By Marianna Trzeciak
Is it possible for an earthquake to be felt from Rome, Italy, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, even across the Mississippi River, throughout Louisiana, and all the way to East Texas? There was such an earthquake this morning.
North America’s most beloved Catholic bishop, The Most Reverend Joseph Strickland, has been removed from his duties of pastoral care as bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler, Texas. This Bishop Strickland, who has faithfully—and peripatetically—overseen a diocese roughly the size of Ireland (with its 26 bishops), this bishop who is a homegrown boy of East Texas, this bishop who is a scholar and a man of simple words, this Bishop Strickland has been demoted by perhaps the most capricious Pope in the history of the Church.
American Thinker has tried to be kind to Pope Francis. After all, Pope Francis sometimes talks the talk—for instance, declaring that abortion is akin to hiring an assassin to take out one’s own child. And he even encouraged nursing mothers to feel welcome at Mass. But then he went and spoiled it all by summarily ending the terms of 139 members of Pope John Paul II’s Pontifical Academy of Life, reappointing but 28, and appointing pro-abortion and pro-euthanasia thought leaders instead.
For all of his talk of ecumenism and the peripheries, Pope Francis has always shown his disdain for American Catholics, who are known to be very generous to the worldwide Church, even though they comprise only five to ten percent of the worldwide Catholic population. And what could be more American than a Texas backwater, with peach trees, azaleas, and roses quaintly tucked in among the timber industry and pop-up oil derricks peppering an otherwise bucolic landscape of cows and hay? Here, the children still roam, and the Catholics and the Baptists play, with Friday night Latin Mass followed up by honky-tonk dancing near a Protestant “cowboy church.”
Pope Francis had to do the deed before the Democrats would remove Joe Biden as their candidate for the 2024 presidential election. Bishop Strickland has been a tireless voice for traditional Catholic morality, such as the life issues and the preservation of marriage as uniting one woman with one man. Bishop Strickland also anticipated any further plague by saying that he would oppose closing church doors if ever there were a new COVID-type exigency. Francis had to pave the way for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (the USCCB) to garble the message of what it means to be Catholic and what it means to vote as one.
Second only to a child’s parents, Catholic bishops are the ones primarily responsible for the religious education of their flock. The USCCB is merely a fraternal professional organization of American bishops. The USCCB has no ecclesial power. However, it will assume power where there is a void. Anecdotally, this author has noticed that, when an American bishop is issuing a directive of clear Catholic teaching, the bishop signs his own name. When morality-nuancing directives appear, look for a “conference” of bishops as the undersigned.
Ahead of the 2024 election, the USCCB needs its voice to be unencumbered by the dissonance of good individual bishops providing strong guidelines for the faithful on voting for the truly least amongst us (babies waiting to be born) over the other “seamless garment” issues, such as relief from poverty.
Notwithstanding the USCCB, not only does each bishop hold the teaching authority over his flock, but the Pope is only the primary bishop amongst all the bishops, as Jorge Bergoglio insisted upon self-referring when elected the “Bishop of Rome.” Indeed, Pope Francis might not even have the authority to remove Bishop Strickland, given no evidence of wrongdoing.
Hundreds of devout Catholic families (what is the multiplier here, five children each?) have moved to the Diocese of Tyler in just the last two years. We have come for open churches, reverent Novus Ordo Masses, and openness to the Latin Mass. A whole order of nuns left a decent bishop for the dynamism and protection of Bishop Strickland. Vocations to the priesthood exceed expectations. Besides feeding all the poor of the area, parishes are growing and building and, even then, contributing to smaller, fledgling parishes.
Bishop Strickland started a catechetical body, and its books are in demand all over the country. He has spoken to us diocesan newbies, emphasizing that we should show respect for the Protestants who developed this devoutly Christian region even before Pope John Paul II founded the Tyler Diocese in 1986. A trusting manager who is open to delegating with much leeway to priests, as well as religious and lay people, Bishop Strickland is also fond of reading the works of obscure mystics. Seemingly modeled upon St. Pope John Paul II, Bishop Strickland is all things to everyone. 1 Corinthians 9:22.
Very little can be said ill of Bishop Strickland. Pope Francis has only hurt himself by removing this good bishop, given that Bishop Strickland has conservative bone fides and yet defends this Pope’s papacy. Who, other than the devil, has advised the Pope on such an immoral and unintelligent move?
But, perhaps such action goes beyond an American election and even beyond Pope Francis’s legacy. A New World Order requires a New World Religion. And for that to happen, devout Catholics must be convinced that we are actually the “cafeteria Catholics,” choosing whom and what to follow. And so let’s leave for now with the words of Bishop Strickland himself, “Follow Jesus.”