Ed Peters, Canon Lawyer…

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 11:54 am by Mark Shea

Ed Peters, Canon Lawyer… 2014-12-31T11:54:15-07:00 Mark Shea

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on the Bp. Zurek/Fr. Pavone dispute. He does his usual thorough, balanced, and well-informed job of giving clear facts.

Me: I’m content to wait till Rome weighs in. There are more important things for us laity to be doing than offering our ignorant opinions about and taking sides in a quarrel we know nothing about. God grant that this spat is resolved soon.

Speaking of which, Dr. Gerard Nadal is right, hear him! One of the strange phenomena to emerge on the “conservative” Catholic Right in the past few years has been the automatic assumption that in any dispute between an American bishop and a conservative folk hero, the bishop is always acting as a sinister agent of modernist evil bent on destroying the Faith from within and the folk hero is “under attack” *because* of his orthodoxy and not because there is something worth investigating.

In short, The *default* position among a disturbing percentage of “conservative” American Catholics in the blogosphere is that, whenever a bishop speaks a word about any subject other than abortion, it is a) suspect and b) completely ignorable. When such a bishop actually does something these “conservatives” dislike it is treated with instant contempt and explained as an act of malice by an agent of heresy. As one blogger I know said recently, “I booted two commenters who just came out and accused Zurek of being ‘a fag with an agenda’ or words to that effect. So ugly.”

Yes. Ugly indeed. And deeply un-Catholic. Our bishops are our bishops, people, given to us by Jesus Christ. The good bishop of Amarillo is perfectly within his rights to make the choices he has made. He is not perfect. No bishop is. But he is trying to do what is right. Given the recent spectacle of the new bishop of Corpus Christi trying very hard to rein in the long-ignored financial misdeeds of the rogue priest styling himself “The Black Sheepdog” all while being arraigned as part of a shadowy gay conspiracy by Real Catholic TV, combox warriors should think long and hard before imputing malice, heresy, hostility to orthodoxy (or, disgustingly, homosexuality) to a bishop who is, in fact, trying to do his job. That does not, of course, mean that Fr. Pavone is guilty of any wrongdoing. He is perfectly within his rights to appeal to Rome and I suspect he will come out okay in the end.

But it does mean that we who are out in the peanut gallery should shut our traps before instantly erecting yet another simplistic scenario of Brave Folk Hero vs. Evil Heterodox Bishop. The conservative American Catholic track record for picking folk heros–Maciel, Euteneuer, Corapi–and then declaring their critics to be Enemies of the Faith who are only motivated by hatred of orthodoxy has not covered itself in glory for its awesome powers of discernment and soul-reading. So just let Rome handle this matter and let the chips fall where they may. Personally, I think Fr. Pavone a good man and am confident it will all work out. Chill.

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