The General Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is meeting this week and once again it is clear that the Catholic Church in America finds itself lacking the clear pastoral leadership necessary to respond to the spiritual crisis among the faithful, both clergy and laity alike.
Once again, the Bishops will introduce new programs with a great deal of fanfare, all promising to bring people back to the Church. But these new gimmicks will look very much like those of the past. They will require a great deal of financial resource, bureaucratic support, organizational structure and a heck of a lot of human resource and energy. But they will lack any real substance and be as lackluster in results as those which have preceded them and failed to achieve any substantive spiritual conversion.
As I listen to the various Committee reports and the discussions which follow, the pattern is the same. Everything is reducible to administrative concerns, or psychology or sociology. Very little in their conversation is truly spiritual or religious.
Listening to Cardinal DiNardo, President of the Conference, in his opening remarks to the Conference attendees, I could have been listening to the Chairman of the Democratic Platform Committee. Racism, immigration reform, health care, welfare, pietistically framed but of no particular import when it comes to developing or nurturing personal or communal sanctity.
All indicators point to a serious spiritual crisis within the Church and yet the Bishops seem incapable (and clearly unwilling) to exercise any real pastoral leadership.
Pastors are aging, with little hope of sufficient numbers to replace them. Pressure is brought to bear upon them to balance budgets, to comply with mandates imposed upon them by bloated and self-sustaining diocesan agencies. Meetings upon meetings abound to promote the latest programs or fundraising schemes. And only rarely are Priests encouraged or supported by their Bishops, and then only in passing.
Little wonder, the USCCB is consistently silent about the challenges facing Pastors and the need for constant spiritual and fraternal support.
The same need is evident among the laity. Mass attendance keeps falling. Church weddings and baptisms are also declining. Confession is almost a rarity. The indications of a crisis are evident everywhere. What is the USCCB’s response?
Avoiding the spiritual crisis altogether by seeking relevance in what is politically correct at any given moment.
I have asked myself why that is so many times. And I guess that is the way bureaucratic organisms function. Rather than addressing problems deeply rooted in a loss of what is profoundly spiritual, tangible solutions are proposed by way of programmatic policies or agendas which manifestly fail to address what is the core mission of the Church: the salvation of souls.
True, the pastoral office of the Bishops involves fundraising, organizing, planning, managing, and community leadership. But these are only incidental roles. Their critical responsibility is to serve as spiritual fathers to the Christian faithful.
If the Bishops would but fulfill that function, the other needs will fall into place. If they fail at spiritual leadership, all the other roles and politically motivated agendas won’t matter.
If only Cardinal Dinardo would have reminded the Bishops of the primacy of their spiritual leadership, perhaps this General Assembly of the USCCB might have been more productive than I fear it will be.
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