For this 'big news' today, I shall lead off with a prompt commentary which says all there is to say about this matter... This time, so clearcut are the facts that Christopher Altieri isn't even allowing any 'benefit of the doubt', as he usually tries to do for Bergoglio.
Cardinal Wuerl is gone — or is he?
Once again, the pope has officially removed someone
while effectively keeping him in place
by Christopher Altieri
posted Friday, 12 Oct 2018
In Pope Francis’s acceptance of Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl’s resignation from the See of Washington, DC, we see an unmistakable pattern emerging.
By accepting Wuerl’s resignation, but also keeping him on as Apostolic Administrator, the Pope shows he is working to a particular modus operandi.
There seem to be three basic steps:
(1) ignore criticism and impugn critics’ motives;
(2) when that becomes impracticable make a big show of doing something, without actually doing much of anything;
(3) if necessary, remove a high-profile figure, but not really.
With Cardinal Wuerl, Pope Francis has done exactly this: he is officially out, and also officially in.
The Pope’s letter expresses support for Cardinal Wuerl and confidence in his record of leadership. It also indicates reluctance to accept the resignation. “You have sufficient elements to ‘justify’ your actions and what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes,” Pope Francis writes. “However, your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense,” he continues. “Of this, I am proud, and thank you.”
The
New York Times reports Wuerl as saying
he expects to keep his roles in various powerful dicasteries, including the Congregation for Bishops [to which, you will recall, Bergoglio named him to replace Cardinal Burke whose appointment to that dicastery was not renewed, and in which Wuerl will be the advocate for all papal nominees for bishop in the USA].
The Pope did something very similar in his management of the dust-up at his Secretariat Dicastery for Communication and in his handling of the crisis in Chile.
In March of this year, Pope Francis’s hand-picked prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, Mgr Dario Edoardo Viganò (not to be confused with whistleblower Carlo), landed himself in hot water over doctored photographs and manipulative claims about a letter from Benedict XVI.
Mgr Viganò resigned after several days of increasingly intense media scrutiny — but,
in the same letter announcing acceptance of Viganò’s resignation, Pope Francis also praised him and announced he had created a special ad hoc position for him within the Secretariat [DIM=pt][where, one can well imagine, he may still be running the whole show despite the civilian figurehead Paolo Ruffini named to be the new communications prefect].
In Chile, Pope Francis first accused the now-disgraced and retired Bishop Juan Barros’s principal accusers of calumny, then said he’d seen no actual evidence against Barros even though he’s had a letter from one of Barros’s accusers since 2015.
Then Francis ordered an investigation into the whole hierarchy, then he summoned the bishops of Chile for a pow-wow at the Vatican, obtained their resignations, and began to sit on all but seven of them while the Chilean government continues to raid chanceries and offices of the national bishops’ conference.
Meanwhile,
three central figures remain in place, despite serious misconduct allegations pending against them (allegations all three strenuously deny): Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati continues in peaceful possession of his see — the capital Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile — while Ezzati’s predecessor, Cardinal Francisco Errázuriz, remains a member of the Pope’s C9 “kitchen cabinet” of cardinal-advisers, and Archbishop Ivo Scapolo remains in place as Apostolic Nuncio.
There have been varying degrees of emphasis on different parts at different times, but the basic pattern is fairly straightforward.
[Does anyone need more proof of how shamelessly, brazenly duplicitous Bergoglio is, among his many forms of dishonesty?]
Rorate caeli's commentary was just as prompt...
Wuerl I, Wuerl II and Wuerl III
The pope finally accepted Cardinal Wuerl's resignation as Archbishop
of Washington but keeps him on o run the diocese as interim administrator
by Kenneth J. Wolfe
Otober 12, 2018
Far from a dismissal or firing of any kind, Wuerl and Francis managed to turn the action into a retirement party. In the pope's "beautiful letter" (Wuerl's words this morning in a 6:09 a.m. listserv email) to the outgoing archbishop, Wuerl was praised by Francis:
"You have sufficient elements to 'justify' your actions and distinguish what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes. However your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense. Of this I am proud and thank you."
The Archdiocese of Washington has created a tribute page to Cardinal Wuerl, highlighting all of the archbishop's accomplishments and defending his reputation. All that is missing is the presentation of a gold watch during a luncheon to celebrate such a successful career heading into retirement.
An interesting detail in today's action: Wuerl remains in charge of the Archdiocese of Washington. So, even after his resignation was accepted by Francis, he has been appointed apostolic administrator of the archdiocese. To those who have ever been fired from a job, imagine being asked to stay on until the vetting and paperwork clears for your successor. This was hardly a termination; Don Wuerl is still in complete control of his mafia.
Lastly, remember
Wuerl is one of only two American members of the Congregation for Bishops, the Vatican body responsible for choosing new bishops to be appointed by the pope. It is a very safe bet to assume Wuerl has handpicked his successor. The entire process has been orchestrated, as demonstrated in the pre-arranged friendly interview in, of course, America [journal of the Jesuits in the USA].
Wuerl I was the archbishop of Washington.
Wuerl II is the apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Washington.
Wuerl III will be the protege of the outgoing archbishop, who will remain on the Congregation for Bishops. This is reform in the Bergoglio pontificate.
Perhaps we will be proven wrong, and an honest, traditional-leaning archbishop of Washington will be appointed by Francis.
The new archbishop would then need to reset the tone, including enforcing Canon 915 for Catholics within the troubled Archdiocese of Washington (including politicians and Jesuits) who receive communion while openly dissenting from core teachings of the Church.
This would likely require cleaning house in the chancery, currently comprised of Wuerl acolytes from top to bottom. Best wishes.
Cardinal Wuerl's resignation
a case of lost credibility
More than anything else it was because his priests didn’t
believe he was telling the truth about Archbishop McCarrick
by Raymond J. de Souza SJ
October 12, 2018
In the normal course of events, the resignation of a bishop nearly three years after his 75th birthday would be unremarkable. But these are not normal times, and Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s fall is most remarkable.
The two low points of the summer of shame for the Church in the United States — the Pennsylvania grand jury report and the revelations about former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick — both put Cardinal Wuerl on the hot seat. His time as bishop of Pittsburgh was subject to examination in the grand jury report, and what he knew about his predecessor in Washington, Cardinal McCarrick, led to many uncomfortable questions.
But it would have been possible to imagine Cardinal Wuerl surviving either, or both. It was that he lost the confidence of his priests that led to today’s resignation.
When Cardinal Wuerl traveled to Rome to meet with Pope Francis in August about this future, the Holy Father told him to return home and consult with his priests. The cardinal did so in early September and soon after announced that he would be asking Pope Francis to accept his resignation, which he submitted in accord with canon law on his 75th birthday in 2015. It had been expected that Cardinal Wuerl would continue in office until his 80th birthday in 2020.
And why did his priests lose confidence in him?
It was not his record in Pittsburgh, where he served as bishop from 1988-2006. While the general reaction to the grand jury report was fierce toward Cardinal Wuerl — his name was removed from a school named after him in Pittsburgh — the priests of both Pittsburgh and Washington would have had a more nuanced view.
There were cases, early in his time in Pittsburgh, that were not handled as they would have been after the Dallas Charter of 2002. But as bishop, Cardinal Wuerl was ahead of his time on the sexual abuse issue, and by the early 1990s he already had in place measures that other bishops would take another decade to implement.
Indeed, in his Oct. 12 letter accepting Wuerl’s resignation,
Pope Francis goes out of his way to praise Cardinal Wuerl’s handling of abuse cases — a brave statement given that it will be poorly received in the aftermath of the grand jury report.
“You have sufficient elements to ‘justify’ your actions and distinguish between what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes,” Pope Francis wrote. “However, your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense. Of this, I am proud and thank you.”
That is not entirely true. When the grand jury report was released, Cardinal Wuerl launched a special website precisely to defend his record in Pittsburgh. That was so grave a miscalculation of the public mood that Cardinal Wuerl took it down within a day.
On many other matters — catechesis, Catholic education, priestly formation — Cardinal Wuerl was exemplary and more than earned the praise Pope Francis showered upon him.
It was the McCarrick matter that brought him down. Precisely, his repeated insistence that he did not know about Cardinal McCarrick until the Archdiocese of New York announced in June that an allegation of sexual abuse of minor had been “substantiated.”
His priests did not believe him. They thought that he was lying in public and lying to them. When Archbishop Carlo Viganò wrote that Cardinal Wuerl “lies shamelessly” in his “testimony” published in late August, it confirmed conclusions that many Washington priests had already arrived at.
Further details from Archbishop Viganò’s testimony have subsequently been confirmed by the Vatican, most recently by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, who acknowledged that the nuncios in Washington were informed about Archbishop McCarrick and the restrictions placed upon him.
It is simply not possible that the nuncio in Washington, communicating restrictions from the Holy See upon Archbishop McCarrick for sexual misconduct, would not have told Cardinal Wuerl about what was being done to his predecessor, still resident in the archdiocese.
But it is not necessary to conclude that Cardinal Wuerl was lying about his ignorance regarding his predecessor [even if, in fact, he was???]; the important factor in his resignation now is that he could not convince his priests that he was telling the truth.
And therein, possibly, lies a significant milestone in the ongoing reform of the clergy.
Priests, in fact, have much experience of their bishops not telling the whole truth. Or speaking in a manner, while technically truthful, that is aimed more at obscuring rather than revealing. Or, on occasion, telling lies, plain and simple.
A culture of clerical mendacity can take hold in which violations of the Eighth Commandment no longer have the power to shock and are treated as routine. And when clerical culture accommodates itself to routine violations of the Eighth Commandment, matters violating the Seventh Commandment — embezzlement, fraud, theft — and the Sixth Commandment — failing in chastity of all kinds, including sexual abuse — are not far behind.
It may be that the priests of Washington, after Pennsylvania, after McCarrick, were just tired of a culture that was less than forthright.
Cardinal Wuerl was not helped by Cardinal Kevin Farrell, now in Rome but previously the vicar general for Cardinal McCarrick in Washington for six years. Cardinal Farrell, despite insisting in October 2017 that he “knew everything” that happened in Washington, pronounced himself shocked that there was anything untoward about Archbishop McCarrick. That denial was widely met with disbelief.
How deep can the culture of clerical mendacity go?
Consider last March, when Msgr. Dario Viganò, the prefect of the Vatican secretariat for communications — the chief communications officer of the Holy See — manipulated a letter from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI to make it seem that he was endorsing a series of booklets on the theology of Pope Francis. Benedict had refused to do so, and given explicit reasons why he would not endorse the project. When caught in his manipulation, Msgr. Viganò blatantly lied about what he had done.
The consequence? He resigned as prefect, but was immediately installed in a new senior position created for him in the same communications department, that of “assessor” — a sort of deputy to the prefect.
That the Vatican communications chief was not fired absolutely for deliberate falsifications and lies about the pope emeritus is an indication of how entrenched a culture of clerical mendacity can be.
The resignation of Cardinal Wuerl brings to an end decades of service that will be tarnished, at least for time, until a fuller appreciation becomes possible.
Yet the resignation might serve another purpose too, that of cleansing the culture of the clergy of one of its most serious vices, the failure to tell the truth. [Hard to do that at this time when the man at the very top no less has shown himself to be a habitual violator of the Eighth Commandment - and worse, of the Third Commandment ('Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain') as well, every time he misquotes Jesus by commission or omission to falsely support whatever point he is making!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/10/2018 21:41]