Reviving Love for Our Bishops

Our high school religion provoked us: "What would you do if you learned your mother was a whore?" After we processed the disturbing feelings...disgust, anger, shame...Father suggested gently: "At the end of the day, your mother is your mother. No matter how bad, you love her." Pause and then: "That is the way it is with the Church. One day you will know your Church is a whore. But she is still your mother. You will still love her.

Since the catastrophic Summer of McCarrick 2018 I have suffered very low confidence in our papacy and episcopacy and the suspicion that the legacy of Uncle Ted lives on in his proteges including the circle of Pope Francis. This has been a sadness and a dissonance since my Catholic faith is constituted by, among other things, trust in our hierarchy. I have maintained allegiance, but with little zeal, affection or joy. That changed yesterday: my heart and mind were changed by, of all things, an oped from the National Catholic Reporter. (https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/editorial-why-we-support-bishops-plan-deny-communion-biden).

The piece...contemptuous of the American bishops, sarcastic, condescending, arrogant, self-righteous, frenzied to near hysteria, hyper-political...was so vile that I was personally insulted. It angered me and aroused a fierce protectiveness of the heirs of the apostles. I felt the affection, loyalty and zeal I missed these past years. It is as if you called my mother a whore. The fact that she is a whore does not matter, I will fight you all the more in her honor.

For a lifetime I have observed our bishops, mostly from some distance. I find them to be almost always decent, competent, prayerful, intelligent men. Those named by John Paul and Benedict are, on the whole, theologically sound. I blame most of their failings on the system: they are responsible to maintain a mamouth bureaucracy and the demands of that stewardship distract from gospel leadership. The Church must and will grow small and poor. She will be purified. In the meantime, I respect and sympathise with our bishops. I will support them with my loyalty and prayer, even as I withold financial support for the malignancy of ecclesiastical institutions.

I am heartened and encouraged by the desperation of the NCR. They clearly see that the American episcopacy as currently composed remains faithful to the legacy of John Paul and Benedict. While weeds will continue to grow with the wheat, neither the confusion/incoherence of Pope Francis nor the perversity/duplicity of McCarrick will prevail. Christ is with his Church to the end of the age.