After hearing reports about Deal Hudson’s meeting in DC with the leaders of the US bishops’ conference, I have to ask what’s new.
Here is what I wrote in a comment on the previous post to this one:
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.”
So what’s different this time? What’s new? And as I said when I first heard about this meeting, is this supposed to be equal time because the liberals got to meet with the bishops too?
Look, here’s how it goes. The liberal contigent, because it has so much sway at the bishops’ conference, organizes a secret meeting which the bishops gladly attend. But the icky conservatives find out about it and demand equal time. So, the bishops agree to meet with the conservatives, too. They make approving noises at the appropriate times, dismiss talk of cracking down on dissenters as not being pastoral. They watch the clock until the meeting is over and go on their merry way, now able to say that they listen to all sides (as if both points of view are equal) and do nothing to change.
I’m not saying that the meeting should not have happened. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t expect this one meeting to bring about the renewal of the Church in the US. As I said before, what makes this meeting different from all the other ones?
I agree with Mark on most of that, especially his points that (a) we can’t expect change to come instantly and especially with this “hapless bench of bishops”; we must wait for a new generation of bishops, and (b) the most important thing we can do is cultivate holiness and fidelity in ourselves, our families, and our parishes. It starts locally and builds globally.