There is plenty of Canon Law on the question which would seem to favor the Archbishop--if he would only invoke it. Look at Canons 750, 751, 755, 757, and 764. (Yes, I'm sure that some lawyer will find wiggle-room to defend Massingale there. So what? Get a junkyard-dog lawyer, Excellency!!)
So why is Abp. Listecki so shy? Why won't he go before the press and answer questions? Jos. Shaw analyzes the broader Church's problem with and favors an "abusive family" analogy.
...Talking of tiers of abuse may seem a rather extreme approach to analysing a simple problem of over-zealous loyalty to the Church, but remember, we now know that we are dealing with the institutional manifestation of widespread sexual abuse. The question I am probing is: given that we have had an endemic abusive system at the heart of the institution for fifty or more years, at the level of the episcopacy, the seminaries, and even the Roman curia, what effect on the overall culture of the Church has it had?
The answer is that it will have done its best to draw into its distorted mind-set as many people involved with the Church as possible. It will have done its best to inculcate in them the abusive assumptions that the system is not, really, bad; the victims are guilty; and it would be terrible if the system is exposed: whistleblowers are traitors. We know how ruthlessly men too strong, too healthy, to bow to this set of attitudes have too often been treated. We know the kind of weak and weaselly individual who too often has found preferment in this system. Thank heaven, there are exceptions. I am not making a generalisation about bishops or priests, so much as an observation of the direction in which things have been pushed, a direction we would not have gone in at all had it not been for the poison of abuse eating away at the good sense of good people in the Church over many decades....
The red text might explain +Listecki's recalcitrance. It would be terrible if he exposed Massingale's errors and heresies to the public, and +Listecki does not want to be the traitor to the system which formed, educated, and ordained Massingale. (After all, the Archbishop who ordained him still lives here.....)
The analogy of 'family abuse' seems to be what was operative in the Lincoln Seminary scandal, too, and of course, it's what is behind the 'omerta' surrounding McCarrick until recently.
Oremus.
SEPTEMBER 15th 3PM SHARP (ALL TIME ZONES)
PICKET THE CHANCERIES DAY
FEAST OF OUR LADY OF SORROWS
BRING YOUR COPY OF THE STABAT MATER.
2 comments:
Can we communicate via email? I am a Southeastern Wisconsin native and writer.
Sorry.....although my real identity is known to a few folks, I'm not too interested in pulling a Samson trick on myself.
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