Rod Bennett - Bad Shepherds: The Dark Years in Which the Faithful Thrived While Bishops Did the Devils Work

Rod Bennett

BAD

SHEPHERDS

The Dark Years in Which
the Faithful Thrived While
Bishops Did the Devils Work

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2018 by Rod Bennett

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Perceptions Design Studio.

On the cover: Cardinals (SEL244079) 2005 by Lincoln Seligman / Bridgeman Images.

Biblical references in this book are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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ePub ISBN 978-1-622827-152

To Robert L. Ripley,
who gave me my first lessons in this sort of thing

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. He who is a hireling and not a shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. He flees because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep. I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me, and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

John 10:1115

Contents

A Cautionary Note

This book, like most of my others, has a lot of history in it but it isnt the work of a trained historian. Im a history buff, a popularizer, someone whose gifts (if there are any) lie in the tricks of the storytellers trade, a knack for making history interesting for people who dont usually like history. Its only too likely, in other words, that someone who really knows his stuff might stumble across a howler or two. My only plea? No one else seems to be doing this job for the Church right now and as the great G. K. Chesterton once said, A thing worth doing is worth doing badly.

Also, Id be very sorry if anyone were to take this work as a veiled stab at any modern churchman not yet proved beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty of wrongdoing. I have no trouble naming names such as Maciel, Law, and McCarrick; nor will I hesitate to pin my term bad shepherd on the tail of any donkey found guilty of malfeasance in the future. At the time of this writing, however, the jury is still out on many unsettled matters; and several popular candidates have been nominated for the title of bad shepherd though their guilt has not yet been proven. That being the case, Ive stuck here, as I will continue to stick until compelled to do otherwise, to Pauline counsels on this subject:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. (Heb. 13:17)

Pay all of them their dues... respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. (Rom. 13:7)

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.... Never admit any charge against an elder except on the evidence of two or three witnesses. (1 Tim. 5:17, 19)

Introduction

When I was young and still a Baptist, my mother worked part-time as a secretary and librarian to a group of Evangelical clergymen in and around the city of Atlanta, Georgia. One day she both amused and shocked me by declaring that of these five or so distinguished ministers of the gospel, there had been only one who didnt end up being a challenge to her faith.

The first had shown himself crass and flirty with the ladies. Another locked the door of his comfortable office every afternoon for a sweet hour of prayer which was actually a sweet hour (or three) of loud, comical snoring. The last had recently become famous on TV and thus acquired a towering Napoleonic ego, leaving his cringing staff to wonder when the Queen of Hearts was next going to holler, Off with his head!

The single happy exception had been one of the Queen of Hearts lowly lieutenants. This meek little fellow spent most of his time visiting the sick and shut-ins, doing the grunt work his boss was now too good for, drawing scandalously little praise from the Big Mans flock, and seeking none. He died not long after my mom left his service, broke and disgraced like his Master.

I hope nobody will imagine that Ive written this book to contrast the sloth and hypocrisy of Protestant ministers with the superior unction and virtue of Catholic clergymen, my own shepherds since a 1996 conversion. Im pretty sure, in fact here in the wake of the calamitous revelations of 2018 that not many of my readers will jump quickly to that assumption, certainly not as quickly as they once might have done.

Ministers who end up being a challenge to ones faith have now become the Catholic problem par excellence, and the days when we could blithely brush off our scandals of abuse and cover-up as no worse than those of any other denomination are over (whatever modicum of truth that answer might once have contained).

In fact, Ive far exceeded my mothers old record, having personally bumped up hard for years against one genuine clerical miscreant after another not just the usual haughty heretics and all-too-obviously unchaste celibates, but men whose misdeeds eventually forced even todays congenitally nonconfrontational authorities to return them (quietly) to a laicized state of life. Many of these personal experiences, if truth be told, were with strange, warped men who made my moms bottom-pinching lothario and slumbering contemplative look like quaintly amusing characters in an episode of The Andy Griffith Show .

Looking back, I will say that my moms memorable story gave me a mental category that really has helped through the years: the shepherd who ends up being a challenge to your faith. It gave me a place to hang my hat, so to speak, during such days, a heads-up that prevented me from being caught off guard with no advance notice, much as St. Paul sought to provide for his own converts: We would not have you ignorant, brethren (1 Thess. 4:13); Do not be deceived (1 Cor. 15:33); Understand this.... Men will [come]... holding the form of religion but denying the power of it (2 Tim. 3:1, 2, 5).

Its this kind of heads-up Im hoping to provide in these pages, however postdated it may happen to be. For the Good Shepherd has always been served, Im afraid, by bad shepherds, ever since the days when His handpicked treasurer, a man who sat through every sermon in the Gospels, began helping himself to what was in the money box (see John 12:6). Judas Iscariot, as you may recall, was one of the Twelve Apostles designated to take the place of Judah or Benjamin, sitting on one of twelve thrones in the New Jerusalem and judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28). And the office of an apostle is far higher in Gods economy than a patriarch, a bishop, a cardinal higher even than a pope. Yet Judas proved himself to be, in Christs own words, a devil (John 6:70). Even true shepherds then, unambiguously designated as such by Christ, can be not just bad at times but downright diabolical and worse than you think.

Most such notices move quickly at this point to the Even so, the vast majority of our clergy are holy and good! phase, with concerns about tarring the innocent along with the guilty; and though that interjection is certainly true and makes an important point, Im going to let you wriggle on the hook a little more before moving on.