Click here if you don’t see subscription options
Memory Comes Back
Many thanks to Patricia Kossmann for calling attention to the 25th anniversary of the death of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen on Dec. 9 of this year.
During the seasons of his Life Is Worth Living television series, the bishop would periodically decamp across the Hudson for a few days. His objective? The so-called bishop’s suite in St. Michael’s Monastery of the Passionists in Union City, N.J.
As seminarians, we took turns bringing Bishop Sheen a mid-morning snack of coffee, or mid-afternoon tea with a Danish or cookies. We all noticed the small piles of lined yellow foolscap on the floor along the walls. One classmate finally asked: Bishop, are those the drafts of your future talks? The answer: No, Confrater, each pile has drafts of separate paragraphs for the one talk I’m working on at the time.
As I begin to write a new homily, that memory comes back and gives me the courage to keep trying. Maybe it’s the same for my good classmates.
(Most Rev.) Norbert M. Dorsey, C.P.
Culpability
The articles by Archbishop Harry Flynn and Thomas P. Rausch, S.J., (10/18), and Archbishop Francis Hurley’s letter (11/8), dealing with the one strike and you’re out approach to pedophile priests, clearly state many important considerations.
One not addressed is the culpability of any bishop or religious superior who, despite understanding that there is a significant degree of recidivism among pedophiles, regardless of the quality of treatment, returns a pedophile priest to active ministry.
If that reinstated priest commits another act of pedophilia, then the bishop or superior is the proximate cause of a grave sin and is also guilty of a grave sin. Sanctions similar to those proposed by some for proximate cause pro-choice politicians might be an appropriate response.
Likewise, an act of pedophilia is statutory rape in criminal law. The bishop or superior should be considered an accomplice before the fact, subject to civil action for that felony.
Eugene Bova
