It now appears that the Governing Council was not established in strict accordance with the canons, including the fact that the Judicial Vicar recently appointed by Msgr Steenson, not being incardinated in the OCSP, could not sit on the Governing Council and hence could not actually do his job. . . . And it has been pointed out that the annual OCSP clergy get-together does not fulfill the canonical requirements for the retreat that priests are expected to make annually. I am sure that daily examples of Chancery sloppiness are coming to Bp Lopes' attention. As you say, there may be some dark secret that came to light and precipitated Steenson's abrupt departure. But his day-to-day management was also certainly remiss.Like the centurion with the paralyzed servant, I've tended to impute what I've learned from experience in another field to the operation of God's Kingdom. The various lacunae that my visitor mentions here strike me as the sort of thing that's tolerated -- barely -- from some relatively unimportant corporate functionary until some other last-straw issue comes to light. ("Did you hear the CEO's son-in-law went to that presentation?")
Or consider that Ted Bundy shoplifted socks, a peccadillo that was overshadowed by the other stuff. I still don't see something big enough to justify sudden retirement when, for four years, we saw, as my visitor puts it,
Sometimes the Ordinary issued an Advent/Christmas/Lent/Easter letter; sometimes he didn't. The hopeless website we have often commented on, the erratic "quarterly" newsletter full of puff pieces.Something had to be new. It had to be big enough to force action, when for four years of bungling, none had been taken.
