Calls for bishop's removal step up

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AP Photo/James A. Finley: Bishop Edward K. Braxton sits with his staff after being installed June 22, 2005, in Belleville, Ill.Some 25 years before he was named bishop of Belleville in southern llinois, Fr. Edward K. Braxton wrote a book titled The Wisdom Community: A Framework and a Program for Renewing Communication and Understanding Between Priests, Bishops, Theologians and the People in the Pews.

Ironically, it is wisdom that is desperately needed in Braxton’s diocese today. The pastoral crisis in Belleville, where communication has broken down during three years of Braxton’s leadership, is such that on April 17, the third day of Pope Benedict XVI’s U.S. visit, a quarter-page ad appeared in USA Today asking the pope to remove Braxton. The ad, reportedly costing $10,000, was written and paid for by Frank S. Ladner, 81, a Catholic philanthropist from Lawrenceville, Ill.

A few weeks earlier, in mid-March, 46 Belleville priests, representing about half of active diocesan priests, took the unusual step of signing a letter of no confidence, urging Braxton to resign “for his own good, for the good of the diocese and for the good of the presbyterate.”

And in February, the province of a religious order that has served in Belleville for 138 years, the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, wrote the papal nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, urging him to “use all the power of your office to create a moment of change.” Citing “an unraveling of both trust and hope,” Sr. Jen Renz, regional superior, said, “The climate of secrecy that surrounds committee meetings and actions within the diocese must end.”

Priests’ complaints

In the priests’ letter calling on Braxton to resign, they complained of “lack of cooperation, consultation, accountability and transparency,” along with “misappropriation of funds” and “pursuit of outside donors to cover these expenditures.” The bishop’s response was limited to a portion of a letter read at Easter Masses, in which he contended that from the outset of his appointment, he had been unfairly targeted by a coterie of hostile clergy and would remain in office “as long as the Holy Father wants me to.”

Braxton alluded to priests’ complaints that his appointment to Belleville by a seriously ill Pope John Paul II occurred without their input and over their objections. At the time of the appointment, some 50 area priests protested what they said was a lack of process in a letter addressed to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, papal nuncio Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, and curia officials in Rome.

Braxton made no response to several calls to his office requesting comment for this article.

In several days of conversations in the diocese, priests and laity told NCR that Braxton’s style is so monarchical that many diocesan boards are either dormant or barely functioning.

The communication problem “affects all important decisions,” said Fr. Don Blaes, a retired priest. “The finance committee, the personnel board, the presbyteral council -- everything.”

Symptoms of the crisis include the resignations of three members of the personnel board last year, who said they were wasting their time because the bishop makes personnel decisions unilaterally. Diocesan consulters have not been summoned in more than two years, and the diocesan pastoral council has been inactive.

Jerry De Soto, a pastoral council member, said he and others met with Braxton last October to question him about the moribund council. “He said he didn’t have anything to talk to us about and did not want to waste our time,” said De Soto. “I told him we have a lot to talk to you about,” such as seeking ways to acclimate international priests to American culture. A meeting of the pastoral council is now scheduled for June.

Complaints about Braxton’s style preceded his tenure in Belleville, where he succeeded Bishop Wilton Gregory, now archbishop of Atlanta. As auxiliary in St. Louis, Braxton’s pastoral prudence was questioned; as bishop in Lake Charles, La., his spending was criticized.

In Belleville, complaints took on a new focus last fall when several groups questioned expenditures. The advisory board of A Future Full of Hope, a fund established for building maintenance and outreach to the sick and elderly, protested after discovering the bishop had used $10,000 without their knowledge to purchase a conference table and chairs for a meeting room in the chancery office. The bishop reportedly responded that he had used 147;prudential judgment” in making the purchase.

Meanwhile the diocesan finance committee learned that Braxton had used some $8,000 from funds set aside for the Propagation of the Faith to buy Mass vestments and altar linens from an exclusive provider in Chicago. Fr. Dennis Voss of the finance committee said a complaint about this was sent to the bishop and a copy filed with the papal nuncio in Washington. According to church regulations, all funds designated for the Propagation of the Faith are to be sent directly to New York and then passed on to the Vatican; never are they to be used for local purposes.

Discussion closed

Members of the finance committee have declined to discuss their concerns publicly because Braxton requires an oath of secrecy. Although the $18,000 total in question for the conference table and vestments was not immense, the bishop’s actions proved especially irksome to priests, who have over the years become accustomed to having input into diocesan decisions.

Their frustration came to a head at a meeting of the presbyteral council Jan. 14. Just six weeks before, Braxton had published his new statutes for the council. Article II states, “The bishop considers the presbyteral council to be his primary consultative body and an important structure for communication and collaboration. He must strive to listen attentively to its deliberations, seeking to understand the different points of view of the priests.”

But when council members that day sought to introduce spending issues, Braxton abruptly closed the discussion. The presbyteral council “is not a forum in which members ... question the diocesan bishop about his personal life or about his pastoral ministry,” he said, according to a meeting transcript. “It is not a forum in which individual priests in the council ask the diocesan bishop to explain pastoral, practical, liturgical, financial or administrative decisions that he makes concerning the diocese he governs.”

Fr. Joseph Rascher, council secretary, said council members were told, “The bishop only needs to hear matters he himself brings up.”

Eight days later Braxton issued a brief statement in which he noted the disagreements over his spending and said he would replenish both funds with a gift secured from a benefactor. “I apologize for anything I may have done, even unwittingly, to contribute to this situation. ”

Priests then met March 12 in Germantown, where the call for resignation was drafted and signed.

“In this diocese,” said Msgr. Carl Scherrer, pastor in Germantown, “anonymous donors have more control over spending than the presbyterate has. A solution will come only when the bishop and the whole presbyterate come together and we get away from this idea that about seven priests are out to get him.”

Braxton is not without supporters. News of the priests’ letter provoked an instant armada of angry letters to the city’s daily paper, the Belleville News-Democrat. “The renegade priests ... have been like this for years,” said one writer. “Bishop Braxton is not the problem ... these priests are.” Wrote another, “I don’t care how sincere you are as a priest. There is no excuse for publicly disobeying your bishop.”

However, some 40 laity who attend a regular scripture course with Fr. Roger Karban, pastor in Renault, told NCR they virtually all supported the priests’ petition. Lu Welch of O’Fallon said many find Braxton’s style to be overly ostentatious for Belleville, a diocese that sprawls beyond the comfortable middle-class city of Belleville itself -- a city with economic ties to nearby St. Louis -- to poor areas in the lower third of Illinois.

Kelly Casey of Belleville noted that Braxton brought the old, ornate president’s chair out of the cathedral museum when he came, reinstalled it in the sanctuary and raised its height twice to better express his episcopal dignity. It’s that sort of thing that turns people off, said Casey.

Although priests favorably disposed to the bishop were invited to speak with NCR, just one, Fr. Richard Weidert, did so, after obtaining permission from Braxton to be interviewed. Weidert provided NCR with a six-page statement defending Braxton as a model priest, administrator and teacher, and describing the campaign to oust him as a “fraud” rigged by lies and manipulations and rooted in petty gripes and personal grudges.

Diocesan employees steadfastly declined to be quoted for attribution. “Nobody’s job is secure,” said one. “We are extremely concerned about the health and morale of the priests, and we’re concerned about the people. Right now the situation is unwinnable. Everyone is a victim, and that includes the bishop.”

Anne Harter, a leader of FOSIL (Fellowship of Southern Illinois Laity), a church reform group strongly critical of Braxton, said she hoped the priests’ bold action would inspire priests in other dioceses to take action against tyrannical bishops. “In a sense, we hope Braxton stays,” she said. “He’s empowered us to take ownership.”

Robert McClory is a Chicago-based freelance writer.

National Catholic Reporter May 2, 2008