McBrien Carries On Task of "Dissing" Bishop Finn, Obedient Catholics

In a column titled "Sources of demoralization" from the Tidings, the weekly rag of the LA Archdiocese, Richard McBrien, expounds on Dominican Timothy Radcliffe's recent LA Religious Education Congress talk on the polarization in the Church and carries on the task started by the National Catholic Reporter in demonizing Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn for, it seems, his orthodoxy and fidelity to the Church.

In McBrien's eyes, there are 4 groups of Catholics:
1. Ultra-conservatives (who have never accepted the ecclesiology of Vatican II, especially as it applies to the liturgy),

2.Moderate liberals,

3.Moderate conservatives (who basically accept the conciliar ecclesiology but favor a more cautious approach to ongoing renewal and reform than their moderate counterparts on the left) and,

4. Ultra-liberals, or radicals (for whom words like "hierarchy" carry no practical meaning).

Middle of the road Catholics, somtimes referred to as 'Centrist' Catholics, "believe that the Church needs to be concerned with both outreach and identity, creativity and tradition."

McBrien (with Andrew Greeley) lays blame for much of the division at the feet of Pope Paul VI and the encyclical Humanae Vitae.

Here he begins the setup:

Catholics of the far right, and bishops who share and enforce their ecclesiology, insist that obedience is one of Catholicism's primary virtues and that the teaching of the hierarchy, and especially the pope's, is the only sure guide to saving truth.

Is this a subtle attempt to reject Vatican I's Pastor Aeternus and the affirmation of the gift of infallibility?

And yet the new bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Robert Finn, a member of Opus Dei, has been dismantling much of what had been put in place by his three immediate predecessors: Charles Helmsing (1962-77), John Sullivan (1977-93), and Raymond Boland (1993-2005). . .Did they lead their flocks astray or throw them to the wolves? Were they grievously wrong in their pastoral teachings, policies and appointments? If so, how is a Catholic to know when any bishop is to be respected and obeyed, and when he is not?

As an alleged theologian, McBrien should be able to provide us the answer to his questions but he doesn't...I think one can conclude what he is really trying to imply.