One would have to be a hermit not to know about quondam
Cardinal McCarrick’s precipitous fall from grace. The New York Times, probably with great
relish, ran three stories on McCarrick’s other career as “Uncle Ted”, sexual
predator of young men. The story was
taken up by the whole mediasphere for at least a week and still continues at
this writing. The Church, thanks be to God, acted swiftly, stripping him of his
public ministry, removing his membership in the College of Cardinals, and
planning a trial in the Vatican in the future. The secular press often wonders how such a man
could have been promoted to the very highest levels in the Church. But that sense of wonder masks an assumption
that moral corruption in the Catholic Church is far and wide among its
clerics.
The fact is that many priests and bishops knew about
McCarrick’s predatory behavior for years.
Even I, a simple parish priest from Connecticut, heard from priests in
the know about Uncle Ted and his
exploits. The question then still remains:
why did he rise so high in the hierarchy when so many people, including
those in Rome, knew his sordid history?
Those in charge of making bishops cannot claim ignorance given the paper
trail of payments paid to settle accusations made against him. So the obvious conclusion is that it is true
that moral corruption has infected the Church at all levels.
Cardinal O’Malley of Boston, in two articles in the Boston
Globe, spoke about two issues related to the McCarrick scandal. The first is, given the zero tolerance policy
with respect to priests, that a clear and swift procedural policy must be set
up for bishops and the rest of the hierarchy of the Church with respect to
grossly immoral sexual behavior. Let us
hope that happens very soon. The Cardinal also warned about the further erosion
of the already weak moral authority of the Church. The latter concern of the Cardinal is very
real. Catholics for the most part, when
they hear of reprehensible behavior on the part of priests, are saddened
deeply. Some get angry to the point
where they stop going to Mass. But most Catholics have always understood that
the efficacy of the sacraments does not depend on the moral state of the
priest. And yet Catholics often find
themselves trying to defend the Church even to their own children, who view the
Church with suspicion and hostility, often because of the priests’ scandals
that continue even today. I have heard
priests say things like: the 70s and 80s
were pretty bad with all those terrible scandals involving priests, but let’s
stop dwelling on that and move on. But
there is no moving on when the moral corruption in the Church still so
obviously exists.
To believe that the
McCarrick scandal is a singular situation is impossible for a rational person. For such a parlous situation to go on for so
many years it is impossible to believe that other bishops knew nothing about
this. The recent protests of a number of
bishops that they knew nothing about Uncle Ted until the scandal broke cannot
be seriously entertained. When one
ponders the question about why pedophile and hebefile priests were shuffled
around for so many years by bishops, one striking and logical answer is
this: that the bishops themselves were
compromised. There are indeed many
bishops who understand the gravitas of their God-given office and who
understand that their calling demands a real call to holiness. But it seems that there has been and
continues to be a strong homosexual subculture made up of priests and bishops
who know each other and protect each other. Ask any seminarian of fifty years
ago, twenty years ago, even today. They
all know of the existence of this subculture and often accept it as just how it
is in the Church. How many of us parish
priests know young men who would have made fine priests but who left seminary
because of the noxious presence of this subculture? All too many of us.
There have been and still are dioceses with a strong gay
subculture among priests. In some
dioceses they are in control and are referred to as the Gay Mafia or the Lavender
Hill Mob. Now the press is not at all
interested in this subculture, because the liberal press thinks that the
Catholic Church’s attitude towards homosexuality and homosexual acts is wrong
headed, and they hope that the Church will become as enlightened as they are
and accept priests who engage in homosexual sex. Pope Benedict XVI spoke of cleaning out the
filth in the stables. That is an
indirect way of referring to the sexual immorality within the clergy, most of
which is homosexual in nature. It is
because of this subculture that the criminal behavior of priests involving boys
and young men was hidden for so long and finally, because of the secular press,
was forced into the scorching light of the day.
Uncle Ted was part of this subculture and was protected by it. It would be a great blessing for the Church
if the whole subculture were exposed for all to see. Perhaps we can hope that the McCarrick affair
will be the beginning of this exposure and the filth will be cleansed from the
stables.
Do we have bishops who have the virility to do what has to
be done in seminaries, in parishes, in the episcopate, in the clerical
bureaucracy in Rome? We must pray for
our good bishops that they may find the strength to do what has to be
done. If not, then there will be a
succession of “Uncles”, each of whom will further erode the moral authority of
the Church of Jesus Christ.
