Rome and the Church in the U.S.

Archbishop Michael J. Curley of Baltimore, who confirmed my father, was a pugnacious Irishman with a taste for shocking people via undiplomatic language. In a conversation with the great historian John Tracy Ellis, Curley, who had had his share of tussles with the Vatican, once blurted out, “Rome will use you, abuse you, and then throw you away!” Like other bombastic Curleyisms, it was an exaggeration, but one that contained a nugget of truth: Roman authorities have often had difficulties grasping the distinctive character and achievements of the Church in the United States. Yet few particular Churches of the size and significance of American Catholicism have been as doggedly loyal (and generous) to “Rome” as we have. That is not a brag; it is a historical and empirical fact.

Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services-USA is the antithesis of Archbishop Curley when it comes to the art of rhetoric. A veteran of the papal diplomatic service with long Vatican experience, Archbishop Broglio chooses his words with great care. The opening sentences of his last address as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), at their annual meeting in Baltimore last month, were, I imagine, carefully crafted. They repay close attention:

Let my first words in this final presidential address to you be those of profound gratitude for your support and for the abiding unity experienced on a daily basis from the prelates who form this conference. I knew that we were united, but that fraternity has been so tangible in the more trying moments of these past three years. I am profoundly grateful.

In other circumstances, that expression of gratitude might be mere politesse. But please note that the archbishop did not underscore his gratitude for his brother bishops’ cooperation, support, or camaraderie. He underscored his appreciation of their unity. That, I suggest, was not an accident.

In recent years, the notion that the U.S. bishops are a divided and contentious bunch has spread throughout the world Church, to the point where I’ve been asked by senior churchmen from Africa and Asia, and in virtually the same terms, “Isn’t it true that the U.S. bishops are deeply divided?” How did this canard spread? It has been spread through the Anglosphere by the London-based Tablet; it has been spread throughout the Francophone Catholic world by La Croix International; and those publications have, one imagines, absorbed this fictitious (and in some cases malicious) story line from the National Catholic Reporter and from Commonweal’s Massimo Faggioli (whose distorted view of the Church in the United States has not been improved by his recent translation from Villanova to Dublin).

The canard about the bishops’ alleged disunity and fractiousness is typically accompanied by other fairy tales: that the U.S. bishops intensely disliked, even disrespected, Pope Francis; that the U.S. bishops are joined at the hip to the Republican Party; that in matters of public policy the U.S. bishops care only about abortion; that the U.S. bishops don’t do enough for migrants and immigrants. In each case, the truth of the matter is quite the opposite.

The bishops as a body were deeply loyal to Pope Francis, even when he made their pastoral lives more difficult with (to take but two examples) Amoris Laetitia and Traditionis Custodes. The bishops are no more beholden to the Republican Party than they are to the Democrats. The bishops speak in the public square on a host of issues, and they do so with the voice of public reason, not as “culture-warriors” (another silly epithet applied to them by bears of little brain). And the Church in the United States does more for migrants and immigrants than any other institution in the country.

It is a sadness to think that the distorted picture of the U.S. Church that one finds internationally and in Rome has been confected, not only by disgruntled journalists and commentators committed to the failed project of Catholic Lite, but by some American bishops who resent being part of a decided minority in the bishops’ conference. If that is the case, and I fear it is, then a serious breach of the collegiality that Vatican II called the bishops of every particular Church to live, operationally and affectively, is being committed. And it should end.

The opening months of the new pontificate have seen a renewed papal stress on unity in the Church. I hope that those who spread disinformation about a disunited American episcopate take that to heart.

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