“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan said. And we also shouldn’t need moral theologians with formal training to tell us that the leadership of our churches should consist of “individuals who are neither perpetrators nor enablers of abuse.”
But apparently we do.
Bill Lindsey directs us to that bit of advice from the theological faculty at the University of St. Thomas in Dylan’s home state of Minnesota. “St. Thomas faculty join refrain for Twin Cities leadership change,” Brian Roewe reports for National Catholic Reporter:
Five female professors at the University of St. Thomas, in St. Paul, Minn., say it’s time for new leadership in the St. Paul-Minneapolis archdiocese, the latest to repeat a refrain already echoed by priests, donors, news publications and Catholics in the pews.
“For genuine healing to occur, we believe it is necessary to have new leadership at the archdiocesan level, leadership that includes individuals who are neither perpetrators nor enablers of abuse,” they said in a letter shared with several media outlets, including NCR.
The tenured theology professors — Cara Anthony, Corrine Carvalho, Sherry Jordon, Sue Myers and Kimberly Vrudny — did not name specific persons, such as Archbishop John Nienstedt, in the letter, but said they see a need to restore trust in the archdiocese following the near year-long abuse scandal that has hovered over the region.
“Because we believe in a God of justice and of mercy, restoration of community requires that abusers acknowledge wrongdoing and undergo the long, hard, arduous task of reconciliation. This entails sincere contrition, public truth telling, and adequate restitution,” they said.
The group, speaking their own views, said they could not keep quiet after learning more of the abuse scandal from a recent Minnesota Public Radio documentary and from the affidavit of Jennifer Haselberger, the former chancellor for canonical affairs who has disclosed much of the documents that has fueled near-constant reports since September.
The professors are certainly correct that no archdiocese, congregation, parish or denomination should not be led by people who are “perpetrators and enablers of abuse.” And they’re simply doing their job as moral theologians to say so.
But it really shouldn’t require a bunch of Ph.Ds to help the church come to that conclusion.
No “perpetrators or enablers of abuse” is the sort of bare-minimum standard that seems like it ought to go without saying. That such standards no longer can go without saying is a clear indication that something has gone very, very wrong.
We should note that this letter from five distinguished theologians doesn’t actually have any official significance. Theologians are not part of the church hierarchy and thus, like most laypeople, they are outranked by clergy, bishops and archbishops (or, in the more market-based ecclesiastical structures of American evangelicalism, they are outranked by clergy, mega-clergy, radio hosts, and the president/founder/CEOs of various parachurch “ministries”).
A wise and decent bishop/radio host will listen when theologians weigh in, but no bishop has to. And since this particular letter addresses the problem of an archbishop who has been demonstrably unwise and indecent, I’m not hopeful it will have much effect.
Archbishop John Nienstedt seems less likely to consider the wisdom of the St. Thomas letter than he is to respond with the same indignant defensiveness he has shown all along. The sad truth is that he’s less likely to apologize and step aside than he is to strike back at these uppity women who would dare to criticize his throne.
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