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in the de facto immunity given to bishops and cardinals by the logic of apostolic succession. The Vatican considers members of the hierarchy as spiritual descendants of Jesus’s apostles. A cardinal or a bishop can be removed from his position under canon law, but in reality, only the pope as the supreme authority can render such justice. The singular lesson undergirding the quarter century of abuse scandals and financial debacles is that cardinals and bishops stand above their severe mistakes or moral crimes. Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër of Austria made “strong homoerotic gestures to most of his students” for years before he became archbishop of Vienna, reports Leon C. Podles, the author of Sacrilege.3 Groër suffered no demotion in ecclesial rank when accusations forced his retirement in 1995. John Paul uttered no public criticism, yet announced prayers for Groër several years later upon his death. He had no words for Groër’s victims. For all of Maciel’s financial power as the leader of an international religious order, he was neither bishop nor cardinal.

Bernard Law, Darío Castrillón Hoyos, and other cardinals who concealed pedophiles had caused financial disasters. Prelates of lesser rank, like Bishop Lennon, the self-taught canonist, destroyed parishes and took their money through incompetence. “It is to the holiness of the faithful that the hierarchical structure of the Church is totally ordered,” John Paul stated in forbidding women’s ordination.4 Ecclesiastical tradition sees the men of the hierarchy in a descending line from Jesus’s apostles, fostering holiness as an expression of God’s kingdom. Many bishops work dutifully to do so. Bishops of recent memory who stand out as moral exemplars—the martyred Óscar Romero of El Salvador, Samuel Ruíz of Chiapas—embodied solidarity with the poor. But the hierarchy spares no expense to defend a compromised prelate in secular courts. As this self-protective logic evolved, apostolic succession created a caste system. Cardinals stand as nobility, each prince a potential pontiff; archbishops and bishops hold elite standing above the lower clergy and, at bottom, ordinary Catholics whose donations finance the church.

Inspired by the Second Vatican Council, the 1964 Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Lumen Gentium, gave ordinary Catholics an elevated status as People of God. A body of theological writing on People of God has arisen since then, auguring hope for pluralism in church governance, tapping a wisdom born of married life.5 But the last two papacies have devalued the People of God idea like a poor foreign currency. Pray, pay, obey is Rome’s expectation. John Paul and Benedict blunted the ethos of a collaborative role for People of God through the selection process for bishops. As Cardinal Law wielded great influence on American candidates for the episcopacy, John Paul imposed a litmus test to eliminate any priest who supported optional celibacy or women priests. When the abuse scandals erupted, the subsurface story was a legacy of episcopal yes-men and theological reactionaries who recycled child molesters, kept silent on the burgeoning gay culture in seminaries, and rarely lost rank for mismanaging church money. Suborning moral conscience to papal supremacy was the currency for episcopal advancement. As the CDF in the Palace of the Holy Office became the citadel of moral truth, John Paul’s indifference to traumatized abuse victims, and the impact of the crisis on people in the pews, was symptomatic of the hubris embedded in the apostolic succession.

Cardinal Ratzinger punished theologians who embraced the complexities of conscience in the real lives of People of God: Charles Curran on birth control, Hans Küng on papal infallibility, Leonardo Boff on poverty as the prism of liberation theology, among other persecuted intellectuals. In defining moral truth as the province of the Vatican, Ratzinger wanted obedience—“definitive assent”—to the magisterium, or teaching office of his congregation. Curia comes from the Latin covir—men among men. “The freedom that celibacy was