Leon Podles reports from Deal Hudson’s meeting with the bishops. He wasn’t encouraged by the response (surprise, surprise).
Here’s his quick summary:
The bishops were told 1. that they had to be more direct in dealing with dissenting Catholics, and 2. that they should at the least stop appointing notorious pro-abortion politicians to prominent committees (Leon Panetta at the national Review Board).
The response to 1 : we are family, doing anything might make matters worse and only help pro-abortion politicians.
The response to 2 : if his bishop vouches for the orthodoxy of any member of his flock, no other bishop will ever question that decision.
Of course, it’s the same message orthodox Catholics have been trying to get through to US bishops for 30 years and the same response we’ve been receiving. I don’t understand how anybody (and Leon wasn’t one of them) could have been under the illusion that this meeting would be different. After all, it’s the same bishops we’ve been hearing from over the past 20 months who said the Scandal was about “boundary issues” and new policies and the like. Did we expect something different this time? Why?
By the way, here’s my original reaction to the idea of the meeting.
I’ve heard all this before, so what’s new. Orthodox Catholics have met with leaders of the bishops’ conference before. Those leaders mouthed the same pieties as before. And when bishops fail to act again or act in the wrong way, these people will raise objections and be rebuffed as before.
Is anybody under the illusion that there weren’t strongly orthodox Catholics watching the bishops and complaining about lies and heresy and heterodoxy over the past 30 years. Whole libraries are filled with books and magazines and newspapers detailing the assaults on the Gospel, assaults which have gone unanswered by many of these same bishops.
I didn’t hear anything out this meeting that leads me to believe that anything at the US bishops’ conference has changed. But we can all pat ourselves on the back now for “being heard.”