A Plea to Good Bishops
The last thing I’d want to be in our time is an American bishop.
The recent letter from the USCCB to President Trump, on illegal immigration, was measured in tone, nor did it fail, implicitly, to recognize the duty of those in public office to provide for the common good, taking all circumstances into account. It was greatly superior to the moral posing and preening wherein the Episcopal prelate in Washington indulged herself at the service following the inauguration, to the predictable applause of her true audience and to the hardening of the president’s opposition to anything she had to say.
And yet, who will listen? I have heard some people say that the first thing the Trump administration did for Catholics who voted for him was to betray them, giving their bishops the stiff arm. That assumes that American Catholics, as a whole, like and admire their bishops. They do not. Whether they should is another question. It also assumes that when they see a missive coming from the USCCB, they think of their own bishop. Unless their bishop is one of the most vocal of the players, they do not.
It is a thankless task to manage decline. When I was a boy, in the heady days following Vatican II, our bishop, Joseph Carroll McCormick, set about a diocesan campaign called Project: Expansion—and yes, the colon was in the phrase, as I saw on a billboard outside our town. Call it market-driven punctuation. The diocese was going to build. I don’t fault him for that. He want
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
