US

Chicago, Ill., Jan 7, 2019 / 04:41 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of Chicago’s Mundelein Seminary is beautiful. Set on 600 leafy acres, its buildings merge the aesthetics of the American Colonial Revival with the motifs of great Roman edifices. Its library is expansive. Its chapel is a gem. Mundelein is the kind of place that is hard to leave.

When their seven-day retreat at Mundelein ends Jan. 8, some of the U.S. bishops may be reluctant to leave the seminary. But if they are not eager to go home, it will not be because of the setting.

When they depart, many bishops will find their retreat was not an end to the siege under which they find themselves.

Once home, they will face the same questions, the same investigations, the same demand for answers that they left behind. And they will face the same impatience from Catholics across the country.

The president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, for example, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, will likely face questions about his dealings with the Vatican in the lead-up to the bishops’ meeting: he will be asked whether he knew earlier than he let on that the conference would not be permitted to vote on a reform package of policies that he championed.

Back in Houston, DiNardo will also face questions from county prosecutors who have accused the archdiocese of withholding evidence during a police investigation.

DiNardo will not be the only U.S. cardinal with problems when the retreat comes to an end.

After losing an auxiliary bishop to allegations of sexual abuse, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York now faces questions about why his archdiocese misrepresented a priest under investigation.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston is investigating accusations of misconduct at the seminaries in his archdiocese. Cardinal Blase Cupich faces a diocesan investigation from Illinois’ attorney general.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin’s Archdiocese of Newark remains at the center of questions regarding long-time archbishop Theodore McCarrick. And Cardinal Donald Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor in Washington, faces continued scrutiny as he remains the archdiocesan interim leader until his successor is named.

Other bishops face allegations of misconduct or cover-up, among them Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo and Bishop Michael Hoeppner of Crookston.

Like Dolan, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles must also address an auxiliary bishop accused of sexual abusing a minor. And dozens of other bishops are faced with state and federal investigations into the historical and current administration of their dioceses.

The bishops did not formally discuss strategy or plans during the retreat: meals were taken in silence, recreation periods were few. But their leaders, DiNardo and Gomez, will go to Rome next month for a meeting with Pope Francis, and the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world. That summit, occasioned by the eruption last year of sexual abuse scandals in the United States, is scheduled to address the sexual abuse of children and vulnerable adults around the world.

Sources expect very little practical policy to come from the February summit. The meeting is expected to encourage bishops in the developing world to develop the baseline child protection protocols that U.S. bishops developed in 2002, and to engender in all participants a greater awareness of the profound harm that clerical sexual abuse can cause to victims.

As he did in his letter to the U.S. bishops at Mundelein, Pope Francis is likely to encourage the assembled bishops to greater personal conversion, and to emphasize, as he often has, the centrality of personal integrity in resolving allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct.

It is expected that a guilty verdict for Archbishop McCarrick will be announced before the February meeting, along with the likely penalty of laicization. But Vatican sources do not expect a report on the Vatican’s investigation into its own documents on McCarrick to be forthcoming.

Leadership and committees of the U.S. bishops’ conference continue to revise and discuss the policies they proposed in November, along with alternatives that emerged during their meeting. It is not likely that the February summit will substantially impact that work. Instead, it seems most likely that the bishops’ will work on their policies and proposals until a March meeting of the conference’s administrative committee, and then send them to Rome for review.

After DiNardo was accused of not giving the Vatican enough time to weigh in on proposals before the November meeting, the bishops will want to leave ample time for back and forth with Rome before they vote at their June meeting on whatever draft policies have received an initial approval from the Vatican.

The priorities for the U.S. bishops are said to be establishing a mechanism for credibly investigating allegations of abuse, negligence, or misconduct against bishops; investigating the possibility of expanding the Church’s definition of vulnerable adults to include seminarians and others under the authority of bishops, and creating protocols for bishops who are removed or resign from their posts amid scandal or allegations.

It seems likely they’ll be able to accomplish some portion of those goals by the conclusion of their June meeting.

The question, of course, is whether Catholics will wait.

Among the effects of the scandal has been a much broader sense of disillusionment and disenfranchisement from Catholics than was palpable in the aftermath of the 2002. It is not yet clear whether the scandals of 2018 have impacted Church attendance or diocesan financial support. And, of course, for many Catholics the anger of last summer has abated. But episcopal leadership is under a new level of scrutiny in the U.S., and voices from across the ecclesial spectrum have been unrelenting in calling for change.

Some of those voices are likely to intensify after the February meeting, at which the outcomes, and even the agenda, are not likely to meet public expectation.

Since June, the bishops seem to have been playing catch-up with a tornado. Their responses to new fronts of the crisis often seemed insincere or unconvincing. They have seemed often to have been owned by the events unfolding around them, and they frequently have been criticized for seeming to lack authenticity, contrition, and above all, leadership.

As a result, in addition to the legitimate questions bishops have faced from Catholics, and from the media, they now must also contend with a growing anticlerical populist backlash in the U.S. Church, one that seems to foster broad distrust for episcopal initiatives and the Church’s governing structure, rather than on calling for or supporting reform efforts.

The retreat may well motivate bishops to address their problems with new vigor: it may have given them an opportunity to regroup, catch their breath, and emerge as the leaders that Catholics seem to have been looking for.

If they have any hope of restoring confidence in U.S. Catholic hierarchy, the opportunity afforded to them by their retreat is one the bishops ought not miss. 

Because any practical change is likely six months away, if there is to be change in the narrative of the last six months, or if the burgeoning anti-episcopal populist movements in the U.S. Church are to lose steam, it will only be because bishops emerge renewed from their retreat, and begin to address the Church with the kind of courageous, direct, transparent, and fatherly leadership Catholics have been calling for, even in the absence of new policies. Even then, it will be an uphill battle, and will become more difficult with each passing month in which leadership is seen to be lacking.

If their retreat has had its effect, the U.S. episcopate may now have more spiritual health and vigor with which to lead the Church than it has had since before the crisis began. Whether they will emerge ready to take the mantle of leadership, and begin to foster healing from the Church’s still-gaping wounds, remains to be seen.

 

[…]

Denver, Colo., Jan 7, 2019 / 04:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Colorado baker who already won a U.S. Supreme Court case may proceed with a second lawsuit claiming the state of Colorado is again wrongly prosecuting him, this time for declining to bake a cake… […]

Indianapolis, Ind., Jan 7, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- At the closing Mass of the SEEK 2019 conference, Fr. Doug Grandon offered advice to the 17,000 attendees on how to become effective missionary disciples. Grandon is a national chaplain with the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), meeting in Indianapolis this week for their annual conference.

 

Grandon centered his homily on Monday’s reading from the gospel of Matthew, which recounts Jesus’s arrival in Capernaum to preach perform miracles in the region. He related this story to his own personal experience of a missionary disciple: his friend Dan, who helped to bring him to Christ.

 

“What Dan did for me, each of us can do for someone else in our circle of influence,” he said.

 

“Our ‘yes’ to becoming missionary disciples will make an eternal difference for more souls than we will ever realize.”

 

Grandon then provided three pieces of advice to the congregation on being an effective and productive missionary disciple in their own communities: a commitment to learning and spiritual growth, planning, and reading signs in their own lives.

 

“Missionary disciples commit to life-long learning and ongoing spiritual growth,” said Grandon. With Jesus, the Bible only tells a few stories about his childhood and training, but instead there are many stories of Christ beginning his messianic ministry, he pointed out.

 

The move to Capernaum to begin this ministry was significant, Grandon explained, as Capernaum was more centrally located than Nazareth.

 

In terms of his own spiritual growth, Grandon spoke of Dan and his Protestant pastor, who led him to embrace a life of Christian ministry. They “taught me to serve, even though I didn’t like that very much,” he explained. At the time, Grandon was a Protestant. He would eventually be received into the Catholic Church in 2002, and was given a special dispensation by the Vatican to become a married priest.

 

In addition to a commitment to growth and learning, Grandon said that missionary disciples “must engage in careful strategic planning,” and remain “attentive to providential signs,” much like Jesus did in Monday’s gospel.

 

He shared a story of a young woman who came to Denver to follow what she thought was God’s will, yet did not properly plan and quickly ran out of money. Failure to properly plan will make one an ineffective missionary disciple, he said.

 

Grandon told the hall that a recognition of signs and trusting in God’s providence were also important, noting that the places in today’s Gospel reading where Jesus preached were “overshadowed by death” in past generations, and were often the first to be invaded and occupied. Jesus arrived and changed this, he said, and these cities were the first to witness the “blazing light” of the Gospel and of Christ’s teachings.

 

“Isaiah’s prophecy was a providential sign” of Christ’s eventual mission, he said.

 

Grandon shared a story of his own reliance on providence, when he thought he would have to cancel a mission trip due to a lack of funds. He went to preach at a small church, and, miraculously, that church donated exactly the amount that was needed for the trip to happen. This encounter left him “astounded at God’s miraculous providence.”

 

Referring back to his friend Dan, Grandon said his friend eventually visited him in Denver to see him celebrate Mass. The parish, being familiar with his vocation story and Dan’s role in bringing him to God, gave him a standing ovation once they learned he was present.

 

“Where would I be today if it wasn’t for Dan?” Grandon asked.

 

“Let’s go home. And change the world.”

[…]

Denver, Colo., Jan 6, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- Founder of the pro-abortion campaign “Shout Your Abortion”, Amelia Bonow was featured in a recent kids’ YouTube video to talk abortion with adolescents, telling them that life begins when they decide it does and that abortion is “part of God’s plan.”

The video, entitled “Kids Meet Someone Who’s Had an Abortion,” was published by Seattle-based company HiHo kids, and is a part of a series of videos called “Kids Meet.” Other videos in the series include kids meeting a ventriloquist, a deaf person, a Holocaust survivor, a gender non-conforming person, and a gynecologist, among others.

“Shout Your Abortion” (SYA), the organization founded by Bonow, has as its mission the normalization and celebration of abortion as an act of female empowerment.

“We’re in a fight for our lives, and it’s time to tell the truth. Every single day, all sorts of people have abortions, for every reason you can imagine. We are your siblings, your coworkers, your spouses and your friends. Abortion helps people live their best lives. We are the proof. And we’re only going to get louder,” the organization’s website states.

In the “Kids Meet” video featuring Bonow, she answers the questions of the kids, who appear to be middle-school aged, about the abortion she procured, which spurred her to found SYA. She also questions the kids about their own views – about what they think abortion is, their opinion on abortion, and even their religious and moral views.

“Do you think that sometimes it’s not ok to have an abortion?” Bonow asked one of the boys in the video.

“I want to say if you’re being reckless, if there’s nothing wrong going on…” he replied.

“I don’t know, I just don’t agree,” Bonow said. “Do we want people to just have all those babies?”

When the boy responds that unwanted babies could be put up for adoption, Bonow argues that that would still be forcing women to “create life.”

“I feel like if I am forced to create life, I have lost the right to my own life,” she said. “I should be the one to decide if my body creates life. Even if you give a kid up for adoption, you still like have a kid out there somewhere, you know?”

Bonow also questions several of the kids in the video about their religious views. When one girl identifies as Catholic, Bonow questions her whether she knows what the Catholic Church teaches about abortion.

“I don’t think the Church liked it. Because they see it as like, killing the baby,” the girl responds.

Bonow then asks her and another girl what their personal opinions are.

“I think it’s up to you,” one of the girls responds. “Same,” says the girl who identified as Catholic.

“I feel supported by that,” Bonow replies, smiling.

Bonow then asks a boy in the video whether he believes in God. When he says he does, she asks him what he thinks God would think about abortion.

“If I were to say, I think he’s ok with it because there’s still babies being born,” he answers hesitantly. “What do you think God thinks about abortion?”

“I think it’s all part of God’s plan,” Bonow responds. “I really was just thinking about Drake when I said that,” she adds.

A few of the kids in the video asked Bonow why she had the abortion, and whether she and her partner had used a condom or contraception to try to prevent pregnancy.

“He wasn’t wearing a condom,” Bonow said, because it seemed “easier at the time.”

When asked what the abortion was like, Bonow compared it to “a crappy dentist appointment or something.”

“You go to the doctor and they put this little straw inside of your cervix and inside of your uterus. And then they just suck the pregnancy out,” she said. “It was like a body thing that’s kind of uncomfortable, but then it was over and I felt really just grateful that I wasn’t pregnant anymore.”

The content of the video, released Dec. 28, garnered so much negative attention that the comments for the video on YouTube have been disabled.

As of Jan. 4, the original video had more than 250,000 views, with 5,900 “thumbs up” ratings and 6,700 “thumbs down” ratings on YouTube.

Thousands of concerned parents and critics in social media comments called the video “disgusting”, “disturbing” and “irresponsible.”

Kristi Hamrick, a spokesperson for pro-life group Students for Life of America, told CNA that the video lies to children about the weight of the decision of having an abortion.

“It’s clear that when an abortion takes place, there’s a tragedy that affects both woman and child,” she said.

“And to pretend otherwise, and to tell children that it’s an irrelevant, insignificant choice is the largest lie of abortion, because so many people understand that no matter how you feel about it, it is an unchangeable thing that you have done,” she said.

Hamrick added that she thought it was unfortunate that the video expended effort on justifying abortion to children, rather than trying to teach them how to make good choices.

“To go to kids and say I want to help you feel comfortable with what is an unchangeable and terrible choice, why would we do that?” Hamrick said. “Why wouldn’t we talk about children what is best, what is aspirational, about their hope and future?”

Georgette Forney is an Anglican deacon, the president of Anglicans for Life, and co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, whose mission is to give a voice and platform to women who regret their abortions.

Forney told CNA in e-mail comments that she thought the video should be called “Kids Meet Abortion Propaganda.”

“…when I looked into the organization producing the series – I realized it was indeed an organization pumping out ‘content’ for kids that features a liberal agenda,” she said.

She said the video with Bowon is “disingenuous and not representational of women who have abortions,” many of whom have deep regrets.

She said she attempted to reach out to the group to suggest that they make an alternative video, where kids talk with women who regret their abortions, but could not find any contact information.

“Guess they don’t want to hear from people but do want to decide what kids should hear!” she said.

Mallory Quigley, a spokesperson for pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, which advocates for pro-life politicians, told CNA that she thought it was sad that Bowon felt the need to use children to justify her decision.

“It’s sad that she felt the need to justify the choice to end a life, and to bully kids into supporting her decision,” she said. “People who are comfortable with their decisions don’t usually take that step.”

She added that she thought the video was an act of “desperation” on the part of the “abortion lobby.”

“They see that life is winning, that a majority of young people are pro-life,” she said. “This is sort of a desperate attempt to try out what’s really old and tired language at this point on the next generation. And I think that it reveals a lot of the flaws in their arguments and the subjectivity of it all.”

D. C. McAllister, writing for P.J. Media, wrote that the video was “creepy” and “targets children.”

“Notice how she dehumanizes the baby, the life inside of her. She also fails to tell the children about the physical risks to the mother. She ignores the pain women suffer and the long-term adverse effects. She skips over the emotional toll having an abortion takes on most women,” McAllister wrote.

“She doesn’t describe what happens to the baby – how it’s chemically burned, how it feels pain. How it is cut up into pieces. Little arms, legs, and torsos. Planned Parenthood has plenty of pictures she could have provided, but no, she tells these kids it’s a simple procedure – and you’ll be so grateful afterwards.”

Nathan Apodaca, writing for life advocacy group Human Defense, deconstructs the arguments made for abortion in the video, which he said “simply helps confirm many of the biases that people have against those who oppose abortion, through lazy dismissals, bad arguments, ad hominem insults, and snarky political posturing.”

“The ‘#SHOUTYOURABORTION’ movement may be holding the hearts of many at the moment through tearful and heart wrenching stories, but it is instead the desperate plea of a movement which has broken tens of millions of men and women and helped slaughter tens of millions of little children who never got to see the light of day or feel the warm embrace of those who loved them,” he wrote.

Bonow posted the video on her Twitter, and announced that her group was also working on a children’s book: “I let a bunch of kids grill me about my abortion and it was great. #ShoutYourAbortion will be releasing a children’s book about abortion in 2020!”

But the 2,200-plus comments on her post were overwhelmingly against the video.

“I notice not one child was filmed who rejected her position,” Twitter user MamaD said.

“I watched this. No information given such as facts of embryonic developmen [sic] & what abortion procedures at various trimesters actually entail. No, it’s platitudes & emotional appeals; of course kids will tell you it’s ok and sadly so will many adults. Abortion is a grave injustice,” Twitter user Jenny S. commented.

Several commenters on Twitter and Facebook recommended that the “Kids Meet” series also expose children to someone who has survived abortion, such as Gianna Jessen, a pro-life speaker and advocate who survived a late-term saline abortion at 7 months, and has cerebral palsy as a result.

Jessen herself responded to the video on Twitter: “as someone who was actually born in an abortion clinic, resulting in cerebral palsy, and being a woman-i would Love to give these kids another perspective. the baby’s perspective-what were my rights?”

[…]

Bridgeport, Conn., Jan 5, 2019 / 06:22 pm (CNA).- The Bishop of Bridgeport condemned anti-Semitism Saturday, after a swastika was found painted on the doors of Bridgeport’s cathedral.

“I am appalled and outraged by this act of vandalism ag… […]

Denver, Colo., Jan 5, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- In a 25-year film career, Scarlett Johansson has portrayed a cartoon mermaid princess, a comic book superhero, an Indian python, and a punk-rock porcupine. She has not portrayed a porn star. Nevertheless, h… […]

Denver, Colo., Jan 4, 2019 / 04:47 pm (CNA).- It’s probably a little late for retrospectives, but if you’re planning your 2019 reading list, here are six great novels and memoirs I read in 2018.

I am not including on this list my perennial favorites, but I am not limiting myself to books published in 2018 either. Rather, these are six books that gripped my heart and imagination last year, and might do the same for you.

Novels:

“The Devil’s Advocate” Morris West, 1959.

Father Blaise Meredith is an English priest, a canon lawyer, and official in the Sacred Congregation of Rites, the predecessor to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Father Meredith is precise, meticulous, intelligent, and disconnected: lacking living relationships, and the experience of love. His life is ordered, peaceful, and gray. When he discovers he is dying, his Vatican superiors send him to investigate the cause for canonization of a complicated figure from a complicated place, a man who was executed by Communist partisans in Calabria at the end of World War II. In Calabria, he discovers more about faith, hope, and about himself than he ever would have expected.  

“Lincoln in the Bardo” George Saunders, 2017

George Saunders is weird, and so is his fiction. A lapsed Catholic and a practicing Buddhist, the impact of a Catholic education and a Catholic worldview is never entirely absent from his work, which explores questions of spirituality, morality, and relationships from new approaches and perspectives.

“Lincoln in the Bardo” is the story of the afterlife of Abraham Lincoln’s deceased son, Willie. While not reflective of Catholic doctrine, and at times upsetting for some readers, the book is funny, tragic, and, in its own way, offers beautiful insights on living and dying well.  
 

“The Book of Aron” Jim Shepard, 2015.

Aron is a poor, Polish, Jewish boy who endures the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, where his family lives in a tenement flat. His world is miserable before the Nazis arrive, and it falls apart as they force Warsaw’s Jews into ever-worsening conditions. When he can no longer survive by his own wits, he discovers what it is to be loved, by Janusz Korczak, director of a Warsaw orphanage. While Aron, Korczak, and everyone they know march toward an inevitable evil, that love endures, as a powerful counter-witness of hope.

Memoir:

“The Last Homily: Conversations with Fr. Arne Panula” Mary Eberstadt, 2018

“How great,” wrote St. Francis de Sales, “is a good priest.” Fr. Arne Panula was a good priest: holy, humble, cultured, and human. It takes a writer as skilled as Mary Eberstadt to capture the beauty of a good and holy priest preparing for a good and holy death. In this book, she has done exactly that. Do not miss the prophetic witness of Fr. Panula, captured in the prophetic prose of Eberstadt.

“From Fire, By Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith” Sohrab Ahmari, 2019

The story of an Iranian immigrant, who discovered in America first nihilism, then communism, and then eventually the Lord. Ahmari’s memoir took me to places I have never been, and gave me a fresh look at people and places that seemed very familiar. Most especially, Ahmari’s book explored a restless human heart, searching and seeking, until, quite unexpectedly, coming to rest in the Lord.

 

“With God in Russia” Fr. Walter J Ciszek, SJ, 1964.

As a young priest, Fr. Walter Ciszek wanted to preach the Gospel behind the Iron Curtain. He spent more than a decade in Soviet labor camps, preaching and witnessing to the Gospel in extraordinary ways. His story is the story of the Lord’s Providence, and one man’s fidelity to Christ.

I asked CNA reporters and editors to suggest the best books they read in 2018. Here are some of their suggestions, in no particular order:

“The Other Francis: Everything they did not tell you about the pope” Deborah Lubov, 2018
“Life and Love: Opening Your Heart to God’s Design” Terry Polakovic, 2018
“Why Liberalism Failed,” Patrick Deneen, 2018
“By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed,” Edward Feser, 2017
“A Canticle for Leibowitz” Walter Miller Jr., 1984
“The Magnolia Story” Chip and Joanna Gaines, 2016
“In Sinu Jesu”  A Benedictine Priest, 2016
“Crossing to Safety” Wallace Stegner, 2002
“Gilead” Marilynne Robinson, 2006
“Building the Benedict Option: A Guide to Gathering Two or Three Together in His Name” Leah Libresco, 2018
“A Call to a Deeper Love: The Family Correspondence of the Parents of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus” Louis and Zelie Martin
“Hillbilly Elegy” J.D. Vance, 2016
“My Squirrel Days,” Ellie Kemper, 2018
“The Buried Giant” Kazuo Ishiguro, 2016
Every Sacred Sunday Mass Journal
“I’ll Be Gone In The Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer” Michelle McNamara, 2018
“The Power of Silence”  Cardinal Robert Sarah, 2017
“Deaconesses: An Historical Study” Aime G Mortimort, 1986
“The Idea of a University” John Henry Cardinal Newman, 1852
“Don Quixote” Miguel de Cervantes, 1605

 

[…]

Indianapolis, Ind., Jan 4, 2019 / 04:30 pm (CNA).- Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) founder Curtis Martin encouraged members to recall the real purpose of their lives while speaking at the organization’s annual conference.

&nbs… […]

Washington D.C., Jan 4, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- This week the U.S. bishops gathered at Mundelein Seminary in the Archdiocese of Chicago for a weeklong retreat, held at the urging of Pope Francis. Under the guidance of the preacher to the papal household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, they will spend a week “pausing in prayer” to “reflect on the signs of the times.”

 

Although recent scandals loom large over the meeting, the pope has asked the bishops to focus on their own conversion, before further discussion about new systems or structures to address the sexual abuse crisis.

 

In a letter sent to the American bishops ahead of their retreat, Pope Francis underscored that the recent crisis has “severely undercut and diminished” the Church’s credibility.  Only response grounded in unity and communion, the pope wrote, has the power to restore the Church’s authority and authenticity.

 

The pope warned the bishops to avoid temptations to seek either the “relative calm resulting from compromise, or from a democratic vote where some emerge as ‘winners’ and others not.”

 

These temptations remain strong. One of the great frustrations for many of them during the Baltimore assembly was what they saw as a missed opportunity to produce “a solution,” in whatever form.

 

Whatever model bishops supported in November: the proposed lay-led national commission or the so-called metropolitan model, at least some seemed to be looking for a silver bullet, a powerful “fix” that would restore confidence now and prevent scandals from repeating.

 

Many American Catholics, too, seemed to expect a cure-all structural reform, and are now hoping that at the global summit on abuse in February, Rome will produce the reforms the U.S. Church could not.

 

But expectations that there can be one practical solution to solve the crisis are likely to prove false hopes. It has become obvious to most observers that no new policy, structure, or process can answer or prevent what is essentially a crisis of sin.

 

In his letter, Francis called administrative reforms “necessary yet insufficient” as they “ultimately risk reducing everything to an organizational problem.” The pope called the bishops to recognize their “sinfulness and limitations” and to preach to each other the need for conversion.

 

The pope’s diagnosis seems to be rooted in the evidence of recent months.

 

The current crisis is really better understood as a web of intersecting crises. The sexual abuse of minors is rightly seen as the most scandalous among them, but it has festered – as the pope has observed – among other illnesses in the body of the Church.

 

Clericalism, sexual permissiveness, moral indifference, and administrative negligence are themselves serious problems that require answers of their own.

 

But, if recent history is any guide, those answers are unlikely to come from any canonical or structural reform, however dramatic or well-intended.

 

As Cardinal Blase Cupich noted in November, there have been structures and commitments of various kinds in place in since 2002. The Statement of Episcopal Commitment was designed to ensure Church law was always followed when allegations were made, no matter who was being accused. And in 2016, Pope Francis issued the motu proprio Come una madre amorivole, which established – or was meant to – an entirely new canonical procedure for investigating and triying allegations against a bishop.

 

But even with those those policies and promises, Church officials have not seemed to consider themselves bound to any uniform procedure for handling allegations against bishops. Meanwhile, Francis has withdrawn the reforms of Come una madre before they were ever tested.

 

Many are now realizing that the problems facing the Church have never been the result of a lack of procedures. Instead, attention is beginning to shift to an enduring lack of will in the Church to employ its policies consistently and with rigor.

 

Absent a moral commitment to see them applied unsparingly, no reform measures – however systematic – can prevent the worst from happening.

 

As a case in point: last month it emerged that the Archdiocese of New York, which has some of the clearest, best-established abuse policies of any U.S. diocese, left a priest in ministry even after its own independent commission offered compensation to several of his alleged victims.

 

As recently as last month, the office of clergy personnel issued a letter of good standing stating “without qualification” that no accusation had ever been made against him; this despite an ongoing investigation by the archdiocese’s own review board.

 

The failures in New York were not caused by a lack of policies and procedures. Instead, they appear to have been truly human failures.

 

This may be the reason the pope appears skeptical that another policy or structure could yield different results, at any level of the Church, without personal conversion by the people charged with implementing them.

 

In August of last year, at the height of the Church’s summer of scandal, the USCCB’s own lay-led National Review Board agreed, issuing a statement that ruled out further structural reforms as a solution.

 

“The evil of the crimes that have been perpetrated reaching into the highest levels of the hierarchy will not be stemmed simply by the creation of new committees, policies, or procedures,” the review board wrote.

 

“What needs to happen is a genuine change in the Church’s culture, specifically among the bishops themselves. This evil has resulted from a loss of moral leadership and an abuse of power that led to a culture of silence that enabled these incidents to occur.”

 

Moral leadership, as the pope has told the U.S. bishops in no uncertain terms, cannot be effected by a vote. It requires a personal conversion in the face of failure and sin. Real change will require a totally new mindset among bishops, and the Curia.

 

The 19th century British Prime Minister George Canning ridiculed what he called “the idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the carriage.”

 

“Men are everything,” Canning said, “measures comparatively nothing.”

 

Pope Francis echoed this sentiment in his letter to the bishops, warning them that the Church’s lost credibility “cannot be regained by issuing stern decrees or by simply creating new committees or improving flow charts.”

 

Instead, the pope wrote, the Church will only regain her credibility by “acknowledging its sinfulness and limitation” while at the same time “preaching the need for conversion.”

 

After the scandals of 2002, many bishops and officials treated the new measures and standards as a hardship to be endured, rather than a new reality of ecclesiastical life to be internalized. The “cultural change” called for by the national review board and the pope may prove to be the only means of breaking what has begun to resemble a cycle of scandal.

 

By warning the American bishops against measures aimed at recovering their reputations rather than amending their ways, the pope may have set the bar by which his own February summit will be measured. In his letter, Francis has called for a “shared project that is at once broad, unassuming, sober, and transparent.” Such a project, it seems, would bear little resemblance to past attempts to respond to the sexual abuse crisis.

 

As the bishops pray in Mundelein and the pope’s advisers prepare for February’s meeting in Rome, many Catholics begin 2019 wondering if a hierarchy beset by scandal can truly convert, or merely reform – again.

[…]

Washington D.C., Jan 4, 2019 / 09:30 am (CNA).- In the first day of the new congressional session, the House of Representatives passed a spending bill that includes a provision to repeal a pro-life policy. The bill was one of two appropriations bills p… […]