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The pope and the abuse crisis
Who are the falsifiers in this situation?
By Marco Tosatti
Editorial
Translated from
Sept. 14, 2018
There’s a very simple question to which an answer must be given and on which this pope’s credibility depends: Did Mons Vigano inform the pope about the McCarrick case on June 23, 2013, as Vigano claims? Millions of Catholics want to know and have a right to know.
Instead, as soon as this question is posed, the usual gang of falsifiers surrounding the pope immediately seek instead to discredit whoever asks it, ascribing ignoble motives for doing so.
“Pope Francis will meet all the presidents of bishops’ conferences around the world from February 21-24, 2019, at the Vatican, to talk about preventing abuses against minors and vulnerable adults”, Vatican News reported yesterday, quoting the deputy director of the Vatican Press Office, Paloma Garcia Ovejera, after a briefing held at the end of the 29th meeting of the pope with his Council of 9 cardinal advisers on curial reform and the governance of the Church.
Then we read an editorial in Avvenire (the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference) written by Stefania Falasca, who suggests that “in order to avoid disorientation by word counterfeiters [in Italian, falsifari della parola – which really means not just counterfeiters of words but of facts] who are assaulting the Church at this time”, it would be ‘healthy to follow the ordinary Magisterium of the Successor of Peter. The pope is not a personage. In his ordinary preaching, he does not speak in his personal capacity”.
Falasca states that “symptoms are multiplying of an evil which seems to be spreading like a crisis of collective neurasthenia, where everything becomes subject to denigration and receives a sinister interpretation to the point that it is considered normal and licit to ask for the resignation of the pope as if he were the head of a corporation or of a political party”.
‘Word counterfeiters”. While I read that phrase, I think of McCarrick, of the auxiliary bishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras [recently forced-to-retire archdiocesan vicar to Vice Pope Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga], of Boston and its notorious seminary, and of so many cases of sexual abuse and episcopal cover-ups in Chile, Germany the USA, and also Italy (even if, for now, the denunciations in Italy have so far been subdued and anonymous). In a crisis that as many have now conceded, has to do with the ‘pervasive homosexuality’ among priests and bishops, which the institutional Church has so far not addressed.
Indeed, the announcement on the February 2019 meeting at the Vatican does not mention it, nor does the pope in his letter to the Chilean bishops nor in any of his other interventions [notably his August 20 ‘Letter to the People of God’, issued six days after the release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report -a letter that the Vatican said was ‘exhaustive’ and would therefore be his ‘last word’ on the abuse issue], nor in any official Vatican statements. Why? What is it that the Bergoglio Vatican does not wish to say? Would we be malicious if we thought that there are ‘word falsifiers’ via deliberate omission in the Vatican? To over who and what?
Falasca is right – that we should follow the ordinary magisterium. But alas, the pope is also a person who, like anyone else, has a credibility that depends on the consistency between what he says and what he does.
That is why it is important for me and for millions of Catholics to know if Mons. Vigano did tell the pope on June 26, 2013, about McCarrick – what he did and what he has been doing [that violated his priestly vows and the Sixth Commandment, as well as private sanctions imposed on him by Benedict XVI for these misdeeds].
Because if Vigano is not lying, then the pope not only chose not to do anything about it - but went on to fully rehabilitate McCarrick, and followed his advice for episcopal promotions and appointments in the USA, rewarding McCarrick’s friends and proteges – then his credibility when he presides at that conference he called for February 2019 will not be what it could be if the Vatican can show that Vigano lied or was mistaken about his allegations on McCarrick.
That is why the Bergoglian defenders – who have not been shy about falsifying words and facts – are automatically in default if instead of finding out if Vigano’s claim to have informed the pope (an event that is fact not opinion) is true or not, they go on blathering instead about conspiracies, attacks on the pope, etc.
In democracies, where there is freedom of expression, one can demand that authorities account for, among other things, whether an event took place or not. [A simple straightforward question, to be answered simply by Yes or No, like the Four Dubia. Something is surely wrong if one cannot answer simple straightforward questions with a Yes or a No.]
But in totalitarian regimes, no! Any request for transparency and truth is immediately labelled as an assault on the ‘Maximum Leader’, on the ‘Father of the Nation”, on the ‘Great Helmsman’, etc. And the regime’s falsifiers immediately set out to discredit whoever dares to question, normally attributing to them any number of ignoble motives. And we have seen all of this in the current situation.
Because, leaving aside the question of a papal resignation, it is the personal and human credibility of Jorge Bergoglio, pope and 266th Successor of Peter, that is at stake. It represents a significant reality for many Catholics, and perhaps for many non-Catholics too who look up to him.
But the regime’s falsifiers have avoided to touch this point at all in their lengthy dissertations and analyses of the Vigano testimony. To which silence, however it may be adorned and prettified to justify it, does not constitute a response. An ape dressed in silk is still an ape.
Then, in some vague way, the pope’s Council of Nine advisers (only 6 present) has informed us that the Holy See is now preparing ‘eventual and necessary clarifications’ over ‘what has been happening in recent weeks’. [As I said in my first response to that announcement, there is no mention of denial or non-denial, rather of ‘clarifications’. Which is an indirect way of saying, “Yes, some of what Mons Vigano claims did take place but we need time to prepare our clarifications”. In other words, Bergoglio cannot answer the main question with a simple Yes or No. He and his defenders need more time (remember the Testimony was published August 26) to formulate their ‘clarifications’.]
Meanwhile, even some of the more exuberant denigrators of Mons. Vigano now admit that “it is evident the ex-Nuncio to the United States has cited dates and documents in his possession (or that he has seen) about which there is no reason to doubt” [They did? Who and when? I missed this!] An important admission.
So, suppose Vigano was also right about his June 26, 2013 audience with the pope? ‘Clarifications’ are central to this question, more than to any other.
Fr Z had a most interesting sidebar to the Vatican announcement that the pope will be meeting the presidents of the world's national bishops' conferences next February... I bet whoever decided on the dates for that meeting must be banging his head on a brick wall now.
Will the pope and his bishops finally acknowledge the 'H' word when they meet to discuss 'the present crisis' in a 3-day period bracketed by the dual feast days of
the author of THE BOOK OF GOMORRAH?
IRONY! Francis calls 2019 bishops' meeting
on the Feast of St. Peter Damian
Sept. 13, 2018
... Pope Francis will convoke a meeting with all the presidents of conferences of bishops across the globe to discuss the issue of the sexual abuse of minors. The meeting is scheduled for 21-24 February 2019.
The cynic in me worries that the focus here on “minors” will obfuscate the real, core issue of most of the cases of abuse and of clerical sin: homosexuality.
However, the Church’s calendar might just remind those who meet about why they are really there.
In the Novus Ordo calendar 21 February is the Feast of St. Peter Damian, Doctor of the Church. In the Traditional calendar 23 February is the Feast of St. Peter Damian.
That means that, as the meeting opens, they will begin work under the aegis of St. Peter Damian and, as they are working, those who celebrate the TLM will invoke Peter Damian. [I wonder if PF knows anything at all about Peter Damian, or at least, about his Liber Gomorrhianus?]
This great Doctor of the Church made many great contributions. However, his works that is most pertinent to The Present Crisis is the Liber Gomorrhaianus [The Book of Gomorrah, written between 1049-54. The LG is a call for reform of the clergy. LG treats the vices of clergy, especially sodomy.
Peter Damian, a zealous reformer of clergy who combated corruption such as simony, called for the removal of bishops from their sees in no uncertain terms. Regarding one such, he wrote:
Now may the multiform head of the poisonous serpent be crushed, and the commerce of perverse business come to an end. […] For unless the aforesaid church is taken away from the hand of that incestuous adulterer, perjurer and robber, all the hope of the restoration of the world that has been raised among the peoples will be completely drained. Indeed, all turn their eyes to this purpose, all raise their ears to this one voice. And if that bishop, implicated in so many crimes, is restored to the height of the episcopacy, the Apostolic See will be utterly unable to do any further good.
[Very uncanny! Across two centuries, a Doctor of the Church is saying words that apply to the 'PRESENT CRISIS' in the Church and to her pastors today, including the Bishop of Rome.]
It was a turbulent time of anti-popes. Eventually one of history’s greatest clergy-reforming Popes would in 1049 emerge from the rubble, Bruno von Egisheim, Pope St. Leo IX (all the more reason for the next pontiff to be called “Leo”). It is to Leo that Peter Damian addressed the LG.
The Doctor wrote about this most evil of corrupting vices, the “cancer of sodomitic impurity”, with horrible clarity. He addressed contraception, masturbation, same-sex pederasty and adult homosexual acts, noting that the Church had penalties for them.
Peter Damian said that punishments should be greater for clergy and that the most severe should be applied to clerics who abused children and adolescents: public beatings, imprisonment for months in chains with fasting three days a week till sundown with confinement of monasteries under guard.
While he denounces homosexual acts in stark terms he also writes about his compassion for the sinners and prays for their repentance.
Leo IX praised St. Peter Damian lavishly for the LG.
It is a fact of our human experience that whisteblowers will eventually be attacked and smeared. So too was it with Peter Damian. Detractors denounced him to Leo. However, a later Pope eventually made Peter Damian a cardinal and entrusted him with great duties. He was the Cardinal Bishop of Ostia and Velletri from 1060–1072.
The Doctor strongly admonished Popes and Bishops who failed in their duties. In 1059 he denounced cover-ups and wrote with a warning about divine punishment to Nicholas II about unchaste bishops: “What worse thing can one do than to spare lustful bishops when he has the power to correct them?”
In the time that intervenes between now and the February 2019 meeting, we might keep the figure of St. Peter Damian before the eyes of those who will participate.
My addendum: From Benedict XVI's catechesis on St Peter Damian on Sept. 9, 2009:
The ideal image of "Holy Church" illustrated by Peter Damian does not correspond as he knew well to the reality of his time. For this reason he did not fear to denounce the state of corruption that existed in the monasteries and among the clergy, because, above all, of the practice of the conferral by the lay authorities of ecclesiastical offices; various Bishops and Abbots were behaving as the rulers of their subjects rather than as pastors of souls. Their moral life frequently left much to be desired.
For this reason, in 105, Peter Damian left his monastery with great reluctance and sorrow and accepted, if unwillingly, his appointment as Cardinal Bishop of Ostia. So it was that he entered fully into collaboration with the Popes in the difficult task of Church reform. He saw that to make his own contribution of helping in the work of the Church's renewal contemplation did not suffice. He thus relinquished the beauty of the hermitage and courageously undertook numerous journeys and missions.
Just to help you keep track of THE PRESENT CRISIS as it continues to metastasize:
A week of controversy, resignations, rumors, meetings — and mirth?
Recapping the dizzying array of stories since Monday, in Rome and elsewhere
by Christopher R. Altieri
September 13, 2018
It has been a doozy of a week in the news out of — and into — Rome, and it isn’t even over. Let’s recap the dizzying array of stories since Monday (many of which have ties to older, long-percolating and still-developing ones):
o Announcements of “unprecedented” meetings; promises of responses from underlings to accusations touching the person of the Holy Father, personal reply to which the Holy Father has deemed beneath his dignity;
o Oblique reference in extemporaneous remarks at morning Mass, to the current circumstances in the Church — a * series * of * remarks *, actually, given on each day the Pope has celebrated Mass (quasi-)publicly in the chapel of the Domus — in which he returns with a regularity one could fairly describe as systematic, to the idea that public accusation of wrongdoing — specifically episcopal wrongdoing — is the work of the devil in collaboration with worldly “elites”, undertaken in order to scandalize “the people” whose default disposition is to “love” their bishops, but who may become accomplices of the devil if they are riled up;
o A leaked document out of Germany, detailing thousands of cases of abuse by clerics over several decades;
o The release of a heavily edited and oft-interpolated transcript of a weeks-old private encounter with Irish Jesuits, in which the Pope admits he did not believe the accusations of clerical and episcopal malfeasance that reached him from Chile, until he had seen them documented by a trusty cleric — an admission that quite possibly gives the lie to his January protestations of ignorance — “You, with goodwill, tell me: there are victims [of Bishop Barros, or of the alleged coverup of Bishop Barros],” he told reporters en route to Rome from Perú in January. “But I have not seen them because they have not come to me,” he continued, in an extension that now forces upon us the question, “Which is it?” — and an assertion that the real problem is “elitism” in the Church — an assertion which, because of the timing of the thing, could appear to mitigate his statements at Mass this week, but actually aggravate the already awful character of his position when read chronologically;
o The announcement that the embattled Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, DC — who was shocked — shocked! — to learn his predecessor, Theodore Edgar “Uncle Ted” McCarrick, had sexually assaulted children, and in more than three decades had never heard a whisper of his other perverse proclivities (though nearly everyone except Wuerl and the other leading members of the US hierarchy apparently had), will travel to Rome “in the near future” to convince the pope to accept his resignation, which has been sitting on the pope’s desk for three years;
o The forced resignation of a 57-year-old Brazilian bishop in connection with his arrest — in March of this year — on charges of embezzlement to the tune of more than $600,000;
o Confirmation — after whispers in the Italian press — of a months-old, papally-ordered investigation into financial irregularity at the Sistine Chapel Choir;
o The resignation, five days after he was required to submit his resignation for limits of age, of one US bishop with a reputation for luxury and perverse lasciviousness — Michael J. Bransfield of Wheeling-Charleston (emeritus) — and the announcement of an ecclesiastical investigation into allegations against Bransfield of sexual misconduct with adults (the Archdiocese of Baltimore, which has the Diocese of Wheeling Charleston in ecclesiastical receivership on Papal mandate, informs CWR that the inquest will be “lay-led” — oh, and there is a hotline: 1-833-272-4225).
That, in roughly chronological order, gets us to about noon on Thursday, September 13th, 2018 — the hour at which a meeting of Pope Francis and the leadership of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was scheduled to begin. It’s been rough going for those men, too:
o USCCB President, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston (news broke Wednesday of a seriously mishandled clerical abuse case in his diocese, and partly on his watch);
o USCCB Vice-President José Gomez of Los Angeles (who tried to keep his negligent predecessor, Cardinal Roger Mahony, out of public ministry, but couldn’t, because only the Pope can discipline cardinals);
o USCCB General Secretary, Msgr. Brian Bransfield of Philadelphia (apparently a relative of the emeritus bishop of Wheeling-Charleston). [Thanks for the clarification. I must go back and correct the post that featured the photo of the pope's meeting with the USCCB delegation. I am re-posting the photo below with the corrected caption.]
Cardinal DiNardo, Archbishop Gomez, and Msgr. Bransfield were joined by the President of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap., of Boston:
o Cardinal O’Malley has promised to do better, after admitting he ignored a 2015 letter from Fr. Boniface Ramsey, OP, regarding McCarrick, but still has not explained what happened to another 2015 letter from victim-advocate Juan Carlos Cruz,
Cruz’s letter detailed the abuse he suffered at the hands of the disgraced Chilean former celebrity priest, Fernando Karadima, and explained the roles of Cardinals Francisco Errazuriz and Ricardo Ezzati of Santiago de Chile, and the former bishop of Osorno, Juan Barros — one of Karadima’s protégés — in the coverup of Karadima’s predations, a coverup in which other reports also implicated the apostolic nuncio to Chile, Archbishop Ivo Scapolo.
A statement from the USCCB described the meeting with the pope as “lengthy, fruitful and good,” but offered no details and strongly suggested no decisions had been taken. “We look forward to actively continuing our discernment together,” the statement said, “identifying the most effective next steps.”
The USCCB statement also said Francis “listened very deeply, from the heart.” Apparently, Francis could not bring himself to authorize an investigation into the role in the Church of the man, Theodore McCarrick, who is credibly alleged — quite apart from the “testimony” of the former nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — to have corrupted and abused seminarians and priests, and raped children — and who cannot be trusted not to have agents and sympathizers within the US Church hierarchy and clerical ranks.
The now-embattled USCCB president, Cardinal DiNardo, called for a Vatican investigation into the McCarrick debacle — and presumably into related questions — on August 16th, and repeated his call on August 27th, in concert with the Executive Committee of the Conference. In both statements, Cardinal DiNardo announced his intention to bring the issues to the Holy Father, in person. The Vatican only announced the pope’s meeting with the USCCB leadership two days ago.
The Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, however, did release this photograph, which was taken at the meeting:
[Really? Did the OR release it too? I thought it was just a doozy of a Zenit whopper! If the OR did, I am absolutely dumbstruck.]
OK, the bishops meeting with the pope are Archbishop Gomez of LA, USCCB vice-president; Cardinal Di Nardo of Galveston-Houston, USCCB president; Cardinal Sean O'Malley of
Boston and the Bergoglio Vatican's pointman on all matters related to sexual abuse of minors; and Mons. Brian Bransfield, USCCB secretary-general, not, as previously
captioned, the recently-retired bishop of Wheeler-Charleston.
One ought to be glad they’re all able to see the lighter side of all this, even if the mirth eludes the rest of us.
Another summary of PRESENT CRISIS developments, with a Washington perspective:
All roads lead to Washington, D.C.
by Kenneth Wolfe
Sept. 14, 2018
For those interested in the latest news, we bring you our summary:
1) Bishop Michael Bransfield resigned and the resignation was accepted. Bransfield served for 24 years at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., most of the time as rector. He was then ordained a bishop, choosing Theodore McCarrick as co-consecrator.
2) Archbishop William Lori, who ran the Archdiocese of Washington (D.C.) throughout the 1990s (holding several high-level positions, including moderator of the curia and auxiliary bishop), will investigate allegations against Bishop Bransfield. During Bransfield's time at the D.C. basilica shrine, Lori had oversight over Bransfield. (For instance, the Washington chancery instructs which bishops -- and even cardinals -- are banned from offering sacraments at the basilica shrine, a practice that still continues).
3) All this follows the scandal of Theodore McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, who handpicked his successor in D.C., Donald Wuerl. The two men were the leaders of the movement to give Communion to politicians who openly dissent from Church teachings.
4) Cardinal Donald Wuerl has announced he will be going to the Vatican to discuss his resignation, which implies it will soon be accepted by Pope Francis. Not mentioned yet is Wuerl's membership on the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops, where Pope Francis chose him to replace Cardinal Raymond Burke just nine months into this papacy. Two Americans sit on the extremely prestigious congregation that selects all new bishops -- Cardinal Blase Cupich being the other.
5) The replacement for Cardinal Wuerl will be the next piece in this saga. It is presumed, given his Congregation for Bishops post, Cardinal Wuerl has handpicked his successor.
6) Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, based in Washington, D.C., is himself facing allegations of a priestly transfer and cover-up in his archdiocese.
7) Cardinal DiNardo and three other U.S. Church leaders held a meeting with Pope Francis today to discuss the scandals. As the Associated Press smartly observed regarding the four American representatives: "Among the four was (Bishop) Bransfield's cousin, Monsignor Brian Bransfield, secretary-general of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."
8) Pope Francis is convening a group of bishops in February to investigate themselves.
The Archdiocese of Washington has, for several years, been a center-left jurisdiction controlled by a tightly connected mafia. Cross the middle to go to the left, like Jesuits in Georgetown, and you are tolerated until Rome speaks. Cross the middle to go to the right as a priest and you are suspended, transferred, removed, retired or even sent out of the country.
Many of the pastors of large parishes have been priest-secretaries to the archbishops or otherwise extremely loyal to whichever cardinal is in charge, despite the open-secret atrocities committed we now know about. This will continue, even under a new archbishop in Washington, unless a massive housecleaning is accomplished, from the chancery on down.
As one who was denied a job several years ago in the Archdiocese of Washington chancery (Deo gratias!), after successful interviews and high-level recommendations, explicitly as a result of a code of mafia-like trust that could not be counted on, this writer guarantees nothing will change until all levels of staff -- priests and laymen -- are, at best, re-examined or, at worst, removed. Otherwise the mafia, with its secrecy and cover-ups, will simply continue under new leadership.
And an analysis of where we are at this point, with the writer playing devil's advocate to help clarify opposing positions:
The Catholic crisis as it now stands
Pope Francis owes the Church some answers
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
September 13, 2018
The Catholic Church is in a novel position. A senior churchman has accused the pope of knowingly rehabilitating a predator cardinal and publicly demanded the pope’s resignation.
The accusation itself exposes to the public the political and theological divisions in the episcopacy of the Catholic Church, pitting bishop against bishop — and most dangerous of all — Pope Emeritus Benedict against reigning Pope Francis.
The divisions have been a part of Catholic life for decades, but they were litigated openly only by academics, theologians, and the Catholic press. Conflict between bishops happened but in a way that was almost deniable. Attempts to change the fundamental orientation of the Church were disguised as merely legitimate differences of emphasis. Tradition could be in under Benedict. Mercy and renewal, under Francis.
The testimony of Archbishop Cardinal Viganò, demanding the resignation of Francis, with accusations of moral turpitude and doctrinal heterodoxy spreading out to hit a score of senior cardinals, was like a grenade going off between two sleeping camps of inexperienced soldiers.
And when an explosion like this happens, each side understandably panicked, reached for their weapons, and awaited orders. It’s worthwhile to look at how things are aligned now.
Earlier this week, the Vatican announced that it would respond to “allegations Pope Francis covered up” sexual abuse by America’s disgraced and now-degraded former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.] This was strange in that Pope Francis was not accused of covering up exactly, only that he knew of McCarrick’s serial sexual harassment of seminarians when he lifted some kind of restrictions on his activity that were imposed by Pope Benedict and made McCarrick an adviser in reshaping the American episcopate.
Shortly after this confusing announcement, McCarrick’s successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, sent a letter to his priests, saying he would travel to Rome to discuss resignation — his own — with Pope Francis. The heavy implication was that he would allow new leadership to come to the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C.
It is useful to review the turns this story has taken in the weeks since the accusations were made. The Viganò letter contained a long litany of accusations, setting reporters and commentators scrambling in several directions at once.
Viganò is an uncouth right-winger, part of a vast conspiracy against the Pope: The first line of defense for Pope Francis was that Archbishop Viganò keeps repulsive company, daring to dine with conservatives such as the Italian journalist Marco Tosatti or the American lawyer Tim Busch. The latter has denied consulting with Viganò over his testimony.
Further, commentators speculated that Viganò was motivated by a grudge with Francis over an incident involving Kim Davis. As ambassador, Viganò had arranged for Davis, the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue same-sex-marriage licenses, to meet Pope Francis during his trip to America.
Reports at the time emphasized that Viganò had sprung this on Pope Francis against his wishes. Subsequent reporting confirmed that Viganò followed all the procedures for getting Vatican approval for the meeting but that regret over the subsequent media storm in Francis’s circle led to Viganò’s dismissal from his post.
Despite the attempt by some commentators to describe Viganò’s testimony as part of an “operation” or an organized “putsch” against Francis, the letter’s release has not been followed up by any new revelations or documents [to refute Vigano's claims, for which he cites dates and supporting documents]. The appearance of the testimony in small, conservative Catholic publications was evidence in itself of Vigano turning to the first friends on hand, in the absence of real planning.
Did McCarrick even look sanctioned? Not long after Viganò’s letter was published, reporters began to interrogate the public record. Did McCarrick look like a man who had been sanctioned by Benedict as Viganò claimed?
The record was mixed, to say the least. Simple searches on YouTube or in newspaper archives turned up appearances of McCarrick at various Masses and social events during the period in question. McCarrick traveled, and he even appeared near Archbishop Viganò and Pope Benedict in public. This certainly did not look like a life retreated into a prayer cell.
On the other hand, reports also confirmed that Cardinal McCarrick did move out of his retirement living quarters at a seminary and into a renovated parish house. He was forced by the nunciature to cancel his appearance at events with seminarians.
And after Francis was elected, McCarrick did take on a larger profile. Reporters sympathetic to McCarrick had noted the change, saying that while had been “put out to pasture” by Benedict but was “busier than ever” under Francis.
The nature of Benedict’s discipline is important. Confusing and somewhat contradictory statements coming from anonymous sources near Benedict have confirmed that some action was taken against McCarrick, but the precise details could not be recalled. This might strike most readers as odd in the extreme. How could Benedict remember disciplining a cardinal but not recall the details? Shouldn’t it have made an impression on him?
This has led a number of commentators to surmise that Benedict never formally imposed anything on McCarrick other than a personal request, perhaps not much more authoritative than a wish, that McCarrick lie low and mostly keep himself out of the public eye. The implication being that Benedict, for whatever reason, did not take McCarrick’s behavior so seriously.
But one theory that would reconcile all the above facts is that Benedict imposed a form of discipline short of a canonical sanction after a trial but more authoritative than a mere personal request.
Subsequent reporting has indicated that the likeliest form of discipline imposed on McCarrick was not the product of a canonical trial but a “precept,” which, the reporter and canon lawyer Ed Condon explained, “is essentially an authoritative canonical instruction to do or not do something; it often includes direction on where a cleric must live.” The details of such an instruction would be handled by the Congregation of Bishops, the very curial office Viganò says would have the pertinent documentation on McCarrick.
That McCarrick, after the election of Francis, moved back into another seminary is some evidence for Viganò’s claim that a disciplinary measure imposed under Benedict was lifted under Pope Francis. Though it is at least for now conceivable that such measures were simply unknown to new administration in the Vatican.
Notably, media very close to Pope Francis haven’t quite dared to deny the main charge, that McCarrick was in some way rehabilitated by Francis. They have questioned the severity of the sanctions. Reporters with close access to papal advisers have relayed reports that simply downgrade the severity or question the seriousness of Benedict’s disciplinary methods. This is a strategy of mitigating the charge and qualifying it.
Would it be so bad? We didn’t know about the kid: These reports take care to remind readers that once a credible report of abusing a minor reached the Vatican, McCarrick was exposed and his status degraded in public by Francis. After all, it wasn’t until just this summer that McCarrick was alleged to have abused a minor (the first boy he baptized, in fact), and once that report was made, Francis made his sanctions against McCarrick public fact. [The implication in this line of defense is that Bergoglio did not consider McCarrick's advances towards seminarians serious enough to discipline him in any way, but once a plausible case he abused a minor four decades earlier surfaced in New York, he decided McCarrick needed to be sanctioned. An egregious case of Bergoglio's apparently habitual instinct to relativize evil.]
We’ll shoot the hostage. McCarrick was exposed under us. If there is a coverup, it implicates your friend: One theme of this story and the spin surrounding it is that Pope Francis’s defenders have pointed at Pope Bendict XVI or the legacy of Saint John Paul II and implied that conservative critics of Francis shouldn’t be so anxious to turn over rocks. There might be collateral damage.
“Those who conceived and managed this operation with the intention to force Francis off the throne of Peter did not realize that such an attack would have involved his two predecessors,” said Massimo Faggioli, a Church historian and an active defender of Francis.
In fact, many reporters and commentators recently found themselves on the receiving end of sympathetic private appeals, explaining that what was really going on was that Pope Francis was protecting the reputation of his predecessors. It was hard not to detect the whiff of a threat. [Wow! That wins the prize for shameless chutzpah!]
By promising to address accusations of a cover-up, the Vatican seems to be trying to reframe the issue as one of disclosure, rather than rehabilitation. In this, Francis defenders may believe that their best argument that Viganò’s testimony was wrong to say that Pope Francis only recently imposed on McCarrick sanctions similar to ones imposed by his predecessor.
As Andrea Tornielli, the Italian Vaticanist closest to Francis, wrote:
Actually though, the sanctions are not similar. Those of Benedict XVI, according to Viganò himself, were personal and secret. Nobody should have known them. Those of Pope Francis were instead made public immediately, so that everyone knew that the old cardinal had been sanctioned after the emergence of a well-founded allegation of abuse of a minor.
But the question is not whether sanctions are public or private. The question is whether Francis knew about McCarrick’s behavior with seminarians and lifted the restrictions on McCarrick’s life because he wanted McCarrick’s counsel in reshaping the American episcopate. And who else knew of them? Did Cardinal Weurl?
If some conservatives have miscalculated the damage that could be done to the legacies of Benedict and John Paul II, some of Francis’s defenders may be underestimating the will to discover how men like McCarrick advance to positions of authority in the Church and the will to reform the Church in response.
Further, Team Francis may be underestimating the willingness of those around Benedict to protect him. Archbishop Georg Gänswein, who acts partly as a caretaker to the pope emeritus, has in recent days found himself energetically defending Benedict against his critics and, while doing so, not so subtly taking shots at Pope Francis’s advisers.
Silence before reporters, raving at Mass: Pope Francis’s initial reaction was not to deny any part of the grave accusations against him. Instead he told reporters that they could make a judgment on the nature of the accusations themselves and that he might speak on the matter later. For now, though, he told them, “I will not say one word on this.”
However, as in previous public controversies, Francis has taken to using his homilies as an occasion for issuing undisguised commentary on current events.
In his homily on September 3, he recommended his own chosen strategy for dealing with those who seek scandal. “With people lacking good will, with people who only seek scandal, who seek only division, who seek only destruction, even within the family — silence, prayer” are the appropriate answers, he said. He said silence makes us better imitators of Christ.
His homily the following week is worth quoting at some length:
In these times, it seems like the “Great Accuser” has been unchained and is attacking bishops. True, we are all sinners, we bishops. He tries to uncover the sins so they are visible, in order to scandalize the people. The “Great Accuser,” as he himself says to God in the first chapter of the Book of Job, “roams the earth looking for someone to accuse.”
So in two consecutive weeks, the pope has managed to praise nondisclosure in his homilies. The first time he did so while comparing himself to Jesus Christ, and the next week he did so while comparing Viganò to Satan. The only thing that is astonishing about this in this point of the Francis pontificate is the pretense that the pope is still silent.
In all the noise, the question that matters is still this:
- What did Pope Francis and those around him know about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick?
- How much influence did McCarrick have on the pope and his appointments?
- Does Pope Francis overlook the moral turpitude of those prelates he sees as allies (Cardinal Daneels, Cardinal McCarrick) in order to advance what his friends describe as his “larger agenda” for the Church?
If the Church is in the middle of a cold civil war between a Benedict faction and a Francis faction, [I think it is strangely far-fetched for Dougherty to reduce the PRESENT CRISIS to simplistic factionalism, least of all as between pro-Benedict and pro-Francis factions!] the question all laypeople have is whether that factionalism has now become all-consuming, so that even the punishment of flagrant sexual abuse is subordinated to factional concerns. Pope Francis should dignify us with an answer.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/09/2018 18:07] |