A new allegation of sexual abuse of a child was levelled against Cardinal Theodore McCarrick last week, and details emerged about settlements made with adult seminarians whom the cardinal allegedly abused in the 1980s, when he served as Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, and later as Archbishop of Newark.
The reports come weeks after Cardinal McCarrick was removed from public ministry with the approval of the Vatican after the Archdiocese of New York announced a “credible and substantiated” report of child abuse when the cardinal was a priest there in 1971.
A 60-year-old man, identified only as James, told the New York Times that Cardinal McCarrick began to abuse him when he was 11 years old and the abuse continued for 20 years. The cardinal was a close friend of the man’s family. He described such sexual contact as masturbation performed on him when he was still underage.
Robert Ciolek, a former priest who had obtained one of the two settlements disclosed in June, told the New York Times that Cardinal McCarrick had sexually harassed him when he was a seminarian. Although not underage, as a seminarian, he had felt powerless to resist the then bishop.
The new revelations drew universal revulsion but also prompted some alternative interpretations of the scandal. Rod Dreher, of The American Conservative, argued that the “darkest truth” revealed by the McCarrick episode was that “there are secretive cabals of gay priests who protect and advance each other, and who depend on the protective culture of secrecy within the Catholic Church to shield them”.
Robert Mickens, former Rome correspondent of The Tablet, now at La Croix, blamed the crisis on the psycho-sexual immaturity of gay clergy forced into the closet by the Church’s homophobia.
Nicholas Cafardi, a canon and civil lawyer at the forefront of the Church’s efforts to confront clerical sexual abuse, disagrees, telling The Tablet: “The John Jay studies done for the USCCB’s [United States Conference of Catholic Bishops] National Review Board found that it was a matter of access and vulnerability, and not because our clergy are gay. I think vulnerability is the key explanation myself. These perpetrators were all on power trips and they took the most available vulnerable victims.”
He noted that the sexual harassment of a subordinate who is not a minor is still a violation of church law. “The Church already has a law for this. It is Canon 1389 §1,” he explained. “Bishops, and priests, who use their ecclesiastical power to molest anyone, child or adult, have violated this penal canon and should be punished accordingly with loss of office or worse, depending on the nature of the crime.”
Kurt Martens, professor of canon law at the Catholic University of America, told The Tablet: “[Cardinal] McCarrick’s case will be an interesting test case. Unfortunately, you see that the interests of the victims are not put first by some, but an ideological agenda, in the sense that some are using McCarrick as a tool to attack Francis. Ironically, McCarrick was appointed by Paul VI and John Paul II.”
In Washington, where Cardinal McCarrick ended his ecclesial career, Stephen Schneck, former politics professor at the Catholic University of America, said he felt betrayed. “I yearn to hear a lengthy expression of the guilt and shame that I trust McCarrick must feel, to hear compelling words of his repentance,” he said.
“He no longer deserves the honour of his cardinalate and should ask the Holy Father that it be withdrawn. Recognising his declining health, his remaining years should be spent in prayer for all those harmed and betrayed by his actions and by his years of efforts to keep those sins and crimes secret.”
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