More than Birthday Candles

Do you know that Google knows when your birthday is and sends you a cute little graphic of candles? At least they didn’t use a volcano. This is the date Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, and Kilauea is still going strong. Still, it’s disconcerting that they know that about you.

But not as disconcerting as “BREAKING NEWS” from NCR.  All 34 bishops from Chile who were gathered by Pope Francis to discuss the sex abuse scandal have offered their resignations. The danger of writing 24 hours in advance of publication is that further news will break. Yet I cannot avoid discussing this unprecedented assumption of accountability – maybe.

I have been critical before of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Some of my early blogs highlighted those who tried to take a stronger stand on immigration and racism (i.e., The Bishops, the Pope, and the King , The Table, 11/25/17), with no concrete proposals as results. I never looked at the morass of sexual abuse in the United States because I sensed their avoidance under the cloak (cape?), accepting responsibility with half measures, not enforceable accountability. I left the outrage to Voice of the Faithful and the continuing data collection to Bishop Accountability, both very important in calling for justice and healing for survivors, as well as change in the church.

Will this action today result in change in the church? Certainly the Chilean survivors who met with the Pope Francis were positive about his genuine apologies. And after receiving a 2,300 PAGE report from Archbishop Scicluna and Father Bertomeu about the situation in Chile and these meeting with the survivors, the Pope prepared a cover document for the gathered bishops.  He was highly critical of cover-ups, including destroying documents; assigning known abusers to other postings, including dismissed order priests; and the lack of supervision of seminary training and the formation of priests.

“The problems inside the church community can’t be solved just by dealing with individual cases and reducing them to the removal of people, though this – and I say so clearly – has to be done,” Francis wrote. “But it’s not enough, we have to go beyond that. It would be deeply irresponsible on our part to not look deeply into the roots and the structures that allowed these concrete events to occur and perpetuate.” (RNS)

Now contrast this with the Chilean bishops’ spokesperson. While acknowledging the truth of the “absolutely reprehensible” contents of the long report, Archbishop Ramos said that the bishops decided to offer their resignations “to be in greater harmony with the will of the Holy Father. … In this way, we could make a collegial gesture in solidarity to assume responsibility – not without pain – for the serious acts that have occurred and so that the Holy Father can, freely, have us at his disposal.”

This response upsets me for two reasons. First of all, the Pope has to accept their resignations: they are “at his disposal.” His action may be the breaking news you hear by the time this is published – or not.

Second, however, is the desire “to be in greater harmony with the will of the Holy Father.” Is that all? A “collegial gesture” does not suggest reform of “the roots and structures” that the Pope was talking about:

He also said he was concerned by reports regarding “the attitude with which some of you bishops have reacted in the face of present and past events.”

This attitude, the pope said, was guided by the belief that instead of addressing the issue of sexual abuse, bishops thought that “just the removal of people would solve the problem.”

In an accompanying footnote, the pope said the bishops’ behavior could be labeled as “the Caiaphas syndrome,” referring to the high priest who condemned Jesus saying, “Better for one man to die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” (NCR)

Irony abounds: the whole nation of bishops offers to die, ecclesiastically, for the people, when the pope suggests far more change, in a somewhat humorous metaphor. Even the Irish Bishops, when similarly summoned by Benedict XVI in 2010, did not make such a self-sacrificing offer. Benedict did order an investigation of the Irish seminaries, which I will not investigate right now. (RNS)

Robert Mickens speculates on the politics of these resignations and makes the contrast I was going to make: the further irony that the Pope’s efforts at decentralization are upset by the meek submission to Vatican authority by the Chilean bishops. Mickens goes on to complain about the awkward and slow translations of two Vatican documents, one on religious life and one on the world economy.

Rather, I will highlight Pope Francis’s request that the German bishops continue discussing guidelines for non-Catholic spouses receiving communion in contrast to the response of the Chilean bishops.  When three-quarters of the German conference members approved a new policy, the dissenting quarter requested a Vatican clarification of the theology behind this practice. The Pope calmly (?) sent it back through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, saying “do over” or “work it out” in much fancier language: “find, in a spirit of ecclesial communion, a possibly unanimous outcome.” He calls for an adult bishops’ conference to take full responsibility for decisions in light of its unique national culture and circumstances.

May that be the case in Chile and in the United States. Grapple with the real problems of the Catholic Church; do not hide behind individual prerogative and Vatican authority; come out and say what the needs are. There will be volcanoes, for sure, if that ever happened, especially if honoring women and their vocations; but then, there would be candles lit by everyone.