EDITORIAL Can synod survive Vatican manipulation?
As the Synod for America nears, there is abundant reason to
conclude that the organizers in the Vatican are pitifully out of touch with
Catholics throughout the Americas.
For starters, it should be clear to Vatican officials by now that
most geographers recognize North America and South America as distinct
continents, not as one continent. However, that is but one point, and a minor
one, among many. Taken together, the Vaticans actions -- including
appointment to the synod of a priest accused of sexual abuse -- border on a
giant insult to many Catholics in this hemisphere.
As Gary MacEoin, an experienced Vatican observer and Latin America
expert, wrote in the Oct. 31 issue, the General Secretariat of the Synod, a
curial body, has fashioned an agenda for the Nov. 16-Dec. 12 Rome gathering
that depends on a certain suspension of reality and a revisionists view
of history.
Serious consideration of the themes of justice and liberation --
so central to religious thought and action in Latin America during the past
three decades -- have been effectively removed from the preparatory
document.
The critique by Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese, a Vatican expert (see
story page 7), is aimed more at process: Preparations have been rushed, the
delegate selection rules are skewed to discriminate against larger episcopal
conferences and the rules of the assembly itself seem designed to squelch any
open and substantial discussion of issues.
It isnt, of course, the first time reactionaries in the
curia have tried to steal a march at an official church assembly. In recent
history, one need only recall the gatherings at Medellín in Colombia and
Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, or the special synod on the
anniversary of the 1960s Second Vatican Council, not to mention the early
attempts of conservatives to scuttle Vatican II itself. There is no predicting
how the Holy Spirit and good people can conspire to undo curial plans.
Chalk up much of the pre-synodal machinations to various degrees
of a need to control, of a desire to undo the influence of liberation theology
or to simple ineptitude.
The appointment of Fr. Marciel Maciel Degollado, founder and
superior general of the Legionaries of Christ, is beyond any reasonable
explanation.
It is clear that Pope John Paul II has used his direct
appointments (most other delegates are elected by bishops conferences) to
place some high-profile conservatives amid the assembly. But naming Maciel,
accused by nine former seminarians of sexual abuse, is a grossly insensitive
and damaging act.
Since the accusations were reported earlier this year in The
Hartford Courant newspaper, the Vatican has been mum. The accusers include
a priest, a guidance counselor, a professor, an engineer, a lawyer and a former
priest who became a university professor.
The accusers have been unable to get the Vatican to respond to
their queries and letters. Maciel has denied the accusations.
In treating the accusations with silence and favoring the alleged
abuser with a papal appointment, the Vatican is sending a distressing message
to priests and bishops in the United States who have made efforts against great
odds to deal with the awful and ongoing reality of sex abuse by priests.
Victims can only take the popes appointment of Maciel to
mean that, despite words to the contrary, the church does not really take sex
abuse accusations seriously.
Maciel should be investigated thoroughly, not rewarded with papal
favors before his accusers -- serious professionals who have tried alternative
channels for redress before going public -- are given a full hearing.
We trust that the to and fro of the synod will inject some reality
into the curial choreography of the event. The slap in the face represented by
Maciels appointment will resound well beyond the synod.
National Catholic Reporter, November 7,
1997
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