Springtime for the Bishops

It's hard to imagine a job more difficult than a bishop's.

The story is told of a lunch years ago attended by U.S. bishops and Pope John Paul II. A bishop sitting near the Holy Father asked him in an animated voice about the possibility that some people living even in today's Western cities might live and die without ever hearing about Christ in a compelling way. “When they die, can't they still be saved, on the principle of invincible ignorance?” he asked. After the question was repeated twice, the Pope put his spoon down and its clank silenced the room.

“Yes,” he said, or so the legend goes. “The man who dies in a state of invincible ignorance, he will be saved. But the bishop responsible for that ignorance, he will not be saved.”

If bishops are judged more severely in the eyes of God and the Church because of their responsibilities, they are judged more harshly in the eyes of the world, as well. Informal media and court searches suggest that there are far more clergy of other denominations and rabbis who have been charged with sexual misconduct since 1997 —and yet the headlines are dominated by the priest suspects, smaller in number even if you count decades worth of them.

This suggests that the anger directed at the Church and the bishops is caused by the relative importance of institutions. It's certainly not caused by the relative severity of abuse problems.

Does that mean that we should exonerate bishops? Alas, that's impossible. The media haven't invented the crisis, after all —they are merely exaggerating a real problem. And the bishops, whether their job is easy or not, were in a position to greatly diminish the problem in the seminaries. Many failed to do so.

For the past 20 years, too many seminaries have been contributing to the very problems they are supposed to solve. The bishops had fair warning that this would happen, in a 1961 document which Pope John XXIII gave his authority to. Called “On the Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Sacred Orders,” the document spells out the dangers of allowing sexually incontinent candidates to become priests.

It adds: “Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers” (No. 30).

Does that sound old-fashioned and harsh? If it had been followed, countless victims would have been saved the severe trial of abuse by a priest.

Its teaching was left intact by the Second Vatican Council, which said in On the Training of Priests that the seminary's purpose is “to inculcate self-control.” The Vatican privately reiterated the prohibition against homosexual seminarians to bishops in the past 10 years, it has been reported. Finally, the prohibition was repeated in public by the Pope's own spokesman, Joaquin Navarro Valls, earlier this year.

Is it hopeless to expect this commonsense proscription to be followed in the future? We think not.

There are signs that a springtime of the bishops may be underway, and that a dynamic that is affecting the whole Church is transforming the bishops as well.

Pope John Paul II got it exactly right in his recent address to the U.S. cardinals. To be satisfied that all is well in the Church, Catholics in America “must know that bishops and priests are totally committed to the fullness of Catholic truth on matters of sexual morality, a truth as essential to the renewal of the priesthood and the episcopate as it is to the renewal of marriage and family life.”

What should the bishops accomplish this June?

Thinking Catholics expect something more than a reaction to media-generated anxieties for more procedures. At a minimum, they want a guarantee from their bishops that all our seminares will obey Vatican directives and stop creating future problems for all of us.