AN OPEN LETTER TO THE BISHOPS

The Bridegroom is again meeting together for their biannual Bishops Conference and I wish to say a few words to them.

An Open Letter to the Bishops:

I was there in Baltimore during the Bishop's Conference last fall and attempted speaking to many of you. I stood outside the fantastic Marriott hotel in Baltimore ($300+ per night rooms) and waited for you to come out for breaks. You did. I saw you scurrying the few feet from the hotel entrance to the expensive (around $100 a dinner) Fleming Steakhouse. I saw how you avoided eye-contact with the victims who stood silently holding up pitiful signs begging for concern from you.

I was there watching how you jumped into your chauffeured, black suburbans to avoid hearing the cries of the elderly ladies "sheep" who you knew were there to confront you about the sex scandal. That was pretty scary for you, I guess. I guess you didn't think about the heartbreak of those fathers, mothers, sons and daughters of the church who needed to be reassured by you, their shepherd.

This year it will be different. You won't see me, and you won't see many of the hundreds who came out last year to beg you to listen to them—to beg you to end the silent treatment. You will be free to converse and walk to Flemings unmolested by small, elderly women who smell like the sheep. You won't be bothered by your Bride. 

But please bishops, you need to understand that when the second wave of the sex scandal broke a couple years ago, there was so much anger. The anger the Bride felt towards you who are the Alter Christus is very much like the rage a woman feels when her husband is unfaithful to her. And even though a woman is crushed by her husband's infidelity, there is some spark of hope that his love for her will draw him back and the marriage can be repaired.

However, I saw it in your eyes last year. I could hear it in your voice. Many of you have lost your first love. Many of you bishops no longer care for your wife. And you continue your unfaithfulness, and protect your idolatrous lusts. Your voice is only to excuse and defend, not to sooth and protect your wife. Your silence is a silence of unfaithfulness and your Bride feels the depth of abandonment by many of you. And those of us who will be faithful to the wedding vows we made to God will not leave you nor God's Church, though our hearts are no longer angry but dulled by heartbreak. The fight has gone out of many who are the Bride. Our trust is broken and the horror of a dull, loveless future awaits. The time for our silence begins, a silence of despair.

There are a few of you bishops whose eyes have not been closed because of your love of God and your Bride. We see fear in your eyes too, we faithful Catholics can hear the panic in your voice, but it is of a different kind. We can see and hear you desperately trying to communicate to the Bride that you are aware of her sufferings. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

But in most bishop's demeanor, there is utter oblivion or worse yet, a smug defensiveness. At least those bishops who gain the most attention.

We may not know what is going on behind the closed doors of the Bridegroom. The door has been barred and the Bride no longer can walk in. There may be many of you who are fighting like hell for us, we just don't know it. Whatever the reality is, we who love our Lord, who love being Catholic, have stopped trusting our leaders. We don't trust what the United States bishops say. There have been too many lies, obfuscations, excuses and silence. There have been too many empty words and empty actions.

And most bishops simply do not care. We can feel it. And our hearts fail.