I will add this for your consideration now. You seem to imply that JPII's hands were tied by the rights of the bishops. Indeed, the bishops do have rights, but those rights to NOT extend to choosing their sees. It would have been a simple matter to order men like Mahoney and Law to take up a diocese that exists on paper only, such as in North Africa. He could have been rid of these (at best) incompetents with the stroke of a pen. That's Canon law. As you think about the legacy of JPII, I ask that you consider that he didn't take the actions that he could have and that those (again, putting the best face on it) incompetent men continued on abetting evil men like Oliver O'Grady for years and years in ruining the lives and damaging the souls of countless children and their families.
I see absolutely no excuse for that.
Sure, maybe JPII's attentions were distracted by the events in his native Poland, at least for the first half of his tenure. But then again, that just really shows you where his priorities were. JPII wasn't terribly concerned with sins that Christ Himself would be punished in a way that would make having a millstone tied around the neck and being flung into the sea look like child's play. And at least raises an issue of moral culpability sufficient to derail this herd-instinct drive to proclaim JPII a saint.
“You seem to imply that JPII’s hands were tied by the rights of the bishops. Indeed, the bishops do have rights, but those rights to NOT extend to choosing their sees.”
Indeed, and that's been done from time to time.
The difficulty is that something beats nothing every time.
If you appoint Roger Cardinal Mahoney to a titular see, you still have to replace him with someone else.
I actually remember when Cardinal Mahoney was appointed Archbishop of Los Angeles. He was considered a good guy, a “conservative,” orthodox. Eventually, it became clear that he'd either deceived everyone previously or had gone off the rails once he became Archbishop of Los Angeles. Some chalk it up to his having been first made a bishop prior to his 39th birthday.
If you're pope, and you appoint this fellow that seemed to be a good, orthodox bishop, and then he goes south on you, you might be careful of whom you next appoint.
I remember Cardinal Law's reputation prior to the scandals. All agreed that he was a good, orthodox archbishop. It was a devastating shock to learn that he'd so badly handled the sex abuse cases in his archdiocese.
Cardinal Law taught us that a priest can be a good priest, an orthodox priest, but nonetheless be an incompetent and terrible ordinary, even one who may become morally compromised as a result of his complete incompetence.
There are two or three lessons to learn here:
1. Not everyone you think is orthodox is really orthodox.
2. Taking good priests and making them bishops too early may be a big mistake.
3. Not everyone who is orthodox, even personally devout or even holy has any idea of how to manage, how to administer a diocese.
By the time it became clear that Cardinal Mahoney had either become or been all along something less than orthodox, it was the 1990s.
By this point, we're starting to see some of the fruits of the pope's work on priestly formation - increasing numbers of priests are orthodox.
But the folks who are available at this time to be consecrated to the episcopacy are folks ordained in the early to mid-1960s through the early or mid 1970s. Experience has by this point taught the pope - rather vividly in the case of Roger Mahoney - that appointing very young bishops might not be such a great idea.
So, the modest but increasing number of orthodox priest coming out of the seminaries by the early 1990s aren't really candidates for the episcopacy. Not yet, at least.
By 1992 or so, a priest ordained in 1960 will typically be in his early 60s. A priest ordained in 1975, in his mid 40s. That's your cohort of priests that's available to you to make bishop.
This happens to be the cohort most implicated in the sex abuse catastrophe. The Jay study provides a lot of interesting details about who abused and who didn't. If I recall correctly, the peak year by ordination date of abusers was 1968 or 1969 (I'm working from memory here). In other words, the priests of the class of 1968 or 1969 had the highest percentage of abusers among their ranks. And if you look at the graph, you see that by 1960, priests ordained in that year had an increased level of abusers, too, and then you see the decline through the 1970s.
So, in the early 1990s, your primary cohort of potential bishops happens to be your primary cohort of abusers.
Yeah, they'd really make good bishops.
If you're pope, like I said, if you get rid of one bad guy, it'd be nice to know that you're not just sticking another one in there. Maybe the Mahoney you know might not be worse than the devil you don't know.
As well, even I'm willing to admit that a high percentage (although not a large majority, or even a majority) of priests ordained during those years were homosexual. So, if I'M right about the proportion of homosexual priests, you're still looking at a one out three shot that you're appointing a homosexual man to the episcopacy. If YOU'RE right about the proportion of homosexuals in the priesthood, then most of the bishops appointed will be homosexuals, almost as a certainty.
Remember, too, that in the first part of his pontificate, Pope John Paul II’s appointments here in the US were heavily influenced by the likes of Cardinal Bernadin and Archbishop Jadot. Many of the episcopal choices that Pope John Paul made in the first years of his reign weren't all that great. They seemed to improve with time, and in the last few years of his pontificate, we saw the appointment of a number of good, orthodox, relatively young (but not too young) men to the episcopacy. But you'll also notice that especially in the latter half of his pontificate, he allowed many bishops who had turned 75 to stay on for a while, and he allowed episcopal vacancies to go on for extended periods. In my own archdiocese, even though he pleaded to retire for reasons of ill health, the pope had our Cardinal Hickey serve in ill health until he was 80.
Cardinal Hickey was far from perfect. He had a mean and vindictive streak a mile long and a mile deep. Also, he was indifferent to the plight of middle class Catholics trying to afford Catholic school for their children.
But Cardinal Hickey was very orthodox, and very methodical and patient. He did a lot of good for this archdiocese in helping to promote orthodoxy over heterodoxy, and in helping to re-Catholicize the Catholic University of America.
One wonders to what degree he was trying to stretch the available numbers of decent episcopal candidates. that's certainly what he was doing with Cardinal Hickey.
Even today, under Pope Benedict, it's still probably a little tight, as the first wave of priests ordained after the efforts to clean up the seminaries got under way are just getting to the right ages to be made bishops. Someone ordained in 1990 at age 30 (remember that the average age at ordination began moving up in the 1980s) is now approaching 50 or so.
We have seen in recent years the appointment of a number of very good, orthodox, COMPETENT ordinaries and auxiliaries. But the younger cohort of priests is for the most part not quite ready for major sees.
Just remember, something beats nothing every time.
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