Chad Pecknold, associate professor, was quoted in a National Catholic Register story on a proposed plan of oversight for bishops.
... Meanwhile, Chad Pecknold, a theologian at The Catholic University of America, acknowledged that the Vatican would likely raise even more questions about an independent lay-led commission investigating bishops. In the past, he said, Rome strongly resisted what has been called “lay trusteeism” — oversight responsibility exercised by lay Catholics that does not fit with the Church’s ecclesiastical framework.
“The bishops are the shepherds, and the laity are the flock,” he agreed.
But the suggestion that “the laity should have no responsible role in holding bishops accountable,” he said, is also a “kind of clericalism.”
Then, stepping back from the canonical and theological debate over the proposal’s feasibility, Pecknold also considered how the metropolitan plan would likely play to ordinary Catholics who are already angered by Church leaders’ past failures. ...
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