Periodically during this election cycle I’ve wondered: “Why on earth would anyone want to be President?” And now I’m wondering the same thing about the job of bishop. Once, it was a job with plentiful perks; but increasingly, it’s all about headaches, aggravation, deficits, lawsuits, conflict and criticism.

And those are the good days.

For many American bishops, as the election results became clearer, last Wednesday was not a good day.

And now, John Allen takes note:

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: It ain’t easy being a bishop. As proof, just consider the avalanche of wildly conflicting advice descending upon the Catholic bishops of the United States as they gather Nov. 10-13 in Baltimore, most of it focused on abortion, the 2008 elections, and where the bishops go from here.

Some analysts, especially those of a more liberal bent, are spinning the election of Barak Obama as a “repudiation” of what they see as an overly strident and partisan tone from the bishops, especially on abortion. A few ardently pro-life Catholics, meanwhile, actually believe that what they call “silence and treachery” from the bishops on abortion helped pave the way for Obama’s success. Pro-lifers who fault the bishops for being too subtle are planning to wear Obama masks outside Baltimore’s Marriott Waterfront, where the bishops are meeting, with signs reading, “I couldn’t have been elected without you.”

High-profile Catholic commentators have been similarly, and perhaps predictably, all over the map.

Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese, for example, has suggested the bishops follow the lead of “pragmatic pro-lifers,” who do not necessarily support criminalization of abortion but rather social policies to reduce the actual number of abortions. Meanwhile, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, writing on his First Things blog, has counseled the bishops in Baltimore to avoid “calculated timidity,” and to bear in mind that “it is not their business to win political races” but rather “to defend and teach the faith, including the church’s moral doctrine.”

Fr. John Jay Hughes, a noted Catholic writer based in St. Louis, has offered yet another perspective. Since the prospect for legislative or judicial progress under Obama – i.e., overturning Roe v. Wade – is virtually nil, Hughes suggested earlier this week, the challenge is to win the argument for life on the cultural level. In other words, the bishops should focus on changing hearts and minds, not, at least for now, the law.

Still others are counseling the bishops to focus on other matters where Catholic social teaching and the President-elect seem closer to a meeting of minds, such as immigration reform, poverty relief, peace-making, and environmental protection.

Complicating things further, as the bishops gather in Baltimore, is that the conflicting voices don’t come just from outside the conference. The bishops themselves “aren’t of one mind,” as Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, vice-president of the conference, put it in a mid-October interview in Rome with NCR.

To be clear, there’s no disagreement among the bishops on the core teaching that abortion is a grave moral evil. How to translate that into concrete pastoral and political choices, however, is another matter. Russell Shaw, former spokesperson for the bishops’ conference, offered a rough-and-ready taxonomy this week by dividing the bishops into three categories:

• “Hardliners,” who want to deny communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians and who believe that under canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law, pro-choice legislators and judges (and, possibly, ordinary Catholics who vote for them) have excommunicated themselves;
• “Compromisers,” who support a less confrontational approach to politicians who don’t follow church teaching, in hopes of finding common ground and avoiding impressions that the bishops are overly partisan;
• A largely silent majority who are just trying to keep their dioceses going, and who hope that polarizing national debates like this one will somehow go away.

There’s much more at the NCR link.

As these men embark on their meeting in Baltimore, they need our prayers. Now, perhaps, more than ever.