Bud Macfarlane Jr: Vast Majority of Bishops "Wimps or Liberals" [or both?]

I wasn't planning to send you a message this week because we're still recovering internally from the technical knock-outs we suffered this month, but I wanted to let you know about four excellent Commentaries we've posted regarding the Bishop's Conference on our homepage:

1. IN DENIAL? I'm disappointed that the U.S. bishop's failed to address the problem of dissent and homosexuality in our seminaries and priesthood during the conference. They quickly tabled a proposal by Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz to investigate the causes of the scandals along these lines, leaving no doubt about their corporate lack of courage.

The four articles we've posted by Michael Novak, Mary Jo Anderson, Rod Dreher, and Lifesite.net all address the issue of homosexuality and dissent in the priesthood. You should take the time to read them. Mary Jo's "untold story" is particularly disturbing.

2. GRACE ABOUNDS. Let's all 70,000+ families receiving today's brief message pray together to the Archangel Michael for our bishops now... in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...

"Saint Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do you, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen."

3. RARELY CRITICAL. In over a decade as the director of the Mary Foundation and seven years online with CatholiCity, I can't recall publicly criticizing our bishops. Mainly, it's just not my job and never will be. Furthermore, I'm thirty-nine years old, and since I started living deeper commitment to my faith as a freshman at Notre Dame in 1980, I really don't remember living in a world where the vast majority of our U.S. bishops haven't struck me as anything other than wimps or liberals, with a few notable and holy exceptions. Their glaring refusal to address the real causes of the scandals in Dallas doesn't surprise me. After decades of neglect, why would they change their stripes? They are flesh and blood, like you and me, and bad habits are hard to break. It makes me laugh when the secular media portrays our bishops as a "powerful" force in our culture. Had they actually been so in the early 70s, we wouldn't have legalized abortion.

The scandals haven't effected my faith in the least. I love the Catholic Church more than ever. Nothing has changed, as far as I'm concerned, and that's the problem. The only thing to do is to keep praying and working, and to keep raising our children to be saints to preserve the faith into the next generation.

I'll be back soon with my regular Message soon. I'm just not in the mood for jokes. But I will be.

EVERYBODY LOVES BUD'S NOVELS - GET YOUR FREE COPIES AT: http://www.catholicity.com/saintjude/

DID A FRIEND FORWARD THIS TO YOU? TO SUBCRIBE TO THE WEEKLY MESSAGE DIRECTLY OR READ THE ARCHIVES, GO HERE: http://www.catholicity.com/weeklymessage/

In Dallas, the bishops did not confront the dissent-as-rebellion that ripples through the American Church. Neither did they confront the accounts of smarmy homosexual sex in several major seminaries over the last 40 years. True, especially after 1992, some bishops began shoveling out those Augean Stables. The seminaries today are in better shape.
But how can the bishops get the credit, if the dark smarmy secrets of the "Progressive Era" in the seminaries remains secret and unexamined? It is very hard to believe how bad it was. Published accounts and court records of seminary practices in several dioceses remind one of tales of Renaissance corruption in the papacy.
Thus, the unnoticed camel in the room in Dallas was the rebellion whose nose first pushed under the tent in 1968: then his jowls, ears, head, neck, shoulders. Finally, the whole tent was lifted up and carried away by that camel.
The elephant, as Mary Eberstadt points out in the June 17 Weekly Standard, is the complicity of many bishops with "the lavender takeover" of numerous seminaries. Several years ago, Fr. Andrew Greeley spoke in much stronger words: "clean out the pedophiles, break up the gay cliques, tighten up the seminary, and restore the good name of the priesthood."
Seminaries come directly under the authority of the bishops. No one has more authority there than they do. They allowed elephants in, to stomp out true and orthodox vocations, to crush true faith, to despoil chastity, to create a desert.
The really deep secret, then, of the last 40 years is the fear, timidity, and passivity of the American bishops. I believe it was Orwell who said that no one will ever know the crimes committed in our time through the fear of being thought conservative.
Everything the bishops did in Dallas showed how fearful they still are of being thought conservative. That is why they refused even to touch the one issue that John Paul II had told them is central: fidelity to the whole of Catholic teaching on married love and sexuality. That would have meant antagonizing the secular, liberal press. That would have meant preaching Catholic doctrine straight. The bishops didn't want to touch that task.
They refused by voice vote a motion to study the role of dissent in the present scandalous developments. They were afraid to probe that deep, neuralgic nerve.
Even the choice of two liberals to speak for Catholic laywomen and men displayed the bishops' remarkable fear of being thought conservative. In that respect, the bishops still don't get it.
The bishops need to understand that what we Catholics love and respect is the Catholic faith, not them. If they lack courage to speak up for the faith, what are they good for except to be thrown out and trodden upon, salt without savor?
I don't know about you, but I hear more and more people saying that they should throw out the whole bench, and get a new team. A few exceptions aside, this one doesn't seem to be completely serious.
But my advice is, give them a little more time. And pray that the one or two clear leaders among them will step forward, for the good of the Church. Enough of Avignon. It's time to take the Church back to Rome.

— Michael Novak, the George F. Jewett scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Novak is the author, most recently, of On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding.

http://www.nationalreview.com/novak/novak061802.asp

I love the Catholic Church more than ever.

I think I understand what the author means, but I wouldn't have said it that way.

The Love of Almighty God is the essential principle of the spiritual life. True, I have hope in the Church but that hope is clearly not based on the men in the hierarchy but the foundation of hope is the infinite merits of Christ and the infinite goodness and mercy of God.

Fr. Eugene Boylan wrote (in 1947, btw) that the hope for our Church, indeed, for civilization itself, is that Catholics succeed in leavening society. Their success in doing so depends primarily not on their organizations, not on their bishops, not on their liturgical committees, but on their interior life and personal love of Jesus Christ.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.