OF GEESE AND GANDERS

5/1/11

The latest brouhaha surrounding Father Mike Pfleger’s suspension by the Cardinal in the wake of Pfleger’s going on the public airwaves and questioning whether he will remain in the Church has prompted some thinking about the rule that stipulates that a pastor in the Archdiocese of Chicago can serve only two six year terms at his parish.

Despite what some readers seem to have somehow read into it, my first post on the Pfleger/George standoff (TIME FOR A COUNCIL OF CHICAGO?, 4/28/11)
took no stand on what we will call the twelve year rule. The second post (“WHO TOLD YOU TO PICK UP YOUR MAT AND WALK (ON THE SABBATH)?,” 4/28/11) similarly took no stand on the rule, but pointed out that sometimes good and holy things can result, perhaps by Divine intervention, when rules are not followed. More subtly, and primarily through its title, that post argued that when we as Catholics argue in favor of rigid adherence to the rules rather than focus on trying to achieve the ultimate goals of our Savior, we are taking the side of the Pharisees in the ongoing Jesus vs. the Pharisees battle that runs throughout the four gospels, but especially that of John. I know whose side I would rather be on, but I digress.

Neither of the two aforementioned posts addressed the merits of the twelve year rule simply because I am ambivalent about the rule. Yes, it’s not a good thing when parishioners start to identify more with their pastor than with the Church and therefore a changing of the guard might be merited. On the other hand, there are scores of beloved pastors who have done a wonderful job with their flocks, have no delusions about who they are and what they are there to do, and will be sorely missed when they are forced to move on. To remove them simply because twelve years has gone by and, after all, rules are rules, would be gratuitously cruel to both the parishioners and to their pastors, especially when neither the pastors nor the parishioners are allowed any say in the pastors’ successors.

I can see both sides of the argument. But no one has asked what I think is a very logical question: If a pastor has to leave after twelve years, for fear of people getting confused about where their loyalty lies, why shouldn’t the archbishop, whoever he may be, be subject to the same rule? Isn’t there a similar danger that the people of the Archdiocese (any archdiocese, for that matter) will get attached to their archbishop to such a point that their loyalty will lie with him rather than with the Church? Shouldn’t he who made the rule (or whose predecessors, in the case of Cardinal George, who has been Archbishop for fourteen years) be subject to the same rule? The logic behind the rule would seem to apply, if anything, more saliently to the archbishop than to the parish priest.

I’m assuming the counter-argument is that the twelve year rule is a rule of the Archdiocese of Chicago and whatever other dioceses or archdioceses enforce a similar rule. The matter of pastoral tenure lies fully within the jurisdiction of the bishops or archbishops of the dioceses in which they serve. The tenure of bishops and archbishops, however, is a matter for the Vatican; it is up to the Pope, and not to the individual heads of dioceses, to determine how long bishops and archbishops will serve. So an archbishop could not limit his tenure even if he wanted to.

The counter to this counter is two-fold. First, this appears to be another example of the Church hierarchy hiding behind legal technicalities to do what it wants to do. While this is not necessarily a strong argument, it certainly will be made by those who notice the problems that relying on legal niceties has caused for the Church of late.

The second, and perhaps better, argument is that John Cardinal Cody, who instituted the 12 year rule, and his two successors, never made any effort to convince the Popes they served that a term limit rule like the one those Cardinals imposed for ordinary parish priests would be good for the bishops and archbishops like themselves. Perhaps (probably, really), they would not have succeeded in convincing any of the four relevant Popes of the virtue of the rule. But if Cardinals Cody, Bernadin, and George believed so strongly in the dangers of letting pastors stay in place for too long, surely the same logic applied to the pastors of the Archdiocese, if you will. Therefore, one would have thought these men, all of whom had plenty of clout in the universal Church, would have tried to convince their Popes of the wisdom of expanding the twelve year rule to include archbishops. One wonders why they did not.

One could, of course, expand this logic to suggest that perhaps the role of Cardinal should be limited to twelve years, after which the red hat would have to be passed to others. If one were bold enough, one could even make the same argument for Popes. Yes, the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth, but he is also a man subject to the same temptations and limitation to which any man is subject. In order to avoid the problems that naturally come with entrenchment, can’t Christ choose successive Vicars? Is only one man, and then for his entire lifetime, capable of being His Vicar? The authority of any particular Pope flows from Christ; isn’t Christ’s sanctity and authority sufficiently strong to flow into others He might choose to succeed His Vicar? Why do we insist on limiting Christ’s latitude in this area?