Answers after the USCCB Meeting

Were you expecting me to write about anything else? Two weeks ago, I picked Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne as the most progressive of the ten nominees for President of the USCCB. He got 30 votes on the first ballot and 37 on the second. My second choice was Daniel Flores, Bishop of Brownsville, because he headed the Synod committee; he got 18 and 7. Not unsurprisingly, neither had enough for the runoff, but they garnered the most votes below the two who topped the list.

They were my conservative choice, Baltimore Archbishop William Lori, and one of my truly awfuls, Military Services Archbishop Timothy Broglio. Guess who won? Not Pope Francis, says Michael Sean Winters. The shifts from vote to vote tell the tale: Lori: 37, 45, 99. Broglio: 73, 114, 138. Maybe the chart in The Pillar is easier to follow, but I will just say that this year, combining the results for those I would have been happy with totals 85, or 36% of the whole 237. I used to get about 25%, so this is good. And Lori was elected Vice President, so there will be a moderate voice on the Executive Committee, as the NCR’s unhappy editorial says. Read it for more election details.

I turn to the questions I asked last week. What happened for women? The bishops perhaps inadvertently acknowledged how important women are to the work of the church. Three women’s causes “of beatification and canonization” advanced “on the local level.” This was more moving than I expected; several bishops got up and explained how each touched their own lives or their dioceses. The women’s stories are emphasized on the USCCB website; I wonder how much that reflects a preference for individual devotion rather than their communal importance suggested by some of the bishop witnesses.

Two of these saints are laywomen: Michelle Duppong, a church worker who died of cancer, and Cora Louise Evans, a Mormon convert renowned as a mystic. Mother Margaret Mary Healy-Murphy, a widow, founded the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate to work with the poor and people of color. I liked the variety of ministries. No men were so recognized.

Of course, no women were introduced as new bishops, either, and just to reinforce that, the sessions that were not open to the public were called “Fraternal Dialogues.” For those, the bishops were seated at round tables, according to the Catholic News Service, so they could better communicate with each other. The media were de-emphasized; most press conferences were cut, which is the way they communicate with the rest of us. Retiring President Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles acknowledged the closing of the domestic CNS office of at the end of the meeting, and expressed his regrets that so many lost their jobs; I wonder if that’s why the decreased communication, and how many women were among those laid off.

Two women did speak to the plenary: Dominican Sister Donna Markham, President of Catholic Charities USA, and Anna Marie Gallagher, Executive Director of Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC). In addition, Lisa Weis is Chair-Elect of the National Advisory Council, “a group that includes laity, priests and religious and offers guidance to the bishops’ conference’s leadership.” The current chair, Mark Sadd, gave a report near the end of the meeting that had the breadth of a strategic plan, so I’ll watch for Weis’s insights next year.

What about “Faithful Citizenship”? John Lavenburg of Crux notes that this issue received the most debate, but as I read the agenda, that was because it was the only one where the result was not preordained—at first. Apparently, one of those “Fraternal Dialogues” was a group process to work over four alternatives presented to the bishops. I’m basing my conclusion on the introduction to a fifth alternative presented in the open session, which seemed to combine all the original options. Those who rose to challenge the content of #5 seemed heroic among all those men in black suits just sitting there, so inert.

Lavenburg says: “Bishop John Stowe of Lexington said the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the COVID-19 pandemic, and national divisions are examples of societal changes that make it ‘irresponsible’ for the conference to suggest it has nothing new to say,” and he urged changes to the document.” Brian Fraga in NCR adds another issue Stowe identified: “the electoral fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to strike down its abortion precedents in Roe v. Wade.” Of course.

Lavenburg also quotes Cardinal Robert McElroy of San Diego who, “echoing Stowe’s sentiment, urged the conference to give great attention ‘to the crisis of democracy’ that the nation has experienced. ‘Our people are uneasy about this, and we must speak to this question in a non-partisan way, a way that comes from our tradition…I feel like if we let this moment go… I think we will be missing out on what is probably the central challenge to us at this moment as a people.” Fraga also quoted a McElroy sentence that put the responsibility for unity on the bishops: “How do we do so in a way in which division and bigotry are not the hallmarks of our discourse and our public action?”

Lavenburg summarized alternative #5: “In the end, the bishops voted to forgo major changes to the document before the 2024 election. They will instead develop an introductory note for the document that will incorporate more recent papal teachings and policy developments, and then tackle a full ‘re examining’ of the document once the election passes.” Fraga adds some more contemporary items also approved: “multiple bulletin-insert length documents, a social media kit and a template video script that can be adapted for local use.”

Why couldn’t they approve something by next November, 2023? Because everything has to go before each relevant committee. You think the US Congress is dysfunctional? I am going to nominate Nancy Pelosi to whip this operation into shape.

What happened with the Synod? I was not able to hear Bishop Flores’ report, but I did view a pre-taped interview that has now disappeared from the USCCB web site, at least to me. I found the full meeting on YouTube but I cannot seem to fast forward it, and I cannot bear to sit through the preliminaries to get to Flores. In the on-site interview Flores said the process was respectful of all voices, even those that might have been unexpected, and “The church is a communion before anything else.” I hope he said that to the plenary, and that there will be more reporting in my more typical news sources next week. I am not going to answer my other questions now; perhaps they will still be relevant, or less so if the news cycle has left the bishops meeting in the dust.