What happened?
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the 87-year-old former Archbishop of Washington, was removed from public ministry over the alleged abuse of a 16-year-old altar boy decades ago. Cardinal Timothy Dolan said a diocesan review board had found the allegation “credible and substantiated”. The Archdiocese of Newark and Diocese of Metuchen said that in the past three cases of sexual misconduct with adults had been alleged. Two resulted in settlements.
What commentators said
Rod Dreher, writing at the American Conservative, said that “everybody knew” about the allegations against Cardinal McCarrick. These were not that he would abuse minors, but that he would “go after seminarians”, inviting them to his beach house and getting into bed with them. Dreher investigated claims against McCarrick but dropped the story after none of those he was said to have assaulted wanted to go on the record.
At GetReligion.org. Julia Duin wrote that after the election of Benedict XVI in 2005 “McCarrick was the darling of the American press … No one dared to go against such a powerful personality.”
Rocco Palmo, writing at his blog Whispers on the Loggia, said McCarrick had been one of the US hierarchy’s “principal forces of nature” – a “slight figure in a threadbare jacket universally known as ‘Ted’ ” who raised millions for charities and “parachuted into more humanitarian emergencies than most folks knew existed”.
He was a patron to several leading US churchmen, Palmo noted: Cardinal Joseph Tobin received a red hat after a “Ted talk” to Pope Francis.
Ross Douthat, writing at the New York Times, said more stories were likely to come out. He urged people in the “everybody knows” orbit to “make it as easy as possible for these stories to be told … without worrying about whether the stories make either side of Catholicism’s civil war look good”. He concluded: “The first thing is the truth. And the way out of
purgatory is through.”
Analysis, page 12
✣✣ Pope Francis says Cardinal Zen is ‘scared’
What happened?
In an interview with Reuters, Pope Francis defended the Vatican’s dialogue with Beijing, saying it was at a “good point”, and accusing Cardinal Joseph Zen, a critic of the talks, of being “a little scared”. He said: “Perhaps age might have some influence,” adding: “Dialogue is a risk, but I prefer [it] to the sure defeat of not talking.”
Why was it under-reported
Reuters did not report the Pope’s remarks. The Herald, a Malaysian Catholic weekly, published them after asking Reuters for a transcript of the interview. They were thus overlooked by Catholic media and not reported elsewhere. But they show one thing clearly: Cardinal Zen did not persuade Pope Francis of the folly of the Vatican’s current direction when he visited the Pope in January. In his interview with Reuters Francis said the Chinese were a “very wise people”. “I respect China a lot,” he said.
What will happen next?
The Vatican-beijing dialogue is said to have stalled somewhat since a new crackdown on religions was launched in China. Earlier this month formal talks took place for the first time since December. According to Reuters, Vatican officials raised concerns about growing religious restrictions – including a ban on children attending Mass. Francis alluded to the slowing of progress in his Reuters interview, saying that he liked to think the dialogue consisted not just of formal talks but of a wider cultural rapprochement.
✣The week ahead
Eight men will be ordained priests for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham tomorrow. They will be ordained by Archbishop Bernard Longley at the Birmingham Oratory. Their ordinations mean the ordinariate will have about 100 priests.
The ceremony will be the largest mass priestly ordination in the ordinariate’s seven-year history.
St Patrick’s, Soho, is hosting a day celebrating Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati. His 90-year-old niece, Wanda Gawronska, has said she will attend if health permits and bring relics. Bishop John Wilson is among the organisers.
Mexico’s general election will be held on Sunday, with commentators saying Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a leftwing populist, is likely to be elected president. López Obrador is a former altar server who still attends Mass but describes himself as a “Christian in the broadest sense of the word”. A priest close to him has said he is a practising Catholic “up to a certain point”.
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