The Vatican Has Fallen

It seems these men are caught in a bind.....think for themselves or be absolutely obedient no matter what in order to show Church unity....not division. One would think though that it doesn't prevent anyone from offering a "teaching" opinion in the meantime as has AB Chaput.

Cardinal DiNardo: Vatican directive came from Congregation for Bishops

......
The president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was speaking at the first press conference held at the bishops' autumn General Assembly in Baltimore Nov. 12.

He indicated that the directive came not from Pope Francis, but directly from the Congregation for Bishops.

Bishop Christopher Coyne of Burlington, who spoke at the press conference, told CNA that he did not know whether the American members of the congregation played a role in the decision.

The American members of the Congregation for Bishops are Cardinals Blase Cupich of Chicago, and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington.

A source close to Wuerl told CNA that he did not believe the cardinal had been involved in the decision.

DiNardo had announced the decision earlier in the day to “a visibly surprised conference hall.”

DiNardo said that the Holy See insisted that consideration of a code of conduct for bishops and a lay-led body to investigate bishops accused of misconduct be delayed until the conclusion of a special meeting called by Pope Francis for February.

Coyne told CNA that the bishops would also suspend their vote on establishing a third-party reporting system for complaints about episcopal conduct.

The Congregation for Bishops asked for the delay so that bishops around the world can be “on the same page,” and learning from each other, the bishops said. The importance of further precision in canon law was also raised.

Joining DiNardo and Coyne at the press conference was Bishop Timothy Doherty of Lafayette in Indiana.

Dinardo said he found Rome's decision to be “quizzical,” and suspected the Congregation for Bishops thought the US bishops might be moving too quickly.

“I'm wondering if they could turn the synodality back on us. My first reaction was, this didn't seem so synodical; but maybe the Americans weren't acting so synodically either. But it was quizzical to me, when I saw it.”

DiNardo said the bishops have not lessened their resolve for action, and that they are not pleased by the Holy See's decision. He indicated that they will continue to push for action on the sex abuse crisis: “we're disappointed, because we're moving along on this.”

.......
While acknowledging their disappointment in the decision from Rome, the bishops also spoke of the importance of their own obedience. DiNardo said they were responsible to be attentive to the Holy Father and his congregations, and Bishop Coyne said bishops are by nature collegial, “so when the Holy See asks us to work in collegiality, that's what we do.”

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...tive-came-from-congregation-for-bishops-64505

 

Is Conflict Developing Between Two Living ‘Popes’?

November 13, 2018 by sd





I’ve personally met at least fifteen priests who were later caught up in scandal, from my days on the campus of a Jesuit college to priests in the parish in my hometown and then New York City and Albany to ones I ran across on the Catholic speaking circuit, including several who were on Catholic network television, one a big star there. They were both traditional and liberal. All we very, very disappointing (to say the least).

The net effect on my faith?

I’m as enthusiastic about and dedicated to Catholicism as ever for the simple reason that the Roman Church is the Mother Church — that Rock founded by Jesus — and stands separate from fallen men. The gates of hell will not prevail.

But they certainly have made the attempt!

Three ways the devil has assaulted the Church:

First, as Our Lady of LaSalette predicted, he inserted sinners into convents and seminaries. Real sinners. There is nothing worse than one who corrupts and harms the young, especially when the corrupter wears a collar. There is the added factor of homosexuality, which the Church, in its brilliance, summarizes as an “intrinsic disorder.” The seminaries — especially those who vet applicants — should have treated it as just that. Then again, those in charge of admission at our seminaries themselves were sometimes of this dark disorder — really, a spirit. As a writer said back a couple decades ago, “good-bye, good men.”

Secondly, Satan created such a mesospheric level of pride via clericalism that many priests and bishops felt they were above the law, certainly above regular laity, entitled to whatever they desired, and thus could use or ignore ordinary rules of behavior. Once scandals grew to maturity (thousands of cases!), it was harvest time for the grim reaper, who blinded churchmen. Oh his scythe!

And third, now that the above two have been accomplished — and although, in most dioceses, abuse slowed markedly nearly twenty years ago (and in some cases before) — the evil one has inspired the secular and in some cases Catholic media to relentlessly besmirch the Church, blackening it and in many cases disheartening the faithful, when, if they were going to expose the crisis, they should have been on top of it when the story first broke big eighteen years ago (or before).

Since then, incidents have plummeted — though there is a current uptick, though the Vatican still has a tin ear (see the recent surprise Vatican request to U.S. bishops not to formally pass abuse legislation), and though many bishops who allowed abuse priests remain in power.

The devil plays all sides, and while — almost inconceivably — the bishops allowed what they did (in some cases due to the shortage of priests, in other cases because they didn’t mind the “intrinsic disorder”), almost as baffling is how the media stayed away from Church scandals for so long (call it a mysterious restraint) but lets loose now that society most needs the sacraments.

A shrewd spirit indeed. (Woe to those who channel him.) Among recent commentators has been Saint John Paul II’s official biographer, conservative George Weigel, who writes:

“The ‘narrative’ of an ongoing, widespread, and unaddressed rape culture in the Catholic Church in the United States is false. There are still abusive Catholic clergy in America; they must be rooted out and dismissed from the ministry. There are still bishops who don’t get it and they, too, must go. But as one state attorney general after another finds political hay to be made by investigating the Catholic past, it is essential that Catholics understand that a lot of the awfulness that is going to keep coming out — both in terms of abusive clergy and malfeasant bishops — was in the past. Effective anger today will focus on the present. And it will not be limited to local situations but will include the obtuseness (and worse) of officials in Rome.”

And here Weigel gets to the crux of the matter:

“Digging deeper, one hits another question: Why were so many Catholics, who don’t believe much else they read in the papers or see on TV, so ready to believe the misrepresentations of the Pennsylvania grand jury report? Part of the answer, I suspect, has to do with pent-up Catholic anger with clerical narcissism.” More on that in a moment.

There is also a fourth strategy, the tried and true one of “divide and conquer.” Incipient schism. Some worry that is in the offing, and even portray it, as Vanity Fair (hardly a religious publication) did recently, as a struggle between two Popes — Benedict and Francis (though from neither of them has there ever been any such direct indication).

Said an article in that publication (written by a priest), “The Francis-Benedict relationship seems to have deteriorated. In July of 2017, [Benedict’s secretary Georg] Gänswein [pictured above with both Popes] read a letter from Benedict at the funeral of conservative cardinal Joachim Meisner, the archbishop emeritus of Cologne. It contained a line that could be read as profoundly destabilizing to Francis’s pontificate. Benedict, via Gänswein, said that Meisner was convinced that the ‘Lord does not abandon His Church, even if the boat has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing.’ The boat of the Church is a powerful, ancient metaphor. The living Pope is the captain of the bark of St. Peter. Benedict appeared to be saying, in other words, that the Church under the command of Pope Francis is sinking.”

Yet such a split, as Vanity Fair said, “could unleash chaos: litigation and perhaps even violence over money and property ownership, involving churches, schools, seminaries, and even colleges and universities.” One cardinal who is constantly on television criticizing the Pope now expresses concern, ironically — and bafflingly (given his public criticisms) — precisely of schism.

Sister Lucia of Fatima foresaw a “diabolic disorientation.” It plays all sides of the debate. Could a split actually occur? Is there any real evidence of a split between the two living Popes (or, one should say, the Pope and the Pope Emeritus)?

Not at the present time, although what happens in the near future is another issue, in times such as ours when crises escalate in a matter of days when once it took years and when the Vatican shows less than full cognizance of public dialogue in the West.

Problems — a crisis– remain, particularly in seminaries. As the Vanity Fairwriter termed it, “My [Vatican source] would have me believe that Baltimore’s diocesan seminary, St. Mary’s, scurrilously known as ‘the Pink Palace,’ was the biggest ‘gay bar’ in the state of Maryland. In 2016, Dublin’s Archbishop Diarmuid Martin stopped sending students to the country’s oldest seminary, St. Patrick’s, Maynooth, after allegations of sexual harassment. It was also reported that trainee priests were using the dating app Grindr to violate their vows of celibacy, and that seminarians who complained were getting kicked out.”



That has to stop. It is intolerable. We don’t need homosexual or otherwise adulterous priests; they should be delivered and shown the exit — even if those who remain must oversee more than one parish. In the clip below, note how one man who knew an abuse priests says, when he asked the priest if he could promise not to harm their son, the priest candidly replied “no” and went into a convulsion. That makes it rather clear.

But serious too is the pride that has infected even priests who have not been caught up in sexual transgression.

There are many forms of narcissism. As Weigel writes, “A priest or bishop who messes with the Missal and re-writes it to his taste as he celebrates Mass is a narcissist. The priest or bishop who rambles on aimlessly during a daily Mass homily, abusing the time of his people, is a narcissist. A bishop who behaves as if he were hereditary nobility, but absent the gentlemanly noblesse oblige that characterizes the truly noble man, is a narcissist. And Catholics are fed up with clerical narcissism. The angers of the present have been stoked by that narcissism for decades; the deadly combination of McCarrick and Josh Shapiro blew the boiler’s lid off. Anyone who doesn’t recognize this is not going to be much help in fixing what’s broken.”

If our clergy and bishops — and all of us — are humble, matters will resolve themselves; if not, in this Age of Narcissism, and fulminating anger, on all sides (Church and political), crises of all sorts soon will frighteningly escalate.

— MHB

 

The more I read of Pope Francis' attitudes expressed in writings, choices, actions, and admonitions from the beginning the more I think of the character Alec Guinness played in the Bridge Over The River Kwai....COL Nicholson. After seeing that his troops worked against the order of cooperation with the enemy to build the bridge, doing shoddy work and attempting to sabotage at every step, he is shocked rather than proud of the non-compliance. His personal project had taken on an importance in itself.

For him, its completion will exemplify the ingenuity and hard work of the British Army long after the war's end.
Clipton (medical officer) expresses grave doubts about the sanity of Colonel Nicholson's efforts to build the bridge in order to show up his Japanese captors.

While wishing to establish a kind of personal legacy of his time there he didn't realize that his personal involvement was causing him to actually become swayed by a kind of Stockholm Syndrome based on a similarity of purpose for this secular engineering project. In the end after seeing the results of his misguided ego and in his personal shock in realizing what deaths on his side he then was responsible for, he wound up, while stumbling from his own wounds, and without purpose, carrying out what had to be done....falling on the detonator and blowing up that bridge that could have become quite useful to the enemy. A "type" of symbolism I guess!

 

Lynn is this from you or are you quoting g from someone else? It is so profoundly sad. In our suffering g over this horror we forget what Jesus conti nually endures. But when will He bring it to an end? It is getting very very bad.

 

BREAKING: Abp. Viganò urges U.S. bishops to confront sex abuse as ‘courageous shepherds’

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò speaks at the Rome Life Forum in May 2018. don Elvir Tabaković, Can.Reg.
Diane Montagna | https://www.lifesitenews.com/mobile...abuse-as-courageous?__twitter_impression=true
Tue Nov 13, 2018 - 10:36 am EST

ROME, November 13, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò today issued a brief message to the U.S. Bishops, urging them to confront sex abuse as “courageous shepherds” rather than “frightened sheep.”

The U.S. Bishops are currently in Baltimore at their much-anticipated fall annual meeting at which they were expected to vote on concrete proposals to hold bishops accountable for their failures after the revelations about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Today’s message from the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States (2011-2016) comes one day after the Vatican insisted that U.S. Bishops not vote at their fall assembly on two action items to prevent sexual abuse coverup: standards of accountability for bishops and the special commission for receiving complaints against bishops.

Here below we publish the official English text of Archbishop Viganò’s message to U.S. Bishops, dated November 13.

***

Dear Brother Bishops in the US,

I am writing to remind you of the sacred mandate you were given on the day of your episcopal ordination: to lead the flock to Christ. Meditate on Proverbs 9:10: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom! Do not behave like frightened sheep, but as courageous shepherds. Do not be afraid of standing up and doing the right thing for the victims, for the faithful and for your own salvation. The Lord will render to every one of us according to our actions and omissions.

I am fasting and praying for you.

Arch. Carlo Maria Viganò Your former Apostolic Nuncio

November 13, 2018 Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini​

***
Edited to add:

The following tweeter feed might help give some insight as to what is currently happening at the USCCB meeting, https://twitter.com/hashtag/usccb18?src=hash .

Making sense of Vatican’s no-fly order to US bishops on abuse crisis
John L. Allen Jr. Nov 13, 2018 | https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2...s-no-fly-order-to-us-bishops-on-abuse-crisis/
...
Still, it’s difficult to explain why Rome singled out the American conference, putting them in the awkward position of explaining why their hands are tied but not those of their brother bishops in other parts of the world.
...
(As a footnote, it’s a bit curious that DiNardo was left to make that announcement, rather than French Archbishop Christoph Pierre, the Vatican ambassador to the U.S., who’s in Baltimore. If it’s a Vatican request, it’s not clear why the pope’s man in the country didn’t want to stand behind it.)

In much American media discussion on Monday, casual references to “the Vatican” standing in the way of the U.S. bishops abounded. However, the plain truth is that under Francis, the traditional structures of the Vatican have lost most of their power in favor of personal leadership by the pope himself.

Sooner or later, the question will become not where “the Vatican” stands, but the pontiff himself.

In the meantime, one hopes that bishops from the countries which lost the fight at the recent synod - the U.S., Australia, Ireland, the UK, Germany, Belgium, and other places that have lived the abuse crisis in full-blown form - are organizing ahead of the February meeting, so they can deliver a unified and effective message about the need for meaningful reforms.

In the absence of that, the fear would be for another Vatican meeting with an ambivalent and ambiguous outcome. Were that to happen, it could spell pastoral disaster for countries where the crisis is a real and present fact of life, including the United States.
​

This next article contains a short video of Cardinal DiNardo making the announcement about delaying the vote on sex abuse and Cardinal Cupich's following statements.

Vatican asks USCCB to delay vote on sex abuse response proposals
Posted on November 12, 2018 by Newsroom By Dennis Sadowski
Catholic News Service | https://cnstopstories.com/2018/11/1...o-delay-vote-on-sex-abuse-response-proposals/
​

Here is another tweeter feed that might help give some insight as to what is currently happening at the USCCB meeting, https://twitter.com/CatholicNewsSvc along with one more article from today,

Bishops’ abuse response must trump all other issues, advisory group says
Posted on November 13, 2018 by Newsroom By Carol Zimmermann
Catholic News Service | https://cnstopstories.com/2018/11/1...t-trump-all-other-issues-advisory-group-says/​

 

If the US Bishops do not heed the call of Vigano this will go down exactly as Dolours ventured. The Bishops are accountable to God first and above all things. My prayers are with them to do the right thing.

 

AED, Yes, this was told to me, and yes, it was extremely sad for me to experience. If I had not had a grace from Our Lord and the Gift of feeling His presence, I would have died of sorrow. At the time this was told to me I truly didn't know what He meant as things did not seem so bad to me in our Church, but I believe He meant this for our days. Just remembering this experience brings me to tears! I cannot express to you what this means to me. It is not the only time I experienced His sadness. Jesus wants souls and He is loosing so many!
God bless you.

 

I take it as His prophetic Word to you. There must be purification but I never expected this path of purification. I remember Padre Pio saying that Jesus said to him once: did you think my suffering end d on Calvary? No. I will be in agony until the end of the world.
This always tore at my heart. To think of Him having to suffer—in His sacramental Presence—and in His Body the Church. The actual crucifixion of the Bride must be very close. Fr Roux spoke of this coming some years ago. He said JPII knew it was coming.

 

I feel I must offer one more experience I had years ago to encourage everyone to pray more for our Priests - even just one more Hail Mary a day offered through the Immaculate Heart of our Mother Mary.

I was once shown a deep cliff and around it were many Priests just wandering about. They just looked at the ground and none noticed the precipice before them. Many came right up to the edge looking as though they were about to fall into it and they never even saw it. I knew I had to pray much for Priests.

 

JD Flynn (is he with Catholic News Service?) tweeted what each Bishop said during the discussion.

I suppose this shouldn't be surprising but it is:

"+Byrnes (coadjutor of Guam): there are not meaningful constraints on my predecessor, +Apuron, who is accused of abuse. I do not know where he is, and the ppl are struggling. "we're a small place and seem to be neglected," but there shld be constraints on bps accused of abuse."​

 

There is such a thing as a preference cascade, when those sitting on the fence sense that the ground is moving beneath their feet and that a new view of a situation is beginning to prevail over the preceding one. If such a tipping point is reached, it is to be expected that the great majority of US bishops will suddenly come together to oppose what does frankly smell like nothing other than covering-up and evasion. Even the indifferent like to be seen to be on the winning side.

 

We need a preference cascade NOW!

 

Unfortunately, such cascades can also go disastrously wrong. Our recent pro-abortion landslide here in Ireland was, I believe, an example of such an event. I don't believe there is as wholehearted a craving for baby-murder in Ireland as the results might suggest; we are not all turned into Aztecs, at least not yet. But, when it seemed to become inevitable that the Mollochists were going to win, many lukewarm voters decided to opt for what was little more to them than being on the winning side. They had better beware of being spat out.

I wouldn't interpret our sodomy marriage referendum in quite the same fashion. That had the primary engine of being falsely presented as being a matter of 'equality' and many believed they couldn't be against something like that, even if they found the proposal abhorrent. Being prey to such deceptions, apart from being wrong, also has a corrupting effect and may have opened up many to the even greater abomination to come.

 

This is very encouraging. I pray you are right.

 

Dolours, JD Flynn works for the Catholic News Agency. His twitter feed is also very informative on the USCCB meeting https://twitter.com/jdflynn. He also has the following,

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...aders-are-ignoring-why-sociologist-says-47293





USCCB meeting: What just happened, and what might happen next?

By Ed Condon and JD Flynn | https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...ust-happened-and-what-might-happen-next-30605
Baltimore, Md., Nov 12, 2018 / 04:09 pm (CNA).- (Please click on the link above for the article.)
​

***

Intense debate over handling of abuse scandal ensues at USCCB meeting

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/...f-abuse-scandal-ensues-at-usccb-meeting-31318
Baltimore, Md., Nov 13, 2018 / 07:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- More than 20 bishops and cardinals offered passionate interventions during an open floor discussion on the sex abuse crisis at the U.S. bishops’ meeting in Baltimore on Tuesday afternoon.

More bishops wanted to speak, but due to time constraints, their comments were reserved for the next morning.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), opened the discussions with the announcement that he had created a “deliberately small” task force, comprised of himself and the former presidents of the USCCB.

The task force, which includes DiNardo and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, and Archbishop Wilton Gregory, will work closely with the committees of the conference to examine instances of abuse and mishandling of abuse cases, and their work will culminate in a report presented at the next bishops’ meeting in June, DiNardo said.

Afterwards DiNardo opened the floor to any comments on the task force or the issue of the sex abuse crisis at large.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has been barred from public ministry in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for the mishandling and cover-up of abuse cases involving minors and priests there, opened up the comments from the bishops, urging them to seek a greater collegiality amongst themselves as “brother bishops.”

He said the bishops should look to the example of St. Charles Borromeo, who said “we are not bishops alone or separate, we belong to a college and have a responsibility to it.”

He also encouraged bishops to pray more together and to consider establishing houses of prayer for priests and bishops, similar to one found in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Finally, he urged the bishops to “not allow outside influences to interfere with or attempt to break bonds of ecclesial union” that they have with each other.

Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico then gave a brief intervention, in which he suggested that bishops look to their priests to know how the faithful are reacting to the crisis and for any suggestions about possible solutions.

“It occurs to me that we might benefit from the wisdom of our brother priests, they are our closest collaborators, by tapping them in a more formal way,” he said.

Following Wester, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco then gave a long intervention in which he described what he has been hearing from Catholics in his area.

“We’ve heard how important it is to listen to our people, I’ve held listening sessions in my own Archdiocese” regarding the abuse scandal, he said.

From this listening, Cordileone said he has found that Catholics tend to fall in one of two camps regarding the abuse crisis: the first camp believes that the Church is not talking about the real problem, which is the prevalence homosexuality among the clergy and its correlation with abuse, he said.

The second camp believes that the real problem is an all-male hierarchy, “because women would never have allowed this to happen,” and therefore women must be invited in to all levels of the clergy.

Cordileone, who clarified that he was merely reporting what he found among his people, said that both conclusions are overly simplistic, but neither are without some merit.

“We do sometimes act as a good old boys club,” he said, with problems of “cronyism, favoritism, and cover-up.” He urged the bishops to find solutions to these “legitimate concerns” of Catholics in the second camp.

When considering the first camp, Cordileone cautioned against the “overly simplistic” conclusion that homosexuality causes sexual abuse. That “obviously cannot be true” he said, as some priests with homosexual tendencies faithfully serve the Church, while some heterosexually priests serve the Church poorly.

Still, the concern “has some validity,” he said, pointing to a recently-published study by Father D. Paul Sullins, a Catholic priest and retired Catholic University of America sociology professor. Sullins’ analysis found a rising trend in abuse, and argued that the evidence strongly suggests links between sexual abuse of minors and two factors: a disproportionate number of homosexual clergy, and the manifestation of a “homosexual subculture” in seminaries.

“The worst thing we could do is discredit this study so we can ignore or deny this reality,” Cordileone said. “We have to lean into it...to ignore it would be fleeing from the truth.”

The archbishop recommended further studies into the correlation between homosexuality and sexual abuse, one that avoids “quick and easy answers” and would attempt to find the root causes of this correlation.

Cordileone’s was the first intervention met with applause from many bishops.
​

continued...

 

continued from above...

Another California bishop, Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles, followed Cordileone’s comments by asking about the status of the Vatican investigation into the accusations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and whether the bishops might “bring any respectful pressure to bear” to the Holy See on furthering the investigation.

DiNardo responded, saying that he knew that the four dioceses in which McCarrick had served had opened investigations, but he did not know of the status of a Vatican investigation on the matter.

In his intervention, Bishop Michael Burns of Guam asked about “meaningful constraints” on bishops accused of abuse, such as his predecessor Bishop Anthony S. Apuron, who was found guilty of sexual abuse of minors by a Vatican tribunal, but who has asked for an appeal.

“It’s been grating on the people of God” to have no concrete knowledge of the status of Apuron’s constraints, he said.

In his comments, Bishop Robert Daniel Conlon of Joliet, Illinois, said he agreed with an earlier suggestion of Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, that the remedy for the abuse crisis and accusations against bishops may already be found in the bishop’s charters and laws.

“People say the Church is hung up on sex, this is evidence of that,” he said regarding the debate about the sex abuse crisis. “We are capable of malfeasance in many other areas as well,” he said, and urged the bishops to consider more broadly the ways bishops may have gone wrong.

“I promised celibacy during (ordinations),” he added, “and I have to say I’m a little chagrined to be asked to sign something that says I will be accountable to certain standards.”

Bishop Andrew Cozzens of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis said in his following intervention that he wished to see more fraternal correction among the bishops. He asked that bishops seek out the counsel of the bishops in their region if they are considering resigning, and also that bishops fraternally correct bishops in their region if they believe they should resign.

“I dream of a day when we as brothers are strong enough to say - we think you should resign, even if he’s not ready to hear that,” he said. “Those are difficult conversations to have, nobody wants to have them, but they can be very important.”

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, a “small rural area” with a minority Catholic population, gave a notably strong intervention, in which he asked the bishops to consider how McCarrick got to be in the positions that he was “if we really believed that what was going on was wrong?”

“It’s part of our deposit of faith that we believe homosexual activity is immoral,” he said. “How did he get promoted if we are all of one mind that this is wrong? Do we believe the doctrine of the Church or not?”

Strickland said that while homosexual people are “children of God who deserve great care” and not personal condemnation, the Church should teach clearly that homosexual actions are sinful, and help people move from sin to virtue.

“There’s a priest that travels around saying that he doesn’t (believe this teaching), and he’s well promoted in various places,” Strickland said. “Can that be presented in our dioceses? That same-sex marriage is just fine and that the Church may one day grow to understand that? That’s not what we teach.”

Strickland’s intervention was also followed by applause from numerous bishops.

Bishop Thomas Daly of Spokane said he had heard from many concerned, faithful Catholic parents who want to encourage vocations in their children, but are growing impatient with a lack of answers on the abuse crisis from Church leadership.

It is a concern the bishops should “take very seriously,” he said. “My feeling is judging from their conversations, they’re running out of patience.”

DiNardo then commented that he personally reads “thousands” of letters that the “people of God” have sent to the USCCB.

“If there’s one thing that nags at everyone, it’s the Archbishop McCarrick thing,” he said. “It seems to be ubiquitous. This is the one that I think has to be addressed, it’s just bad for our people.”

In the next intervention, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, said he seconded an earlier suggestion from Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, that metropolitan bishops be given greater authority over the bishops in their region and the ability to conduct their own reviews and investigations.

“We have an existing structure but it needs to be empowered,” he said. He also added that it should be clarified which accusations against bishops and clergy should be made public - those that are deemed credible, or those that have been further substantiated.

He added that the media “has been very negative” about the Church following the crisis and has perpetuated a “myth” that nothing has changed since the 2002 Dallas Charter, and that the bishops must do a better job speaking out about what has already changed.

Archbishop George Lucas of Omaha, Neb., said in his intervention that the process for handling misconduct on the part of bishops must be made clear, transparent and expedient.

“How bishops are held accountable when there has been misconduct is not clear, it’s a process that happens sometimes, but it’s not timely, it’s not transparent,” he said.

He said that he was “very disappointed” by instructions from the Vatican to not hold votes on proposed changes, but said he saw it as an opportunity to be very clear with the Holy See about needs to be done at the meetings in February.

Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing, Michigan, gave a brief intervention in which he said he also favored the suggestions of strengthening the role of metropolitan bishops, and that it would likely be well-received in Rome.

Bishop Murry of Youngstown, Ohio said in his intervention that while lay people are angry, they want to help the Church, and the bishops should accept their help.

Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, Florida joked at the beginning of his comments that the bishops should be glad Donald Trump is president, otherwise the Church would be receiving even more attention and “bad press” than it already has.

He urged the bishops not to get “distracted” by the media, and not to give in to the “industry and addiction” of outrage. Most people are not hung up on the sex abuse crisis, he said.

“People are coming to Church, they're praying, they’re sending their kids to Catechism, the life of the Church is moving on. If you’re not reading the blogs, if you’re not watching cable TV, this is not front and center for most of our people,” he said.

“We’ve done a lot, we have to tell our story better and not get played in the outrage business and get back to what we’re supposed to be doing as pastors,” he said, to applause from some bishops.

Bishop George Thomas from Las Vegas followed Wenski, and said that he had heard from people who were “rightfully” angry and disappointed that the Vatican had put a hold on the votes of the bishop’s conference on any proposals regarding sex abuse.

“The perception is that justice delayed is justice denied,” he said. He said he still hoped the conference would hold an “advisory vote that reflects the gravity of the issue at hand, the urgency of the matter, the depth of the breach of trust…(in order to) remove a cancer and help heal this wound that is affecting so deeply the living body of Christ.”

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, where McCarrick had once served, provided an update on the two investigations ongoing in his diocese, which he said are moving along but can become complicated when they overlap.

He said the diocese is “committed” to sharing the findings with the Holy See. He added that if Catholic’s trust in the credibility of their bishops was so easily shattered by the sex abuse crisis, “what was there before? What was our credibility built on, that it could be so swept away?”

Cardinal William Levada, emeritus prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said in his intervention that the McCarrick situation may have been prevented if there were stronger investigations conducted when transferring bishops to different dioceses.

Bishop Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, Missouri reiterated in his interventions the “necessity” of the laity, who could serve as a “tremendous resource” in responding to the abuse crisis.

Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Oregon, said the abuse crisis has caused him to “take a real good hard look at myself and how I’m living my life as a bishop in the Church today,” spiritually and pastorally.

“Have we lost sight about what our mission is truly all about?” he said. “Our mission is to sanctify the world,” through shepherding and being close to the people.

“Reform begins with us individually,” he said.

Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, California said in his intervention that he disagreed with all of the proposals to strengthen the role of the metropolitan bishops, an effort which he said would be perceived by lay Catholics as too little, too late.

“Maybe that moment has passed and we’ve missed our opportunity to do that,” he said. “In the current time, the transparency and independent review seems to be more on the minds of the faithful. We have to continue to pursue what has been proposed by the committee.”

All other interventions were reserved for the following morning. Following an announcement about expected ice and snow, the bishops broke for the evening. Thursday is the final day for the fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which this year has focused almost exclusively on their response to the sex abuse crisis in the U.S. Church.
​

Edited to add:

DeGaulle,
Very good point and this sexual abuse crisis in the Church may encourage a cascade for the ordination of women priests.

 

Pope Francis appoints Archbishop Scicluna to top role in addressing abuse crisis

Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta arrives in Osorno, Chile, on June 14, beginning a pastoral mission to promote healing in the wake of a clerical sexual abuse crisis. (CNS photo/courtesy of Archdiocese of Santiago)


Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Charles Scicluna as secretary adjunct of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The pope’s decision gives the Maltese archbishop the lead role in the fight against abuse in the church and in the protection of minors.

The Vatican broke the news at midday on Nov. 13 in a statement adding that Archbishop Scicluna “will retain his role as archbishop of Malta.” Adjunct secretary is the joint number two position in the C.D.F., a senior role which he shares with the Italian archbishop Giacomo Morandi under the prefect of that congregation, the Spanish born Jesuit, Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer. By appointing Scicluna to this important position, Pope Francis is assigning him the lead role in the Vatican in dealing with all matters relating to the abuse crisis, suggesting his determination to deal decisively with the scandal.

An informed source told America that Archbishop Scicluna will divide his time between Rome and Malta, but whether that continues to be the situation remains to be seen.

This surprise announcement came as the Vatican prepares for an unprecedented summit meeting of the presidents of some 130 bishops conferences from all continents in February called by Pope Francis to address the question of the protection of minors in the church and the crucial issue of accountability.

Archbishop Scicluna has long been the face of the Catholic Church in the fight to eliminate the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults by clergy and its cover-up by bishops and heads of religious orders. He enjoys enormous credibility among both survivors and bishops worldwide for his work in this field.

Archbishop Scicluna has long been the face of the Catholic Church in the fight to eliminate the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults by clergy.
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Born in Toronto to Maltese parents, he returned with them to Malta as a child, where he grew up and was educated. After gaining degrees in civil and canon law, Pope John Paul II called then Monsignor Scicluna to work in the Vatican in 1995 in the Segnatura Apostolica, its Supreme Tribunal.

Then in 2002, as the abuse scandal erupted in the United States and other places, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the C.D.F., called the Maltese monsignor to work at his side as promoter of justice or chief prosecutor at the C.D.F. in dealing with cases of the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults by clergy. In the following 10 years no fewer than 3,000 priests were removed by Rome from ministry, and Archbishop Scicluna emerged as the public face of the Vatican in the fight against child abuse.

In April 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger sent Archbishop Scicluna to investigate allegations of abuse against Father Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ. He had just begun that investigation, listening to witnesses in New York when St. John Paul II died, but he continued his work. He returned to Rome on the eve of the 2005 conclave and reported back to Cardinal Ratzinger, who some days later was elected pope. His report soon led to the conviction and removal from public ministry of Father Degollado, a very powerful figure in the church who had many friends and defenders in the highest places in the Vatican.

The Maltese monsignor soon became the Pope Benedict’s right-hand man in implementing his “zero tolerance” policy against priests and religious who abuse minors and children. He was also one of those who ably defended Benedict in 2010 against the charges made in Germany that as archbishop of Munich he had re-assigned a priest abuser within the diocese. Archbishop Scicluna played a key role in drafting the new norms for the church’s handling of questions of abuse of minors by priests, norms that are now meant to be operational throughout the Catholic Church, even if not all conferences are living up to this standard.

Such fearless action did not always make him friends in the Vatican, and this is said to be one of the reasons why Benedict XVI appointed Archbishop Scicluna as coadjutor to the archbishop of Malta on Oct. 6, 2012. Two months later, however, the same pope appointed him to the board of the C.D.F. enabling him to continue to make his contribution in dealing with abuse cases.

After becoming pope, Francis began to assign important roles to the Maltese prelate. In 2014, he sent Archbishop Scicluna to Geneva to testify before the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child and in April of that year sent him to Scotland to collect testimonies of abuse against Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the former archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, who resigned in 2013 after admitting to sexual misconduct. As a result of his investigation, Francis deprived the late Cardinal O’Brien of all his rights and duties as a cardinal, and only left him with the title.


In February 2015, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Scicluna as archbishop of Malta. Later, he appointed him as president of the C.D.F.’s Tribunal of Appeals, dealing with the appeals from clergy following the first C.D.F. judgment against them. That tribunal, composed of seven senior Vatican officials, hears around five cases at its monthly session.

Earlier this year, soon after returning from his visit to Chile, Pope Francis sent Archbishop Scicluna to listen to victims of abuse by the predator priest (now laicized) Fernando Karadima. The Maltese archbishop began that work in New York and then traveled to Santiago. He reported back to the pope, giving him a 2,300 page dossier.

As a result of that investigation, Francis first sent a letter of apology to the faithful and victims in Chile and then invited some of the main survivors to meet him in the Vatican and reside there as his guests. Subsequently, the pope summoned all the Chilean bishops to Rome for a meeting, at the end of which they all submitted their resignations. He has already accepted nine of them and removed two bishops from the priesthood in addition to the former priest Karadima.

Today’s announcement reveals the trust Pope Francis has in Archbishop Scicluna. He has called him to work part-time in the Vatican as his closest advisor in handling the abuse crisis and, according to sources, may at some future day give him even more responsibility.

https://www.americamagazine.org/fai...hop-scicluna-top-role-addressing-abuse-crisis