In yesterday's NPR's NPR : All Things Considered for June 27, 2002 show, they had an interesting piece on dissatisfied Bishops which merits a listen. Basically three U.S. Catholic Bishop's including Bishop Sullivan of Brooklyn and Bishop Lipscomb of Mobile were dissatisfied with the final product of the USCCB meeting in Dallas.

Lipscomb was upset that they were making the charter for the protection of children and its prescripts retroactive. He said that to do so, so long after the fact was a violation of the American idea of justice, AND BY REASON, ALSO A VIOLATION OF NATURAL LAW!!!! Bishop Lipscomb is a very intelligent and one of the more influential and powerful Bishops in the USCCB. One wonder's if it was a momentary lapse on his part to suggest that retroacticve retributive justice is a violation of natural law.

If that is the case, then Jewish Holocaust victims are not necessarily entitled to retribution interms of compensation and prosecution of escaped Nazi personel. We could multiply these examples. it is sad that he would say that. It is so clear now, that many of the Bishops are primarily concerned with closing ranks and protecting their brother priests. On the issue of retributive justice, inevitably, the issue of reparations to African Americans for slavery will, it already has in a preliminary way, come up as an issue that the Bishops would have to take a stand on. I wonder where Bishop Lipscomb will stand on that issue.

As for Bishop Sullivan, he stood out during the USCCB meeting as one overly concerned with protecting priests and so I had written him off as hopelessly conservative. But he made some interesting and progressive comments about celibacy and its relevance in our day and age. If nothing else, what I like about him is that he speaks his mind and is not interested in political posturing. He should be careful, if he upsets the big boys he may get shipped to Biloxi, or another very small diocese.