To the Tiber With All of Them

Note:  The following contains very angry language, because anger about this issue is important.

Yesterday, Rome finally released their "McCarrick Report", or, if you prefer a "Report on the Holy See's Institutional Knowledge and Decision Making Process Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick."  I already said what I thought the report would outline, and I was mostly right.  If Rome thought the report would answer these questions, they were mistaken.  Fr. Ryan Hilderbrand listed almost 30 questions he had about the report that Rome doesn't answer.  

There is a lot to the report, but I think we can focus on a few overall points

Benign Neglect or Active Indifference?

The first is that there was a narrative that McCarrick, ever the cunning schemer, was able to hide everything from Rome.  This has turned out to be 100% false.  Rome was well aware of allegations regarding McCarrick, having received up to 4 different allegations of abuse, violation of boundaries, or inappropriate behavior on behalf of the Cardinal by the time action was finally taken against him.  How did he then rise up the ranks despite all this being known?  

I think the best explanation is that nobody wanted to look really closely what was going on, because if they looked they knew they were going to find something.  Its like the person who knows their spouse is being unfaithful, or they know their spouse has a drinking problem.  They go out of their way to avoid seeing all the warning signs that would force them to take action.  Theodore McCarrick was charismatic, a smart politician, and a prodigious fundraiser.  Just like Marcel Maicel, he wasn't particularly subtle with hiding his abuse.  There was just overwhelming incentives to not look too closely.  If you aren't looking closely, you don't have to look the other way at wrongdoing.

This was combined with an active weaponization of the Church against opposition to McCarrick.  For example, when McCarrick was promoted to the Archdiocese of Washington, an investigation was conducted regarding abuse, but it was an investigation to be conducted "without urgency."  Yet this investigation was completed, and alongside numerous other pieces of evidence, it was suggested that McCarrick not be transferred to another see.  One can take the at face reasons listed, but another way of looking at it was it was believed promoting McCarrick to a higher position would bring about greater visibility.  This suggestion was ignored by the Pope who then bypassed the normal process of consulting the Congregation of Bishops and the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  (Then Josef Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI who punished McCarrick.)  You engage in this type of bypass because you don't want anyone looking too closely at the situation.

The Bureaucratization of Abuse

One of the striking features of the report, as well as the evidence contained therein, is how bureaucratic it is.  At no point does one detect a sense of anger or outrage at McCarrick, either over his crimes, or over having been deceived.  One could even be forgiven individuals believe a crime was committed here.  There are jokes and light hearted banter mentioned, a warm comity and rapport with everyone involved.  Even McCarrick's enemies (and they do make appearances in this report) seem more troubled by the extra paperwork this unfortunate set of events generates.  It suggests that, far from this being an isolated incident, these kind of abuse investigation and rumors regarding senior prelates seem strikingly common, to the point where its impact seems fairly trivial in the proceedings.  Maybe this just the soulless boardroom mentality seeping into the Church.  Or maybe it points to a striking frequency of these allegations.  Either way, it is something deeply troubling.  As always here, the protection of the institution matters above all else.  A primacy of attention is given to if McCarrick's indiscretions and allegations would impact a papal trip, rather than terrify and scandalize the flock he governed.

The Complication of Papal Legacies

Make no mistake, this report is a haymaker to the face of Pope John Paul II's legacy.  If he were not already canonized, there would not be a snowballs chance in hell he would be canonized.  From a doctrinal standpoint, this does not invalidate his canonization.  Saints can have serious blindspots, they can be gullible, be deceived, and they can make catastrophic mistakes.  Sometimes you could even say understanding those mistakes is essential to understanding the saint in question.  Yet let us not kid ourselves: this is going to impact the legacy of John Paul II negatively for centuries, and it should.  Benedict is less Der Panzerkardinal and more a weak and ineffectual man, who takes half measures because taking full measures would torch the legacy of his yet uncanonized predecessor he owed his career to and damage the institution's reputation he spent decades trying to uphold.  It is the dark side of institutionalism.

Axing the Final Chapter

One could ask how this reflects upon Pope Francis, but he is largely absent in this story.  For all intents and purposes, the McCarrick saga ends in 2009, with a brief epilogue in 2017 where WHOOPS TURNS OUT MCCARICK IS A PEDOPHILE HOLY CRAP GUYS WHAT DO WE DO?  At this point everyone puts on their shocked face and expresses disbelief that the guy they had under "prescript" (where he is forced to only live in certain areas, restricted from doing almost everything but don't you dare call it a "punishment" or "sentence") for borderline consensual/nonconsensual sexual activity engaged in nonconsensual sexual activity, and oops, turns out those rumors we've heard for decades about abusing minors were true, who woulda guessed?  Though they admit McCarrick gave advice that various individuals be appointed bishops and to other Vatican organizations, and that he gave people a lot of monetary gifts impossible to trace since it was cash, we swear this activity had no influence on anything.  They aren't trying to convince us of that fact, they're practicing their defense when they appear before Christ at the Judgement Seat.  He will be as impressed by it as we are.

A Very Online Report

The report seems written less to explain McCarrick's rise than it is to take sides in various factional disputes within the Church.  Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano is a frequent antagonist in the report.  Vigano was the man whose whistle blowing testimony forced McCarrick to be laicized and forced the eventual publishing of this report.   One should readily grant whistleblowers are not ideal figures.  They are normally vain corrupt individuals who have been double crossed by someone more vain and corrupt.  That's what happened here.  In an attempt to mollify his base being angry over a papal trip to America, Francis pinned everything that went poorly on Vigano, and told everyone he fired him to try and generate good PR with his biggest fans.  (In truth, he resigned as was customary, without prompting from the Holy Father.)  Vigano, always a man to treat the slightest provocation as a declaration of holy war, waited until the perfect moment to exact his revenge, and the McCarrick scandal was that perfect moment.  So the report looks to portray him in as bad a light as possible, such as faulting him for not examining how much legal liability they would have from McCarrick's indiscretions after he was forcibly restricted from ministry.  (Note not whether or not the charges were true, Rome had a pretty good idea they were.  Just how much legal liability this threatened to ensnare everyone in.)

Now if this seems very inside basbeall:  no kidding.  The average Catholic does not give a damn about any of this, much less people outside the Church.  Yet the report is filled with these little anectdotes of factional bloodfeuds.  This wasn't written to shed light on a situation. This was written to provide a narrative for one side of a bitter factional struggle in the Church to present as a way to justify everything that has happened up until now.  The various debates about various personalities might rage on twitter, but all anyone else will see is "sure looks like the past three popes knew one of their senior advisors was a sexual abuser and moved heaven and earth to avoid doing anything about it."

Will He Find Faith?

Christ asks "When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith?"  I thought about that a lot lately.  We spend a lot of time in today's Church about who is more faithful to her traditions, to her doctrine.  Critics of traditionalism complain of a Catholicism that is "More Catholic than the Pope."  I think this is the wrong way of looking at it.  There's something for everyone in this report.  We see some very casual misogyny.  We see liberals acting bad.  Conservatives acting bad.  Everyone of every ideological persuasion uniting to make sure nobody has to look too hard at what McCarrick is doing.  All of these people are baptized Catholics.  Yet we have to ask:  do any of them have faith in God?  Do any of these people have a relationship with Christ?  Or is the Catholic Church just a book of the month club, where the doctrinal debates are over which list of books gets promoted by the group?  While the Pope has criticized this mentality in the past, it's clear that its accelerated under his watch.  For all the talk of the importance of Jesus, one has to ask where Jesus fits into their understanding of how McCarrick was treated in the Church.  How often did they think about pleasing and serving Jesus when they deliberated over what to do?  The McCarrick saga is a case of the Vatican under the past three popes losing the plot.

Barring penance and confession, anyone involved in this sordid affair, from the bottom to the top, should be denied a Catholic burial.  That's the charitable solution.  Otherwise, let God cast them down from their roles, and after a lifetime of penance, let them be cast into the Tiber.