The following letter is fiction.
Dear Josh,
This letter comes from both Joe and me, but he knows you and I were close in college and thought I should write it because I’m more “sensitive.” We haven’t seen you in several years, but we three were best friends when we graduated from Georgeham in 1980. Your ordination was a high point in our lives, and the following year we picked you to celebrate our wedding. We still love you. But we follow your career and sometimes wonder if you are the same person we knew 30 years ago.
It crystallized with last year’s Christmas card. You posed—still handsome, though a bit thick around the middle—in bishop’s robes as if you were a Renaissance prince! As if Christmas were about you. Do you remember our college immersion trip to Latin America, when you were so appalled by the lavishly decorated cathedral next to a slum full of poor people, and how upset you were by that overweight monsignor who sneered at liberation theology? You said he was a “pompous so-and-so,” and you swore that would never happen to you.
What has happened to you, Josh? Joe and I used to say the priesthood needed fearless men like you. But instead of building on your political science education, you went to Rome and did a degree in canon law. Then you came home to be a bishop’s secretary and were made a bishop, with no more than a few summers’ parish experience.
You cut your diocesan newspaper down to a monthly. It doesn’t allow letters to the editor, never covers social issues, prints only right-wing columnists and runs way too many pictures of you. Your own column never deals with war, race, poverty, capital punishment or labor and reads as if contraception and gay marriage were the biggest problems facing the world.
Finally, we are most disturbed about your role in the reprimand issued by your Bishops’ Committee on Orthodoxy to our old theology professor at Georgeham, Bill Worthy, because of his new book Jesus and the World. I’m sure you remember his Jesus and Ourselves, which we used in the course we took with him.
You loved that man. He took you to dinner, visited you in jail when you were arrested in that demonstration, talked you out of quitting school when you broke up with Sally and presided at your father’s funeral. But you were on that committee and signed the report accusing him of “heterodoxy.” In his rebuttal Bill asked whether all the committee members actually read the book. Did you read it? Did you defend him? Why didn’t you let him testify? What has happened to you?
You can’t be deaf and blind to what has happened to the church, the alienation and empty pews. Joe and I receive the Eucharist and pray for leadership that will remind us of Jesus curing the sick and slamming the rich who hog their wealth and the Pharisees who love titles and fame.
Joe suggests that now that you’re a bishop you want to be a cardinal; and once you’re a cardinal you will think you can be pope. So you keep your mouth shut. Joe has a cynical streak. I can’t believe that your mind actually works that way. But a lot can happen in 30 years.
My Irish mother told me that people don’t change. I remember the evening in 1980 when you and I went out for a few beers after finals, and you told me you were going to be a priest who would fight for the weak and the poor, and you asked me to pray for you. Then you reached across the table and kissed me. I haven’t given up.
Love,
Mary and Joe
If AMERICA eventually treats us to a "Bishop Josh's reply," to be credible let it be published as fiction. Bishop Josh can no longer be as honest now as he used to be before becoming "His Excellency".
Thanks.
Enjoyed the letter.
Very realistic, poignant and challenging.
Bill '51
I want a bishop who has AIDS. I want a bishop with no health insurance who grew up in a place where the earth is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn't have a choice about getting leukemia. I want a bishop who was kicked out of the house at fourteen and I want a bishop who lost their last lover to breast cancer, who still sees that in their eyes every time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they were dying. I want a bishop who has stood on line at the clinic, at the dmv, at the welfare office and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harrassed and gaybashed and deported. I want a bishop who has spent the night on the street dumpster diving for a meal and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape. I want a bishop who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has made mistakes and learned from them. I want a bishop with bad teeth and an attitude, who has eaten nasty hospital food, a bishop who crossdresses and has done drugs and been in therapy. I want a bishop who has committed civil disobedience. And I want to know why this isn't possible. I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a bishop is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker...
Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese of Sydney from 1984 to his retirement in 2004 (three years under Cardinal George Pell), hit the nail on the Episcopal head when he wrote: “During the second millennium many bishops adopted clothes and ornaments that spoke of power and riches. I do not believe we have yet gone far enough in abandoning his trend. The church could start by consigning the miter to the dustbin of history. Only a small part of communication is verbal. Body language is of great importance. Wearing a hat that makes one far taller than any other person present is strong body language, conveying the message, ‘I am more powerful and important than anyone else here.’ Is this the message that Jesus wished to convey? After the miter I would want bishops to look at pectoral crosses, pastoral staffs and rings made of expensive materials.” (“Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church”, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 2008)
Also poor Bishop Josh, like many of his fellow bishops, had become the victim of his canonically proper episcopal attire.
I am a member of a parish community with 600 families registered ... and only 100 attending Mass each week. This letter sheds a powerful light on a dreadful situation.
I agree. Yes Josh, what happened to you? Your clownish regalia with that funny hat and that jeweled stick you carry around. What’s that all about? You think you’re a prince or something? Really you’re not. You’re a servant, a caretaker of sheep and goats and as such you should dress like shepherds do in hand-me-downs, not expensive stuff and you should smell like sheep do, so to speak, and like sheep eat grass, I mean the food of the poor not elegantly like kings with marbled bar, and a vintage wine cellar and more. In other words you shouldn’t be living high off the hog and dressing like royalty while all around you people you are supposedly shepherding are inadequately housed, clothed and fed. Children crying for bread while parents are forced to steal to put something on the table or in their shack- homes! Jesus once said to you know who, “Rebuild my Church which is falling into ruin” ruined then and being ruined now by sheep and goat watchers who would rather watch themselves wrapped in lace and silk while Jesus in the person of the faithful is wrapped in a sweaty, bloody loincloth, on a Cross heaving for breath and choking on thirst! Yes, Josh, what has happened to you?
And it’s not just Bishops – oops! I’ve used that word, that behave so pompously. Priests too, are starting to devolve back to Tridentine habits, especially the youngsters coming out of seminaries – they appear so stiff, so formal, so Lordly, smelling more of incense than sweat, indicating very little involvement in “real life” flock realities! Some older priest too are being sucked into the pompous past, liking tasseled sashes flowing black capes Dracular-like, and pom-pom Birettas. Such stuff is not helpful to the flock and militates directly against Gospel simplicity and good humor which guarantees Faith, devoted sheep and repentant goats, all with our sheep and goat herders on the road to the universal call to holiness. Wow! This all sounds so harsh! Call it “tough love.” I do love our Bishops and priests, but for heaven’s sake, get with it!I think of poor Bishop Gumbleton and how he was treated by his fellow Bishops.
I did not like this article. As a "work of fiction", I found it heavy-handed and predictable. This fictional Bishop is such an uninteresting stereotype: A villain through and through. And he's only worse because he once was a "good guy" but then he went over to the "other side." He isn't very realistic, but he’s so easy to hate.
It isn’t good to incite people to hatred of anyone. It’s worse to create a stereotype of a whole group of people and stir up hatred for the whole group – even those who are innocent. And worst of all, this is a Catholic magazine stirring up hatred for our own Bishops. Please don't do this.
About the gorgeous episcopal and cardinalate robes, and so forth: imagine the international reaction if Benedict XVI were to stage a Bonfire of the Vanities in Rome, overseeing (for starters) the combustion of every extant cappa magna. The scarlet and lace dresses could come later. A suggested venue might be the Campo dei Fiori, where, 412 years ago, Father Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake.
About comment no. 15: I don't think America is stirring up hatred of anyone, episcopal or otherwise. It is simply engaged in properly Christian fraternal correction of those whose actions might occasionally seem rather distant from the faith they profess. Such correction is certainly part of a long Catholic tradition. If you want stronger examples, go read Dante's Divine Comedy - particularly, but not only, the Inferno. (Warning: this dangerous book is still taught today, even in many so-called Catholic colleges).
P.S. Yes, that last sentence is meant to be ironic (like Schroth).
What happened to my commitment to the poor? It seems the only time i'll give toward a 'cause' is when there is a fundraising gala involved so that i am entertained. I never encounter the poor and marginalized there. I don't find them in the boardrooms or on planning committees either. How is it that i presume i know more about what they need and how to get it than they do? How is it that only 3% of Catholic Charities income is from parishes or dioceses? Isn't my responsibility a bit larger than 3%?
I found myself wondering where do my priorities lie? where is my energy and excitement for the life of faith and hope the Lord is giving me? is it the Bishop's fault that the poor are not served by my parish? or that children are receiving less than the education we all hope for? I don't think any of this provides excuse or safe harbor for Bishop Josh, but i do wonder if Bishop Josh would be where he is, doing what he is doing, in the way that he is doing it, if Mary and Joe had been a little more present to the issues, and to their relationship with the Lord and with the Church over the past 30 years. I suppose what i am trying to say is that the Bishops and priests do not stand alone if the Church isn't what we want it to be, or more importantly, what the Lord hopes it to be. I am as convicted as Bishop Josh by the letter. I cannot judge others when the plank in my own eye is blinding. Perhaps when Bishop Josh gets wind of my hope and my energy, my commitment and my generosity, his eyes will open toward new possibilities. Perhaps when he sees what i am willing to do rather than just talk about, he can consider doing something different. Perhaps not, but either way, i can have more clarity regarding my own relationship with the Lord and with others. I do thank you for writing this 'fictional' piece as it has launched a lot of prayer, which will in God's grace result in my doing something different.
So thank you. Thank you very much.
AMERICA is still my favorite Catholic weekly, but after publishing some twenty letters of mine, you sadly disappointed me this time.
Inadvertently, but carelessly, your editor moved a set of quotation marks from the end to the middle of the bishop’s statement I had submitted, causing half of it to appear as my own comments and not as the unusually courageous words of the bishop himself.
Please note also that Geoffrey Robinson is not the bishop of Sydney but the auxiliary bishop to the very conservative Archbishop of Sydney, George Cardinal Pell. My problem is delicate not only because Bishop Robinson had to weigh carefully every word of his book “Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church,” (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 2008), but also because we, as a church, have been hurting recently by the Vatican treatment of Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba, another Australian bishop.
It may prove helpful historically, and pleasing to Fr. Raymond Schroth, S.J., I am sure, if you just quote in its entirety Bishop Robinson’s courageous words from page 292 of his own book: “During the second millennium many bishops adopted clothes and ornaments that spoke of power and riches. I do not believe we have yet gone far enough in abandoning this trend. The church could start by consigning the mitre to the dustbin of history. Only a small part of communication is verbal. Body language is of great importance. Wearing a hat that makes one far taller than any other person present is strong body language, conveying the message, ‘I am more powerful and important than anyone else here.’ Is this the message that Jesus wished to convey? After the mitre I would want bishops to look at pectoral crosses, pastoral staffs and rings made of expensive materials.”
AMERICA is still my favorite Catholic weekly, but after publishing some twenty letters of mine, you sadly disappointed me this time.
Inadvertently, but carelessly, your editor moved a set of quotation marks from the end to the middle of the bishop’s statement I had submitted, causing half of it to appear as my own comments and not as the unusually courageous words of the bishop himself.
Please note also that Geoffrey Robinson is not the bishop of Sydney but the auxiliary bishop to the very conservative Archbishop of Sydney, George Cardinal Pell. My problem is delicate not only because Bishop Robinson had to weigh carefully every word of his book “Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church,” (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 2008), but also because we, as a church, have been hurting recently by the Vatican treatment of Bishop William Morris of Toowoomba, another Australian bishop.
It may prove helpful historically, and pleasing to Fr. Raymond Schroth, S.J., I am sure, if you just quote in its entirety Bishop Robinson’s courageous words from page 292 of his own book: “During the second millennium many bishops adopted clothes and ornaments that spoke of power and riches. I do not believe we have yet gone far enough in abandoning this trend. The church could start by consigning the mitre to the dustbin of history. Only a small part of communication is verbal. Body language is of great importance. Wearing a hat that makes one far taller than any other person present is strong body language, conveying the message, ‘I am more powerful and important than anyone else here.’ Is this the message that Jesus wished to convey? After the mitre I would want bishops to look at pectoral crosses, pastoral staffs and rings made of expensive materials.”