Could have been any of us - and almost happened to me along that same strecth of road, on several different occasions no less.
I agree with most of your post but this part.
exceppt.... YOU would have stopped after the accident. YOU would not have tried to get the windshield replaced on Sunday to hide your crime. YOU would have offered last rites. The problem is, this bishop, did not.
I hardly think his actions representative of my Catholic family members... and suggest humbly that YOUR reactions to such an accident would very likely be like theirs... stop, call for police, offer assistance, and pray for the wounded... till the medics, police and fire department officials arrived.
May your tribe increase... and may this bishop's... be put out to pasture.
fwiw...
to be honest with you, I don't know even ONE catholic family member or friend who would behave in any other way, than to do what is right in such manners. The ones I know won't even tell a little white lie... let alone leave the scene of an accident.
Do you have any evidence that he KNEW he had hit a human being? I thought not. NONE of us know what actually happened, and I'm sure we won't for some time.
He didn't try to have the windshield fixed on Sunday, by the way...it was Monday morning. He told his secretary to inquire about it. He obviously wasn't hiding the condition of the car, either, as you would expect if he knew he had killed a man in a hit-and-run accident. He drove it to church so he could say Mass on Sunday and then to visit his sister in Scottsdale. Hardly the actions of a criminal trying to cover his tracks, I'd say.
I just wish someone had managed to get the license plate number of the other car that hit the victim...you know, the one who not only ran him over with his car but then dragged him 40 feet.
As a lifelong Catholic, I was raised to think highly of priests. If I had to take the word of a priest over a regular old Joe, the priest would win. I believe the Bishop when he says he thought he hit an animal, and I will continue to believe him until it is proven otherwise.