Mankowski: What Went Wrong?

Robert Conquest says somewhere that the “behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies". Of couse, he means enemies of the organization: the idea of a bureaucracy being taken over by its enemies fills me with a mixture of hilarity and dread.

That reminds me of Fr Paul Mankowski SJ's paper from July 2003 (I blog slow but exceeding fine): What Went Wrong?

In thousands and thousands of pages of records one scarcely, if ever, is edified by a pleasant surprise, by discovering that a bishop’s or superior’s concern for the victim or for the Faith was greater than that known to the public, that the engines of justice were geared up and running at full throttle, but in a manner invisible to those outside the circle of discretion. Didn’t happen.

It is not surprising that something by an American priest in 2003 should smell of cynicism of all Ecclesiastical bureaucracies:

When the scandal is sexual or financial, it seems the Holy See can move quickly to remove the offender. When the scandal is in the arena of heresy or administrative irregularity or liturgical abuse, there is almost never enough secular interest generated to force the Holy See’s hand. Bishops Milingo and Ziemann and Roddy Wright have many brethren; Bishop Gaillot has few.

These differences between the Vatican's policy towards immoral Bishops and that towards dissenting Bishops may be due to the differences between the applicable canon law. That became clear when it took the Pope five years to remove Bishop Morris of Toowoomba.