Lots of rumors are flying around all over the place lately. Many blogs have been reporting—and the mainstream media is starting to catch up—that Archbishop Harry Flynn of Minneapolis-St. Paul will soon have a coadjutor bishop. The most common name being bandied about lately is Bishop Sam Aquila of Fargo. While some people say that Flynn requested the coadjutor of Rome because of his advancing age (he is 73), other reports claim that the initiative came from Rome because of Flynn’s missteps on things like Communion for pro-abortion politicians and Rainbow Sashers. (Aquila comes down, like Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs and Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, on the side of refusing Communion to persistently pro-abortion pols.) Tom Szyskiewicz seems pretty certain of this rumor:
Bishop Samuel Aquila of Fargo will be coming to the Twin Cities as the archbishop. My prediction is that the announcement will be made on the 13th or the 20th.
While the reports are saying that Archbishop Flynn sought a coadjutor, the reality is that this was something pushed from the Vatican. Let’s just say that a certain someone in Rome was rather unhappy with the Archbishop’s response when it came to a Communion issue.
I’m not sure if I buy that explanation completely, although it’s possible that the process was speeded up by a mutual desire to see Flynn begin the process of turning over the archdiocese to another.
Curial changes too
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Of course, a lot goes on behind the scenes that we will never find out about, such as private communications to errant bishops, chastising them, and, surely in a few cases, warning them. To us in the public, however, it all looks as though nothing is happening. Can anything be inferred from this? Only, perhaps, that Rome tends to err on the side of avoiding public humiliation of errant bishops.
I can certainly imagine that’s preferable to the opposite error. In the history of the Church, there have been very few “aggressive” eras, if any. Most times have resembled our own in this respect, and when wars did break out, it was a battle between the popes and one or more monarchs, not a battle with bishops, per se. The story of Boniface VIII seems to be a rare exception to this.
No, Eric. It was not intended to impress you. It’s simply a fact that the Church hardly ever reaches out to correct her errant children, bishops or otherwise. Even the history of the Inquisition, when investigated in detail, supports this claim.
Unless a conservative like Fr. Altier or whistleblower like Fr. Madden. Then correction comes swiftly…
These corrections do not come from the chief pillars of the Church. They come from bishops who, perhaps, have lost the true sense of their calling as shepherds, or so the reported facts would strongly indicate.