San Francisco, Calif., Oct 25, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA).- A Minnesota-based law firm released a report Tuesday compiling the names of over 200 priests from the San Francisco Bay area it says have been publicly accused of sexual abuse. At least one Califor… […]
New York City, N.Y., Oct 24, 2018 / 05:06 pm (CNA).- Musical inspiration can come from unexpected places – like a Franciscan friar’s struggle to learn Spanish.
The inspiration for the title and theme of “Poco a Poco,” a new CD from the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, came from a friar living in Honduras, who worked at a hospital that serves the poorest of the poor.
Although he was having a hard time learning Spanish, the friar wanted to encourage people as they waited to for medical attention – some of whom had walked for miles to receive care – so he memorized a simple but encouraging phrase in Spanish: “Somos peregrinos caminamos al Señor; poco a poco, vamos al llegar,” which translates to: “We are pilgrims walking to the Lord, little by little, we will arrive.”
“It was just this little way of like encouraging people…little by little, step by step, I can get through another day,” said another Franciscan, Fr. Mark-Mary, CFR, who heard the friar’s phrase for the first time when he was also living and working in Honduras.
“But it ends with this hope of ‘vamos a llegar’, we’re going to make it, our hope is in Christ and we do not hope in vain,” he told CNA.
Fr. Mark-Mary shared the phrase and story with friend and fellow friar Br. Isaiah, CFR, who found that it resonated with him so personally that he chose “Poco a Poco” for the title of his first full-length musical album.
“Every time I heard it I just lit up because there was something about it that just grabbed my heart” Br. Isaiah said in a video about the CD for Ascension Press.
“Little by little, there’s something about that that my heart just says ok yeah, I can handle that…its become a chorus for me when facing life’s difficulties,” he said. “It’s become a rallying phrase for whatever the moment calls for.”
The biblical theme of life as a pilgrimage journeying to the Lord, and with the Lord, is something that permeates the whole CD, Br. Isaiah said in email comments to CNA.
“The Book of Exodus recounts how God led Israel ‘little by little’ through the desert in their pilgrimage to the Promised Land and so He does with us,” he said.
“‘Poco a poco,’ God guides us along our journey, encouraging the heart to set out each day to a land it knows not, by paths it has not known, all with the promised accompaniment of an ever-present and unwearied Love, capable of carrying us beyond the familiar lands of our habits and capacities to frontiers of growth, transformation, and ever-deepening peace as we come to behold the God of love, in the face of Christ Jesus, whose peace (and love for us) ‘passes all understanding,’” he said.
The theme of life as pilgrimage also fits perfectly with the charism of the friars, as stated on their recently-received Pontifical Decree from Rome: “In imitation of St. Francis of Assisi, the friars seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, as a prophetic witness that life is a pilgrimage to the Father, of faith, hope and love of God and neighbor, made possible by the Holy Spirit.”
The album is the fruit of prayer and brotherhood, said Fr. Mark-Mary, who is the CD’s executive producer.
“There’s this really popular line from St. Irenaeus, that ‘the glory of God is man fully alive,’ but man fully alive is man in communion,” Fr. Mark-Mary said.
“There’s something about this album that’s the fruit of our Franciscan brotherhood, it’s not the fruit of Brother Isaiah being a superstar, it’s listening to one of our simple, older brother’s prayer and the way he’s speaking to the poor in Honduras, and then sharing that and putting my gifts at the service of Brother Isaiah, and Brother Isaiah receiving that gift,” he said.
“This (album) wouldn’t happen if it weren’t for our Franciscan brotherhood, which we take very seriously, we’re really proud of it,” he said.
Using music as a way to evangelize is deeply embedded in the Franciscan charism, Fr. Mark-Mary noted, and goes all the way back to St. Francis of Assisi, who had a talented musical friend and follower.
“So St. Francis would have him come and play in the market square and he’d get people’s attention, and then the musician would take a break and then they’d preach, so its very much a part of the Franciscan charism,” he said.
It’s also particularly a part of the CFR charism – one of the founding members of the order is the rapping Fr. Stan Fortuna (of ‘Everybody Got 2 Suffer’ fame), and many other musically talented brothers who have joined the order over the years.
The music adds, rather than detracts, from the friars’ primary mission of serving the poor and evangelizing, Fr. Mark-Mary noted.
“I thought it was really beautiful that on the night when (the CD) was released, Br. Isaiah came down to our homeless shelter in the Bronx, and he’s playing music and giving a word to the homeless in the shelter,” he said.
“There’s something beautiful about being able to do this but in a way that doesn’t take us away from our first call.”
Something else that Fr. Mark-Mary said he appreciated about being involved in the project was the opportunity to add something positive to the culture.
“I have a chance to lead the way again with some of the friars’ work with media evangelization,” he said.
“What it comes down to is that we’re in a battle for minds, and so…how can we be speaking goodness into the world? Because so much of the culture these days…its not morally neutral, a lot of the stuff out there, it’s really like poison.”
But it’s not enough to tell people “don’t watch this, don’t listen to that,” Fr. Mark-Mary noted, there has to be something else to take its place.
“The full work is saying – watch this instead, listen to this instead. So we’re trying to do that and finding that music is one way to get into people’s personal cultures, to get on their phones get in their car radios,” he said.
So far the album has been received very well, Fr. Mark-Mary said. It was at one point the fourth best-selling Christian album according to Amazon, and the number 23 best-selling album for all music on Amazon.
The album “Poco a Poco” is available on iTunes and Amazon, and CDs and merchandise can also be ordered through Ascension Press.
One of Fr. Mark-Mary’s favorite parts of the experience has been watching the comments that people have made on a music video for one of the tracks, “Struggler”, produced by Spirit Juice Productions and posted on Ascension Press’ website.
“I think one of my favorite comments has been ‘I regret underestimating this,’” Fr. Mark-Mary said.
He said he has found that people often expect “church stuff” to be mediocre or lower in quality, and he likes breaking those stereotypes.
“I’m very much committed to speaking a message in a way where the means doesn’t undermine what you’re trying to say.”
Denver, Colo., Oct 24, 2018 / 10:08 am (CNA).- People who have had only one lifetime sexual partner have happier marriages than people with two or more lifetime partners, according to a new report from the Institute for Family Studies.
The study’s author, Dr. Nicholas Wolfinger of the University of Utah, found that women who have been sexually intimate only with their spouses are most likely to report having “very happy” marriages, at 65 percent. Among women with between six and ten lifetime sexual partners, only 52% reported being “very happy” in their marriage, the lowest in the study.
Among men, 71% with one partner reported being very happy with their marriage, according the study. For men who report two or more sexual partners, the number drops to 65 percent.
In addition, 40% of the study’s respondents reported having had only one or zero sexual partners before getting married. Wolfinger pointed out that the rate among younger Americans, who have married since 2000, is closer to 27 percent. The median American woman born in the 1980s has had three sex partners in her lifetime, and the median man six; just five percent of all women marrying in the 2010s were virgins.
“The surprisingly large number of Americans reporting one lifetime sex partner have the happiest marriages,” the study reads. “Past one partner, it doesn’t make as much of a difference. The overall disparity isn’t huge, but neither is it trivial.”
The study controlled for the religiosity of its subjects, which Wolfinger said has been shown by other studies to be a major factor in happy marriages, but not the only explanation. He said the data he has is not conclusive on this point.
“Coming into this beforehand, I would have expected religion to be one reason why people who don’t have a lot of sex partners would have happier marriages,” Wolfinger told CNA.
“Church attendance, in itself, produces happier marriages…but be that as it may, controlling for [denomination and church attendance] did not substantially affect the relationship between how many premarital sex partners you have and whether you’re in a very happy marriage.”
What this means, Wolfinger clarified, is that people are more likely to have a happy marriage if they have fewer premarital sexual partners whether they are religious or not.
One major factor affecting this result, he said, is the fact that premarital sex can often result in children born out of wedlock, which unfortunately tend to strain future relationships. Moreover, people who have had previous sexual partners before marriage may later compare their spouse to those previous partners, leading to a decline in the happiness of their marriage.
In a similar 2016 study, Wolfinger examined the divorce rate in relation to the number of sexual partners a woman has had in her lifetime. He found that survey respondents who had not had sexual partners before marriage had the lowest divorce rates, and those with ten or more partners in their lifetime were the most likely to spit up, with a 30% chance of divorce in the first 5 years of marriage.
Of those women who married in the 2000s without having first had sex, nearly 70% reported regularly attending some kind of church services, while less than 30% of women with ten or more partners were churchgoers.
“Everything should be on the table”
Father Brian O’Brien, a priest of the Diocese of Tulsa in Oklahoma, told CNA that the statistics presented in the IFS study are confirmed by his experience working in marriage preparation for 11 years. He said he often presents statistics to the couples he counsels, to try to help explain how premarital cohabitation and premarital sex can negatively affect the happiness of their marriage.
“Ultimately it comes down to: we’re not meant to be used,” O’Brien told CNA.
“I think what happens in a lot of cases is [people think]: ‘I’ll just sleep with a whole bunch of people, and maybe one of them will work out.’ And that’s exactly what happens in the movies…but the idea that you can just use somebody and move on as if that didn’t happen, I think is where the unhappiness sets in.”
People will remember the sexual partners that they had “along the way,” because sex bonds people together, he said. A bond with a person who is no longer in a person’s life will remain with them even if they start a new relationship, leaving a “lingering guilt,” “unresolved issues,” and “baggage” that makes new relationships that much more difficult.
“Marriage is hard enough, and it’s even harder if you’re bringing in a bunch of baggage,” he said. “For couples that are going to enter into a marriage covenant, everything should be on the table.”
O’Brien said that the broader trend in society of couples coming into marriage with multiple sexual partners, as evidenced by statistics cited in the IFS study, has also manifested itself among the couples he counsels.
“I go into [marriage prep] assuming, until I talk to them, that the couple is probably living together, and I assume that they are sexually active,” O’Brien said.
“I tell [couples] that I want their marriage to be as happy and holy as possible, and your marriage will be happier and holier if you abstain from sex and if you don’t live together.”
O’Brien said he thinks most couples who are living together know what they’re doing is wrong, especially when it comes to being sexually active. He said he suspects that there are many couples that don’t see anything wrong with cohabitation before marriage, viewing the move primarily as an economic decision.
“It’s not that they’re sort of ‘trying each other out,’ it’s that ‘we don’t want to pay two rents,'” O’Brien explained. “So I think in that way they’re not really flaunting Church teaching, they’re trying to make good economic decisions.”
He said he takes a pastoral approach to the couple’s situation, affirming them in their good decisions and “meeting them where they are.”
“If they’re not living together, and they’re not sexually active, it’s my chance to say: “Awesome! Great job!” and to really affirm them in those decisions,” he said.
He said generally in the second or third marriage prep meeting, he’ll ask some basic information such as the couple’s home address. If the couple is already living together, they will often admit it at that point, if reluctantly.
“They’ll look at each other like: ‘Oh no. Should we give him the same address?’ And as soon as they do that, I’ll ask ‘So do you guys live at the same place?’ And they have this guilty look on their face, and they’ll say yes,” O’Brien said.
“And I’ll say: ‘Ok, I’m not yelling at you, but obviously you guys feel bad about it.’ So then we’ll kind of take that and discuss it as we go.”
O’Brien said despite popular opinion that may suggest that fewer people are seeking marriage in the Catholic Church, he and his fellow priests in Oklahoma are engaged in marriage prep and presiding at weddings “all the time.”
“I’m not ready to throw in the towel on the young people of the Church,” he said. “Because I think there really is a desire to have God as part of their marriage, and they’re not finding that in other places.”
Father Zach Swantek, a chaplain at Seton Hall University, offered his thoughts about his experience with modern marriage prep in an email to CNA.
“Often priests are afraid to discuss issues such as pre-marital sex, chastity, cohabitation, contraception and even participation in the Church with [couples], for fear that they will be offended or scared off,” Swantek wrote.
“On the other hand, some priests boast about how they refuse to marry couples that fail to live in strict adherence to the teachings of the Church, yet do not help these couples to understand and live these teachings,” he added.
“Marriage preparation must be viewed as an opportunity to accompany the couple, gradually leading them to the fullness of truth about faith, sacraments and marriage. This requires patience and work, but it is well worth the effort.”
Denver, Colo., Oct 24, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA).- Every time Christians recite the Apostles’ Creed, they affirm their belief in what will happen to them after death: “’I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”
The belief in the resurrection of one’s physical body at the end of time is central to Christian theology, and finds its basis in the resurrection of Christ, who rose in body and soul three days after his passion and death.
But according to a new Pew survey, 29 percent of Christians in the US hold the New Age belief of reincarnation – the belief that when one’s body dies, one’s soul lives on in a new and different body, unrelated to the first.
The percentage of Catholics in the US who said they believe in reincarnation was even higher – 36 percent; just shy of the 38 percent of religiously unaffiliated people who said they believe the same.
However, according to Catholic teaching, belief in anything other than the resurrection of the body is completely incompatible with a Christian theology and anthropology of the human person.
Where did the belief in resurrection come from?
Even before Christ, the belief that the body would rise at the end of time was becoming a more common, though not universally held, belief among certain groups of Jews, such as the Pharisees.
The Sadducees, for example, “were dubious about the authority to be given to the Prophets and other writings…(which included) skepticism about spiritual realities like the soul or even angels,” said Deacon Joel Barstad, who serves as Academic Dean and associate professor of theology at Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.
“From New Testament evidence it would seem they were particularly hostile to the idea of a future resurrection of the dead,” he told CNA.
“The Pharisees on the other hand believed in angels and spiritual souls and the general resurrection of the dead,” he said.
As they became more convinced of the “radical faithfulness of God,” he noted, belief in bodily resurrection took root, paving the way for the acceptance of the resurrection of Christ.
“The resurrection of Jesus from the dead confirmed that belief, but it also gave it a deep and solid foundation,” he said.
What does belief in resurrection mean for Christians?
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The ‘resurrection of the flesh’ (the literal formulation of the Apostles’ Creed) means not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our ‘mortal body’ will come to life again. Belief in the resurrection of the dead has been an essential element of the Christian faith from its beginnings. ‘The confidence of Christians is the resurrection of the dead; believing this we live.’ How can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain…. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
The Christian confidence in bodily resurrection comes from Christ himself, and the New Testament promise that salvation comes through follow Christ in everything, including his death and resurrection, Michael Root, a professor of Systematic Theology at The Catholic University of America, told CNA.
“Salvation is unity with Christ, Christ brings the kingdom of God, and that kingdom is realized in the resurrection,” Root said.
There is a great deal of “fuzziness of thinking” regarding death that many Christians hold besides reincarnation, Barstad added, such as believing that after death one dies and goes to heaven and stays there forever, rather than joining with their resurrected body at the end of time. “The vague notion that something called a soul or a spirit or a shade lingers after death in some kind of place or condition where it can be more or less happy is not Christian,” Barstad said. “A human soul without a body is a tragedy. Think about what a body is to the soul. It is the instrument, the nexus, the node, the vessel through which, by which, in which a soul establishes and sustains contact with reality,” he added.
A body, he said, has concretely experienced everything that a soul has gone through in its lifetime. It is the actual mode through which the soul has related to others. It makes that person who they are – the father of a particular son, or the daughter of a particular mother, the wife of a particular husband, or the friend of a particular person.
“A soul stripped completely of its body is literally nobody. Who cares whether such a nobody lives forever! A Christian is someone who wants to be this somebody…now and after death and unto the ages of ages. But for that to be possible, I’ll need my body resurrected along with the bodies of everyone and everything I have a relationship with,” he said. “I have to die completely and be dissolved back into the dust from which I came; and then I have to be put back together again in a new kind of life,” he said. “The trouble is I would cease to exist at the midpoint of this process. Someone else has to hold me in being as I pass over from death to new life. Only because Christ loves me am I held in being, not just my soul, the nobody, but the somebody I am because I have this body.”
Why Christians should reject reincarnation
The two main reasons that a Christian should reject reincarnation is that it is opposed to the way of salvation offered by Christ, and because it goes against the nature of the human person, Root said.
“It contradicts the picture of salvation that we have in the New Testament, where our participation in Christ’s resurrection is what salvation is all about,” Root said, “and it gives us quite a different picture of what it is to be a human being – a disembodied self that isn’t related to any particular time.”
“Christianity takes very seriously that we are embodied beings, and any notion of reincarnation means that the real self only has a kind of accidental connection to any specific body, because you’ll go on to another body and another body and another body, and bodiliness ends up being kind of at best side point about who you are,” he said.
The belief in the resurrection is bound up with a Christian view of the human person, Root said, which is that a person will only ever have on particular body, and what happens in that particular body matters.
“There’s very little formal Catholic dogma about the resurrection details, but one that there is is that we will rise in the same body we now have. There’s no official definition of what ‘same’ is here, and there’s a big transformation, but nevertheless it is official Catholic dogma that we will rise in the body we now have,” he said.
The transformation of the body can be seen in the resurrected Christ who, once resurrected, was able to walk through walls, appear or disappear suddenly, and seemingly control who was able to recognize him, though he maintained his body, Root noted.
The Christian view of the human person also means that what happens with each person’s body matters. In the document “Jesus Christ: The Bearer of the Water of Life” by the Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue, the Vatican said that belief in reincarnation is incompatible with Christianity because it denies the freedom and responsibility of persons who act through their bodies.
Reincarnation is “irreconcilable with the Christian belief that a human person is a distinct being, who lives one life, for which he or she is fully responsible: this understanding of the person puts into question both responsibility and freedom,” the document states. A Christian occupies a body, which is able to be judged for its sins, but is also able to participate in Christ’s redemptive work through its suffering, the Vatican noted.
“In bringing about the redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the redemption. Thus each man in his suffering can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ,” the document states.
Barstad noted that the New Age belief in reincarnation as something positive even contradicts most traditional religions that believe in reincarnation, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, which ultimately view reincarnation as something to be escaped.
“I am not aware of any robust doctrine of reincarnation, whether that of Western Platonists or Eastern Buddhists, that regards reincarnation of a soul as a good thing; maybe certain Hindus or a Stoic could see it as a benign cosmic necessity, like the physical laws governing the conservation of energy,” he said. “But certainly the deepest aspiration of Platonists and Buddhists is to dissolve the nexus of temporal, bodily relationships once and for all; that is, to dissolve the relationship to body so completely that no further embodiment is possible for that soul. The goal is for the soul to become completely and permanently nobody.”
The hope of the resurrection
Christian hope lies in the belief that Christ has conquered death, and Christians will be able to be known and loved fully as themselves in eternal life, which will include their resurrected bodies, Barstad said.
“(A) Christian wants to continue to exist as himself. He knows that he is loved by his Creator and Redeemer who wants him to exist always. Consequently, he can have the courage to love himself enough to want that self, this somebody, to exist forever,” Barstad said.
While Christians may experience wrongs and sufferings in this life, they can have the hope of knowing that “they have been loved by Christ who through his own divine-human dying and rising can take them apart, to the very dust, and refashion them, making something beautiful out of the tangled mess,” he added.
Christians also have the hope that not only will they be resurrected individually, but that they will rejoin their loves ones, “living in a renewed and refashioned heaven and earth,” Barstad said.
“This is why we evangelize, this is why we repent and make amends for our wrongs and forgive those who wrong us, this is why we pray for the dead, and this is why the saints who already enjoy the (beatific) vision of God nonetheless still pray for us. They are still invested in this world and await with us the final revelation of Christ that will bring about the resurrection of everybody.”
Denver, Colo., Oct 24, 2018 / 12:00 am (CNA).- An after-dark walk through a cemetery in late October seems like a night pulled straight from a Halloween movie or a scary novel.
But when Colorado teens make nighttime visits to Mount Olivet Cemetery thi… […]
Portland, Ore., Oct 23, 2018 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- Oregon bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein have appealed to the Supreme Court Oct. 23 after being fined $135,000 for refusing to make a wedding cake for a lesbian wedding.
The Kleins, who are practici… […]
Parma, Ohio, Oct 23, 2018 / 02:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Ruthenian Eparchy of Parma has announced that a priest who was reportedly attacked in August has been placed on administrative leave due to a credible accusation of sexual misconduct with a minor.
Fr. Basil Hutsko is accused of misconduct alleged to have occurred 35 years ago (or in 1983), the eparchy stated.
“Though Father Basil Hutsko denies the accusation, Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, having heard from the priest, the Review Board, and the Promotor [sic] of Justice, has found the accusation to be credible,” the eparchy said. “A finding that the accusation is credible is not a finding of guilt,” it added.
In August, Hutsko had been reported to have been attacked at his parish. The eparchy’s statement said that attack did not take take place.
The eparchy “has recently verified with a member of Father Basil Hutsko’s immediate family that the incident Father Basil Hutsko reported on Aug. 20, 2018, did not occur,” the statement said.
An August statement attributed to the eparchial chancery which was widely shared on Facebook said Fr. Hutsko “was attacked and knocked unconscious” in the altar server’s sacristy at his parish after celebrating the Divine Liturgy.
That statement said the priest was choked and his head slammed to the ground, making him lose consciousness. According to the statement, the attacker said, “This is for all the kids.”
Fr. Hutsko, 64, was serving as pastor of St. Michael parish in Merrillville, Ind., immediately south of Gary.
The August statement was signed by Fr. Thomas J. Loya, who is pastor of Annunciation Byzantine Catholic Church in Homer Glen, Ill.
A source close to Fr. Hutsko confirmed that the priest was hospitalized in August, but did not have additional knowledge about the incident.
Jeff Rice, spokesman for the Merrillville police, told the Chicago Tribune Fr. Hutsko had been “definitely bruised and banged up.”
The police department alerted the FBI about the supposed incident.
Later in August, the eparchy said that an abuse complaint had been made against Fr. Hutsko in 2004, but it was not deemed credible. The complaint was made by a woman who said the priest had abused her as a child between 1979 and 1983.
Fr. Hutsko has also served at parishes in Cleveland, Dayton, and Marblehead, Ohio, and Sterling Heights, Michigan.
The Parma eparchy has also placed on administrative leave Fr. Stephen Muth, in response to a recent credible accusation of sexual misconduct involving a vulnerable adult.
“The Eparchy of Parma is committed to protecting children and helping to heal victims of abuse,” the chancery stated. “We are deeply sorry for the pain suffered by survivors of abuse due to actions of some members of the clergy.”
Washington D.C., Oct 23, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- The bishops of the United States will meet for a week-long retreat to reflect upon the current situation facing the Church in America. The meeting will take place early next year.
In a statemen… […]
Washington D.C., Oct 23, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Congressman Jeff Fortenberry introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives Oct. 5 a security resolution intended to protect religious minorities in northern Iraq.
“Much is at stake. Iraq and the… […]
Washington D.C., Oct 23, 2018 / 09:47 am (CNA).- The District of Columbia’s attorney general has opened an investigation into clerical sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Washington. The announcement was made during a Mayor-Council breakfast meeting on Oct. 23.
A statement released by DC attorney general Karl Racinev said that “while we generally don’t talk publicly about our confidential enforcement activity, I can report that our office has launched a civil investigation into whether the Archdiocese – which is a nonprofit institution – violated the District’s Nonprofit Act by potentially covering up allegations of sexual abuse of minors.”
Racine told the breakfast meeting that “according to the law, nonprofits are required to work for a public purpose; if they are in fact covering up child sex abuse, that is clearly not in the public interest.”
CNA contacted the attorney general’s office and asked if the investigation was in response to allegations it had received, or if it was a proactive step being taken on the AG’s own initiative. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office declined to comment and said they were not prepared to answer “detailed questions” about the announcement.
Racine previously stated in a radio interview in August that he had received considerable pressure from the public to open such an investigation.
The Archdiocese of Washington is currently led by Cardinal Donald Wuerl as interim-administrator pending the appointment of a successor by Pope Francis.
A spokesman for the archdiocese told CNA that archdiocesan officials met with the attorney general last month and stressed their eagerness to engage in a collaborative and cooperative process.
The spokesman also said that the archdiocese encouraged the attorney general to consider a wider investigation into all bodies with a child protection mandate, including other charities and public schools, in the interests of the public good. “Clearly the attorney general has decided to go another way,” the spokesman said.
On Oct. 15, the Archdiocese of Washington released a list of clergy who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse. At the time of that release, the archdiocese stressed that no priest currently in ministry had been accused of sexual abuse, and that no credible allegations had been received concerning the abuse of minors in nearly twenty years.
News of the attorney general’s investigation comes only one day after the opening of a special hotline for residents of the district to report allegations of clerical sexual abuse. That line was announced Monday, Oct. 22 by federal prosecutors at the Superior Court Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
Following the publication of the Pennsylvania grand jury report in July, attorneys general in several states have announced similar inquiries, including in Michigan, Missouri, Maryland, New York, and New Jersey. Last week, federal prosecutors served subpoenas to the dioceses of Pennsylvania, opening a new investigation into clerical sexual abuse in that state.
The Washington attorney general specifically emphasised the trend, saying in his remarks Tuesday that “our investigation brings the count of states with open investigations to 14.”
The Archdiocese of Washington is home to nearly 700,000 Catholics, six Catholic colleges and universities, and 93 Catholic schools.
As the last archdiocese to be led by former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Washington has been the subject of considerable attention and scrutiny during a summer in which several different sexual abuse scandals have unfolded at once.
Despite accusations of sexual abuse or harassment against McCarrick concerning his time in several dioceses in New York and New Jersey, no public accusations have been made concerning his time in Washington, either while archbishop or in retirement.
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