"Wisdom is justified by her children"

Just expanding on the final comment posted here, clarifying what I meant by citing the Pharisees' objections to Christ's hanging out with the likes of St. Mary M, Zacchaeus, Simon the Leper et al and our objections to the hobnobifications of bishops with the rich and famous in modern-day America. I really don't mean to imply that the two things are equivalent, and I don't claim to be a Bible scholar either. So perhaps I'm taking Matthew 11:16-19 and similar passages slightly out of context. But the reaction of the Pharisees seems to be that of misreading motives and intentions, and we should keep this in mind as we seek to "avoid jumping to conclusions" as the JohnMcG put it wisely in a previous comment to that post.

One of the problems I would think that bishops face is that they really can't, or at least shouldn't, "sound the trumpet" about anything good they do. In medieval times, the bishops wore gold robes over a hair shirt. The gold was for the good of the people, the hair shirt was for his own good. He could thus represent the splendor of the Risen Christ and his Church while all the while being reminded of his inadequacies in his own flesh. Many of the people at the time probably forgot about the hair shirt or never even knew about it. You couldn't see it; likewise we don't see certain hidden mortifications, penance, sufferings or good works which may in fact be performed by the self-same leaders we criticize. Pierre Cauchon built a cathedral in repentance for what he did to the Maid of Orleans and we trust St. Joan prayed he be spared from the eternal fire even though he refused to spare her from the temporal flames.

Nowadays news coverage is by nature mostly negative. So I think that we should provide the balance. I'm not suggesting that we deny that some ghastly things were committed or good works left undone by bishops both in recent times and all throughout church history. But if we want to call attention to the eating and drinking and say "behold, a glutton and a wino" we should acknowledge that epithet has been used to describe Someone Else.

If anyone has a hard time seeing the likeness between the Blessed Lord and the American Bishops, they've got plenty of company and myself included. And that's leaving alone the very idea of hair shirt-wearing. If you're a Catholic, however, you're supposed to see with the "eyes of faith" the bishop standing in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. And in the Final Judgement the knowledge of the exact sins of the bishops will not be a criterion by which we shall be judged. I'm more afraid that Almighty God might say to me, "You knew about hair shirts -- where was yours?"

One last note: The critique is often made that bishops should spend more times with their flock and less times with "other celebrities". Recently my family and I were privileged to meet our bishop, Richard Lennon, and it was not at a charity extravaganza, but in our parish school gym on the feast day of our church's patron. He held my one-year old and laughed as everyone asked him if he was running for office. He had to rush out to do confirmations at another parish. Somehow I don't think that "story" made it into any local papers. There was no camera crew at any rate.