Judging and firing bishops and due process in the church | National Catholic Reporter

Judging and firing bishops and due process in the church | National Catholic Reporter by Fr. Reese.  MGB: While traditionally, Bishops were an independent entity because of their local election by priests - and originally by the people of God, that began to erode when provinces were set up over diocese and the office of Archbishop was created.  One could offer that in the ancient Church, the office of overseer was not a bishop, but a pastor - a pastor who grew into a bishop in large city churches and metropolitan areas (hence the title, metropolitan).  Saint Paul could be seen as the prototype of the Archbishop or Patriarch, with his see being the entire area to the West of the Lebanon.  Once the clergy took over for the people, clericalism began.



The end of civil government in Italy and the feudal era turned the Pope into an absolute monarch - with the benefits that came with selling indulgences and having vassals.  This ended when the Pope lost his land and he replaced his civil power base with an ecclesiastic one - when ambassadors to the various nations became branch managers - so very much like the bureaucracy found in modern capitalism.  Even while popes condemn this method of organization, they practice it.  Indeed, the Vatican is a headquarters under the guise of a sovereign state (you wonder what St. Paul and Jesus would think of that one).



Indeed, because of the way bishops are hired, fired and rotated, it is only the Vatican Treaty that protects the Holy See's assets from seizure by avaricious lawyers in sexual abuse cases.  Christ would simply volunteer most of the paintings - which don't look like Him or His Mother anyway, in abuse settlements.  He certainly would not hide behind a treaty with Benito Mussolini.  Indeed, at the Last Supper, the cautioned against the kind of worldly power that the papacy and the bishops have gathered.  He would sell it all and give it to the victims (and the poor) - and believe Francis would as well if he though he could get away with it.  Of course, Christ also mandated capital punishment for those who would lead children astray.  I believe Bernard Law would be in the Tiber - and any priest who simply covered up abuse to protect diocesan assets - which are literally in the name of the bishop.