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I have some very difficult things to say in response to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops\u2019s statement on the disgraced Cardinal McCarrick.<\/p>\n
On August first, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, the president of the USCCB, issued a statement\u00a0<\/a>which I quote here in full:<\/p>\n The accusations against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick reveal a grievous moral failure within the Church. They cause bishops anger, sadness, and shame; I know they do in me. They compel bishops to ask, as I do, what more could have been done to protect the People of God. Both the abuses themselves, and the fact that they have remained undisclosed for decades, have caused great harm to people\u2019s lives and represent grave moral failures of judgement on the part of Church leaders.<\/p>\n These failures raise serious questions. Why weren\u2019t these allegations of sins against chastity and human dignity disclosed when they were first brought to Church officials? Why wasn\u2019t this egregious situation addressed decades sooner and with justice? What must our seminaries do to protect the freedom to discern a priestly vocation without being subject to misuse of power?<\/p>\n Archbishop McCarrick will rightly face the judgement of a canonical process at the Holy See regarding the allegations against him, but there are also steps we should be taking as the Church here in the United States. Having prayed about this, I have convened the USCCB Executive Committee.\u00a0 This meeting was the first of many among bishops that will extend into our Administrative Committee meeting in September and our General Assembly in November. All of these discussions will be oriented toward discerning the right course of action for the USCCB. This work will take some time but allow me to stress these four points immediately.<\/p>\n First, I encourage my brother bishops as they stand ready in our local dioceses to respond with compassion and justice to anyone who has been sexually abused or harassed by anyone in the Church. We should do whatever we can to accompany them.<\/p>\n Second, I would urge anyone who has experienced sexual assault or harassment by anyone in the Church to come forward. Where the incident may rise to the level of a crime, please also contact local law enforcement.<\/p>\n Third, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will pursue the many questions surrounding Archbishop McCarrick\u2019s conduct to the full extent of its authority; and where that authority finds its limits, the Conference will advocate with those who do have the authority. One way or the other, we are determined to find the truth in this matter.<\/p>\n Finally, we bishops recognize that a spiritual conversion is needed as we seek to restore the right relationship among us and with the Lord. Our Church is suffering from a crisis of sexual morality. The way forward must involve learning from past sins.<\/p>\n Let us pray for God\u2019s wisdom and strength for renewal as we follow St. Paul\u2019s instruction: \u2018Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect\u2019 (Romans 12:2).\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The best response I have seen to this came from the actress Patricia Heaton, a Catholic, on her Twitter page:<\/p>\n Dear Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, The laity does not care how much shame you feel; we want all those who perpetrated and covered up sexual abuse OUT. Also, victims of abuse should not \u201ccome forward \u201c but go directly to the police. You had your chance to help; you failed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I believe she\u2019s absolutely right. I couldn\u2019t say it any better myself.<\/p>\n DiNardo is wrong when he says this is a crisis of sexual morality. It\u2019s a crisis of the abuse of the vulnerable, and of the bishops\u2019 failure to stop the abuse, and it\u2019s a crisis for which they have no excuse. Furthermore, it\u2019s hardly a crisis. A crisis is a dramatic moment of change. This is a corrupt status quo which has gone on for a very long time. We have, at this point, no reason to believe that they will do better going forward. They had plenty of time to do better, and they didn\u2019t. The answer to this crisis doesn\u2019t lie in trusting our bishops to make it go away. We have to report abusive priests to somebody else, or they will go on abusing.<\/p>\n This is a hard topic to discuss. We as Catholics are raised to respect and honor priests, and that\u2019s good. We ought to. Priest represent Christ when they administer the sacraments; they represent the Church when they appear in public in their clericals. They make a beautiful, generous choice when they choose to dedicate their lives to serving the Church instead of their own interests, and that ought to be commended. You ought to have great respect for the priesthood.<\/p>\n But too many of us have also been raised in a form of idolatry known as clericalism\u2013 the idea that priests can do no wrong, or that priests have to be defended even when they\u2019re very wrong indeed. Many of us might have been told that it\u2019s wrong to tell anyone if a priest hurts you\u2013 that it\u2019s gossip, that it\u2019s damaging to the Church, that we ought to suffer in silence and offer it up. And this couldn\u2019t be further from the truth.<\/p>\n We ought to respect the clergy, but a huge part of respect is having standards. Part of respecting the sacred office of the priesthood is expecting them to live up to the honor and trust we have for them.<\/p>\n And when priests betray this trust in such a sickening, inexcusable way, they betray the priesthood. They betray the Church. They betray Christ. They commit a sacrilege that is unimaginable.<\/p>\n It is as much in the interest of the Church and the office of the priesthood as it is in the interest of anyone else, that priests who commit heinous crimes against the laity or other priests be exposed and punished. And, as of today, the bishops have tragically failed to punish them, or to keep the laity safe.<\/p>\n For the sake of our safety, for the sake of justice, and indeed for the sake of the office of the priesthood and the Church itself: go to law enforcement. If a priest has abused you or someone you know in a way that is illegal, report them to law enforcement. Don\u2019t try to talk to the bishop first. The bishops have given us no indication that that will be fruitful.<\/p>\n You\u2019re not betraying Christ if you do this. Christ doesn\u2019t commit mortal sins. Christ doesn\u2019t abuse people. The priest who is supposed to represent Christ, betrays Christ if he commits sexual abuse.<\/p>\n You\u2019re not betraying the Church either. The priest who committed this hideous crime betrayed the great trust the Church put in him. You are helping the Church by helping bring him to justice and keeping him from abusing anyone else.<\/p>\n We Catholics must love and honor the Catholic priesthood and the many good and saintly men who are consecrated to serve as priests. We must do this by constant prayer and penance for our priests. We must also do it by supporting and defending them whenever they do good, which is so very often. But we also have to honor the office of the priesthood by having no tolerance for evil, abusive men who desecrate the priesthood by their actions. They have to be exposed and brought to justice, and the way to do this seems not to be to report them to their bishops. That has proven fruitless.<\/p>\n If you have been sexually abused by a priest: I am sorry. I can\u2019t imagine the pain, shame, fear and betrayal you must be suffering right now. I don\u2019t pretend that everything will be all right if you come forward. I don\u2019t think anything can make it all right. But please don\u2019t be frightened into silence by any clericalist errors you might have been taught.<\/p>\n If you have witnessed sexual abuse by a priest: I can\u2019t imagine what a horrible thing that must be to have seen. I know it\u2019s very hard to come forward and talk about such things, but I do ask you to come forward. Don\u2019t try to handle it through the Church right now. Report them to law enforcement. There will likely be a backlash against you from misguided people of faith who think we have to hide priests from the consequences of their actions, but you will be in the right. God will be with you. When we speak up for the victims of abuse, we speak up for Christ who is hidden in them.<\/p>\n We must stop waiting for our bishops to fix this.<\/p>\n Because, at this point in time, we can reasonably expect that they will not.<\/p>\n (image via pixabay)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 I have some very difficult things to say in response to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops\u2019s statement on the disgraced Cardinal McCarrick. On August first, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, the president of the USCCB, issued a statement\u00a0which I quote here in full: The accusations against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick reveal a grievous moral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2694,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[865,1738,626,485,5192,665,742,1652,2146,550,2941,733,1767,284,6162,1764,482,480,5189,896,59,71],"tags":[61,4059,113,135,477,6168,6165,3320,6174,695,4941,6177,522,693,3477,1762,6171,6180,2750],"class_list":["post-5805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abuse","category-america","category-christian-idenitity","category-conscience","category-culture","category-fear","category-heresy","category-horror","category-human-dignity","category-icon","category-laity-and-lay-vocations","category-mess","category-monster","category-news","category-priest","category-rape","category-sex","category-sexual-ethics","category-silencing","category-social-justice","category-spiritual-abuse","category-suffering","tag-abuse","tag-cardinal","tag-chastity","tag-christ","tag-church","tag-clericals","tag-clericalsim","tag-crisis","tag-dinardo","tag-failure","tag-law-enforcement","tag-mccarrick","tag-police","tag-priest","tag-priesthood","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-silencing","tag-trust","tag-usccb"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nThere has been a massive failure to protect the Church from abusive priests, it was already noted, and it\u2019s gone on completely uncorrected for decades\u2013 this despite people \u201ccoming forward\u201d to the bishops for help. We knew this in 2002 when Cardinal Law was exposed but escaped all punishment for his horrendous mishandling of reports of pedophilia. That was sixteen years ago. A few years later, two dioceses paid off victims of Cardinal McCarrick\u2019s abuse. Bishops have known about his misconduct for ten years and he\u2019s only now beginning to see consequences. And it\u2019s not as though he\u2019s the only one. We\u2019re hearing stories<\/a> from all quarters of women and men, and even other priests<\/a>, who reported sexually abusive priests to their superiors and got nowhere. The priests were quietly transferred and the victims ignored or silenced.<\/p>\n