Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 10, 2020 / 11:00 am (CNA).- The release of the McCarrick Report Tuesday has been given a cautious welcome by lay American Catholics, who urged continued concern for the victims of sexual abuse and commitment to transparency by Church authorities.
The Vatican released its lengthy 461-page report on Nov. 10, detailing the Church’s institutional knowledge and decision-making on McCarrick over his decades as a priest, bishop, archbishop, and cardinal. He was laicized by Pope Francis in 2019 because of credible allegations of the sexual abuse of minors and adults.
In his years as a priest, bishop, and cardinal, McCarrick rose to the highest ranks of the Church, including leading the archdioceses of Newark and Washington. He also held influential positions at Catholic organizations including The Catholic University of America, where he was Chancellor, and the Catholic University of Puerto Rico.
The president of The Catholic University of America, John Garvey, addressed the report in a letter to the university community on Tuesday.
“We offer our prayers and pastoral support for the survivors, that they and their families encounter healing and peace,” Garvey wrote. “And I recommit this University to addressing sex abuse in the Catholic Church with courage and tenacity.”
McCarrick had long-standing ties to Catholic University, first as a student, assistant chaplain, Dean of Students, and an administrator and fundraiser at the university between 1958 and 1965. He later served on the university’s Board of Trustees and as chancellor of the school while he was Archbishop of Washington from 2000 until 2006. The university bestowed an honorary degree on him in 2006.
When the Archdiocese of New York announced in 2018 a credible accusation of child sexual abuse had been made against McCarrick, “the news hit our University community close to home,” Garvey said. The university rescinded McCarrick’s honorary degree that year.
Some lay Catholics expressed their disbelief at the report’s revelations–particularly the lack of a canonical investigation into the allegations against McCarrick until 2018, despite decades of accusations against him.
“To me, one of the things that’s so hard to read, as a Catholic and as a lay person, is that so many innuendos or concerns were never followed up on,” Dr. Susan Timoney, pastoral theologian at The Catholic University of America, told CNA on Tuesday.
“It’s unbelievable to think that the concern—any kind of concern of the kind of things going on in a seminary—wouldn’t be better investigated.”
Dr. Robert George, a law professor at Princeton University, said that the report does not adequately treat the matter of McCarrick’s proteges, or bishops and cardinals who attained significant positions in the Church because of McCarrick’s influence.
“Are there influential and powerful leaders in the Church in America and in the curia in Rome who have their positions at least in part due to Theodore McCarrick’s influence?” George asked rhetorically. “Who are they? Why did McCarrick use his influence to advance their careers?”
But Catholics also pointed to progress the Church has made in dealing with clergy sex abuse, and said the report is a necessary first step toward greater transparency and accountability within the Church on the matter.
Timoney noted the universal establishment of diocesan child protection offices in the United States over the last two decades, as well as Pope Francis’ work to establish better accountability for accusations of misconduct against bishops worldwide. The report’s publication “does show a better commitment to transparency,” she said.
In 2018, Catholic University launched its own special project unity to respond to the clergy abuse crisis as well as other relevant Church matters.
Stephen White, executive director of The Catholic Project at The Catholic University of America, said that, while a single report could not undo the damage by McCarrick, “truth and transparency are necessary steps toward healing those wounds and repairing the trust that has been broken.”
White said that Catholics should manifest “a spirit of penance and humility” amid “our anger and pain at the injustices committed by our clergy, and the sense of betrayal brought about by shepherds who failed to protect the flock.”
As they read the painful revelations in the report, Catholics should not forget “all of the work that the Church does at the grassroots level” to serve people, Timoney said.
“This isn’t the whole story of the Church,” she said, noting that “we are making a positive impact in a lot of peoples’ lives, day in and day out, through all of our ministries and agencies.”
McCarrick was ordained a priest in the Archdiocese of New York in 1958 before becoming auxiliary bishop of New York in 1977. He then became bishop of the new Diocese of Metuchen, New Jersey, in 1981, before becoming Archbishop of Newark in 1986, and then Archbishop of Washington in 2001, where he was made a cardinal by Pope St. John Paul II.
In 2006, he submitted his letter of resignation at the age of 75, as required by the Church of all bishops at that age.
After accusations that McCarrick had abused minors and seminarians over a period of years were made public in June 2018, Pope Francis ordered McCarrick to observe a life of prayer and penance and demanded his resignation from the College of Cardinals.
McCarrick was laicized in 2019, following a canonical process at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which found him guilty of “solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.”
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
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Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
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Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
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I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?