Haven't had much commentary on strictly Church stuff lately, what with having given up blogging and with my previous focus on the fight against the Missouri cloning amendment. But yesterday in the car, I heard an audio replay of EWTN's The World Over, in which Raymond Arroyo went to far less effort to conceal his disdain for most of what the USCCB is up to than he has in previous years.
And apparently, many of the Bishops put forth even less effort than Mr. Arroyo. Arroyo had a number of Bishops commenting on various things---the disconnect between "official priorities" and staffing; the line items in the USCCB budget; the method by which business is conducted).
Among the snips he played for us was one from Lincoln Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz. The impeturbable ordinary of the Cornhuskers rose during discussion of some-or-another document (I think it was The Spiritual Value of Fibre: a Pastoral Response to the USDA's Proposed Revisions to the Food Pyramid), and quoted Cardinal Ratzinger on the pointlessness of the national bishops' conferences. I checked yesterday and today to see if the audio of the program was available at EWTN.com, but it's not. When it is, if I'm around, I'll find it, link to it, and tell you at what point in the clip you'll hear it.
But it was pure Bruskewitz: he quoted Ratzinger (whatever happened to the Cardinal anyways?) stating that the national conferences had no teaching authority and no ecclesial role to play. Bruskewitz just wanted everyone in the room to keep that in mind, he said, as they considered the document. To that, Bill the Bankrupt Bishop Skylstad, at the podium, meekly asserted that the statemnts he quoted were 20 years old, and that of course Skylstad saw great value in the Bishops' conferences and they've done great things (like give him an excuse to leave his mess in Spokane behind?).
I think Dusty posted on this, too. One or the other of us will probably have a link up when the program is archived online.
I'm glad you caught and summarized the Raymond Arroyo program on EWTN, together with recorded snips from the Bishops meeting in Baltimore. My mind at the end of Arroyo program told me it was really good--it's just that I couldn't remember much of what was actually said! More senior moments, I guess.
ReplyDelete