If there was a single act which upset people most, it was the way Bishop Morris had, early in his time as bishop, shut down The Shrine in downtown Toowoomba. The Shrine had always been heavily patronised, particularly by the elderly and working Catholics of Toowoomba who would, seven days a week, come in numbers to mass, confession and Eucharistic adoration. The Shrine was a powerhouse of worship, prayer and Catholic identity - not the sort of place any kind of Catholic bishop could simply shut down. Years later, part of The Shrine was re-opened by Bishop Morris for adoration, although not as a place for regular mass and confession. Despite the partial reactivation of The Shrine, Bishop Morris’ credibility never really recovered from this early act which in a way set the tone for his time as Bishop of Toowoomba.

By May 2011, the end for Bishop Morris had been a long time coming and had been much anticipated among well informed Church insiders in Toowoomba and around Australia. Bishop Morris’ dismissal announcement was made at masses on Divine Mercy Sunday. William “Call me Bill” Morris had been sacked by the Pope after all; the Bishop got his announcement in before the Vatican’s, which came the next day. Some, though far from all, were stunned. The reactions were many and varied, across a wide range from fury, confusion, bafflement and despair all the way to relief and undisguised joy. For a bishop who had seen himself as “pastoral”, William Morris’ legacy was in fact a polarized Catholic community.

Crying Foul

Significant public angst has followed from Bishop Morris and his supporters, including claims of injustice, denial of natural justice whether or not from lack of procedural fairness and/or lack of transparency, and lack of a process to appeal the decision.

To date, nobody - whether the Pope, Bishop Morris himself, or his supporters - has chosen to reveal more than general information relating to the dismissal decision and the related decision making process. Bishop Morris’ supporters, however, have released some relevant information. Key documents include Bishop Morris’ dismissal announcement / farewell letter, a seven page summary history of Morris’ dispute with the Roman Dicasteries prepared by Toowoomba priests Fr Peter Schultz and Fr Peter Dorfield and a “Reflection” paper signed by Fr Peter Dorfield on behalf of a number of fellow priests. There is also a Courier-Mail article by journalist Paul Syvret, who interviewed Bishop Morris, wherein Syvret wrote, “The Vatican in Rome has decided that the Bishop is guilty of questioning church teaching ‘basically accusing me of heresy’, he says.”

In his dismissal announcement letter, Bishop Morris states, “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”. The Schultz-Dorfield summary says, “The Report of the Apostolic Visitor has never been shown to the Bishop.” Syvret in the Courier-Mail further says, “The Apostolic Visitor - a Vatican investigator arrived. He spent 3 ½ days in the Toowoomba Diocese, with the end result being Morris received an unsigned memorandum that concluded pastoral practices in Toowoomba were ‘defective’. Morris says the memo was ‘littered with factual errors’, and he contested its validity’.” Fr Dorfield writes, “Bishop Morris has been removed on the grounds of ‘flawed’ and ‘defective’ pastoral leadership through his years as a Bishop, and more recently, on doctrinal grounds.” Dorfield says the grounds were later “reduced to two doctrinal matters .. views expressed .. on the ordination of women and the recognition of Anglican (and other Church) Orders.”

Canon Law

Now, the dismissal of a Catholic bishop is no small matter. As leading American canon lawyer Edward Peters has noted, “The canonical commentaries I’ve looked at regard a bishop’s ‘privation’ of office as being possible only in the face of guilt for ecclesiastical crimes ... But criminal conduct is not the same thing as “mismanagement”, and it is certainly not the same thing as “weak performance”, both of which conditions might well justify upper-level management in removing a lower level administrator from his post, but neither of which - for all sorts of ecclesiological and canonical reasons - constitutes grounds for privation of episcopal office in the Church. Only the Pope hears criminal cases involving bishops (c. 1405 § 1) and penal cases are generally conducted confidentially (c. 1455 § 1), so unless either side decides to discuss the matter, the details are not likely to emerge (with good reliability, at least).”

Based on the best information to hand, as outlined earlier, it appears that Bishop Morris was dismissed for heresy at least, although there may have been more to it. Heresy can constitute an “ecclesiastical crime” - grounds for privation of office, as Edward Peters has pointed out. It appears that issues involved in the overall dispute were, at a minimum, Bishop Morris’ 2006 Advent Pastoral letter referring to the prospect of ordination for women and protestant ministers, his Toowoomba confession guidelines and his own subsequent interactions and position taking with Vatican officials.

In fact, despite the bishop’s complaints, he does not appear to specifically state that the dismissal decision was in fact reliant upon the Chaput Report or other unsighted specific complaints from Toowoomba. Morris himself says per Syvret that he received a copy of a relevant memorandum, albeit unsigned, and contested the issues raised by Vatican officials. So far as an outsider can tell, Bishop Morris’ dismissal appears to have been driven by his own written words and his long term persistence in the positions he had taken.

Put Up .. or Apologise

As to the allegations of denial of natural justice, given the foregoing and the long record of interaction between Bishop Morris and Vatican officials - as detailed in the Schultz-Dorfield history - it is clear that Bishop Morris was accorded considerable indulgence overall in relation to process. Despite what has been said, no-one - Bishop Morris included - has put forward the information and argumentation necessary to support any sort of serious, substantive claim in regard to either injustice or denial of natural justice. The legal jargon is in play, almost parrot-fashion, but not the logic required for a serious case.

If there is such a substantive claim to be made, Bishop Morris and his advisors should put it forward if only to clarify the record. In the event no such position can be put forward, Bishop Morris and his advisors should withdraw their allegations and apologise.

Ironically, the transparency issue plays both ways. In his farewell letter, the bishop says, “The Consultors are aware of all the facts as I have met with them on a regular basis to keep them up-to-date with what was happening. Through them, the priests and the pastoral leaders, you will be given the full story.” To Syvret, he said, “’We are not a free and open church if there are questions that cannot be talked about. We are at our best when we are transparent.” All well and good. But, Bishop Morris accuses the Vatican of lack of transparency whereas he and his advisors have chosen not to release an obviously extensive collection of relevant documents, despite Bishop Morris’ undertaking to the Catholics of Toowoomba that “you will be given the full story”. Transparency, it seems, is good for the goose but not so essential for the gander.

Well may we ask, given Bishop Morris’ undertaking in his farewell letter: why has he not released the documents? Could it be that the documents would demonstrate that the Vatican had in fact treated him fairly and appropriately, even respectfully? This is what we at Lepanto suspect. Again, Bishop Morris should release his records of the decision and the decision-making process. Lepanto considers it unlikely he will.

One of the points made early on was that the Church does not allow for an appeal from the dismissal of a bishop: the “lack of an appeal process” complaint. But, who can one appeal to in the Church superior to the Pope? It is difficult to imagine Bishop Morris and his supporters suggesting that a bishop should be able to be dismissed in the first place by an authority lesser than the Pope. Perhaps this is why the “lack of a process for appeal” argument appears to have been quietly dropped.

Finally, it must be said that it is not easy to see how Bishop Morris could in good faith practice as a Catholic bishop. A bishop’s role is to proclaim, teach, explain, and uphold the faith - in this case a faith which has always involved a solely male priesthood and a Eucharistic consecration requiring beliefs not shared by protestant ministers. Not to mention the primacy of the Petrine office and oaths of obedience for ordained ministers. Given his positions, how could Bishop Morris have proclaimed, taught, explained or upheld such a faith? Clearly, he could not.

Oppositional Tactics

Despite the lack of apparent substance to their claims, it is clear that Bishop Morris and his supporters have managed to conjure up a reasonable sized if ultimately narrowly based public controversy. The dismissal has certainly elicited the predictable sympathetic, non-probing coverage from the usual quarters: the ABC, the Fairfax media, Eureka Street, “St Mary’s-in-Exile”, etc.

One aspect of unfolding events has been the extent to which the hue and cry (Who can forget the plaintive “Bill is my bishop” placard?) has been manufactured and coordinated by some Toowoomba diocesan clergy and employed Church lay officials. The opportunistic misuse by some priests of Sunday homilies has been a notable feature of recent life in Toowoomba, Brisbane and elsewhere. If their objective was to demonstrate the extent to which Bishop Morris had succeeded in embedding in the diocese his own dissenting attitudes, then they certainly have made the point. A range of openly orchestrated agitprop tactics have been employed, including caucusing the poorly informed and the gullible, organizing letter writing campaigns and petitions, etc, in short, all the activities the same people would never undertake to support, for instance, the pro life cause.

Nonetheless, the bedrock loyalty of Catholics to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ has also been demonstrated by the fact that whatever loyalties there were to Bishop Morris, they were not enough to sustain any impulse there may have been on the part of Morris and his supporters to stay on and further defy the Pope.

Looking to The Future

With a local clergy aged, ageing and limited in numbers and with no local vocations, the Vatican is no doubt aware of the necessity to provide support for the diocese of Toowoomba. Among other things, it is likely to be necessary for a new bishop to bring in new clergy from elsewhere. No doubt the Toowoomba Church, being an inclusive, hospitable community, will gratefully welcome the assistance of more priests from Asia and Africa. Finally, the new bishop will need to be unambiguously interested in fostering the sacramental and devotional lives of Catholics rather than someone all too experienced in the art of gradually reframing and displacing Catholic life.

It would be a shrewd and widely supported early move for a new bishop of Toowoomba to find a way to fully re-open and reactivate The Shrine, whether outside priests are available or not.

Naturally, the on-going oppositional climate is less and less about William Morris, who has left the diocese of Toowoomba. The object of the current orchestration is to influence subsequent events, in particular the appointment of a new bishop. The strategy appears to be to foster and maintain the rage but to direct it against Roman officials rather than against the Pope personally. For now, expressions of angst and opposition are being carefully stage-managed and kept within defined limits.

More to the point, the Archbishop’s position in Brisbane is also in play. If preferred candidates from the same priestly groupings are appointed to Brisbane and Toowoomba, it will be business as usual: the longstanding Rush-Cuskelly “New Church” agenda will be further reinforced - and Rome will have acted in Toowoomba for nothing. If on the other hand, bishops loyal to Rome are appointed to Brisbane and Toowoomba, oppositional elements will contest the authority of the new appointees. In such an event, the oppositional elements are certainly capable of making life uncomfortable for a time. Time, however, is not on their side. More than a few of the disaffected elements are approaching the end of their working lives. The tide of history is against them.