ST. LOUIS (MO)
Waiting for Godot to Leave
Kevin O’Brien
In this case, she focuses on Archbishop Carlson, who shocked normal people (though, sadly, not enough Catholics) when he said, in a sworn deposition, that he wasn’t sure if he knew that child rape was a crime or not when he was 40 years old and auxiliary bishop of St. Paul, and who has since insisted that he misunderstood the question put to him, a claim that a simple reading of the relevant part of the deposition does not support.
I’ve tried to be fair to Archbishop Carlson, who is my archbishop, and who (ironically) was actually waving red flags about the abusive priest in question back in St. Paul, and who did more than most others in the chanceries at the time, though certainly not enough. That he should compound his bad testimony (which amounts, in Christian terms to bad “witness”) with a denial that should rather have been an apology, is a shame. That he should go so far as to attempt damage control by distributing a letter to every parish in the archdiocese (when he’s never done that here on any doctrinal or moral issue), repeating his rather far-fetched denial while boasting of his own value as a bishop, is sad.
Hamilton reminds her readers – rightly enough – that we are not to put our trust in princes or in the sons of men (Ps. 146:3), but in the Son of Man; that we are all sinners, including our bishops, and that we must therefore avoid a kind of clericalism that serves only to bring us down when our clergy lets us down (as they inevitably do).
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