The Nero act: Are the powers-that-be
fiddling while America – and Rome – burn?
By Robert Royal
July 25, 2018
The famous political philosopher Leo Strauss is reported to have once said that modern political theorists are worse than the ancient Roman emperor Nero. Because contrary to the old saying,
they know neither that they are fiddling nor that Rome is burning.
The U.S. bishops held their annual June meeting in Fort Lauderdale a few weeks ago and, to judge from reports,
largely spent their time together discussing current politics and changes to a voters’ guide for the Fall midterm elections.
In Rome, just last week, Fr. Antonio Spadaro S.J., editor of the semi-official Vatican publication
La Civiltà Cattolica, along with Marcelo Figueroa, a Presbyterian chosen by Pope Francis personally to be editor of the Argentine edition of
L’Osservatore Romano, released another long essay attacking an American religious phenomenon: “The Prosperity Gospel: Dangerous and Different.”
Unlike their previous effort, which argued that collaboration between conservative evangelicals and Catholics was an “ecumenism of hate,” this article drew little attention. Which is no surprise.
Though peddlers of the prosperity gospel have connections to President Trump – who seems to be the real target of the essay – few familiar with religion in the United States would regard that slice of our varied faith groups as particularly prominent. In fact, among most religious people, both Left and Right, it’s regarded as a kind of eccentric Christian sect.
Meanwhile, an international threat to the Church is emerging, in several countries simultaneously, a crisis of confidence in Catholic leadership and the Church Herself that could make these other concerns, which are after all rather peripheral to the Church’s life and mission, seem mere fiddling.
In America, many people have been shocked by revelations that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, one of the most prominent U.S. Catholic prelates over the past two decades and the public face of the Church after the 2002 exposure of the priestly abuse crisis, was himself an abuser.
At first, stories emerged of his relationships with adult men, two of whom received monetary settlements from the Metuchen and Newark dioceses, where McCarrick had served as bishop and archbishop. Those stories confirmed what had been widely rumored for many years, that “Uncle Ted” had made a practice of pressuring seminarians and others into sexual situations.
But now a man has come forward with stories of abuse by McCarrick that began when he was eleven. And no doubt there are many further eruptions to come, to judge from what we already know.
This has led to further disclosures by others who were abused by priests and bishops, some in shocking fashion, and the sickening fact that virtually no one in a position of authority took action, especially where bishops were involved. If you can stomach the details, which are sometimes outright blasphemous and literally diabolical, you can get an idea of the nature of the problem.
It’s no surprise that a wave of outrage is building in America just now, even among faithful Catholics. To judge by many of the people with whom I’m in contact on a regular basis and who know these matters quite well, we may well be just at the beginning of another wave of soul-searching in the Church, this time not so much over complaints about priests, but about bishops who should have done something about other bishops and people in positions of authority.
We saw how mishandling of similar charges about the past in Chile soured the pope’s trip to that country earlier this year. Two Chilean cardinals, one on the pope’s own handpicked council of nine, are implicated in the cover-ups and perhaps the misinformation that was passed along to Francis. Just yesterday, Chilean authorities announced that they are investigating 158 members of the Church who are suspected of being abusers or of having covered up abuse.
Another of the pope’s top advisors Cardinal Oscar Rodriquez Maradiaga of Honduras has been accused of financial corruption. But potentially even more serious is that his subordinate, Bishop Juan José Pineda Fasquelle, who runs the archdiocese during Maradiaga’s many long absences, has had to resign after revelations of multiple instances of sexual abuse of seminarians, similar to McCarrick’s.
But the McCarrick case is unusual in that we have a sitting cardinal now judged by proper authorities to have committed offenses over many years who remains a cardinal. Pope Francis has to do something about this – and about those who enabled McCarrick.
Because despite denials, many American bishops received complaints about McCarrick and did nothing about them. Rome itself had to have been informed about the payouts for earlier abuses (we know that a lay delegation went to Rome to try to stop McCarrick’s appointment to Washington precisely because of his known sexual proclivities).
Even
The Washington Post, previously uninterested in the rumors about McCarrick, has observed:
“Many church-watchers think this is a make-or-break moment for Francis because of McCarrick’s stature and the fact that Catholic clerical sex-abuse crises are exploding in Chile and Honduras.”
Our friend Phil Lawler wrote an essential essay, which appeared yesterday on the First Things website. Inquiring into how McCarrick was able to abuse children and adults for so long, he says, is an important question to protect future victims, but:
...is less critical than the question of how his rise through the ecclesiastical ranks continued, even while rumors about homosexual activities swirled around him. Why was McCarrick named archbishop of Washington, and given a cardinal’s red hat? Why was he allowed to promote his protégés, to serve special diplomatic assignments for the Vatican, to influence the selection of bishops and even of a Roman Pontiff, after his beach-house antics had become a matter of common knowledge?
[The problem is that all this was never 'common knowledge' because those who did know of it - more than just a few, obviously - failed to expose McCarrick in public. In any language, that amounts to a cover-up. The few in the media who tried to expose the man failed miserably after their initial attempts. Maybe they should have imply followed the simple tactic to 'try and try again and again until you succeed'. In any case, those in the media who knew about McCarrick's double life and did not lift a finger at all to expose him are just as guilty as all the bishops and priests who had the same knowledge (if not more) and simply chose to look the other way. Whether it was in implicit acceptance of the reality that those in a position to do something about it would not touch McCarrick at all (e.g., John Paul II whom, it is reported, a delegation from the US visited to protest his naming of McCarrick to be Archbishop of Washington and eventually cardinal), or because they themselves, for reasons of their own, did not want McCarrick exposed, all those who covered up for McCarrick must share equal blame. When blogging became a widespread phenomenon in the past decade, why didn't bloggers who had knowledge expose and pursue their exposure on the blogs?]
Finding out how this was possible is going to call for some painful self-examination, both here and in Rome itself. But the alternative is business as usual. And that business is now in danger of bankruptcy.
Now, we have a first reaction from the Vatican hierarchy. My problem is that because Cardinal O'Malley has been Bergoglio's frontman for 'dealing' with clerical and episcopal sex abuse I find it difficult to believe that he had no awareness at all of the allegations against McCarrick before things came to a stinking head!
Cardinal O’Malley condemns
McCarrick’s 'alleged behaviour'
as morally unacceptable
by Michael Davis
July 25, 2018
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s alleged behaviour was “morally unacceptable and incompatible with the role of a priest, bishop or cardinal,” Cardinal Seán O’Malley has said.
Cardinal O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston and a leading “fixer” in the clerical sex abuse crisis, issued a statement addressing the allegations against Cardinal McCarrick.
[Unfortunately I cannot access O'Malley's full statement published in the Boston Globe, which has a financial firewall.]
“Each new report of clerical abuse at any level creates doubt in the minds of many that we are effectively addressing this catastrophe in the Church,” Cardinal O’Malley said, adding that it further compromises her “already weakened moral authority”.
“While the Church in the United States has adopted a zero tolerance policy regarding the sexual abuse of minors by priests we must have clearer procedures for cases involving bishops,” he continued. “The Church needs a strong and comprehensive policy to address bishops’ violations of the vows of celibacy in cases of the criminal abuse of minors and in cases involving adults.”
O’Malley set out a three-part course of action: “First, a fair and rapid adjudication of these accusations; second, an assessment of the adequacy of our standards and policies in the Church at every level, and especially in the case of bishops; and third, communicating more clearly to the Catholic faithful and to all victims
the process for reporting allegations against bishops and cardinals.
The Cardinal closed by assuring that he will raise these concerns with the Holy See “with great urgency and concern” during an upcoming visit.
[Wait! Wasn't that third item on the cardinal's action plan supposedly addressed by the reigning pope - at least according to Vatican announcements? - that he would create a tribunal to deal with erring bishops, and that it would be under the committee to protect minors and children headed by Cardinal O'Malley himself. One has to think nothing was really done about it beyond the initial announcement!
As for a rapid adjudication of the accusations against McCarrick, is it not enough for now that we have the documented settlements made by two New Jersey dioceses with adult victims of McCarrick and the documented investigation of the New York archdiocesan committee that found a New Yorker's accusations of having been sexually abused by McCarrick when he was a pre-teen? Why does O'Malley continue to say 'alleged' for McCarrick's behavior? It may be 'alleged' only in the other cases that have surfaced so far, but even just the three cases that have been fairly 'adjudicated' to date more than suffice to condemn his behavior!]
CATHOLIC THING found it appropriate to reprint today these memorable words from Cardinal Ratzinger's 2005 meditations on the Via Crucis just a month before he became Pope...
The third fall
by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church?
How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts!
How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there!
How often is his Word twisted and misused!
What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words!
How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!
How much pride, how much self-complacency!
What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall!
All this is present in his Passion. His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison — Lord, save us (cf. Matthew 8: 25).
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NOTE:
BIG PULPIT is running two special editions daily, compiling the most significant online commentaries on the McCarrick story and on the 50th anniversary of Humanae vitae. Do check them out.
bigpulpit.com/2018/07/25/mccarrick-watch-monday-edition/
and
bigpulpit.com/2018/07/25/humanae-vitae/
Pewsitter devotes its 'above the fold' headlines today to HV on its actual anniversary day...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/07/2018 02:26]