So, What Happened?

According to Church Militant,

Less than a week after news proving that Wuerl became aware of Abp. Theodore McCarrick's homosexual predation in 2004 — contrary to multiple statements claiming otherwise — the archdiocese of Washington, D.C. confirmed Wednesday that Wuerl will not be the principal celebrant at the Youth Rally and Mass for Life, held each year on the same day as the National March for Life.

Instead, Abp. Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio, will offer the liturgy. He will be joined by auxiliary bishops Mario Dorsonville and Roy Campbell.

At a Mass at which Wuerl presided in September, two weeks after the Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed he had protected predator priests during his tenure as bishop of Pittsburgh, one angry Catholic shouted "Shame on you!" during the homily before walking out, followed by his wife. Another woman turned her back on him throughout the duration of Wuerl's homily.

. . . Church Militant also learned that the archdiocese received multiple messages from Catholics in the past few weeks demanding that Wuerl not attend the Mass for Life.

The "multiple messages from Catholics" almost certainly refers to Fr Mark Goring's efforts on YouTube to organize his audience to send such messages protesting Wuerl's appearance. This, according to Fr Goring, made the Archdiocese of Washington unhappy with him, and in a subsequent video, he said he'd been told to "cease and desist", as his videos had "made the lives of his superiors more difficult". All of his posts on the current crisis have been deleted; the most recent one still remaining is from January 7.

Because I was interested in the Charismatic movement and Fr Goring's perspective on it, I'd subscribed to his daily e-mail. However, it appears that his daily e-mails have also been stopped. The poor guy is clearly in the doghouse.

However, it appears that the Archdiocese of Washington recognized that there are limits to what it can control. I would guess, in fact, that if Wuerl was taken off the program and replaced by the papal nuncio, this decision had to have been made in a larger context than just the chancery in Washington, and Rome was probably involved in some way, at least to approve it.

I hope that Fr Goring can quickly be rehabilitated.