Vatican seeks 'transparency' but we see through that

Some interesting ideas, but this piece could have used some judicious editing. Mixed metaphors, run-ons, poorly constructed & convoluted sentences...

One example: "If bishops want to help the beleaguered pope, let them lead the way back to the collegiality that was the original structure of the church instead of criticizing the media for reporting the tragic story whose end is not in sight. Collegiality is healthy, it preserves the pope at the center of the church, and recognizes its members to be a People of God in this world. That kind of health is the only cure for the corrupt style now calling in a cracking voice for truth, transparency and credibility."

Please accept this suggestion in the collegial way it is meant: Sometimes less is more:

For example:

"If bishops want to help the beleaguered pope, they should promote true collegiality--the kind that offers constructive criticism. Rather than criticizing the media for reporting the truth, bishops should call for transparency."

--MB

Mud obscuring the transparency-Law, Burke, Levada a trinity of sorts although there's more where that came from.

Excellent commentary! Time for the People of God to take back Christ's church from the pompous and elite who are called the Hierarchy--------by definition, opposed to the model of Jesus. Time for the Great 21st Century Reformation with the People of God in Christian Council III. Finally a break with Rome and the structure that runs contrary to every Christian principle established by Jesus. The People of God choose compassion over dogma; inclusivity over exclusivity; egalitarianism over class distinction; and most importantly, openness to the Spirit over blind commitment to tradition.

I still am amazed by all this talk of hierarchy. The one thing the sex abuse scandal has demonstrated is that no one has observed the hierarchy of things in decades. The Pope isn't clinging to the Vatican balcony - he goes forth. What do the bishops do - they go forth. What can't happen is undoing and that is what you really want to happen. So, why can't you?

I'm in sympathy with much of what Mr. Kennedy writes, but I think he weakens his case by overstating things. For example, Benedict has his eyes fixed firmly on Trent?? Rather, he has a very conservative reading of Vatican II based on his lifelong theological study. There is a difference.
Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB

Thank you for this forthright essay soaked in sorrow for Church leadership so out of touch, and yet seasoned with some compassion for the pope who must try to recover and reform this body...yet does not seem to know where to begin. The question that needs to be asked of all the bishops is why can they not in humility and collegiality draw upon the wisdom of the laity? We seem to be the ones who can recognize the extent of the problem brought on by patriarchical positioning that has poisoned the hierarchy for far too long.

"If bishops want to help the beleaguered pope, let them lead the way back to the collegiality that was the original structure of the church"

I doubt that it will happen primarily because the current crop of bishops are the hand-picked product of a non-collegial system. What few collegial bishops existed
following the Jone XXIII and Paul VI era have been supplanted by John-Paul II era bishops of the Raymond Burke ilk. Getting these cats to change their spots is going to be nigh on impossible as they at once:

• Have absolutely no experience of collegiality other than with their peers
• Didn't get into "bishop biz" to be collegial

They are senior executives, "upper management," if you will, and are in general not about to give up the power and perks attending to their station.

At least you don't portray the Pope as a villain. A step in the right direction.

Very well said Eugene. The church need only look at the business world to see what thrives in this modern era with an educated populace having access to a world of information. What works? Organizations that value collaboration over control, that recognize that great ideas can originate anywhere in the organization, that encourage creative thinking, and that are willing to change are thriving. Organizations that have rigid structures cannot compete and survive because they can neither anticipate nor respond to changes in the world in which they function. A dramatic change in church structure is the only thing that can save it from becoming a modern dinosaur.

Kudos to Eugene Kennedy for this insightful and honest article that hits the target dead center! Joe Ratzinger is trying to preserve an imperial Roman empire style of being Church. It has no bearing on the humble and unadorned Jesus of the gospels. It is a system that not only belongs to another century but it is a system which has failed catastrophically. Until the entire theology of collegiality is practiced we will see little change. We will also see little change if bishops continue to be appointed by The Bishop of Rome. This doesn't work. Every local diocese should select and then elect their own bishops. This needs lay and clergy voting for their own local bishops with a five or ten year term limit. Women need to be ordained priests and bishops. Mandatory celibacy needs to be dropped. Ratzinger will fight to prevent all of this from happening and as a result he will hasten the implosion of the Catholic Church hierarchy. This is another reason for Benedict to resign. He would be doing the Church a great favor if he would dissolve the College of Cardinals and put into place a democratic system of lay people, priests and bishops from each diocese to elect The Bishop of Rome as a symbol of unity. It remains to be seen just how much time the present system has before total collapse. I believe it will not be as long as most would predict. The present system is rotting from corruption at a very rapid pace. Secrets breed dysfunction and collapse.

Does Rome really think we are that gullible?

I think Kennedy has nailed it by focusing on hierarchy. The kind of pyramidal hierarchies we see around us (church, business, the military)all suffer from the same thing. Ken Wilber had some insight into it when he wrote:

"For so many people hierarchy has become a dirty word, and for understandable reasons. But there are at least two very different types of hierarchy, which researchers call oppressive hierarchies (or dominator hierarchies). A dominator hierarchy is just that, a ranking system that dominates, exploits and represses people. The most notorious of these are the caste systems. Any hierarchy is a dominator hierarchy if it subverts individual or collective growth.
Actualization hierarchies, on the other hand, are the actual means of growth itself. Far from causing oppression, they are how you end it. Growth or developmental hierarchies classically move, in humans, from egocentric, to ethnocentric, to worldcentric to Kosmocentric waves. In the natural world, growth hierarchies are everywhere, the most common being the unfolding from atoms to molecules to cells to organisms. Growth hierarchies are always nested hierarchies, which means that each higher level transcends and includes its predecessors. Organisms transcend and include cells, which transcend and include molecules, which transcend and include atoms, which transcend and include quarks, and so on. In a growth hierarchy, higher levels don’t oppress lower levels, they embrace them. They literally include them, they envelop them. Each level in a growth hierarchy is indeed ranked in a higher-archy, because it represents an increase in the capacity for care, consciousness, cognition, morals, and so on. Growth is a development that is an envelopment –egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric to Kosmocentric.
In short, dominator hierarchies cause oppression, growth hierarchies end it."

Back in the mid 60s I was at a lecture Kennedy gave. As I remember his quote he said that the problem with houses of religious formation is that they take normal people and make them feel guily because they can't lead an abnormal life perfectly, and they reward those who can.

After 8 years in a seminary and 5 years as a priest I finally realized what Wilber meant when he said: "Any hierarchy is a dominator hierarchy if it subverts individual or collective growth."

The NCR seeks "truth" by resurrecting Dr. Kennedy, but we see through that. It is the "Battle of the Bulge" revisited: a last ditch offensive to keep the fires of dissent alive in the Church. Transparency, indeed!

Reading the articles in the NCR reminds me of that old country song by the late, great Roy Acuff, "The Great Speckled Bird," which is actually a wonderful theological commentary on people like Dr. Kennedy, who continually criticize the Church.

1.What a beautiful thought I am thinking
Concerning a great speckled bird
Remember her name is recorded
On the pages of God's Holy Word.

2. All the other birds are flocking 'round her
And she is despised by the squad
But the great speckled bird in the Bible
Is one with the great church of God.

3. All the other churches are against her
They envy her glory and fame
They hate her because she is chosen
And has not denied Jesus' name.

4. Desiring to lower her standard
They watch every move that she makes
They long to find fault with her teachings
But really they find no mistake.

5. She is spreading her wings for a journey
She's going to leave by and by
When the trumpet shall sound in the morning
She'll rise and go up in the sky.

6. In the presence of all her despisers
With a song never uttered before
She will rise and be gone in a moment
Till the great tribulation is o'er.

7. I am glad I have learned of her meekness
I am proud that my name is on her book
For I want to be one never fearing
The face of my Savior to look.

8. When He cometh descending from heaven
On the cloud that He writes in His Word
I'll be joyfully carried to meet Him
On the wings of that great speckled bird.

How does the Pope resolve the crisis and still cover for John Paul II ? Not easy I guess. It's doubtful that intrenched,old,uncomprehending fossils are going to surrender their privileges to pressure from laymen. The clergy are chosen by heaven for their jobs after all.

I don't think you used the word hierarchical enough.

Bravo Mr. Kennedy.
You are exactly correct.
This crisis isn't primarily about sex, there are pedophiles in every occupation and walk of life.
Rather, the crisis exposed the hierarchy as a bunch more concerned about the reputation of the Church than the rape of children. Laity recognize that when they were preaching to us they were transferring pedophile priests to prey on other children.
They haven't "walked the talk".
They are now exposed and have lost all credibility.

B16 says I'm sorry, change will come but does nothing to address the root of all this: hypocricy,clericalism and pride. Now he sheds a tear in Malta, big deal. He met w/ survivors in NY, said change would come then they never heard from him again, same thing in Ireland, same thing w/ the bishops in Germany, now Malta.
He can fool us once, maybe twice but no more.

The next conclave can't come soon enough.

Thank you Eugene for the focused passion of your analysis. This by someone whom I can sense loves the church deeply. Your commentary helps me feel less burdened holding my own personal experience of 'ecclisia' and I know that for me it is important to remain in the position of observer. I had become filled with anguish and hatred, why bother hating an 83 year old man who is about to drop one or two of his red Prada slippers. Yes, I will refine the observer's stance, I will repent of the acerbic posts on blogs, I will say a very quiet but evident yes to Mother Mary and Rabbi Yeshu. I want to come home. I want peace in my heart. I am about to become more 'observant' but I will not return to 'church', unless it's a ruin.

"He cannot see what lay people see in the resignation of bishops from different countries..."
THIS lay person sees that church LAWYERS told them to resign, because for them to be deposed by the Vatican would establish legal grounds for civil lawsuits!

As always, Eugene Kennedy is both elegant & brilliant in his synopsis. Dr Kennedy, however, omits one important
part of the "Eifel Tower-like hierarchical structure" of the temporal Church he describes, & that is: MEN !
I've said it before & I'll say it again: if we had more women "in-charge" in the Curia/Vatican, we'd
not be having this discussion at all!

After all that has come to light over the last decade or so, I no longer imagine that an ecclesiastical leadership that excludes people with real experience as parents, could come on its own to a frank and humble admission of its failure and then muster the resolve to act decisively to protect children.

In all of this church defenders are constantly referring to "past" abuse of children.

It takes many years for abused children to become adult enough to understand what happened to them and to report it, or to get a hearing.

So how do we know these same abuses are not CURRENTLY taking place and that the bishops who presided over the silence are still covering up?

As long as Cardinals Law and Mahony and the Irish bishops remain in powerful posts, I will not believe that the Pope and the institutional Church are doing anything more than public relations.

On learning of a credible report of priest-child pedophilia or ebophilia has a bishop ever picked up the phone and called the police? Ever?

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger ORDERED bishops to be silent on sex abuse allegations under pain of ostracism.

Far from ordering the bishops to call the cops to investigate credible allegations of abuse they were told to handle them internally and secretly, send the information to Rome and then wait until whenever for the decision.

Why are there a mere 40 administrators handling these issues? Because the leaders in Rome WANT it that way. They persist in regarding CRIMES as SINS and protecting the predators so as to avoid scandal...and eight years after the Boston Globe broke the story, they are still at it. (Cardinal Law has a major post in Rome. No bishop has been disciplined let alone fired for shuffling these predator priests around.)

Until the bishops are ORDERED to report credible allegations of sexual assault to the police in the jurisdictions of their dioceses and FIRED if they fail to do so this scandal will not go away.

Until this reform why would any caring parents put their children in harm's way?

The Vatican makes the police "blue wall of silence" look like a sieve.

"Catholics see right through this call for sudden and unaccustomed virtue in church dealings. This is deathbed repentance after the near death experience of sex abusing clergy being exposed for exposing themselves all over the world."

## That is not fair.

It puts the Vatican in an impossible position: first it is criticised for its failures then it is criticised when there is a "for sudden and unaccustomed virtue in church dealings."

If it is not repentant, it is blamed, and if it penitent, it is blamed. Whatever it does, it is faulted. I yield to no-one in abhorrence of what has been allowed to happen in the Church all these years, but this merciless attitude will not help to bring healing. Vatican tendencies toward conspiracy theories are not a good reason for equal and opposite conspiracy theories from its critics.

As C. S. Lewis pointed out, to "see through" things is the same is not to see them. To "see through" whatever the Vatican may do to mend matters, is dangerously close to being blind to it.

I disagree fundamentally w/Kennedy that "collegiality" is what's needed. The fact remains that the Church has no effective system to redress legitimate grievances, and bishops can ignore Canon Law w/impunity! "Collegiality" will not remedy that problem; indeed, it will make it worse because the bishops will continue to cover each other's posteriors. Moreover, the bishops -- "collegial" or otherwise -- will not tolerate any means to redress grievances because those means will rob them of their power, prestige and lust for career advancement. The only solution is a congregational system of polity for each diocese. That's far more radical than "collegiality," far less imperial -- and, perhaps, far more in keeping w/Christ's ideas on the exercise of authority (John 13).

Maryc - You have sand in your eyes. Eventually that will become painful.

The People of God are asking for accountability. It makes no difference whether the Pope is on the balcony or in the car, the hierarchy will eventually be forced to join with the People of God and to acknowledge its role in the coverup. Who could have imagined that the uncovering of Cardinal Law's role in the sex abuse coverup in Boston would lead to the eventual fall of the dominant hierarchy that is the Roman Church?

But it's happening. I hear the sand from the loose mortar beginning to drop from the walls. I see it beginning to pile up at the base of the structure. It's too late for tuck-pointing.

Stand back and watch. Clear your eyes, Maryc. The Church will emerge stronger and better. It's a metamorphosis that is long overdue.

It's incredible that there there are obviously still some Catholics who can't stand to face the truth that the institutional church needs to change if it is to survive. They are obviously stuck in the first level of consciousness. Could this be the reason for treating the article as though it was an English grammar test? Is that a 'cover-up' for something deeper going on?

The Catholic laity needs to grow up and squarely face the fact that we have a huge problem that needs fixing.

Professor Kennedy hits the nail on the head. But the nail can't penetrate the hard skull of curial aristocracy, secrecy, and intransigeance! The only nail that can do that is the nail of the reform-minded laity who are living the recommenddations of VC2 despite the blind pronouncements of those at the top... Stay with it, folks! You are the Church as Jesus intended it to be!!!

Pax. Aristophlos

Wanna bet that secrecy persists? But the little known fact is that nothing ever remains secret for ever...

"Collegiality is healthy..."

Say no more. Now you know why the bishops and cardinals are against it. There is not a speck of health there. John Paul II saw to that by appointing businessmen rather than holy men to those offices. As far as the church was concerned, JPII had the vision of Mr. Magoo!

The present Pope created this sordid situation by requiring the hierarchy to march in lock step to the rhythm of his beat. One misstep and the bishop or cardinal is sent packing. It is understandable why they are only too eager to please! It is so unfortunate that especially diocesan bishops feel that they have to jump down everyone's throat for every little thing -- see the article on Cincinnati ArchBp. Schnurr who tried to single-handedly dismantle a conference on "Violence Against Women" -- because that is what Benedict wants to see them do.

Bishops, archbishops and cardinals do not seem to know what to do because their focus is primarily financial -- that's how they got the job. The qualifications were not how deeply spiritual they are, but how deeply POWER HUNGRY they are and how they yearn to face 'liturgical east'! It is strictly "money and numbers" and back to the past!

Your article is beautiful and inspired. We are so fortunate that you share your inspiring words with us.

The situation is so bad that even I, the eternal optimist, am starting to lose hope.

As long as Cardinal Law, formerly of Boston, sits in luxurious comfort in the Vatican, on the small committee that vets candidates for Bishops, all the Curial leaders who took payoffs, financial "donations" from Maciels' group & others are still in their leading roles, etc, then the Vatican is engaged in the same old corruption & coverup of evil in its midst...

One's moral character is known by the people one associates with, not just hot air coming from the mouth...

What is this gibberish about a bird? You published THE WHOLE POEM? BY ROY ACUFF? What is this: the new tea-party-country-music theology?

Give us a break!

"which is actually a wonderful theological commentary on people like Dr. Kennedy, who continually criticize the Church."

This is the way that TNCath speaks about Fr. (Dr.) Eugene Kennedy, a theological icon?

I guess that it is what one does when they have nothing positive to contribute to the discussion.

In the early 70s my former professor Gene Kennedy was giving a talk at University of Santa Clara. Afterwards my wife and I went to say hello. We enjoyed the reunion and had a nice chat.

Suddenly there erupted quite a dilemma as to which Jesuit underling was going to drive him to SFO for the flight home. The kerfuffle was approaching Keystone proportions. Back and forth it went and there was no resolution in sight. Not at all a pleasant development.

Then my practical spouse announced with authoritative finality, "We'll take him to the airport!" The startled blackrobes looked to Gene to see if he had any objections to this new plan. Gene assured them it would be fine, and I was one of his former students from the late 60s and we could have a nice visit on the way, blah, blah, blah.

We beat a hasty retreat to the parking lot and off we went. Once in the car Gene thanked us profusely as the whole awkward scene had made him quite uncomfortable. He was not relishing an hour plus in a car with a reluctant short straw chauffeur.

Driving North on the 101 WE laughed and reminisced and recalled not a few pranks that we undergrads had subjected our professor to. Gene was very popular because he was so real and his insights, understanding, and support were sometimes the only manna to he found for some of us in that particular institution. The murders of Bobby Kennedy and MLK and the 68 Convention in Chicago were still fresh in our collective minds.

I do remember very clearly one thing he said that night with great sadness and regret. It seemed to him that the bishops were on an island that was slowly ebbing out to sea, less and less important or helpful day by day.

Do some things indeed never change?
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