Tag Archives: McCarrick

Grow Up, Francis!

October 10, 2019 – 7:36 pm

A good friend, an Irish-Notre-Dame-cradle catholic, says “I still like this pope”. Despite the clue contained in that “still”, he seems mystified why anyone (like me) thinks the papacy (and the Church) took a nosedive when Benedict retired.

My own spiritual journey, leading to my now-two-year-old conversion, owed a great deal to Benedict XVI, and found me towards the end hung up on the problems of joining his successor’s church. I finally made it over that obstacle, but I came into the Church as a worried layman wondering why the current management seems so unworthy and unlike its predecessors.

My PF concerns do not entirely overlap with those of some of his conservative critics. The divorced/remarried communion issue is not mine. I am not divorced, and I certainly can understand why pastors do not want to confront their divorced/remarried parishioners with such a tough choice as no sex or no Eucharist. [I do think the church’s teaching errs by considering divorce as a matter between two adults (and God, of course), thereby making the same mistake as our courts do: treating the children as a collateral issue. In my view, divorce between childless adults is one thing, while divorce with children is wanton, cruel family destruction, a particularly hypocritical form of child abuse. But that does not make “Amoris Laetitia” a problem for me. I wrote about this in “Suffer the Little Children: Aquinas on Divorce“, below.]

His non-response to the sexual abuse crisis is another matter. Continue reading →

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Four Faces of the Church Scandal

September 22, 2018 – 6:54 pm

The more I hear and the more I think about the present sex scandal in the Church, the more I am convinced that this crisis has four distinct but interwoven threads.

First, the problem of pedophile priests.  This atrocity is the most widely recognized piece of the puzzle; but it is also the only one that has been addressed and, to a significant extent, dealt with.  If any priest is today molesting a catechism student or an altar boy or girl, he will be quickly exposed and driven out.  That is why the Pennsylvania Attorney General report deals almost entirely with past, and not current priests.

Second, the problem of homosexual abuse/recruitment/”grooming” of seminarians and young priests, typified by the scandal of ex-Cardinal “Uncle Ted” McCarrick.  The pope’s refusal to even admit the existence of this problem indicates the difficulty of dealing with it. 

Third, there is the new gay advocacy, the growing presence and prominence of openly pro-gay priests and bishops, advocating for full acceptance of homosexuality in the Church and world. Father James Martin is only one of the most flamboyant examples.  The pope’s readiness to take McCarrick’s advice in appointing bishops like Cupich is yet another.

And fourth, tying them all together, is the ongoing tolerance of misbehavior that the Church has always regarded as mortal sin.  The cover-ups and protection of pedophile priests, the veil of silence regarding molesters like McCarrick, and the open encouragement of gay advocates like Martin, are all part of a single disease.       The pope’s refusal to address Abp. Vigano’s accusations, along with his track record in South American scandals, suggests that he is, to say the least, unwilling to be part of the solution.

There you have it; four ugly, tangled threads.  Much discussion these days is about how to untangle them. But it seems like a better idea to simply grab them all and rip them out of the Church!  Or, as Alexander the Great demonstrated with the Gordian Knot, just take a sword to them.  Throw the rascals out!

Despite the rhetoric, I don’t know exactly how to do it.  Certainly we must pray for Jesus to once again save His Church from the hands of those who are profaning his temple.  And we must speak out in some way to let the hierarchy, and the world, know where we stand.

May God help us, as laymen, to find a way to help fix this mess.

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The Church Scandal; The Laity’s Role?

August 15, 2018 – 5:40 pm

I am sure all Catholics are thinking about this crisis. McCarrick, the Pennsylvania AG report.  Silence from the USCCB and from Rome.  Several thoughts, starting with defensive ones.

First, the enemies of the church are having a good time. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Grand Jury project once again displays the sins of the church’s recent past, but says nothing about the present or future.  The report rehashes what has already come out in many (most? all?) dioceses’ victim settlements, including that of my own diocese in Helena, Montana.  The PA AG made a big deal about the scandal he has uncovered; it should help his reelection.  The NPR commentator/expert today was asked “Are these abuses continuing today?”, and he answered “The Grand Jury would probably say yes.”  Without any evidence.  That is the anti-Catholic sentiment we are up against.

But the Church has created this problem, and we cannot complain too much when our enemies use it to attack us. 

Many of the faithful bemoan the “abuse crisis”.  But, as many have noted, we are dealing with a sexual crisis, not just an abuse crisis.  The general absence of new cases charging current-day abuse of altar boys/girls or catechumens is noteworthy; in the present environment, they would be all over the news.

The current focus of the ongoing crisis appears to consist of two active scourges:  homosexual molestation of male seminarians by senior clergy, and continuing cover-up of such molestations (an echo of the past cover-ups).  This crisis is summed up in the scandal of Cardinal McCarrick, and of the higher clergy’s apparent ignoring of this detestable “open secret”.  While sexual abuse of minors is obviously criminal, sexual molestation of adults who employ them or are otherwise in authority is a grey area in criminal law (remember Clinton/Lewinsky?). But it is clearly a mortal sin. Continue reading →

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