I bet Mr. Dreher is regretting he ever used the phrase "With the stroke of a pen..." I know I am! :)

Seriously, though, good article. Many Catholics, cradle and convert, as well as many non-Catholics, really don't have a good understanding of the Papacy as it relates to bishops. Church history isn't well taught in most schools any more and no way can most RCIA programs cover even the basics. This is an issue that adult Catholics have to teach themselves and in a society like the U.S., with no working analogies (it's not like a democracy; it's notlikea business) it's difficult to grasp. What makes it worse is that so many people seem to see this as a matter of justice only as it pertains to the victims. These are good people who wouldn't deny the most heinous murderer his day in court with his court-appointed lawyer, but regarding some US bishops they get angry and upset if someone suggests that the issue might be more complicated than they know. And this anger leads only to the desire for revenge, not healing.

Stroke of the pen, stroke of the pen, stroke of the pen, stroke of the pen. If we simply repeat the phrase loudly while putting our hands over our ears, we won't have to consider what the popes could have done or said publicly, or should have done and said -- specifically things OTHER THAN "firing" a bishop -- compared to what they have done and said. Or what bishops could have done or said in fraternal correction.

But lest anyone think I'm being too critical of Mark's own straw-man argumentation, please know that I realize that, just like "we get the bishops we deserve," we get the Mark Shea we deserve, so it's really my fault that Mark argues the way he does.

Mark:

I share your concern, but the potato potahto distiction here is more complez:
Wuerl can & should be punished publicly (removing him to some cell in the Vatican and do 'meditation').That is a doable task for concerned Ley organizations.

Why?, his direct responsibility in the WIDELY WARNED, defiant proabortion politicians intention to scandalize us, worldwide, in the Papal Mass.

Not so Lugo, who was and is openly rebellious, so the Pope has little choice indeed, but to excommunicate him with dubious political effects on the mass-Catholic ignorants that follow him.

Cordially

Sorry for my typos: I meant complex instead of complez, and Lay instead of Ley.

"So when Cardinal Law tries to resign repeatedly, John Paul II refuses the resignation -- apparently because Law did not himself abuse boys but only reassigned priests who did."

Why "only"?

The not entirely unreliable wikipedia tells us the following about him:

"On May 16, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Cardinal McCarrick as Archbishop of Washington, DC...
"On 12 March 2007 it was announced that Cardinal McCarrick will become a Counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies."

My sources reveal that the Pope does not have authority over the CSIS. Has the petition for McCarrick's removal from office been sent to the wrong address?

"But when O'Connell and Symonds down in Palm Beach are found to have actually been molesting boys? They're outta there like a shot."

No, not really accurate at all. When their actions became Public Knowledge, then they were allowed to resign.

Time for practical details. It seems that B16 and JP2 didn't really "get it" until years after the media was pounding the story home. Years later.

Details suggest several things:
1) Independent reports suggest ENORMOUS conspiracy within this national Church.
2) Change in what Mr. Shea would term "management style" is not a priority for bishops until recently. (Let me explain further: while Ratzinger is famous for a "Way of the Cross" comment during a Good Friday service-it seemed particularly focused on the offending priests-not on the systems and leaders that supported their activities-and the hierarchy did so.) "Lead better-you are to blame," is a new comment and critique to come out of the Vatican. And really it comes 6 years later.
3) Way up in the Vatican-the only charitable thing to say is: they just didn't care. Navarro-Valls, no small fry, just didn't care. Navarro-Valls elicited more concern for the PR issues of the "office of the Cardinal" and Cardinal Law's own appearance than for the sex abuse victims and the abuse scandal's impact on the Church(see a recent John Allen article in NCR about Law). It is true-they didn't get it, even when Law was replaced-they didn't get it.
4) The "usual American suspects" provided routine access to the corridors of power in the Vatican (good conservatives like Weigel, Fessio, and Novak) didn't really believe it. Only a few liberal lepers like NCReporter "got it." Until 2002.

While "good theology" may be part of the reason underlying the absence of massive lay-offs in the American hierarchy, an equally plausible one is the top didn't get it, is just getting it, and were part of the creation of the culture that permitted this (a type of clerical management culture that was likely centuries in creation and has little to do with true charisms of grace).

And such a culture has such incredible inertia, and change is slow. While accountability is an American thing, it may be that this American virtue (for this is what it is) is not embraced by a Eurocentric Church leadership. And this may change, or not.

Organizations tend to have characteristics and "habits"-virtues and vices that define them, and "living up to" principles is less likely the way an organization behaves. Leaders influence this by directing the behavior, and choice of subordinate leadership of the organization. So, in some sense Mr. Dreher is correct in pointing out that the Church leadership does have some responsibility to claim accountability for its leaders, and it is likely that it is just now appreciating this.

Ritual purity from untouchably sinful clerics is not a Catholic/ecclesial tradition, however. Such Puritanical concerns are truly an American issue, and not a virtue. This need for ritual purity and scrupulous attempts not to pollute oneself with acquaintances of "unsavory types" (like American bishops) is really the heart of Mr. Dreher's difficulties.

Daniel,
I think you have hit the nail pretty much on the head. It is clear that we Americans want a particular type of accountability that hasn't happened. Over time, Mark has proposed one reason why: That mercy is a virtue and vengeance isn't.

I don't think that goes far enough to explain it. You have to also include reasons like embarrassment in some bishops that the priests they were merciful to stabbed them in the back, or even favoritism due to personal preferences.

That said, I would not say that only the liberals were concerned with the situation. I know that from at least the early 90s, The Wanderer, one of the most conservative Catholic weeklies, was very active in reporting the scandal. By the time 2002 came around, it wasn't news to me. Of course many would consider The Wanderer as a conservative leper, so your point still stands.

Good post.

Dreher may (or may NOT) be confusing US criminal law with Canon Law.

The US criminal law does include 'conspiracy' --in other words, should a Bishop move a perp from parish to parish while covering up multiple provable offenses, that Bishop would be liable under US criminal laws. (Of course, that requires a District Attorney with some chutzpah.)

I don't know if Canon Law has similar provisions.

Statman:

I absolutely agree, in fact I bet some liberals easily and eagerly participated in covering for their favorites icons.

I think organizational culture and the message by the usual suspects with access to the high levels of authority in the Vatican accounts for the greatest problems.

And I think that accountability may be a virtue that is engaged better by the Vatican over time, but as an organization, it has centuries of inertia to overcome.

I always like the Truth and Reconciliation model in which punitive-free truth is heard. But this won't happen and legal reasons are the least reason for this. Culturally, as one reads the DA report from Philly on this matter, it is not of the Church's organizational culture.

But really, Puritanical approaches are the real reason we see weeping on this matter still.

Removal is one thing; fraternal correction and criticism is another.

The Pope and other bishops have the responsibility to correct their brethren, and when the error is public, the correction must also be public.

Benedict has not criticized the American bishops, probably because he know they were following the signals that the Vatican gave them about handling sexual abuse.

But he has not even criticized Bishop Mueller of Regensburg, who assigned a convicted sexual abuser as a pastor (in which position he abused again) even after 2002 and after the German bishops had publicly promised they would never do that.

The German bishops came down on Mueller, but he said that he didn’t have to listen to them, that he was responsible only to the Pope, and Benedict not only did not criticize Muller but appointed him to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Mueller took this as a vindication, and said that he would so the same thing again: assign a convicted sexual abuser to a position dealing with children.

As to theology: I think Mueller’s papalism and disregard of the coresponsibility of bishops is close to Innocent III’s theology of the papacy rather than to an Orthodox theology of communion of churches.

Well OK, so American Catholics are simply NOT going to get a fully Americanized response to what has happened; no "stroke of the pen" firings, at least not for the time being. Hopefully there are lessons learned from all this regarding psychiatry and Fraternal Correction. That might work for me if other lessons are learned.

Who knows, maybe there has been constructive Fraternal Correction already between Pope Benedict and the American Bishops or maybe between the bishops themselves. Corrections that the public does not hear about. After all the toughest critics point out how secretive these guys can be.

The foregoing discussion is overlooking the obvious answer. The Pope tolerates the pedophile-shuffling bishops because he does not care about the child abuse that is rampant within the Roman Catholic Church. He only cares about the effect that this scandal will have on the church's ability to raise money.

For a Roman Catholic priest, who is required to suppress all natural sexual desires, and who frequently descends into homosexuality and other sexual perversion, pedophilia is simply a milepost on the path.