I hope Pope Francis will clarify like the former cardinal and now reduced to the lay state, Mr. McCarrick did, as soon as possible what His Holiness actually said and meant!
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Cardinal Theodore McCarrick issued a clarification Friday on remarks he
made during an interview on CNN’s The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.
The interview had generated some concern among many Catholics.
The cardinal said he recognized that his remarks could have given the wrong impression to people who took them out of context.
“I’m
afraid that I misspoke last Wednesday when I was being interviewed on
CNN,” the cardinal wrote, referring to the June 7 interview.
The
cardinal explained that he and Blitzer were discussing the proposed
Federal Marriage Amendment that had yet to be voted on in the Senate.
During the interview, the cardinal defended the need to “continue to
define marriage as we have defined marriage for thousands of years as a
union between a man and a woman.”
“After
that, I spoke of the legislation as it had been proposed and that it
would not eliminate the possibility of civil unions,” the cardinal wrote
in his clarification. “I said, ‘If this is what the legislation would
provide for, I think we can live with that.’”
“My
point was that the wording of the proposed legislation to protect
marriage, which did not eliminate civil unions, might be necessary in
order to have the votes needed to pass it,” he explained in the
clarification, which was posted on the Archdiocese of Washington’s
website this weekend.
“When
probed further on the question of civil unions, which came up because
the wording of the constitutional amendment did not seem to eliminate
them, I returned to the ideal,” he wrote.
The
ideal, he had said during the interview, is that everyone should be
“able to enter a union with a man and a woman and that would bring
children into the world and have the wonderful relationship of man and
wife that is so mutually supportive and is really so much part of our
society and what keeps society together.”
“In
trying to reply to a question, I mentioned people who may need the
right to take care of each other when they are grievously ill and
hospitalized, but it was always in the context of the proposed
legislation and in no way in favor of a lifestyle that is contrary to
the teaching of the Church and Scripture,” he clarified.
“I
realized that my words could have given the wrong impression to someone
who did not take my remarks in context,” wrote the cardinal. “I regret
any confusion my words may have caused because I did not make myself
sufficiently clear.”
The official transcript of the segment of the CNN interview in question follows:
BLITZER:
Another very sensitive issue that's being dealt with in the Senate
right now involves a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Senator
Ted Kennedy said this yesterday. He said, "A vote for this amendment is a
vote for bigotry, pure and simple." You disagree with him, don't you?
MCCARRICK:
On this one, I do. Ted and I have -- do have differences from time to
time. And this is a real big one. It seems to me that we really have to
continue to define marriage as we've defined marriage for thousands of
years as a union between a man and a woman.
Now,
I think the legislation as it is proposed would not throw out the
possibility of a civil union. And I think we can -- we can live with
that if this is what -- if this is what the Constitution will provide
for. But to say that you can take this concept of marriage, this word of
marriage and use it in ways that it has never been used before, as far
as I know, in the history of the world, I think that makes no sense.
BLITZER:
So just explain. You think that you could live with -- you could
support civil unions between gays and lesbians, but you wouldn't like
them to get formally married, is that right?
MCCARRICK:
Yes. I think -- I think basically the ideal would be that everybody was
-- was able to enter a union with a man and a woman and bring children
into the world and have the wonderful relationship of man and wife that
is so mutually supportive and is really so much part of our society and
what keeps our society together. That's the ideal.
If
you can't meet that ideal, if there are people who for one reason or
another just cannot do that or feel they cannot do that, then in order
to protect their right to take care of each other, in order to take care
of their right to have visitation in a hospital or something like that,
I think that you could allow, not the ideal, but you could allow for
that for a civil union.
But
if you begin to fool around with the whole - the whole nature of
marriage, then you’re doing something which effects the whole culture
and denigrated what is so important for us. Marriage is the basic
foundation of our family structure. And if we lose that, then I think
we become a society that’s in real trouble.
And new today from sources in the Vatican:
Vatican report on disgraced ex U.S. cardinal McCarrick expected this month - sources
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - A long-awaited Vatican report into disgraced ex-U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is expected to be released this month to coincide with an annual meeting of American bishops, Vatican sources said on Thursday.
McCarrick was expelled from the Roman Catholic priesthood last year after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of sexual crimes against minors and adults and abuse of power.
Pope Francis ordered a thorough study of all documents in Holy See offices concerning McCarrick in 2018. The four U.S. dioceses where he served - New York, Metuchen, Newark, and Washington, D.C. - carried out separate investigations to feed into the Vatican report.
U.S. Catholic bishops are due to hold their annual meeting Nov. 15-19. It will be held virtually this year because of the coronavirus.
The sources said the report would be released by the Vatican before the bishops’ meeting starts.
There is great anticipation for the report because it may show how McCarrick managed to rise through the ranks even though his history of sexual misconduct with adult male seminarians was an open secret.
The 90-year-old McCarrick, once a power-broker as Archbishop of Washington, D.C. from 2001 to 2006, is the highest-profile Church figure to have been dismissed from the priesthood in modern times.
Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Hugh Lawson
4 comments:
Maybe McCarrick was planning his own
I would not at all be surprised for some heavily redacted document to be released with some lame explanation about "liability" and "protecting the identities of innocent people" or some other claptrap.
Sorry Vatican apparatchiks, I just don't trust you. You've earned it.
"Pope Francis ordered a thorough study of all documents in Holy See offices concerning McCarrick in 2018. The four U.S. dioceses where he served - New York, Metuchen, Newark, and Washington, D.C. - carried out separate investigations to feed into the Vatican report."
One person after another — Cardinal Pell, for example — who has been associated with Pope Francis has praised our holy Pope's integrity.
I am confident that said report will be fair and accurate.
Pope Francis will make sure of that.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Yes, any report from the Vatican will be a whitewash. McCarrick was not the only bishops sexually involved with his priests and other. The are others who should be defrocked as well. They bishops protect their own.
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