NEBRASKA
National Catholic Reporter
Robert McClory | Jun. 18, 2014
CRISIS OF CATHOLIC AUTHORITY: FAITH AND POWER IN THE DIOCESE OF LINCOLN, NEBRASKA
By Rachel Pokora
Published by Paragon House, $19.95
Crisis of Catholic Authority is a kind of ecclesiastical horror story. It relates what can happen when an autocratic hierarch chooses to exercise his supreme, punitive power over some of his subjects. No one on this earth will restrain him, neither the priests of his diocese, nor his fellow bishops in the U.S., nor the high authorities in Rome, not even the pope himself. And like some ancient gothic curse, this awesome penalty has acquired a life of its own, continuing in full force for 18 years, outliving the resignation of the bishop who pronounced it, still in effect to this day and into the foreseeable future.
The bishop is Fabian Bruskewitz, who ruled the diocese of Lincoln, Neb., from 1992 to 2012. Those immediately affected by excommunication in 1996 were some 45 members of the Nebraska chapter of the Call to Action organization who happened to live in the Lincoln diocese. They were given one month to resign from the accursed group, at which time the penalty would automatically go into effect. Also presumably affected were any other Call to Action members who would move to Lincoln in the future without renouncing their membership.
It should be noted that no other U.S. bishop has followed Bruskewitz’s lead in all these years, though the bishop himself has become a kind of folk hero to supporters of Mother Angelica’s EWTN television station and other far-right conservative Catholic organizations.
Author Rachel Pokora narrates the story clearly, without rancor or bitterness. She is a professor of communications at Nebraska Wesleyan University who moved to Lincoln after Bruskewitz struck. She chose to join CTA’s Nebraska chapter after experiencing the rigidity and extreme conservatism that marked parish life in the diocese, and she later served for several years as the chapter’s president.
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