Shaw to bishops: Go public and take the flak

Julia Duin of The Washington Times talks with Russell Shaw about his book, Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication and Communion in the Catholic Church, published earlier this year by Ignatius Press (ht: Get Religion blog):

When I attended my first meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in November 1986, I was very conscious of about 300 men, all dressed in black, scurrying about on very important business.

And then there was I, a religion writer for the Houston Chronicle who had no idea of what was going on.

Back then, the man who headed the press office for the bishops was Russell Shaw, always a helpful soul when I needed guidance on what was what.

His new book, "Nothing to Hide: Secrecy, Communication and the Communion in the Catholic Church," is an amazing read, considering the author was in the belly of the beast for 18 years.

His beef: Despite extravagant promises made in 2002 in the aftermath of the clergy sex-abuse scandal, the doings of the U.S. Catholic Church are as impenetrable as ever. A case in point: the twice-yearly bishops' business meetings.

Read the entire column.

Find out more about Shaw's book.

Comments

[Commander Craig]

Hear more from Russell Shaw here: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/CommanderCraig/2008/07/26/Catholic-Radio-20

[Darcy]

I haven't read the book, so I don't know about the whole position of Shaw, but in this column there seems to be an idea that transparency is unambiguously good (and maybe even some sort of solution to substantive problems?) so that limiting transparency is called for only in rare circumstances on particularly sensitive issues. I know that's a popular direction to go in these days, and in a way I can understand that given recent scandals and so forth, but I still don't buy it. In practical terms, on any important matter, I generally want the authorities discussing it to have a setting in which they can do so among themselves, without fear of (for example) negative public exposure for making unpopular points. It seems to me that the more these sorts of meetings are public and televised, the more they inevitably become oriented towards playing to the audience. I don't see how that would a fruitful direction for meetings of the bishops. The real business of almost any consultative or governing body is never done on television, and often not in full public view--and this is true even in democracies (I'm pretty sure the most important discussions in our legislative process do not take place on C-SPAN). All that said, I wish there wasn't as much going on at these meetings in the first place, and that the conference generally didn't issue documents, and that most of the USCCB bureaucracy was dismantled, but that's another issue.

[Ed Peters]

I want to read this.

[Augustine]

I find Shaw rather presumptuous about stating that the subjects discussed at closed meetings should be open, even without what they're about.

His mistake is assuming that the bishops' meetings are business meetings and that bishops are mere administrators. Rather, it is after all also a meeting of brothers and they need to spend some intimate time together, when they can weep and laugh away from intruding eyes and ears.

[Ed Peters]

Augustine, if you know anything about Shaw, the ONE thing you simply cannot say about him is, "He is presumptuous." Really.