The courts, America's bishops and the Holy See

In the world of Church structure, the Province of Denver includes the Dioceses of Pueblo and Colorado Springs in Colorado, the Diocese of Cheyenne in Wyoming, and the province’s metropolitan (or senior) See: the Archdiocese of Denver.  That makes Denver’s bishop an “archbishop,” and as an archbishop, a year rarely goes by without at least two or three unhappy parishioners assuming I have the authority to “straighten out” their liturgist or principal or pastor, or some other problem in their local parish—within the province, but outside my own diocese. 

They tend to get even more annoyed when they learn that I have neither the authority nor the bad sense to meddle in the life of a sister local Church.  Nor will I intrude on the ministry of a brother bishop.  The title “archbishop” does entail some rights and duties in the life of a province, but these are strictly limited.   In reality, each diocese is a separate, autonomous community of Catholic believers.  Each bishop in a province is an equal.  Each is a successor of the Apostles.  And each is the chief teaching and governing authority in his own local Church.  Of course, the bishop of Rome is uniquely different:  He is first among brothers; yet he also has real authority as pastor of the whole Church.  But he is not a global CEO, and Catholic bishops are not—and never have been—his agents or “employees.” 

It’s useful to remember this today as lawyers try ingeniously to draw the Vatican into America’s on-going sex-abuse saga.  In O’Bryan vs. the Holy See, currently being heard in U.S. district court in Kentucky, plaintiffs’ attorneys seek to depose Vatican officials—including potentially the pope himself—to determine what they knew and allegedly ignored or covered up about the handling of clergy sex-abuse cases by American bishops.  The plaintiffs’ legal argument hinges on the premise that bishops are, in effect, Roman-controlled employees or officials.   But that argument is not merely false in practice; it is also revolutionary in its consequences.  In effect, it seeks to redefine the nature of the Church in a manner favorable to plaintiffs’ attorneys, but alien to her actual structure and identity.  To put it another way, plaintiffs’ attorneys want a federal court to tell the Church who she really is, whether she agrees or not, and then to penalize her for being what she isn’t. 

Every bishop in the United States has a filial love for the Holy Father and a fraternal respect for his brother bishops.  But these family-like words—filial, fraternal, brother—are not mere window-dressing.  They go to the heart of how the Catholic community understands and organizes itself, and more important, how the Church actually conducts herself, guided by her own theology and canon law.  The Church is much closer to a confederation of families than to a modern corporation.  And this has real, everyday results.  In practice, the influence of the Holy See on the daily life of the Archdiocese of Denver is strong in matters of faith and morals.  We’re deeply grateful for the leadership and wonderful teaching of the Holy Father.  But in the operational decisions of our local Church, the Holy See’s influence is remote.  In 22 years as a bishop, my problems have never included a controlling or intrusive Vatican. 

We live in ironic times.  Critics of the Catholic Church in the 19th century conjured up a monolithic Roman Church to frighten America’s Protestant masses.  Today, when that Roman strawman is even less believable, they rather like the idea of the Catholic Church as a Vatican-controlled monolith—no matter how far that myth is from real Church life—the better to sue her.

This text originally appeared in slightly edited form May 26 on the First Things “On the Square” Web site.  See “Suing the Church,” http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/05/suing-the-church.  Republished here with the permission of First Things.