Lets look at some of the evidence from the last few days:
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There is plenty more.
The auxiliary bishop is basically 2IC of the dioceses, with responsibilities very similar or the same as the bishop in charge.
Does Pell strike you as a man who knew what was going on on his patch?
The time I was a part of the RCC the local Bishop was always involved in the goings on of the community, he visited our school several times and was the ultimate authority of the RCC in the area.
IMO Pell failed miserably in his duties and was more concerned with protecting the church and the church finances than he was with the parishioners under his care (see my first quote).
You aren’t pointing out a reality, you are asserting something. And without much evidence. The RCC central authority involves a hierarchy to which associated entities accede to a greater or lesser extent. To some extent the authority is legally enforceable and to a much greater practical everyday extent its cultural. In other words " the Pope says we should so we will". There is a lot of politics and there can be substantial differences at a practical level between various orders and diocese.
I’m yet to here of any suggestion that any local congregation acceded to the idea their credit could be pledged by the Pope towards covering the fines or compensation payable for crimes or wrongs committed elsewhere and without the congregation’s knowledge, consent or support.
To continue my example, your position is like saying that because FIFA is the governing body of soccer, and because if FIFA sets new rules your local club will follow, then your club has to pay if another interstate club does something criminal and FIFA covers it up.
I made my ‘inference’ based on Pell’s continued statements of ignorance regarding events that were occurring in the dioceses he was either a priest or a bishop in for years despite ongoing complaints about his colleges to multiple levels of the church hierarchy.
You’re absolutely correct that the bishop is the person in charge of the diocese.
An auxiliary bishop may, or may not, have similar responsibilities. A diocese may have no auxiliary bishop, one, or several. When it has only one, canon law requires that the bishop appoint his auxiliary as Vicar General. When it has several, the others may hold responsibilities only in particular deaneries, and not have any real familiar with other operational areas.
In short, there is no reason whatsoever to say that the auxiliary bishop has “responsibilities very similar or the same as the bishop in charge.” It’s possible he might; it’s possible he does not. It’s by no means a safe assumption that he does.
Yes. The bishop.
The local bishop is a very different position than any local auxiliary bishops.
Whether legally or not, the RCC is, in practice, a single hierarchy. What’s more, the same culture of disregard for the wellbeing of innocents is evident on a global scale, which is ironic, given that they ostensibly present as an organisation where care and compassion are cornerstone principles.
So your quotes are to the effect he didn’t know and he supplies a plausible reason why he wouldn’t have been told. In my experience when something criminal is going on in an organisation, those involved don’t tell anyone they don’t have to. I’m not sure why this is seen as implausible as you imply. In any other context - where you hadn’t already pre-judged the situation - I doubt you would think it anything but thoroughly plausible that people doing something dubious don’t blab to those who may take a dim view.
Basically your position gets Pell coming or going: if he says he was known as a good man who would have been kept in the dark by his conniving colleagues you don’t believe him and he’s to blame. If he says he knew then he’d be to blame.
Your examples of your personal experience are weak sauce: official visits to schools and being the ultimate authority mean nothing when it comes to the local whispers. You couldn’t have said more to convince me your local Bishop would have been the last person to know what was really going on.
What inferences, if any, can I make about your willingness to opine about the duties of an auxiliary bishop when you clearly are ignorant about the position?
I notice now you are broadening your complaint to a more vague and thus more defensible one. I objected to:
You are correct to complain that Pell, as the Ordinary, disclaims knowledge. He may not have had actual knowledge, but he was ultimately responsible.
You are not correct to make a similar claim that as an auxiliary bishop, he must have had similar responsibility.
The pope appoints arch bishops in consultancy with other cardinals and advisers, the arch bishops appoint bishops, bishops look over their diocese and are in charge of the priests beneath them. Its a clear line of authority, the Pope can set church policy on a global level, and the issue is that although Francis has made some words about stopping abuses he hasn’t backed them up with action yet, forcing suspected priests / bishops / archbishops, cardinals etc to resign. If he fails to do that then theres a case to be made that the Vatican / Holy See as an organisation is culpable in the abuse and it can and should be sued.
Or to put it another way: “I don’t really have anything to say to rebut you, so I’ll just reassert my belief”.
Your assertion of the monolithic nature of the RCC suits your purpose because it allows you to ignore the detail and make sweeping assignments of blame and responsibility. It’s called bigotry. Muslims are all responsible for terrorism. Jews are all responsible for usury. Blacks are all responsible for high crime in ghettoes. Africans are all responsible for what various despots have done.
Stop playing games. Can the pope force any member of the church below him to resign or not? I don’t care about legal theoretical limitations about dancing on heads of pins. I mean if the pope publicly called for a specific member of the church hierarchy to resign do you think they could actually realistically go against that?
This is a utterly ridiculous comparison, in this case we are talking about a single organisation and pointing out failures of the organisation as a whole. Are you seriously trying to deny that Pell is part of the same organisation as the Pope?
It’s not a plausible reason–that’s the point. Want proof? Pell: “the whole story of Searson is implausible and the cover-up is equally implausible”.
Pell maintains that the Education Office kept him in the dark. However, there was no reason for this. They had reported to his superior (IIRC, Little) and either they wanted action or they didn’t. If they did, why not go to Pell since he was so well known as a noble maverick who would act; if they didn’t, why report such things to others but not Pell? It makes no sense whatsoever: there is simply no motive to keep Pell in the dark.
He’s bullshitting, IOW, and the commission rightly called him on it.
Which has what to do with why some local parish in Boggabadoo in which no priest has been accused of paedophilia and which never did anything to condone such conduct or covering it up should lose their congregation owned church?
Make no mistake; any entity that condoned or covered up paedophilia should pay the consequences and if that includes the Vatican I won’t be losing a moment’s sleep. Far from it.
But when, as above, people are proposing mass forfeiture of property based on cultural association we are getting into the realm of seriously f’ed up injustice.
I’m bowing out for a while. This hits way to close to home.
Having been in a school where teachers (Catholic Brothers) were molesting other students, the school hierarchy knew and did nothing - proven in court BTW - and several of those students, including a a good friend, later killed themselves.
We’ll you can see how the similarities would colour my perceptions.
Pointing out your factual errors is not playing games.
But claiming that it is becomes a useful tactic for you. Instead of taking responsibility for factual errors you make, you dismiss the corrections as “playing games.”
The answer to your question is no.
The reason is: your scenario disclaims legal theoretical limits only on one side. That is, in your question, the Pope can disregard any political realities and demand anyone’s resignation, but then, suddenly, political realities must be considered in answering whether the individual can resist.
So pick a world: are we talking about the rules of the church, or about the realities of governance?
As to the rest; you might well be right. I have no particular love for Pell, in fact IIRC he’s the sort of extreme social conservative I can’t stand. But I don’t like to see people being railroaded. I also tend not to believe media reports of legal or commission proceedings because once the media decide which way the popular wind is blowing, they make absolutely sure not to report anything that goes the other way, and indeed do things like take quotes out of context to change their meaning to fit the popular narrative. The popularity of recreational outrage wasn’t first noticed by the denizens of the SDMB.
I, personally, don’t blame individuals simply because they’re Catholics. There are many, many good people who happen to be Catholic.
The organisation, and the culture within that organisation can be criticised, however. Whenever there’s some investigation into police corruption, and a culture of corruption is exposed, there’s always some segment moaning about good cops being vilified by extension. The only people to blame are those in the hierarchy who (either directly or indirectly) allow the corruption to flourish. The organisation becomes rotten from the inside–it’s systemic–and no number of good individuals acting as individuals can change that. Evils emerge not from individual actors but from a system that has become inherently toxic.
You are wrong in both cases.
“In the Catholic Church, a bishop, priest, or deacon may be dismissed from the clerical state as a penalty for certain grave offenses, or by a* papal decree* granted for grave reasons.”
I’ve been watching the proceedings live. Believe me, the media are not twisting his words. To be fair, I don’t believe Pell to either be a paedophile or someone who wanted to directly protect paedophiles. But I also believe he’s a man who is very comfortable when it comes to filtering out bits of reality that don’t suit his purposes. Frankly, it’s hard to expect the truth from a man who so habitually lies to himself.
And it’s far worse, IMHO, for a man of the cloth to so willfully ignore the suffering of children because he’s not into rocking the boat and/or damaging the status of the Church.