UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Michael Sean Winters | Apr. 22, 2015 Distinctly Catholic
Yesterday, I wrote about the news that Bishop Robert Finn had resigned as the Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph. I mentioned that the accountability of bishops is especially important when it comes to the issue of clergy sex abuse, but that issue does not exhaust the issue: Bishops can fail in many ways, as can we all, but they are in positions of leadership, with enormous power over the people they are supposed to serve. How can and should the Church deal with bishops who are simply not working out?
There is not doubt that changes must be made. Today we live under what one friend calls the “reverse Caiaphas” policy. Caiaphas, the high priest, said that it was better for one man to die that the whole people might be saved. Today, when it comes to the accountability of bishops, the default position is that it is better for the people to die so that one man might be saved.
First, I should note that most bishops do just fine. Some may be more pro-active than others. In some dioceses, there is a sense of vibrancy and activity and in others not much is going on, but instances of actual failed leadership are few. Not to put too fine a point on it, but whatever one thinks of the leadership of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone or St. Paul Archbishop John Nienstedt, they are the only two bishops in the country who have people taking out full page ads asking for their removal, or otherwise writing letters to the pope, the nuncio, and the Congregation for Bishops. There are 270 active bishops in the United States, so having two that have not managed to be a good fit for their dioceses is not such a high rate.
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