I have read the McCarrick Report which is like reading a sex novel about homosexuality. I felt like I needed to go to confession for reading it! I have read some commentaries about it too. Some say they lament the fact that the statutes of limitation have expired and McCarrick at the age of 90 won’t be incarcerated. Others write they believe civil law suits should be brought against him to make him pay dearly for his crimes and give some sense of justice to his victims.
But everyone in the Church from the pope on down is a victim of McCarrick. He’s just one more dig at the foundation of the Church that has had a lot of digs since Vatican II. Just look at the photos of the before and after renovation of a gothic church in Indiana below this post. The liturgy for one and the other are unrecognizable as being and accomplishing the same thing. There is clearly a new identity being created that has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the previous identity.
This is my suggestion to whatever bishop, and I think it is the Bishop of Rome. EXCOMMUNICATE MCCARRICK until he repents of what he has done to his victims, not just the 17 boys and men he molested or violated sexually, but to every single Catholic in the world.
And I am using excommunication not just as punishment, but out of a concern for the salvation of his soul. Isn’t that the Church’s primary mission, saving souls from going to hell??? Justice is a part of that, lamenting this that and the other while wringing our hands is normal, but let’s have some toxic masculinity compassion from our bishops. EXCOMMUNICATE MCCARRICK, until he publicly repents and then restore him to the full communion of the Church while keeping the punishment/justice of “defrocking” him in place.
We have serious ministries to convicted killers in prison, some of them serial killers. I would hope the purpose of that is not to coddle them but to call them to repentance and prepare them for their personal judgement before Almighty God. Anything less would be another miserable failure in the Catholic Church of Vatican II.
7 comments:
The McCarrick report reveals what everone knew. The Bishops and Cardinals around McCarrick knew what he was doing, but they didn't know that what he was doing was wrong. They were mostly concerned that other people -- people not as tolerant as they were, and likely not as enlightened -- would find out and raise an alarm. McCarrick spooning with seminarians might have been a bit "icky" for the hoi polloi but it wasn't in anyones manual of do's and don'ts so they didn't know it was actually perverted and sinful and obviously a sign of grooming.
And the Popes were too weak kneed to intervene. If only we had the orthodoxy of B16 and the ruthlessness of Francis at the top of the Church.
Good points all, especially that last paragraph! Pope Francis could have been the darling of the orthodox if only he wasn’t so damn progressive in an enabling way.
Bishops and Cardinals: “....they didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong”.
How could that be ??!!
I am old enough to remember being taught as a teenager by Catholic priests and teaching brothers that masturbation was a mortal sin, as was any premarital sexual intimacy. Anyone who listened to, and took seriously, what was taught back then would have had ZERO doubt that the Catholic Church taught that ALL premarital or extramarital sexual activity was seriously sinful. It was very clear cut back then.
I am old enough to have female relatives who have told me that as young women they ended relationships with boyfriends because of advice (demands?) received from priests during confession.
My mother after almost dying giving birth to me went to a priest to discuss the medical advice she had received about not quickly having more children and this particular priest back then would would not even give the OK for her and my father to practice the rhythm method; my mother was advised to pray, trust God and accept as many children as He wanted her to have....
I could go on with other examples from my family....but that will do.
And to think that in this same era it was somehow possible for any priest or bishop to NOT regard it as seriously sinful and seriously wrong in every way for another priest to be acting out sexually in ANY way with a young men and teenage boys or ??!!
How could that be ?
A @ 8:58, that is how I perceive the pre-Vatican II Church. Bishops, priests and nuns taught in a “black and white” way and you knew what was morally wrong and mortally sinful. Yet there is definitely a “rigidity” in what you describe that caused these very same bishops, priests and nuns to flip flop right after Vatican II and its ability to affect changes on what was perceived to be unchangeable. The rigorous discipline of the Church at that time was tossed out almost immediately by many in the clergy and religious life and they went on a mortal sin shopping spree.
I do not. Advocate for pre-Vatican II rigidity or pastoral insensitivity and making a mountain out of a molehill, but the Swiss Alps are what they are and you can’t make a molehill out of those which is what so many in the hierarchy have done after Vatican II and acted on their instinctual concupiscence no matter how disordered or perverted.
Many progressives in the church despise the word disordered to describe unnatural sex acts be it homosexual or heterosexual. We now know why.
I wonder how many Catholics lost their faith (if not in God) in the Catholic Church when the secular media revealed the extent that Catholic bishops and priests so often went very easy on fellow priests, who at times had even committed sexual CRIMES, and had memories of how tough significant numbers of priests could be in the confessional with teenagers and young adults in the past for what many regard today as quite minor transgressions of the 6th and 9th commandments.
My godmother tells a true story of a particular priest who has very strict with her as a young woman in the confessional who almost immediately the craziness of the 1970s started just quickly left the priesthood without bothering with the process of laicization (sp?) and "shacked up" with a woman.
It will always remain a mystery to me how in those times c. 1970 to c. 1985 how VERY many Catholic priests and nuns could change (as people!) so much SO quickly !! With everything from liturgy to marriage and sexual morality to death, judgement, heaven and hell to their general worldview etc !
It is a subject a 100 plus PhD doctorates could be written on...
It has been the devil’s perfect storm. The sexual abuse of children/teenagers and the vulnerable while present in the pre-Vatican II Church escalated after the discipline of the Church was lifted after Vatican II. Most of the abuse, not all, was homosexual in nature and I suspect the priest doing it thought it consensual even though he had to know it broke the 6th commandment and his promise/vow to celibate chastity.
Even in the seminary, I never heard a thing about this. Although by the 70’s numerous priests left the priesthood to marry or pursue alternate lifestyles. Many married nuns or parishioners. It was a scandal, but marriage wasn’t a scandal compared to sex abuse. Yes, many Catholics lost their faith certainly in the Church, the hierarchy and maybe God because of it and this in no small part has emptied the pews.
But the negligence and complicity of bishops exacerbated it. We all thought the breaking of the 6th commandment and one’s priestly vows/promises would lead to serious repercussions but it did not, only cushy treatment in psychiatric facilities and a new assignment in the diocese or elsewhere. it is all too shocking to comprehend.
The Bishop of Rome might consider excommunicating all people in the USA who voted knowingly for a team that celebrates Abortion as good.
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