The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 5)

Gene Brennan br> Chatham, MA /p>

First let me start by stating that I am a fan of Mr. Neumayr's reportage of the scandalous shape of the Los Angeles Archdiocese. Clearly, Cardinal Mahony and his associates have failed to significantly address the problem of predatory homosexuality, and in certain instances, pedophilia. This is a tragedy for the Church. Such sinful and criminal behavior is an abomination, as is the culture of moral and doctrinal dissent that created the conditions for the commission of such behavior and the hapless response of America's prelates.

A significant point, however, must be addressed and in this where I take issue with Mr. Neumayr. I very much agree with Cardinal Mahony's less than enthusiastic response to the "study" commissioned by the American Bishop's abuse panel. While there definitely needs to be a reckoning of the actions of some American Bishops, I believe the abuse panel and its prescribed study to be the very worst way to achieve the appropriate reckoning. Gov. Keating has proved himself bellicose and disrespectful, often making remarks that indicate his deficient grasp of Catholic orthodoxy; Leon Panetta, another panel member, is a pro-abortion, Clinton administration official who was a party in defending immorality on the part of a deeply flawed chief executive. These are hardly men capable of addressing the finer nuances of appropriate moral deliberation, pastoral sensitivity, and culpability on the part of accused priests. It is greater fidelity to Catholic truth and to proper ecclesiastical discipline where the solution to this present crisis lay.

Gov. Keating and his panel have moved against the Bishops in an adversarial fashion, using the categories and implements of prosecutors and politicians, not the categories of sound moral deliberation and spiritual insight provided by the Church's two-thousand year history of ministering to the sinfulness of the human condition. The present crisis of the clergy is, at its roots, a manifestation the Bishops' failure to teach and govern their flocks according to the Church's accumulated spiritual, theological, and moral wisdom. The methods and implements proposed by Gov. Keating and his panel are secular, quick-fix, media driven solutions, and wholly unsuited to address the larger crisis of faith that underwrites clerical sexual misconduct and episcopal malfeasance.

Also, Mr. Neumayr seems not to grasp that the abuse panel's study and other proposed methods to address the present crisis is leading the American Church down a dangerous path whereby government authority is being invoked against the Church on an unprecedented scale -- at least by recent standards. These process-oriented solutions threaten to diminish the liberty of the Church (libertas ecclesia) in significant ways. The recent situation in Phoenix, Arizona, is a prime example. I can't help but think that certain unorthodox Bishops, clerics and other dissenters will be all too happy to see Church authorities subject to the whims of prosecutors, politicians, and media elites. They want nothing more than to seize control of the Church so that their agenda of infidelity can be forced on those who insist the Church should be free in the conduct of its affairs and unwaveringly faithful to doctrines at odds with contemporary sentiment.

Accused priests have the right to their good name until their name is proved not to actually be good. Some priests, who may have failed morally, but repented and lived their vocation with fidelity following their repentance, should not have their name smeared by a "study" that is incapable of understanding a particular instance of misconduct in its totality. The very human drama of sin, repentance, and the restoration of a man to fidelity -- under the influence of grace -- is the proper purview of the Church's pastors, even when they fail to do it well or even at all. The pastoral deliberations over the fitness of an errant cleric to serve (or continue to serve) is like surgery: to be done with the careful, prudent strokes of a scalpel, not the vengeful whacks of a machete. The elevation of legal process over pastoral deliberation is further evidence of the American Bishops' lack of faith in the Church's wisdom in addressing the effects of sin -- the very reason we are in the present crisis. I am quite aware that it is quite likely that many canonized saints, such as St. Augustine of Hippo, would be ineligible, under the present norms of the Bishops' Conference, to remain in ministry because of their morally profligate pasts.

However troubled Cardinal Mahony's leadership in Los Angeles may or may not be, he is quite right to insist that there are and should be limits to the amount and kind of information publicly released about accused and even guilty priests. Insisting on the prerogatives of the internal forum is not done, necessarily, to "spin" or to cover up misconduct, but rather, it is an appropriate recognition of the sacred confidentiality that should govern the internal forum deliberations that occur in the relationship between a Bishop, his priests, and the people to whom they minister. As such, this relationship forms the very foundation of the Church's freedom from state encroachment and its freedom to minister to all sinners in a space where the grace of conversion can take root. The fact that such privileged relationships have been abused does not constitute an occasion for their diminishment or abolition. If we want to truly address this crisis, the solution is not a media-driven "study" or in the outrageous comments made by a former governor, but a deepening of our commitment to the Truth(s) of the Catholic faith. In short -- fidelity, fidelity, and fidelity is the only real answer.

p>Respectfully, br> -- Phillip W. De Vous br> Grand Rapids, MI /p> p>

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