Via Rod at the Crunchy Con blog, what soon-to-retire Bishop Grahmann most regrets about his tenure:

If you could have changed anything during the last 16 years, what would that be and why?

First of all, when I came here I did not know the composition of the life of the church here, of the people. The very wealthy — and then the very poor. I would have more forcefully challenged people to a conversion of heart. I would have challenged those with more resources to share them. I would have also challenged the concept of power and control, and invited people to unite as one body and serve everyone, esepcially the poor and the needy. Toward the end of my ministry here, I see how entrenched all of that is! That leaves me very sad. This abyss between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots, is deep — how deep it is! If I could have changed anything, I would have more forcefully challenged people to a conversion of heart.

Considering the spectacle and tragedy of clerical sexual abuse and subsequent cover-ups that have occurred under Bishop Granham, one is left…speechless.

A priest correspondent of Rod’s cites a similar walk in dreamland offered by Bishop Emeritus Timlin of Scranton, noted in a local newspaper’s account of a response to a series it did on abuse in that diocese:

We have heard from priests, some even had some choice words for the Times Leader from the pulpit Sunday, parishioners, non-Catholics, law enforcement officials and people who also claim to have been victimized by abusive priests.

While we haven’t heard from the Diocese, some of us were on the phone with Bishop Emeritus Timlin yesterday.

The Bishop had not responded to repeated requests for an interview by the newspaper during the months when we were reporting and writing the series.

We felt it was important to speak to him because much of the abuse, treatment and reassignment of troubled priests occurred on his watch. While we wanted Timlin to have voice in the series, the Diocese told us he would have no comment.

In yesterday’s phone conversations, while the Bishop would not go on the record with us and could not point out any errors in the coverage, he did say he wanted to make sure we understood how hurtful the stories were to him and all Catholics.

He said he just wanted to vent.

So we asked him to write a commentary piece that we would run on the editorial pages. We asked him to tell his side of the story from his unique perspective.

Timlin, who stressed that he was not speaking for the Diocese of Scranton, told us he would like to do that but would need to seek permission from the Diocese before writing anything.

The Sins of Our Fathers: What the diocese knew and didn’t tell you is the first article in the series, and there are links to others from last Sunday’s papere there.

Scranton has been a mess of a diocese – here’s a webpage detailing the accusations against the Society of St. John, mentioned in this first article.