Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Politics and Religion
What can the laity actually do, post-McCarrick?

What can the laity actually do, post-McCarrick?

Last updated on: July 30, 2018 at 7:43 am by Jane the Actuary

What can the laity actually do, post-McCarrick? 2018-07-30T07:43:18-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

So now Cardinal McCarrick is now just, well, I guess, Mr. McCarrick. The Washington Post, among others, reports a widely-acknowledged need to clean house. He will be given a trial according to canon law but the eventual punishment is unclear except for the sort of “life of penitence” that occurs in such cases. The Post speaks of McCarrick also being de-frocked, and I’m not entirely sure what that means, that is, what the consequences are — the Post reports this as a matter of him being “becoming a lay person, not a Catholic priest” but I thought that this was considered theologically impossible, and the only thing that can happen is to be banned from acting in any way as a priest; in any case, for someone as corrupt as McCarrick reportedly was, I’m not sure what the consequences would be. Is it worse to semi-imprison him in a monastic cell somewhere, or leave him to his own devices out in the world? Can the church even compel the “life of penitence” in the first place, if McCarrick rejects it?

But having said that: what next?

Other people, more in the know and more connected than I, have said things like “hold the bishops to account.”

But here’s what I struggle with: how, exactly?

Simcha Fisher on twitter says,

Okay, Catholics. What do we do? Total boycott of giving money until there are widespread defrockings? This is a sincere question. We can't wait for the magisterium to put appropriate pressure on itself.

— (((Simcha Fisher))) (@SimchaFisher) July 29, 2018

I stumbled on a Regina Magazine assertion that one should only give to seminaries and other organizations which have been positively vetted. But that’s an abandonment of parish life. Do we boycott the bishops’ annual appeals? I don’t know whether, in that case, they would just demand money of the parishes anyway. Probably depends on the diocese.

And the trouble is this:

it’s now taken as a given the widespread numbers of bishops knew about McCarrick and shrugged it off. But how do you hold individual bishops to account? How do you ask them to prove their innocence, when the misdeed in question is inaction in the face of knowledge? How does an individual bishop prove he didn’t know? Or how does the laity prove he did know?

And likewise with the ongoing accusations that seminaries are — well, here’s what the Regina author has to say, in the second person, directed at the perpetrators:

Why? You have sabotaged the future of the Faith by preventing honest young men with genuine vocations from entering our seminaries – calling them ‘rigid’ when you read in their eyes that you cannot suborn them.

And the ones you DO admit to seminaries? I have spoken personally with dozens of them. Your seminary teachers prey on them, using every grooming and abusive tactic in the book. If they acquiesce, they are prey for blackmail their entire careers. If they refuse, they are openly humiliated and mocked, until they leave – their faith all but shattered, their psyches all but destroyed.

As the mother of a son, here’s what I told a young man in the Frankfurt, Germany seminary who told me and my husband that his teacher was openly mocking him at lunch gatherings because he had refused to have sex with him – knowing full well the boy was from a poor family which couldn’t possibly afford to repay the tuition he would owe them if he quit.

But how does a bishop prove of the seminary under his control that this particular one is “clean,” free of this abuse?

Yes, in this case, we can hope that others will speak out, will say, “as a student at seminary X, this happened to me/I watched this occur, and I now feel emboldened to speak out.”

But the bishops — it feels like a desperate hope to believe that people will step forward and say, “I know that bishop X knew.”

Are we trapped? Is the best we can do, to reproduce the tactics of protest marches, and hope that the bishops among them rat on each other? Do we then create a witch-hunt culture in which we demand defrockings of enough people to sate our anger? Do we risk a result in which the less-powerful bishops become the scapegoats?

I suppose the answer depends, in part, on the question: how many of the bishops, our bishops, were complicit, were silent, did not take action, at either McCarrick in particular, or similar abuse and corruption elsewhere? How many are innocent, were truly “out of the loop”? To what extent do the bishops spend their time trading gossip at get-togethers? Is there a secret Facebook group for bishops where at this very moment someone is saying, “well, of course we all knew, but we can’t admit that”? Or are their cliques — the traditionalists in one corner, the progressives in the other, griping to themselves about how the other guys spend too much time on X and not enough on Y?

Catholic readers, what do you think?

Image: do we march on the cathedral instead of the White House? https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trump-WomensMarch_2017-top-1510075_(32409710246).jpg

Previous Post

July 25, 2018

Cardinal McCarrick and the future of the church

Next Post

August 1, 2018 Will the "Rent Relief Act" relieve renters?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

People of Babel Egyptians Israelites Chaldeans