A Template For McCarrick?

At least at first glance, what seems to be a fairly successful handling of the McCloskey case might give the Church a way to handle Cardinal McCarrick. Or not. My regular correspondent does make a worthwhile comment:

While the ghost-written book reviews etc seem like a pathetic stratagem on the part of Opus Dei, they are at least consistent with the long-term attempt to cover for Fr McCloskey, now apparently over. The alternative hypothesis ---that he doesn't have dementia, but is being sheltered behind a fake diagnosis---requires him to be kept out of sight for decades, potentially. To what end? His reputation has been pretty thoroughly trashed in innumerable recent stories.

I pretty much agree, he's been thrown under the bus after what seems to have been several years of covering up his status. Naturally, the easiest and best resolution, removal from the priesthood following an investigation into the potential delict in 2002, would have eliminated the need for all the extra effort now. As this commentator noted,

The variety and complexities of such adult cases means that superiors have to exercise good judgment, prudence and courage. But in an anti-authority environment where even the Pope concedes that bishops have lost their credibility, almost anything short of permanent banishment from ministry becomes suspect, as a consequence of religious authorities having lost the trust of the faithful.

But a second- or third-best approach seems to be what Opus Dei took: temporize with the matter, however belatedly, and keep it quiet. However, when outside forces intervene, such as a complainant now requesting the matter be made public, throw the guy under the bus. (In effect, this is what the Diocese of Spokane also did with the hinky Jesuits.) Even so, as my regular correspondent put it,

Continuing to publish ghost-written reviews over the name of a man in the last stages of dementia is bizarre even before we get to the other stuff. As you point out, he can't have long to live. What were they planning to say he died of?

The ingredients for a successful crisis management in this case would be:

• A case that has already been resolved, but whose circumstances have now come to light
• A sympathetic spokesman who can appear to be sincerely transparent
• Sincere acknowledgement of errors
• A clear and sincere explanation of what's been, or will be, changed to prevent recurrence.

Opus Dei has been able to claim, though, that this is the first and only such settlement paid in the US. I don't think the Church has the same circumstances with McCarrick. It does appear that Pope Francis would like to dispose of the McCarrick issue definiteively before the February conference in Rome, but simply throwing McCarrick under the bus won't be enough. The differences include:

• Numerous cases over decades, already well-publicized
• A well-publicized history of coverup
• Unsympathetic spokesmen like Cardinal Cupich
• An unwillingness to address the real problem, gay networks in seminaries and chanceries
• No clear plan for resolving the problem, along with a perception that sincere efforts from places like the USCCB are not supported in Rome.

I think it's fairly plain that what will be needed will be a future strong pontiff, indeed, one stronger than John Paul II, who appears to have allowed the situation to reach its current point.

Msgr William H Stetson

According to Wikipedia, thanks to a heads-up from my regular correspondent, Msgr William H Stetson passed away in the morning of January 3, 2019. Stetson was a major figure in the final failed push to get the St Mary of the Angels Hollywood Anglican parish into the Catholic Church. However, this effort had been under way since at least 1977 in various forms, and it's been the judgment of this blog that Stetson, who worked closely with Bernard Law since the time both were at Harvard, was a factor in the ultimate failure of this effort, although I believe it was ill-conceived from the start.

The only child of working-class parents in Greenfield, MA, Stetson went to Harvard, where he was prosperous enough to live at the upper-crust and reputedly gay Adams House and drove an apparently new Buick. He got to know Bernard Law, also an Adams House resident, and Law introduced him to Catholic circles in Cambridge. Stetson became an Opus Dei numerary while still a Harvard undergraduate, and he got in early with the establishment of the movement in the US.

From 1983 to 2010, he was the secretary to the delegate for the Pastoral Provision, who for most of that time was Bernard Law. For 17 years of that time, he was also vicar for Opus Dei in Chicago, where he seems to have earned the trust of Cardinal Bernardin, who gave Opus Dei the responsibility for renovating a Polish parish, St Mary of the Angels, in the Archdiocese of Chicago. Following that assignment, Stetson became Director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, another Opus Dei function. He was appointed to that job by Theodore McCarrick.

During the later phase of his career, rather clearly able to gain the ear of influential cardinals in AmChurch, he seems to have operated as a general fixer for the Pastoral Provision on Law's behalf, although it's worth pointing out that the Pastoral Provision nevertheless underperformed, to the extent that Law continued to press for a personal prelature for former Anglicans, broaching the idea in a formal proposal to Cardinal Ratzinger in a 1993 meeting.

His appointment as director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington is also something of a puzzle. As best I can tell, this is basically a bookstore with a chapel attached and a small paid staff. Law's successors as director haven't been monsignors. That Stetson would fall from secretary to the delegate for the Pastoral Provision and Opus Dei vicar in Chicago to bookstore manager is a puzzle and may reflect an understanding within Opus Dei of his actual abilities, especially after his patron Law's departure from the US.

My own exposure to him during 2011-12 and the runup to the erection of the North American ordinariate is that he erred profoundly in his assessments of the Anglican clergy at St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, and Jeffrey Steenson also erred, as far as I can see, in accepting those assessments. But as far as I can see, Stetson had little or no experience in actually running a parish in any denomination; he was always above that sort of thing in the upper levels of Opus Dei.

My perspective now, after almost six years as a Catholic, is that David Moyer, who did have experience with Anglicanism, running a parish, and serving as a bishop, had a much better sense of what it would take to make the St Mary of the Angels parish Catholic, and my impression from the remarks he made during his episcopal visit in early 2011 was that the place was a disappointment and would probably need to be extensively rebuilt or expanded to be a true Catholic parish.

I think he had it right. I'm not sure what universe either Bernard Law or William Stetson ever thought he was operating in. But I think this also says something about the upper levels of AmChurch in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s.

Freelancing And Grandstanding

Several weeks ago, I subscribed to the YouTube channel of Fr Mark Goring, CC. I'm interested in Catholic new media, and in his case I subscribed because I wanted to learn more about the Charismatic movement in the Church. When the business about McCarrick blew up, he had a lot to say, though there wasn't much new, and I wondered how much of it was prudent.

Then he started, or tried to start, a movement. I think he called it something like the Legions of St Joseph, and the point was that they'd take up a particular issue related to the Second Crisis, and they'd commit to making phone calls and sending e-mails to designated Church organs in protest at whatever. His first effort was aimed at the Archdiocese of Washington in an attempt to discourage Cardinal Wuerl from appearing at an event. He commented earlier in the week that the Archdiocese of Washington wasn't happy with him.

I'd point to his videos about all this, but everything's been taken down. Yesterday he did put up a video saying he'd been ordered by his superiors to "cease and desist". He apologized for making their lives more difficult. Well, I guess everyone learns about this kind of thing sooner or later, and watching the situation develop, I wondered how soon life would catch up with him. It caught up right about when I figured it would. You don't get to be my age without learning something, I guess.

I note that Bp Barron and Fr Schmitz said their say and then shut up. Indeed, Abp Gómez and Cardinal DiNardo have themselves been pretty quiet. The exception seems to be Cardinal O'Malley, who just before Christmas referred Cardinal Dolan to the papal nuncio for covering up an abuse case in New York. According to Michael Voris,

What impact this will have on the U.S. bishops upcoming week-long retreat of prayer and reflection regarding their failures in the arena of sex abuse and the resulting decades of cover-up is uncertain, but it seems as though this latest bombshell will at the very least make some encounters among various bishops uncomfortable.

Nearly the entire body of U.S. bishops will be gathering at Mundelein Seminary near Chicago starting next week, and this seems like news that will cause quite the commotion.

O'Malley, who is president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, seems to have fallen out of favor, at least to a degree, with Rome and Pope Francis, perhaps relating back to his revelations regarding the involvement of multiple Chilean bishops in homosexual sex abuse and cover-up and his own criticism of the Holy Father's mishandling of the case of Bp. Juan Barros.

Well, if you're Cardinal O'Malley, you can maybe get away with it. Maybe. But if there's no clear leadership, then you're going to get every Tom, Dick, and Harry freelancing and grandstanding, and in the case of Taylor Marshall, putting out stuff that's poorly presented, or in the case of Fr Goring, counterproductive.

Let's hope clear leadership and a coherent, effective strategy comes out of the Mundelein session in the coming week.

More On James Grein

I mentioned the Taylor Marshall interview of James Grein in yesterday's post. I would say that the interpretation in other Catholic media is an indication of how poorly Marshall's interview was conducted: I listened to the Grein interview for several minutes without learning exactly what McCarrick's offense was. Life Site News had the patience to work through the preening, shuckin' and jivin' from Marshall and his friend to get to Grein's point:

Because the initial case against McCarrick seems to be crumbling, Grein’s sworn testimony last week to Church authorities conducting the Vatican’s investigation into McCarrick’s long history of sexual predation may soon become the cornerstone –– and the last hope –– for any canonical action to be taken by the Holy See against McCarrick.

Though canon law may be lenient on McCarrick for his despicable sexual abuse of the altar boy in the sacristy of a St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Grein’s abuse occurred during confession, which canon law views as a capital crime.

Grein explained that when he was a young boy, McCarrick, who was a close friend of his parents, brought him to a third floor bedroom in the Grein family’s house to hear his confession, far away from the others who were gathered on the main floor.

McCarrick told Grein he wanted to “hear my sins of the mind and body.”

“And as he blesses me, he puts his right hand on my right shoulder and starts to bless me with Holy Water down my body,” recounted Grein, “and then he massages my genitals, and he kisses me there.”

Because the sexual abuse began when Grein was just 11 years old, this is clearly a case of abuse of a minor that cannot be excused as consensual sex by higher ups in Vatican City seeking to protect the now-disgraced former cardinal.

Just this morning I ran across St Bernardino of Siena, who said,

No sin has greater power over the soul than the one of cursed sodomy, which was always detested by all those who lived according to God's law. ...

Such passion for untenable practices borders on madness. This vice disturbs the intellect, unbalances an elevated and generous state of soul, drags lofty thoughts down to base ones, makes men pusillanimous and irascible, obstinate and hardened, servilely soft and incapable of anything.

Furthermore, the will, agitated by the insatiable drive for pleasure, no longer follows reason but rather the tumult of the passions.

I like his stress on the influence of sin over reason.

Two Bishops, Two Approaches

Barring any new revelations from state investigations, I think we've learned all we're going to know about the hinky Jesuits at Gonzaga. But the data points we have lead to compelling conclusions.

Then-Bp Cupich was the ordinary in Spokane from 2010 to 2014. In 2011, we know that the Jesuit provincial told him about at least seven of the hinky Jesuits at Gonzaga. Cupich had already been Bishop of Rapid City, SD from 1998 to 2010, so he presumably had more than a decade learning the job, and he'd been a bishop throughout the First Crisis. But as far as we know, he did nothing about the Jesuits who were theoretically living under "safety plans" but were free to come and go.

We know that Bp Thomas Daly took over from Cupich in 2015, and the press release a week ago from the diocese said he "was not informed by the Jesuits or Gonzaga University that these men were living at Cardinal Bea House." Whether he was told anything by Cupich is unclear, although the issue seems not to have concerned him much between 2011 and his departure for Chicago.

On the other hand, the hinky Jesuits don't seem to have been a complete surprise to Daly, either, however he learned of them. In 2016, they all suddenly left Gonzaga for California, a complete coincidence, I'm sure. (However, they were relocated to the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center in Los Gatos, California, in the diocese where Daly had previously been auxiliary.) By 2017, the Spokane diocese was updating its policies to be sure that no more hinky Jesuits (or hinkies of any other stripe) could come in without the bishop's knowledge and approval.

The result was, at least from a bishop-as-corporate-manager point of view, Daly had been acting prudently to deflect potential blame from the diocese, should the story become public, which in fact it did. He was also acting as a good shepherd, both protecting potential future victims and protecting the faithful from fallout over any new scandal.

The question is why Cupich, a decade older and with that much more experience as a bishop under his belt, didn't take equivalent action while he was in Spokane.

Let's look at the pattern we began to see in the First Crisis: certain bishops, like Law, Levada, and Mahony, simply had a record of protecting criminally abusive priests. But this didn't happen in a vacuum; they tolerated a great deal more open same-sex conduct and advocacy among all their clergy. There's probably a law enforcement analogy here: when police enforce quality-of-life laws, subway fare evasion or low-level vandalism, the overall crime rate decreases. The same, I strongly suspect, applies to dioceses.

Thus in the Second Crisis, we see similar records with Tobin, McCarrick, and Wuerl. And it's probably no coincidence that there are financial issues with these bishops as well. On the other hand, we're beginning to see bishops like Thomas Daly who are moving proactively, recognizing that it's simply part of a bishop's job to keep the lawn mowed, the windows clean, and the trash picked up. Even if Cupich tries to claim the Jesuit provincial didn't spell things out in words of two syllables or less, why did Daly see and act on a problem, knowing even less than Cupich, when Cupich apparently ignored it?

Although Cupich, if you get right down to it, doesn't strike me as very smart. This may be why he's where he is, and why he's still Pope Francis's point man for dealing with the Second Crisis.

Let's hope Bp Daly continues to advance in his career.

Illinois Discrepancy

From the Chicago Tribune:

A scathing report from Attorney General Lisa Madigan finds the number of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse against children in Illinois is much higher than previously acknowledged.

The report said accusations have been leveled against 690 priests, while Catholic officials have publicly identified only 185 clergy with credible allegations against them.

. . . Although the report says that “Clergy sexual abuse of minors in Illinois is significantly more extensive than the Illinois Dioceses previously reported,” it does not estimate how many of the allegations against the 690 clergy should have been deemed credible. Some of the allegations go back decades.

Yesterday's Download from Church Militant addressed this story.

The discussion raises one possible issue. At about 3:40, it quotes the Archdiocese of Chicago's reply, "Starting in 2002, we have reported all allegations of child sexual abuse to civil authorities, and at that time, we reported all historical allegations."

However, the question is what "child sexual abuse" means here. The Pennsylvania grand jury report, as well as the well-publicized allegations against McCarrick, refer to abuse of those below the age of consent, 18, and not just "children". It's plain that the Cupich agenda is to restrict the discussion to children and reiterate that policies to "protect the children" are in place.

But this leaves out the issue of sexual harassment against teens and adult seminarians over the age of consent, an issue corporations in particular have had to address since the 1970s, but which the Church seems reluctant to confront. This probably accounts for the discrepancy, but it will be a struggle to get Cupich and others to acknowledge the real issues.

I do find one encouraging aspect to the Church Militant discussion: the consensus seems to be that the gay problem, as well as the actual abuse of teens and adults, is limited more to chanceries and seminaries, and it's much less common in parishes. This is consonant with my impression of our parish clergy, as well as to remarks by Fr Schmitz and others on YouTube that they've never actually seen the sort of conduct that's reported by state authorities. This strikes me as credible.

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.

A Visitor's Theory Of Benedict's Resignation

Theories of Benedict's resignation that I've found most credible center on a "Wikileaks dossier" that exposed misconduct in the hierarchy, delivered to Francis late in 2012. For instance, Michael Voris has mentioned these theories several times, as in this piece from last October:

[T]he original dossier was compiled in the wake of what was tagged "VatiLeaks," a reference to the theft and release to Italian journalists of various private documents of Pope Benedict.

The Holy Father ordered an investigation into the thefts but various media reports said what began as an investigation into one area quickly diverted into an entirely unforeseen area: homosexuality within the hierarchy here at the Vatican.

Three cardinal-investigators eventually compiled their findings into a dossier and presented it to Pope Benedict just a couple of months before his surprise retirement in February of 2013.

The explanation derived from this circumstance is basically that the revelations in the dossier convinced Benedict that he didn't have the energy to pursue the implications and decided to leave this task to a successor. That would certainly be taking an easy way out -- popes have been called to martyrdom, after all. I'm open to a better explanation.

A visitor had a suggestion:

[A]fter reading today’s post I am becoming more and more convinced that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI resigned because of his role in the unfolding homosexual scandal in the Church hierarchy. I suspect Pope Benedict expected former Cardinal McCarrick to recognize the gravity of his sins and the peril of his immortal soul when he asked him to retire from his ministry and live out the remainder of his life fasting, praying and repenting. It is a testament to the evil in McCarrick’s heart and the obvious lack of faith in the doctrines of the Church that he did not avail himself of that voluntarily and that he did not explain that to the Holy Father when Pope Francis requested him to “come back out.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict, I have come to believe, is a good and decent man who has seen what he allowed and/or facilitated by promoting very flawed men. As he expected McCarrick to do, I think he prescribed the same punishment for himself and he has withdrawn to a life of prayer, fasting and repentance. Perhaps Pope Benedict thought that by his example, the other Cardinals and Bishops who have wrought this blight upon our Church would also VOLUNTARILY do the right thing and resign their offices as well, allowing the Church to heal with as little scandal as possible.

The fact that almost NONE of these men have done this speaks volumes to the “Smoke of Satan” that has permeated our Church and the intrinsic evil that entails. I might be way off on this, but, the more I see, the more I think I might be right, and if so, my admiration for the integrity of Pope Emeritus Benedict grows and I think history will judge him better than our current Catholic brethren do. I also think, Pope Francis is beginning to understand this as well and seems to be turning the corner. We’ll see….

One thing that's kept troubling me is the number of corrupt bishops and cardinals who were promoted, not just by John Paul II, but by Benedict as well. Cardinal Levada rose under JPII among a corrupt Mahony clique -- all promoted by John Paul -- but Benedict made him a cardinal. The impression I have is that Levada sometimes said the right things, but his personal example was poor. The drunk driving arrest suggests a serious problem with alcohol that must have been of long standing and was probably of a piece with other private conduct -- and Steven Lopes, his secretary for some years, would have been a facilitator.

And Benedict must have been aware of this. Why, also, did he demote Abp. Viganò just as Viganò seemed to be getting a handle on Vatican financial corruption?

That Benedict may have felt remorse for some level of complicity in the scandals strikes me as credible, but as the visitor said, we'll see.

Opus Dei Bishops And Other Topics

A visitor comments,

One thing that might not be understood by your average reader is that Bishops (and by extension, Archbishops) must resign their memberships in Opus Dei before they become Bishops. This has to do with the person or hierarchy to whom they must be obedient. In Opus Dei, the person is obedience to the Prelate. When a priest is made a Bishop, that vow to the Prelate is dissolved and a vow of obedience is then made to the episcopal polity ultimately headed by the Pope.

While I do not doubt there is some animosity between the Jesuits and Opus Dei, Archbishop Gomez is no longer a part of Opus Dei. Is there some Tom Hanks/DaVinci Code type of conspiracy for Opus Dei to subsume the papacy? Is our Holy Father paranoid about such a thing? I would put more money on the latter being true than the former.

Pope Francis has a track record of being suspicious and authoritarian during his history as a Jesuit and as a Bishop and now Pope. Archbishop Gomez has a history of faithfulness to Church teaching which has angered some who prefer an agenda of Social Justice over fidelity to the Magisterium. Which of these two seems to be likely targeted by the other?

These are difficult times for our Church. It is sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees. Something tells me, a great winnowing is about to take place and the fire to burn the chaff has already been prepared and lit. Hold on to your catechisms, folks, it is about to get real hot!

Further on the putative feud, another visitor comments,

The feud between the Jesuits & OD is hype. Pope Francis chose Greg Burke as his spokesman. Most ODers don't admit that they are in OD unless it's good press for them---Burke is one of those cases.

Francis has also appointed at least 1 OD priest a bishop in Australia (& has appointed 11 Jesuits. 12,000 Jesuits in the world vs 3000 OD priests. And, obviously the Jesuits have 1500 years on OD.) The one thing Francis has not done is make the head of OD a bishop as JP2 did w/Portillo & Echeverria. OD has to get a OD-friendly bishop to do ordinations (& there's been no problem finding them).

Elsewhere, there's been much comment on Francis's reported remarks about homosexuality, for instance, here:

Rome (kath.net) Pope Francis is worried about homosexuals in the Church. "In our societies, it seems that homosexuality is a fashion, and this mentality also influences the Church in some way," said the head of the Church in a recent interview, which will be published in a book on Monday. This was reported by “ORF.” According to the interview, Francis is worried about homosexuals in the clergy and seminaries. [What about his close circle?]

So does this mean he's going to throw Coccopalmerio, McCarrick, Tobin, and all the others under the bus? Don't wait for it. If any of them crosses him, of course, all bets are off. As I commented yesterday, in a corrupt organization, the ruling clique has something on everyone, and anyone is subject to removal for "corruption" at any time. But as long as they stay with the program, they're safe, unless too much pressure builds up to make one of them an example no matter what.

Francis is triangulating here. At least it's an indication he knows there's concern out there -- but he'll always weasel his way out of any such statement and point to his "zero tolorance" in Paraguay if he has to.

The Roger Mahony Chain Of Paternity

Roger Mahony retired as Archbishop of Los Angeles in 2011. According to Wikipedia,

On January 31, 2013, in the wake of a court order requiring the Archdiocese of Los Angeles to release its unredacted files on clergy sexual abuse, Archbishop Gómez relieved Mahony of all of his remaining public and administrative duties. Critics called Gómez's action "purely symbolic punishment" and "hand-slapping...a nearly meaningless gesture", and noted that Mahony remains "a powerful man" in the church. According to the archdiocese, Mahony remains "a priest in good standing" and may still celebrate Mass, but he may no longer speak publicly or exercise any responsibilities ordinarily reserved for a bishop. . . . Under canon law, as Mahony is a cardinal, he enjoys the "privilege of forum", meaning that the only the pope is competent to judge and punish Mahony in matters subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Gómez only has the authority to control Mahony's administrative assignments within the archdiocese.

Thus we had the situation mentioned in yesterday's post, in which Francis made Mahony his delegate to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Diocese of Scranton, from which Mahony withdrew after protests. Similar protests took place in Utah when Mahony was scheduled to keynote a fundraising event; he withdrew from that as well.

It seems as if Pope Francis had been trying to rehabilitate Mahony as he had McCarrick. This suggests Francis has been reversing a course he had apparently set in 2014, in which he publicly acted against a Paraguayan bishop accused of tolerating flagrant abuse -- I'll cover this tomorrow.

Throughout his time in California, Mahony has enjoyed remarkably good press. He rose in the Church via the same path that Bernard Law and Joseph Bernardin followed, allying himself closely with civil rights and anti-poverty causes, in his case Cesar Chavez and the first California governorship of Jerry Brown. This led to consistently favorable treatment from the Los Angeles Times and other California media. Although his indulgent treatment of sex offenders was comparable to Law's, he never attracted the same scrutiny in Los Angeles as Law did in Boston -- Law's association with the Bush family was probably his undoing, even though Law's practical positions on theology and liturgy were equivalent to Mahony's.

In fact, Mahony's impact on AmChurch probably exceeds that of both Bernardin and Law. Engel's The Rite Of Sodomy certainly has more to say about Mahony than Law, though I'm finding that its coverage of Mahony is poorly organized, and it often tells the story through Mahony's numerous protégés. But an example is the case of a 2003 civil suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of 17 victims of clerical abuse:

The December 2003 lawsuit exposes a portion of the clerical homosexual underworld operating out of Southern California with tentacles that reach into the American heartland. The lawsuit supports one of the major claims of this book—that clerical pederasts and homosexuals tend to gravitate toward and colonize certain administrative areas in a diocese, specifically the Chancery, diocesan major and minor seminaries, and departments connected to liturgy, religious education, canon law and finances.

According to attorneys Boucher and Drivon, unlike Cardinal Law of Boston, who was forced to resign in disgrace for his role in covering-up multiple clerical abuse cases, Cardinal Mahony has managed to survive the legal earthquakes that continue to shake the Archdiocese of Los Angeles because he enjoys the favor and protection of the ruling media and political elite.

. . . The lawsuit alleges:

In terms of shaping the make-up and philosophy ... of the archdiocese toward child molestation in the 1950s and into the 1960s, perhaps the most significant child molester faculty member of Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary was Fr. John Farris. Fr. Farris was among the most popular teachers and spiritual advisors at Our Lady Queen of Angels ...while rendering spiritual advisement, Farris sexually molested the young students at the junior seminary. During this time period, not uncoincidentally, the attrition rate of students dropping out from the junior seminary was extremely high. During this time many of the present archbishops and bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in California were students at Our Lady Queen of Angels Junior Seminary, including Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop William Levada, Bishop John Steinbock, as well as former Bishop of Tucson Manuel Moreno. (p 807)

Engel describes a Mahony "Gang O'Four" that emerged from the Our Lady Queen of Angels seminary and the St John's major seminary in Camarillo, CA. These were Justin Rigali, Tod Brown, William Levada, and Mahony himself. These in turn sponsored or protected other gay or gay-friendly bishops, including Patrick Ziemann, the disastrous Bishop of Santa Rosa, CA; Bishop of Tucson Manuel Moreno; and John Steinbock, Ziemann's predecessor in the gay-friendly Santa Rosa diocese and later Bishop of Fresno, CA, where his record of handling abuse was at best mixed.

As far as I can see, this is just the tip of the iceberg, in large part because California media hasn't covered abuse cases as fully as media in other regions, and because the political establishment is aligned with liberal and gay-friendly prelates.

Another Italian Take

The visitor who follows the Italian press has sent another link to a good summary of the current crisis from the Italian point of view. (The translation is from Google translate with a few tweaks):

Pope Francis has insisted several times on the fact that at the root of the phenomenon of abuse is clericalism, a sort of abuse of power, leaving out the factor of homosexuality in the clergy. Even the journalists of the papal court are doing their best to convince everyone that homosexuality has nothing to do with it, even if the data say exactly the opposite.

Among the four components of the organizing committee stands out the archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich, much discussed both for his close friendship with the former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and for statements that seem to diminish the emergency created by the crisis for sexual abuse. At the meeting of American bishops last week in Baltimore, Cupich was the one who led the faction that managed to prevent the launch of a truth commission on what happened; in particular, Cupich - like the Pope - is opposed to the presence of lay people in the Commission of Inquiry, as advocated by the presidency of the US Episcopal Conference and by Cardinal Sean O'Malley, president of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Children, blatantly excluded from the list of the organizers of the February meeting.

Even the appointment of Cupich is a serious matter, given the contiguity with McCarrick, but moreover to strengthen the position of Cardinal Cupich is also another appointment, that of the Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias, of Mumbay, who firmly supports the right to gay marriages and the need to change the language of the Church regarding homosexuality.

With a similar team in charge of operations, it is clear that we want to avoid the issue of homosexuality in the clergy as a phenomenon to be monitored in terms of preventing abuse. There is also the risk in the position of those who maintain that the acceptance of homosexuality in the clergy would be useful to avoid sexual abuse.

One issue that I haven't been able to reason through is how the synod, if it addresses it at all, will deal with the question of "consensual" same-sex activity, at what age, and under what circumstances, and how this relates to traditional Church teaching on the sixth commandment as it relates to heterosexual marriage.

The basic problem is that same-sex activity bypasses the potential for procreation. This in turn bypasses Humanae Vitae and much else. So if you are allowing in some way for "consensual" same-sex activity, you're creating a whole separate category for sexual activity unrelated to procreation.

In that case, why forbid artificial contraception? But if the implication in Cupich's Baltimore remarks on "consensual" is that any same-sex activity by priests over the age of consent is outside the question under review, why continue to forbid fornication between men and women? Is it worse for a priest to have a woman concubine than to have a gay boyfriend?

For instance, how does this relate to former Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Gabino Zavala, who resigned under those circumstances in 2012:

Zavala informed the archbishop last month that he had fathered two children who live with their mother in another state, Gomez said in a letter to the archdiocese's approximately 5 million Catholics. The archbishop said Zavala told him that he had submitted his resignation to the pope.

"Since that time, he has not been in ministry and will be living privately," the archbishop said in the letter, which was posted on a Catholic blog.

So, must every bishop or auxiliary with a gay boyfriend living either in the rectory or in another state resign? Apparently not, but a bishop or auxiliary with a concubine apparently must, and the Holy Father won't dither over whether to accept the resignation, either.

Why the difference, or will we reform Church teaching in this matter?

Cupich And Wuerl Deny Complicity In Baltimore Delay

Thanks to a visitor for sending me the link to a Crux story from yesterday:

Cardinal Blase Cupich is firing back against claims that he sought to advance an alternative proposal for bishop accountability ahead of last week’s meeting in Baltimore, in place of the plan put forth by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

“The allegation is false,” the archbishop of Chicago told Crux on Sunday, in response to a Catholic News Agency (CNA) report Friday that he and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington collaborated on a separate proposal.

“At no time prior to the Baltimore meeting did the two of us collaborate in developing, nor even talk about, an alternative plan,” he said.

Further,

Cupich said that he, along with the other cardinals, were summoned to DiNardo’s hotel suite by USCCB General Secretary Monsignor Brian Bransfield on Monday morning ahead of the start of the general meeting, and they were informed of the delay. While all cardinals were invited to attend the meeting, only he and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, were present, he recalled.

Contrary to the CNA report, which alleges Wuerl and Cupich collaborated “for weeks and presented it to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops before the U.S. bishops’ conference assembly in Baltimore,” both Cupich and a spokesman for Wuerl insist that’s false.

Cupich told Crux that upon arrival in Baltimore, and hearing the news of the delay in voting, he consulted with numerous bishops on the plan that he eventually submitted.

I strongly suspect weasel-wording in these denials -- I tend to agree with the occasional analysis I've seen that it's in Francis's interest to delay any independent plan in the US until the February 2019 synod can address it, when, as with other Franciscan synods, he can directly control the outcome. There's little argument that in the Baltimore discussion, Cupich came out supporting Francis's delay and an agenda other than the one that was on the USCCB's table.

There's another issue here: all of a sudden, Msgr Brian Bransfield turns up as a key actor as USCCB General Secretary. We will recall that this position is an immediate stepping stone to more powerful rank in the US hierarchy, as it was Joseph Bernardin's post before he became a bishop. However, as we discovered yesterday, his cousin, Michael Bransfield, recently resigned as Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston, WV.

Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia.

Yet Bransfield's cousin is General Secretary of the USCCB! The rot is pervasive -- and, pace Cupich and Wuerl, regardless of who ran a draft of whichever by whom on what date, there's pretty clearly an effort to promote a single agenda by Francis, Wuerl, Cupich, and Bransfield.

Back To The Papal Foundation

Via a French site a visitor pointed me to, I found an article by Matthew O'Brien in First Things from last September, The Papal Foundation & McCarrick's Conflict of Interest. We're seeing increased speculation on how Francis might somehow be encouraged to abdicate, but in light of the political background in which Bergoglio formed his sense of obligation, I would say that caudillos mostly don't leave office unless they're put on the plane by a successor group of colonels. Or put in the ground, for that matter. So I don't give the idea of abdication much chance, but then, what do I know?

I'm inclined to agree with commentators like Marco Tosatti in yesterday's post that pressure from the US legal system will probably be a better route to limiting any mischief Francis can create. Per O'Brien:

As an ex officio member of the board of cardinals which controls the Foundation, McCarrick advocated and voted four times to approve an extraordinary, expedited grant of $25 million to the Vatican, in order to help it bail out a scandal-plagued dermatology hospital that it controls, the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI) in Rome: first in executive session in June 2017, then at the Foundation’s annual meeting in December 2017, again in January 2018, and finally in April 2018.

During at least the latter three votes, then-Cardinal McCarrick knew that he was under a Vatican-authorized investigation, carried out by the Archdiocese of New York, for sexually molesting a boy. According to a source with first-hand knowledge of the matter, McCarrick knew by October 2017 at the latest that he was under investigation. Because the recipient of the $25 million grant was the Vatican, which was the very entity that would determine McCarrick’s fate as a result of the investigation it authorized into his conduct, McCarrick appears to have had a manifest and gross conflict of interest in considering the grant request in the best interest of the Papal Foundation. McCarrick stood to benefit personally if, by helping to secure $25 million for the Vatican, he could win leniency in how it handled his sex abuse case.

Under Pennsylvania law, the directors of non-profits such as the Papal Foundation are under an obligation to disclose material conflicts of interest to their organization’s directors and officers, and to recuse themselves from board decisions in which their conflict of interest is implicated. McCarrick failed to make any disclosures to the Papal Foundation’s board or to recuse himself from board decisions, according to people present at the board meetings in 2017 and 2018.

O'Brien then lists at length circumstances under which the foundation board has not operated under legal definitions of "good faith" in disbursing grants, in particular by not confirming with the ultimate grantees whether they actually received the amounts designated in the foundation's grants. The basic problem is that the foundation sends the grant money to the Vatican Secretariat of State, which passes it on to the grantee. The clear issue is whether, as a possible example, the foundation granted the Secretariat of State $200,000 for a school project, but the school received only $20,000, with the remainder going elsewhere.

In late 2017 Cardinal Wuerl tasked the Foundation’s legal counsel to review its operations and bylaws for legal compliance. In a letter dated December 29, 2017, a copy of which was provided to me by a person involved with the Papal Foundation, its own attorneys identify five problem areas in the Foundation’s operations and procedures. Two of these were particularly important: first, an apparent general failure to confirm that the ultimate recipients of its grants were operated in a fashion analogous to US public charities; second, an apparent general failure to obtain meaningful audits or accountings of how grant beneficiaries spent the money they received. The Foundation’s attorneys concluded this assessment with an injunction, “There must be some accountability for the Board to satisfy itself that funds are indeed expended for charity.”

The cardinals’ board of the Papal Foundation apparently distributed its charitable grants in a manner that made them remarkably vulnerable to fraud and embezzlement, and in so doing, the board appears to have contravened its own bylaws, and thus violated Pennsylvania civil law as well. The Foundation’s chosen partner in distributing grants, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, has a longstanding reputation of financial mismanagement. In recent years the Secretary of State himself, Cardinal Parolin’s predecessor Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was personally involved in misappropriating $500,000 in charitable assets to double pay a contractor friend to renovate his Vatican apartment, and also in directing millions of dollars from the Holy See into now-failed Italian television venture owned by his friends.

O'Brien raises questions about whether approving or directing Papal Foundation grants was a factor in McCarrick's rise, as well as that of other McCarrick protégés.

No prelate has been more consistently and intimately involved in the Papal Foundation than McCarrick, who helped to found the non-profit in 1988 alongside the late Cardinal Krol of Philadelphia and Cardinal O’Connor of New York. The current chairman of the controlling board of cardinals is Cardinal Wuerl, McCarrick’s successor as Archbishop of Washington. Before he was elevated to the cardinalate and moved to Rome, then-Bishop Kevin Farrell, McCarrick’s protégé and former housemate in Washington, was a member of the Papal Foundation’s board of trustees. The current president of the board of trustees is another McCarrick protégé, Bishop Michael Bransfield.

. . . Like McCarrick, Bransfield stands accused of sex abuse. His recent resignation from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston was announced on September 13, 2018, at the same time that the Holy See announced a special investigation into Bransfield for the alleged sexual abuse of adults. Before the announcement of the investigation, Bransfield had been dogged for years with allegations of sex abuse and alleged complicity in rape and molestation carried out by priest friends of his in his native city of Philadelphia.

The first executive director of the Papal Foundation, who served from 1988 until 2001, was a priest named Monsignor Thomas Benestad. Benestad, who retired early from his home Diocese of Allentown and now lives in Boca Raton, Florida, is accused in the Pennsylvania Grant Jury Report of sexually abusing boy over a period of years in the early 1980s, beginning when he was nine years old.

. . . Benestad, Bransfield, and McCarrick have been three of the most important clerical leaders of the Papal Foundation, and all face serious allegations of sex abuse. Some of these allegations were widely known for decades, but did not prevent the men from rising from one ecclesiastical preferment to the next. Did these men use the grant-making power of the Papal Foundation to curry favor and buy protection from Vatican officials? Did they enable the misappropriation of the Foundation’s charitable grants? The only way to answer these questions is with an independent investigation of the Papal Foundation, along with a forensic accounting of its past grants.

Such an investigation would not face canonical impediments or infringe upon the proper authority of bishops over their dioceses. The Papal Foundation is not an ecclesiastical entity, but an ordinary 501(c)(3) religious non-profit. No permission from Rome is necessary. The Foundation’s board could commission an investigation with a simple vote. If the Foundation does not authorize its own independent investigation, it may nonetheless find itself facing one from state or federal authorities.

The US legal path strikes me as a potentially much more effective route to imposing reform on the Vatican, if the Vatican can't reform itself. In fact, the O'Brien article provides the outline for a "lay-led" investigation of how McCarrick rose in the hierarchy despite his well-known record of abuse -- and it could be done, for instance by an entity connected with Timothy Busch's charities, without approval of the Vatican or the USCCB.

An Italian Take On The Baltimore Fiasco

The visitor who follows the Italian press has sent me a link to this post by the Italian blogger-journalist Marco Tosatti. The translation is mostly Google with some suggested changes from the visitor.

the French and Italian bishops' conferences in recent days have debated and voted for measures to prevent abuse by the clergy without the Holy See batting an eyelid. The American bishops' conference, meeting in Baltimore, to discuss and approve guidelines on the same subject, and the creation of an independent commission of inquiry, received at the last minute the extraordinary and unanimous request-injunction from the Congregation of Bishops (with the obvious endorsement of the reigning Pontiff) not to vote for anything, and to wait for the summit on the abuses of all the Episcopal Conferences of the world scheduled for February. An absolutely unusual move that surprised everyone.

We would like you to read the exceptionally precise report of the Catholic News Agency, in our translation. In the end we will follow it by some comment. We anticipate a note here: Cardinal Daniel Wuerl, accused by the Grand Jury Report of serious omissions in handling cases of abuse in Pittsburgh, and accused by Archbishop Viganò of having very badly monitored the sanctions imposed by Benedict XVI to McCarrick, his friend and predecessor in Washington, he was forced to resign because of the reaction of the faithful. Card. Cupich (pictured with McCarrick while delivering the "Spirit of Pope Francis" award) is another prelate of the "McCarrick supply chain", openly pro-LGBT. Enjoy the reading.

[I'm substituting the original CNA text for Tosatti's translation to Italian-back-to-English here for clarity.] Washington D.C., Nov 16, 2018 / 06:56 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington collaborated extensively on a recently proposed policy for handling abuse allegations against bishops, CNA has learned.

Cupich submitted the plan Tuesday to leaders of the U.S. bishops’ conference, proffering it as an alternative to a proposal that had been devised by conference officials and staffers.

The conference’s proposed plan would have established an independent lay-led commission to investigate allegations against bishops. The Cupich-Wuerl plan would instead send allegations against bishops to be investigated by their metropolitan archbishops, along with archdiocesan review boards. Metropolitans themselves would be investigated by their senior suffragan bishops.

Sources in Rome and Washington, DC told CNA that Wuerl and Cupich worked together on their alternative plan for weeks, and presented it to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops before the U.S. bishops’ conference assembly in Baltimore. Cupich and Wuerl are both members of the Congregation for Bishops.

The Cupich-Wuerl plan was submitted to the U.S. bishops even after a Vatican directive was issued Monday barring U.S. bishops from voting on any abuse-related measures. The Vatican suspended USCCB policy-making on sexual abuse until after a February meeting involving the heads of bishops’ conferences from around the world.

An official at the Congregation for Bishops told CNA on Thursday that the substance of the plan presented by Cupich at the Baltimore meeting is known in the congregation as “Wuerl’s plan.” The official would not confirm whether the congregation had received an advance copy of the document.

Senior chancery officials in Washington described the plan presented Tuesday as a collaborative effort by the cardinals, telling CNA that Wuerl and Cupich first informed the Congregation for Bishops several weeks ago about their idea for the “metropolitan model” to handle complaints against a bishop, and suggested they had continued to discuss the plan with Congregation officials since that time.

"It was a mutual effort," one Archdiocese of Washington official told CNA.

The idea of amending USCCB policy so that allegations against a bishop would be handled by his metropolitan archbishop was first suggested by Wuerl publicly in August.

While Cupich played an active role in conference sessions this week, and proposed the detailed plan for an alternative to the conference’s special commission, Wuerl did not make any public comment on the plan, which at least some in Rome consider to be “his,” and which he first suggested in public 3 months ago.

Sources familiar with the behind-the-scenes discussions in Baltimore told CNA that Wuerl chose to step back from the plan’s presentation, providing advice and counsel but not seeking to take public credit. A spokesman for Wuerl declined to comment on that decision.

Several bishops in Baltimore told CNA that Cupich appeared to be positioning himself as an unofficial but influential policy-maker in the conference. His status would be strengthened if the plan he introduced in Baltimore gained support in Rome, they said, especially if it were favored over the plan proposed by conference officials.

It is not clear to what extent Cupich considered how the manner in which he presented his plan could be interpreted. A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Chicago told CNA that Cardinal Cupich was away, and could not be reached for comment.

A source familiar with the drafting of the alternative proposal told CNA that Wuerl was not involved in the way the plan was presented in Baltimore, saying that Wuerl’s only concern was developing the best possible plan for tackling the sexual abuse crisis, and not “playing games” at the conference.

Many American bishops arrived in Baltimore this week expecting to approve the proposed the independent commission, along with proposed standards for episcopal conduct. Bishops were stunned to discover Monday that they could not vote on the measures, following the last-minute instruction from the Congregation for Bishops, received Sunday night by conference president Cardinal Daniel DiNardo.

An Archdiocese of Washington official suggested to CNA that the Congregation for Bishops’ last minute suspension of voting at the Baltimore meeting might have been because the conference’s independent commission proposal was not sent to Rome until Oct. 30.

DiNardo, however, told a press conference Monday that while the draft document for the independent commission had been sent to Rome at the end of October, the USCCB had been in consistent contact with Vatican officials as the texts were developed.

DiNardo said that “When we were in Rome [in October] we consulted with all of [the Vatican dicasteries]. I mean, [that’s what] we do.”

“When I met with the Holy Father in October, the Holy Father was very positive in a general way - he had not seen everything yet - of the kind of action items we were looking to do.”

Cupich spoke from the floor immediately after DiNardo’s announcement of the change Monday morning. The cardinal suggested that the bishops continue to discuss the proposed measures and take non-binding votes on them. He offered no indication at that time that he would introduce a completely different plan.

By Tuesday afternoon, the Chicago cardinal rose to question the premise of the USCCB’s proposed independent commission, asking if it was a reflection of sound ecclesiology. Cupich suggested that the commission could be seen as a way of “outsourcing” difficult situations.

Shortly thereafter, Cupich submitted to conference leaders a seemingly well-prepared and comprehensive “Supplement to the [USCCB] Essential Norms,” which outlined in detail the plan he had developed with Wuerl.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia said from the floor that the “metropolitan model” appeared to align closer with the Church’s hierarchical structure.

“I really do favor the use of the metropolitan and the metropolitan review board for these cases… but that would require that the Holy See give metropolitan archbishops more authority than we have,” Chaput told the conference.

Chaput told the bishop that the reason the USCCB executive committee opted to pursue the idea of an independent commission instead of developing a plan based around the metropolitan archbishop was because they did not think the “metropolitan model’ would have support in Rome.

“When we discussed this at the executive committee level we, some people, thought it would be easier for us to develop this independent commission than to get the Church to change canon law,” he said.

Sources close to the USCCB told CNA that if the executive committee had known the Vatican might support the “metropolitan model,” it might have been pursued earlier, with a proposal being circulated to members by the conference leadership. A spokesperson for the USCCB declined to comment on that possibility.

Cupich had suggested during the meeting that either or both plans could be voted on in non-binding resolutions in order to give the Vatican a sense of the American episcopate’s desires. Ultimately, no vote was taken.

Instead, as the Baltimore meeting ended, DiNardo agreed that Cupich’s plan would be developed alongside the independent commission plan, by a special task force consisting of former USCCB presidents Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, and Archbishop Wilton Gregory. DiNardo will have the option of presenting either or both possibilities when he and conference vice president Archbishop Jose Gomez attend the Vatican’s February meeting.

USCCB spokespersons declined several times to comment on any role Cupich or Wuerl, members of the Congregation for Bishops, might have played in developing the congregation’s reaction to the special commission plan.

Some considerations. From the above, we understand that Cupich and Wuerl and the Congregation for Bishops have worked for months behind the US Episcopal Conference, to sabotage the two proposals that the Americans were working on. And of which, however, Rome was continuously informed. The painful justification thus comes down - also served by the major international press agencies, prone to official versions - according to which Rome had been taken by surprise by the proposals of the bishops. No, he was simply preparing a plan provided by members of the power group near McCarrick. And he has chosen to make a nice authoritarian trip to the USCCB, with many greetings to synodicity, independence, autonomy, etc. etc. Pure Brezhnevian centralism.

Second consideration: what obviously annoys the proposal is that the "club boys" ie the bishops can be investigated - investigated, mind you, not judged; investigated - by an external commission made up of lay people. But clericalism? No, that's not to use the word homosexuality. Another lure mirror. The bishops must investigate the bishops, and the laity do not put their noses on it. They pray and pay. So they want Wuerl, Cupich and - until proven otherwise - even the Pope. Business as usual. With the results that, until today we have seen. Fortunately, at least for the United States, lay justice will take care of it. Maybe Federal. Which, however, perhaps will not stop there.

Then they'll have something to laugh about.

This reinforces the idea I began to have yesterday that Cupich, Wuerl, and McCarrick are living in a never-never land where, as long as they can throw the small percentage of gay priests and bishops who can be accused of "pedophilia" under the bus, the rest can carry on with the authorities looking the other way. US corporations have found it's not like that for the last 40 years. I agree with Tosatti -- McCarrick, Wuerl, and presumably Francis will have something to laugh about when they realize they can't get around US law so easily.

More Context On Msgr Ricca

As I do more research on Battista Ricca, I'm finding he's at the fulcrum of the other major Vatican scandals -- or at least, those that have reached the European press in the last several years. Let's start with Vatileaks, or as some commentators call it now, Vatileaks I. According to Wikipedia,

The scandal first came to light in late January 2012 in a television program aired in Italy under the name of The Untouchables (Gli intoccabili), and escalated in May 2012 when Gianluigi Nuzzi published a book entitled His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI consisting of confidential letters and memos.

Among the documents were letters written to the pope and to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, by then apostolic nuncio to the United States, Italian Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, complaining of corruption in Vatican finances and a campaign of defamation against him.

The scandal appears to have been less about the financial corruption than that the information was leaked.

Paolo Gabriele, who had been the pope's personal butler since 2007, leaked the stolen information to Gianluigi Nuzzi. He was arrested on 23 May 2012 after confidential letters and documents addressed to the pope and other Vatican officials were found in his Vatican apartment.

A separate investigation took place concerning the financial and administrative problems.

The Vatican probe into the leaks worked along several tracks, with Vatican magistrates pursuing the criminal investigation and the Vatican secretariat of state an administrative probe. In March 2012 Pope Benedict appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the leaks. The three cardinals appointed by Benedict acted in a supervisory role, looking beyond the narrow criminal scope of the leaks to interview broadly across the Vatican bureaucracy; they purportedly uncovered a sexual and blackmail scandal.

One outcome of the investigation appears to have been that Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who had been president of the Vatican Bank (IOR) since 2009, was forced from his position in May 2012, although this seems to have been connected with other controversies not necessarily related to the cardinals' investigation. On the other hand, it's hard to ignore that once he became pope, Bergoglio put his corrupt ally Battista Ricca into the position of IOR president.

Although Francis's "Who am I to judge?" remarks on July 29, 2013 were very well publicized, it's less well known that they were made in the context of a question about Battista Ricca and his flagrant homosexual background.

Ricca was also a subject of earlier complaints by Abp Viganò at the time of the 2012 Vatileaks scandal. The visitor with insights into the Italian press sent me a link to a much more recent story in il Giornale from September 3, 2018. The translation is via Google translate with a few emendations of clear errors:

Another burning case is likely to shake the Vatican. The polemics raised by the publication of the so-called "Viganò dossier" are not allayed. The document of the apostolic nuncio was announced a week ago, but the alleged revelations brought to the forefront continue to hold the bank.

The last to express themselves on the content of those pages, in order of time, was the journalist Sandro Magister.

. . . Magister, in the interview with La Verità , reported the existence of another affair, the one related to Monsignor Ricca : "There is a twin case, perhaps even more embarrassing: that of Monsignor Battista Ricca. Seventh heaven" [see below]. The clergyman in question would have been responsible for behaviors not in line with the provisions of Catholic doctrine and tradition: "In Montevideo - Magister said - between 1999 and 2001, he lived under the eyes of everyone with his lover , the former captain of the Swiss army Patrick Haari ". And again: "He attended places of appointment with young homosexuals, once he was involved in a fight and another was discovered in an elevator blocked inside the nunciature with an eighteen-year-old known to the Uruguayan police. He was recalled to Rome, his career did not suffer damage, indeed began again as if nothing had happened ".

Monsignor Ricca would have been appointed to the IOR prelature despite these events. Pope Francis was aware of these facts? A similar question was answered by Magister: "In 2013 the Pope was aware and consenting: the nuncios warned him and the documentation sent by the Uruguayan bishops was complete." A question on Ricca and the gay lobby replied: 'I did what the canon law sends to do, the Investigatio previa, and there is nothing that they are accused of". "The offices - specified the journalist - had omitted the most troubled passages, but he had submitted the true documentation and did not speak". Then the clarification: "Ricca never repented. He went out on the Espresso and did not react, with his friends he talked about chatter. Francesco also dismissed them as talk. By pronouncing the famous phrase 'Who am I to judge?' - Magister pointed out -, Francesco referred to the archetypal case of Ricca. With these words, Bergoglio overturned in his favor a public affair that could have undermined his credibility. When he refers to gay issues in the media world, the Pope does something clever. "The clash in the Vatican, meanwhile, seems to have just begun.

The visitor comments,

Reference to "seventh heaven"...it the translation of name of Sandro Magister's blog septimo cielo carried by larepubblica.it went behind a subscription paywall about a year ago.The Vatican had no more attentive theologically astute observer tracking it. And they hate him. I think they tried to have him suppressed, so now he's more remote for me.

The separate Vatican investigation into the financial irregularities in the IOR referred to above appears to have collapsed with a second Vatileaks scandal -- sometimes referred to as Vatileaks II -- in 2017, which I will discuss tomorrow. However, it appears from the information we have that Ricca was placed in his position by Francis specifically to forestall any serious review of the IOR.

But beyond that, the Wikipedia entry cited above refers to a dossier on the scandals as of 2012:

On 17 December 2012 the Pope received a report on "Vatican lobbies" prepared by cardinals Julián Herranz, Salvatore De Giorgi, a former archbishop of Palermo, and Jozef Tomko. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, speaking on Vatican Radio on 23 February 2013, strongly criticized media coverage of the report as a financial scandal which purportedly became, upon the cardinals' internal investigation, a gay sex and blackmail scandal as well.

Although the dossier was available only to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and the investigators themselves, the latter were free to discuss the results of their investigation with the Cardinal electors of the March 2013 papal conclave, and the dossier itself was to have been given to Benedict's successor as Pope, Francis.

It's been speculated that this dossier was the proximate cause of Benedict's abdication in February 2013. While the contents remain confidential, it's hard not to speculate that Ricca is a key figure in making sure the issues that are apparently discussed in it are not addressed.

What About McElroy, Tobin And Cupich?

Bishop Robert McElroy, 64, and Cardinals Joseph Tobin, 66, and Blase Cupich, 69, make up the next cohort of homosexualist prelates who look as though they will replace the Wuerl generation -- Wuerl is 78. Barring equivalent scandal, we may expect McElroy, Tobin and Cupich to stay influential into their 80s.

One thing that intrigues me is that none has attracted the critical press attention that Wuerl or McCarrick had attracted before their ultimate downfall. Wuerl's opulent lifestyle was covered in Pittsburgh and Washington, while McCarrick's conduct with seminarians had reached the press in 2006, whether or not US bishops could insist they'd heard nothing about it but rumors. But the most we know about McElroy, Tobin and Cupich comes only from an implication in the first Viganò testimony:

Viganò claimed that the appointments of Cardinal Cupich to Chicago and Cardinal Joseph Tobin to Newark “were orchestrated by McCarrick,” among others. He said neither of the names was presented by the nunciature, whose job is traditionally to present a list of names, or terna, to the Congregation for Bishops. He also added that Bishop Robert McElroy’s appointment to San Diego was orchestrated “from above” rather than through the nuncio.

So the "father" of this corruption turns out to be McCarrick, but we don't have a more complete record of sponsors and patrons that we earlier had of figures like Bernard Law or Donald Wuerl. In the wake of the Wuerl-McCarrick scandal, we have only hints. On McElroy,

The Bishop of San Diego has explained why he did not respond to a 2016 letter alleging sexual misconduct on the part of Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and other Catholic clerics.

The letter was sent to Bishop Robert McElroy by psychotherapist Richard Sipe.

. . . Sipe wrote to Bishop McElroy in 2016, listing allegations against half a dozen bishops – including then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – and warning of a broader problem of chastity violations among clergy.

On Cupich, the most consistent cirticism comes from Church Militant, for instance:

According to a man who thinks he's a so-called transgender woman, the archbishop of Chicago is listening to him instead of his faithful priest, Fr. Paul Kalchik, the pastor of Resurrection Parish.

The biological man, who goes by the name Alexandra Whitney, started a Twitter storm over the weekend claiming to have the cardinal's ear in having Fr. Kalchik ousted:

"I called and spoke to Cardinal Blase Cupich, Archbishop of the Diocese of Chicago. I shared my concerns with Cardinal Cupich about Fr. Kalchik's attacks on LGBTQ Catholics and how this priest is harming the Body of Christ."

The most we know about Tobin's rise is that the Archdiocese of Newark is characterized in Engle's The Rite of Sodomy as "gay friendly" and a predictable step in the career of an upwardly mobile gay bishop, as it was for McCarrick. Before he became Archbishop of Indianapolis, he spent about 15 years in the Vatican, where, speaking apparently good Spanish, he seems to have developed ties with Cardinal Bergoglio. Of other patrons and protectors, we seem so far to know little.

UPDATE: Regarding Tobin, we have the episode of the "Nighty-night" tweet, which may or may not have been intended for his sister, as well as the Italian actor who was in residence at the rectory:

In late September, I started getting calls from concerned Catholics in Newark, New Jersey that Cardinal Joseph Tobin “had an Italian actor living at his cathedral basilica rectory.” The callers identified the actor as Francesco Castiglione. They said that Castiglione has been taking English and voice classes at Seton Hall University, and suggested that he is the real recipient of Tobin’s infamous accidental tweet from earlier this year. (“Nighty, Night baby, I love you,” Tobin wrote to someone whom he claimed later was one of his sisters; the sister has never published proof of receiving the tweet.)

. . . I got a call from a well-placed source in Newark. “Francesco is gone. He left the rectory,” my source informed me.

It's probably not an accident that none of these men has an extensive paper trail. If anyone can refer me to additional links, I'll be very happy to follow up.

Raymond Arroyo: "This Corruption Has a Father"

At about 10:40 in the YouTube video below, as he interviews Msgr Charles Pope, Raymond Arroyo says of the scandals in the Second Crisis, "You can track the lineage, they're connected, some of them to Cardinal McCarrick, some of them to others -- but this corruption has a father, and then it is passed along."

This insight gets within shouting distance of the problem, and it's clear that Msgr Pope isn't quite comfortable even with shouting distance -- if Cardinal Tobin succeeds Wuerl in Washington, things could go south for him in a hurry. Arroyo presses on with what seems to be the consensus response to the Second Crisis, a lay-led investigation into how Cardinal McCarrick was able to advance in the hierarchy despite his clear record of sexual predation.

This is a lot like the calculated indirection that "explained" the First Crisis, that it was a series of bad apples, marginal priests who had a pedophilia problem at a time when the condition was poorly understood blah blah blah, and the Virtus program has been put in place to deal with it, blah blah blah. That the nice middle-aged ladies who serve as lectors must be trained in where not to touch toddlers is not, of course, the real issue, but everyone goes on pretending it's the solution.

By the same token, what is a "lay-led investigation" into McCarrick going to turn up that we don't already know? Engle's The Rite of Sodomy covers McCarrick quite fully. For instance,

Cardinal Spellman ordained Father McCarrick on May 31, 1951. He served as secretary to Cardinal Cooke from 1971 to 1977, when Cooke made him an Auxiliary Bishop of New York.

New York insiders glibly refer to McCarrick by his feminine name “Blanche” and Vatican officials have long been aware of his penchant for young handsome seminarians. [74] McCarrick has ordained at least three homosexual bishops.

Yet, here is a man who the Holy See permitted to play the fool before an international audience of reporters on the question of the ordination of homosexual candidates to the priesthood and the existence of a homosexual network within the Church.

How far has the rot gone? All the way to the top. (p 758)

And in the footnote:

74 The charge that Cardinal McCarrick is a homosexual prelate who preys on seminarians was made public by whistleblower Father James Haley in December 2005, shortly after The Rite of Sodomy went to press. See Matt C. Abbott, “Priest accuses U.S. cardinal of abuse of power,” 2 December 2005 at http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_10585.shtml. Several years later, author Richard Sipe confirmed McCarrick’s homosexual proclivities on his web site at http://www.richardsipe.com. “The Archdiocese of Newark September 2009—Questions About the Status of Clergy Abuse Schulte/Gillen; Sita; & McCarrick,” and “The Cardinal McCarrick Syndrome” are two articles by Sipe which further substantiate the charge of homosexual exploitation of clergy and seminarians by the cardinal. According to Sipe, McCarrick’s homosexuality was known at the time of his installation as the first bishop of Metuchen. This was on January 31, 1982. The New Jersey diocese was erected especially for him by Pope John Paul II on November 19, 1981. Readers will recall that McCarrick was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of New York by homosexual Francis Cardinal Spellman, and later served as secretary to Spellman’s successor Terence James Cardinal Cooke, also a homosexual. The McCarrick case is a classic example of intergenerational homosexuality in the Roman Catholic hierarchy today. (p 762)

I don't see the point of a new lay-led investigation that will take months or years to restate what's been documented in a decades-old public record. But Arroyo is correct, and echoes Engle, in saying that one part of the problem is intergenerational homosexuality. The chain of "paternity" referred to by Arroyo is fully known. It's just as well known with his successor Wuerl.

What we don't know yet, at least in the full public record, is what's up with Tobin, Cupich, and others. I would say this is where lay-led investigation would be much more profitable.

More On The Papal Foundation And The Scandal Behind The Grant

Yesterday, pretty much in passing, I mentioned the underreported Papal Foundation scandal, in which the Papal Foundation, a US Catholic charity, made only part of a $25 million grant to the IDI, a corruption-plagued dermatological hospital in Rome accused of money laundering. According to LifeSite News,

[T]he Pope made the request for the massive grant, which is 100 times larger than its normal grants, through Papal Foundation board chairman Cardinal Donald Wuerl in the summer of 2017.

Despite opposition from the lay “stewards,” the bishops on the board voted in December to send an $8 million payment to the Holy See. In January, the documents reveal, lay members raised alarm about what they consider a gross misuse of their funds, but despite their protests another $5 million was sent with Cardinal Wuerl brooking no dissent.

A visitor who is familiar with Italy and the Italian press, where the IDI hospital scandal has been covered for several years, has sent me several links. All of these are translated via Google translate, which my visitor points out is not as good in Spanish or Italian. (For some reason, I suppose in part because I am complacently German in build, people in Germany walk up to me on the street and ask me for directions. I can translate German pretty well, but little else authoritatively.)

Per Italian Wikipedia,

The Istituto Dermopatico dell'Immacolata , better known as IDI, is a hospital with headquarters in the Aurelio district (Rome) in the area of ​​the "mountains of clay". It was founded in 1912 by the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception as an institute for the treatment of dermatological diseases . In 1990, it became a scientific hospital . Since 2015 he belongs to the Luigi Maria Monti Foundation led by Antonio Maria Leozappa.

. . . . In the '70s and' 80s, the institute became a reference structure in the Italian healthcare scene, also thanks to its scientific contribution in the dermatological field.

. . . In 2012, episodes of mismanagement led to the opening of judicial investigations for alleged wrongdoing with the indictment of some members of the Congregation. The institute plunged into a management crisis that forced the summits to request a prior agreement with the Court of Rome. On 29 March 2013, with the decree of the MISE, the institute entered an extraordinary administration that ended on 14 April 2015 with the acquisition of the institute by the Luigi Maria Monti Foundation.

This story from 2012, viewed somewhat murkily via Google translate, outlines some of the implications:

In addition, the Vatican secretariat of state has unobtrusively sent an apostolic visitor in recent months to check the accounts of the IDI. And who has witnessed the attempt - then faded - promoted by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone to take over the San Raffaele hospital with funds taken partly from the IOR (Institute for Religious Works), he hypothesized that the Holy See could help also with the Idi. Especially when thousands of jobs are at risk. Especially when the nine Roman religious hospitals of the Aris (religious association social-health institutions), from Gemelli to Fatebenefratelli on the Tiber Island, are on a war footing with the spending review of Commissioner Bondi. Especially after the Vicariate of Rome intervened to express its "apprehension" for the destinies of Catholic health in the city of the Pope. And even more so after the responsibilities of religious who have become more interested in their own affairs than in the care of the faithful have emerged. . A category of people who - from the pedophilia scandal to the intrigues of the IOR to the murky events linked to the properties of Propaganda fide - Pope Ratzinger has never tolerated.

This excerpt from a 2013 story in Corriere della Sera gives more context:

Here in addition to dermatological services there was also surgery: "Up to twenty, thirty operations a day. There were also waiting lists," says the employee. Now it has become difficult, if not impossible, to guarantee even a minimum of ordinary assistance: doctors, nurses and all the staff continue to work for the few remaining patients, but even the simplest activities become an obstacle course when faced with more and more dull computers (with a ticket that refers to the "date of death") or instruments tampered with by hidden saboteurs who perhaps want to accelerate the decline of IDI. "The only ultrasound that works we take it in the morning from a locked room" says the anonymous employee. "The last one who uses it puts it back in the evening. If it breaks it's over". In all this, the deafening silence of the institutions: no one has moved a finger to stop the disaster of the hospital, owned by the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate. Only a few days ago the Vatican decided to commission the Congregation, appointing Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, president of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See, pontifical delegate, with the task of "guiding the religious Institute and directing the health structures it managed towards a possible economic rehabilitation, excluding however the participation of the Holy See in such works". The hope is that for IDI it is not too late.

This story from March 2018 in Vatican Insider News summarizes the current situation:

There will not be, at least for the moment, the traditional audience of the Pope with the Papal Foundation, a charitable organization that for years has been supporting with some generous donations some activities of the Holy See. The appointment with the Pontiff was held every year during this period. The same association, one of the largest in the United States, which - explains the ANSA - still experiences internal tensions after the Vatican's request to support the three-year plan to relaunch the IDI, the dermatological Institute of Rome ended up bankrupt due to maladministration. According to the American media, the donation was expected to be around 25 million euros.

The "charity" that until now has operated with donations of smaller entities, especially in developing countries, has been divided. In the end, the board decided to donate. But, according to a letter signed by the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, addressed to the same foundation, the amount of the "special" donation decided by the board was in any case halved; in addition, the hearing was postponed "until an agreement is reached - explains the cardinal - about the mission and structure of the foundation and its relations with the Holy See".

The problem clearly goes beyond pedophile priests or gay-enabling bishops. The visitor who sent me these links assumes there must have been high-level influences at work to keep this story from being covered outside Italy, and the culpability of Wuerl and McCarrick seems to extend beyond what's normally reported..

What Do They Mean By "Transparent Investigation"?

Espionage networks are carefully compartmented into cells, with the knowledge of the network limited within each cell, so that if one cell is compromised, only the information known to members of that cell is exposed. Thus an "investigation" into something like the Rosenberg A-bomb spy ring is a real investigation, slowly uncovering facts that had previously been known only to a very limited group. In cases like the Rosenbergs, where the results of the investigation become known in a public trial, there is also transparency.

Looking for statements from the USCCB on the Second Crisis, I did a web search on "USCCB transparent investigation", and as one might expect, I got many hits, dating back many years. Here's one from 2017, before the Second Crisis, that ends:

we reaffirm that when such allegations occur, an immediate, thorough, and transparent investigation should begin in cooperation with law enforcement and immediate steps be taken to protect children. The protection of children and young people is our most sacred responsibility.

Clearly this is boilerplate that's trotted out whenever something that requires it occurs (in this case, a Vatican diplomat recalled over child pornography charges). I assume there was never any "transparent investigation". That boilerplate is used in such cases indicates one is never seriously expected, and the USCCB simply goes through the motions each time, until the next case comes up and the same boilerplate is trotted out.

But there's another issue beyond just boilerplate. An investigation into a compartmented espionage ring uncovers information that only a few people knew about. What's going on among the College of Cardinals isn't the same thing -- it appears that it's all an open secret that just about everyone knows. At about 22:00 in this episode of Church Militant's Download, there's an outline of a network that seems to be common knowledge to anyone with serious interest in the Church:

It goes:

{Cardinal Joseph] Tobin took over after [Cardinal John] Myers, who actually paid for sex abuse for McCarrick; [Cardinal Kevin] Farrell lived with McCarrick in Washington, DC for six years [unintelligible] and [Cardinal Blaise] Cupich is in the tank with Wuerl saying we don't want any investigation [unintelligible] homosexuality has nothing to do with it. . . and Tobin has since come out saying he knew about the payment as well.

This episode is dated August 9, before the Second Crisis began in earnest with the Pennsylvania grand jury report, and it appears that concerns about Cardinal Wuerl had reached the press before that time. The panelists go on to suggest that even right-of-center Catholic media like EWTN or the Register have been reluctant to cover these issues. Yesterday I cited a piece in The Catholic Thing that said in part, "Certainly, if decades ago, McCarrick had similarly powerful patrons in the Vatican, there must be some record of when and where they intervened."

I sense a look of irony on the writer's face here -- this is probably common knowledge, not something that needs a J Edgar Vatican investigation to uncover. I suspect that if Catholic media were doing a more complete job, an "investigation" wouldn't be needed -- but in the USCCB, I have some concern that we're still back at "protecting the children".

A commission isn't going to help.

Cardinal Law vs Cardinal McCarrick

There's a sleeper paragraph down at the bottom in the Catholic Thing piece I linked yesterday:

We know that McCarrick was not high on the list of candidates to become archbishop of Washington. Is there nothing in the McCarrick file at the Congregation for Bishops about how he leapt over a dozen better candidates? Viganò suggests that two homosexual advisers have been bypassing the usual process for bishops’ appointments in recent years. Certainly, if decades ago, McCarrick had similarly powerful patrons in the Vatican, there must be some record of when and where they intervened. And how doubts were circumvented. You can’t help but feel that Ouellet has given an incomplete account of the files and what they suggest. And that only a more open and independent review of the whole matter will resolve various questions and – let’s hope – restore trust.

This takes me back to the question my regular correspondent raised last week, and that I began to work on a couple days ago:

Cardinal McCarrick was born in 1930. Blaming his behaviour, or that of Fr Maciel (born 1929), Fr Cunningham (born 1931), Fr Shanley (born 1931) or many other serial predators on a culture which is accepting of sexual deviance and promiscuity is looking at the 1950s through the lens of a sexual revolution that arrived much later.

There's another question here. Bernard Law and William Stetson were both born in 1931. We know that Law and Stetson were together at Adams House, the "gay house" at Harvard, in the early 1950s. Law and Stetson seem to have worked together and fostered each other's careers at least through the Pastoral Provision and up to Anglicanorum coetibus. My regular correspondent thinks that "politics" are responsible for making McCarrick the "bad guy" in the story, while Law is often portrayed as misunderstood or perhaps the victim of overzealous underlings.

I'm increasingly of the view that the First Crisis, c. 2000, was carefully spun via the John Jay Reports and elsewhere in the media to make it a "pedophilia problem" that could be blamed on cultural developments in the 1960s and 70s, as well as well-intended therapeutic approaches to pedophilia that turned out to be wrong. The one thing it wasn't, John Jay and the rest of the media assured us, was a "gay problem". My regular correspondent gives dates that strongly suggest there was a "gay problem" that sometimes happened to include sex with underage boys that almost certainly existed prior to the 1960s.

Law is sometimes portrayed as a "conservative". I'm just not sure how courting syncretism with Anglicans is a "conservative" issue. I think we need to look more carefully at what other agendas may be involved. But I think, as long as suggestions are now being made that the Second Crisis is a "gay problem", that there may be a need to revisit a "gay problem" in the First Crisis as well.

This goes to the issue Fr Mark Goring raises in this YouTube video. There's something out of kilter if the Church sees no problem with active same-sex conduct among clergy, especially bishops, as long as it isn't with minors.