The forced retirement of Bishop Bill Morris raises many questions.
Some questions concern the facts of the case — why the Bishop's pastoral strategies and his reflections on ways of addressing the shortage of priests in rural dioceses were found to be inconsistent with Catholic values. These questions cannot be usefully discussed because the evidence against him and the evaluation made of it have not been publicly disclosed.
Even more significant questions concern the process that culminated in his retirement. An understated paragraph of the pastoral letter in which Bishop Morris communicated to the Toowoomba Church his decision to take early retirement raises the question sharply. He says:
I have never seen the Report prepared by the Apostolic Visitor, Archbishop Charles Chaput, and without due process it has been impossible to resolve these matters, denying me natural justice without any possibility of appropriate defence and advocacy on my behalf. Pope Benedict confirmed this to me by stating 'Canon Law does not make provision for a process regarding bishops, whom the Successor of Peter nominates and may remove from Office'.
Outside observers used to the English legal system are likely to see this lack of due process and of natural justice as scandalous. They would notice the parallel with the non-statutory process by which asylum seekers on Nauru had the claims for protection assessed. It resulted in a morass of arbitrariness, and was experienced by its victims as abusive of their human dignity. In Australia, it is the case that where there is no statutory review there can be no confidence in justice.
Of course the legal system of the Catholic Church is not based on English law. It goes back a long way further than that. So it may offer assurances of justice that the outside observer might miss. But the gap makes even Catholic observers ask why the Pope should see the denial of due process as demanded by his position. And they might also muse whether the received Catholic understanding of the papacy must really exclude due process.
To understand the Pope's claim, you need to go back to the Gospels. The place of the papacy in the Church is based on the position of Peter among the 12 disciples whom Jesus chose. The Bishop of Rome is understood to stand in the same relationship to the other Bishops as did Peter to the Twelve. Peter is one of the Twelve, but is given