Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 2:07am

Cardinal McCarrick

It has come out that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick has been credibly accused of sexually abusing a minor fifty years ago.  What has also come out is that he was in the habit of bedding handsome seminarians and calling them his nephews.  Phil Lawler at Catholic Culture gives us the details:

 

 

Now at last the truth about Cardinal McCarrick’s misconduct has become public knowledge. If my email traffic is any indication, many more stories will soon emerge. But Rod Dreher drives right to the central point in his follow-up column, entitled “Cardinal McCarrick: Everybody Knew.

There’s a bit of exaggeration in that headline, because not “everybody” knew about the cardinal’s homosexual approaches to seminarians. The ordinary people in the pews didn’t know. But those seminarians knew, and the word spread across the clerical grapevine.

Now at last we know, too, that complaints had been lodged against the cardinal. These complaints, we are told, did not involve minors—and that’s all we are told about the complaints, apart from the fact that they were settled. But in light of those complaints, and in light of the many stories involving seminarians, it would be naïve to suggest that the cardinal has now been brought to disgrace because of a single, isolated incident. The seminarians may have been of legal age, but they were not a bishop’s equals. His position gave McCarrick the opportunity to recruit young men and to silence those who rejected his advances, and he abused a sacred trust.

Earlier this week I asked rhetorically why reporters did not follow up on this story years ago, since many journalists were numbered among the “everybody” who knew about Cardinal McCarrick’s homosexual activities. Julia Duin, the longtime religion writer for the Washington Times, has answered my question in a column of her own, recalling that she could not find sources willing to speak on the record, or editors willing to give her the latitude to probe further into the reports. Moreover, she writes, she ran into a wall of silence among Catholics: an unwillingness to discuss a prelate’s misdeeds. “There were priests and laity alike for whom McCarrick’s predilections were an open secret,” she writes, “but no one wanted to go after him.”

Go here to read the rest.  A few questions come to mind.  Why didn’t any of the seminarians who rejected McCarrick’s advances not break one or both of the pervert’s arms?  Why didn’t they go to law enforcement or the media?  For too long the Church, too often, has not been ordaining men but rather craven careerists who will do anything, anything, to protect their phony baloney jobs.  They are not only unworthy of being priests, they are unworthy to be called men.   Clergy tend to be the biggest pack of gossips in the world.  How many knew that McCarrick was a homosexual predator as he steadily went rung by rung up the ladder of ecclesiastical preferment?  This period in Church history was summed up long ago in 2 Peter 2:

17 These people are springs without water and mists driven by a storm. Blackest darkness is reserved for them. 18 For they mouth empty, boastful words and, by appealing to the lustful desires of the flesh, they entice people who are just escaping from those who live in error. 19 They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity—for “people are slaves to whatever has mastered them.” 20 If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. 21 It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. 22 Of them the proverbs are true: “A dog returns to its vomit,”[g] and, “A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.”

 

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Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 6:36am

Definition of scandal. 1 a : discredit brought upon religion by unseemly conduct in a religious person. b : conduct that causes or encourages a lapse of faith or of religious obedience in another. 2 : loss of or damage to reputation caused by actual or apparent violation of morality or propriety : disgrace.

The world eats up and spits out men who at one time professed Truth. Not wanting to waist time in hurling stones it seems profitable to pray for this and all weak clergymen who have been slaves to their vices. The past century has been Lucifers best…but his time is ending. Prayers too for all “nephews” who were subjected to beasts in power.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 7:03am

It’s a reasonable wager that the number of people who actually did know something of the Cardinal’s proclivities is around 20 and scattered between New York and Washington.

They didn’t break his arm because the sort of person who has that sort of reaction is not the sort of person who lands in the seminary (or, indeed, any sort of white-collar or service-sector employment). They didn’t go to law enforcement because laws against consensual sodomy were generally petty misdemeanors enforced only in the oddest of circumstances (the Bowers v. Hardwicke case arose when a man was caught in flagrante by police officers let into his apartment by a roommate; they’d arrived to arrest him for ignoring an appearance ticket). They didn’t go to the media because the media a generation ago didn’t make a practice of publishing dirt on people who were not already celebrities unless they’d ended up on the police blotter or a court docket. The condition of seminaries of all types in our age has been such that it’s a reasonable wager a great many of his objects were sexual deviants themselves.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 9:13am
Ezabelle
Ezabelle
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 9:39am

Excuse my rant this once- this disgusting being is not fit for the sacred collar, he needs more than his arm broken. Whoever put him there and kept him there is complicit and should be stripped of the priesthood. All these dirty old men still in Church Power should be defrocked immediately and not be given one dime of a pension. How can we continue to defend our faith against the atheist cynics who continually mock and insult all our priests as queer and pedos? Some of them are! We as a Faith have no respectability left in the eyes of the world because clerics like this scum took that away. How do you even preach the Faith to an atheist cynic- he will laugh in your face and do you blame him? In some countries we are trying to defend the sacredness of our Sacraments such as The Seal of the Confessional and instead we have men like this embarrassing us. The real tragedy of these scandals is that these men bring shame on the good Faith of so many devout Catholics. Just wants to make you cry.

Morenowthanever
Morenowthanever
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 9:55am

I travel extensively for my career. I recall mentioning in New York, one Sunday morning to a colleague, who is said to be Catholic by Baptism, when asked why I was up so early on a Sunday morning, I’m going to St. Pats for the 10:15 Mass…want to go? He laughed, there, and throughout the Catholic Church you have the height of hypocrisy at all levels…NO. I was under the impression he was referring to the sex abuse scandal we are all too familiar with being played out.

I have a friend who volunteered at the Archdiocese of San Francisco, him and his wife were personal friends of then Archbishop Lavada who was personal friends of then Cardinal Ratzinger. After Archbishop Lavada was elevated to Cardinal and brought to the Vatican by then Pope Benedict to head the CDF my friend asked the Cardinal how’s life at the Vatican? His reply was jaw dropping: “the level of homosexuality is beyond belief.”

I truly believe we are seeing the fruits of Satan when given his 100 years to “destroy the Church” as prophesied by Pope Leo XII. The conspiracy to infiltrate and fill the Seminaries with homosexuals, who by progression would be elevated throughout the Church (research Bella Dodd and Antonio Gramsci). In addition to the homosexual plan, the ideal to follow the “gospel of social justice” over the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ. How much can the average Catholic take before they walk away from the Holy Eucharist? This, in my humble opinion, is the ultimate goal, it has and always will be about the Bread of Life.

I mentioned Antonio Gramsci above, his philosophy being one should not attempt to eliminate religion but alter it to proclaim the plans of the state. Today’s Vatican, many Chancery offices around the globe are now bastions of not only homosexuality but liberation theology.
http://www.stjames-cathedral.org/Events/2018/album-procession.aspx

The great martyrdom is not far off. The target being Catholics under the consent of those who claim to be catholic.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 10:29am

Nowmorethanever and Ezabelle-

Agreed with both of you and offer this simplistic suggestion.

We are privileged Catholics.

We are the minority who are staying the course during this typhoon of biblical proportions. The Church first must be chastised before the throngs of humanity and then the minority, the faithful who’s lives will be a living testimony of Jesus the Christ, will be beacons of Hope shining through the storm and helping other sojourners into safe harbor.

Now more than ever, be consecrated into the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Pray your rosary daily. Sacrifice your very self in service to our poor and lonely. Yes…even if it means reduced income and lowly vocations, menial work in the eyes of the world, to serve the hopeless, the forgotten, the “deplorables” of society…then witness the new creation within you.

Lowly vocations are an oxymoron.

This is our time to become worthy of the title Christian in it’s fullest sense.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 10:45am

All would be well if the Church would end its tepid opposition to abortion.

I apologize in advance.

True story.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, I worked at 40th and Fifth Avenue in NYC. My 20th floor office overlooked the NY Public Library (lions and all). That is two blocks south of where the St. Patrick’s Day parade forms. One St Paddy’s, the more specialer pros among the NYC gay community were protesting (they were not allowed to march as gay Irishers) and went into the street in front of the library to be arrested – fake media events work in NYC.

My buddy and I were on the sidewalk watching the NYPD cuffing the louts and putting them into paddy (funny, huh) wagons.

You know me. I always want to be helpful. So, I called out, “Whatever you do don’t pick up the soap if you drop it in the shower.” Well, the lisping lizard standing in front of me did not see that as in any way helpful. He said, “Eff You!” Well, I said, “eff you!” After a number of repetitions of that more reasonable argument for gay rights, he/she said, “Go ahead. Hit me. I’m a lawyer.” You know my mother (RIP) didn’t raise an idiot. I was not about to hit a useless POS in front of 55 cops. There endeth story. I had to go back to work.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 11:47am

See Sandra Miesel on Bella Dodd. I wouldn’t pay her much mind, though it is true that Alice von Hildebrand thought she was on the level. The truth is, though, that just about every liturgical denomination has a notable problem with homosexuals in the clergy unless they’ve undertaken vigorous and self-conscious efforts to keep them out. Homosexual men are drawn to certain occupations: the art trade, the theatre trade, advertising, &c. Interest appears to be correlated with aestheticism, the presence of an audience, and clean hands at work. There may be some literature on the subject, but I’d wager that in psychology faculties this is a quesiton you just do not ask.

Morenowthanever
Morenowthanever
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 12:11pm

Philip, excellent comments. Please don’t get me wrong, indeed we are all called to serve the poor but as the airline safety attendants always say, “place your oxygen mask on first then assist others as needed”. We cannot pass on what we do not have. My frustration is the abandonment of our personal call to Holiness, in its stead we consume our time with political, social, worldly “liberation”. Only to site one example is one of the great feast of our Liturgical celebrations is Holy Thursday, when was the last time one has heard a homily on the “Institution of the Holy Eucharist” or the Institution of Holy Orders”? I can honestly say, never in my adult life. Thank you for your wise comments and yes, all points made are indeed required to fully live a Holy Catholic life. One such life I pray we all strive to live to the best of our ability.

BTW, “Morenowthanever” is purposeful, as in St. Thomas More ???? – I adopted after Amoris Laetitia.
God Bless

Morenowthanever
Morenowthanever
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 12:48pm

Speaking of the Eucharist I can’t but help and share todays meditation:
https://www.stlukeproductions.com/benedictus

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 6:21pm

MOREnowthanever…mea culpa.

Oops. True. More than ever we need the spirit of St. Thomas More.

“My frustration is the abandonment of our personal call to Holiness, in its stead we consume our time with political, social, worldly “liberation.”
Me too. Frustration, but not dispair. Nor you I assume. We must strive to abandon our self interest for one of servitude. As you said; we can not give what we don’t have. Pray then for that grace that Blessed Solanus Casey wrote of; “Life is to live and life is to give. For talents to use for good If you choose. Do not pray for easy lives but pray to be stronger. Do not pray for tasks equal to your talents, but pray for the talents equal to the task..then the doing of your work is no miracle, but you become the miracle. Then you shall receive the richness of life that has been brought to you by the grace of God.” For the Glory of God alone.

Peace.

John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 8:20pm

“…not the sort of person who lands in the seminary”.
Several years ago I heard a story that took place in the 60s about a local Cincinnati all boys high school Purcell, named after a former Archbishop, and operated by the Society of Mary (Marianists). One of the former students told the story of how a class went on field trip and acted very “poorly”. Apparently someone made a call back to the school. When the bus got back it was met by 2 or 3 priests and 4 or 5 brothers, all angry and dealt out the wrath of God in a physical sense to the students.

TLM
TLM
Saturday, June 23, AD 2018 8:45pm

I am in hopes now that people are finally seeing that good ol’ Cardinal McCarrick is just the tip of the iceberg. The Church is jammed packed full of sodomites, and they all cover for each other, or …….hold it over their heads. I know, it’s really disgusting but it IS what it IS.

Louis E.
Louis E.
Sunday, June 24, AD 2018 12:35am

In regard to the comment above “Whoever put him there and kept him there is complicit and should be stripped of the priesthood”…all of McCarrick’s episcopal appointments and his cardinalate came from John Paul II,who has been canonized.(As has been noted,a delegation went to Rome to beg the Pope not to name McCarrick to Washington,but were brushed off).I don’t see a Cadaver Synod on the horizon.

Texas Thomist
Texas Thomist
Sunday, June 24, AD 2018 7:16am

Louis E:
Indeed, a sobering fact. One of many henceforth unthinkable (to me, at least) questions raised by the Francis pontificate is whether papal canonizations are infallible, especially when they are accomplished by skipping the verification of two miracles. Don’t get me wrong, I loved JP II, and many of his writings are truly magisterial in every sense of the word. But the entire sodomite scandal in the Church seems to have been largely ignored for most of his reign. (Ratzinger, while at CDF and later as pope, did some good but, it seems clear in retrospect, not nearly enough). I get confused trying to match the more or less traditional requirements for canonization with JP II’s record. And let’s not even start talking about John XXIII.

JTLiuzza
JTLiuzza
Sunday, June 24, AD 2018 7:24am

“They didn’t break his arm because the sort of person who has that sort of reaction is not the sort of person who lands in the seminary (or, indeed, any sort of white-collar or service-sector employment). ”

Baloney. Double and triple baloney.

Any man worth his salt would respond that way, seminarian or no. And I’ve been in white collar employment since grad school.

Quadruple baloney.

Amateur Brain Surgeon
Amateur Brain Surgeon
Sunday, June 24, AD 2018 7:30am

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2018/06/concerning-card-mccarrick/

Well, of course he did what he could to subvert doctrine because sodomites are naturally subversive and will diligently strive to subvert all doctrine and praxis in opposition to their willful lust.

ABS has known he has been own his own for scores of years and he remembers that it was not all that long ago that the two top henchmen for the USCCB were two Bishops who had ordained/hidden clerical queers.

The “guidelines” promulgated by Ratzinger/Benedict XVI having to do with allowing sodomites into seminaries was a complete and utter joke.

It allowed for the admittance into seminary sodomites who had sold their bodies for use by other sodomites – i.e. sodomite prostitutes.

Holy Mother Church has been constantly scourged by the twin evils of feminism and sodomy fro scores of years and NOTHING will be done about it because the revolution within the form of Catholicism emptied it of much of its publicly perceived substance (we have a shadow church, one lacking substance) and replaced it with a worldly anthropocentrism.

And still absent in the Hierarchy is that Prelate whose puissant possession of Tradition is such that it could be applied as a force against Our Inertia Into Indifferentism.

Our Pope and Our Cross has been a blessing in disguise, as men were once wont to say- the evil has been exposed – but because we live in this execrable epoch of epicene ecclesiastics nothing will be done.

Jesus established His Church for two reasons

Salvation
Sanctification

but who can attain unto either in this worst of times?

Well, one can do it but you are largely on your own unless you can access a Chapel of a Trational Order- SSPX, FSSP, ICK -for it is solely in those chapels were Salvation and Sanctification are primary concerns, not Ecumenism which is the Universal Solvent of Tradition.

Evangeline
Evangeline
Sunday, June 24, AD 2018 7:36am

“They didn’t break his arm because the sort of person who has that sort of reaction is not the sort of person who lands in the seminary”

We have all suffered under the satanic lie that “real” Christians do not resort to physical means, and that being the “better” Christian is to remain silent or only respond with feminine (weak) methodologies. This is properly called “effeminacy” and it has infiltrated our thinking and helped cause devastation to our culture and most certainly our church.
Let me tell you something. I am a middle-aged woman. I embrace an authentic femininity, and am vehemently opposed to physical violence of any kind, having had a rather turbulent childhood where violence was a possibility.
But there are times that call for a manly response, and this would be one of those times. If I were a young man, and some old geezer, or anybody for that manner, tried to physically molest me, shove his hands down my pants, as this old fart did, I would immediately punch him in the head and give him a good kick. He wouldn’t do it twice. We are not called to be effeminate pacifists. That is a diabolical misrepresentation of manhood AND Christianity. It is a feminized version of Christianity, and if the men of Lepanto suffered from it, I wouldn’t be here writing this today, nor you reading it. We cannot afford this level of effeminacy any longer. It is part of the larger problem. Our societies need men, men to step up and be men. I am not talking about a physical response to every situation, of course not, but certainly in THIS one.
Once upon a time I thought my son had a vocation. He was my only child, and I would have been proud if he had chosen to be a priest. But even so, even if he were being ordained the next day, I’d rather my son refuse to be molested by a man, refuse to engage in even the appearance of homosexual activity, and respond in a manly way. Let the cards fall where they may. Participating in these homosexual activities is a sin. These men all need to be rooted out. It is when the victim is a minor, a post-adolescent male between ages 11 and 17, which has been at LEAST 81% of the victims of priests, according to the John Jay study. These are the ones we need to protect, and we should take a zero tolerance approach to homosexuals in the priesthood, because you aren’t going to “fix” these men.

Evangeline
Evangeline
Sunday, June 24, AD 2018 7:54am

“They didn’t break his arm because the sort of person who has that sort of reaction is not the sort of person who ends up in seminary.”
Sorry, but this is exactly the sort of pacifist lie that has been packaged as “authentic” Christianity and has helped get us to this point. We must really disavow ourselves of the false notion that the definition of a “real” Christian is a passive and pacifist one. In point of fact, men must be authentically male, and that by definition includes the sometimes necessary physical response. If that were not the case, God would have made us all the same, feminine and comparatively physically weak. This notion is sheer effeminacy and is why our culture and church are a wreck.
I am a middle-aged woman who abhors violence, having a childhood where physical outburst were unpleasant and traumatic. And I raised a son who I thought might have a vocation. But even on the eve of ordination, I would want my son to provide a manly response to the advances of some old coot, and punch him in the eye for his unwanted advances. Career be damned. I would be ashamed of my son if he were to get in bed and “cuddle” with some codger, or anyone, for any reason.
I NEED TO INFORM THE BLOG THAT IN TRYING TO POST THIS, A SCAM APPEARED, CLAIMING TO BE VIRUS PROTECTION UNDER MICROSOFT. MICROSOFT STATES THEY WILL NEVER CONTACT A USER TO INFORM OF A VIRUS, SO IF COMMENTERS ALSO RECEIVE THIS WARNING, IGNORE IT.

Magdalene P
Magdalene P
Sunday, June 24, AD 2018 10:36am

The sodomite agenda HAS mostly achieved their agenda: total infiltration and acceptance in the Church and in society; children before the age of reason are being indoctrinated into perversion. Things will get worse! Already many young indoctrinated people are one step before violence; they will not tolerate any even discussion of immoral sexual activity. Our bishops are complicit with either their silence, their homosexuality, or their focus on social “justice” issues while failing to teach and pass along the Truth.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Sunday, June 24, AD 2018 1:42pm

Any man worth his salt would respond that way, seminarian or no. And I’ve been in white collar employment since grad school.

No, ordinary men don’t behave that way. If you’re male in this country, your lifetime probability of being at the receiving end of an aggravated assault is about 30%. I think if you unpack it you’ll discover the vast majority are alcohol-fueled rages which have nothing to do with homosexual men getting fresh.

If I’m not mistaken, breaking someone’s arm is a Class D felony in New York, and ‘he had it coming to him’ is not a defense. If hizzoner claps you in the county jail to cool off for a few weeks, you’ll have to work something out with your white-collar supervisor.

Ezabelle
Ezabelle
Monday, June 25, AD 2018 12:32am

Louis.E – Yes it is true all appointments came from St JPII. But I wander how much St JPII knew or was aware of. In all fairness St. JPII was dealing with Communism and setting our clear definitions against an anti-life mentality that was and is endemic, notably, contraception and abortion. I suspect whoever towed the line in support of the Catholic view on this, he promoted. But the sad consequence was turning a blind eye to the horrible clergy that infiltrated the Church. I just honestly can’t bring myself to believe that St JPII would have prompted this scum McCarrick with the full knowledge he was a homosexual pervert and pedo. I just can’t. And I suspect Pope Benedict couldn’t take the strain of pressure and burden of the filth within the Church, and did not know how to deal with it. I hope Pope Francis takes an ocean of bleach through the Vatican. Or these senile scum die very soon and meet their Judge.

Mary De Voe
Monday, June 25, AD 2018 7:34am

“OT, but the apposite threads are now closed

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/06/baptizing-babies-violates-fundamental.html
Fundamental human rights? Baptism removes original sin and renews sanctifying grace into the human soul. Sanctifying grace clears the way for the soul to make right choices and again approach “their Creator”, the Supreme Sovereign Being. Too much of our Catholic religion is taught by individuals who are more ignorant than atheists.
Is it no different for when the seminarians are indoctrinated into sodomy, by the ignorant sodomites. Why ignore the benefits of grace and Divine Providence (our Declaration of Independence petitions Divine Providence) and sow despair and nihilism other than to infect the world with totalitarianism? Let us overthrow the slavery sin and ignorance and those who would enslave us to their vices.
McCarrick ought to be defrocked and thrown into the streets.

Mary De Voe
Monday, June 25, AD 2018 7:36am

“All these dirty old men still in Church Power should be defrocked immediately and not be given one dime of a pension.”
Comment of the week, the month, the year.

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