Wednesday, September 22, 2010

As for the USCC? You Can Ignore It

Short but useful from Light/Law:

[Bp. Vasa's] talk deserves, I think, an especially careful reading by two groups: Catholics concerned that the USCCB is usurping the leadership role of local bishops (Vasa argues that it’s really some bishops who are ducking behind conference statements as if those statements absolved them of having to make their own decisions); and, secular journalists who routinely exaggerate the authority of the episcopal conference because they prefer the kind of “low-confrontation” language that committee documents tend to use, as opposed to reporting on the straight talk coming from many diocesan bishops today.

Worth knowing!

4 comments:

Neo-Con Tastic said...

I have been all along!

Al said...

Bishop Martino in Scranton said some of the same things a few years ago.

GOR said...

Yes, excellent remarks by Bishop Vasa and his quotes from the Ratzinger Report are very much ad rem. Further along in that book then Cdl. Ratzinger brought the matter down to the chancery level. Speaking of his time as Ab. of Munich he said:

”Just think, in the Munich archdiocese we had 400 staff members and employees, all regularly paid. Now it is known that because of its nature every office must justify its existence by producing documents, organizing meetings, planning new structures. To be sure all had the best intentions. But it has often enough happened that the parish priests have felt more burdened than sustained by the burden of ‘auxiliaries’.”

Just as bishops could say the same about the bureaucratic output of the Episcopal Conference, so too many parish priests could relate as regards the output of some chanceries.

Badger Catholic said...

Agreed GOR