Experts: Archbishop blessed with celestial job security

By Kevin Fagan
SFGate
April 18, 2015

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Experts-Archbishop-blessed-with-celestial-job-6209028.php

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wants to foster appreciation of the traditions of Catholicism. Photo by Michael Macor

All those praying that Pope Francis will take notice of their pleas and bounce Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone from his post in San Francisco had better settle in for a lot of time on their figurative knees.

Just about the last thing the Vatican ever does, experts say, is strip a bishop of his job because of political trouble in the pews — such as that being caused by a group of more than 100 local Catholics so upset about Cordileone’s conservative policies that they took out a full-page open letter in The Chronicle last week asking the pope to replace him.

“It’s so unusual for a bishop to be removed from office by the pope that there is a Latin term for it,” said the Rev. James Bretzke, professor of moral theology at Boston College. “It’s promoveatur ut amoveatur, which means, 'Let him be promoted so that he can be removed.’

“That’s the way it’s been for centuries. And that’s the way it is now.”

Church watchers say that’s how St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke wound up being “promoted” to a legal post in the Vatican in 2008, four years after declaring that he would refuse communion to pro-abortion-rights presidential candidate John Kerry, among other provocations. And it’s reportedly how Bishop Joseph Martino was allowed in 2009 to gracefully retire at 63 — 12 years before the usual retirement age for bishops — after alienating his flock in Scranton, Pa., by espousing authoritarian views and closing nearly half the schools and parishes in his diocese.

“People are free to complain to the Vatican about bishops, but there is no formal process for removing them,” said Patricia Miller, an author who writes nationally on Catholic issues. “You can lobby it, and if you have the Vatican’s ear because you are a big donor or someone with big influence, you might get heard some. But the Vatican is not a democracy. It is literally a feudal court, a monarchy.

Pope calls the shots

“There is no expectation of transparency there,” Miller said. “Pope Francis is trying to open it up ever so slightly — he’s created a layperson committee now looking into sex abuse in the church — but in the end, he makes all the decisions.”

So does that mean he has heard the cries from San Francisco and is ready to act?

“The short answer is no,” said Miller.

“The pope is kind of like the president,” she said. “He has staff who hear things, so I’m sure that likewise someone in the Vatican has heard all of what’s going on in San Francisco. But does the pope himself know? There’s just no way of knowing.”

The Vatican’s leadership office in the United States, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, referred all questions last week to the Vatican, where officials could not be reached for comment.

Standing firm

As for Cordileone, he shows no sign of backing down. He has maintained since he was appointed to his San Francisco post in 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI that his goal in emphasizing traditional church doctrine is to foster a greater appreciation of Catholicism.

In doing so, he’s pushed for teachers and staffers at Catholic schools to agree to a morality code that calls sex outside marriage and homosexual relations “gravely evil.” This week, he’ll in in Washington to take part in a rally backing a traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

The San Francisco Archdiocese issued a statement calling last week’s full-page ad “a misrepresentation of Catholic teaching,” and saying the signers don’t speak for the city’s Catholic community.

The Vatican has been known to stand by even in cases where its bishops become embroiled in scandal. Thousands of people, for example, have signed petitions asking the national Catholic leadership to force the resignation of Bishop Robert Finn, of Kansas City-Saint Joseph, Mo., who in 2012 became the first U.S. bishop to be convicted of failing to report suspected child sex abuse by a priest to police. He is still in office.

Sent to Rome

In St. Louis, those who reviled Burke consider his transfer to Rome a major victory. They took particular pleasure last year when now-Cardinal Burke was demoted to a ceremonial post as patron of the sovereign military order of Malta after publicly criticizing Francis for his statements professing a more open attitude than previous popes.

“Not a week goes by even now where someone doesn’t say to us, 'Oh, thank goodness Burke is gone,’” said David Clohessy of St. Louis, national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, who had advocated for his ouster. “It became very clear to us that once you are a bishop, you are pretty much untouchable. Almost never do any of them get disciplined, demoted or even denounced.”

The most prominent example of a bishop taking a dive publicly was when Boston Archbishop Bernard Law resigned his post in 2002 after church documents showed he had apparently covered up sex abuse by priests in his archdiocese. The hit was not lasting, though.

Two years later, Pope John Paul II appointed him archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome. He held that post until he retired in 2011 at age 80.