Collaboration in Poland

There is an interesting but troublesome parallel between the hierarchy cover-up of the clergy in Poland who cooperated with the communist secret police (NCR, Jan. 19) and the hierarchy cover-up of priests in the United States who sexually abused young children. Clearly, there is a bureaucratic predilection toward avoiding the confronting of grievous faults and sins within our own institutional bounds that is at unbelievable variance with the truths the church teaches. It is not that the cover-up propensity is unique to the church; it is just so much starker within an institution that preaches the opposite of how it all too often behaves.

TOM DINELL

Honolulu

What the church hierarchy still has not internalized is that its refusal to acknowledge the sins of clergy--be those sins of sexual abuse or sins of collaboration with communist secret police--not only undermines the church's moral authority but more critically undermines two longstanding central tenets of Roman Catholic theology: confession and forgiveness.

What priest would ever counsel a parishioner, "Hide what you did, don't tell anyone. Just hope what you did wrong stays hidden." That advice is not only morally reprehensible but also damaging to a person's psyche and soul. Unfortunately, the current pope has not appeared to understand the connection between hiding inadvertent mistakes or deliberate sins and the erosion of one of the most sustaining and life-affirming sacraments offered to Catholics throughout the ages. At best, confession and penance can lead to reconciliation, a restoration of right relationships with God and with other people.

Most couples are counseled in pre-Cana classes that a sure road to the destruction of marriage is the keeping of secrets. Such sage warnings apply to the whole body of the church. The pope and clergy around the world would do well to embrace this moment--albeit a late one--as the perfect time to act on St. Paul's advice to the Ephesians: "Living the truth in love, we should grow in every way unto him who is the head, Christ" (4:15). And Paul's even more pointed words to the Colossians: "Stop lying to one another" (3:9).

Instead of trying to convince the world they are different from other people, let our very human pope and the church's shortest-serving archbishop show us that goodness and growth can come from confessing sins of our past.

KATHRYN L. WALDRON

Reading, Pa.

With the embarrassing matter of the archbishop in Poland, does it not become clear that the manner of selecting bishops in Rome is broken? My understanding is that there are lots of dioceses without bishops here in the United States and nothing seems to be moving. We never hear of new bishops being appointed in the press. Through the grapevine, I heard one did get appointed in Iowa. We in the diocese of Belleville, Ill., are keenly aware that our own bishop got appointed outside the regularly identified process in the Code of Canon Law. This, we understand, happened because of some powerful brokers working the back offices on his behalf. Without even a modicum of delay, we got a bishop; now it seems to take years. His successor in Lake Charles, La., to my knowledge, still isn't named, and it's close now to two years. Has it all ground to a halt somehow?

(Fr.) DONALD A. BLAES

New Baden, Ill.

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