Chapter Six: Conclusions and Future Studies

I. General Discussion

In his book on the Gospel and Epistles of John, world famous Johannine scholar Raymond E. Brown (1979) analyzes the struggles and tensions that existed in the early days of the Christian Church. Brown (1979) argues that the Gospel should be read on three levels. First, the Gospel describes the way John conceived of and presented Jesus to the community of followers in the last third of the first century. Second, using source analysis, it reveals John’s understanding of Jesus before writing the Gospel. Third, it offers a “limited means for reconstructing the ministry and message of the historical Jesus” (17).  Brown (1979) concludes his study on John’s gospel by focusing on the tensions that were created when church scholars chose to keep John in the same canon with Mark, Matthew, and Luke. To resolve these tensions through the use of simple resolutions would be “unfaithful to the whole New Testament” (164).  Brown (1979) writes,

The Great Church ... whether consciously or uncon­sciously, has chosen to live with tension.  It has not chosen a Jesus who is either God or man but both; it has chosen not a Jesus who is either virginally conceived as God’s Son or pre-existent as God’s Son but both; not either a Spirit who is given to an authoritative teaching magisterium or the Paraclete-teacher who is given to each Christian but both; not a Peter or a Beloved Disciple but both.” (163-164)

Thus, when Christians choose to live with tension, they are being true to their scriptural and ecclesiological roots.[214] The difficulties of dealing with the tensions of being both a social and divine institution have been discussed throughout this study.

In addition, tensions can be viewed within the private/public realm. The relationships identified and explored in chapters four and five—bishops with other bishops, bishops with priest-perpetrators, and bishops with victims represent a combination of the private and public arenas. Not discussed, but obvious, are the public relation­ships of bishops with the faithful and of the faithful with one another.[215] The second underlying assumption—the permanency of the priesthood—is perceived of as both private and public for the “call” to the priesthood is perceived of as private, but the priest must be incardinated in a diocese and subject to the bishops and the public canons of the Church.

The public dimensions to “the largest religious denomination in the United States” (Gelm 1994) are multiple. The U.S. Catholic Bishops in this normative institution (Etzioni 1975)[216] constantly enter into the public arena and via the NCCB issue statements and episcopal letters on a wide variety of social issues—abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, fair labor laws and wages, immigration, migration, and refugees, nuclear arms, and world peace.[217] To make public statements on moral, ethical and social issues, the bishops often have lively debates and strenuous disagreements. On many issues, the U.S. Catholic bishops are a formidable force with which to be reckoned (Shannon 1993, O’Sullivan 1993). Of course, one of the reasons Church leaders came under such heavy criticism once clergy abuse cases became publicized was because of the Church’s public positions and mandates on many political, socioeconomic, moral and ethical issues, as opposed to its private dealings with the sexually abusive behavior of the priests. The seeming dichotomy delivered a crushing blow to the hierarchy of the Church. Bishops and their dioceses were held institutionally accountable to victims and their families. To the parishioners and the Church community, as well as to non-offending priests, bishops had to make statements of apology. “Its failure to confront the crisis within its clergy” (Wilkes 1993) left parishioners, Church members, including priests (Dreese 1994, Connors 1994), and the general public feeling betrayed. “Outrage and bitter recriminations are being visited upon bishops for inept handling of these problems” (Quinn 1993).

This study gave bishops an opportunity to present their side of the clergy abuse issue. In the main, their explanations focused on the private realms, which included arguments that sexual abuse was a private, moral failing that called for a spiritual solution (prayer, the sacrament of penance, and/or retreat). The bishops handled moral failings and/or discipline problems privately within their own dioceses. Also, the bishops’ responses paralleled the way society, especially Catholic families, responded to such incidences. Also, they were ignorant of the addictive nature of sexual abuse and the long-term damaging effects on the abused. But, the bishops also argued that to disclose priests’ sexual misconduct in a public arena would bring scandal to the Catholic Church, which bishops were committed to preserve.

Brown (1979) argues that to grapple with issues of the human condition is to be true to one’s scriptural and ecclesiological roots. But it seems that some, perhaps most, U.S. Catholic Bishops of late have chosen to avoid tension and to avoid dialogue on the issues with which the Catholic community—laity and priests—struggles.[218] The following discussion highlights what seems to be the bishops’ refusal to take action on issues that pertained to the institutional and human tensions discussed throughout this study.

In 1967, the U. S. Catholic Bishops “… voted to conduct an extensive study of the life and ministry of the America priest” (Kennedy 1971, preface). The study was organized under the NCCB’s Committee on Pastoral Research and Practices and ad hoc subcommittees on the ministry and life of American priests were formed, one of which was on psychology. The objective of the psychological study was:

… to allow the priests of the United States to speak for themselves, and to help them articulate what they themselves cannot fully express about their life and their ministry, to understand, at as deep a level as possible, and in a language as clear as possible, what kind of men American priests are. (19)

The sought for clarity of language was achieved in the presentation of the findings, making it fairly easy for the bishops to understand the descriptions of developed, developing, under­developed, and maldeveloped priests. First, a word about the study’s design and methodology.[219] The design was based on a developmental framework, which meant the researchers perceived the subjects in terms of health rather than sickness, which surely helped when presenting the findings to the NCCB. Kennedy (1971) writes,

… instead of choosing a system of psychiatric classifica­tions, or emphasizing a diagnostic method that would lead to an emphasis on possible pathological features of the population, the interview was designed as  a vehicle for understanding a normal group of men in the language of growth and development. This flowed from the basic understanding that the subjects of the research were normally functioning individuals who would best be understood in a positive rather than potentially negative language. (20)

The methodology (Kennedy 1971, 29-53) was based on a decision to ensure that priests who volunteered for the interview would consider it a “highly dignified approach to me as a person” (29). In addition to in-depth interviews, the researchers used a variety of other psychological instruments.[220]

The scientific underpinnings for the developmental framework came from Erik Erikson (1963), whose multi-stage schema follows a person through his psychosocial development. Because Erikson (1963) used scientific and literary terms to describe the eight stages, the findings of the 1971 study are readily understandable.

The findings in 1971 study indicated that American priests were:

Developed                       7%

Developing                    18%

Underdeveloped             66%

Maldeveloped                   8%

Two-thirds of the priests in the study were underdeveloped, that is they did not live fully human lives, which in turn affected their ability to live a full religious life and to productively minister to the faithful. The under-developed priests, the largest group and the one that most often indicated a desire for growth and maturity, had not matured to a level that would be expected of men their chronological age and with their vocational responsibility. Following are but a few of the descriptions of underdeveloped priests. They:

¨      lack a proper integration of emotional and intellectual growth (8)

¨      have not successfully passed through adolescence (8)

¨      are adept at covering up their underdevelopment through the skilled use of high order defenses, such as intellectualization, to handle the problems of psychological underdevelopment (8)

¨      impose a consistent view of themselves even when their understanding of themselves really does not match what they are like in reality (9)

¨      are good at not looking at the gaps between what they are really like and what they perceive themselves to be like (9)

¨      lack relationships with other people and have few close friends

¨      are uneasy about intimacy (9) (as used by Erikson 1963)

¨      have not worked through the problems of responsible closeness (9)

¨      have difficulty with their own personal identity (9)

¨      have not achieved an integrated psychosexual identity (11)

For men who were supposed to live a spiritual life, it was significant that these underdeveloped priests had “a general inability to articulate a deep level of personal religious faith” (11). Kennedy (1971) writes,

This combination of factors, personal immaturity, a poorly realized religious faith, and the protective function of the priesthood role for the underdeveloped, affects markedly their capacity to implement religious values in their lives. (12)

While the priests did not suffer from major psychological problems, one would have anticipated that the priests would not have suffered from underdevelopment because, as Kennedy (1971) writes, “ ...   the population of priests is carefully selected and supervised during a long training period. One would presume with this care, psychological underdevelopment would have been noticed and would have been remedied” (7).[221]

Given the personal, socio-psychological, and spiritual implications of the fact that “(a) large portion of the priests in this cross-sectional sample has not developed to full maturity” (7), one wonders why the bishops did little, if anything, with the recommendations from the psychological study that they commissioned. A variety of reasons come to mind. They may have:

¨      distrusted the overall findings and/or found them to be too intimidating

¨      been intellectually and/or emotionally uncomfortable with interplay between religion and science

¨      been suspicious of the scientific and/or psychological underpinnings of the study[222]

¨      found troubling the interplay between the psychological needs of the priests and organizational needs of the Church

¨      thought the dualistic form of the questions and the need to make an either/or choice were too simplistic, too extreme, or too narrow

¨      met with such opposition, dissension, and/or disapproval among the bishops on the NCCB Committee on Pastoral Research and Practices that it would have been difficult to move forward with the preliminary discussions needed before any decisions could be made concerning the two questions and the follow-up recommendations.

Speculating beyond this as to the reasons why the 1971 psychological study was not followed up is not warranted. But it will be helpful and germane to this study to discuss what the bishops’ inaction suggests about the structure of organizational Catholic Church.

In Dulles’s (1974/1987) discussion of the various models[223] of the Church he begins by focusing on the strengths of the Church as an institution. In Vatican I language, the Church is a “‘perfect society’” in the sense that it is subordinate to no other and lacks nothing for its own institutional completeness” (39). The Church as society focuses on its visible structures and “the rights and powers of its officers” (39), which have led the Church throughout its history and its “prescribed forms of public worship” (40). Dulles (1974/1987) argues that while the Church has institutional structures, which have facilitated the Church’s effectiveness in society, the Church is not a vehicle for institutionalism, which Dulles (1974/1987) says “is a deformation that has unfortunately affected the Church at certain times of its history, and one that remains in every age a real danger to the institutional Church” (40). Later, when evaluating the models (190-203), Dulles states that each makes some significant contribution. The institutional model highlights the Church as “structured community,” but it can conflict with other models, as when it is “rigid, doctrinaire, and conformist” (194). Dulles goes so far as to say the institutional model cannot be taken as primary because “institutions are subordinate to persons, structures are subordinate to life” (198). The actions/inactions of the Bishops regarding the 1971 study are disturbing precisely because they seem to indicate that the institution was subordinated to the needs of the priests, especially the underdeveloped who made up the major part of the subjects.

The recommendations could have been addressed fairly easily, but first the bishops had to answer two questions, which focus on how an institution resolves the problems inherent in being a human institution. The questions deal with how to maximize institutional goals and at the same time maximize the human resources within the institution. Or as Greeley (1970) puts it, “The critical question for all human communities is not whether they can survive without institutional structures, but whether they can develop structures to serve the welfare of the human persons who belong to them” (26). The critical questions for the bishops meant to set priorities on institutional goals and on their human resources. 

First, the bishops had to determine their overall goals and expectations for American priests. More simply stated than accom­plished to be sure, but the vibrancy of institutional life depends on not only answering these questions, but asking and answering them repeatedly as the structure and the environment of the institution change. de Haas (1972) writes, “The process of institutionalization is actually a double process of and deinstitutionalization and re-institutionalization” (18). After determining Church’s priorities, the bishops had to answer two other questions that follow from the implications of the commissioned psychological study. Kennedy (1971) writes,

Do you put first priority on assisting American priests to achieve greater personal maturity and, therefore, greater effectiveness as priests?

Do you rather put priority on American priests’ adjusting themselves to the expectations of the institutional priesthood even at the price of not developing themselves? (173)

The bishops had to determine: would they put first the priests’ personal growth or choose the second because the bishops had “institutional expectations of the priesthood, the conditions which, if observed readily, will minimize the stress in administering the activity of priests so that it fits into the pattern of organizational needs” (Kennedy 1971, 173). The bishops’ apparent refusal to answer these questions is significant, especially in light of the clergy sexual abuse crisis that had its roots in the early 1970s. Later in this chapter, I argue that the bishops need to return to the “drawing board” and address these issues.

The dilemma of managing personnel so that “what contributes most effectively to personal growth also contributes to the work of the organization” (174) is always deeply challenging. Kennedy (1971) writes,

The definition and resolution of these expectations regarding the priesthood and the work of preaching the Gospels is at the heart of understanding the problem uncovered by this investigation. (174)

AUX4, a former rector of a seminary, said, “Underdeveloped sexuality … we have to deal with that better because it can be confusing and what we are at 25 is not what we are at 36, and not what we are at 50.” AUX4 said that part of the reason the bishops did not give to the study the attention it deserved was because of their “… inability to figure all of that out and to see what the implications of that were.” However, on the initial subcommittee on psychology with Kennedy were many highly regarded psycholo­gists[224] and assisting in the in-depth study were numerous consultants and specialists.[225] And, as stated above, the report was easily accessible and written using terms of human growth and development. The theoretical framework was developmental; thus the researchers presented their findings in terms of the subjects’ overall personal growth and development and not in terms of sicknesses and pathologies (see Kennedy 1971, 17-27).

At the risk of Monday morning quarterbacking, referring to the Kennedy study (1971) AUX2 said,

…it gave clear evidence that we had big problems. The Bishops—it astounded me at the time, I was still kind of new in the Conference—they just totally refused to look at those studies. And if they had done something right then to meet the problems that were revealed by those studies, we probably could have avoided some of the problems that we got into.

B16, who went away from its reading “kind of evaluating myself,” agreed that the bishops chose to ignore the findings and offered an explanation:

Nothing was done. … I guess … They weren’t working that closely together, I don’t think, on anything. They were working on the internal working of their dioceses. 

This statement supports the autonomy concept that all the bishops cited as a reason for not addressing clergy abuse as a national issue. But priests’ human growth and development is an issue that needed to be addressed on a national NCCB level with the individual dioceses implementing the specific recommendations.

Another bishop discussed the study and said that it deserved more recognition than it received, especially in dealing with the issue of undeveloped sexuality in seminary training. AUX4 suggested that one of the reasons bishops have a hard time dealing with basic human/sexual issues is:

… partially because it is the theology of priesthood, which has canonically spoken of the state of perfection and or some of the static terms and there fore allowed people to put the priest on a pedestal.  Or maybe insisted that the priest be put on a pedestal.

The idea of being “ordinary men” but called to live a life of perfection has always been, at a minimum, intimidating and stressful. Kennedy (1971) writes,

The expectations made on the personal life of the priest have shaped his education, his style of living, and his mode of relationship to others. But priests are ordinary men and they can only react to this demanding environment with their ordinary human powers. (3)

This concept of an idealized life ties in with the complexity of being “ordinary men” but being “special” in the eyes of the laity that is addressed at the beginning of the book. About priests, Kennedy 91971) writes:

They have been encouraged to look on themselves as separate, called to a very high vocation of service, and asked to transform their own personalities into that of Jesus Christ. … marked by sincerity and good will in trying to meet the expectations of their role as priests, (they) cannot shatter or transcend  the bonds of their own humanity in the process. (5-6)

AUX4 said that the clergy were coming to a recognition of their humanness that was not promulgated in the theology of the priesthood.

And as we have allowed ourselves to think through God’s humanized presence, we have the clergy, priesthood, religious life have become humanized as well, and we can do it now more honestly than our theology allowed us to do.  That’s at least one piece of it.

AUX4’s statement is important because it specifies the tension that exists between what the priests were taught and what they have come to understand about themselves.

AUX2 recognized that the NCCB could have addressed the issue as a national priority and thus giving the impetus to all bishops to address the issues raised by the findings. Each bishop would have had to take action, as AUX2 said of the psychological study, “ … because it was a study of the whole priesthood of the United States, obviously it had commonality to it.  But it was still up to each bishop.” Doing something about the underdevelopment of priest would have caused “tensions,” with which, I argue, the bishops chose not to live. The questions, cited above, indicate the heart of the matter. As Kennedy (1971) writes, “No recommendation that ignores the need to reconcile individual growth with institutional aims can be psychologically successful” (175). The bishops had hard choices to make; they chose inaction.

Since I found convincing the bishops’ argument that they were silent about clergy abuse because of their need to “avoid scandal,” one might wonder about my reluctance to accept and/or apply this explanation to the 1971 study recommendations. First, the individual priests and victims deserved confidentiality. Second, the tenor of the times was to keep one’s “family problems” private. As AUX4 said,

… good pastoral care requires prompt, no-nonsense response … And particularly  in the pulpit, you’d be very careful of any allusion that would lead the person to say, “He’s talking about me.”  I think that the pastoral sense of effective confidential dealing was brought to this situation. … you don’t make a public issue of it …

Third, sexual abuse was seen as a sin that could be forgiven with repentance, prayer, and a firm resolve to sin no more. And the tradition did not include verifying if the penitent did keep his resolve. The standard was “seventy times seventy” (Mt 18:22).

The situation with the 1971 study is decidedly different. First, the study dealt with a substantial number of priests, two-thirds of whom were underdeveloped, not to mention the 18% who were developing, but in need of assistance in a process that could be both integrative and disintegrative. Growth consists of both a building up and fitting together as well as a tearing down process (107). Some priests, in this case, all but 7%, needed help. Second, underdevelopment seriously affected the priests’ ability to minister, in addition to creating lonely lives. The underdeveloped have “mechanisms of emotional isolation, repression, and regression” (91), all of which affect their emotional, social, and spiritual life. Third, a sizable number recognized their immaturity and wanted help (173). Fourth, to not address the issues raised by the study was tantamount to letting the priests suffer unfulfilling lives. “They lack the true sense of gravity about themselves as human persons” (84). They were almost incapable of experiencing life. Kennedy (1971) writes,

To sum up: an underdeveloped person who does not experience the demands of growth in his environment will not grow. He continues to function through some major adjustive pattern which takes the place of real growth. (87)

At a time when a large number of priests were leaving, one wonders why the bishops were not more concerned about those who remained and whether they were as ministerially productive as they could be. One wonders even more why the bishops did not heed the warning implicit in their comments about the priests’ training. Kennedy (1971) stressed that, given the priests’ careful selection process and extensive training, their lack of psychosocial and religious growth was highly significant. The study offered no conclusions, but it did raise a question about the fact that the priests “ … are psychologically underdeveloped in the very areas which are crucial to their effective functioning as clergymen” (80).

It seems to me that the bishops were unwilling to admit to the dilemma that this study raised. Bishops knew the truth of this study—that priests, and bishops are first priests, are ordinary men. They are called to a life of service and they have been put on pedestal because of that calling, but most, if not all, recognize their own frailty. The Church’s scripture and tradition take the sinfulness of the People of God—both laity and priests—into account. But the bishops did not choose to identify themselves or their presbyterate with human weakness. They chose to ignore the fact that the Church is the means to salvation and in need of salvation. The Church is ecclesia semper reformanda, “always in need of reform” (Unitatis Redintegratio 6). In the end, the bishops answered neither of the two questions posed. They would have run a risk by choosing the first and assisting the presbyterate with the achievement of their own personal maturity. They would have run a risk by putting first the institutional needs of the church. But to have done nothing, served no one well. Making tough choices, said some bishops, is something bishops don’t like to do.[226]

It is beyond the scope of this study to indicate how closely the characteristics of the underdeveloped priests resemble the priest-perpetrators, but those connections were made by this researcher and surely not lost on the reader.

At the risk of overstating, the bishops’ lack of attention to their presbyterate seems wantonly neglectful. Contrary to the opinion that the bishops were protecting the clergy in clergy abuse cases, it seems that they were protecting themselves.

Within the sphere of human relations, the Roman Catholic Church has chosen to stifle discussion on a variety of issues from sexuality and gender issues to sexual/celibate issues (Sipe 1990), calls of remarriage, divorce, women’s ordination.

Up to this point, I have referred to basic underlying assumptions as if they are uniformly held by all the bishops.  However, the bishops are a heterogeneous group, as indicated in the first finding and as such the assumptions about the Church, for example, vary considerably.  One assumption that is not held in unison is that living with tensions—scriptural, ecclesiological, and even theological is part of ecclesial life.  A willingness to live with, even to create tensions is at the heart of the dilemma bishops faced when making decisions concerning priests accused of abuse. For many bishops, especially those who have not totally espoused the documents and theology of the Vatican II, the Church was/is not a Pilgrim Church. They do not look on the Church as ecclesia semper reformanda, “the Church always in need of reform” (Unitatis Redintegratio 6).  A Church in need of reform, of continual change, may seem a fairly simple matter, even a bit innocuous.  But the contrary is true.  McBrien (1994) sums up the difficulty some have with this concept in his description of Yves Conger, “(t)he most important ecclesiologist of the twentieth century” (660).  Congar had already written about many of the themes discussed at Vatican II.  McBrien (1994, 660) writes that according to Congar, the Church is:

¨      the People of God (in Mystery of the Temple, 1958/1962)

¨      more than the Roman Catholic Church alone (in Divided Christendom, 1937/1939)

¨      exists in itself but not for itself (in The Wide World, My Parish)

Congar’s next description of the Church is most pertinent to this study and the most revealing:

This Church, ecumenically conceived, is always in need of reform, even institutional and structural reform, in head as well as members.  ...   (Congar’s) book, whose title means “True and False Reform in the Church,” was never translated into English, and in fact was withdrawn from circulation because of its controversial content. (McBrien 1994, 660) [227].

This eschatological ecclesiology is echoed by Karl Rahner, another major contributor to Vatican II.[228]  McBrien (1994) summarizes Rahner’s understanding of the Church.  The Church is:

¨      “the sacrament of God’s universal saving activity on our behalf”

¨      the sacrament of the Kingdom of God, not the Kingdom of God itself[229]

This relationship between the Church and Kingdom is critical because it points to the Church’s place in the world. Rahner emphasized the necessity of being mindful that we—individually and as a society—are sinners. McBrien (1994) quotes Rahner from The Shape of the Church to Come: “The danger of debasing Christianity by confining the struggle with sin to the wholly private sphere is imminent and menacing” (quoted on 693).[230] Rahner is discussing “institutionalized sin” but the connection to the Church’s acknowledging in a public manner the Church’s complicity in the “sins” of its priests was well “beyond the pale” for many bishops.  For the Church to remain credible, Rahner argued, in addition to being more deeply ecumenical, it had to be less hierarchical, even “declericalized.”  McBrien (1994) quotes Rahner, who asks, is it not time,

to begin a theological reflection about whether the seat of the primacy in the Church will have to remain in Rome in the future, when real centers of power and authority will no longer lie in the older Europe?”[231]  (693). 

As indicated in other chapters, one of the effects of the institutionalization of the Church is its tendency toward intransigence.  To many, the immutability of the Church, its apostolic succession, its oral and written traditions are its bedrock.

As was stated in chapter one, the bishops saw as their first obligation the preservation of the institution. Exposing weakness, being open to criticism, responding pastorally to victims and perpetrators were interpreted as a sign of infidelity and possible attack on the credibility of the Church.  As one priest said, the bishops were frightened.  They wanted to be able to say: “Not on my watch!”

That some bishops—approximately half of those whom I asked—were willing to be interviewed on this topic signals in a small way the plurality of thought within the Catholic hierarchy.  Some understand that to criticize the church and to admit its failings does not do a disservice to the church, but in fact represents a faithfulness to Vatican II.  “Every renewal of the Church essentially consists in an increase of fidelity to her own calling” (Unitatis Redintegratio 6).

Christ summons the Church, as she goes her pilgrim way, to that continual reformation of which she always has need, insofar as she is an institution of men here on earth.  Therefore, if the influence of events or of the time has led to deficiencies in conduct, in Church discipline, or even in the formulation of doctrine (which must be carefully distinguished from the deposit itself of faith), these should be properly rectified at the proper moment. (Unitatis Redintegratio 6). 

If the U.S. Catholic Church bishops are going to rectify the misdeeds of the past, they are going to have to do more than set up diocesan procedures, be sensitive to victims, meet their fiscal responsibilities to the victims and their families, attend Masses of Healing, and continue to lead their dioceses as they have in the past. In many ways, the successes that the bishops have had      in terms of “surviving the crisis” may ill serve them and their dioceses. Because the dioceses have been able to withstand the financial drain brought about by law suits and attendance at church, though less than in former years, seems to be stabilizing or even increasing, the bishops might think that they faced the challenges of the clergy abuse crisis and have won. I think that many have ill-served their presbyterate and the People of God.

One bishop described the attitude of another bishop during a discussion on a highly contentious issue—women’s ordination. He said that how the issue was defined was important. AUX5 told the other bishops,

… the theological denotations are extremely important to bishops and how we arrive at them at the altar of denotation.… essentially we are men seeking the truth ... One cardinal got up after me, “We are the teachers of the truth.” I said, “Wait a second, we’re trying to find the truth.”

This type of elitism, this type of intransigence, is indicative of an institution that is “stuck on” on preserving itself. For this lack of growth there is a dear cost to all involved—bishops, priest, and the laity. It is a cost that present bishops should be unwilling to pay. AUX5 said,

… you realize that the bishop, a human being, has taken on such an enormous job and the Church counts on one thing for him to accomplish, his goodness. That’s what we count on. One of Church’s saints.  And the Church can only survive by realizing that it is a church of sinners ... Sinners are a major part of this Church. And part of the human condition is to realize that that’s a reality, all part of the reality. But we, we keep going on the myth that the Church can be run by saints and high office. It can’t be. 

Closing Remarks

It is not only that the bishops chose to do nothing about the 1971 study; it is the topic that they chose to ignore. In the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (Presbyterorum Ordinis), the distinction is made between bishops, who fully possess sacrament- ally the priesthood of Christ. The priest’s participation sacramentally the priesthood of Christ is “derived and dependent … the priest is a sign, not directly of Christ the Priest, but of his bishops” (Young 1966, 527).

Making a play on the term Human Resources, AUX4 said of the Church, “We don’t resource humans well.” The bishops acting in the name of the institution of the Catholic Church rallies to the foreground on issues of social and moral importance. But on the human issues—those dealing deeply personal human relations, the college of bishops often are deeply divided and in the end, do nothing. Those who are committed to furthering an issue can do a great deal within their own dioceses, and this, to a large extent, affects the energy with which they address these issues on a national front.

When the Church is the problem, it must also be the solution (Henson 1995).