First, on bishops’ accountability:
Some would suggest the missing element in your analysis is the question of accountability for the bishops, which somehow has not been addressed. Do you share that?
No. I gave a speech at the University of Dayton [about this] last month. I think to say, lay it all at the door of the bishops, may be an understandable psychological stratagem. Whom do we blame? Blame the bishops. When you’ve got somebody to blame, you just feel better because you know it’s their fault. Well, it’s not that simple. We’ve got the psychological community, we’ve got the role of lawyers, we’ve got the role of the media. I think we have to be careful not to generalize. [People say] ‘the bishops.’ Which bishops? Are you talking about two or three here, two or three there, or did every bishop in the country mess up?
But there are individual bishops who clearly made bad decisions, and other than a couple of high-profile cases, many of those men continue to be in place. Will the community ever accept that accountability has been achieved as long as that’s true?
I would want to know who and how many and where. You can continue to say that forever if you want to. I think it’s more just to say, what do we really know about what this bishop did? Where do we know that from? Do we know it from the daily paper, which is no friend of the bishop? Do we know exactly what he did? It seems to me that you don’t want to simplify, you don’t want to generalize, and you don’t want to engage in what I call ‘presentism,’ meaning judging the behavior of the past by the criteria of the present.
What nonsense. How about this – the bishops as a group have not, as a group, issued any public fraternal correction to bishops who themselves have been accused and admitted abuse. They have not issued fraternal correction, as it were, to bishops who made plea deals in which they admitted wrongdoing. Yes, you know exactly what these men did, and it’s not the media’s fault.
Sheesh.
Then on Kerry, et al:
Granted the complexities involved, the practical reality is that you’re going to have candidates crossing the state over the next few months. What do you do?
Well, the first thing I’m going to do is to wait to see what Cardinal McCarrick’s committee comes up with. Secondly, it seems to me we need to be very cautious about denying people the sacraments on the basis of what they say they believe, especially when those are political beliefs. So Kerry believes abortion is a good thing for our society, let’s say. Do you refuse him communion on the basis of his opinions? What about people who don’t like “Humanae Vitae”? What about people who don’t like the church’s teaching on the death penalty, or on homosexual marriages? Are we going to refuse them?
There’s a swath of Catholic opinion that would say yes to that question.
I know there is. But there’s also a justice issue here. It seems to me that the last thing any church, or any representative or agent of the church wants to do, is to deny the sacraments to anybody unjustly. It seems to me at this point that it makes a lot more sense to presume people’s good will, presume erroneous conscience or perplexed conscience and give them communion, rather than say, ‘I think you think such-and-such.’ Now, there is another issue here, however, which complicates it a little further. That is, there are people who are in invalid marriages, clearly invalid marriages, people who have publicly gotten married outside the church. For example, two Catholics who went and got married by a Justice of the Peace. This is all public stuff. It is not an opinion, not a thought, this is behavior, and a state of sinful behavior. Well, it seems to me that maybe you do deny people communion for that. On the other hand, there are those who would argue still again: Do you know whether they had sex last night or not? Are they living as brother and sister? Is there some other factor here? So, I’m hoping that Cardinal McCarrick’s committee also talks about that, because it’s a very germane issue.
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