of the bishop himself. The
“shared authority concept,” however much it suggests listening, often begets a
form of politics unworthy of a body of Christ, because it gives primacy to worldly
considerations. Pastors, even the episcopal variety, can share problems, share feelings,
share opinions, but not decisions. The anti-authority venom now endemic to secular
politics has infected the most vital sub-institutions of the Church. The test of
Catholicity, on the other hand, is how often pastors obey Church law, and how right they
are in its execution.
By World War I the Catholic pastor was the lord of his neighborhood with lifelong tenure,
often beloved, rarely hated, and removable from office only after an ecclesiastical trial,
sanctioned by the bishop and evidence. When he walked down a parish street, as he often
did in those days, people, including non-Catholics, raised their hats or hands in friendly
recognition at least. The pastor of my home parish (1901-1934), for example, was twenty
years in office when I entered the first grade (1922), 58 years old, with four curates,
the oldest of whom was 33 years of age. When the pastor of the next-door parish was made a
monsignor in Rome in 1926, he was met upon his return at a West Side pier by a cortege of
open-aired cars, and driven to his rectory through the main avenue in his parish to the
applause of roaring crowds. On a weekday! He, too, had four curates. The vast majority of
Consultors to Patrick Cardinal Hayes (1918-1938) were prominent pastors. That archbishop
made bishops, even auxiliaries, only of reigning pastors, including men of distinction
such as John Mitty (San Francisco), Joseph Rummel (New Orleans), James Kearney
(Rochester).
In the 1940s all of this changed with the rise to status of priest-professionals and
Chancery officials; in the 1960s bishops transferred much pastoral authority to bureau
chiefs.
The institutional realignment in the 21st century of pastors’ authority with that of
their bishop will require more than improved personal contacts. Certain walls between them
must be torn down, like compulsory terms of office, personnel boards making appointments,
and forced retirement. At ordination a priest places his hands in the hands of his bishop
as evidence of his reverence, not into the hands of some committee. What happened to
Catholic common sense, when a priest-pastor who shares in the authority of his bishop and
exercises similar authority in his own name, like the bishop, became subject to political
appraisals by others than the bishop? How did a priest-forever pastor, experienced enough
to become “a little bishop” in his town, come to lose the tenure that priests
like himself once had, and be forced to retire, even though at age 70 or 75 he is in
excellent health, is widely beloved, and often more qualified than the younger man who
will take his place? A simpler question– and a worse scenario– is this. Who can
be thinking properly of the Catholic pastorate when he sends a respected priest of 50 on a
pastor’s mission, and force him out of that office at 62, denying him the pleasure of
reaping what he had planted with hard labor, and in the seventh decade of his life make
him a tyro all over again, without regard to his feelings or those of his parishioners who
may love him? (Bad pastors are always removable.)
The introduction of such compulsory devices into the relationship between a bishop and his
pastors has changed the ecclesial status of both, commonplace as such devices may be in
secular societies, even in religious congregations. The bishop and pastor are vicars of
Christ for the Church, and lineal descendants of the Apostles. Theoretically, the diocesan
bishop is free to deal with his pastors according to his own best judgment, and pastors
are free to resign. The bishop may set aside policies or recommendations of the NCCB, as
needs be. However, in the present climate the bishop does this at the risk of upsetting
one or another activist priest group capable of inflicting public distress on the new
bishop. Local pastors lose their uniqueness in the process and, over time, lose the
burning desire to hold that office. A pastor cannot be a good pastor unless he commands
the respect of his bishop, and has freedom to place the stamp of his personality on the
parochial family within the context of papal and episcopal policies. In principle, a
pastor should be free of harassment, except by the bishop for cause. Why should a priest
accept the office otherwise?
Granted, there are limits to the “honor” owed the unworthy shepherd of souls.
Neither the bishop, nor his chosen vicars, should tolerate priest/pastors and/or religious
who approve doctrinal dissent, free and easy annulments, liturgical aberrations, or
contumacious disobedience of canon or diocesan law. The bishop needs vicars capable of
providing him with honest estimates of what is going on in his parishes, in his schools
(including colleges), in his hospitals, in his seminary, and so forth. Properly informed,
the bishop, even if alone, must act in favor of the faith. He must resist compromise with
evildoers. If he is not able to say “no” to evil, he should not be a bishop. If
he is unable to deal salvifically with the Church’s hostile forces at his level,
higher authority must intervene. Is not this what people in the pews expect of
“authority”? Do they not expect the bishop to intervene when he finds an
office-holder with his hands in the collection basket? What about stealing a people’s
treasury of faith? Every new bishop must have, as his own, a deep reservoir of
determination and courage. And a bright side.
4. Only Christian disciples as
administrators
Some administrators would normally not make it into Christ’s company.
The Council was hardly a memory when Jean Cardinal Danielou observed that the troubles of
the Church, already emerging by 1967, were not the results of anything that bishops did,
but of what they did not do, i.e. rein in administrators of Catholic institutions who no
longer wished to play the role of disciples to the Vicar of Christ. In self-justification,
the offenders appealed to the democratic impulse of a secular society against allegedly
authoritarian bishops, knowing full well that if, as worldly employees, they perpetrated
similar transgressions against their employers, they would be fired. Even Christ drew up
several lists of offenses which disqualified some of his followers from claiming disciple
status (e.g. Lk 14). There is no reason why a bishop cannot make a similar determination.
Secularized Catholics appeal to their own conscience to disregard, demean, or defy a
bishop, ignoring the fact that it is the bishop’s conscience in union with the
Pope’s that hands on the Word of God. In a certain sense, together they shape the way
Catholics are supposed to live in Christ.
Christ was a very popular fellow when he told people what they wanted to hear, or said
“yes” to their pleas, or when he fed them or cured their ills. It was his
“nos” that led him to Calvary and into history.
The Church gains when the bishop is charming, friendly to a fault, and an exciting public
personality. On the other hand, Archbishop John Nepomucene Neumann of Philadelphia
(1852-1860), the only saint among American bishops (canonized in 1977), was not
comfortable in his governing role. Dennis Cardinal Dougherty, his successor several times
removed (1918-1951) and no charm-boy, enjoyed ruling the City of Brotherly Love, and
supervised a body of priests whose morale was compared, by one author, to that of the
Jesuits. Personalities aside, however, the bishop is where the buck of saying
“yes” or “no” stops, which sets the course for a priest either way.
Outspoken Catholic prelates of old had little television impact on the nation’s
culture. They did their share of complaining about the creeping godlessness of the Supreme
Court. But mostly they preoccupied themselves with building the piety of the Catholic
community. Their successors, by changing priorities to accommodate what were said to be
new Vatican II proposals, have had less influence on the public square. Adoption of
humanist causes with great fanfare — by some as an agreement with the culture —
has tended to push the Church’s eternal verities — the mind of God — into
the background of many Catholics’ minds. Or, churchgoers hear those verities
reinterpreted against their authentic meaning without the bishop seeming to notice the
misteaching. Whether Christ is God, rose from the dead, or established a Church or a
sacrament of penance truly, (questions that lack modern fire), lost out to intricate
arguments about the atom bomb, sex and marriage, racism, the minimum wage, and social
security. But no matter how humanistic the Church came to appear, declines of faith in
revealed truth also occurred, giving bishops less influence over anybody.
Bishops who say “yes” or “no” firmly to members of their flock, with
full confidence in what the Church teaches as God’s Word, are out of synch today with
priests and editors who want a Church more in tune with less eternal times. Well-placed
elites expect bishops to be doctrinally flexible with other religious bodies, at least in
practice, and less absolute in proclamations about anything supernatural. Bishops at odds
with each other over the meaning of papal directives are taken for granted in an
“open” Church. Some are afraid to lay down the law, or be specific in their
demands, e.g. that Catholic college presidents profess their faith publicly. So-called
“conservative” bishops may even spark rebellion simply by trying to enforce
canon law. Furthermore, they must live with a Bishops’ Conference that never really
confronted the “sexual revolution” in the spirit of Pius XI and, as a result,
younger Catholics now are living in sin on a large scale. Relative silence on the
indissolubility of marriage and on contraception has disabled the Conference’s
crusade against abortion. When Rome disciplined the leaders of Dignity for its toleration
of sodomy, the leading story coming out of some headquarters was not the sin of sodomy but
that Catholics must be charitable to homosexuals. The essential message that the
homosexual lifestyle was disordered and unnatural, that sodomy involved mortal sin and is
a threat to social well-being, was lost in the verbiage. In better days, when a priest,
even a theologian, publicly suggested or directed force against the Church’s sacred
canons or persons– force being the root word of violence — the bishop,
personally or through the Vicar General, summoned the belligerent, as a matter of course,
to the bishop’s office to make his argument face-to-face. It might also be an
occasion for clearing the air, or for the critic to be reacquainted with the conditions
under which a priest exercises his sacred office. If a priest or a theologian publicly
misrepresents the nature of Catholic faith, theology, or the Church, a bishop must not be
silent. Violence against Catholicity by a priest calls for winning counter-action by a
bishop. A bull in the cathedral chair can do as much harm to the Church as a wimp. The
effective new bishop must be politically astute, and a determined leader, in union with
the Pope, of all those who administer Catholic institutions.
5. Guarantee the integrity of the faith
everywhere.
Beware of false prophets in sheep’s clothing (Mt 7:15)
The Church is only as good as the faith that Catholics have in her teaching. Across the
country Catholics once loved their Church, their priests, especially the nuns, their
private devotions, and their children. And over the years the one office that brought them
to this contentment, the one which still leads all others as Christ’s chief
apologist, is the office of an effective bishop or two along the way.
When theologians were making their march after Vatican II against the intellectual
competence of bishops, they variously indicated how the hierarchy had virtually abandoned
their role as theological experts centuries ago. Not exactly so, but the argument looked
persuasive in the 1960s because, up to then, bishops had little reason to dispute their
doctors of sacred theology. Indeed, as late as 1962 the retiring president of the Catholic
Theological Society of America told his peers in convention that theologians were
“subsidiary” to bishops.
A century earlier, Bishop John Hughes of New York — dealing with a Protestant
crusade against papist teaching — used the auditorium below old St. Patrick’s
Cathedral to hold city-wide lectures during Advent and Lent on such spicy subjects as the
divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and the infallibility of the pope. Secularists
today, who despise papal doctrine more than the 19th century crusaders ever did, need
counterpointing but are not getting it.
A bishop does not need to be a doctor of sacred theology to talk on sacred matters. He
just has to know what he is talking about.
No one can really tell a bishop how to teach in his diocese with authority if he does not
have a governing gene embedded somewhere in his corpus. (Rome should look for it first.)
Anyone can run a successful enterprise without such a gene because, then, it seems to run
by habit, and no hanger-on wants to bring it down. Finding a bishop to govern an
institution in crisis properly, however, is a rare discovery, because men, chosen to be a
No. 1 mostly on the basis of pleasing someone as a No. 2, are rarely good at debating an
enemy effectively or at winning a fight. Bishops today are unquestionably in a battle
situation. The outward American culture is unfriendly to revealed religion in general, to
fully believing Catholics in particular, to strong father figures (especially a Pius
type), and to the notion of Christ as Savior and Redeemer. Many Catholic elites prefer
bishops to be more sensitive to those who believe differently, even at the expense of
ecclesial integrity. It would be nice if a new bishop had the pious demeanor of Patrick
Hayes, the political savvy and decisiveness of Francis Spellman, the innocent friendliness
of Terence Cooke, and John O’Connor’s gift of the gab, all together. But these
days bishops are in favor with elites only if they “listen,” are
“ecumenical,” “socially conscious,” or “compassionate,” and
do nothing to make others, even Catholics, uncomfortable about the way they think or live.
A bishop is sometimes called compassionate, not because he “suffers with” a
person in trouble, but because he excuses or tolerates his evildoing. In this case he is
no help to the sinner or to the Church. Neither Judas, nor Peter, nor the doubting Thomas
found favor with Christ for bad thinking or acting. What the contemporary Church needs at
all times is discipleship, and that means good and faithful servants, starting with
bishops.
A new bishop will only be known in history– surely in heaven — by the Catholic
quality of the flock he leaves behind.
A case is being made outside the Catholic community that the day of Christ is over. The
world has already begun to date its years without reference to B.C. or A.D. Christ surely
had a long run, largely because of the Catholic Church and her bishops. But, as far as
daily life today in the West is concerned, the public question now may well be “Jesus
who”? Schoolmen may argue about the starting point of Christianity’s decline
— Martin Luther and King Henry VIII in the 16th century are good scapegoats —
but a “kingdom not of this world” hardly has appeal anymore to the masses.
According to Philip Hughes, French Encyclopedists in the 18th century, the fathers of
modern humanism, demanded that the Church explain by what title Catholicism had a right to
exist. In the 19th century Protestant biblical critics convinced European intelligentsia
that Christianity was pure myth, that its sacred books were full of made-up stories, that
Christ was just another traveling rabbi, and that Catholic bishops were little more than
self-created power-brokers put in place by an emperor.
The 21st century is uniquely American, culturally as well as politically. Everywhere the
U.S. flag is planted, the “religion of humanity” is sure to go, sired and
nurtured by American politicians, jurists and journalists. The problem is not only that
Christ gains little public mention, but that God himself is poorly allowed in the public
square. Late in 1999, Andrew Greeley proclaimed with evident pleasure that the
“Confident Church” of his lifetime (“efficient” and
“strong”) is no more, collapsed like a house of cards. Catholics of the future,
he said, will be better off in a “Confused Church.”
How prescient were the Council Fathers of Vatican II in 1965 when, in finally attending to
the problems of the modern world, they identified the Church’s No. 1 difficulty as
atheism. How inept they were, then, to permit their own professionals to lead astray an
already wayward European Church; and to adopt a secular Catholicity as their own for the
reform of the Church; and to allow Catholicity’s main stronghold in this world, the
Church of the United States, to fall on bad days. It makes no sense for bishops, new or
old, while promising people a better life in this world, to allow dissident
opinion-molders to spread the word that the Church is confused about life in the next, or
what it takes to get there.
So whatever else can be said about contemporary Catholicity, rebuilding its system is a
high objective. The gates of hell may not prevail in the long run, but history shows that
recovery is tortuous, as witnessed in recent years by the fate of Ireland’s and
Poland’s Catholicity. Without bishops competent for the task, there is no guarantee
that the American Church can regain its hard-won grassroots vitality.
To recreate or reinforce discipleship, bishops will have to reeducate the Catholic
community in the meaning of “freedom of the sons of God.” Freedom from the
demands of authority figures — including God — is what young Americans are
learning liberty is meant to be. The Founding Fathers never thought that way, but modern
opinion-molders do. And the young hear their message through television, if from nowhere
else. In these circumstances, a new bishop will find it difficult to sell Christ’s
message of “obedience of faith,” or to convince Catholics that freedom is
exercised more properly in virtue than in vice. AA members could drive that lesson home
abundantly, but there are not enough of them. Yet drive the message home the bishop must.
A Catholic community cannot tolerate the image of a religious society willing to tolerate
“pro-choice”— for mammon, for adultery, for abortion, for disobedience, for
divorce, for homosexuality, for killing the old and the young, for condoms in the
classroom, for unconscionable civic disorder, for wanton dissent against religious truth.
The time has come for a bishop to reintroduce Americans to Christ, to the need for virtue,
and to sorrow for wrongdoing. Secularists place people in jail for breaking their tax and
traffic rules, yet resist restraints on the very moral laxity that begets violence, sexual
libertinism, family breakdown, and general vulgarity. People must learn all over again
that virtue gives first place to God’s fatherhood, to integrity in behavior, to
stable family life, to civility in discourse, even to good manners. Learn, too, that
evildoing must be restrained, and when it is contumacious, must be punished by the proper
authorities. Christ engaged in both.
Still, a bishop’s talk is cheap if his own handling of serious wrongdoing within the
Church is ambivalent or tepid. His role calls for the protection of the Catholic way of
life at least for Catholics. And within the Church especially. He will have little reason
ecclesiastically to deal with wayward laity, unless the behavior is grievous and
notorious. Those who do the most harm to faith and morals are priests and religious
scandalmongers. Rome may have excuse for taking ten years to remonstrate with offenders
far away, but not so the local bishop close to an upsetting scene. Less justification
exists for a bishop to take his frustrations out on faithful Catholics who remind him of
bad behavior more often than he can stand. He need not intervene personally with a priest
who tells a middle-aged layman (denied an annulment) that he may marry in City Hall and
receive Communion anyway, but someone on his staff should. Aberrations of this kind are
commonplace at parish levels, where the real disaffection goes on, although the
perpetrators originally guilty of the bad advice are usually academics.
In recent years bishops have taken a rude blow for their allegedly repressive tactics in
the past against creative thinkers and imaginative doers. Theoreticians, often tenured
professors, resent power plays from presidents or popes against their disruption of social
order. Yet, in truth, no house is freer than the one in which everyone knows his role and
does his duty.
Contrary to what privileged academics say, laissez-faire was the governing style of most
dioceses during most of my priesthood. Even when bishops kept a firm hand on the daily
doings of their dioceses, the hand was gently placed. Most priests had the good sense to
take the bishops “nos” as new foul lines for their working field, and usually
reacted without rancor with respect to the bishop’s governing role. During the
Spellman era, for example, no priest was ever suspended for crimes against the Church.
Largely because crimes by priests or nuns were virtually non-existent. That is how good
discipline was, especially in religious congregations.
The American Problem
Any bishop, however new, realizes his importance to the well-being of Christ’s
Church, even if he would rather not be reminded of the harm some have done by not being
worthy of the anointing. No matter how competent, or nice, he is in this disrespectful
culture, he may find himself one day in a priests’ assembly, challenged to quit, as
one was by a youngster several years ago. The mood toward bishops has changed. Back in
1943, a baby priest of one year walked through Grand Central Station with a senior pastor
and, by accident, met Bryan J. McEntegart, newly consecrated Bishop of Ogdensburg, N.Y.
The older priest, a very funny fellow, said to his friend: “Bryan, you have two
things in your favor now. You never again will have a bad meal. And you’ve heard the
truth for the last time!” Bishops then led a sheltered life, he thought, and the
tendency to make things easy for a bishop was commonplace.
Today, however, a bishop is likely to be told what an old bishop would never hear:
“We do not believe,” “We will not obey.” The test of his goodness,
therefore, will be his mastery of people like those who threaten the Church’s
credibility and her future. They are everywhere, challenging Vatican II’s claim that
the Church is the world’s sacrament of salvation. Undermining, too, the notion that
the Church, like Christ, brings God to people from Baptism through the last Anointing, and
especially through the Holy Orders, the Eucharist, and Matrimony.
Yet, creeds to the contrary, the faithful today hear priests and popes being called
community leaders, not Vicars of Christ exercising divine authority. Real Presence in the
Eucharist is being reinterpreted to mean the presence of Christ in a congregation around
an altar, not in a host or a cup. Matrimony is designed, it is said, essentially for the
couple’s benefit, not for the children’s, and becomes a sacrament only when the
couple senses God’s presence in their lives, not at the moment when a priest speaks
the Church’s words. (Easy annulment is the end result of this theory.)
When Christ found his “Father’s House” — the Temple of Jerusalem
— turned into a center of personal gain and self-enrichment, the Lord drove the
scoundrels out of their settled niches within what was a house for the worship of God. The
Jewish priests or rabbis, one might have expected, should have done this out of respect
for Jewish faith and worship. They did not for reasons we can only surmise. Similarly
today, the Catholic faith is being radically subverted by malefactors holding Catholic
office. These mislead the laity, and inflict pain, even on religious, with little done
effectively to protect either from Judas-like betrayers of Christ’s Church. A new
bishop hopefully senses that he, above all, is the first defender of Catholic faith. Rome,
too, has come to expect better of new bishops.
If a new bishop is seeking good models for governing the modern Church, especially during
periods of crisis, he might study the experiences of America’s great bishops. Many
wonder, however, why the Church itself has not created a better instrument for training
potential bishops in the art of walking successfully in Christ’s footsteps, should
the call ever come. A new bishop would look back on such schooling gratefully.
A Final Word
Since a new Bishop Ordinary is likely to look to his own Metropolitan Archbishop for
initial guidance, it is fair to ask: What kind of archbishops is Rome planning to give the
American Church in the 21st century? Archbishops within their metropolitan jurisdiction
are “watchmen” for the pope, although diocesan bishops ordinarily govern their
sees without interference from anyone save the pope. In given circumstances, and with
papal permission, archbishops can intervene in a neighboring diocese, especially when
violations of doctrine and discipline occur. American archbishops were once formidable
personalities in their own right, and exercised personal influence far beyond their
diocesan territory.
In my young priesthood, the following Archbishops ran the American Church: William
Cardinal O’Connell (Boston), Francis Cardinal Spellman (New York), Dennis Cardinal
Dougherty (Philadelphia), Michael J. Curley (Baltimore), Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle
(Washington, D.C.), Joseph Rummel (New Orleans), Robert Lucey (San Antonio), J. Francis
Cardinal McIntyre (Los Angeles), John J. Mitty (San Francisco), Samuel Cardinal Stritch
(Chicago), Edward Cardinal Mooney (Detroit), and John J. McNicholas (Cincinnati). Some of
them could be gruff, and personal differences between them were rarely kept behind closed
doors. Priests used to joke about Spellman’s Church in New York against the Church of
“the Axis,” i.e. the three Midwesterners, Stritch, Mooney, and McNicholas, who
dominated the national episcopal machinery in Washington, D.C. These curmudgeons
demonstrated remarkable unity about the course of the American Church, and they were one
with Rome as expected. And they kept their eyes on suffragan sees.
In those days bishops consulted widely, and were recognized as the Church’s most
prominent decision-makers. Pundits today claim that their kind is gone forever, that laws
can no longer be enacted without the permission of opinion-makers, usually elite
minorities with power to disrupt public order if they are denied their freedom to do what
they want. These same savants further assert that the very Catholic notion of hierarchy is
passe, even if “hierarchy” only means “holy rule.” Once upon a time,
Hans Kung and company encouraged disbelievers and the disobedient with this line,
“Don’t worry over what Rome says, only about what Rome does,” but Kung
never dealt with Spellman, Stritch, and Mooney. Archbishops, who were one with the pope,
mastered many a Catholic crisis then, and can still master the contemporary difficulties
created by today’s naysayers, to whom “the obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5) is
anathema. Rome will overcome these detractors only when decision-making archbishops are in
the front lines of controversy. As the Epistle of James (1:22) advised Church leaders in
New Testament days: “Act! If all you do is listen, you are deceiving
yourselves.”
If I were a bishop, this is the kind of company I would like to join. And I would like the
guidance of my archbishop. When Catholics were just beginning to rise from poverty, a
theologian named Gerald Shaughnessy, S.M. (D. 1950) wrote a book, Has the Immigrant Kept
the Faith?, with this as his dedication:
Dedicated to the American hierarchy, the American priests and the American people who
under the guidance of the Holy See built the Church in the United States better than they
knew.
You cannot have that kind of Church without the “obedience of faith” in the
episcopacy– without disciples of the reigning pontiff– and I would like to be
part of such an assembly. Or to try building one. In my priesthood, now inching through
its sixth decade, the ugliest bishop I ever met was Philadelphia’s Dennis Cardinal
Dougherty (1918-1951). He was variously described as good to nuns, good to blacks when few
were, hard on priests, and the bane of Hollywood moguls. But so effective was he as bishop
that Francis Spellman, on his way to New York in 1939, was told by Rome to shape up his
new diocese “Philadelphia-style.” Dougherty is half a century dead, succeeded
naturally by three cardinals. But if today you speak of “the Cardinal” in
Philadelphia, the assumption among people still is that you mean Dougherty. That is how I,
were I a bishop, would like to be remembered.
The Catholic Church will never influence a godless culture if Catholics are not known, as
they once were, as law-abiding Christians. Bishops must deal effectively with their
doubting Thomases, their denying Peters, and their traitorous Judases as Christ did. What
else are they there for? To lead a Church with lots of good works and little faith? Not
for me! The curse of the contemporary Church is the number of disobedient Catholics,
including priests and religious, of “little faith” as the Church defines faith,
who challenge bishops to do anything effective about their defiant autonomy over parishes
and other Catholic bodies. Once, in reviewing a difficult situation, I said to Cardinal
Spellman, “You can’t do that.” He replied, “Try me!” Spellman
bequeathed to his successor what he called “the best body of priests in the United
States.” He also left behind a fully developed and well-administrated archdiocese.
Msgr. George A. Kelly is founder and president emeritus of the Fellowship of Catholic
Scholars, and author of several books including the forthcoming The Second Spring of the
Church in America, which will be available through St. Augustine’s Press.
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