Pope Francis in the Dock by Archbishop Carlo María Viganò

Described as “an atomic bomb dropped on the Roman Curia,” a former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States accused Pope Francis of covering up some Cardinal sins.

I was just sitting on my bunk in my prison cell on Sunday night, August 26, after a tiring day on multiple fronts. I went through the day without a single message on the GTL tablet I was holding. It was unusual, the calm before the storm. I spent a few minutes at night playing one of its solitaire games that I can never seem to win. Several minutes later I exited the game to find a surprise. In that brief ten minutes, l9 messages had come into my GTL inbox. Before the night was over, there were nine more.

The summer of Catholic scandal had just detonated its third and most explosive bomb, and several readers sent me alerts and commentary. Archbishop Carlo María Viganò (pro. “vee-ga-NO”), a former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, published an 11-page letter on two Catholic websites.

The published letter charged that Pope Francis, six months after assuming the papacy in 2013, revoked restrictions placed by Pope Benedict XVI on the ministry of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick when Pope Benedict learned of his history of sexual abuse of seminarians. Archbishop Viganò claims that he personally made Pope Francis aware that Cardinal McCarrick had been restricted to a life of prayer and penance, but simply ignored it.

The letter also claimed, among other charges, that Pope Francis ignored it as well, restoring Cardinal McCarrick to a position of power and influence as a papal advisor. Cardinal McCarrick, according to the letter, thus became instrumental in the naming of two other American prelates, Cardinal Joseph Tobin in Newark and Cardinal Blase Cupich in Chicago.

On the day this all exploded, it made for dismal reading long into the night. You need a scorecard to sort out the details of this three-strike story. First in the summer of Catholic scandal came revelations that Cardinal McCarrick, age 88, stands accused of groping a 16-year-old boy in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City in 1971, long before he became a bishop and then a cardinal.

The claim has been presented as both credible and substantiated, but in a post, on Beyond These Stone Walls (linked below) I described this to be a matter related more to expediency than evidence. “Credible” simply means that both McCarrick and the 16-year-old lived in New York City in 1971. “Substantiated” is another matter and, absent evidence, eyewitness testimony, or an admission of the accused — and there were none of these — it defies belief. As I have pointed out, the 16-year-old is now 63.

But this bombshell has morphed into a bigger one that is far more credible and substantiated. A barrage of sordid stories has emerged about Cardinal McCarrick engaging in a decades-long pattern of homosexual predation of seminarians and younger priests. He became notorious for this, the current disclaimers of bishops notwithstanding.

These tales, and those of his now infamous beach house were familiar to many former seminarians and priests east of the Mississippi in the 1980s and 1990s. I was one of them. Meanwhile, every bishop and fellow prelate has either feigned ignorance or kept silent. In “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix,” I speculated upon three questions:

• Who knew what and when did they know it?

• What did they do once they did know it?

• Why is this all coming up now?

The central point of that post was something that each of the polar camps seldom considers as this story heightens a debate about the moral prerequisites for priesthood:

“I have encountered another condition among many, but certainly not all, homosexual seminarians and priests. I found the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder among them to be inordinately high. Perhaps it is inordinately high in the wider ‘gay community’ as well.

I believe it is this disorder, and not simply same-sex attraction, that is the real impediment to Holy Orders. It is this that must be detected and treated as an impediment for seminary candidates. Narcissistic personality disorder is one of the most difficult personality disorders to treat and modify. One of its symptoms is the objectification of others for one’s own gratification.”

In other words, there is a developmental and psychological difference between a person who experiences same-sex attraction but remains celibate, and one who becomes a predator. Behaviors such as stalking and grooming are inherently narcissistic.

But before anyone launches a Catholic witch hunt, narcissism is a pathology not at all related to sexual orientation, although I and others have cited a higher presence of narcissistic behavior among homosexual men than heterosexual men. This was supported in a subsequent article by Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons, MD, on LifeSiteNews.

I did not intend to analyze Cardinal McCarrick in the above post, but if the behaviors with seminarians now attributed to him are true, then one could legitimately conclude that he became a manipulative, narcissistic predator. Some of what Archbishop Viganò now alleges in his 11-page bombshell letter lends credibility to this. He wrote that McCarrick was privately disciplined for these behaviors by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009, but the Cardinal “openly flouted the papal sanctions.”

The Second Bombshell: Pennsylvania

The news media, for the most part, looked the other way during the Cardinal McCarrick bombshell, and the reasons for that were political. I examined them in “The McCarrick Report and the Silence of the Sacrificial Lambs.” Then another bomb dropped, this time in Pennsylvania but with reverberations across the country and around the world.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro published a Grand Jury report that exposed 300 Pennsylvania priests accused of sexually abusing 1,000 victims over a period of seventy years. Nothing in this report is new, some of it is untrue, and much of it is politically motivated. I wrote about this report in detail in “Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Joseph Goebbels In ‘The Reckoning’.”

I think I speak for many conscientious Catholics when I say that we have grown tired of upwardly mobile political careerists like AG Shapiro who allude that questioning claimants or asking for evidence “re-victimizes the victims.” Claims in the Pennsylvania report date back as far as World War II and most of the priests accused are long deceased. Many others who are still living were denied any opportunity to defend themselves. There are serious flaws, and multiple injustices, associated with this report. (Note: In the elections of November 2022, Josh Shapiro was elected Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania.)

The news media that ignored or minimized the Cardinal McCarrick story pounced on the Pennsylvania story ignoring its many flaws, lack of due process and substantiation, and the fact that it was a grotesque abuse of the grand jury system. It served a purpose for the leftist media by momentarily moving the spotlight back onto the moral panic about child abuse and off a politically less desirable truth: that homosexual predatory behavior has been the real ground-zero of the crisis.

That crisis is manifested in a 50-year history of narcissistic homosexual inclination and behavior among a significant number of seminarians, priests, and bishops. And according to Archbishop Viganò’s published letter, it is a reality with tentacles that have reached deeply into Vatican affairs.

The hypocrisy it has borne along with it never ceases. In light of the third and biggest bombshell, the accusations brought by Archbishop Viganò, USCCB President Daniel Cardinal Dinardo had this to say:

“Archbishop Viganò’s letter raised questions that deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence. Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusations and the guilty may be left to repeat sins of the past.”

I agree. But with all due respect, Your Eminence, there are many accused U.S. priests who deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence. Innocent men have been tainted — imprisoned even — by false accusations, and Cardinal McCarrick is evidence that some of the apparently guilty have been left to repeat the sins of the past. The U.S. Bishops’ Dallas Charter applied only to priests while exempting bishops.

The “Atomic Bomb” and Its Fallout

Now, with the revelations of Archbishop Carlo María Viganò, it seems that some who feigned shock over Cardinal McCarrick already knew, and had known for years, about his history of luring seminarians into a homosexual Catholic subculture of predation, compromise, and secrecy.

Archbishop Viganò’s document alleges that he personally informed Pope Francis of the above in Rome shortly after the conclave of 2013. Without apparent consultation with Pope Emeritus Benedict, Pope Francis met with McCarrick, appeared to revoke the canonical sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict, and restored Cardinal McCarrick to a position of power and influence. The media coverage of this story has been amazing. A lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal (“Pope Francis in the Dock,” August 29, 2018) chided the left for downplaying the story:

“The archbishop’s charges have split the Catholic community. Some defend [Acb. Viganò’s] reputation for honesty and professionalism while others suggest he is motivated by dislike for Pope Francis. Some secular defenders who like the pope’s politics, and are stalwarts of the #MeToo movement, want to excuse the episode… But motives are irrelevant here, or at least should be. The question is whether the archbishop’s claims are true.”

In an op-ed in The New York Times (“A Catholic Civil War?” August 27, 2018) First Things senior editor Matthew Schmitz described the fallout of the bombs of the summer of 2018 and Archbishop Viganò’s letter to be evidence of our polar ideologies:

“No matter what Francis does now, the Catholic Church has been plunged into all-out civil war. On one side are the traditionalists, who insist that abuse can be prevented only by tighter adherence to church doctrine. On the other side are liberals, who demand that the church cease condemning homosexual acts and allow gay priests to step out of the closet.”

I do not at all agree with this assessment of the state of affairs in the Holy See. This is not a matter of simple polarity, but of truth. Getting at that truth is something owed to the Church. How best to do this is the next big question. Some more conservative commentators have cast a series of doubts about the integrity of Pope Francis in the light of what is presently alleged. Others on the left attack Viganò.

Those in the media, often of a more liberal mindset, have suggested that Archbishop Viganò should be treated with a degree of skepticism. John Allen, formerly Rome Correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter and presently president of Crux Catholic Media wrote that “The proper attitude is to take [the Viganò letter] seriously but with a large grain of salt [and] healthy skepticism.”

Mr. Allen cited as a reason for “healthy skepticism” Archbishop Viganò’s “unsubstantiated” accusations against other church leaders in the same document, and the Archbishop’s history as an emphatic critic of the pope’s liberal views on divorce and homosexuality. The Rev. Robert Imbelli, emeritus professor of theology at Boston College — in the epicenter of the 2002 abuse scandal — suggested that the pope “leaves it to journalists and their professional competence to evaluate the truth.”

I am sorry, but “journalists and their professional competence” may seem a cruel joke to anyone who has been victimized by the news media’s total lack of John Allen’s “healthy skepticism” when it comes to coverage — and the most basic truth-telling — about Catholic scandal. For the best commentary on the media’s lack of “healthy skepticism” see JoAnn Wypijewski’s courageous media comeuppance: “Spotlight Oscar Hangover: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film.”

Vigano: Impeccable Integrity or Caped Crusader?

Despite some of the aspersions against his integrity and motives, any honest assessment of Archbishop Viganò’s Vatican-based career can lead to only one conclusion. He has been a servant of the Church of the highest caliber, exhibiting moral fortitude and integrity — sometimes at great cost to himself.

In 2012, the Vatican’s most powerful powerbroker under Pope Benedict XVI, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, engineered a plot to move Acb. Viganò out of Rome. He was transferred against his will from his position as Deputy Governor of Vatican City to a post as Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, a position that Viganò interpreted as “exile.”

America is not normally considered a place of exile, but it’s easy to understand why Viganò saw it that way. His reforms in the financial structure of Vatican City halted the scourge of nepotism and corruption. His department went from a 10 million Euro Debt to a 30 million Euro surplus in one year. He ended corrupt contracts and replaced them with legitimate ones. In the ordinary course, this would be a good reason to keep him around.

So his “exile” was perplexing. His letter of appeal to Pope Benedict was never answered when he was sent to Washington DC. It was from this move that Acb. Viganò was unwittingly placed in a position between the affairs of Rome and the Archdiocese of Washington where, he says, Cardinal Donald Wuerl also became keenly aware of censures placed on Cardinal McCarrick by Pope Benedict, but chose not to enforce them. Cardinal Wuerl denies this, a position that grows weaker by the day.

This is not the last word. Without doubt, there is more to come. Until it does, I am a loyal and steadfast supporter of the pope until clear evidence loosens that knot. Nonetheless, every visible and credible source measures Archbishop Carlo María Viganò as a man of great integrity and courage. We would all be fools not to listen.

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Editor’s Note: This article and others like it can be found in our “Inside the Vatican” category in the BTSW Public Library. Please share this important post. And please consider these other related posts from Father Gordon MacRae and Beyond These Stone Walls:

• Pope Francis in a Time of Heresy

• The Chief Priests Answered: “We Have No King But Caesar”

• Pope Francis Suppresses the Prayers of the Faithful

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

A claim that the former Archbishop of Washington, DC sexually assaulted a New York 16-year-old in 1971 is weighed against a broader spectrum of homosexual behaviors.

Now that President Donald Trump has nominated Brett Kavanaugh, a respected Constitutional scholar and devout Catholic to the U.S. Supreme Court, we can expect some anti-Catholic rhetoric in months to come. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed about one of the other finalists (“Inside Amy Coney Barrett’s Cult,” WSJ, July 7, 2018), I wrote this comment for the WSJ Online edition:

“The greatest tragedy to befall the Catholic Church in America was to accommodate itself too much to the culture in which it lives. Its leaders became comfortable in America, then amassed power, and then tried to hide the corruption that always accompanies the need to retain power. But the humbling of Catholic leaders has run its course, and now, from the bottom of pop culture popularity, it is time to come back swinging.

Imagine the outcries if Islamic or Jewish nominees to the Supreme Court were publicly discredited by Senator Dianne Feinstein for actually living and believing the faith they profess. It is time for Catholic leaders to reconnect with their spines. This disdain for authentic Catholicism in America was brought to the fore when “Wikileaks Found Catholics in the Basket of Deplorables.”

It was premature of me to write, “But the humbling of Catholic leaders has run its course….”  Immediately after I wrote it, news surfaced that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, DC, was accused in what is described as a “credible and substantiated” claim of sexual abuse of a 16-year-old male.

My first thought was, “How can I possibly write about this?” How can I not write about it? This story has been the elephant in the sacristy for weeks. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, age 88, has been accused of groping a 16-year-old boy in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City when he was a priest in that archdiocese in 1971, long before he became a bishop.

But before anyone recoils in horror, the story needs a dose of perspective. I tried to bring some of that perspective in a comment on “McCarrick Accused,” a news story by Joan Frawley Desmond, a Senior Editor for the National Catholic Register.

The Register article raised many questions about who knew what and when in ‘the Cardinal McCarrick story, including whether his alleged homosexual predation was known to Pope John Paul II before McCarrick was appointed Archbishop of Washington and elevated to Cardinal. Here is my comment on that article:

“There can be no transparency on this topic as long as its cast of characters continues to wield the sex abuse story as a weapon in support of varying agendas. I have several issues with this story:

1) It is nearly a half-century old. Does anyone wonder why it surfaces only now just as a new conservative nominee to the Supreme Court is about to be named? What better way to stifle a Catholic voice than a renewed sex abuse scandal?

2) I was a first-year seminarian forty years ago and heard many stories about the homosexual exploits of then Bishop McCarrick. The stories were not passed around by seminarians who saw themselves as victims, but by young gay men who boasted of currying narcissistic favor with a bishop. I knew decades ago that Cardinal McCarrick had been strongly advised by the Apostolic Nuncio to sell his scandalous beach house.

3) There is no reason at all to believe that Pope John Paul II knew about any of this before elevating McCarrick to Cardinal Archbishop of Washington. The U.S. bishops treated this story with a wink and a nod for years and had each others’ backs.

4) What makes this newest claim of a minor “credible and substantiated?” He is not 16. He is 63, and McCarrick denies it. By what magic is this 47-year-old claim of groping “substantiated?”

5) And lastly, the BIG question: Why would American Catholic leaders go to such extreme lengths for so long to shield homosexual priests from being implicated in The Scandal? It is a monument to the power of reaction formation [a classic Freudian defense mechanism] when an entire institution prefers the term “pedophile scandal” to “homosexual scandal” even when the facts say otherwise.”

— Fr Gordon J. MacRae, NC Register

The Mirror of Justice Cracked

One of the many stinging rebukes of both Cardinal McCarrick and the American church coming out of this story was by Anthony Esolan in “Vesting in Lavender,” a blog post for The Catholic Thing. Professor Esolan wrote:

“And now this, about Cardinal McCarrick. The cardinal, choosing his words precisely, says he has no memory of ever having engaged in the sexual abuse of the erstwhile young man [who happens to be 63] who is now accusing him…

The cardinal has cautiously denied one sin, while not bothering to address the thousand others. For all these years, according to witnesses at last speaking out, he has been vesting in lavender, compromising young men in his charge… He has pointedly not said, ‘I have never had sexual relations with a seminarian or a priest.’”

Apologies to Anthony Esolan whom I much respect, but all I could think of when reading this was President Bill Clinton’s famous obfuscation, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!”  (referring to Monica Lewinski), and his later, more measured response, “It depends on what you mean by sex.”

We, too, must choose our words carefully. A man accused of a crime — like the sexual abuse of a 16-year-old — must be judged on the evidence of the crime and not on his reputation. This is why our legal system has so-called “rape shield laws.” A woman who is a victim of assault is protected from having her sexual history placed on trial. The same must be true of a defendant.

Cardinal McCarrick will not be a defendant in this story. There will be no trial of facts because American criminal law does not allow for one 47 years after such an offense was alleged to have happened. But there will be a canonical procedure because “prescription,” canon law’s version of a statute of limitations, was dispensed with after the U.S. Bishops’ “Dallas Charter.”

It’s ironic that Cardinal McCarrick was one of the Dallas Charter’s main proponents pushing it through. “Zero tolerance” and the due process rights that the Charter has so severely eroded for a multitude of accused priests will now also apply to Cardinal McCarrick. We learned a lot about the flaws in that process in Father Stuart MacDonald’s recent very popular post, “Last Rights: Canon Law in a Mirror of Justice Cracked.”

Nonetheless, Cardinal McCarrick should still be due the rights that have been denied to others. One canon lawyer who read my comment in the Register sent me a message thanking me for it adding, “Your point number four should be shouted from the rooftops again and again.” Let me reiterate point number four:

“What makes this newest claim of a minor ‘credible and substantiated?’ He is not 16. He is 63, and McCarrick denies it. By what magic is this 47-year-old claim of groping ‘substantiated?’”

I do not think that we should be so quick to accept that this is “credible and substantiated” as claimed. The 197l claim surfaced for the first time only after the Archdiocese of New York announced the existence of a fund to compensate victims of sexual abuse related to the ministry of the Archdiocese. There was a time when possible financial motives for bringing such claims were examined in a critical light.

The person who brought this claim — after waiting 47 years — is not 16 years old. He is 63. Additionally, the claim is unlike every other claim of homosexual misconduct now alleged against Cardinal McCarrick. This claim alleges force and a story that the unnamed victim had to “fight off” an alleged second assault in the sacristy of one of the busiest cathedrals on the planet.

It is also important to understand what the bishops and their Dallas Charter now mean by “credible.” It is not nearly the same “reasonable doubt” standard that should (but isn’t always) be present in a criminal trial. “Credible” simply means that it cannot immediately be disproven. If the young man lived in NYC at age 16 and did attend a specific Catholic school, then the claims could have happened. “Credible” means no more than that.

“Substantiated” is a very different standard. It requires (or at least should require) an admission of the accused. Cardinal McCarrick vehemently denies this claim. Or it should require the statement of a corroborating witness. If there is one, why would it take 47 years for that person to come forward? And why would the integrity of this snippet of memory be accepted at face value? This is why statutes of limitations exist in legal systems. They exist to promote justice, not defy it.

None of the above means that Cardinal McCarrick is not culpable for the much broader history now being claimed of him in light of this incident from nearly a half-century ago. My issue with this is that the claims are presented as though they have only now surfaced. These claims are not newly discovered.. There is nothing new here. For decades, McCarrick had been rumored to be involved in grooming seminarians and others, casting suspicion on his own sexuality. I will return to this in a moment.

The Homosexual Matrix

In a coming post, I plan to write about some recent statements of Pope Francis and his supposedly “progressive” views. For now, I want to point out something that he recently said that was about as counter-progressive as a pope could get. The news media played this down to the point of ignoring it, but Pope Francis has said something revolutionary about homosexuality and the priesthood.

He told the Italian bishops in May that they should not accept seminary candidates who exhibit same-sex attraction because “it could end in scandal.” It amazes me that the news media would hype Amoris laetitia and its suggestion of a dialog on reception of the Eucharist for those in an invalid marriage while keeping a media blackout about his statements on same-sex marriage and barring homosexual candidates from priesthood.

Prior to my current state in life, I served as Director of Admissions for a residential center that provided spiritual rehabilitation and psychological care for priests, brothers, and seminarians. The facility and its sponsoring religious order, the Servants of the Paraclete, were a profound source of good in the lives of many wounded priests.

I hope it no longer comes as a shock that there are indeed Catholic priests who have experienced same-sex attraction. Along with other conditions with the potential to compromise ministry and fidelity to priesthood, many of them had come to face this openly, and for the first time in their lives, under the care of the Servants of the Paraclete.

No one in that setting promoted homosexuality. No one condoned it. There was no “wink and nod” or looking the other way. Fidelity to the Church’s teaching was upheld and embraced while also embracing the human realities and limits we all face and cope with. Our shared inability to live an ideal is never an excuse for disposing of the ideal.

I think most Catholics are beyond feeling scandalized by the mere existence of same-sex attraction in the life of a priest. I remember being told by one priest that he could not bear the shock of others in his life learning of this. I told him that the real shock may be his revelation to them that he thought they did not already know.

For many of these men, this aspect of themselves existed only in the internal forum, wrestled with by their consciences but not involving what anyone could call a “lifestyle.” Many of these priests sought out spiritual and psychological support to address this because of their fidelity, not in spite of it.

What we tried to convey, and helped them to apply, was their responsibility for discerning and maintaining the boundaries — physical, psychological, and spiritual — between having such an attraction and acting upon it. It was my position, and a well-received one, that heterosexual priests had to discern and maintain those very same boundaries. Celibacy and other requirements of priesthood are not dispensable options.

Some priests and seminarians struggle with same-sex attraction, and those who are spiritually strengthened by their own struggle can be fine priests who live celibate lives with accountability and transparency. But I have also encountered another condition among many — but certainly not all — homosexual seminarians and priests. I found the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder among them to be inordinately high. Perhaps it is inordinately high in the wider “gay community” as well.

I believe it is this disorder, and not simply same-sex attraction, that is the real impediment to Holy Orders. It is this that must be detected and treated as an impediment for seminary candidates. Narcissistic personality disorder is one of the most difficult personality disorders to treat and modify. One of its symptoms is the objectification of others for one’s own gratification.

Narcissistic personality disorder is manifested in a tendency to be grandiose and exhibit inflated self-importance. It is manifested in a lack of genuine empathy, seeks to be exploitive, tends toward a sense of entitlement, and takes advantage of others who are objectified and groomed with no account of what might be in their best interest.

When coupled with same-sex attraction, narcissistic personality disorder creates what I call a “homosexual matrix.” In science, a matrix is “a situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained.” There are priests with same-sex attraction who struggle for and attain fidelity and equilibrium in their lives as men and as priests.

There are others, however, for whom an identity as “gay” is the core of their being. It is their matrix, and all other aspects of their lives — including priesthood — must accommodate it and become subjugated in service to it. It becomes the centerpiece of one’s identity and renders a man incapable of living the charisms of priesthood.

I do not pretend to psychoanalyze Cardinal McCarrick — and it would be a grave injustice to do so — but I remember being a seminarian in the late 1970s when he was an auxiliary bishop of New York, and in 1981 when he became Bishop of Metuchin, New Jersey. I remember the stories about him told by young men who did not present themselves as victims, but as predators in their own right. They did not present as McCarrick’s conquests, but often rather the other way around.

Some of Bishop McCarrick’s seminarians and their friends openly boasted of what they concluded was his attraction to them. They spoke of how they fostered it, were invited to his beach house, even slept in the same bed at times, but there were no stories of overt sexual predation or force until the lure of money was at the other end of the story.

I did not travel within the seminary circles that reveled in the trading of such accounts. As a seminarian, I was in a smaller circle of men who were repulsed by them. But my instinct was clear. These young men objectified themselves, measuring their own self-worth by the quality and quantity of attention from someone like Bishop McCarrick. Some went on to ordination in a state of narcissism and objectification of others.

In his “Scandal Time” series of essays in First Things in 2002, the late Father Richard John Neuhaus described the seminary climate of the time. None of this is newly discovered news:

“Today’s newspaper brings another report, this one about a seminary in the Southwest where the influence of the ‘lavender mafia’ and the consequent and predictable scandals are coming to light. ‘I have no control over the seminary,’ the bishop is reported as saying. That is simply false…

“Now there is Michael Rose’s forthcoming book, Goodbye, Good Men (2002) which I have had a chance to read… A large part of the book is based on interviews with men who were repelled by seminaries dominated by the ‘lavender mafia.’ Rose names names…”

Cardinal McCarrick was surrounded by priests and bishops who knew the path he was on, treated it with “a wink and a nod” typical of the 1970s, and did little to foster accountability. For reasons of their own, they promote an image today that these matters are coming to light for the first time. They are not.

But this is another time, and now Theodore McCarrick is stripped of his Red Hat. Hindsight is not always the best sight. Fifty years after the brave Pope Paul VI signed Humanae vitae, we should bravely face the legacy of the sexual revolution and how it has stripped many of honor, fidelity, and dignity. Hindsight does expose one glaring truth: It was, in fact, revolting.

There is more to be said of all this, but I must repeat point number five in my National Catholic Register comment above:

“And lastly, the BIG question: Why would American Catholic leaders go to such extreme lengths for so long to shield homosexual priests from being implicated in The Scandal? It is a monument to the power of reaction formation when an entire institution prefers the term “pedophile scandal” to “homosexual scandal” even when the facts say otherwise.”

Editor’s Note: Please share this important post. You may also like these related posts from Fr. Gordon MacRae at These Stone Walls:

Catholic Scandal & the Third Reich: Rise & Fall of a Moral Panic

Cardinal George Pell Is on Trial and So Is Australia

Cardinal Bernard Law on the Frontier of Civil Rights

Justice and Priests Are Both Easy Prey Without Truth

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