Yes, Lest we forget ............. ............... Bishop Bill Morris (Main Forum)

by Brian Coyne , LINDEN, NSW, Wednesday, July 11, 2012, 12:14 (319 days ago) @ Nehemiah

Yes, thanks for that reminder, Nehemiah. Beside John W's comment on the v2catholic.com website there is a link to Sr Joan Chittister's recent address at Stanford "What it means to be a leader". Today might be remembered as the day when our ecclesial leaders finally lost their balls altogether in refusing to stand up for the injustice perpetrated against one of their own. They gave in to the wolves and bullies in the flock.

I was thinking of Bill Morris last night as I did the layout for Tom McMahon's commentary coming up today. In a slightly different way, Tom's commentary today is all about leadership too — or, more correctly, the lack of leadership, and what happens when intelligent leadership is lacking and the leaders themselves start acting like a herd of sheep or goats.

In the recent videos we have produced about Catholica — I've been uploading the final edited versions to YouTube overnight, a process that's taken at least 8 hours, but boyo is the quality now sparkling — I reproduced a graph of our growth. There is a spike on it in May 2011. I call that the "Bishop Bill Morris Spike" and to me is a small measure of the outrage felt in this country at what was done to Bill Morris. I would bet the farm that when we see the long term participation statistics of people leaving the Church, in another 12, 18 or 24 years the current statistics will show a similar bump this time reflecting the number of people across Australia who gave up on their bishops and Pope Benedict and finally dropped out of participation. What was done to +Bill Morris was an outrage against the core values of the Australian nation — the belief in justice and a "fair go"!

I was thinking last night of what Benedict or the Australian Bishops could do to restore some credibility and authority to themselves. I actually think a stronger symbol even than some gesture to indicate that they finally understand the abuse crisis would be to reverse the injustice of what was done to Bill Morris. It isn't going to happen of course for to make that gesture they would have to make the admission that the Pope made a mistake and hell will freeze over before any of them admit that Popes are capable of any mistakes. This was the day the wolves and bullies finally took over the sheepfold.

Brian Coyne
[Editor & Publisher]