Bishops' hierarchic culture needs accountability, transparency

https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/bishops-hierarchic-culture-needs-accountability-transparency
MGB: By the time Ted McCarrick got to DC, he was past his cruising days.  There was no way anyone here would have known about his past as a younger man.  If he were an Anglican, he could be out and proud and no one would have paid any mind to it, save for the incident of the underage person,  who is unidentified so we don't know how underage or whether he was gay or straight.

Perhaps it is time to drop the assumption that our bishops and priests are eunics and the myth than an asexual lifestyle is good for them or for gays or unmarried heterosexuals or married people not trying to conceive.  The sexual revolution was not about making life one big orgy. It was about freeing women from their traditional roles. That was a good thing, the logical outcome being ending sacred continence for priests and ordaining women. These reforms are as essential as how we hold bishops accountable.

Bishops are hardly accountable to Rome. The ethic in Rome is that bishops are accountable to themselves. The culture is not a hierarchy, it is an organized despotism and the bishops are the despots. If Rome were accountable, it would drop the insistence that they cannot be made to backstop financial settlements to the victims of abuse. They won that battle and lost the war of accountability.  The most important commandment to them is still the Eleventh. Thou Shalt Not Get Caught.

The office of bishop needs to be changed. Put parish property under the control of parish non-profits under the management of a lay deacon (no vows except to the community, but still ordained) and accountable to the parish, with the collection of lay deacons accountable for diocesan property and, along with the priests, to select the bishop and pastors. No more tiernas, recommendations by the nuncio or selection by the pope and congregation of bishops. No more medieval hierarchies. We live in a democratic age. The council of lay deacons should also approve any settlements. The money belongs to the people, not the bishops,

The old man and wife paradigm for bishops is outdated. Men and women are equal in marriage, including the ability to leave and the local Church having the power to give the bishop his or her walking papers, returning him to the priesthood. Divorce is not so bad. There is no freedom to be in a marriage without the freedom to leave it. This would have a much greater impact than simply imposing a vow of stability. I think the views of my youth are still better then MSW's.

The Congregation of Bishops needs to be disbanded. Their only gatherings should be national, synodal or a general council, the latter considering doctrinal matters, so that the Inquisition may be disbanded as well.

This scandal was as much about the Potemkin Sexuality of the clergy as it is about authority, Both should be dealt with. Whether Francis and his Council of Eight has the courage to propose a solution and present it to the Church in General Council is the real question of the day.