Why did our Bishops and Cardinals Start Behaving Badly?

First reading
Acts 1:15-17,20-26 ©

'Let someone else take his office'

One day Peter stood up to speak to the brothers – there were about a hundred and twenty persons in the congregation: ‘Brothers, the passage of scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit, speaking through David, foretells the fate of Judas, who offered himself as a guide to the men who arrested Jesus – after having been one of our number and actually sharing this ministry of ours. Now in the Book of Psalms, it says:

Let his camp be reduced to ruin,

Let there be no one to live in it.

And again:

Let someone else take his office.

‘We must, therefore, choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was traveling around with us, someone who was with us right from the time when John was baptizing until the day when he was taken up from us – and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection.’

  Having nominated two candidates, Joseph known as Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, and Matthias, they prayed, ‘Lord, you can read everyone’s heart; show us therefore which of these two you have chosen to take over this ministry and apostolate, which Judas abandoned to go to his proper place.’ They then drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he was listed as one of the twelve apostles.

There was a vacancy that needed to be filled.  Once there had been twelve apostles, twelve men specially selected by Jesus to be the bishops of His Church. One of them betrayed the Lord and committed suicide leaving the vacancy. 

It is interesting that this passage begins with us being informed that one day Peter stood up to speak to the brothers -120 people. Out of the crowd that was present, it was Peter that told the group that they needed to fill the office of the traitor Judas.  Peter was held in great esteem because all knew that he was the one that Jesus appointed as leader of the Church. 

The process that they used was interesting, they prayed and they drew lots.  I guess Mathias got the short straw and was enrolled as one of the Apostles.  They were relying on the Holy Spirit to show them the way. Today, we do not select our Church leaders by praying and drawing lots.  The process we use starts at the seminary or maybe even before. Back in my youth, I had the notion that I had a calling to be a religious brother, a Franciscan to be exact.  I wrote a letter to the vocation director who came to Chicago to visit me one Saturday morning and we had a long talk in the lobby of a downtown hotel.  I must have made it past this preliminary screening because he told me that I would be receiving some documents in the mail.  He was not lying.  There were lots of documents and a checklist of things that I had to provide before the Third Order Regular of St. Francis, Loretto PA would consent to allow me to try my vocation. There were tests to take, psychological panels to fill out and documents to obtain followed up by a one-hour screening at the office of a local head shrinker.  All of this was to assure them that my motives were pure and I was not an out of work ax murderer looking to open a branch office in Pennsylvania. Today, in light of the scandals that are plaguing the Church, I am sure that the process is even more rigorous than it was back in the '70s when I underwent it.   

So what happened to our hierarchy? They went through the process the same as I did plus they spent years discerning if celibacy and the priesthood were for them.   I think the vast majority of the hierarchy began to trust too much in the process and not enough in the Holy Spirit.  I am speaking here of the leaders that practiced trying to solve the predator priest problem by playing the Move 'em Out game where they transferred problem priests to other parishes.  Were they working for the good of the Church when they did this?  Why of course they were or at least they thought so.  We know now what they were doing was to spread the contamination and to give the predators a new virgin hunting ground.  They acted in what they considered charity by transferring these people, many of whom they had been to seminary with and had close relationships that spread over several decades.  It was, the long black line similar to the long blue line of the police.  What happens in the Church, stays in the Church (although we see that it doesn't) and we take care of our own.  In all of this, our Bishops displayed great trust in human nature and a lack of faith in the Holy Spirit. Each time a predator was moved, each time a violation of a person be they young or old, male or female, the bishop was making it harder and harder to reform the Church and was no longer doing his job.  His job is to lead people to heaven and not to protect the church from chastisement from outside forces. If he had stuck to the leading people to heaven, the perpetrators would have been thrown out, put in jail, and the Church itself would be in a better position today than it is right now. 

The College of Cardinals, the Bishop's Conferences around the world, and even local parish priests have lost credibility.  The public now looks with suspicion at these men who are supposed to be good examples whom we should emulate.  Every "solution" to this issue involves the bishops doing something, coming up with a rule, investigating this and that and yes, they are now coming down hard on predator priests.  Schools that were named after what appeared to be holy men are being renamed with any inspirational artwork being relegated to storage closets and or landfills. 

Our Holy Father, Francis, whom I respect as a good and holy man but as a terrible pope finally came out with a definitive what to do rule for those cardinals and bishops that still may be unsure.  While the rules apply to Vatican City, they are a model that should be adopted by all.   Here is the news story from May 5th courtesy of API. 

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has issued sweeping new sex abuse legislation for the Vatican City State and Vatican diplomats that requires the immediate reporting of allegations to Vatican prosecutors, as he seeks to create a model policy for the Catholic Church.

The mandatory reporting provision, while limited in scope to Vatican officials, marks the first time the Holy See has put into law requirements for Catholic officials to report allegations of sex crimes to police or face fines and possible jail time.

Francis also issued child protection guidelines for Vatican City State and its youth seminary, acting after the global sex abuse scandal exploded anew last year and The Associated Press reported that the headquarters of the Catholic Church had no policy to protect children from predator priests.

While the new norms only cover Vatican City State, affiliated institutions and the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, they were still symbolically significant and were welcomed by a former seminarian whose case helped spark the reform.

“I see this as something positive,” Kamil Jarzembowski told the AP.

The law for the first time provides a Vatican definition for “vulnerable people” who are entitled to the same protections as minors under church law. The Vatican amended its canon law covering sex abuse to include “vulnerable adults” in 2010, but never defined it.

According to the new Vatican definition, a vulnerable person is anyone who is sick or suffering from a physical or psychiatric deficiency, isn’t able to exercise personal freedom and has a limited capacity to understand or resist the crime.

The issue of whether “vulnerable people” can include seminarians, religious sisters or other adults who are emotionally dependent on clergy has come to the fore in the wake of the scandal over ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, a once high-ranking American cleric who molested seminarians, and revelations of priests and bishops around the world sexually preying on nuns.

The new law covers all personnel who live in or work for the Vatican and any abuse that occurs in the Vatican, the 44-hectare (110-acre) city-state in the center of Rome and its other territories, as well as the Holy See’s vast diplomatic corps.

The Vatican’s own ambassadors have figured in some of the most scandalous cases of sex abuse in recent years, with papal representatives accused of groping, distributing child pornography and sexually abusing minors in their far-flung posts.

The provisions to punish them criminally are now contained in the city state’s criminal code and are separate from the canon law which also imposes canonical penalties, such as defrocking, for predator priests worldwide.

The law now requires any Vatican public official who learns of an allegation of abuse within the law’s jurisdiction to report it to Vatican prosecutors “without delay.” Failure to do so can result in a fine of up to 5,000 euros ($5,615) or, in the case of a Vatican gendarme, up to six months of prison.

Information obtained during confession is exempt from the reporting requirements, in keeping with Catholic doctrine.

“With this document, the Vatican wants to send a message that it takes these crimes seriously, wants to prosecute them, to avoid cover-up, and also to create an atmosphere that prevents these crimes from happening in the first place,” said Ulrich Rhode, a canon law professor at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University.

Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability, an online database about clergy abuse, said any law that protects even a single child is to be applauded. But she faulted its limited scope as reinforcing the Vatican claim that it is only responsible for protecting children in the city-state.

“Let’s hope (Francis) finds the courage soon to enact new, sweeping laws in this larger jurisdiction,” she said.

Francesco Zanardi of the Italian survivor advocacy group Rete L’Abuso (Abuse Network) echoed her call, saying: “If minors have the luck of being abused in the Vatican City State, their rights will be protected. Outside, we can’t do anything.”

Many of the law’s provisions answer longstanding victim complaints about how they are treated by the church, while also ensuring that the accused are entitled to a defense and efforts to restore their reputations if the claims are not substantiated.

The legislation requires that victims be welcomed, listened to and provided with medical, psychological and legal assistance, and sets the statute of limitations at 20 years past the victim’s 18th birthday.

They must be kept apprised of the investigation, a significant point given that victims are usually kept in the dark about canonical sex abuse investigations.

Victims and their families are to be protected from any retaliation. Jarzembowski, who reported abuse at the Vatican youth seminary, was kicked out the following year.

Mimicking some provisions in place in the U.S. church, the guidelines require background checks for Vatican staff and volunteers working with minors and calls for safe environment training for all Vatican personnel.

The Vatican’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, acknowledged that very few children actually live in the Vatican City State. But he said Francis decided to make the legislation and accompanying guidelines a model.

Last year, the AP reported that Vatican City had no policy to protect children, even though the Holy See required such policies in Catholic dioceses around the globe and had told the U.N. in 2013 that such a policy was in the works.

The absence of clear-cut policy became evident following revelations that Jarzembowski, then a teenage seminarian in the Vatican’s youth seminary had, in 2012, accused one of the older boys of sexually molesting his roommate.

Nothing came of it. Vatican police, who have jurisdiction, weren’t called in to investigate. A series of bishops and cardinals said they investigated, but no one ever interviewed the alleged victim. The accused was eventually ordained a priest.

On Friday, Jarzembowski told the AP the law answered many of the loopholes into which his case fell, particularly its recognition that the youth seminary falls under Vatican jurisdiction.

“Before there was a situation where a group of kids were there, in the Vatican City State, but they were seemingly in a legal limbo,” he said.