Nothing has defined the Catholic Church in recent years quite like the civil reckoning for the systemic way priests raped young boys.
Catholic dioceses across the United States have paid more than $3 billion dollars to victims of clergy abuse. Often, these priest abuse settlements also bought silence from victims.
(abuselawsuit.com)
I have written many commentaries decrying this institutionalized criminality, including “Pope Accused of Harboring Pedophile Priest,” March 16, 2010, “Justice Begins for Victims of Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church…,” June 23, 2012, “Sexual Abuse Allegations Against Pope’s Adviser Damns Papacy,” June 29, 2017, and “Confirmation! ‘Pedophile Priests’ Is Redundant,” August 15, 2018.
But, as the quote above indicates, the church enabled Catholic rapists to escape criminal reckoning, religiously, by settling civil lawsuits. Not to mention that no less a person than Pope Francis has publicly lamented the “gay cabal” that rules the Vatican. I commented on the pope’s lament in “Eighty Percent of Catholic Priests Are Gay. No Surprise Then That a ‘Gay Cabal’ Rules the Vatican,” February 20, 2019.
The point is that church has always been more interested in keeping even the sins of pedophile priests in the closet than risking all of their carnal sins being outed.
That’s why I was so heartened when I read this:
The wedding reception took place on a June weekend in 1974. But it was this week that Theodore E. McCarrick, the former Roman Catholic cardinal expelled by Pope Francis, was criminally charged with repeatedly sexually assaulting a teenage boy at the event.
The complaint, issued on Wednesday, makes Mr. McCarrick the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States to face charges in the sexual abuse crisis that has plagued the church for decades.
(The New York Times, July 29, 2021)
Except that, at 91, McCarrick can die tomorrow and laugh all the way to … Heaven. After all, no matter what he pleads in court, he probably atoned long ago. This, by confessing his sins (within the inviolable secrecy and confidentiality of the Church confessional), showing due contrition, and performing a prescribed penance.
Of course, the only people who believe in this “Sacrament of Penance” are the poor suckers who spent their lives filling the coffers the Catholic Church used to pay off the victims its priests sexually abused. As indicated above, I have already sermonized far more than I care to about these scandals. But, given that, I felt obliged to acknowledge this seminal development.
More to the point, given all the criminal offenses we know so many Cardinals have committed, the real crime is that McCarrick is the first in US history to be criminally charged. They are a cult of pedophiles masquerading as a holy church. And they have thrived on the presumption that nobody would believe innocent children about being sexually abused when frocked-out Cardinals are swearing on the Bible they never touched them.
Frankly, the litany and legacy of sexual abuse crimes in the Catholic Church are as perverse as they are perverted. And yes, the financial crimes are almost the same in every respect, which is why I was almost as heartened when I read this:
A Roman Catholic cardinal who was once a close ally of Pope Francis has gone on trial in the Vatican, accused of misusing Church funds in a ruinous London property venture.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, 73, is the most senior cleric in modern times to face trial for alleged financial crimes.
He is charged with spending €350m (£299m; $412m) of church money on a botched deal to buy a property in Chelsea that incurred huge losses.
A two-year investigation exposed how the Vatican lost millions of euros, including donations from worshippers, after buying a former Harrods warehouse in Sloane Avenue, Chelsea, in 2014. The cardinal was formerly in charge of donations at the secretariat which handles Vatican funds.
(BBC, July 27, 2021)
So here’s to the criminal justice system for finally overcoming the presumption of Cardinal innocence. Because, given the cardinal sins so-called men of God routinely commit, it’s self-evident they do not believe God exists.
They must reason that, if she did exist, she would have stopped priests from systematically abusing children long ago. For surely no God would allow a criminal sex cult to flourish as a holy church in her name.
Related commentaries:
Catholic Church… gay cabal…