January 24, 2012                 Thinking about Bishop Bill                    David Timbs

Since the publication of the civil and canon law opinions favourable to Bishop Bill Morris, there has been wide ranging and energetic conversation about how supporters of +Morris might keep the flame of his cause alive. Some clear initiatives will, no doubt, emerge before much longer.

It is becoming clear that +Bill Morris has been systematically denied due process and therefore natural justice. We might well put the question to the content and purpose of the famous secret report of the Apostolic Visitor to Toowoomba, ++Charles Chaput of Denver. He indicated at the end of his inquiry that he felt +Morris had nothing to fear. The Vatican has refused to release the report. Why? Might it just be that the Curial authorities had predetermined +Bill Morris fate as the first local bishop to be removed or forced out as part of a programme to ‘clean up’ the Queensland ecclesiastical Province? If this in time turns out to be true then it would obviously be in the interest of the Holy See to keep a favourable +Chaput report from public scrutiny. If it was released it could create a rod for the back of the Pope and the three Curial Cardinals who dealt with +Bill.

These questions continue to tantalise and apparently will not cease. Sub poenas unfortunately don’t seem to work with the Vatican.

What is more soul destroying than all of this is the behaviour of the Australian Bishops on their recent Ad Limina visit to Rome. Thousands of Catholics had petitioned them to raise serious questions about the treatment Bishop Morris had received. We have not been told what actually happened in their meetings with the Curial Three except that some discussions were held. Then they thanked the Cardinals for their time and obediently rolled over.

What these men have done, at least by omission, is to alienate Australian Catholics to such a degree that trust may never be retrieved, or at least for generations. They fritted away the reserves of credibility and went into overdraft.

What the Bishops have done is to break the bonds of fraternity with the +Brother and left him largely isolated and hanging out to dry. The smarter ones will know their compromised integrity and the betrayal done to their people; those who have lost touch with the sentiments of those in their care might just think that they have done the job demanded by the Corporation.

They came back to Australia somewhat like Neville Chamberlain returning from Bavaria with that worthless letter in their collective hand and proclaiming, Peace in our times.

A reflection by David Timbs