Seven Lessons from the McCarrick Case
Following the long overdue revelations about the contemptible sexual misconduct of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, many authors have rightly expressed their indignation toward him and his episcopal enablers. In this article, I will try not to spend much time on ground already well trod, but will rather highlight some of the lessons from the McCarrick scandal that neither Catholic clergy nor lay Catholics have any excuse for ignoring ever again.
Lesson One
The first lesson is that if you want to address a sin, you have to name that sin for what it is. For this reason, the bishops who produced the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People cannot credibly claim to have been serious about addressing the problem of the sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy. Had they been serious, they would have identified, in view of the evidence, the main source of the problem instead of suggesting another source. It was never pedophilia as such (the sexual abuse of a prepubescent child of either sex by an adult [or a near-adult] of either sex); rather, it was, and still is, clerical homosexuality (sex or sex-related acts between post-pubescent males). If it proves true that one of McCarrick’s victims was a boy as young as eleven, then he would, in that (or any such) case, be guilty of homosexual pedophilia. The age range of McCarrick’s victims does not change the nature of the problem.
With McCarrick as a key player in the formulation of the Charter, along with disgraced Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles, it is not difficult to understand the document’s fundamental dishonesty. The problem of clerical homosexuality, which needed so urgently to be addressed, and which has yet to be effectively addressed despite strict guidelines established by the Vatican in 2005, exists not only among priests, but also among the bishops. By withholding the truth, such bishops were providing cover for themselves. Perhaps cowardice and political correctness also played a role in the episcopal refusal to name the sin for what it really is.
Read also: Report: Cardinal close to Pope is protecting cadre of gay seminarians in Honduras, LifeSite
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