Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Bishop Morris says his retirement sends a message

Toowoomba's retired bishop, William Morris, said he would like to make public a copy of the Vatican written report on his diocese, reports Tom Roberts of the National Catholic Reporter.

Bishop Morris, in answer to questions from NCR, also said he thinks his forced retirement is intended to "send a message to the bishops of the world: the fact that if you ask questions, if you're in people's faces long enough, if you're kind of a nuisance around the place, well look what happened to Bill Morris."

Bishop Morris made the comments to this reporter in a panel discussion on the ABC program Sunday Nights with John Cleary on May 8.

Of the report, by Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, Bishop Morris said: "Archbishop Chaput, who wandered around the diocese for three-and-a-half days ... and then made a judgment on the diocese. I think the people have a right to see what judgments he made in his report."

Bishop Morris said he knows a written report exists because Archbishop Chaput sent him an e-mail "telling me that he'd sent an electronic copy as well as a hard copy to the dicastery for bishops, and then he did what he was supposed to do. He destroyed both the electronic copy and the hard copy, so he didn't have a copy any more."

Bishop Morris says he has not seen what was written about him or the diocese, and the Vatican apparently does not intend to reveal the contents of the report.

In answer to a question from John Cleary on the ABC, Bishop Morris read from the letter Pope Benedict sent to him. 

He said the pope appeared to be raising the stakes on discussion of ordaining women with the claim in the letter that Pope John Paul II "has decided, infallibly and irrevocably, that the church has not the right to ordain women to the priesthood."

"I had never seen that written before, using the word infallible concerning JPII's statement," Bishop Morris said.