"We Bishops Are Responsible" – At Guadalupe, Chaput's "New World"

Whispers in the Loggia: "We Bishops Are Responsible" – At Guadalupe, Chaput's "New World"

Whispers in the Loggia

Saturday, November 16, 2013

"We Bishops Are Responsible" – At Guadalupe, Chaput's "New World"

For everything that was different about this week's Baltimore Plenary, there was still a bit of deja vu in the air... well, besides Archbishop Allen Vigneron being denied the Divine Worship chair for the fourth straight time – now an apparent custom of the bench, going all the way back to 2005.

In one of this week's great surprises, for the second time running, Archbishop Charles Chaput was the runner-up for a seat in the USCCB's topmost leadership. The result made for a rather striking contrast to this meeting's run-up as, going into the sessions, many felt this was his protege's hour, with the votes accordingly to swing – beyond being head of the largest diocese these shores have ever known, Archbishop José Gomez had become the first Hispanic in recent memory to make the USCCB's presidential slate, and the choice of the Mexican-born Angeleno ecclesially bred in Texas was advanced by his champions as an evocative, providential amplification of both the Latino ascendancy into Stateside Catholicism's largest ethnic group, as well as the source of the first-ever American pontificate, albeit south of the border.

Yet when Decision Time came, Don José's mentor – a veteran of the last five 10-man slates (more than any other contender) – edged again into the runoff by all of one vote.

Of course, the demographic and Roman fronts aren't the only ways the world has changed since the 2010 Fall Classic. Keeping with Rome's long-standing habit for the almost-vice-president of the US bishops, eight months after last time's near-miss, Chaput was sent to the country's next open cardinalatial see... yet even if he's become the sole US prelate to occupy the chair once held by a saint, to describe the modern-day archdiocese of Philadelphia as any sort of "consolation prize" would simply be perverse.

The figures speak for themselves: a second grand jury that charged four clerics for abuse and its coverup; a former clergy-personnel chief convicted, his three-to-six year jail sentence still on appeal; a score of priests suspended, some 30 schools shut in one fell swoop, along with as many parishes (and more coming through 2015), all of it amid heated protests; long-term deficits in excess of $350 million, with at least a dozen civil suits still pending (the latest of which – a wrongful death claim in a victim-survivor's drug overdose – dropped this week); a quarter of the Chancery staff laid off, the museum-like Cardinal's Residence sold, and the crown jewel of the clericalist behemoth – the "Lower Side" seminary that, on its 1928 opening, was the largest formation house ever built – now likewise on the market... to say nothing of a landscape full of hardened hearts and lasting wounds that remain to be restored and made whole again – and all of it up against the deadline of a seemingly bankable September 2015 PopeTrip for the Vatican-chartered World Meeting of Families, to say nothing of the global focus it brings.

From the outset – indeed, even before a months-long forensic audit revealed a quarter-century of "chronic... crippling" mismanagement in a starkly full light – this was already perceived to be the most difficult situation an American bishop has faced in the last half-century. Now, having watched the most determined, unflappable figure on the US bench look as if he's aged 20 years over the last 26 months – at points doubled over in anguish and grabbing his head over what he was made to inherit – it seems safe to say that taking on this inferno would've killed anyone else. But to know Chaput – the guy who once famously played a younger priest into a heart attack on the racquetball court – is to know that, where it matters most, the Capuchin comes to win.

Along those lines, just surviving the multi-tiered horror of the last two years has been quite a victory in itself, and the full thrust of setting a "fire upon the earth" after all this cleanup is yet to come. Still, having laid out a clear, resolute vision of church, culture and the public square in writings, talks, podcasted preaches and best-selling books that've spanned the last decade and a half, in the context of American Catholicism's present, it could be said that the dream he's dreamed in time gone by could only ever fully prove itself in the the crucible of the US church's once-dominant, now-decimated Northeastern beast.

With said experiment now well underway, at the place an earlier Charles Joseph declared the spiritual center of the American continent, and amid Chaput's own 25th anniversary as a bishop, these pages' shepherd delivered the following major address earlier today as one of the keynotes at this weekend's Vatican-organized Mexico City conference on Guadalupe, the New Evangelization, and the Continental Mission declared by the now-Pope Francis – emphases original, links added for context.