BishopAccountability.org
	Catholic Church First Must Get Past Denial By Peter Boulay Statesman Journal April 28, 2010 http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20100428/OPINION/4280424/1049 The dark cloud that has descended on the Roman Catholic Church has elements of sex abuse as its most prominent feature, but the American bishops' malfeasance through cover-up is of greater weight. Anyone who thinks the crisis is close to being over is naive. The Catholics in the pews are fighting mad. They see the continuing conduct of the bishops, including their failure to admit their cover-ups, as schismatic: The bishops have willfully separated themselves from the main body of the church and are lost in their own black cloud of denial. One archbishop has canceled his subscription to the local newspaper in an overly righteous foot-stamping tantrum. Denial needs an arch-villain, so blame the press. Just what did Pope Benedict XVI mean when, en route to the United States, he told the press, "The church in western Europe and the United States is dying"? Was that an early distraction tossed out to fool the media? The death knell for American Catholicism is most likely premature. Something of that church — it's not clear what — may yet survive the present crisis. But it will probably not match today's format: The Curia and the world's bishops reigning supreme in their own positions, with the laity humbly chanting, Miseremini mei, be kind to me. The sidebar story is the American bishops' unpatriotic behavior. John F. Kennedy — with questions swirling about him regarding his patriotism versus his Catholicism — could not have been elected if this all had happened in the run-up to his election as president. American Bishops — educated to respect the American rule of law like the rest of us Catholics — flagrantly and en masse aided and abetted the priests' criminal sexual abuse of minors. They failed to report it as required in every jurisdiction in the United States, and they re-assigned abusive priests to positions where it would be easy to strike again. That is a schism that has split the American Catholic Church right down the middle. And it is a schism of the bishops. If the bishops do not turn it around it is likely to result in two American Catholic churches. One will continue to accept a Vatican mindset of absolutism, censorship, denigration of women and the denial of a meaningful role to the laity. The other will reject this Vatican mindset. The new church will not care that Rome denies it and confounds it. Of course Rome will do that, but perhaps in a century or two — or five or six — we might all get back together again — with Rome having cleansed itself. Could any of this be averted? Yes, let Pope Benedict resign, but not before acknowledging the illness of the American bishops and urging them to follow his example. Contact: peterboulay@hotmail.com
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.