[nickcarraway]

I hate to say I told you so, but this was obvious.

[nickcarraway]

(We might even ask, in passing, why Church leaders persist in offering such implausible excuses for the resignations of bishops. If no one really believes that Bishop Martino is too sick to carry on, why is that flimsy explanation offered to the public? Corporate leaders routinely offer vague, unsatisfactory reasons for a change at the top: it is a matter of "different styles of leadership," they might say, or a question of "conflicting visions." But those explanations, lame as they are, are not transparently false. Don't Church leaders attach any importance at all to the principle of that honesty is the best policy? Don't they worry about undermining their own credibility?)

[Erik Latranyi]

It is becoming clearer and clearer that the liberal politicians wanted Martino to go. Those liberal politicians provide much of the funding for the Church in the US and carry a great deal of weight.

[Cicero]

I’m sure that the libs will be happy to see Bishop Martino go, but I’m not sure if they had the power to push him out without his consent—because he was feeling sick and tired.

Let’s wait and see who is appointed in his place, and what happens next.

The Church in America is, indeed, in a difficult position. If they offend the libs, they will lose money at the collection plate, sure. But if they kowtow to the libs, they will continue to bleed Catholics and suffer from a worsening shortage of priests.

It would have been MUCH easier if the bishops had stood fast earlier. But there were negative forces who had wormed their way in at Rome as well as here, and it wasn’t done. Now, the only way is to bit the bullet and suffer the short term consequences, if the Church is to be healed and start to grow again.

[Salvation]

**did he jump or was he pushed?**

I don’t think either happened.

[Alex Murphy]

Now making an encore appearance as a Catholic Caucus thread. I like Miss Marple's response on that thread:

I take the Bishop’s resignation as it stated. I don’t deal with supposed reasons. We can get into trouble if we start looking for hidden motives in every action.

AFAIK, only Popes can ask for resignations. Asking if "Martino was pushed" begs a couple of questions: Who else can push a Bishop into quitting? and also If no one else can push, then why would the Pope pressure a conservative, pro-life Bishop into quitting?

[Desdemona]

This article has been posted a number of times. I wrote this for another thread on the same subject:

My guess is that administrative styles are coming under scrutiny. Last year's "removal", our very own Archbishop Raymond Burke, was a lightning rod on pro-life issues, but the general consensus around here is that he was Peter Principled up for reasons of job performance in the administrative arena. Now that he's been gone for a bit, the stories from the Chancery on leadership style are surfacing and they aren't pretty - from holding grudges, to denying promotions to men who are truly worthy, to really BAD personnel moves to fiscal irresponsibility. Get a couple drinks in the right people and all sorts of stuff comes out. My guess is Martino is more of the same.

Until you've been in a diocese with one of these guys who are MILITANTLY "orthodox," you have no clue how miserable it can be. I won't go into details, but I've heard stuff about Burke (provable, too) that curled my hair, made me furious, and told me a lot about him (humility is NOT one of his finer virtues) that was not at all flattering in a Christian perspective.

Just know that there is always another side to the story.