BALTIMORE (MD)
Crux
June 17, 2019
By Christopher White
When the U.S. Catholic bishops gathered for their semi-annual meeting last week, the burning outsider question was what steps they would take to combat the clerical sexual abuse scandals that are once again scarring the Church in America.
For insiders, however, that question took on a highly specific focus: Would anyone finally sit in Ted McCarrick’s chair?
In reality, there is no chair formally designated for the disgraced former priest and cardinal whose downfall opened the floodgates for the latest wave of the abuse crisis, but, symbolically, his empty chair during recent meetings has come to represent something more.
McCarrick’s absence – once a towering figure in this august body – was a reminder of the betrayal many feel, and his name has become synonymous with the failings of the collective body of bishops and the source of rage for Catholics across the country.
In a room full of hundreds of chairs – none of which are actually reserved – one chair was just be assumed to be off-limits. It was his chair, where he had sat for years.
As a reporter focused on the Catholic Church, many people often ask me what it’s like to cover the U.S. bishops. Each year they hold two national meetings – gathering every November in Baltimore for a general assembly, and again in June at a rotating location – and making sense of their seating habits has been just one facet of coming to understand the customs and routines of this body of men.
At the level of public perception, the conference is often taken to be the governing body of the Catholic Church in America. In reality, the conference has little real power, since under Church law there’s no authority between the individual bishop and the pope. Nevertheless, decisions taken here matter, because most bishops make a good-faith effort to abide by them.
There are 441 Catholic bishops in the U.S., more than 270 of whom are in active ministry, making the U.S. body one of the largest conferences in the world. Retired members are also invited to attend – although after a decision taken at last week’s meetings, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), can now bar emeriti bishops who have been removed from office for grave reasons.
Ann Rodgers, the director of communications for the diocese of Pittsburgh, told me that the work of “mapping the room” where the U.S. bishops meet is one of the first essential tasks during the formal meetings of the USCCB.
Rodgers, who began attending these meetings in 1988 when she was a newspaper reporter and since going to work for a diocese in 2013 has helped the USCCB’s communication team when the bishops get together, said that as soon as the meetings get underway she and several other staffers go row by row to determine who is occupying each seat.
Once the chart is completed, USCCB president Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and General Secretary Monsignor Brian Bransfield draw on that list when bishops hold up a card seeking to make an intervention during the meeting.
“Sometimes you watch the president calling on someone ten rows back and you might think, ‘Gosh, he has a great memory.’ In reality, he’s using the list,” said Rodgers.
The seating chart also serves other purposes – namely, to locate bishops when the hundreds of interview requests from reporters like myself are submitted.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.