Feet to the Fire

Praying and doing penance for our bishops

11/12/2018

Titus 1:1-9 For this reason I left you in Crete so that you might set right what remains to be done and appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you, on condition that a man be blameless, married only once, with believing children who are not accused of licentiousness or rebellious. For a bishop as God's steward must be blameless, not arrogant, not irritable, not a drunkard, not aggressive, not greedy for sordid gain, but hospitable, a lover of goodness, temperate, just, holy, and self-controlled, holding fast to the true message as taught so that he will be able both to exhort with sound doctrine and to refute opponents.

May I make a somewhat strange request of you? Would you join me in three days of prayer, and even a little penance, for our U.S. bishops? There are 441 active and retired Catholic bishops in the United States who will all be meeting this week in Baltimore for three days, from November 12-14. To give you a little perspective, there are 435 representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives, so the two bodies are roughly equivalent in size.

Our prayerful and penitential support of our episcopal leaders is urgent because one of the topics they will address is their own responsibility and accountability for the clergy sexual abuse crisis. Here’s what the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) website states about their meeting: “During the assembly the bishops will discuss and vote on a series of concrete measures to respond to the abuse crisis…such as third party reporting mechanisms, standards of conduct for bishops, and protocols for bishops resigned or removed for abuse.” In other words, the bishops are going to hold their own feet to the fire when it comes to accountability for the abuse crisis, and that has been lacking, at least legally-speaking.

But they do have a serious challenge. No one bishop can fire another bishop, and even the whole body of bishops of a country – called the episcopal conference – cannot fire a bishop. A bishop’s boss is the pope, who alone hires him and can therefore fire him. To understand why that’s the case, imagine the position of us pastors. I cannot fire Fr. Juan Guido as the pastor of Christ the King, that would exceed my authority as pastor of Immaculate Conception. Furthermore, even if all the priests of a deanery decided together to oust Fr. Juan from CTK, we would have no authority to do that. A pastor is appointed by the bishop and a pastor is removed by the bishop. We may not like that, but that would be a personal problem.

Similarly with bishops. The episcopal conference can police itself only up to a certain point, but it has no authority to appoint bishops to a certain diocese, nor can it remove bishops from a certain diocese. Only the pope enjoys that prerogative. That is why the bishops need our prayers and our penance, so the Holy Spirit will guide them to put the needs of the Church above any of their own personal fears or failures, any individual gain or glory.

Today is the first day our 441 bishops are together in Baltimore and they will all celebrate Mass together this evening. How providential that they, too, will hear the first reading from Titus. St. Paul urges his newly ordained Bishop Titus, saying: “For a bishop as God’s steward must be blameless, not arrogant, not irritable, not a drunkard, not aggressive, not greedy for sordid gain, but hospitable, a lover of goodness, temperate, just, holy, and self-controlled, holding fast to the true message as taught so that he will be able to exhort with sound doctrine and to refute opponents.” Wow, talk about holding your episcopal feet to the fire. St. Paul lists the do’s and don’t’s of a bishop in the first century and also for those in the 21st century.

As if that were not enough inspiration for the bishops, today (November 12) is also the feast day of St. Josaphat. He was an archbishop who died trying to maintain the unity of the Church between Catholics and Orthodox in Poland. Mobs killed him and he died a martyr for the faith in 1623. Priests wear red vestments at Mass today to symbolize the blood he shed as a bishop for Jesus. The scriptures provide our bishops with their job description, and St. Josaphat supplies our bishops with a saintly example of how to fulfill that job description. And that is why our bishops need our prayers and our penance. Our bishops must achieve bravery and courage of heroic proportions today.

Let me add one last word. Please do not let personal disagreements or conflicts with our bishops prevent you from praying and doing penance for them. I regret that I too have had my disagreements and dislikes and I have not always been charitable in my speech. We often disagree and argue with our spouse and even with our best friends, but that does not mean we stop loving them or abandon them in their hour of need. So, try to put aside your pet peeves and personal dislikes, and join in solidarity with our bishops for these three days they meet in Baltimore. Let us pray they receive the grace to be brave bishops today, like Titus and Josaphat were back in their day.

Praised be Jesus Christ!