Archbishop Vigano gives an initial report to the McCarrick report:
The McCarrick report might better be entitled the Protect Francis Report. Time for another trip down memory lane:
From National Catholic Reporter in 2014:
— The day before a newly elected Pope Francis was to be formally installed at the Vatican in 2013, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica when he passed out at the altar and had to be rushed to the hospital.
It was a scary moment, and especially odd to see McCarrick stricken; even at 82, the energetic former archbishop of Washington always had a reputation as one of the most peripatetic churchmen in the Catholic hierarchy.
Doctors in Rome quickly diagnosed a heart problem — McCarrick would eventually get a pacemaker — and the cardinal was soon back at his guest room in the U.S. seminary in Rome when the phone rang. It was Francis. The two men had known each other for years, back when the Argentine pope was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires. McCarrick assured Francis that he was doing fine.
“I guess the Lord isn’t done with me yet,” he told the pope.
“Or the devil doesn’t have your accommodations ready!” Francis shot back with a laugh.
McCarrick loves to tell that story, because he loves to tell good stories and because he has a sense of humor as keen as the pope’s. But the exchange also says a lot about the improbable renaissance McCarrick is enjoying as he prepares to celebrate his 84th birthday in July.
McCarrick is one of a number of senior churchmen who were more or less put out to pasture during the eight-year pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. But now Francis is pope, and prelates like Cardinal Walter Kasper (another old friend of McCarrick’s) and McCarrick himself are back in the mix and busier than ever.
Go here to read the rest.
In 2015 McCarrick went with the Pope to Cuba. Go here to read about it.
Whispers in the Loggia on November 5, 2016 lauded McCarrick’s influence in having Tobin named Cardinal of Newark:
As reported at the top, multiple signs point to Newark’s fourth archbishop as the lead architect behind the choice of his second successor. Having maintained an enduring devotion for and among the Jersey church since his transfer to the capital in 2000, McCarrick – who Francis is said to revere as “a hero” of his – made a direct appeal over recent weeks for Tobin to be named to Newark, according to two sources familiar with the cardinal’s thinking.
Go here to read the rest.
In 2016 McCarrick received The Spirit of Francis award from Catholic Extension:
Father Jack Wall, president of Catholic Extension, said, “We are delighted to honor a true hero of the U.S. Catholic Church, who continues to proclaim and live the Gospel and who shows all of us the way for a life of discipleship and mercy in the 21st century.
“It is no wonder that Cardinal McCarrick has emerged as a trusted global envoy for Pope Francis and his mission of ‘going out to the peripheries.’”
Go here to read the rest.
The Pope had no problem making use of McCarrick, although he clearly knew that McCarrick was a predator. It was only when McCarrick’s crimes became too public that the Pope had to jettison his “hero”. The McCarrick Report in its protect the Pope uber alles mendacity is vomit inducing.
Vigano is correct to note “the surreal operation of mystification” that surrounds nearly all statements from the Vatican and often the USCCB. This is how the devil communicates his lies and obfuscations.
Thus we conclude that all statements from the Vatican are suspect and meant to mislead.
Unless I were to learn that either Benedict XVI or JP2 were actively involved with the sexually corrupt I will always admire them while acknowledging they were horrible administrators who refused to comprehend the level of depravity occurring around them.
Good essay on the McCarrick report over at the < a href=https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/11/12/mistakes-were-made/>Catholic Thing.
I want to focus on this passage, which jumped out at me for reasons I’ll explain:
The second paragraph here is key.
Now, by coincidence, I just happen to have completed the safe environment training for the youth organization in which I serve as one of many adult leaders. That making oneself “indispensable,” is one of the way that sex predators ingratiate themselves with an organization’s gatekeepers so as to create the maximum opportunity to troll for victims to exploit for their own perverse sexual desires.
So it seems to me that McCarrick spent as much time (perhaps more) “grooming” his peers and his superiors in the clergy as he did in creating the circumstances in which he could victimize young men.
Naturally, the higher he rose, the easier it was for him to rely upon power disparities to exploit his victims, not to mention prestige/authority disparities to keep others from asking questions.
People see what they want to see. Predators know this, and rely upon it in order to successfully prey upon their victims.
Another thing the training mentioned: Predators lie to themselves as well as to everyone else in order to justify their behavior (e.g., the kid came on to me; there’s was nothing harmful/wrong with a grown man acting out sexually with a minor child, etc.). Which, in light of the essay I linked to, got me thinking about McCarrick’s interview from last year: “I’m not as bad as they paint me[.] “I do not believe that I did the things that they accused me of.”