The Vatican announced a bunch of new bishop appointments for the US, although the Boston Globe only seems to have noticed one. Bishop Timothy McDonnell, an auxiliary in New York, was named to the Springfield, Mass., diocese, where the bishop just resigned after being accused of abuse. Bishop Robert McManus, auxiliary in Providence, RI, was named to succeed Bishop Daniel Reilly of Worcester, Mass., who’s retiring. Msgr. Robert Cunningham, a priest in Buffalo, has been named to Ogdensburg, NY, which has been vacant since last summer, when the bishop was sent to Palm Beach, Fla. And Msgr. Robert Finn of St. Louis will become co-adjutor bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo.
I think it’s interesting that neither of the two Masachusetts bishops were auxiliaries from Boston. In the past, at least one would almost certainly have been filled from Boston. How things have changed.
On top of all that, not to be missed in the flurry of activity, Mary Ann Glendon, the Harvard Law professor and the Pope’s go-to-gal for representing him at Vatican conferences, has been named to head the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a very prestigious honor and I think the first woman to be so named. Speaking of first women, the Vatican announced over the weekend the appointment of the first two women to become members of the International Theological Commission.
Update: Mark Sullivan comments at Tom Fitzpatrick’s blog that Bishop McManus has celebrated the Tridentine Mass as a bishop.
Yes there are pictures of Bishop McManus celebrating the Tridentine Mass with Rhode Island’s Latin Mass community. Yipee!
Bishop Reilly also allowed the Tridentine over at St Benedict Center in Harvard.
This is going to be good. We have a local priest calling the Bishops “hate-filled” for defending man-woman marriage in the Diocese’s own newspaper!!!!!!
Oh Come, Holy Inquisition!
Is Bishop McManus’ offering of the Tridentine Mass with the Rhode Island Latin Mass group for “public consumption”?
See the article at [url=http://www.cruxnews.com/articles/jackson-31dec03.html]http://www.cruxnews.com/articles/jackson-31dec03.html[/url] (originally published in the New Oxford Review) by Jeffrey Jackson, who applied for the seminary in his home Diocese of Providence and was rejected because of his orthodoxy.
As rector of the Providence Diocesan minor seminary, Bishop McManus authorized the diocesan policy of recruiting seminarians by ads on MTV and the the beginning of R-rated movies in theatres, although Mr. Jackson did not get the idea that he apply for the seminary for the Diocese of Providence from those sources. Fr. Taillon was only implementing policy as diocesan recruiter of priestly vocations. Will Bishop McManus have a similar kind of recruitment policy for the Diocese of Worcester?
Also, Bishop McManus was responsible for the dubious psychological testing by unlicensed personnel. Will potential seminarians be evaluated in the same manner?
Again it was Bishop McManus as minor seminary rector who signed the rejection letter to Mr. Jackson—especially because of his criticism of the lack of spiritual formation and theological knowledge among the students at Providence College and Salve Regina University—especially the latter where Bishop McManus is a good friend of the Sister of Mercy president, who is also a good friend of ex-President Clinton. Again Fr. Taillon was only the “bearer of bad news.” How does this bode for any judgment or possible criticism by Bishop McManus of the “Catholic” colleges in Worcester?