Tag: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

How keen is your crozier? (Modified)

Coat of arms (shield only) of Francis cardinal...
George's coat of arms. Not kidding.

Eugene Kennedy does the Chicago cardinal up brown.

Questioning whether Francis George’s is “the keenest crozier at the conclave,” he recalls the great man’s initial meeting with psychiatrist Sara Charles, Kennedy’s wife.

“I’ve looked into your book” — Authority: The Most Misunderstood Idea in America — “and I’ll tell you where you’re wrong.”

“It’s too Jungian,” George began, but my wife cut him off: “There is nothing Jungian in it. It’s based on the work of the Catholic philosopher, Yves Simon.”

“It is?” the startled George replied but did not wait for an answer.

[It’s a 1997 book, co-authored by Kennedy, by the way.  We take Kennedy’s word for the implications here; he does not say when it happened or in what circumstances.  Not a receiving line, we must presume, for instance.]

Interviewing George as “the U.S. bishops’ thinker-in-chief,” NC Reporter’s John Allen “suggests that many Catholics would like to see Cardinal Law-like resignations from bishops who covered up or reassigned sex abusing priests.

To which George:

Law — who, as his great patron put him in line to become archbishop of Chicago as soon as he heard that Cardinal Bernardin had a fatal illness — “went into exile.”

I guess so, but remaining on six powerful Roman congregations, being in charge of a prestigious basilica and living in splendid apartments does not sound like Elba to most people.

[Yes.  Law blew it in Boston, got transferred (in style) to the home office.  George can’t or won’t get this.]

Asked if he was surprised that New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan was elected president of the U.S. bishops’ conference over then-vice president Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas,

thereby breaking the conference’s tradition of selecting its outgoing vice-president as its new president, George cuts right to the chase: “Yes and no.”

Oh my.  Painful to watch.

[As Gene K. presents it.  But the rest of what George said is important here, which I failed to check.  Sloppily.  After the easily criticized “yes and no,” George:

I expected [the election] to be very close, but . . . had assumed the custom would be followed. . . .  The discussion [about the election] was going on [among the bishops], and we [he and Kicanas] knew it. It was fed by many factors, which have been analyzed and discussed. Some interpreted it ideologically, but I don’t know there’s that much ideological difference. Some saw it in terms of different eras – new bishops and old bishops. Obviously, Bishop Kicanas has the capacity and the personality to be president of our conference, and so does Archbishop Dolan. Maybe some bishops simply thought, since both are worthy candidates, why should we be bound by a rule we didn’t make?

[This last sentence makes no sense that I can see, but at least he didn’t let it go at “yes and no.”  He also defended Kicanas as working “extraordinarily” hard at coordinating bishops’ committees, which is fair enough.  All in all, his remarks on this matter were forthcoming enough, if not persuasive.

[As for his wanting to study and read more in retirement, it was a relaxed interview and he was candid in a personal matter.  Retirement?  That’s the biggest issue raised in the whole article.  Does he mean to do so at 75, in a year?]

Lots more of what the cardinal said — and decide for yourself — at “Picking the brain of the U.S. bishops’ thinker-in-chief.“

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Hanging crepe in RC leftville

The Daily Politics
Do bishops do it?

It kills RC libs that one of their own, of the Joe Bernardin camp, got voted out of his heir apparency the other day by U.S. bishops, and no one says it better than NC Reporter’s Thomas C.  Fox, who lays it on thickly.

I find myself thinking about Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., and how he must feel at this time. Whats going on inside him, really going on despite the good face he has put on to the world in the wake of the surprise, historic, and unprecedented rejection by his fellow U.S. bishops.

They “broke with four decades of precedent and essentially threw [him] out,” leaving Fox in a funk:

I cannot help but feel that the bishops hurt a good man along the way, and in the process revealed some things about themselves – at least the majority in their ranks did – that is less than admirable.

The rats!  They “walked over a fellow bishop, by most accounts a decent man. . . . their vote . . . lacked a sense of civility and even perhaps charity.”

“Some on the right” are to blame, but so is the new man, Timothy Dolan of NYC, whom Fox skewers with deft thrusts:

Ive been reading that Dolan has a good wit and keen ability and will probably make a good president. But he arrives with a tarnished garment. I wish he [had] told his fellow bishops . . . that he was not available, that he was willing to wait his turn, that he could learn in the next three years, just like all his predecessors. He would have been a fine vice-president.

Well Fox did not see his wish fulfilled. C’est la vie. In any case, if Dolan had done as Fox wishes he did, he

would have taught us all a lesson in thoughtfulness and civility. It was a teachable moment. Instead we learned our bishops act [like] most other ends-oriented men in other political organizations.

If Fox learned that much, the teachable moment was not entirely lost.

Meanwhile, Kicanas demonstrated a “strong upper lip” in his concession statement:

[Dolan] has been a long time friend . . . [possesses] great wit, jovial spirit, keen ability to relate to people in a deeply personal way . . . exceptional leadership qualities. . . .

Good. I look forward to his leadership. But it doesn’t mean there is joy in Catholic leftism, which has lost a friend in a high place, it thinks. Sob.

Dolan’s coming . . .

Archbishop Timothy Dolan Greets Rangel
Dolan and Rangel chat.

. . . to a pulpit or classroom near you. From what a Princeton U. conservative scholar calls “the capital of the world.” As new top U.S. bishop for next three years, he is bound to be heard and seen.

“. . . [T]he bishops have decided to opt for a confident Catholicism,” [the scholar, Robert] George said. “They had a choice, and they chose the boldest, most outspoken bishop. You wouldn’t choose him as your leader unless you thought what he was doing in the capital of the world (New York) is what we want the church to represent.”

That “confident Catholicism” sounds good. Let’s see how it plays.