With the diocesan chancery ground zero in the sex abuse crisis, now is a good time to ask whether a renovation might be in order.

By Rodger Van Allen

"I want you to get up right now, go to your windows, open them, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!'"

That famous exclamation from the Academy Award-winning film Network (1976) was likely in the hearts--if not exactly on the lips--of several thousand Catholics from around the country who gathered at Boston College in 2002 to pray and reflect on the first wave of shocking accounts of the sexual abuse of children by some of their own long-revered Catholic priests.

Now the anger is expressed most forcefully in Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere as the scandal has gone global.

The greatest Catholic anger, however, then and since, has been focused not so much on the priest perpetrators who are clearly sick, but on bishops who enabled this behavior by recycling these clergy to new assignments and new victims, covertly paid out hush money, and deceived the Catholic faithful.

How could one understand such behavior by Catholic bishops? Why was there no honest communication from them? Were they really allowed to make these secret payoffs? Why didn't they think about the victimized children, their parents, and the wider Catholic community? How did they get to be bishops anyhow? Why were laity excluded from decision-making?

As they sort out this list of questions, Catholic women and men reflect on their faith and their responsibility in meeting this ugly challenge. They were and are angry and hurt. Their faith, however, is still firm. "Keep the faith, but change the church!" has become their resolve in America, and church leadership should hope it goes that well elsewhere.

The U.S. bishops, meeting in Dallas in 2002, pledged zero tolerance for sexual abuse. They approved the "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" and a structure to follow up on the nice-sounding words. The church, they promised, would henceforth proceed with "transparency and accountability.

On the immediate issue of policing the church to avoid further sexual abuse, the American bishops deserve credit for the actions they have taken. It is important that the charter and its implementation be sustained, and I assume it will be. It could wisely be used as a model for the worldwide church. On the broader pledge to being a church proceeding with "transparency and accountability," there is some progress, but further work is needed.

Many Catholics have the impression that the ministry of bishop is currently as it always has been throughout history, perhaps even that Jesus intended bishops to be minor monarchs. But the role of bishop can be renewed to better serve the people of God. In that spirit, I propose four ways to renovate the bishop's office.

1. Selecting bishops

There is a broad-based chorus of voices calling for reform in the process for the selection of bishops. Papal biographer and theologian George Weigel has described the current process as "far too ingrown, with a troubled hierarchy having what seems to many an inordinate influence in shaping decisions about who will now be permitted to join the episcopal fraternity."

He calls it "a serious mistake" that laity are not involved in any significant way in the process and notes that "laypeople can see things that clergy may miss." Common sense suggests, says Weigel, that a more broadly consultative process would produce a more balanced assessment of the needs of a diocese and the qualifications of particular candidates.

Under the current process, the pope names diocesan bishops after a process that has the U.S. papal nuncio prepare a list of three candidates, a terna, which is submitted to the Roman Congregation for Bishops, where it is critically reviewed. The congregation then offers its own terna for the pope's consideration. The U.S. nuncio consults, theoretically, with bishops, priests, and laity, but, as Weigel notes, the consultation process for the nunciature's terna is "dominated by the bishops and those priests whom they trust or the nuncio trusts-which means that the process of consultation is heavily tilted toward those . . . [who] have a vested interest in the status quo."

Ultimately, it has been not just the nuncio but a small circle of Roman officials who have controlled episcopal appointments. American church historian James O'Toole illustrates the problems of the selection process by reflecting on the career of Cardinal William O'Connell, Boston's archbishop from 1907 to 1944. O'Toole calls the century from 1907 to now "the O'Connell century," a period in which an expanding Vatican influence came to outweigh local interests in choosing church leaders. As O'Toole notes, it was an atmosphere in which "ambitious prelates could lobby for advancement, and their chances for success improved because they only needed to persuade a handful of Roman officials to secure the prize."

O'Toole writes that in his five years as bishop of Portland, Maine, O'Connell "flooded Rome with evidence of his own orthodoxy and reports of the supposed theological unreliability of other claimants. He contributed financially to favored papal causes, seemingly beyond the resources of his small diocese. . . . When he got his reward in Boston, other American churchmen saw that they might pursue the same strategy."

The real problem with O'Connell and those who practiced churchmanship in his style was less with any of these individuals than with the system that produced them, O'Toole says.

"Leaders were chosen precisely because they were disconnected from the church and city in which they were expected to be leaders," O'Toole notes. "The Vatican clearly preferred outsiders--bishops who would feel more loyalty to Rome than to any particular diocese, place, or people. How often did newly appointed bishops say at their first press conference that they looked forward to ‘getting to know' their city, and why did no one think that was strange?"

Rome needs to understand that it is no longer battling nobles and kings who wish to control and exploit the local church. It can safely accept a reform that respects the local church and restores the early tradition, which had the local bishop chosen by and from the people. The norm of Pope Leo I (440-461)--that no one can be a bishop unless he is elected by the clergy, accepted by his people, and consecrated by the bishops of his province--can safely and wisely be restored.