The Church and Theodore McCarrick
The Church and Theodore McCarrick have divorced. A quiet parting of the ways. The Church will find another shining star. McCarrick’s future will be revealed in time. Prison is not out of the question.
Divorce is always messy. Even a No-Fault breakup leaves issues to be resolved. Marriage is supposed to last until one party dies. Relationships continue long after the marriage is legally over. My first wife died over 30 years ago. My wife’s first husband died over 40 years ago. Both spouses are still with us. They are not intrusive, but they join our conversations from time to time.
My experience with divorce is second hand. I know people who have gone through it and are living with the aftermath. The problems continue for years, if not forever. The former couple fights over kids, pets, and property. The hurts linger on. Grudges are shoved out of sight and left to fester.
In the case of the Church and Theodore McCarrick, the kids are now adults with profound and terrible wounds from the abuse they suffered. They will press for retribution and recompense. McCarrick wronged them by what he did. The Church by what it failed to do.
The former priest, bishop, and Prince of the Church was uniquely talented. His misbehavior, however, was nothing more than another outlandish instance of widespread abuse inflicted by the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church.
McCarrick’s case provides an extraordinary illustration of what is wrong with the Church. He climbed to the highest levels of the organization by being a great fundraiser. He had a talent for pressuring ordinary lay Catholics to give and give and give. His powers of persuasion made it possible for him to bask in power and prestige.
He took over the Bishop’s appeal when he was appointed head of the Archdiocese of Washington. That became the Cardinal’s Appeal when he was promoted. McCarrick turned the appeal into an extraordinary success. Before he took over, parishioners could avoid the fundraiser by going to a different church on the day their pastor made his pitch. Cardinal McCarrick mandated that every pastor make the appeal at every mass on the Sunday he designated. No one was allowed to skip the pitch. As a result, the Archdiocese took in $10 million year after year.
McCarrick’s successor continued the practice. After that prelate was forced to step down in the wake of revelations about Cardinal McCarrick’s misconduct, the fundraiser was renamed the Archdiocesan Appeal. It still operates under the rules set in place by the disgraced church leader, a man Pope Francis has characterized as a tool of Satan.
One Sunday is set aside for the appeal. On the designated day, the most sacred rite in the Roman Catholic religion is interrupted, and the priest steps out of his solemn role as celebrant to pressure his parishioners for a substantial donation. The pitch is made in the form of a recorded message delivered by the archbishop. Then the priest walks those in attendance through the process of filling out an envelope that has been placed in the pew. This part of the ritual is slow and painful. “Fill in your name. Fill in your address and don’t forget to fill in the name of our parish. Circle the amount you will donate. You don’t have to give anything right now. You can give us your credit card number, and you can spread the payments over 10 months.”
When the envelopes have been populated and sealed, they are collected. Then the priest returns to the regularly scheduled programming – the Sacrifice of the Mass.
Parishioners object to this heavy-handed approach, but it works. Pastors have apologized, but they dutifully follow orders from the bishop. The bishop, whoever that happens to be, continues to use the procedures established by Theodore Cardinal McCarrick in his heyday. Jesus may have taught that you cannot serve God and mammon, but the leaders of His Church know “money makes the world go ‘round.”
The Archdiocese goes to great lengths to let everyone know that the money goes to help the poor. A brochure lists charitable causes that receive aid from the appeal. The priest running the collection assures his parishioners that none of the money is used for administrative fees. In other words, the Church does not benefit from these donations. But one of the charities supported is the training and education of men preparing for the priesthood. Money is also given to parishes to pay tuition for students who cannot afford the parish’s schools. Besides a massive well-organized campaign like the Archdiocesan Appeal has significant overhead. The brochures and envelopes are obtained from commercial for-profit companies. Accounting for and distributing the money collected is too big a job for volunteers. Money to pay these expenses has to come from somewhere.
A healthy organization would be embarrassed by what is going on. The disconnect between what the Church professes to believe and the behavior of its clergy should be enough to bring about change. But church leaders still act as if they believe a few tweaks will be enough.
Pedophile priests are doing things that result in adverse publicity and even lawsuits? Get rid of the priests. But only years after the fact. A very successful fundraiser has been engineered by a practicing pedophile who has been kicked out of the priesthood? Change the name of the appeal and carry on.
Pope Francis convened a meeting in Rome at the end of February to address his Church’s pedophilia problem (nypost.com/2019/02/24/pope-francis-sex-abuse-priests-are-tools-of-satan). Apparently, one suggestion was to make sure that gay men like Theodore McCarrick will not be ordained in the future.
The real problem is that the Roman Catholic Church is a living fossil. As theologian Hans Kung demonstrated in his 1994 book “Christianity: Essence, History, and Future,” it is still a medieval monarchy. The pope is the king. Cardinals and bishops are peers – the dukes, earls, and barons. Priests are the knights, and lay members are serfs. An organization like that is no longer able to execute the mission laid out in the Gospels. Modern society sees the Church as irrelevant and ignores it.
The cure, the way out of this quagmire has been available to the Church for over 400 years. Some believe that it has been available from the beginning, but the institution moved away from its roots to establish its power in the world. Ignatius Loyola founded a group aimed at reforming the Church in the middle of the 16th century. At the core of his training method is the long retreat, which consists of 30 days spent in silence and intense meditation. The exercise that church leaders need to take to heart is “The Meditation on the Two Standards.”
The scenario as presented by Loyola is fantasy fiction. It could be Spartacus leading his gladiators against the mighty Roman army or Braveheart, William Wallace, leading his Scottish loyalists against the King of England. But it provides a simple, powerful way of looking at the situation facing the Roman Catholic Church.
The person doing the exercises ponders a confrontation between an evil kingdom and the good kingdom. A powerful central figure sitting on a throne controls the evil forces. He orders his minions to go out into the world and teach people to pursue wealth, power, and prestige. Opposed to this debauchery is the good side represented by Jesus on a plain with a vast gathering of his loyalists. The Messiah walks among the crowd as an ordinary man encouraging everyone to go out and spread his message of love of neighbor.
It is time for Pope Francis to lead his church along a radical new path. There is no place on the plain with Jesus for pomp, prestige, power or privilege. Men and women stand side by side as equals. Homosexuals mingle with heterosexuals. No one checks credentials. The Church needs to bring women to the table as equals. It needs to recognize that members of the LGBT crowd are normal people.
Those in power will not give up easily. They will continue to wring as much money out of the laity as they can. They will go on flaunting their power and prestige.
Early in February 2019, Pope Francis acknowledged in a press conference that members of the clergy had sexually abused nuns. That was hailed as a big step forward. But neither nuns nor lay women are allowed to debate and vote on the proper way to handle the situation. In 2013, the pope reaffirmed his predecessor’s position that the “radical feminism” of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) was incompatible with Catholic Doctrine. The specific complaint was about the biblical view of “family life and sexuality,” but the message was: The Vatican is in charge – women and children should be seen and not heard.
Pope Francis’ friend Cardinal McCarrick made a serious effort to tamp down on lay activists. Several groups of committed lay persons organizing and working in the Washington Metropolitan area had made Pentecost Sunday a special feast day. Each group held a get together on that day to celebrate their activism and fellowship. The meetings were inspirational as long as each group got together on its own. Cardinal McCarrick mandated that all of the groups gather for one event at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on Pentecost Sunday.
His approach turned the celebration into a chore. The combined groups filled the massive cathedral, but socialization was stymied. Everything about McCarrick’s version was tedious and drawn out. Then he gave his sermon. He skipped over thanks and praise for the dedicated people who had gathered to celebrate lay participation in the life of the Church. He lectured them about the shortage of priests.
If the Roman Catholic Church wants to address its shortage of priests, it will have to make changes. The life of a priest could be more attractive. Women could be ordained. The celibacy requirement could be dropped making the priesthood an option for married men and women. More duties and responsibilities could be turned over to lay members of the Church.
The Age of Royalty has passed. It no longer makes sense to treat the clergy as members of a unique, privileged class. Let those with the talent and desire to serve in the role of community leader step up. Let the community have a say in who gets the position.
The Church has failed to develop a moral and ethical posture that works in modern society because it has failed to move out of the Middle Ages. Theodore Cardinal McCarrick was a prime example of a Medieval clergyman functioning in the 20th and 21st centuries. He succeeded at some things, but he failed in serious ways. All parties were injured because he was afforded the power and privilege that goes with royalty. The Church has now divorced itself from him. But others like him are thriving because the underlying problems have not been addressed.
Mr. McCarrick is gone. Cardinal McCarrick’s ghost will be around for a long time.
