Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick arrives at Massachusetts’ Dedham District Courthouse for his arraignment, Sept. 3, 2021. / Andrew Bukuras/CNA
Washington D.C., Sep 16, 2021 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
Three sex abuse lawsuits, including one naming disgraced former archbishop Theodore McCarrick as the alleged abuser, were filed on Thursday, Sept. 16 in a New Jersey court. All three lawsuits also named the Diocese of Metuchen as a defendant.
Jeffrey Anderson, a prominent attorney who represents sex abuse victims, brought the lawsuits. In an online press conference on Thursday, Anderson called on the Metuchen diocese to release additional information on accusations against current and former clergy.
“We challenge you to account and take responsibility for each of these cases, and also challenge you to come clean with the full truth,” Anderson said. “[We] invite you, implore you, to release more names and information that have been kept secret by the Diocese of Metuchen for too long.”
The first lawsuit filed named McCarrick, who served as the first bishop of the diocese from 1981 until 1986, as the abuser in question. According to the lawsuit, McCarrick engaged in “unpermitted sexual contact” with the plaintiff while he was bishop of Metuchen from approximately 1982 to 1985. The plaintiff was between the ages of 19 and 22 during that period.
McCarrick’s attorney Barry Coburn declined to comment on the lawsuit on Thursday.
McCarrick, 91, on July 28 was criminally charged in a Massachusetts court with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14. The incidents allegedly took place with a 16-year-old male in the 1970s. McCarrick appeared for his arraignment on Sept. 3 in Massachusetts’ Dedham District Court, and pleaded “not guilty” to the charges. His next court date is Oct. 28.
He was once an influential and high-ranking figure in the Catholic Church, before numerous accusations against him were made public in 2018, alleging past sexual misconduct with children and seminarians. McCarrick was laicized in February 2019, after a Vatican canonical investigation 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.”
The second lawsuit filed on Thursday named Fr. John Butler, a laicized priest who died in 2016, as the alleged abuser of a minor. Butler, who was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Richmond, served in numerous dioceses throughout his career including in Metuchen.
According to the lawsuit, Butler engaged in umpermitted sexual contact with a minor between the ages of 9 to 12, from approximately 1995 to 1998. The plaintiff was attending St. John Vianney school in Colonia, New Jersey at the time, where Fr. Butler was employed.
Butler was removed from public ministry in 2002 and was laicized shortly thereafter. He is not on the list of credibly-accused priests from the Diocese of Metuchen, but does appear on the list of accused priests from the Diocese of Richmond, his home diocese.
The third lawsuit names Br. Regis Moccia, S.C. of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, who similarly does not appear on the list of credibly-accused priests from the Diocese of Metuchen. Moccia is accused of abusing a young teen at St. Joseph’s High School in Metuchen, in 1981 and 1982. He died in 2000.
Moccia was first accused of abuse in a September 2020 lawsuit; Anderson claimed that this suit inspired another alleged victim of his to come forward.
“It’s also notable that Moccia is not on the list [of credibly-accused clergy] released by the Diocese of Metuchen, even though that suit has been brought by us naming him as an offender of children at St. Joseph’s high school in Metuchen, earlier,” Anderson said on Thursday.
Anderson called on the Diocese of Metuchen to release additional names of credibly accused clergy, and claimed that there are at least 15 additional names that have not yet been released.
The Diocese of Metuchen did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication on Thursday.
New Jersey in 2019 relaxed the statute of limitations in sex abuse cases, allowing for new lawsuits in old cases of child sex abuse and sex abuse of adults. The two-year window for such lawsuits to be filed expires Nov. 30.
Anderson has filed other civil sex abuse lawsuits naming McCarrick. In July, he filed a civil lawsuit in a New Jersey court accusing McCarrick of sexually abusing a 12-year-old boy in 1986.
In July 2020, Anderson filed a lawsuit alleging that McCarrick had sexually abused a boy and aided his abuse by several other priests in the early 1980s, characterizing McCarrick as leading a “sex ring.”
Anderson has sued many Catholic dioceses and religious orders over the years. While some say he has been an effective advocate for sex abuse victims, critics say he has sensationalized and embellished claims in order to attract media attention to litigation, and that he is a self-promoter.
According to the lawsuit naming McCarrick, the plaintiff’s family resided in the Archdiocese of New York and had contact with McCarrick while he was a representative of the archdiocese. McCarrick was a priest secretary to Cardinal Terrence Cooke of New York beginning in 1971, and served as auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese from 1977 until 1981, when he was made bishop of Metuchen.
McCarrick later served as Archbishop of the Archdioceses of Newark and Washington, and played an influential role in the global Catholic Church. He helped craft the U.S. Church’s response to revelations of widespread clergy sex abuse in 2002. He also made numerous international trips for peacebuilding and ecumenical causes, and was known as an effective fundraiser.
In June 2018, the Archdiocese of New York revealed that a decades-old allegation of sex abuse against McCarrick was “credible.” News reports subsequently detailed more allegations of McCarrick’s alleged sexual misconduct with children and seminarians. According to a July 2018 New York Times report, Metuchen was one of the dioceses to have reached a settlement with a former priest, regarding allegations of abuse against McCarrick committed while the priest was a seminarian.
McCarrick resigned from the College of Cardinals in July 2018, and was laicized in February 2019. He is the first U.S. Catholic cardinal to be criminally charged with sex abuse.
The Vatican in November 2020 released a report of more than 450 pages on the “institutional knowledge and decision-making” regarding McCarrick and his clerical career.
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Sadly, The Times signed their names erroneously. The 1971 letter listed them properly. These “Lords” (peers) are members of the upper chamber of British parliament but not one is an aristocrat. All appointed due to their service in arts, culture, commerce, social justice, etc. and especially music and drama.
entitling the article “British lords” just compounds the error.
I think it’s disgusting that CNA gives traction to ANY statement regarding the Catholic Church and its liturgical expression to the British who turned apostate almost to a man 500 years ago.
Just to illustrate the cultural and moral absurdity of paying attention to anything the British House of Lords has to say about the Catholic Church, the lead-in to the CNA article refers to them as: “A distinguished cadre of British public figures.” Bianca Jagger is distinguished? Now really! I think the folks over at CNA who write such nonsense ought to be fired.
The ears of the Vatican have been deaf to the voices of Catholics who desire the Latin Mass to continue. Perhaps they’ll experience an “ephphatha” moment, however, if non-Catholic celebrities desire it to continue. The current regime seems big on celebrities.
I confess I don’t know what to make of this.
What to make of this? Well, there might be another shoe to fall. Try this…
One of the signatories to the letter is the Catholic Julian Fellowes, writer of the “Downton Abbey” popular TV series—where the last lines of the last episode effectively cast the entire series on British social change as an apologetic for inevitable social and cultural acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. As with possible further quarantining of TLM, even binary human sexuality and marriage (and Humanae Vitae?) are already secularly redefined and scripted as just another museum piece.
So, as a possible Vaticanista response to the British House of Lords, TLM as just another “‘magnificent’ cultural artifact” for the museums…very synodal, that.
The simple fact that Francis is trying to abolish a form of worship that has been with us for almost 2,000 years – Need anything more be said?
Stop this “Mass of Ages” nonsense. Be more nuanced. Take the difference between “essence” and “form.” The Mass in its “essence” (meal, sacrifice, real presence) is unchanged for 2,000 years. Through this span of time it has undergone reforms in its “form” (ritual order, ceremonial flow, languages). The essence of the Novus Ordo (1969 Missal) is the same as that of the Vetus Ordo (1962 Missal). The form of the Vetus Ordo is not 2,000 years old.
Why, may I ask, do people get up at 5 in the morning EVERY SUNDAY and set out for the Latin Mass 100 miles away, on the way passing by a church – only 5 miles from their home – where the Novus Ordo is celebrated?
What is the ‘Vetus Ordo’?
In conclusion – “This is a painful and confusing prospect, especially for the growing number of YOUNG CATHOLICS, WHOSE FAITH HAS BEEN NURTURED BY IT.” (EM)
I noticed you placed meal before sacrifice. The mass is first and foremost the same sacrifice that Christ went through but in a non physical way. The old mass express that clearly, the new mass subdues it for ecumenical consideration. By the way, the two liturgies are not the same.
Good for Tom Holland and God bless him. I’ve enjoyed listening to his podcasts: The Rest is History.
What’s the point? Is it to achieve uniformity, to dispose the faithful to a new hermeneutic of Gospel perspectives? Or is it more, that the TLM is emblematic of an inadmissible past destined for annihilation, as are doctrines condemning homosexuality, the requirement to bear the cross for repentance of sins, conversion of manners for reception of the holy Eucharist, the essential nature of the Mass as sacrifice?
Why doesn’t His Holiness speak clearly on this straining issue within the universal Church? We are dismayed, we are cast into darkness while a Roman pontiff presides at a distance as if possessed of superior knowledge while the sacrifice of the Mass is offered [was the same when presiding during the Vatican lawn worship of an Amazonian idol a portent of this moment?]. Is the doctrine of Christ’s bloody sacrifice a retention of an expired past?
Pope Francis possesses the authority to eliminate what is emblematic of a long, sacred history of worship, witness by the blood of our martyrs. But he has zero authority to change the hearts of the faithful from authentic worship of our crucified Lord.
MIND-BOGGLING TRAGEDY OR CRIMINALITY (for which we must thank God)
Can we be honest?
The whole history of the Church since the early 1960s (excepting a few saintly, heroic individuals who are widely disparaged or forgotten) is one big mind-boggling tragedy, or moral crime.
Only the decades-long Communist domination of Russia and Eastern Europe is comparable, in my mind.
Well, I can think of one other comparable situation in U.S. history:
In the 1940s and 1950s, Congressional and FBI investigations into covert Communist influence in Hollywood lead to hundreds of Communist screenwriters, actors, and directors being blacklisted (meaning none of the movie studios would hire them).
But by the 1960s, all the formerly blacklisted Communists were welcomed back into Hollywood as heroes and martyrs, and Hollywood began producing an endless stream of films that inspire immorality, godlessness, rebellion against moral authority, unrestrained violence, unrestrained lust, sex outside of marriage, divorce, unrestrained greed, etc.
But I guess this is all happening as per divine “permissive will.”
As such, following the Little Flower, I guess we should thank God even for these tragedies and crimes.
We should get one with seeking and touching the all-pure God in the little chapels of our souls.
Just to add a discursive footnote:
Humiliated and discredited after his 1950-53 accusations, Senator Eugene McCarthy (“McCarthyism”) also was subject to a minutely researched and different narrative (William F. Buckley, Jr. and L. Brent Bozell, “McCarthy and his Enemies: the Record and its Meaning,” Regnery, 1954/1961). Lots of attention to names, maneuverings and personal histories, to hearing transcripts, and to a few other key hearings curiously never conducted.
My summary recollection is that the new Senator McCarthy was seen as simply too green in his rhetoric, and that he miss-stepped by charging personalities as card-carrying communists, rather than more accurately as demonstrated serious security threats. Usually not full-blown Communists, but soft-headed “anti-anti-Communists.”
At one point (for one example) we learn that between 1948 and 1952, the period overlapping the McCarthy hearings (1950-1953), the State Department did in fact release 15 security risks, but it is not clear to the authors how many of these were among those named by McCarthy. A contrarian narrative, incisive and scholarly.
Back to Hollywood–As president of the screen actors guild, Ronald Reagan detected and resisted that domain of influence/infiltration (as a result, he switched political parties in 1962), and later as President of the United States was key to cutting the head off the snake–the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The corruption of Hollywood might claim that ironic benefit to civilization.
Well, it is not as if Pope Benedict, and all The Popes after Vatican lI did not recognize The Latin Mass is a Treasure.
Pray for the restoration of The Papacy as instituted by Christ.