Editorial

Bullying the pulpit

Whatever the headlined crisis afflicting the Catholic Church, what is predictable is the appearance of pundits declaring that no one is listening to the bishops. From sex abuse to abortion to contraception to the war in Iraq to the death penalty to immigration, we are led to believe that Catholics collectively turn away from declarations by the hierarchy and go about their own business.

For many Catholics, that is undoubtedly the case, as poll after poll regularly shows a dramatic disconnect of the Catholic laity from Church practice and teaching.

But what is more insidious are attempts, even from within the Church, to drive a wedge between bishops and their people. We are witnessing a disturbing willingness, even from those who profess ecclesial fidelity, to bully the bishops.

Commenting partly on the 70 bishops who spoke out against Notre Dame University's honoring of pro-choice President Barack Obama, a Jesuit priest wrote on the website of the Washington Post that "the bishops stopped listening and teaching and started ordering and condemning." His argument is particularly shrewd because he not only suggests that the bishops are out of step with their people, but also with the Vatican, which "clearly wants to have a positive relationship with Obama."

This is not only a complaint from the Catholic left, however. The Catholic right has been making the same charge for years, arguing in essence that the bishops have stopped ordering and condemning and are spending too much time listening and equivocating. Some have drummed up media campaigns to pressure bishops into accepting their demands, such as revoking Notre Dame's official Catholic status.

Both lines of attack are dangerously wrong-headed. They mark a significant break with how our Church understands the office and role of the successors to the apostles, no matter how humanly flawed that they (like the original Twelve Apostles, and all of us) might be.

Here's how the Second Vatican Council distills it: "The bishops have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as the pastors of the Church, in such a way that whoever listens to them is listening to Christ and whoever despises them despises Christ and him who sent Christ" (Lumen Gentium, 20).

That vision is supported over and over in Church tradition. "Let no one do anything concerning the Church in separation from the bishop," admonishes St. Ignatius of Antioch, the first-century Syrian bishop and Church Father.

We certainly are not suggesting that bishops are the sole recipients of the Holy Spirit's inspiration, nor that they must be accorded some blind obeisance as if they were medieval royalty. Nor that they don't share the frailties of the fallen human condition. History is replete -- and our current day is not excepted -- with examples of weak, sinful, arrogant bishops who show remarkably poor judgment. We have every right to ask our bishops to be holy, prayerful, articulate, wise and courageous.

But we must also recognize our responsibility to look to them as our shepherds. To do so, we have to shed any preconceptions we bring from the political realm. While politics in the Church is inevitable, it is grossly insufficient to explain the deep bond between a bishop and his people, or between a bishop and his priests.

If bishops can be described as irrelevant today in the United States, we lay Catholic share a large chunk of the blame. And responsibility for fixing it.