At this point the allegations about the cardinal\u2019s predatory harassment and molestation of seminarians are still just allegations.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason for that, and before we fall into a spasm of\u00a0Oh what a fine man, shame on people casting aspersions!<\/em> let\u2019s talk about the little old ladies at your parish.<\/p>\n I teach parish Bible study, and easily a half or more of the people I happen to work with are single women in about the same age group as the average parish priest.\u00a0 These ladies are hospitable.\u00a0 They love Jesus.\u00a0 They love their priests.\u00a0 And so a question that comes up is: How do I have Father in for dinner without causing a scandal?<\/p>\n They ask this question because they know that a single lady doesn\u2019t just invite Father over to her apartment for a little one-on-one time.<\/p>\n I approve of this caution<\/a>.\u00a0 So what I typically suggest is that they pair up with another single friend or two and make a group event of it.<\/p>\n So what would happen if Fr. Hapless and Miss Hospitable started spending enough time together that the rumour mill churned out the news that those two were an item?<\/p>\n If Father\u2019s innocent, we could expect a few things:<\/p>\n And then Father Hapless, no longer as naive as he once was, will make a point in the future of avoiding scandalous appearances.\u00a0 My limited experience with false-accusation cases (just one that I\u2019ve personally dealt with, though I\u2019ve watched other cases from a distance) is that the accused will do what is possible to prove his or her innocence.\u00a0 Any number of the accused\u2019s faults may come to light, but the accused will behave pretty much like the guy in the movie who scrambles to clear his name.<\/p>\n Cardinal McCarrick\u2019s case doesn\u2019t smell like that.<\/p>\n The reason the Cardinal has finally been removed from priestly ministry is because of one credible allegation of abusing a minor.\u00a0 The New York Times<\/em> relates the allegations here<\/a>.\u00a0 Keep in mind as you read that a 16-year-old is not a little boy.\u00a0 He is much more like a young man.\u00a0 Back in the day, boys of sixteen were known to lie about their age so they could enlist in the military.\u00a0 Physically speaking, a 16-year-old boy has more in common with an 18-year-old than he does with a 12-year-old or a 30-year-old.\u00a0 Hold that thought.<\/p>\n In 2010, Richard Sipe published excerpts (graphic) of the allegations against Cardinal McCarrick<\/a> from the court records of a then-seminarian who accused McCarrick of molesting him.\u00a0 Sipe, you should know, is literally a professional at the business of testifying against Catholic clergy in abuse cases<\/a>.\u00a0 It is possible that the similarities between the accusations of McCarrick\u2019s behavior with a minor and the accusations of his behavior towards (legally adult) seminarians is based on pure fabrication: Take the details of one set of accusations and copy them out into a variation that slips under the legal line between minor and adult.<\/p>\n Possible.\u00a0 False accusations tend to follow scripts copied from real crimes.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s Rod Dreher, professional schismatic, talking about his efforts to expose McCarrick as early as 2002<\/a>.\u00a0 The summary: He had plenty of people willing to talk to him off the record, but no source would come forward and make the accusations in public.\u00a0 No one dared.<\/p>\n Understand that Dreher\u2019s living is made on scandal.\u00a0 Telling you how bad things are in the church is his bread and butter.\u00a0 It is possible that he is entirely fabricating this whole account of his supposed investigative journalism efforts . . . but if so, that lie is bad business calculus.\u00a0 His market doesn\u2019t want to read fiction, they want real grit.\u00a0 Pretending you almost got the grit is not a winning lie.<\/p>\n The other journalist talking about her efforts to break the McCarrick case<\/a> is Julia Duin with Get Religion<\/em>.\u00a0 Like Dreher, she had sources who wouldn\u2019t go on the record, so she ended up at a dead end.\u00a0 \u00a0In contrast to Dreher, Duin\u2019s market is being the person who sets the record straight on religion reporting<\/a>.\u00a0 Her job is to wade through the hype and get down to the facts.\u00a0 If\u00a0she\u2019s<\/em> lying about her investigation of McCarrick, she\u2019s on a mad quest for unemployment.<\/p>\n Not likely.<\/p>\n The allegations against McCarrick are nobody\u2019s favorite.\u00a0 If you are tired of seeing the Church dragged through the mud, the instinct is to look for proof of innocence.\u00a0 If you are the average pewsitter, probably not gay, probably used to overlooking your parish priest\u2019s little faults, what you want is for all this to be Not That Bad.\u00a0 If you are, whether from within the Church or outside of it, working hard to make homosexuality anodyne, then what you want are clerics who, if they must sin, quietly carry on some personal affair with a sympathetic twist to it.\u00a0 What you don\u2019t want is for The Gay Cardinal to be promiscuous and predatory, forcing himself on young men subject to his power.<\/p>\n What you certainly don\u2019t want is for this kind of predatory behavior to be widespread.<\/p>\n So here\u2019s the late Michael Dubruiel blogging about predatory homosexuality among the clergy.\u00a0 He\u2019s writing in the same era that Dreher and Duin were investigating McCarrick, but reporting on events that happened in the 1980\u2019s and 90\u2019s:<\/p>\n And finally, here he shares the comments of a priest<\/a>, the original is no longer available, talking about the futility of going to your bishop when you experience all this:<\/p>\n It does no good to go to the bishop when the bishop is the problem! The chancery staff, the Monsignori, were appointed by him.<\/em><\/p>\n . . . The few priests foolish enough to speak openly about the scandal of homosexuality in the priesthood have soon learned that they will receive no help or support from anyone. The people don\u2019t want to believe it. The newspapers won\u2019t print it. The district attorney won\u2019t prosecute, after all, his is an elected position, and the only thing more pointless than writing to the bishop is writing to \u201cRome\u201d! Only in the area of pedophilia have we been able to enlist the aid of lawyers and multi-million dollar lawsuits to help keep some children a little safer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Keep in mind that Michael Dubruiel was blogging all this while he and his wife were working (she still is<\/a>) in mainstream Catholic publishing.\u00a0 He had no motive whatsoever to pick fights with the Church.\u00a0 The evidence is ample that McCarrick\u2019s behavior is not an aberration.<\/p>\n As you read the official statements from Newark<\/a>,\u00a0Washington<\/a>,\u00a0 New York<\/a>,\u00a0Metuchen<\/a>,\u00a0and the USCCB<\/a>, think about the men writing these words.\u00a0 Every single one of them has a career built during what we might call The McCarrick Years, but, as we\u2019ve seen, it\u2019s not just one guy.\u00a0 It was a whole way of being Catholic clerics, and it was international.<\/p>\n What does it take to be a seminarian, then priest, then bishop, with a kingmaker who wants to put his hands in your pants?\u00a0 One way or another, you have to be a guy who can tolerate the system.<\/p>\n Some of these men may be singing a\u00a0Te Deum<\/em>\u00a0as we speak, that the criminal they prayed for years would be convicted has finally been brought to some sort of justice.\u00a0 Others may be wondering if they\u2019re next to get caught.\u00a0 We can imagine the bulk fall somewhere in between.\u00a0 To be a priest is to be a company man: A guy who can get along, keep his head down, not make waves.<\/p>\n Is there any wonder not a single priest would come forward and publicly denounce McCarrick? Of course not.\u00a0 To be ordained is by definition to be a guy who managed to make his bishop happy.<\/p>\n If you take a look at the pedigrees of your local bishop and parish priests, and check them against the dioceses and seminaries already on the record as having been hotbeds of predatory homosexuality*, you may start to understand a few things.<\/p>\n Consider, for example, the parish or diocese that gives lip service to praying for vocations, but does not actually do any of the things that would form up young men capable of discerning a vocation at eighteen.\u00a0 It is entirely possible a generation of boys is not being ignored but spared:\u00a0Wait until the boy\u2019s not so nubile, when he\u2019s a got a better chance of being able to dodge Fr. Handsey and Bishop Bedsheets.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>A late vocation may well be a much safer vocation.<\/p>\n But silence only takes you so far.<\/p>\n Mark Shea used to have a whole genre of posts called Gay Brownshirts on the March<\/a>.\u00a0 He was wrong to use such inflammatory language. He was correct in seeing that bit by bit Christian beliefs about human sexuality were slowly being outlawed<\/a>.<\/p>\nHow Innocence Behaves<\/h3>\n
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People Who Have Nothing to Gain<\/h3>\n
What It\u2019s Like at Seminary<\/h3>\n
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Priests Don\u2019t Come from Nowhere<\/h3>\n
You Can\u2019t Have Freedom of Speech and Slavery to Silence Both<\/h3>\n
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