The Bishops are talking to the wrong people

We all fantasize about what we'd do if we were Pope for a day: excommunicate the Jesuits, shut down the LCWR, banish the Maryknolls to a distant planet, but I'd like to recommend something more modest: force Bishops to speak to their congregation.

We live in a media drenched environment.  We also live in a bureaucratic environment where group-think runs wild.  In that case, it's natural that when something happens that affects the Catholic Church the press wants one person they can contact to get the official response, and the Church likewise wants there to be one official response so there's not a cacophony of voices.  It gets to the point that the former Cardinal Archbishop of LA was reluctant to express a pro-life sentiment and deferred to the leader of the US Bishops pro-life committee.  But the role of a Bishop is not to fall back on bureaucratic policy statements and talking points.  The role of a Bishop is to instruct his flock on the faith.

Last week, the HHS issued a new scheme for its contraception mandate designed to allay the conscience of those who object.  Archbishop Kurtz, the president of the USCCB, promptly issued a statement on the new rules.   I'm sure that statement will soon be posted to my own diocesan website, which does little more than pass along statements by the Pope, the state Bishops' conference and the national Bishops conference.  I doubt anyone actually read it, and it will likely have no impact.  Meanwhile, pewsitting Catholics get a homily that if we're just nice enough to each other, we'll all be happy.

So my proposal is this: for now on all press releases must be issued from the pulpit by the bishop during Mass.  Any bishop is free to make any statement he wants on any subject, but in order for it to get into the papers he has to tell his congregation about it at the same time.  And his entire flock needs to hear it, so each priest in each parish needs to read the same text.  If he thinks the press isn't interested in what he says from the pulpit, then he can work a little more on the text to make it more relevant.  If he thinks the press won't understand complex Catholic terms like "sin" and "morality", he has parishioners who don't either and he can explain what those strange words mean.  It might take two homilies to cover it all, but that's OK. The press will drive to the cathedral an extra time. They get a milage stipend.  If the bishop is afraid that his talks will look dumb in the papers, then they probably will. He may need to come up with something more substantial to say than "Be good."