Will The Real Archbishop Please Stand Up?

When I was a teenager, there was a game show on television called To Tell the Truth.

This central character is accompanied by two impostors who pretended to be the central character. The celebrity panelists question the three contestants; the impostors are allowed to lie but the central character is sworn "to tell the truth". After questioning, the panel attempts to identify which of the three challengers is telling the truth and is thus the central character.

After a round of questions, each of the panelists would take a guess. Then the host would say "Will the real _______ please stand up." Sometimes, for giggles, the impostors would make like they were going to stand up until finally, the central character would stand.

I thought about the show after reading the post at Boston Catholic Insider today, "Cardinal reaffirms pension plan".

After letters went out and several rounds of meetings took place to coerce employees to absorb the financial misfeasance for the archdiocese by forfeiting close to 40% of their pension, the Cardinal made a statement in the Pilot saying he is committed, to his dying breath, to care for the thousands of employees who have given their lives in service of the Church. He says anyone who felt pressured into taking their money will be able to reverse that decision. The diocese is financially healthy, he said. All of the fiscal challenges have been resolved.

This comes a day or two after the Cardinal sent his lawyers to arbitration with the Daughters of St. Paul and refuse to give them their own money back. It is completely inconsistent what the Cardinal has been doing and saying for the past month. In terms of painting a financial picture that is healthy, this contradicts about a year's worth of PR about the diocese being in terrible financial shape.

Are we to assume that the Cardinal was ignorant that his staff was screwing retirees? He didn't know that his administration held 40 meetings to tell retirees that the Cardinal was not committed to funding their pensions?

When statements or letters get presented saying the Cardinal said or signed this or that, nobody really believes the Cardinal is even aware of the situation. After a release of a letter or directive on a situation and people ask him about it, The Cardinal acts like he is hearing it for the first time.

Either the man has a serious case of amnesia or the group of people in the Chancery who are running things is penning things and orders and signing his name to them without his authorization or even knowledge.

At times, these statements completely contradict something he purportedly ordered or said.

Here's a good example.

Cardinal Sean put out his statement last May saying the Denver policy would be carefully studied and considered, but Fr. Bryan Hehir said a day later on WBUR that the Denver policy didn’t matter at all to the Cardinal–the Boston Archdiocese was already admitting children of gay parents and would continue doing so, just with a formal policy. One of the these two gentlemen was lying. Based on the outcome policy, it would appear that it was the Cardinal.

Nobody knows who or what is running the Archdiocese or what statements and actions are really by the hand of the Archbishop.

Very, very creepy.

Very creepy.