US bishops could learn a lot from St. Óscar Romero

 US bishops could learn a lot from St. Óscar Romero

What the Catholic Church in the United States needs today, says NCR columnist Franciscan Fr. Daniel Horan, are more bishops like St. Óscar Romero, the archbishop from El Salvador, who was murdered by right-wing militants while celebrating the Eucharist in 1980.

"Enough ink has been spilled in this publication and others about the continual decline of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in respectability and its growing loss of moral authority," Horan writes. "There is plenty of commentary about how the bishops' conference has so intertwined itself in the partisan politics resulting from a kind of Faustian bargain it made in recent decades with the political right — ostensibly for the sake of judicial appointments and anti-abortion policies — such that, as a collective body, it has little moral ground to stand on and appears rudderless in the sea of crises facing society and the church today."

Horan goes on to say that he isn't interested in focusing more attention on those bad actors, but instead wants to turn an eye toward more effective models of pastoral leadership, such as Romero.

"The tenor of Romero's message is one that is in stark opposition to the lies and delusions of clericalism, which continues to be such an evil in the church today," Horan writes.

You can read more of Horan's column here.