Diocese Needs Higher Standards

I am a Catholic.

I have had 14 years of Catholic education and have been attending Mass for 55 years.

But I don’t trust our Catholic leaders in Peoria. I don’t think Bishop Jenky and Monsignor Rohlfs, and Patricia Gibson have behaved like moral Catholic leaders need to act. Especially when times get tough. Like now.

Somehow, and I don’t know how, the laity needs to hold them to higher standards. But the laity is afraid…jobs, health insurance, kids, etc. get in the way of holding the Bishop to a “higher standard”. And that is how the Diocese wants it.

Elaine Hopkins wrote this post today regarding SNAP and their news conference in Peoria.

Before my meetings with Bishop Jenky, Monsignor Rohlfs, and Patricia Gibson, I may have had a hard time believing SNAP and the Diocese’s reaction to SNAP victims. I probably would have sided with the Diocese.

Not any more.

After my personal experience with the Catholic Diocese of Peoria and the way they minimized the importance of Haitian Hearts children’s lives and obstructed the process, I feel the Diocese has been complicit in the abandonment of the very children that they should try and protect. They preach it on Sundays but don't practice it on weekdays.

Whenever I bury a Haitian Hearts patient, I think of our Diocesan leaders in their big offices and new Spalding Pastoral Care Center.

What a shame. What a lot of money. SNAP probably thinks so too.