Vatican’s McCarrick report says Pope John Paul II knew of misconduct allegations nearly two decades before cardinal’s removal

[IanM]

Maike Hickson asks a very interesting question that had not struck me and which I have not seen asked elsewhere:

" What was McCarrick’s source of income? When he retired from the Archdiocese of Wash., he was entitled to a monthly stipend, housing, health benefits, an office. “Consistent with his prior practice of not taking a salary, he declined to draw a pension during his emeritus years.”

https://twitter.com/x/status/1326656578141958149

 

[glencor63]

It actually goes back to Pope Paul VI who was told of widespread sexual abuse and immorality and chose not to act.

Vatican was told 50 years ago to act against paedophile priests | Catholicism | The Guardian

 

[OraLabora]

It actually goes back to Pope Paul VI who was told of widespread sexual abuse and immorality and chose not to act.

Before that even. The notion of “particular friendships” among homosexual religious has been known for centuries. I can’t imagine pontiffs were ignorant of other sexual problems among clergy even before Paul VI.

 

[TMC]

Before that even. The notion of “particular friendships” among homosexual religious has been known for centuries. I can’t imagine pontiffs were ignorant of other sexual problems among clergy even before Paul VI.

Yes, this has been (and remains) common knowledge within the Church.

 

[stpurl]

Yep. As well would be knowledge of the priests who were prone to break their vows with women, the priests who were prone to alcoholism, gluttony, to be ‘lightfingered’ with regard to money and property, who were prone to be violent, have tendencies to arson, etc. Etc.

Priests are human beings with the same human propensity to concupiscience as any other human being.

Priests make vows and then ‘don’t keep them’ at times just as married folks ignore their vows.

We don’t throw out marriage because some folks don’t keep vows. So we don’t throw out priesthood because some priests don’t keep vows. That doesn’t mean I’m saying ‘whatabout’ or saying that it happens and there’s nothing to do about it.

What it comes down to is that there is no possible way to guarantee that any individual priest will never sin.
There are some priests who have same sex attraction and will NEVER act on it. They will respect their vows to the end. There are others who may act ‘once’ and then repent and hold fast to their vows to the end. Still others may in fact ‘cheat’ often (McCarrick). But one cannot look at, say, the ‘concept’ of SSA and then say, “Because this INDIVIDUAL priest has SSA he WILL disobey his vows” thus assuming that a characteristic held will automatically result in ‘the worst case’.

Furthermore the reasons a priest may have or appear to have SSA are varied and there is no ‘one size fits all’ ‘treatment. A priest who abuses a 5 year old child may do so for a quite different reason than one who abuses a 15 year old child.

 

[TMC]

Yep. As well would be knowledge of the priests who were prone to break their vows with women, the priests who were prone to alcoholism, gluttony, to be ‘lightfingered’ with regard to money and property, who were prone to be violent, have tendencies to arson, etc. Etc.

Priests are human beings with the same human propensity to concupiscience as any other human being.

Priests make vows and then ‘don’t keep them’ at times just as married folks ignore their vows.

I agree with this (and most of the rest of your post). One of the problems in my view (just one of many problems, but an important one), is that the Church has tended to look at the abuse crisis as just another example of a priest breaking his vows - a sin by a priest, and not really more than that. But the sexual abuse crisis is much more than a priest sinning by breaking the vow of celibacy. The Church seems to be beginning to realize that, which is an important step forward.

 

[stpurl]

Yes, the sexual abuse crisis is huge, and one thing to put forth is that it is not limited to the Church. One of the reasons we are seeing this kind of abuse by priests is that we are also seeing it in society.

That’s why I think it is misguided to assume that the abuse crisis in the Church happened due to things that are only found within the Church, such as celibacy of the clergy, or in ‘clericalism’ (itself a murky term with many possible definitions), or as related to the idea of ‘coverup’ or ‘the image of the Church’.

If we go with that, we ignore the incredible rise of abuse of men, women, and children ‘outside’ the church; the high rate of unwed pregnancies, abortions, sex trafficking, mutilation, porn addictions, rape, etc. All those things are part of the sexual abuse crisis and need to be addressed at the root in order for the CHURCH’s crisis and all these others to have some chance of being mitigated.

 

[TMC]

If we go with that, we ignore the incredible rise of abuse of men, women, and children ‘outside’ the church;

This suggestion, that modernity somehow caused the problem, ignores the inconvenient fact that the Church has had this problem for at least 1,000 years.

 

[glencor63]

The English Proto-Protestant group, The Lollards followed John Wycliffe (1395). They had 12 Conclusions or objections to the Catholic Church hierarchy in England. Most importantly, they did not deny the Eucharist.

The Third Conclusion asserted that, “The practice of clerical celibacy has encouraged sodomy among the clergy”.

Being Gay isn’t the problem. Not understanding your own sexuality and being ashamed of your sexuality makes you vulnerable to blackmail by pedophiles who know your secret. Also, a large percentage of Gay men in any organization will necessarily cause heterosexual men to avoid those circles because a common life experience is missing, not necessarily homophobia.

https://spartacus-educational.com/Lollards.htm

 

[OraLabora]

Being Gay isn’t the problem. Not understanding your own sexuality and being ashamed of your sexuality makes you vulnerable to blackmail by pedophiles who know your secret. Also, a large percentage of Gay men in any organization will necessarily cause heterosexual men to avoid those circles because a common life experience is missing, not necessarily homophobia.

Bingo! You hit the nail right on the head.

 

[glencor63]

Why do you assume that having married and celibate priests is the end of the priesthood? Celibacy is not a higher calling. It’s a different calling. Celibacy is not more pleasing to God. Each person has a different calling. A person will find it difficult to be celibate if they are meant to marry. I personally think the Western Catholic Church should have both types.

 

[jack63]

Hi @Tis_Bearself…I saw you may have muted, but to respond…

It’s a bit much to expect that someone pursuing what is essentially a career path as a Catholic priest is not going to be financially dependent on the Church.

I completely disagree on this one. There are many examples of Catholic clergy where the church is not their main source of income.

1. Many religious orders. For example, you might have dozen of Jesuits to a major parish. Only a few would be full time. They all share in the priestly duties to their parish. The rest would be teachers, researchers, or professors. Those priests get incomes, and they give these incomes to their order.
2. Many Eastern Rite priests have full time jobs that are paying the bills for the most part.
3. Many clergy converts are making most of their money on book sales or other opportunities.
4. Deacons of course are only occasionally employed full time by the church. Of the many Deacons I’ve met, I’ve only met one who was employed on some level. However, they still devote significant time to the church.

So there really are models out there where priests would not need to be financially dependent on the Church. I really do think stopping the financial dependence on the church of many of these priests would give them more flexibility to challenge somebody like McCarrick.

The problsm that gave rise to this whole situation was one of institutional culture.

I’m always of the opinion that if you give anybody the power to ignore parts of a dysfunctional institutional culture, that institutional culture will change quickly. In this case that would mean a different path for perspective men called to be priests. For example, they would not need to go through a traditional seminary, but could do their training as a Deacon. As I understand, a major part of the problem with McCarrick was that most of his victims were seminarians. This is likely what “threw off” much of the church leadership.

Hopefully now that the Church has suffered a lot of reputational and financial damage, it will continue to maintain a robust reporting mechanism and swiftly deal with predators. Priests don’t have to be older married men to do that.

As for being older married men… No of course they don’t need to be older married men to deal with predators, but the “older” part sure helps a lot. My hair is turning it grey (I dye it). As I get older, I’m a lot less likely to put up with “stuff”. I’ve learned how to not put up with nonsense. This is likely the case for people who are married or single…men or women.

 

[stpurl]

Excuse me? It is the ‘uptick’ in cases today which shows that the problem is spreading everywhere. Rape, trafficking, etc have been around from well before ‘The Church.”

 

[stpurl]

Why are you putting words in my mouth or making assumptions for me?

 

[TMC]

Excuse me? It is the ‘uptick’ in cases today which shows that the problem is spreading everywhere. Rape, trafficking, etc have been around from well before ‘The Church.”

Nonsense. If you look at Church history this is a consistent issue. St. Peter Damian wrote about it (and campaigned against it) in the 11th Century. A reference from the 13th Century was posted earlier in the thread. Yes, there are bad actors in all parts of society, but we need to admit the Church has a particular problem, or we will never be able to address the problem.

 

[stpurl]

The Church has a problem because human beings. Simple as that. May I remind you once again that the incidence of abuse in the priesthood is no greater than the incidence ‘outside’ the priesthood? In BOTH places we should be working to get that incidence down to zero, but we simply cannot pretend that the root causes (which are what we need to address as a society, and for the world) are somehow different for ‘The Church”. After all, the majority of child abuse cases in the world are perpetrated upon children by their parent (s). Not by priests, not even by teachers, or by strangers, but by parents.

So long as we’re out there willing and able to turn a spotlight, if you will, not just upon ‘churches’ but upon “the Catholic Church” and pretend that the whole sex abuse crisis is all about a ‘culture of clericalism’ and a ‘coverup mentality’ all brought about due to a ‘forced celibacy’ which by its nature leads to abuse, we’re presenting a false narrative that sex abuse comes from “the Church” and that ‘any abuse’ comes about from things like “not being able to express one’s sexuality’. Which of course will simply feed into ‘the world’s’ last 50 years or so of rebellion, the ‘sexual revolution’, the tearing down of any kind of authority over any individual, and the objectification of persons and the elevation of thee primacy of having ‘sex’ whenever.

In the slamming down and demonification of all Catholic priests as ‘repressed men’ forced to find an outlet in raping children, protected by ‘the leaders’ for fear of their ‘institution looking bad’, and now calls for ‘transparency’ the howls are out to ‘let them marry’ (as if celibacy caused abuse, which it does not), ‘Sue them for all they’ve got’ which causes churches and services to be stretched to the breaking point or closed, leaving more and more without priests or help, and making it appear the Church never really did much for anybody to begin with; turns the 96% of faithful priests into pariahs, lessens the desire of youth to consider the priesthood leading to even fewer priests in the future, and above all, has no effect ‘outside’ the Church in helping to stop the abuse of children, women, and men through rape, other violence like sex trafficking, porn, etc.

Because it’s the CHURCH with its discredited ‘moral authority’ and its terribly wrong teachings which needs to be fixed, right? Not ‘society’ which is what the Church is being ‘urged’ to be ‘more like’.

 

[TMC]

Because it’s the CHURCH with its discredited ‘moral authority’ and its terribly wrong teachings which needs to be fixed, right? Not ‘society’ which is what the Church is being ‘urged’ to be ‘more like’.

You might want to actually read my posts and address what I am actually saying, rather than constructing these elaborate strawmen.

 

[stpurl]

I did.
You might want to do the same.

You speak of the Church’s problem starting in the 11th century. I say that the entire sex abuse started well before then, and while we have documents (as you mentioned) from clergy reporting problems then, we have plenty of documents regarding all sorts of sexual abuse, including homosexual sex, pedophilia, etc, entrenched in all aspects of society for milllennia.

The Church’s problem is the world’s, and vice versa, and so we need to work on both.

 

[TMC]

You speak of the Church’s problem starting in the 11th century. I say that the entire sex abuse started well before then, and while we have documents (as you mentioned) from clergy reporting problems then, we have plenty of documents regarding all sorts of sexual abuse, including homosexual sex, pedophilia, etc, entrenched in all aspects of society for milllennia.

No, I did not say that. I said that it has existed for centuries, and point out as evidence of that fact that it was considered a major problem even back in the 11th Century.

What you seem to be denying is that the Church has a particular problem. You shrug your shoulders and point out that there are sinners everywhere, suggesting that perhaps Catholics should just move along - nothing to see here. If that is not your point, please correct me. But that attitude, that the Church has no particular problem with clerical sexual abuse is not just wrong, its dangerous. The McCarrick report is just the latest in a long, long line of evidence that the Church has a problem, its a long standing problem, its an endemic problem. And its not just an abuse problem - it is also that Church officials at all levels have covered up, lied, or simply turned a blind eye to the issue of clerical abuse.

I am not saying (contra to your suggestions) that means the Church has to abandon its teachings. But the Church (including the laity) needs to realistically examine why this problem is so embedded in the culture. Only then will there be even a chance of addressing it.

 

[MikeInVA]

May I remind you once again that the incidence of abuse in the priesthood is no greater than the incidence ‘outside’ the priesthood?

This is similar to the sexual abuse crisis in the military. Per capita, the rates of these crimes are no different than the general population. In both communities, the incidence of other crimes (theft, etc) are lower than the general population, so as a percentage of cases, they have a higher proportion in those communities.