Please press 'mute' to the US bishops

The first day of the plenary meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was disappointing in virtually every regard. Indeed, the only good idea to come from this virtual meeting was the image of some bishops who had neglected to unmute themselves, talking with no sound. It is a metaphor for the conference at this moment in time: Their mouths move but they have nothing to say.

If you wanted to write a short story about the reception of the McCarrick report by the U.S. bishops, you might call it "The nuncio that dare not speak his name." There were a dozen or so interventions in the public discussion of the McCarrick report, no bishop mentioned the name of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, and not one bishop apologized for testifying to Viganò's "integrity" when the disgraced former nuncio used the McCarrick scandal as a vehicle to attack his enemies and call for the pope's resignation.

Asked about this during the press conference that followed the event, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services said it was not the conference's job to "hand slap" bishops. What Broglio fails to see is that this is precisely the problem at the heart of the McCarrick report: the fact that there was no effective fraternal correction before it was too late. Even when St. Pope John Paul II decided to believe McCarrick's denial that he had done anything wrong, McCarrick's own letter admitted he had shared beds with seminarians. In what moral universe is that OK?

Turns out it is OK in the moral universe of Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois. He whined that "unfortunate" media accounts of the McCarrick report painted the late Polish pontiff as culpable in the promotion of McCarrick and cited every bit of mitigating evidence to diminish the pope's responsibility. But the overwhelming fact of the report is that John Paul II made a promotion he did not have to make, he chose the problematic candidate when there were other candidates, and then bestowed the red hat on him. John Paul II cannot evade responsibility for the promotion of Theodore McCarrick through the ranks of the hierarchy.

You can't say that out loud because … why? Let me guess. The people will be scandalized? We have heard that excuse before.

The McCarrick report details a culture that is allergic to candor and uninterested in getting at any truth that might make anyone uncomfortable. That report itself was an exercise in candor and an invitation to the U.S. bishops to continue in that spirit. They declined.

What did we watch at Monday's meeting? Perhaps it was different in the bishops' executive session, but in public session we saw a lack of frankness, feigned politeness, the diplomatic manner of the body, all of those things that served to cover up McCarrick's sins and now keep the bishops from acknowledging John Paul II's sins and the sins of the hierarchic culture itself. Many spoke in the passive voice: "Mistakes were made." Occasionally, someone would say something harsh, provided the target was unnamed. For specifics, we got only niceties.