Joe Biden, Cardinal McCarrick and the Betrayal of Life

Joe Biden is only the fourth Catholic presidential nominee in U.S. history but his pro-abortion stance leaves him in broken communion with his profession of faith.

Millions of American Catholics who uphold the Right to Life as a foundational human right in accord with Catholic teaching and the Bill of Rights were disappointed in recent weeks. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the four liberal justices in a matter of life and death. The question before the Court was whether a Louisiana law requiring abortion practitioners to have admitting privileges at a local hospital was unconstitutional.

In the split (5-4) decision in favor of abortion providers, Chief Justice Roberts voted with the majority in a matter from which he had earlier dissented. This may not be the setback some in the pro-life movement have feared. The Court’s ruling in support of the precedent set in Planned Parenthood v. Casey did not address the precedent itself which inserted into the Constitution a right to abortion. This is a distinction that I wrote about early this year in “March for Life: A New Great Awakening.”

The timing of publishing this decision — in the final months of a highly charged presidential battle for the soul of America — reminded me of something that unfolded in these pages during the 2016 election. At that time, I wrote a post entitled “Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables.”

Among a vast media leak from the Hillary Clinton campaign back then was a set of email exchanges between Clinton campaign manager John Podesta and some progressive U.S. Catholics. The leaks exposed a plan to recreate U.S. Catholicism into an entity more appealing to the Democratic Party and its ever descending slide toward the left.

The central tenet of that plan was to move American Catholics away from any identification as a “Roman” Catholic Church into a state of mere symbolic authority from Rome. The result would be something more akin to the U.S. Episcopal church and its open embrace of identity politics, reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, transgender ideology, and a much-weakened moral voice in the public square.

Climate change, open borders, and a global identity were to be the new moral imperatives. Abortion without limits would quietly fall without challenge into the politically correct category of “settled law.” It is easy for the living, while descending toward the left, to compartmentalize their consciences and deny a right to life to the most vulnerable among us.

Back in 2016, Pope Francis raised an alarm among conservative Catholics and the pro-life mission when he was quoted in the media as suggesting that the Church cannot speak only about abortion. The left arm in Catholicism seized upon that, but since then Pope Francis has offered some clarity. You may not know about it because the mainstream media only hypes his more trite sayings such as “Who am I to judge?”

On the matter of life, however, Francis has been as unequivocal as his predecessors, articulating clearly his support for and continuance of the pro-life emphasis of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis affirms that the foundational human right is the right to life. He has stated that the right to life and transgender ideology are the most pressing moral issues of our time. To say that the Church should not speak only of these issues does not at all suggest what the 2016 Clinton and Podesta agenda suggested: that we just set them aside and not speak of them at all.

Joe Biden’s Catholic Communion

Among the moral issues of our time, Pope Francis agrees with the U.S. Bishops that the right to life is the most fundamental human right in Catholic moral teaching. This places Democratic nominee Joe Biden far outside the moral life and teaching of his professed faith. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, Joe Biden said from his basement campaign forum:

“We need to ensure that women have access to all health services during this crisis. Abortion is an essential health care service.”

Joe Biden is only the fourth Catholic in U.S. history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party. All four have been Democrats. The first was New York Governor Alfred Smith who was easily defeated by Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928. Smith’s Catholic faith was widely seen as a cause of his defeat. The anti-Catholic political ice was not broken again until 1960 when John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic U.S. President.

Neither Al Smith nor President Kennedy faced a pro-life question because Planned Parenthood v. Casey had not yet happened. The matter of Catholic identity and abortion first arose in 2004 when Massachusetts Senator John Kerry became the nation’s third Catholic nominee for president exposing a wide contradiction between his professed Catholic faith and his public promotion of abortion rights.

Senator Kerry lost the election when President George W. Bush won a second term. Throughout his campaign, Kerry openly defied Church teaching on abortion. For that he was endorsed by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. His open defiance launched a debate among bishops about responding to pro-abortion Catholic politicians who receive the Eucharist, the ultimate sign of communion with their faith.

The argument was based on Canon 915 in the Code of Canon Law which holds that those who “obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.” For an analysis of how this has applied to Catholic political candidates, I rely on an excellent account in the National Catholic Register by Lauretta Brown: “Biden and the U.S. Bishops” (May 24, 2020).

The matter of promoting abortion while pretending to be Catholic has been raised anew in the candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden. As a Delaware Senator and vice-presidential nominee on the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008, Joe Biden declared on Meet the Press that he “was prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception.” He qualified his belief, however, by stating that he would not impose that belief by promoting laws that reflect it.

Archbishop Charles Chaput and Bishop James Conley published a rebuttal, stating that the beginning of life is a matter not only of faith but of scientific truth. Embracing objective truth has nothing to do with imposing it on anyone. The two bishops wrote:

“If, as Senator Biden said, ‘I am prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception,’ then he is not merely wrong about the science of new life; he also fails to defend the innocent life he already knows is there.”

Mr. Biden was also criticized by Bishop Francis Malooly during the 2008 presidential campaign for his public misrepresentation of Church teaching on abortion. And he was criticized by Bishop John Ricard for receiving Communion during a campaign trip to Florida. This raised anew the debate among bishops about Communion for Catholic politicians who promote abortion.

Now Comes Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — Again!

Cardinal Raymond Burke, then Archbishop of St. Louis, was one of the first bishops to state in 2004 that he would deny Communion to Catholic candidate John Kerry due to his public stance on abortion. Many bishops joined him in support of that view. In June of 2004, the U.S. Bishops Conference released a document entitled “Catholics in Political Life.” It communicated the U.S. Bishops’ unqualified “commitment to the legal protection of life from the moment of conception until natural death.”

Previous to the publication of that document, however, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, then Archbishop of Washington DC, was appointed by the bishops to chair a USCCB Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians. McCarrick quietly lobbied other bishops to oppose denying Communion to pro-abortion politicians. There was significant foul play in McCarrick’s lobbying effort.

In 2004, The USCCB Task Force received a letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This was a year before the death of Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger’s election at the Conclave of 2005. As Task Force Chair, McCarrick received the letter from Cardinal Ratzinger on behalf of the other members. The future Pope Benedict’s letter was entitled, “Worthiness to Receive Communion: General Principles.” Here is one of its major points:

“[R]egarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a person’s formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood in the case of a Catholic politician as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive abortion and euthanasia laws) his pastor should instruct the person about the Church’s teaching and tell him not to present himself for Communion.”

However, in his own report Cardinal McCarrick misrepresented the Ratzinger letter and manipulated the Task Force findings and recommendations to the U.S. Bishops in 2004. He instead reported to the bishops that it was the Task Force Commission’s conclusion that denial of Holy Communion to Catholic politicians could further divide our Church and could have serious unintended consequences.” The report concluded:

“In light of these and other concerns, the Task Force urges for the most part renewed efforts and persuasion, not penalties.”

An official who assisted Cardinal Ratzinger in the writing of that letter tells me today that it carefully referenced Canon 915, instructing that those who obstinately persevere in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to Holy Communion.

In revealing his Task Force Report to the U.S. bishops in 2004, Cardinal McCarrick attempted to hide the Cardinal-Prefect’s letter and his misrepresentation of it. The letter from Cardinal Ratzinger was later leaked by an unknown source exposing the manipulation, but only after the bishops accepted McCarrick’s more accommodating view — that pro-abortion politicians should be instructed but not penalized.

The Pro-Life Sensus Fidelium

What those “unintended consequences” cited by Cardinal McCarrick were can only be imagined. However, hindsight sheds some light on them. There are some who viewed McCarrick in the same way he apparently viewed himself — as a power-broker in the politics of both Church and state.

The full report on Theodore McCarrick’s rise and fall will likely soon be released by the Holy See. It will be interesting to see whether and how it reflects this, and reflects his manipulation of the U.S. Bishops’ collective approach to politicians who claim to be Catholic while dissenting with impunity from Catholic moral teaching on something as fundamental as the Right to Life.

In 2020, the U.S. Bishops formulated a new letter for Catholic voters that specifically cited the priority of life and abortion as “preeminent” priorities. It adopted the language of Saint John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI with clarity about the central importance of life issues in the current political climate.

Meanwhile, Candidate Joe Biden continues to espouse his Catholic identity while moving even further left in his promotion of abortion rights up to and including late-term abortion. In recent months he has withdrawn his four decades of support for the Hyde Amendment, a 1974 bilateral agreement between parties that protected U.S. taxpayers from violating their consciences by government application of their tax dollars for abortions.

There are few steps left to take for a Catholic candidate who openly rejects the Right to Life and other tenets of Catholic moral teaching, but Candidate Joe Biden has discovered them. He has officiated at a same-sex “marriage” and promotes the full spectrum of LGBTQ+ ideology and identity politics. Most recently Mr. Biden has called for codifying the right to abortion in federal law. After a recent Supreme Court decision on religious liberty, he vowed to roll back rights extended to the Little Sisters of the Poor concerning forced contraception coverage.

Some courageous bishops would deny him Communion for the simple but grave fact that he is no longer in communion with his faith. Other pro-life Catholics have asked for his excommunication.

Canon Law limits such a step to those who actively perform or otherwise cause abortion.

Joe Biden’s unabashedly pro-abortion rhetoric and promotion may collectively rise to that standard. In such a case, the Sensus Fidelium may call for something as decisive as excommunication. It would not be a penalty, but a discipline, an invitation to tend to the state, not only of Mr. Biden’s politics, but of his soul.

And how utterly strange and unacceptable that the current Archbishop of Washington, DC, while remaining silent on the Democratic nominee’s pro-abortion politics, chose this moment for a public repudiation of the only major party candidate who has been unequivocal in his support for the Right to Life, his promotion of religious liberty, and his efforts to appoint pro-life judges to the federal judiciary.

I can only ask the same question that has been on the minds of many faithful Catholics in recent weeks:

What in Hell is going on here?

+ + +

Editor’s Note: Please give some volume to this Voice in the Wilderness by sharing this post with others and on your social media. Please Subscribe to BeyondThese Stone Walls and Follow us on Facebook.

U.S. Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington and Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, look on during a news conference at the Vatican April 24, 2002. (CNS photo/Vincenzo Pinto, Reuters)

Our Bishops Have Inflicted Grave Harm on the Priesthood

Pope Francis issued 2019 guidelines for preserving a right of defense for accused priests and limits on publishing their names. Many U.S. bishops just ignored them.

Editor’s Note: The following guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald is an important sequel to his previous post, In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List.

+ + +

In the above-captioned article at These Stone Walls, I wrote about a decision of The Most Rev. Peter Libasci, Bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, to publish a list of the names of priests “credibly” accused in that state over the past fifty years. At the time the list was published in August 2019, the Bishop and Diocese issued a press release citing ‘transparency” as the reason for publishing it.

The list contained the names of 73 accused priests. More than half are deceased. Only five of the 73 ever had a case for prosecution before any New Hampshire court. None of the claims were current. Most alleged misconduct from three to five decades ago. Virtually all were brought with a financial demand that resulted in a monetary settlement from the diocese.

Bishop Peter Libasci’s published list was generated, not by any semblance of due process, but rather by a one-sided grand jury investigation of the diocese launched in 2002. That investigation treated all claims in civil lawsuits and other demands for settlement as demonstrably true with no standard of evidence whatsoever.

Bishop Libasci’s press release revealed that the claims against all 73 priests were determined to be “credible.” This is a standard that the United States bishops adopted at their Dallas meeting in 2002. “Credible,” as the bishops are applying it, means only “possible.” If it could have happened, it’s credible.

A 2003 grand jury investigation of the Diocese was the source for the recently published list. In that investigation, none of the accused — the few who were still living, anyway — were permitted to appear to offer any defense. That is the nature of a grand jury investigation. It is a strictly prosecutorial affair that is supposed to determine whether indictments and trials should follow. None of the subjects on Bishop Libasci’s list were indicted after the 2003 grand jury report became public.

My article cited above was followed by a related and stunning article by Fr. Gordon MacRae, one of the priests whose name appears on the bishop’s list. His category was unique on the list. It was simply, “convicted.” It was published without nuance by a diocese whose previous bishop told others in secret that he knows Father MacRae to be innocent and unjustly imprisoned. “Transparency,” however, has its limits.

Father MacRae’s article is “A Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester.” Amazingly, from reports I have seen generated by These Stone Walls, the article was heavily read around the world, most notably in Washington D.C., at the Holy See, and throughout Rome. In New Hampshire, it was the most-read article of the year at These Stone Walls.

My article, “In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List,” focused on injustices behind the scenes in a decision of the Bishop and Diocese to publish that list anew. Father MacRae’s remarkable sequel contrasts the 2003 grand jury investigation of his Diocese with a similar 2018 investigation of a nationally known Concord, New Hampshire academy, St. Paul’s School, with historic ties to the Episcopal church. Fr. MacRae brought to light a judicial ruling that publishing these grand jury reports — and by extension the Bishop’s list of names — is actually forbidden under New Hampshire law.

Grave Injustice in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State

Father MacRae’s article revealed a grave injustice in the Diocese of Manchester and multiple other U.S. dioceses. Fifteen years after the Diocese and Attorney General signed a deal in secret to publish a grand jury report in 2003, New Hampshire Superior Court Judge Richard McNamara ruled that the report, and one involving a 2018 St Paul’s School grand jury investigation, cannot legally be published.

New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon MacDonald pressed to allow publication of the St. Paul’s School report. He cited the 2003 Diocese of Manchester precedent in which a report and files were published — the source for the names on Bishop Libasci’s list.

Father MacRae revealed that in 2003, the current N.H. Attorney General was part of a legal team representing the Diocese when release of the report was agreed upon in secret. It was the Attorney General’s citing the precedent that triggered Judge McNamara’s 23-page Order dated August 12, 2019, ten days after Bishop Libasci published his list.

Given the various one-sided grand jury investigations of Catholic dioceses across the U.S., Judge McNamara’s Court Order should give Catholics pause. The judicial findings summarized below cast doubt on the U.S. bishops’ collective decisions to publish lists of names arising from grand jury investigations:

• The OAG [Office of the Attorney General] argues that a common law precedent for such a report does in fact exist because the Hillsborough County [NH] Superior Court [in 2003] authorized an agreement between the OAG and the Diocese of Manchester to waive the secrecy of a grand jury investigation …

• The Hillsborough County Superior Court endorsed the Diocese-OAG Agreement without explanation and without any written Order. This Court respectfully disagrees with the decision to approve the Diocese-OAG Agreement [in 2003].

• The Diocese-OAG Agreement fulfilled none of the traditional purposes of the common law grand jury.

• The Court cannot find that the use of grand jury materials and the breach of grand jury secrecy in order to prepare a report is a practice authorized by New Hampshire common law.

• Rather than investigation of crime, the report is a post hoc summary of information the grand jury considered, but did not indict on. It did not protect the privacy interests of those witnesses and subjects that were never charged with a crime by the grand jury.

• The deficiency of the Diocese-OAG Agreement is cast in bold relief by [a] December 2018 decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Pennsylvania has a statute that specifically authorizes investigative grand juries and investigative reports. However, as in most states, the statute contains statutory procedures to provide individuals with due process protections for their reputational rights … the petitioners were entitled to have a report published with redactions of their names in order to protect their right to reputation. [emphasis added]

• A grand jury is not an adversary hearing in which guilt or innocence is established. Rather, it is an ex parte investigation to determine whether a crime has been committed and whether criminal proceedings should be instituted against any person.

• Grand jury testimony can involve all sorts of false, damaging, and one-sided information and New Hampshire has no historical or legal basis for releasing such information.

• An allegation of wrongdoing or impropriety, based on half-truths, illegally seized evidence, or rumor, innuendo or hearsay may blight a person’s life indefinitely.

• Mark Twain famously said that a lie is half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. In an internet age, he might have added that the lie will forever outrun the truth as search engines become more efficient.

• Accordingly, the Court DENIES the OAG Motion to Produce and Disclose. The OAG may not produce any report that contains any material characterized as a “Grand Jury Report.”

[Source Order of Judge Richard B. McNamara In Re: Grand Jury No. 217-2018-CV-00382, August 12, 2019.]

Now Comes the Pope

The Court Order should have applied to the Bishop of Manchester as well. He took it upon himself to do what the law forbids the State to do: to prosecute and convict in the public square those who were not indicted, were not tried or convicted, but were merely accused. I find it a disturbing coincidence that Bishop Peter Libasci’s decision to publish a list of the names of 73 accused priests — the vast majority of whom are merely accused — took place just days before the Order by Judge McNamara was issued.

This is ironic, at best, and at worst highly suspect. Had the Order preceded the release of names, the priests involved — those still living, anyway — may have had legal standing to challenge it. But this all pales next to published guidelines of another authority the bishops should be heeding.

On November 12, 2019, Archbishop Christoph Pierre, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, addressed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, D.C. His address emphasized that “The pastoral thrust of this pontificate must reach the American people.” The bishops can fulfill this, he said, with “tangible signs of their communion with the Holy Father.”

Among the “pastoral thrusts” of the pontificate of Pope Francis that might require communion with his bishops was a February 21, 2019 issuance of a set of guidelines that bishops should follow on how allegations of sexual abuse by priests are to be handled. The list included 21 points that Pope Francis asked the bishops to observe. Point Number 14 is as follows:

“The right to defense: the principle of natural and canon law of a presumption of innocence must also be safeguarded until the guilt of the accused is proven. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the lists of the accused being published, even by dioceses, before the preliminary investigation and a definitive condemnation.”

— Guidelines of Pope Francis, February 19, 2019

Rev. Msgr. Thomas G. Guarino, Professor of Systematic Theology and a prolific author, has published what I consider to be a landmark article entitled “The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter (First Things, October 2, 2019). Father Guarino characterized the 2002 Dallas Charter — the operable document under which accused priests are removed from all ministry:

“The harried bishops, with their Dallas Charter of 2002… passed Draconian norms that come close to venturing beyond Catholic teaching. The American bishops decreed ‘zero tolerance’ for priests accused of sexual abuse, a norm that, as Cardinal Avery Dulles acknowledged in 2002, violates equitable treatment for priests. Dulles added, ‘Having been so severely criticized for exercising poor judgment in the past, the bishops apparently wanted to avoid making any judgments in these cases’”

Father Guarino’s article points out that Pope Francis has been reluctant to invoke the term “zero-tolerance.”  The Wall Street Journal  reported that of the twenty countries in the world with the largest Catholic populations, only the Bishops of the United States have invoked a policy of “zero tolerance.”

In 2000, the U.S. bishops issued a pastoral document critical of the American criminal justice system. The bishops rejected terms such as “zero tolerance” and “three-strikes” in the application of punishments in the criminal justice system. They urged lawmakers to focus on rehabilitation and restorative justice while imposing sentences.

But two years later, at Dallas in 2002, under the harsh glare of the news media and victim advocates such as S.N.A.P. (who were directly invited by the bishops) the U.S. bishops inflicted the same panic-driven one-size-fits-all policy on their priests that they asked the justice system NOT to inflict on all other U.S. citizens. Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote in rebuttal in 2004:

“The Church must protect the community from harm, but it must also protect the human rights of each individual who may face an accusation… Some of the measures adopted [at Dallas] went far beyond the protection of children… [Bishops] undermined the morale of their priests and inflicted a serious blow to the credibility of the Church as a mirror of justice.”

— Avery Cardinal Dulles, “The Rights of Accused Priests,” America 2004

The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter

As Father Gordon MacRae exposed in “A Grand Jury, St. Paul’s School, and the Diocese of Manchester,” the late Father Richard John Neuhaus interviewed an American prelate who was one of the unnamed principal architects of the U.S. Bishops’ Dallas Charter. Father Neuhaus quoted him in a First Things  article: “It may be necessary for some innocent priests to suffer for the good of the Church.” That prelate, according to Father MacRae, was Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

As Father Guarino points out in “The Dark Side of the Dallas Charter,” a significant problem with the Bishops’ policy is that most accused priests have not actually been found guilty of abuse. Of the 73 priests, both living and deceased, on Bishop Peter Libasci’s published list, only five ever had due process in any court of law. Three of those were by plea deals, and one, as Bishop Libasci’s predecessor has acknowledged in secret, is wrongfully convicted.

For all the other names on the Diocese of Manchester list — and for the vast majority of the hundreds of American priests who have been removed from ministry, the allegations against them were only considered “credible,” meaning only that it is possible that they happened. If any other American citizens from any walk of life were subjected to such a standard before being shamed in the public square, libel and slander lawsuits would flood the courts.

Perhaps the greatest insult to Catholics in the pews is the statement of Bishop Libasci — and other bishops who have published lists of names of the accused — that this is done for the purpose of “transparency.” I have personally attempted to review the required canonical investigations of Father MacRae that a previous official of the Diocese of Manchester insisted were carried out. I was told that these investigations are confidential.

I have requested to see the list of settlements meted out to the accusers in his case which have been called into question by The Wall Street Journal  and other interested parties. I was told that these settlements are confidential.

Father MacRae himself requested of a previous bishop, the Most Rev. John McCormack, that he be permitted to see the canonical investigation that the bishop claimed was forwarded to the Holy See. Father MacRae was reportedly told that this, too, is confidential. He was later told by another official of the Diocese that no required canonical investigation ever took place. This was before MacRae learned from a New Hampshire attorney and a PBS producer that Bishop McCormack revealed, after requesting secrecy, that “I firmly believe Father MacRae is innocent and should not be in prison.”

“Zero Tolerance” is an insult to Catholic theology and to our priests who are disenfranchised from their priesthood, and from their civil rights as citizens, on the whim of a bishop after being accused.

“Transparency,” however, is an insult to all the rest of us who have waited under shrouds of duplicity for our bishops to reflect the mirror of justice that this world needs the Church to be.

+ + +

Editor’s Note: Please share this important post with the priests and Catholic laity you know. You are also invited to Subscribe to These Stone Walls  and to Follow on Facebook some inspiring related graphic presentations of these posts.

You may learn more on the story of Catholic priests falsely accused from these relevant articles:

• In the Diocese of Manchester, Transparency and a Hit List by Ryan A. MacDonald

• The Prison of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Silence by Ryan A. MacDonald

• Bishops, Priests and Weapons of Mass Destruction by Father Stuart A. MacDonald, JCL

• The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal