The Nazi generation

German males who survived WWII lived under a constant cloud of suspicion. If you were above a certain age during the war, there was always the tacit, and sometimes explicit, accusatorial question, “Where were you?” “What were you doing when the Nazis were in power?”

Some of them had good answers. Many did not.

The contemporary Roman episcopate faces a similar quandary. You have a whole generation of bishops tainted by varying degrees of complicity in the abuse scandal. Some of them escape close scrutiny because they oversee less prominent dioceses. But when they’re promoted to higher-profile venues, they sweater under the spotlights. The scandal overshadows them wherever they go. This entire generation of Roman bishops will have to die off before the cloud of suspicion dissipates.