We can always count on many of our high ranking ecclesiastics to be unashamed of their baldfaced mendacity:
Cardinal Donald Wuerl told Washington, DC priests Saturday that he appropriately handled a 2004 allegation of misconduct against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. The cardinal also said that his recent denials of knowledge concerning McCarrick’s alleged misdeeds pertained only to the sexual abuse of minors.
In a Jan. 12 letter to priests, Wuerl said that in 2004 he received a complaint alleging McCarrick’s “inappropriate conduct” from a former priest who was primarily reporting other incidents of sexual abuse, one involving a Pittsburgh priest. Wuerl was at the time Bishop of Pittsburgh.
“The entire report was also immediately turned over to the Apostolic Nuncio – the Papal Representative in the U.S. Having acted responsibly with the allegation involving Bishop McCarrick’s behavior with an adult and hearing nothing more on the matter I did not avert to this again,” Wuerl wrote.
“The man asked for confidentiality to protect his own name.”
On June 20, 2018, the Archdiocese of New York announced it had deemed credibly an allegation of sexual abuse of a minor made against McCarrick, who served as a New York priest in the 1970s. Media reports subsequently revealed allegations that McCarrick had serially sexually abused at least two teenage boys, and that he had engaged in coercive sexual misconduct with priest and seminarians for decades.
Wuerl wrote in a June 21 letter to his diocese that he was “shocked and saddened” by allegations made against McCarrick, his predecessor as Archbishop of Washington.
In the same letter, Wuerl affirmed that “no claim – credible or otherwise – has been made against Cardinal McCarrick during his time here in Washington.”
Go here to read the rest. Long time readers of this blog may recall back in 2011 when there was a massive controversy roiling the Catholic blogoshere, ginned up by Mark Shea and some of the other usual suspects, about whether Live Action had acted immorally in doing undercover work against Planned Parenthood. Shea said that every lie was a terrible sin, even when innocent lives are at stake, the classic example being lying to the Gestapo when one is hiding Jews. He coined the charming phrase of “Liars for Jesus” who thought differently from him, Go here to read background on this tempest in a teapot. Go here to read Cardinal Newman on lying. In regard to prevarication, there seems to be a straining at gnats for ordinary Catholics, often by those most vociferously in favor of the current pontificate, while Pope Francis and his cronies get a pass on constantly lying by comission and omission. Such an obvious double standard is poison for the Church, and betrays any concept of morality.
“…about whether Live Action had acted immorally in doing undercover work against Planned Parenthood.”
Any law may be broken to save a human life; the primacy of human life over man made laws or laws of lesser importance. Benedict XVI said this when he said that not all issues bear the same moral weight. it might be said that Mark Shea is a moral midget.
Wuerl lawyered it (sorry Don) and now says his denial only referred to his (lack) of knowledge regarding the abuse of minors by McCarrick.
So call him a dissembler and an obfuscator, but don’t call him a liar.
It appears to be the “double effect”. One does not intend to lie or break the law. One intends to save a human life.
Justice is predicated on intent. Without intent to break the law, one does not break the law.
“So call him a dissembler and an obfuscator, but don’t call him a liar.”
I find such careful use of language, designed to mislead, more of a lie than, by comparison, an honest and forthright lie. In any case, even that shabby exercise in casuistry is denied him:
https://onepeterfive.com/cardinal-wuerl-is-denying-denials-but-video-doesnt-lie/
Innocent human life would not include :”uncle ted”.
There’s that great scene in Lawrence of Arabia about liars who hide the truth, and half-liars who don’t know where they’ve put it.
One of my favorite scenes from that film, with this line delivered unforgettably by Claude Rains:
If we’ve been telling lies, you’ve been telling half-lies. A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it.
Rains fought in World War I in the London Scottish Regiment (he was a Cockney with a thick Cockney accent as a young man) on the Western Front and rose from Private to Captain. During a gas attack he lost 90% of the vision in his right eye permanently.
Rains was a great actor. Love his smarmy Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood and his likable dirtbag Louis Renault in Casablanca.
He was always best at playing cultured evil. His turn as Satan in Angel on my Shoulder was the epitome of his career.
I’m convinced that white washing of dissent over Humanae Vitae, the “keeping of everyone in play”, which continues today in almost all Diocesan bureaucracies -only added to the compulsion to lie and hide the truth.