New Archbishop Edwin O?Brien has great power to do good in Baltimore City. The question is whether he will exercise that power and how. His recent Installation Mass offered only a few clues to his priorities.
He said Oct. 1, “I have no master plan for urban revitalization. But I pledge to you today that this archdiocese will make every effort to ensure that the dream that animated Dr. King and so many others of us does not die. … ”
No disrespect, but Baltimore has had enough of vague promises. Its citizens just finished enduring a mayoral primary election in which every candidate pledged to “bring Baltimore together” and other insipid platitudes that have only helped to sink its people deeper into a mire of illegitimacy, poverty and crime. This is not to underplay the many lifesaving charities the church supports.
But we wish he had exercised a little more vigorously some of that “religious freedom” he noted as “a right that supports and sustains all of our efforts to shape public policy according to the first principles of justice,” and suggested a few specifics he plans to address ? aside from the church?s rote pledges to support life and offer alternatives to abortion. His experience in New York City and in the military surely would have given him opinions about where the church is most needed.
Pledging to increase scholarships to its 30 city schools would have been a great start. One of the church?s greatest strengths is its schools, whose mainly non-Catholic minority students hail from the same socioeconomic background as children in the Baltimore City Public School System yet somehow manage to graduate at much higher rates than their public school counterparts and go on to become productive citizens. A right to a decent education should be chief among the civil rights the church pledges to protect ? as it leads to a respect for life and civil society the church holds dear.
Another would be to pledge to consistently hold every member of the priesthood accountable to the laws of this nation all others must obey, as well as subordinate canon law. O?Brien dedicated only part of a sentence to asking forgiveness for “horrific sexual abuse of the young,” but spent multiple paragraphs on how recruiting new priests will be a top priority. As someone who wrote his doctoral thesis on the writings of a great ethicist of modern times, Paul Ramsey, O?Brien knows intricately what the abuse of power can lead to. He should have stated that more clearly.
And though his general message is in the spirit of the Third Council of Baltimore Catechism?s requirement “to … serve God in this world,” the body of that doctrine must be built on specifics.
We look forward to the Archbishop outlining his detailed priorities in the near future. Until then we will trust all faith and exercise a cautious optimism about his ability to “move mountains” in this city and the rest of the archdiocese.
