c. 1998 Religion News Service
(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of”My Brother Joseph,”published by St. Martin Press.)
UNDATED _ America’s Roman Catholic bishops are probably the most unjustly criticized cohort of religious leaders in America.
Many liberal, activist Catholics, for example, expect the bishops to advocate for reforms such as the ordination of women and an end to priestly celibacy _ reforms they neither can nor will adopt.
The bishops’ calling, after all, is to care for the institutional church and to sacrifice their own pastoral convictions, if need be, to stand by its teachings and be loyal sons to the Holy Father who made them bishops.
So, let’s cut them some slack and stop pressing them to be reformers when they are administrators at heart and by appointment. Let us be grateful for their pastoral respect for the consciences of good people on, for example, birth control, and for not making a big deal of it.
On the other hand, and in the spirit of comic relief, we have a bishop every once in a while who is so anxious to please the pope that he catches his foot in his own cassock hem and comes sprawling into the sanctuary of our attention.
Such is Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, the extraordinarily ordinary of Lincoln, Neb., who, a few years ago, excommunicated all the members of the liberal Call to Action movement in his diocese.
The best test of the bishop’s decree, however, was whether it was supported by any other bishops. The silence at the time was deafening and Call to Action continues to thrive.
If, however, the bishop wanted to get the attention of the pope, he almost certainly did. But perhaps not the sort he sought for if he thought this loud loyalty would lead to a diocese larger than Lincoln, he can sell his suitcases and settle down.
Now, apparently as needy as Chevy Chase to prove he can take repeated falls in public, the Bishop Bruskewitz has, within this calendar year, allowed his diocesan newspaper to assail as a”degenerate”one of the great women of American Catholicism, Patty Crowley of Chicago, the founder of the Christian Family Movement.
He also has attacked his fellow bishops’ pastoral letter to the parents of homosexuals. This letter is the kind of pastoral grace by which our hard driven administrator bishops reveal the greatness of their hearts. It calls on parents to love, respect and support sons and daughters who may be homosexual, noting”our total personhood is more encompassing than sexual orientation”and saying that”God does not love someone any less because he or she is homosexual.” Bruskewitz, however, charges the document is”founded on bad advice, mistaken theology, erroneous science, and skewed sociology.”He also criticizes strongly the way the document was written and claims the paper”carries no weight or authority for Catholics, whom I would advise to ignore or oppose it.” Bishop Bruskewitz, thank you. We needed a good laugh in this parlous year of national and international crises. We thought you could not top your complicity in the attack on Patty Crowley or your mindless excommunication of Call to Action members.
But this assault on a document showing understanding and care for the parents of homosexuals is absolutely brilliant on your part. How could you get attention unless you transcended your own previous low interludes of fame in American life?
By this action, you automatically increase the respect Catholics have for all the other bishops who haven’t abandoned their pastoral hearts. Your solution has the mark of genius as clear as the mark of Cain: Blessed are the cold of heart for they shall never comfort or be comforted.
How brave of you to surrender your ambition to preserve your right to be wrong. Your achievement has little competition in church history: You have taken a stand that hurts everybody at the same time. We certainly hope you like Lincoln. You are going to be there for a long time.
DEA END KENNEDY
