Most average Catholics around the world probably don’t know the name of their local bishop.
And fewer still could tell you who serves as president of the national episcopal conference in their country.
That’s probably not such a bad thing.
As some recent events have shown, Catholics probably aren’t losing out much by not knowing or having a whole lot of contact with these men of the Church who like to call themselves shepherds.
“Look, I am against the shepherds,” says the Lord in the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel.
“I shall take my flock out of their charge and henceforth not allow them to feed my flock. And the shepherds will stop feeding themselves, because I shall rescue my sheep from their mouths to stop them from being food for them” (Ez 34, 10).
Fear not, it’s God — not the bishops — who’s in charge
Interestingly, the first reading for this weekend’s Solemnity of Christ the King is taken from the same chapter of Ezekiel. But it does not include this verse.
Rather, it begins with one directly following it: “For the Lord God says this: Look, I myself shall take care of my flock and look after it.”
Among other things, the Lord promises to “bandage up the injured and make the sick strong”, something the shepherds have not done.
This mission of healing is something Jesus entrusts to the twelve apostles.
“And he sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal” (Lk 9, 2).
The bishops of the Catholic Church put a great emphasis on the fact that they are the rightful successors of the apostles.
Yet those in the United States — at least as a national conference (USCCB) — seem to have forgotten they have a duty to heal. And not just the physical or spiritual ailments of individuals, but also the fractures and division inside their communities.
That would include the deep and dangerous political and social tensions within their nation, which are reflected almost mirror-like in the Church, as I wrote recently.
Healing is not the preeminent priority for the US bishops
Many of the bishops in the United States pride themselves on raising a prophetic voice against the evils and dangers of the current age.
These “culture warriors” think they are some sort of white martyrs for the faith because they suffer scorn for making the elimination of legal abortion their “preeminent priority”.
They have approached the issue like political lobbyists rather than spiritual leaders. They have worked to outlaw abortion, precisely because they lack all moral leadership and credibility to be able to convince women to stop having abortions.
They don’t possess the immediately recognizable authority of true shepherds or successors of the apostles, so they jump in bed with anyone — even a sociopath like Donald Trump — to have the powerful of this world do what they are too incompetent and spiritually lazy to achieve.
They cannot win over the hearts and minds of their own people, so they sell their souls to a con man and justify this as the best way to achieve their “preeminent priority”.
The USCCB has forgotten that the bishops’ preeminent priority is that mandated by the Gospel — to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal.
The bishops would rather battle Joe Biden than help heal the nation
And after the recent presidential and congressional elections, the United State is in desperate need of healing.
President-elect Joe Biden, only the second Catholic ever to be elected to the highest office of the land, is obviously more aware of this than the bishops.
Not only have most of them been slow to publicly acknowledge that he’s defeated Mr. Trump, some of them continue to support the outgoing president’s outrageous claims that the Biden campaign stole the election.
As a national body, the US bishops are leaderless and their views are inconsequential to the lives of the vast majority of Americans — including members of their own Church.
Only those who are wealthy or have influence in the corridors in Washington are tuned in to the inanities that come from the USCCB, because these power brokers are actually using the bishops like tools for their own ideological agenda.
It seems not a single bishop made a plea at the recent USCCB virtual assembly to discuss what they as a body, or the Church as a community, could do to play a lead role in helping to heal the nation.
Abortion trumps a national emergency
The conference is famous for setting up committees. But no one suggested one to even look at how to bring healing to their badly bruised and deeply divided country.
Instead, they found it more urgent to form a working group to prepare them for battle with Mr. Biden over points of disagreement.
“When politicians who profess the Catholic faith support [abortion rights], there are additional problems,” said the conference president, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez.
“Among other things, it creates confusion among the faithful about what the Catholic Church actually teaches on these questions,” he said.
As others have said, Catholics in the United States are not confused about the Church’s teaching. They just disagree with some or all of it!
This past week was an opportunity for bishops in the United States to end their blatant party politics and temporarily put aside their zealot-like fixation on abortion.
They love to strut around as being defenders of life. But they have not the courage nor the capacity — not even the foresight — to consider how their conference might help the United States from spiraling into a national emergency. (Le Croix International)
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