Over the last decades, bishops varied widely, as they always have, in the kind of leadership they exercised in their own dioceses. Nationally, they plugged away at a long list of pastoral challenges, from new translations for the liturgy to new plans for Hispanic or African-American or young adult ministry. But on too many big questions, as the sex abuse scandal made so painfully clear, collectively they stalled and individually they were silent. Will the hierarchy now be jolted out of that stalemate? Or will the bishops be driven even deeper into it?
The prospects, for the time being, do not look good. The end of any papacy tends to be a time for standing pat. The end of this papacy may be a time for last-minute efforts to reinforce its ecclesiastical conservatism. And the long-run prospects are not encouraging either. Tomorrow's bishops will be chosen from today's young priests, and today's young priests are a smaller pool, increasingly conservative, less inclined to conceive and favor new initiatives, indeed less temperamentally inclined toward church leadership than face-to-face priestly roles.
Leadership in Catholicism, despite appearances, has never been restricted to the bishops. Often enough, bishops find themselves responding to the initiatives of other Catholic leaders. The climate of the times suggests that Catholics, ordained and lay, will have to exercise responsibility for the vigor of Catholicism within their own sector of activity.
