Is church's future tied to bishops?

If it is, it is a dismal future indeed! We need prophets, not pussy-footing opportunistic careerists.

Tom Roberts informs us that Allen writes that Benedict XVI told the archbishops that their connection with the papacy is a “pledge of liberty,” insulating them from the pressure of “local powers, national or international,” and assuring their “full adherence to the truth and to the authentic tradition” of the church.

Regarding -- IS CHURCH'S FUTURE TIED TO BISHOPS?

From my perspective Tom, the question should be, does the church have a future? One needs to go back in history not to the bishops’ power confiscation [see Religion Is Not About God – How Spiritual Traditions Nurture Our Biological Nature And What To Expect When They Fail. Loyal Rue Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, NJ 2005 page 214] but the very beginning and then evaluate the beginning by valid 21st century standards. I have said this so often it’s difficult to keep repeating myself. When Pope Benedict talks about their “full adherence to the truth and to the authentic tradition” of the church -- philosophical skills, biblical-historical scholarship, and relevant science evaluation are immediately demanded to confront this issue.
When enough discussion changes the picture, I think we will see the exiting of the post-Axial Age religion called Catholicism and an emerging post-Axial Age faith phenomenon. Why would we have a future church if there appears to be strong evidence that there never was an incarnation or a bodily resurrection since these two dogmas alone and exclusively are the bedrock of Christianity and the foundation of redemption? Without this bedrock the church as an institution is a dream-castle floating in the air. And certainly the bishops’ power becomes a non-issue.

This pope is obsessed with the idea of hierarchical control. He lives in a world where he and his fellow high churchmen pay lip service to the idea of the "royal priesthood" as Peter understood it in his epistle. Democracy of any kind in the universal Churxch has been rejected out of hand. This has serious repercussions in our efforts to unite with the Orthodox Church.

Pope Benedict is rallying now around his shock troops, the bishops. To man the citadels of a decadent and sensate world. Just as the laity are discovering the extent of the decay lying behind the medieval facade of pomp and glory. The whole Church needs a Bill of Rights which was considered briefly at Vatican II, but went nowhere.

It may take the impoverishment of the Church's treasury and artistic patrimony, and countless decades of legal actions against the Holy See to bring about even the most minimal changes in it's institutional mindset. The time for an independent, national Church of some kind is not too far off.

none of them talk Spanish

no Catholic future here . . .

There may be hope for our bishops afterall. Prof. Daniel Maguire recently offered some advice for our bishops which if taken seriously could bring light to the present darkness: http://www.religiousconsultation.org/NEWS/hierarchy_sex_power_a_primer_f...
Daniel C. Maguire teaches Moral Theology and Ethics at Marquette University in Milwaukee. He is president of the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health, and Ethics.

The pollution has been coming from the self-elected (and therefore disfunctional) hierarchy themselves. To be an effective leadership, the system needs to include our wealth of theological scholars; both lay and religious. To balance our leadership to become closer to imitating God's plan, we necessarily MUST include women! A male-only leadership is an unbalance of gifts being brought to the table.
Furthermore, prophets were always the poorest and least likely leaders. Prophets in the bible were never self-appointed princes who dressed in fancy robes, had people kiss their (expensive) gold rings, and insited upon being addressed as "your excellency... NEVER. Jesus is our model for leadership in the Church, modest, loving, always inclusive, and SERVANT-leader par excellence! (I make this statement as a male theologian.)

J. Allen's piece on the 3 bishops struck me the same way.

John Allen is a diligent and gifted reporter on religious topics far and wide, and perhaps the best Vatican and episcopal analyist we currently have.
But the enthusiasm that he wraps into his writings sometimes fails to reach into me. That applies to John's article today or yesterday about the three American clergymen who were "invested" with "palliums" at the Vatican.

This coming winter, I will try to remember these palliums and hand over three woollen sweaters downtown in Philadelphia, to three men sitting on steam vents, and I will know that I am not handling mere symbols, that the hierarchy of mankind is actually inverted in favor of all of us, and that afterwards, a quiet and holy meal awaits at an afternoon Mass. No parade, no cocktail reception afterwards, just some needed charity, with my anonymous prayers to help the three men keep faith with God or at least, with life.

I share Tom Roberts' need to say that I don't dislike the hierarchy of Catholics' clergy. Some of these prelates try to practice the spiritual charity of the Gospels, and avoid unnecessary and Pharisaic attention to ceremonies, formulas, rank, honors and sanctions.

Some American bishops believe that the Catholic laity living within their borders are subject to their episcopal decisions about the laity's individual actities -- no matter where the lay person may visit or temporarily reside. Focus for a moment on the question of what episcopal authority governs and affects us as we move about the landscape. Do we currently think that a Catholic lay person who travels from home into another bishop's domain is beyond the reach of any episcopal authority? If the lay person, while visiting long term or on a visit in another diocese, acts in such a way as to possibly deserve an episcopal sanction, which bishop does he or she admit can sanction him or her? (the bishop where the possibly errant lay person resides, or the bishop where the lay person has possibly committed an offense?) What if the errant lay person, having been sanctioned by one or the other bishop, and barred from communion or excommunicated, actually buys a new home in a third city?

What if the lay person has no reasonable idea that he or she has automatically fallen into excommunication, and moves along in life with apparent innocence, until many years later, a police investigation turns up an old list of customers of an arrested felon, and the press exposes the names of those customers -- and a bishop upon seeing these names, announces that they are all have been automatically, by their own actions long ago, excommunicated and that they remain excommunicated?

These used to be discussion points for classes, but most Catholics do not worry about such hypotheticals these days. However, some bishops today seem to invite a revisitation of these issues. The fact that other bishops do not go out of their way to do so is not lost on critically minded Catholics, and thus the future of the role and the authority of America's Catholic bishops is genuinely up in the air.

I have no enthusiasm for a bishop just because he holds a degree from an American law school. Like many Americans, I am aware of some American lawyers, including some Catholic lawyers, who have bad records. Philadelphia has a retired archbishop living here, whose background includes an earned degree from an American law school; his name, unfortunately, played prominently in the Philadelphia Grand Jury Report about what that Report described as the archdiocese's continuing and intentional "mismanagement" (my word) of clergy-pedophiles here -- until a few years ago. However, I pray that the rising star of that bishop-attorney whom John Allen describes remains unblemished, and that he provides the kind of spiritual leadership we all seek from all our bishops, other clergy, religious women and prominent lay persons.

Time to go.

Vincent

Vincent

Church's future tied to Bishops? Panic. Does anyone remember when there was Canon Law to protect us from abuses of authority? What ever became of that? The last time I tried to interest a Canon Lawyer in a serious case of abuse I was told they are expensive. Why? The poor should be a number one concern. Not true. Never was true. Get old, stop driving, no more getting to Mass. You might be 48 years old and physically fit and find yourself kicked to the curb. I went along to deliver Communion to such a person and found she was not "homebound" at all. Neither was she ill in any sense of the word, just forgotten. Child molestation is not the only scandal in the church these days.

Re the question in the title?
Yep -- always has been/always will be -- since 12 guys that used to hang around Jewish lakes in the first century......

First of all, in my individual opinion, the church's future is not tied to the bishops. Perhaps their church is. In re-reading Vows of Silence this past weekend, we are not out of the water yet. The sea-change is underway but from underneath the surface. Even reading the comments from many who respond to NCR articles, the bishops will be leading an empty house.
Secondly, if John allen's descriptions are relatively accurate, there will be no significant change with these three amigos. Keeping in mind that bishops are independents, and looking back over the past few decades of which bishops changed anything, the status quo is alive and well in the American Catholic Church. That Allen's descriptions used terms like "most hip" and "rock star" suggests the nature of what bishops may be striving to become. He didn't state any were devoted followers of Christ or men of deep prayer. If that is to be assumed, well, re-read Vows of Silence.

How the bishops are appointed has been and will be a determinig factor if the healing is to begin. But, right now, it depends on what happens to the over 60% of the bishops that have been involved in the cover up. If they remain in power,it will be a slap in the face of all Catholics. It will mean that the Pope does not believe that these bishops are not the problem and all catholics should continue to respect them. All I can say to the Pope is, get real, that day will nwever come.

NO! The church's PAST is tied to bishops...and it ain't so pretty!
Memo to USCCB:
Like the current pope and his motley crew of curial sycophants, you are TAIL LIGHTS on the Barque of Peter, clearly illuminating where we have BEEN, but CLUELESS as to where we are going!

No, the future of the Church is not tied to bishops. Bishops are a historical mistake. They began in the first century CE as simply 'managers' of the local Christian community who were voted into office. At the time, lay people celebrated the Eucharist, the "breaking of the bread," in their own homes [1 Cor. 11:17-29; Acts 2:42-46]. As the new gentile Christians studied the Jewish scriptures, they decided that they were the new Israel (bad theology) and therefore needed their own priesthood. The "managers" slowly gravitated to the ancient form of religious functionaries as priests. Emperor Constantine froze this order in stone by making all the "managers" state officers, with himself at the head as the first pope--the first to have the ius in sacris, total control over matters civil and religious. Ignored in all of this historical movement was the historical lesson supplied by God the Father in 70 CE. His Son, Jesus Christ, had been put to death by a (legitimate) hierarchy, the High Priests of the Jewish religion in ca. 30 CE, when they got the Romans to crucify him as a revolutionary. God the Father permitted the Romans to utterly destroy the Temple of Jerusalem, thus effectively ending the priesthood he had put in place. No, unelected bishops are not part of the Church's future.

I suspect that in the future, the laity will demand title to the property of the Church, to be excercised through deacons which they elect to run the institutions and parishes of the diocese. It is time for Canon Law to catch up to the state of the art in non-profit management and the associated tax law.

I thought Mr. Allen's article was a bit schizophrenic. The future of the church is and must always be tied to the laity. If it is tied to bishops, then may God save us all. The hierarchy should have learned by now that it owes its existence only to the masses and only as long as the masses feel respect for the hierarchy.
The bishops have to earn the respect not only from Catholics but also from evangelical Christians (protestants), Muslims, etc.

Christianity without a personal, individual form epi-scope or over-sight already exists. Its called "reformed Roman Catholicism" and came out of, you might have heard of it, The Reformation.

I know some of the communities that came out of the Reformation have something they call "bishops," but from a Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox perspective, you might call them "BINOs" or "bishops in name only." BINOs are invariably shackled to a synod or a standing committee, and have no individual authority.

Many Lutherans, for example, are so allergic to anything remotely like a bishop (recently imposed by the "mutual recognition of orders" between the ELCA and ECUSA) that they've broken off from the ELCA. That is not the only reason many Lutheran congregations have broken away from the ELCA, and a thorough discussion of Lutheran polity is beyond the scope of this post.

Suffice it to say that many Lutherans have historically practiced presbyteral ordination, where a group of pastors collectively ordain new pastors, since Luther's day, when the local Catholic bishop would not ordain candidates for orders of the Lutheran "party," before Luther's followers left Roman Catholicism.

The more low-church you go, the more you find a kirk session, district or convention exercising what RCs and EOs might recognize as episcopal authority - this done as a reaction to the real or imagined excesses of Catholic bishops 500 years ago.

Its reasonable to ask how bishop-less Christianity is working today. And to those who say the early church never had bishops, I'm sure Jesus never told anybody to do anything with the expectation that they'd do it. I'd be pleased to see Scriptural examples of Jesus, the Great Suggester.