Now those who run the Catholic Church have jeopardized another legendary center of Catholic solidarity: Philadelphia.
Cardinal Justin Rigali is retiring as Philadelphia's archbishop, disgraced by a second grand jury report documenting the hierarchy's cover-up of sexual abuse by priests. It was announced last week that his successor will be Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, one of America's most outspoken Catholic conservatives. The appointment shows that the Vatican accepts the strange idea that the church's problems in this country have come about because Catholics are too American - too tainted by America's "culture of death" - and because U.S. bishops and priests are too sensitive to what lay people and non-Catholics think.
What is needed, the Vatican seems to believe, are leaders who "put the church first," assert the authority of bishops and priests, and make no pastoral or political concessions on supposedly nonnegotiable Catholic teachings about abortion, homosexuality, and female priests.
This winter will see the introduction of a revised liturgy produced by the Holy See, whose handpicked committee made some 10,000 changes to the version approved by the vast majority of bishops in the English-speaking world. Locally, bishops and priests can make use of lay ministers and advisers, but they are required to make the difference between laity and priests very clear - as if this were somehow in doubt. Restoration of hierarchical and clerical power in the church, under the guise of "real Catholicism," appears to be the order of the day.
