"Your submission to your bishop, who is in the place of Jesus Christ, shows me that you are not living as men usually do but in the manner of Jesus himself," Antioch wrote in a citation noted by Cardinal George.
That elevated view of the bishop's authority guided George's remarks. For example, he made it clear that even the recent years of crisis would not cow the bishops in their effort to reassert their authority and relevance.
This is good news that he wishes to affirm the role of Bishop quoting St. Ignatius of Antioch, but what does it mean? He makes it clear that he will not only attempt to quell the progressive voices, but also those that are more Ultramontane and Traditionalist. How often has anyone heard the familiar cliche about turning back the clock?
"There are some who would like to trap the church in historical events of ages long past, and there are others who would keep the bishops permanently imprisoned in the clerical sexual abuse scandal of recent years," George said. "The proper response to a crisis of governance, however, is not no governance but effective governance."
If Bishops were more about teaching the Catholic Faith rather than engaging in Inter-faith and social justice, they would have an easier time asserting their authority when it comes to those dissident liberal groups who undermine the Bishop's authority not infrequently and seem to feed at the trough of social justice and religious indifferentism. If Catholics are ignorant of their Faith, they are so because American Bishops have worked so hard in the past to minimize those things, like the authority of Bishops, in favor of liberal ideas like false ecumenism, religious liberty and indifferentism.
As it is, they are "prisoners of the sexual abuse scandal" because they recruited wicked men and women to run their schools, parishes and poor relief programs. Cardinal George still seems to have a problem with this himself. Despite talking tough about dealing with the problem, the Cardinal didn't follow through as this NPR report will indicate.
He also housed a priest from Delaware who had these problems and denied knowing anything about the man's problems and is accused of dishonesty by Justice Anne M. Burke of Illinois at NPR.
San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer, chairman of the committee on Catholic media, told reporters after Monday's opening session that in recent years the political and media landscape has sprouted so many organizations and websites and lobbies using the Catholic label -- and advocating competing agendas -- that churchgoers are confused.
"Catholics will approach us, and approach their pastors in their church, and ask us, 'Well, I hear this outfit is called Catholic and it says this and another says this and another one something else. Can they all be Catholic and disagree so vehemently with each other?' That does challenge us to makes sense of it and to speak as bishops," said Niederauer, who is widely regarded as a media-savvy prelate with a moderate temperament.
This confusion is in no small part the responsibility of Bishops like Niederauer whose glowing admiration for the film "Brokeback Mountain" was evident, but he did after all, apologize for giving Holy Communion to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence at Mass. All of this wouldn't have been possible without all of those "outfits" that reported the event on the internet. One wonders if anything would have been done at all if the story had only been aired in the centenarian publication, The Wanderer.
Link to article...
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