More On Sui Iuris In The Caribbean

Several visitors have provided additional information on the sui iuris mission in the Cayman Islands under the Archdiocese of Detroit that I mentioned in yesterday's post.

As it happens, there is a very similar arrangement between the Archdiocese of Newark and a sui juris mission in the Turks and Caicos Islands. According to that site,

According to Canon Law (cf: canon 368), a Missio Sui Iuris, or mission in its own right, is just the beginning of the establishment of a particular church in a concrete territory. In fact, after planting the word of God into a territory, the mission territory becomes a Church entity called Missio Sui Iuris.

. . . The next step for the Missio, according to the size and growth of the Catholic community is the establishment of an Apostolic Vicariate.

. . . The final step of the Missio Sui Iuris is to become the principal form of a particular Church, that is, a diocese.

All well and good, but in the cases of both the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands, we're talking about numbers of priests and Catholics that are roughly equivalent to a single US parish, and there's no sign they're going to turn into dioceses any time soon. More troubling is this, farther down in the same site:

On the 17th of October, 1998, two days after its detachment from the diocese of Nassau and entrustment to the Archdiocese of Newark, His Grace The Most Reverend Theodore E. McCarrick (now Archbishop Emeritus of Washington and Cardinal of the Church) was named its second Ecclesiastical Superior.

Now, there could be very good and holy reasons for this, but the problem is that they aren't easily discernible, while many others are much more possible -- and the reputations of both the Detroit and Newark archdioceses aren't good. I retain an open mind, but here are comments from visitors, rewritten into bullet points:

• It's a good excuse for the Bishop of Detroit who oversees it, (at the time it was erected in 2000, Adam Joseph Cardinal Maida was the Archbishop of Detroit) to visit/vacation under the pretext of working and a plum assignment here creates the possibility of rewarding some lucky priest (confidante, male friend, benefactor, co-conspirator, make up/insert your own sadly possible descriptor here) as the Vicar administrator to the Cayman Islands. (Or Turks and Caicos)
• Who wouldn’t want to have not only an excuse to go “play” in the Caymans, but to also have all expenses and accommodations taken care of as well? Talk about having your cake and eating it, too. Of course, everything could be above board, run of the mill, good ol’ Catholic outreach. Hard to say.
• Request of a wealthy Detroit major donor to have special attention for his church needs without being exposed to locals out of fear of harm, kidnapping. Many locals only speak pidgin. Detroit has quite a race situation that terrifies many well-heeled and flipflop heeled whites.
• Money stashing haven for the diocese or several priests. "I got to know a Jamaican accountant (Brit Jamaican) who left a lucrative position there because she found everything too corrupt and knew that it's the accountant who usually does the jail time."
• Predator hunting grounds. The gay lobby loves Caribbean hangouts because access to prey is so easy and overlooked. Perhaps some influential Detroit clergy pushed for this.
• Wasn't Szoka an influential money-handling bishop? Not to mention McCarrick. Vatican bank money-laundering locus through Detroit or Newark connected handlers.
• "My curiosity is why Detroit? That's a much further flight than a bishop from any southern state would have to make. Were the bishops in Detroit trusted to funnel monies from the Vatican after the scandal with its bank?" Another visitor answers, "I checked and see that Detroit has an air carrier with nonstop flights to Grand Cayman. It's much nicer than a 5 hr layover in miama."

It seems to me that today's Vortex from Church Militant is pertinent here:

Investigators on various levels and wide-ranging government agencies are staggered at what they are finding as they peruse files and notes from private meetings with insiders and whistleblowers from dioceses and archdioceses all over the country.

Without pinpointing any single diocese or archdiocese, we can tell you that in addition to the sexual scandals and corruption, investigators are, unsurprisingly, also coming across ample amounts of embezzlement, insurance fraud and so forth.

And this all happened under John Paul II.