August 29, 2018
CHURCH MILITANT provides a wrap-up of developments today in the ever-widening BERGOGLIO SCANDAL SAGA...
Indications of a U.S. Department of Justice probe into RICO violations grow stronger, Team Francis digs in and is mocked for stupidity, and the calls for a full-blown investigation and calls for Pope Francis to resign increase.
The calls come amidst breaking news that he dismissed Cdl. Gerhard Müller, former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, over disagreements on how to handle homosexual predators.
Maike Hickson, writing for LifeSite, reported today that a reliable and well-informed source in the Vatican says, "Cardinal Müller [as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] had always decidedly and most sharply followed up on these abuse cases, and that is why he was dismissed, just as his three good collaborators were also dismissed."
According to the source, Muller opposed Pope Francis's decision not to laicize convicted sex abuser Msgr. Inzoli, a decision the Pope came later to regret after an Italian criminal court found him guilty of abusing five male teens and sentenced him to nearly five years in prison.
The source also claims Pope Francis, against the recommendation of Cardinal Müller, chose to give a Vatican apartment to Msgr. Luigi Capozzi [secretary to Bergoglio pet Cardinal Coccopalmerio] who became the center of a scandal that rocked Italy last year when he was busted for a drug-fueled gay orgy in the Vatican apartments.
The source made clear that Pope Francis repeatedly bypassed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in its recommendations to laicize predator priests, choosing instead more lenient sentences, violating his own zero-tolerance policy.
But what's clear is that in the face of increasing pressure and calls for him to step down, Pope Francis appears to be digging in and his supporters are continuing along as though nothing has happened.
This is causing great turmoil which secular media outlets are noticing.Look at this headline ("The silence of Pope Francis and the pain of a Church"in the Chicago Tribune from just today,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/kass/ct-met-pope-francis-catholic-church-kass-20180828-story.html
a public recognition that none of this is going away as long as Francis remains Pope. And it is fitting that the Chicago Tribune would tout that headline, since it is home to Cdl. Blase Cupich.
Chicago Cdl. Blase Cupich had a sit-down interview with NBC Chicago yesterday that could only be described as a public relations train wreck. He was adamant about ignoring the bombshell statement of Abp. Viganò, who is accusing the Pope of participating in the cover-up of sexually abusive clerics.
Cupich dismissed the explosive claims and said, on to more important things.
"The Pope has a bigger agenda. He's got to get on with other things, of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the Church. We're not going to go down a rabbit hole on this." [Cupich has to be stunningly stupid not to realize what he is saying here - not just that the environment and migrants are more important to this pope than taking care of his flock, but also that 'the work of the Church' does not include dealing with a crisis even greater than that of Arianism in the early years of the Church. Bergoglio has exponentially compounded his monumental dereliction of papal duty by coupling his faith-wrecking apostasies with his cavalier confidence-wrecking actions with regard to criminally erring priests and bishops.]
Multiple leaders and authors, both Catholic and non-Catholic, went on the attack against Cupich over his various comments.
Leon Wolf, editor of The Blaze, tweeted,
"So, you know, I'm not Catholic, so how they run their church is not really my business. But this interview by Cardinal Cupich is the most ton- deaf response to a crisis I have ever seen. It's hard to even process the stupidity that went into saying stuff like that on camera."
Catholic author George Neumayr tweeted, "Satire can never quite catch up to reality.
Cardinal Cupich's let's-get-back-to-global-warming quote minimizing the scandal sounds like it was cobbled together by a team of Onion writers. But it wasn't. It is real as a rabbit hole."
And canon lawyer Dr. Ed Peters called for Cupich's immediate resignation, saying,
"With these words Cdl. Cupich demeans all clergy sexual abuse victims as ranking behind environmental issues and insults as racists all persons asking for the simple truth about what Pope Francis might have known concerning his cardinals. Cupich should resign. Immediately."
In a further attempt to obscure the focus and turn attention to the Pope's accusers, Cupich actually pulled out the race card.
"Quite frankly, they also don't like him because he's a Latino."
What makes Cupich's "Latino" claim so ridiculous is that Pope Francis is not really Latino. His father was a full-blooded Italian immigrant to Argentina and his mother was only half Argentinian — her father was Argentinian, but her mother was born in Italy.
That makes Jorge Bergoglio three-quarters Italian, underscoring why no one really thinks of Pope Francis as being "Latino."
The Chicago cardinal is scheduled to give a talk at a symposium in October titled "Discovering Pope Francis" to take place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
But he will do it under the cloud of a Pennsylvania-style investigation of his archdiocese announced by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan last week.
At the press conference, Madigan made clear she wouldn't put up with any stonewalling from the Chicago archdiocese, saying she would use the help of law enforcement where necessary.
Another cardinal named in Viganò's testimony, Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, is also digging in, dismissing Viganò's claims as full of "factual errors, innuendo and fearful ideology."
Tobin was recently named by Pope Francis to the Youth Synod in Rome where he will take a leading role at a Vatican event critics say will only further the LGBT agenda of the faction of the Church to which Tobin belongs.
And Cdl. Donald Wuerl, who many are looking to see if he will come crashing down, is nowhere to be seen. After canceling his regular appearance at the opening Mass for Catholic schools in the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., openly confessing his presence would be a distraction — the word on the street is that he has departed for Rome.
And Church Militant has confirmed he will not be offering his regularly scheduled Sunday Mass at Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Washington, D.C. this weekend.
Meanwhile in San Diego, Bp. Robert McElroy, implicated in Viganò's testimony as part of the homosexual network, had harsh words for the former papal nuncio, saying of Viganò's testimony:
"In its hatred for Pope Francis and all that he has taught, Archbishop Viganò consistently subordinates the pursuit of comprehensive truth to partisanship, division and distortion." [Say what you want against him, you evil man, but how about answering his factual accusations!]
Viganò himself has responded to his critics, insisting he has no political motives and is only acting for the sake of the truth.
In comments given yesterday to Dr. Aldo Maria Valli, Viganò said, "I spoke because now corruption has reached the top of the Church hierarchy.
But California Catholics aren't buying McElroy's spin against Viganò. A group plana to protest outside the San Diego diocese pastoral center, demanding that McElroy first, apologize for knowing about Cdl. McCarrick's sexual predation but then saying and doing nothing; second, they want him to publicly admit that homosexuality is directly linked to the sex abuse crisis in the Church; and third, resign if he's taken part in covering up the crimes of predator priests.
While various supporters of Pope Francis's silence attempt to deflect and ignore, there are others who are turning up the heat, as calls for and discussion of the Pope stepping down increase.
A petition for Pope Francis to resign has been launched on the website Complicitclergy.com, and fresh headlines are now appearing in Catholic and secular media calling on Pope Francis to step down.
In an article for American Spectator today, editor R. Emmett Tyrell asks "Should the Pope Resign?" answering his own question in the positive.
And in a recent scathing article in the Boston Herald, Louis Murray, president of Boston Catholic Radio, demands that both the Pope and Boston Cdl. Sean O'Malley resign immediately. And these new calls are on top of similar calls in the past few days from high profile leaders like Laura Ingraham and Hugh Hewitt.
On the question of the legitimacy of Catholics calling for the Pope's resignation, no less than Cdl. Raymond Burke, former chief canonist for the Catholic Church, offers,
"It is well within the bounds to call for the resignation of Pope Francis".
In comments to the Italian press and republished in American media, he said,
"The request for resignation is in any case licit; anyone can make it in the face of whatever pastor that errs greatly in the fulfillment of his office, but the facts need to be verified."
Other bishops in America, while stopping short of actually calling for the Pope to resign, are calling for a full-scale investigation into Viganò's claims against the Pope, rejecting Francis's out of hand dismissal of Vigano.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois is weighing in on the Pope's reaction to the charges of the former Vatican ambassador to the United States, making clear the Pope's non-response doesn't cut it:
"Frankly, but with all due respect, that response is not adequate. Given the gravity of the content and implications of the former Nuncio’s statement, it is important for all the facts of this situation to be fully reviewed, vetted, and carefully considered."
And Abp. Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City is lending support to Viganò, saying in a statement issued yesterday that he vouches for Viganò's integrity and,
"His claims, yet to be investigated or substantiated, confirm the urgency of a thorough investigation of Archbishop McCarrick's advancement through the ecclesiastical ranks given his history of alleged abuse, involving seminarians and young people."
Church Militant contacted Marco Tosatti, the Italian author who helped Viganò put together his testimony, and Tosatti had his own questions for Pope Francis, saying:
If it is not true, why does he not say so? What is certain is that a situation of no-answer, of ambiguity, is painful for Catholics, and contributes to destroying the credibility of the Church, and particularly of the Pope. If he does not make this situation clear, how can he speak about cover-ups?
It's clear none of these men, neither the Pope nor his allies, plan on going anywhere. They have made clear the plan is to dig in their heels and treat with contempt the charges leveled against them.
What sources in Rome say the Vatican fears the most — and may be the only thing which breaks the current stalemate — is a massive, massive U.S. federal investigation into the Vatican's role in a mostly homosexual clerical sex abuse cover-up in the United States, a possibility that is absolutely being seriously considered by officials at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro has publicly confirmed that a federal RICO investigation is on the DOJ's radar, telling The New York Times Monday that the DOJ has in fact, been in touch with him and going on the record that it was the DOJ that reached out to him first — not the other way around.
That squares with what Church Militant has independently confirmed through our own sources, that the DOJ is actively pursuing the question — again, the greatest fear that Vatican officials have.
Shapiro has made clear that the Vatican was aware of the sex abuse in Pennsylvania and was involved in the cover-up. Yesterday, speaking with Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, he said the following.
What the grand jury also found was, not just widespread sexual abuse of kids, but a systematic cover-up at the highest levels in Pennsylvania — including bishops and now one cardinal. And as you pointed out in your opening piece here, all of this abuse, all of this cover-up, they lied to parishioners, they lied to the public, they shielded these predators from law enforcement, but then they documented all of it, and they shared those documents with the Vatican. That's absolutely incomprehensible to me...
As for the Vatican, again, I deal in facts and evidence. The facts and the evidence in this grand jury report clearly show that bishops and other Church officials notified the Vatican of these predator priests. What happened after that, I don't know.
Meanwhile, the unrest of thousands of faithful Catholics continues to mount in the face of Vatican stonewalling and silence. Nearly 2,000 have already signed up for the Silence Stops Now rally to be held in Baltimore, Maryland in mid-November during the U.S. bishops' annual meeting there.
Just as various complicit churchmen are hoping the scandal will go away, Catholics are being encouraged to make a strong showing in Baltimore to let the bishops know a return to business as usual is not acceptable and those cardinals or bishops complicit in covering up sexual predation must step down — along with Pope Francis.
As a closing note, this morning in Saint Peter's Square, just after the conclusion of Pope Francis' general audience, a group of Catholics appeared to be chanting the name "Viganò."
Some have disputed the claim, saying they were chanting "Italo," the name of a bishop who reports say was on the stage with the Holy Father. [Really? And who might this 'Bishop Italo' be and what has he done that a group of Catholics would chant his name before the pope? How much more desperate can the Bergogliacs be?]
Whichever the case, those who keep a close eye on the Vatican are speculating that this has the potential to become
another flashpoint in the growing tension over Pope Francis's reign if, whenever he appears before a crowd, onlookers start chanting Viganò — a sign of defiance and demand for accountability. [Oh please, let us hope they will. They ought to have started doing this with the DUBIA! Would the Swiss Guard shut up a crowd that chants DUBIA, DUBIA, DUBIA or VIGANO, VIGANO, VIGANO???]
It's not totally clear exactly what was being chanted, but in the words of Pope Francis, we will leave it up to you to make up your own minds.
The sneering contempt of Pope Francis
by Matthew Walther
August 29, 2018
Pope Francis is said to be a keen admirer of Wagner. I wonder whether music will console him as his papacy reaches its Götterdämmerung.
On Saturday night a document with the stark heading "Testimony" appeared online. In this dossier Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio to the United States, accused the pope of reversing sanctions imposed upon the disgraced Cardinal Theodore McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI.
He also alleged, among other things, that various curial insiders attempted to hamper Benedict's own internal investigation of McCarrick, that under Francis the cardinal served as a kingmaker who was responsible for the appointments of various eminent bishops who are close allies of the pope, and that all of this was quid pro quo for McCarrick's quiet masterminding of Francis' own election. Viganò ended by calling upon the pope to resign.
It is almost impossible to the overstate the significance of this letter. If Viganò is lying, he is guilty of one of the greatest slanders in the history of the Church. If he is telling the truth, the Eternal City is mired in filth unseen since the days of the Borgias, and Francis is among the worst wretches who has ever besmirched the Chair of Peter.
Asked on Sunday whether the accusations were true or false, Francis demurred.
"I will not say a single word about this." He then smugly invited the journalists who were present on the papal airplane to investigate the facts for themselves, as if he were a philosophy professor teaching a seminar to a roomful of eager graduate students instead of the Vicar of Christ.
This is the same man who, despite endless PR about his commitment to victims, his hatred of clericalism, and his belief in treating gay and lesbian people with dignity, only a few months ago dismissed complaints made about his handling of sexual abuse allegations in Chile as the worthless gossip of "left-wingers," a word that, according to Viganò, is synonymous in the pope's vocabulary with gay people.
It is not surprising that
even churchmen named alongside Francis in the dossier have responded with what amount to non-denials that make no attempt to defend Francis. Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., has said Viganò has provided no "objectively verifiable proof" of his claims.
Whatever the truth of Viganò's numerous accusations — and the detailed chronology and references to documents in his letter mean that sooner or later it will be possible to prove or disprove them definitively — there are other truths that require facing now. This is true especially for those of us who have defended the Holy Father against slander and caricature in the past.
Francis has revealed himself as an old-fashioned clericalist who views the faithful with contempt. It is not my place as a layman to tell the Holy Father his business, but I can make no secret of the fact that I long for an end to his gaslighting pontificate.
But the hard truths that need facing extend far beyond this papacy. When Viganò's letter was reported over the weekend, liberal Catholic journalists responded with coordinated messenger-shooting. One by one they abandoned their previous rhetoric about the importance of healing and dismissed the dossier out of hand.
The response from conservatives and so-called "traditionalists" was to insist that their willingness to take Viganò's accusations seriously had nothing to do with
their — in many cases almost lunatic — hostility towards Francis in the past and everything to do with the moral imperative of showering sunlight, that best of disinfectants, upon filth.
[Excuse me, sir, the hostility is not against Bergoglio per se, although he certainly deserves it, but against his deliberate wrecking of the Church and trashing of her doctrine. But because he is responsible for all that, then he must be held responsible and named for what he is. The traditional formula in Baptism asks, "Do you renounce Satan and all his works...?" Because to renounce evil is also to renounce the evildoer. But we also have a duty to human evildoers, which is to pray for their repentance and sincere amendment, while commending them to God's justice as God sees fit.]
I do not think anyone deserves a pass here, certainly not traditionalist Catholics, myself included. How many trads are aware, for example, of the case of Father Milton T. Walsh, a scholar whose work is widely respected in Catholic literary circles.
[Awareness - much less, fact-based certainty - about the peccadilloes and grave sins of priests has nothing to do with whether one is 'traditionalist' or 'liberal'! Either the information is easily available or not. Then what one chooses to do with such information depends on one's convictions. Mr Walther surely does not expect that from hereon, every Catholic with access to the Internet should regularly check out bishopsaccountability.org just to find out the latest 'dirt' on some priest or bishop. The site's raison d'etre presumes it has its definite biases and its targets, and one cannot assume that just because something is reported there, it is necessarily Gospel truth.]
I have been aware of Walsh for many years and had no idea until Monday morning that in 1984 he was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy on the latter's birthday while serving as a priest in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Walsh's ordinary, Archbishop John Raphael Quinn, convinced the child's parents not to inform the police. Walsh was then transferred, first to a seminary, then to the cathedral.
When Quinn was replaced by William Levada in 1995, the latter was made aware of Walsh's crimes but allowed him to continue serving as a priest. It was not until 2002 that Walsh was removed from ministry under the Vatican's new "zero tolerance" policy.
Walsh admitted his crimes that year in a phone call taped by police, but the charges were dropped after the Supreme Court ruled that California could not extend the statute of limitations for this offense.
All of these facts are in plain sight at BishopAccountability.org, a website established for the express purpose of putting such information in the hands of the laity. Can it be that I am the only reader of Walsh who is unaware of them? Do his publishers know? What about his literary collaborators?
Until recently these astonishing facts about a man whom I respected were unknown to me. Why? Because they were "open secrets," like the abuses of McCarrick and so many other now-disgraced churchmen. I simply assumed that his good name was deserved.
There must be many more such secrets. We cannot allow them to remain as such. From the Holy Father on down to the humblest priest or layman, all Catholics must atone for their sins, especially those of omission. As St. Luke's Gospel tells us:
There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.
The following two pieces are by an Iranian (born 1975) who came to the USA with his family as a 13-year-old boy and went on to become a columnist and editor at the Wall Street Journal for five years, then moved to Commentary where he is now senior writer. He converted to Catholicism in 2016.
How and why the media
fail in covering the Church
by Sohrab Ahmari
August 29, 2018
The Catholic Church — the religious body which I joined in 2016 and which I affirm to be Jesus Christ’s One True Fold — going through an ordeal. It is an ordeal, perhaps, of the kind that only comes about once every half a millennium or so. As a believer, my feelings seesaw between fear and joy.
I fear for the future of the Church. I take joy in the long overdue cleansing, even if it means breaking the false truce between orthodox and heterodox forces in the Church.
My concerns as a journalist are a different matter. The open war between U.S. bishops, the medieval intrigue of the Roman Curia, the facts and counter-facts and drip-drip of innuendo — all this is catnip to a working hack.
The crisis also holds valuable lessons for all writers, Catholic or not. The most important is this: Always listen to the marginalized, the disgruntled “cranks,” the angry obsessives, those who cry out for justice from the peripheries of powerful institutions.
Most journalists are hardwired to champion the weak and “speak truth to power” and all that. But the grimier incentives of the job can often smother that honorable instinct. The Big Interview with the Big Subject is attractive, and the hunger for access can be corrupting. It is also easy to develop a too-cozy relationship with the flacks, the hired guns who surround the VIPs and take care that their clients don’t make any but good news.
Truly world-historical journalism usually comes from other sources: from the corporate whistleblower, the fading movie star with a horror story to tell about a big-shot producer, and, yes, the deeply wounded middle-aged man who encountered a demonic priest when he was a young boy.
There are plenty of reporters listening to such sources, which is why Theranos has been exposed, the #MeToo movement has emerged, and clerical sexual abuse has been under a spotlight since the 1980s.
The trouble is that
sometimes [Sometimes???? No, all the time!] ideology distorts journalists’ sense of who is truly victimized and marginal and deserving of a hearing in a particular setting. This, I suspect, was one of the reasons Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick — the amiable, genial, and above all liberal American prelate — escaped scrutiny for so long.
Many journalists, including Catholic ones, impose a prefabricated frame on the Church, in which
those who challenge or de-emphasize traditional moral doctrines are the downtrodden good guys facing off against the fusty, black-clad reactionaries who pull the real strings. McCarrick was not just one of those modernizing good guys; he was the good guy par excellence.
Witness the glowing profile of McCarrick from David Gibson of the Religion News Service (Gibson is now a fellow at Fordham).
[But will he eat his words now? This is the same despicable Gibson who had it in all the time for Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, including an opportunistic, cut-throat and yes, ideological, 'biography' of a man whose orthodox Catholicism Gibson cannot stand, shortly after he was elected pope.] The cringe-inducing headline:
“Globe-trotting Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is almost 84, and working harder than ever.”
In Catholic circles, rumors of peccadilloes already swirled around McCarrick when the profile appeared, in 2014, and diocesan authorities had more than a decade earlier settled two suits arising from his misconduct with seminarians.
If Gibson was minimally curious about these matters, his puff piece didn’t show it. Instead, he reported on how the cardinal survived a heart scare in 2013, and how he subsequently told the newly elected Pope Francis: “I guess the Lord isn’t done with me yet.” To which the Argentine pontiff shot back: “Or the devil doesn’t have your accommodations ready!” On another occasion, per Gibson, Francis teased McCarrick: “The bad ones, they never die!”
Today, the ecclesial double entendre is hard to avoid. At the time, readers turning to Gibson for the lowdown on the high-power prelate would only learn that
McCarrick was “always seen as a moderate, centrist presence in the hierarchy, a telegenic pastor who could present the welcoming face of the Church.” His enemies, the dreaded conservatives, “disdained McCarrick’s style.” And readers would learn that the old pederast worked hard in the vineyards of the Lord.
Such incuriosity flows from the hostility to traditionalists that is part of the general ambiance in many newsrooms — not to mention Church institutions. As the Washington Post’s Michelle Boorstein noted last month, “there had for decades been rumors in Church and journalistic circles about his behavior with seminarians. These ranged from talk of an unwanted hand on a knee to chatter on conservative Catholic blogs citing anonymous descriptions of sex parties.”
Too bad respectable Catholic officials and secular journalists just knew that one should never pay attention to things said on “conservative Catholic blogs.”
Boorstein quoted an anonymous source at an organization that honored McCarrick: “It sounded like disgruntled conservative Catholics. I didn’t give credence to the source. It seemed ideologically motivated.”
The liberal Catholic establishment, to whom the secular media often turn for guidance on Church matters, sees itself at war with these forces from the dark past, disgruntled and marginalized yet all-powerful and a menace to progress. Predators and their abettors benefit from this intellectual and institutional dynamic.
“But surely those days are over,” you might be tempted to say. “Surely now, after #MeToo, all cries for justice get the attention they deserve.” Perhaps. Then again, take a look at the headline New York Times editors picked for a recent story on the crisis:
“Francis Takes High Road as Conservatives Pounce... ”
The Catholic abuse scandal
now leads all the way to the pope
By Sohrab Ahmari
August 27, 2018
An ecclesial straight shooter. A reliable character. A serious man. That’s how sources familiar with Carlo Maria Viganò describe the Italian archbishop, who served as the Vatican ambassador to the United States from 2011 to 2016. His reputation makes the publication Saturday of Viganò’s written “testimony” about the Theodore McCarrick affair all the more inconvenient for those in the Catholic hierarchy who tried to bury the truth about the disgraced American prelate.
The core claim in the 11-page document is that a high-powered circle of silence for years abetted McCarrick’s career, despite his well-known penchant for sexual abuse. The circle of silence, Viganò says, included the current successor of Saint Peter. In a cryptic statement to reporters on Sunday, Pope Francis refused to confirm or deny the allegations, instead urging them to “read the document carefully and judge it for yourselves.”
The Viganò testimony bears the mark of a man seething with anger and perhaps facing the mystery of death. “It is in moments of great trial that the Lord’s grace is revealed in abundance and makes His limitless mercy available to all,” the 77-year-old churchman writes near the end. “But it is granted only to those who are truly repentant.”
For American and global Catholicism, Viganò’s dark night of the soul presents a bright clarifying moment. The document portrays a church whose highest echelons are dominated by old men who apparently don’t believe, or at least don’t take all that seriously, what she has taught about human sexuality for two millennia. And others who are willing to cut corners to protect their decadent brethren.
Either Viganò’s core claims hold water, or they don’t. Either the Vatican was informed of McCarrick’s predations as early as 2000 only to turn a blind eye, or it wasn’t.
Either Pope Benedict XVI imposed private sanctions against McCarrick in 2009-10, barring him from celebrating public Masses and cavorting with seminarians, or he didn’t. Either McCarrick’s successor as cardinal-archbishop of Washington, Donald Wuerl, was aware of the sanctions, or he wasn’t.
Either Pope Francis rehabilitated McCarrick upon taking the Petrine office, despite being warned of the abuse “dossier,” or he didn’t.
If Viganò is telling the truth about these things, then the moral catastrophe he describes is horrifyingly real.
Everything else is noise.
Noise: The suggestion, circulated by his critics, that Viganò considers himself an enemy of Francis and has been nursing a grievance over shabby treatment meted out to him upon his return to Rome from his post in Washington. On the contrary, the document suggests Viganò began memorializing his concerns about McCarrick and raising them with his superiors long before Francis became pope.
Noise: News reports that, as nuncio, he supposedly helped quash a probe into a bishop in Minnesota. This is perhaps the most ludicrous of the objections to the Viganò memo. Taken to its logical conclusion, it means that a failure to confront abuse in one instance compels silence in others.
[Beyond that, Viganò has since shown that this pope immediately ordered an investigation of his actions when the newspapers reported that he had quashed a church investigation into Bishop Nienstedt of Minnesota, and found the accusation unfounded. Viganò has apparently been careful to leave an easily verifiable paper trail not just about the accusations he made in his Testimony but also about his own actions as Nuncio to the USA wherever questions were raised.]
Noise: The fact that Viganò is some sort of conservative or traditionalist, per The New York Times and other liberal outlets that have made a great deal out of the man’s theology.
But would his allegations of coverup have been any more or less worthy of investigation were Viganò a theological liberal?
Which brings us to the biggest source of interference of all. As the document spread across the Catholic world, defenders of Pope Francis and the mainly liberal hierarchs implicated by Viganò pointed to the fact that McCarrick celebrated Masses and gave homilies during the period when he was supposedly under sanctions.
Doesn’t that suggest that there were no such sanctions in place?
Well, no. For starters, there’s the National Catholic Register’s confirmation of the fact of a sanctions order with Benedict’s office. Meanwhile, Monsignor Jean-François Lantheaume, a former first counsellor at the Washington embassy, told the Catholic News Agency: “Viganò said the truth. That’s all.”
In his document, Viganò recounts how, when he first arrived in Washington, Lantheaume told him about the private sanctions against McCarrick. Now Lantheaume appears to be corroborating Viganò’s claims as a whole.
My sense is that, while he may be disgruntled and isolated, Viganò is no fabulist. His claims should, and no doubt will, be vetted in the coming weeks and months by the secular media and civil authorities if not by the Church. As things stand, the smart money is that Viganò won’t topple Francis. But there’s no question the Argentine pontiff faces an institutional, moral, even theological crisis.
Lay Catholics should pay close attention to those who follow the truth, wherever it may lead, and tune out the noise and its sources. And we need to pray.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/08/2018 10:20]