The Australian Bishops' response to the forced retirement of Bishop Bill Morris was as good as could have been hoped. It affirmed the Pope's right to dismiss bishops, affirmed the personal and pastoral qualities of Bishop Morris, simply reported the situation that led to the dismissal, and promised to take up the question of the process with the Pope.
The kindly tone of the letter offers good hope that the bishops will maintain the personal links with Bishop Morris that matter more than words.
It may be helpful to look at what happened in Toowoomba against the much larger question of trust in governance. Significant cultural changes have affected all institutions, including national governments as well as churches.
All governance relies on a passive trust on the part of the people if it is to function well. If trust is not given, laws will not be obeyed. When trust is withdrawn, societies stagnate because they lack any sense of the common good. They become polarised, and governments often rule by repression. The officials responsible for day to day governance become demoralised and unenthusiastic.
In Eastern Europe, and now in the Middle East, apparently impregnable regimes can be brought down because trust is lacking.
Traditionally, institutions have encouraged trust by depicting their rulers as strong and benign and as guided by the best of values. But these images, and the trust they engender, have been put under pressure by the development of communication technologies and the lack of control over them. Images have become personalised.
Leaders of institutions must use sophisticated means of communication to project their own image and the values they represent. Their personalities become the face of the institution and the guarantee of good governance.
But the inability of institutions to control communication leaves them vulnerable. The link between the projected image and values and the reality is constantly tested by a stream of information and of critical judgments. The strong leader is shown to bow to pressure groups; the defender of family values is revealed to be a philanderer; the exact administrator is shown to run a shambles.
This erosion of trust results in a general public disillusionment with leaders and their professed programs. It also encourages the political paralysis visible in Australia, Europe and the United States.
We might expect to see two responses to this challenge. The first will be to look for substance rather than style in leadership, and to ensure that the