{"id":510,"date":"2008-03-27T23:46:53","date_gmt":"2008-03-27T23:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-case-of-bishop-braxton.html"},"modified":"2008-03-27T23:46:53","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T23:46:53","slug":"the-case-of-bishop-braxton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-case-of-bishop-braxton.html","title":{"rendered":"The Case of Bishop Braxton"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hope that somewhere out there, some historian or sociologist (or both) is keeping an eye on the travails of the diocese of Belleville, IL. Which, in some form or another, have been going on for a good long while. It would be a fascinating and revealing case study of the dynamics and tensions within the late 20th century American Catholic Church.\u00a0 There – there’s your dissertation topic. No charge.
\nThe most recent, and quite public (in some ways) explosion has been between a large number of the priests of the diocese and Bishop Braxton, <\/a>who was appointed to Belleville in 2005, after about 4 years in Lake Charles, which had, in turn followed several years as an auxiliary bishop in St. Louis. In Belleville, Braxton followed Wilton Gregory, who became the Archbishop of Atlanta.\u00a0 You can read Bishop Braxton’s full biography at the diocesan website, here.<\/a> It’s interesting.
\nThere have been all sorts of accusations – some vaguer (lack of communication, imperiousness) and some quite specific – the latest being the bishop’s use of\u00a0monies designated for the Society for the Propogation of the Faith and another fund for vestments and a conference table.
\nThe week before Holy Week, a group of Belleville priests went public – sort of. That is, they published a letter asking Bishop Braxton to resign<\/a>. \u00a0Bishop Braxton responded last week with a letter of his own, describing his sadness at his mother’s death, and then specifically responding to the priests. <\/a>
\nIt’s a mess.
\n(A CNS summary here<\/a>)
\nI’m sort of intrigued by\u00a0the whole thing because\u00a0I truly don’t understand what’s going on. On one level, it’s being made out to be a conflict between liberal priests who’ve been able to do what they want for decades, chafing under a bishop of a different sort than they are. There’s that. But is there more? For on another level, there are charges of a serious lack of communication. Hard to prove from the outside. \u00a0I really have no idea, but really all I can say is that I was definitely shocked by a bunch of priests blowing this up so close to Holy Week, \u00a0but I also have no idea what Bishop Braxton has actually done to try, on his part, to close the evident gap between him and his priests over the past three years.\u00a0 Perhaps he’s done a lot. Who knows. Leadership is hard. Leadership is a gift.
\nThe place where there is the hottest discussion of this right now is the blog Southern Illinois Catholic blog<\/a>. The blog is definitely pro-Braxton and anti-the letter-writing\u00a0priests,\u00a0 just so you know, but all the links to news and various statements\u00a0are there and the comments come from all sides.\u00a0
\nYou just really wonder what that <\/em>Chrism Mass was like this year…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I hope that somewhere out there, some historian or sociologist (or both) is keeping an eye on the travails of the diocese of Belleville, IL. Which, in some form or another, have been going on for a good long while. It would be a fascinating and revealing case study of the dynamics and tensions within…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Case of Bishop Braxton - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-case-of-bishop-braxton.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Case of Bishop Braxton - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I hope that somewhere out there, some historian or sociologist (or both) is keeping an eye on the travails of the diocese of Belleville, IL. Which, in some form or another, have been going on for a good long while. It would be a fascinating and revealing case study of the dynamics and tensions within…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-case-of-bishop-braxton.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-27T23:46:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Case of Bishop Braxton - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/03\/the-case-of-bishop-braxton.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Case of Bishop Braxton - Via Media","og_description":"I hope that somewhere out there, some historian or sociologist (or both) is keeping an eye on the travails of the diocese of Belleville, IL. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}