Bishops: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

In the sexual abuse horrors of the past several years within the Church, well documented in many books, reports, and news stories but best compiled in these five: Goodbye Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church, by Michael S. Rose (2002), The Rite of Sodomy: Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church, by Randy Engel (2006), After Asceticism: Sex, Prayer and Deviant Priests, by Patrick Guinan (2006), The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture, by Philip F. Lawler (2008), and Sacrilege: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church, by Leon J. Podles (2008)—we learn how bishops should not act; some were merely bad and some were very ugly.

All five of these will be tough reading for the faithful, but absolutley necessary to understand the evil that can arise, even within the Church, and without understanding it we cannot fight against it with our deepened prayer and devotional life.

In this article from California Catholic Daily, we learn how bishops should be; good, and effective.

An excerpt.

"What qualities best equip today's bishop to fight the culture war? That's the question I posed in a survey of Catholic authors and activists, priests and scholars. It brought a flurry of thoughtful responses.

“1. A bishop must be personally holy.

“David Tennessen, author of Dave's Digest, a pro-life news summary, identified several important qualities that serve a bishop at the crossroads of the culture war. One stood at the forefront, however: "The first and most fundamental quality any bishop must have is personal holiness." Tennessen believes that bishops who pray the Divine Office, make regular retreats, and schedule regular confessions for themselves are better equipped to serve as Christ's emissaries.

“In fact, it could be argued that the other habits of an effective bishop flow from this first habit. "The second quality necessary to be a good bishop," Tennessen offered, "is the ability to teach, which is his primary obligation…[and] reading the lives of the saints has shown me that the bishops who are holy make the best teachers."

“And so, holiness must be the foundation of any successful bishopric. "If a bishop has personal holiness," Tennessen concluded, "God will fill in anything else that might be missing."

“Tennessen wasn't the only one to observe that a bishop is most effective when his commitment to personal prayer is strong. One Atlanta priest noted, "How does one follow Christ if one is not on his knees? Think of Christ on His knees in Gethsemane. The Catechism is clear, 'Although Christ's ministers act in communion with one another they also act in a personal way.'" The citation continues, "Each one is called personally: 'You follow Me' in order to be a personal witness…to bear personal responsibility…."

“2. A bishop must promote and defend the authentic Catholic Faith.

"One frequently mentioned quality of a strong bishop is his willingness to stand up for the truth, no matter the cost (often paid in media uproar). Indeed, for 2,000 years, bishops have been among the chief defenders of the Faith -- from the early Church, through the Reformation, and to the modern era. Our contemporary shepherds must continue that venerable tradition.

“Happily, respondents offered some excellent examples. Francis Cardinal George of Chicago was often praised for his "devastating" and repeated critiques of dissent. Professor Gerard Bradley of Notre Dame observed that Cardinal George is also "extraordinary and exemplary for his untiring and fearless and unblinking intellectual engagement with the challenge of militant secularism."

“Many others recalled Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz's refusal to permit Catholics in his diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, to be members of Planned Parenthood, the dissident Catholic organization Call to Action, or to maintain any Masonic affiliation and still be considered in good standing with the Church.

"What I find most admirable in him," said Phil Lawler of the Catholic World Report, "is his willingness directly to acknowledge and confront the most serious problem in the Church in America today: the manifest failure of the bishops, as a group, to provide pastoral leadership."