Now, the $64 dollar question is, what do you do about it in a culture where increasingly anyone who even mildly criticizes anything gay gets charged with a hate crime?
Do you think the Church is going to purge them and then withstand the withering Twitterstorm and assault by Liberal government at all levels looking to punish them?
Personally I don’t.
All I remember is that the seminary in St. Louis was the first to get a visitation from a team of American bishops. The gay publications at the time were calling it an "inquisition" because it included meetings with each and every candidate for ordination as well as with faculty and staff.
How many seminaries they visited and how it all worked out I do not know. I remember there was openly what I would call passive-aggressive resistance. One seminary head said (in print) something like, "Oh yes, we'll receive the 'visitation team' in the front parlor, but that doesn't mean we give them the run of the house."
But will there be a thoroughgoing "scouring" everywhere?
Safe bet: the good ones will do it. The bad ones won't.
One really stupid suggestion (a petition with a couple thousand stupid people's signatures) was that the entire USCCB should turn in their resignations --- as did the bishops in Chile --- as an acknowledgement of collective guilt.
Stupid, because that leaves it to Pope Francis to accept the resignations of the ones he already doesn't like (that would be good guys like Chaput) and turn down the resignations of the ones he does like (like Joseph Tobin, Blaise Cupich, etc.)
It would give The Francis carte blanche to re-make the U.S. bishops in his own image and likeness.
Not a good idea.
Do you think the Church is going to purge them and then withstand the withering Twitterstorm and assault by Liberal government at all levels looking to punish them?
Personally I don’t.
Why not?
If the body of Christ does not take the stand, just who will?