Can we all agree that the USCCB ought to be shut down?
Many bishops are political and so comfortable with government-financed health care. But not if it means government control of all aspects of it. This is a complicated mess, because the state has come to control a large and large share of the national wealth and the national elites —including Catholics—have become more and more statist in their views. These lay elites have grown less comfortable with the idea that they owe as much allegiance to the Church as to the state. Both clericalism and anti-clericalism are both disruptive to the unity of the Church. The former is the result of clerical arrogance, the latter of lay impatience with any reminders of their duties to God and man. The USCCB, I have come to believe, is the result of a clerical rebellion against Rome, an assertion of national feeling of resentment of the papacy’s assertion of authority especially after Vatican I. But it’s turn to politics is, as Dolan suggests, a reflection of its losing control in the American church. Until recently, it was dominated by a few liberal bishops who could count on the many theological and political liberals in academic, in the chanceries, and of course in the Catholic social services. Dolan may be cautious, but he knows he has the support of a growing number of bishops who think much as he does. and who are also opposed to the developments of the past thirty years. Compare him with the likes of McCarrick and Bernardin.