Cardinal McCarrick and the Catholic Church's Continued Dark Night

I still remember the whirlwind of my mid-summer arrival after I was sent to study in Rome back in 2004. Another seminarian and I had flown there early for an Italian immersion program in preparation for fall classes. Exiting Fiumicino, we made it to the Pontifical North American College in time for the large mid-day meal that the Italians call pranzo. Unaware that the college's dress code is quite relaxed during the summer, I remember that we changed into cassocks before finding our way to the large, formal refectory. We were a little red-faced, I think, to be the only ones dressed like that!

We ended up sitting down to dinner with a diminutive, elderly man who was wearing the tab collar and a faded black suitcoat of a priest. He was friendly and engaging, asking us where we were from and where we would be studying Italian. Only halfway through the meal did I get it through my travel-fogged brain that we were speaking with Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, at that time the powerful and highly influential archbishop of Washington, D.C.

Cardinal McCarrick greeting Admiral Fallon after a Sept. 11 Memorial Mass. Image from Wikipedia Commons.

This is the same Cardinal McCarrick, now 87 years-old and living in a nursing home, who last week was removed from public ministry by the Vatican due to credible accusations that he had sexually abused a teen-aged boy more than 50 years ago. Word is also coming out that journalists have been sitting on a story since the early 2000s about the cardinal's sexual exploitation of seminarians. Journalist Rod Dreher writes that he couldn't get any priests to risk their priesthood by speaking out at the time. He also notes that the story almost went to press in The New York Times magazine in 2012 but was shelved for some mysterious reason at the last minute. Now folks are asking why the press kept quiet, especially after the Archdiocese of Newark disclosed late this week that there had been three allegations against the cardinal there and in the Diocese of Metuchen, and that two of them had led to settlements.

What does all of this mean to me? Well, for starters, I'm still processing things. One thing I'm trying to square is the scandalous account from Dreher and the friendly, engaging priest-figure I met back then. A few years later, after having left the seminary, I attended Mass at the University of Notre Dame, and Cardinal McCarrick happened to be the celebrant and homilist. He gave a powerful homily. I told him so when I shook his hand afterward. He smiled warmly but of course didn't recognize me.

How could I have been so oblivious to all of this? Obviously I'm not talking mainly about McCarrick, whom I hardly knew. I'm rather thinking of the the whole priest sex abuse scandal and the whole "gay network" that the journalism of Dreher and others continues to expose. I was in Rome, of course, just after the height of the sex abuse revelations. Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law had already been exiled to Santa Maria Maggiore. He actually instituted my seminary class into the lectorate in 2005. I remember that year that there was also an apostolic visitation of the North American College, and that an American archbishop was sent to interview each of us seminarians separately. I won't mention his name in case it is under some kind of seal, but I do remember telling the archbishop that I hadn't seen a thing. I told him that my real concern was the potential for alcoholism among some men who were soon to be ordained. It seemed to me that many seminarians drank heavily on a regular basis, perhaps as a cure for the loneliness that resulted from celibacy or, for those of us studying in Rome, the distance from the familiar things of home.

Again, how could I have been so oblivious? Well, I'm thankful that I was, because frankly I don't know if my faith at the time could have withstood knowing more than I did. I treasure my time in Rome, and I cherish the friendships I made with many of my classmates, some of whom are today faithful priests serving throughout the United States and others of whom, like myself, left the seminary to pursue the calling of marriage and family life.

And what of my faith today? I would say that I am serene in my faith. I have learned not to put my faith in princes, for "they are but men, they have no power to save" (Psalm 145:3). That goes for Princes of the Church like Cardinal McCarrick as well. So I will pray for the cardinal in his own dark night, that the truth may set him, and the entire Church, free from this terrible scandal. And I thank God for all the priests and bishops who continue humbly to serve Christ and His Church, both those who are holy and those who, like me, are best described as works in progress. Semper reformans, semper reformanda.