UNITED STATES
U.S. Catholic
By Nicholas Cafardi
Guest blog
Rejoicing over the recent resignation of Bishop Robert Finn as the bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph is unseemly. I take no joy in another person’s distress, and I wonder what the church will do with a bishop who is only 62 years old and has 13 years of active episcopal ministry left. What does the church do with a bishop without a diocese?
Bernard Law, when he first stepped down from the See of Boston, was supposed to live a quiet life of prayer as chaplain for the Alma Mercy Sisters, but we all know how that worked out. A similar call to Finn for a cushy Roman job is out of the question. There is a different pope now.
This is but one of the paradoxes in Finn’s case. Another is: Why did he choose to ignore the Dallas Charter, the compact that he had with his fellow bishops, not to allow sexually abusive priests to remain in ministry? That was a promise that the entire body of American bishops made to the faithful in the United States. How could Finn think that he knew better than his fellow bishops? Did he ever consider the effects of his breach on the rest of the American church, namely the persistence of the doubt that if one bishop was breaking the Charter, others probably were as well, but were just better at not getting caught?
And another paradox: Why did his fellow bishops not call him out publicly for his dishonor? After all, it was their joint promise that he broke. Where was the fraternal correction from the American bishops?In Germany, when the Bishop of Bling, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of the diocese of Limburg, spent $43 million dollars to renovate his palace, the outcry from the German bishops was public and immediate. Within four months, Tebartz-van Elst was gone.
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