A dangerous precedent
The resignation of Bishop Reginald Cawcutt as auxiliary bishop of Cape Town has set a hazardous precedent for the stability of the episcopal office.
As we report this week, Bishop Cawcutt has resigned over a recent press report rehashing two-year-old news about his involvement in a private Internet discussion forum for homosexual priests.
The comments attributed to Bishop Cawcutt may be seen as injudicious, even vulgar, and have become a source of division in the Church in Cape Town. However, none of them show that the law had been broken. This is a crucial point.
To his credit, the bishop graciously offered his resignation because he did not wish to be a source of division.
The Vatican did not need to accept his resignation. However, having accepted Bishop Cawcutt’s offer to resign, the Vatican has incidentally handed a victory to the secular media and conglomerates of Catholics who consider it suitable to pursue a bishop’s resignation with undue vigour.
This may be a disquieting development for the episcopate. In the United States where the press is more antagonistic and Catholic pressure groups better organised than they are in South Africa Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston has come under immense pressure to resign over his inadequate handling of sex abuse cases in his archdiocese.
In absence of criminal charges, Cardinal Law has resisted the pressure to resign, and rightly so. Had he yielded, the press particularly the Boston Globe, which has been energetically campaigning for the cardinal’s resignation would consider itself as having won a power battle with the Catholic Church. This would not be in the interests of the Church. The secular press cannot be seen as dictating to the Church as to who may or may not occupy its positions of leadership.
Instead of resigning, Cardinal Law has elected to follow a path of making amends for his past mistakes, and seeking Christian forgiveness from those harmed by his mistakes.
It is beyond argument that Cardinal Law’s actions and inactions have damaged the Church in ways much more grievous than Bishop Cawcutt’s private e-mail activities. In this light, Bishop Cawcutt’s departure has weakened Cardinal Law’s case.
Cardinal Law’s detractors (at least those who follow the travails of the Southern African Church) may hypothetically pose a case of equity: if Bishop Cawcutt had to go, should Cardinal Law not have to go, too?
The precedent having been set, the same principle may well be applied in South Africa if and when controversy, no matter how trivial, should surround a bishop the threshold for accountability has been lowered, perhaps intolerably so.
Who’ll be next?
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