By Mark Guydish
Times-Leader
September 1, 2009
http://www.timesleader.com/opinion/columnists/guydish/Time_to_move_forward_after_bishop_rsquo_s_news_MARK_GUYDISH_OPINION_09-01-2009.html
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| Mark Guydish covers education for the Times Leader |
So Bishop Joseph Martino leaves, and the chatter begins.
Were the health issues cited as the reason for leaving real or a cover?
Was he forced out by dissatisfied clerics higher in the church hierarchy?
Did he simply do what he was going to do all long: Come in as the designated hatchet man, close schools and churches, and then skip town, his anointed task completed?
Did he or someone else decide that, regardless of his willingness to stay, his actions had hurt and angered too many for him to ever effectively lead this flock?
Did the secular media or angry parishioners drive him out unjustly with relentless, sometimes harsh criticism?
Was he simply too thin-skinned, or too much the bookworm (as he called himself Monday) to cope with the real world on the level his job demanded?
Did he botch diocesan financing so thoroughly a new person had to be brought it?
I can tell you two things for certain, from those I’ve talked to over the years. His health concerns were real, and dissatisfaction with the way he did his job ran through the clergy as well as the lay followers. Other than that, I’d be giving idle speculation.
And it’s speculation both unhelpful and unnecessary. The man has stepped down, the position will be filled.
I’m not sure what community good was gained when media rushed Friday to confirm his resignation two days before the formal announcement, but it almost certainly did no harm either. So that, too, seems a moot point.
There will be plenty of post-mortems, and an excessive flurry of speculation on replacements. But I agree wholeheartedly with one person I talked to as it all unfolded, we probably gain more if we ask less about what happened and start asking more about what happens next.
Need for reconciliation
Bishop Martino was surprisingly aloof, considering his past behaviors before coming to Scranton. He was poor at public relations. He made decisions that were, by and large, necessary and painful, and that inevitably hurt many with deep attachment to memories created in physical structures that stood for decades, places built by ancestors and supported by generations of proud – and often poor -- families.
He stuck to a fiercely principled philosophy and alienated those who didn’t fit that narrower application of Catholic teaching, but never remotely did he veer from those teachings.
In some ways, I suspect, as one religious scholar once put it while discussing the likely impact of a new pope, that “the office made the man.” It may well be that Martino didn’t shape the office of bishop. The demands of running a diocese in transition may have shaped him, much against his own intentions.
But all this is moot. He’s done. His legacy will sort itself out. His actions will no longer directly mold the diocese. Which goes back to my point: We need to look forward, and we need to look for reconciliation.
I think it is more important for Roman Catholics in the 11-county diocese to contemplate the way ahead, not the path behind. Do we gain anything by clinging to resentment and frustrations fostered over the last six years? Or are we better off figuring out how to make it all work now that we’re here?
It’s valuable to discuss lessons learned, but it’s even more valuable to apply them. Catholicism teaches us to consider consequences, not surrender to the urge of the moment. We are told by Christ to think ahead for the greater good.
Let’s do that.
Contact: mguydish@timesleader.com
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