Sadly most Catholic media will not rock the boat. As for the secular media, what's not to like? Any Pope who is visibly gay-friendly and declares that all religions are willed by God is their kind of Pope. They are indifferent to abuse victims. Look at how James Levine in the US and Jimmy Savile in England got away with abuse for decades.
Realistically albeit cynically, I think for a lot of secular media "Vatican covers up/ignores/mothballs abuse allegations against well-connected clerics" is no longer newsworthy, except perhaps very locally. I wish that weren't true - the US churchhas benefited immensely from rigorous journalistic scrutiny in the 2000s but I don't think we can count on it indefinitely going forward. That's why I subscribe to the Pillar!
Realistically albeit cynically, I think the reason behind the rigorous journalistic scrutiny in the past has generally been opposition to the Catholic Church on the part of the journalists. So I expect their scrutiny to continue. And it is helpful, regardless of their motivations. But, if "newsworthiness" was the main criteria, there would have been far more reporting on all the other scandal-worthy sexual abuse allegations in schools, non-Catholic churches, medical facilities, etc. Or at least the high correlation between sex abusers and cohabitating boyfriends. Epstein should have made the news decades earlier. Disney World barely made the news for the high percentage of sex offenders on staff, and I recall that being a very short news cycle.
The US news media has never been much for reporting on what happens in other countries, regardless of their agenda, and I think that's why Cipriani hasn't made it.
It's fairly obvious that whenever any accused cleric from Rupnik to a Cardinal has a Vatican connection, the ol' "buddy system" swings into action and the guy gets a slap on the wrist and back to his regular activities the next day, keeping it on the downlow if necessary.
However, make one criticism of the Holy Father or other chiefs-in-charge, and you can expect to publicly get the boot in record time. And for Heaven's sake don't go supporting the TLM.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we have had centuries of historical Vatican shenanigans, and pretty much expect this sort of thing.
We are inured. And this is bad, because it impacts our ability to receive the infused virtue of hope. I'm praying for the grace to carry well this cross of our ecclesiastical leadership.
Come, Holy Ghost, with Your holy cleansing fire! Burn the rot & corruption out of the Church, the Bride of Christ, no matter the cost! Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
The practice of attempting to cover up and whitewash serious sin also seems to imply a doubt in the Vatican regarding God's mercy and justice.
If God is in fact just, and if those who commit mortal sin unrepentant do in fact suffer damnation, then (first point) sin needs to be addressed.
If you know that someone is violating divine law such that they will suffer damnation, you have two choices. You can try to address this or you can ignore it.
If you believe repentance is possible, and if you care for their eternal fate, the logical result of those motivations is to address it.
If you choose to ignore manifest sin, then that would therefore seem to imply one of four or five things.
1) You don't believe in sin and/or eternal damnation.
2) You don't believe repentance is possible, or you don't believe you can help them repent.
3) You just don't care about this person repenting.
4) You don't believe evidence can ever discover the truth of anyone's actions.
5) You believe it's not your responsibility to address this person's fault.
I admit to falling into the fifth category in many cases. That's why I don't call people such as coworkers out when I learn they're living in sinful situations. I also tend to believe I can't help people repent. But for the authority in the Church to fail to discipline its own members seems to be to be a fundamental failing in virtue, and it's really sad, even aside from the lurid nature of many situations.
You forgot 6) You think the person has repented, is struggling to reform, and further reports are either referring to past behavior or to unfortunate backsliding, which happens to us all.
There are some mortal sins that you persist in trying to help a person struggle through. There are others that require discipline. There are others that require a phone call to the police. Wishful thinking is not helpful, and neither is CYA-motivated harshness. There's just no substitute for prudence and docility to the Holy Spirit.
You might be kinder than I am... I don't associate either wishful thinking or CYA-motivated harshness with well-intentioned motivations.
There can be a lot of "fog of war" involved, and that's generally my fallback for reducing culpability: humans are unavoidably stupid and ignorant and limited.
My experience with root cause analysis of my own failings has been that I have generally failed at repentance, forgiveness, acceptance, AND believing falsehoods - at least 3 of the 4 in every instance.
"Hurt people hurt people" is quite true. There are a number of mental illnesses in which you can see physical damage to a person's brain on an MRI.
It's hard to argue that the problem is purely spiritual, even where it is fundamentally spiritual.
The modern illness approach has defined a lot of syndromes according to patterns of symptoms, and psychologists do not claim to have a cure for any of them. The Divine Physician seems to be much more successful.
"Cipriani first denied, then confirmed receiving written restrictions on his ministry from the Vatican in 2019, though he maintains these were lifted verbally by Pope Francis in 2020 — which the Vatican has denied, while saying that some case by case exceptions were made “to accommodate requests related to the cardinal’s age and family circumstances.”
I still think the obvious answer is Pope Francis lifted the restrictions, but the vatican, realizing what a scandal that is, are now saying it is just to "accommodate requests related to the cardinal's age", something which could be absolutely open ended. A perfectly logical explanation is "the cardinals age" meant a get out of jail free card in that such acts, if they happened, were long ago, he's a changed man, etc etc etc.
Now that the game is up, he still has restrictions, future ones will likely be understood to have happened, but to just keep a low profile.
// And the cardinal’s admission to being handed a formal penal precept back in 2019 highlights again a pattern of sanctions being imposed on senior clerics without either resolving the cases against them, or effectively restricting their ministry.
A growing list of international scandals appears to highlight a continued climate of dysfunction and special treatment for senior churchmen while delivering little in the way of justice or resolution, either for the accused or for his alleged victims.
And, given the refusal of the Vatican to answer pressing and reasonable questions about how such cases have been dealt with, and why, many may now conclude that the dysfunction is intentional, despite Pope Francis’ legal reforms to the canonical process. //
The Church is top heavy; it's run like a machine, just like most of the rest of the modern world. One wishes that its leaders could find their way to centering it once more on the life of the spirit.
It is quite a track record. The silence from other "independent" Catholic news sources and the secular media is deafening.
Sadly most Catholic media will not rock the boat. As for the secular media, what's not to like? Any Pope who is visibly gay-friendly and declares that all religions are willed by God is their kind of Pope. They are indifferent to abuse victims. Look at how James Levine in the US and Jimmy Savile in England got away with abuse for decades.
Realistically albeit cynically, I think for a lot of secular media "Vatican covers up/ignores/mothballs abuse allegations against well-connected clerics" is no longer newsworthy, except perhaps very locally. I wish that weren't true - the US churchhas benefited immensely from rigorous journalistic scrutiny in the 2000s but I don't think we can count on it indefinitely going forward. That's why I subscribe to the Pillar!
Realistically albeit cynically, I think the reason behind the rigorous journalistic scrutiny in the past has generally been opposition to the Catholic Church on the part of the journalists. So I expect their scrutiny to continue. And it is helpful, regardless of their motivations. But, if "newsworthiness" was the main criteria, there would have been far more reporting on all the other scandal-worthy sexual abuse allegations in schools, non-Catholic churches, medical facilities, etc. Or at least the high correlation between sex abusers and cohabitating boyfriends. Epstein should have made the news decades earlier. Disney World barely made the news for the high percentage of sex offenders on staff, and I recall that being a very short news cycle.
The US news media has never been much for reporting on what happens in other countries, regardless of their agenda, and I think that's why Cipriani hasn't made it.
I’m disgusted by it all. When will the abuse and the cover ups end?
At the Resurrection, on the last day.
Is anyone really surprised by built in dysfunction in Rome?
It's fairly obvious that whenever any accused cleric from Rupnik to a Cardinal has a Vatican connection, the ol' "buddy system" swings into action and the guy gets a slap on the wrist and back to his regular activities the next day, keeping it on the downlow if necessary.
However, make one criticism of the Holy Father or other chiefs-in-charge, and you can expect to publicly get the boot in record time. And for Heaven's sake don't go supporting the TLM.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we have had centuries of historical Vatican shenanigans, and pretty much expect this sort of thing.
We are inured. And this is bad, because it impacts our ability to receive the infused virtue of hope. I'm praying for the grace to carry well this cross of our ecclesiastical leadership.
Is there any evidence besides Vigano’s word that any restrictions were applied to McCarrick?
I believe McCarrick's personal secretary, a monsignor, backed up Vigano's claims.
Great analysis, thank you!
This type of coverage is the reason I subscribe to the Pillar.
Come, Holy Ghost, with Your holy cleansing fire! Burn the rot & corruption out of the Church, the Bride of Christ, no matter the cost! Let justice be done though the heavens fall.
The practice of attempting to cover up and whitewash serious sin also seems to imply a doubt in the Vatican regarding God's mercy and justice.
If God is in fact just, and if those who commit mortal sin unrepentant do in fact suffer damnation, then (first point) sin needs to be addressed.
If you know that someone is violating divine law such that they will suffer damnation, you have two choices. You can try to address this or you can ignore it.
If you believe repentance is possible, and if you care for their eternal fate, the logical result of those motivations is to address it.
If you choose to ignore manifest sin, then that would therefore seem to imply one of four or five things.
1) You don't believe in sin and/or eternal damnation.
2) You don't believe repentance is possible, or you don't believe you can help them repent.
3) You just don't care about this person repenting.
4) You don't believe evidence can ever discover the truth of anyone's actions.
5) You believe it's not your responsibility to address this person's fault.
I admit to falling into the fifth category in many cases. That's why I don't call people such as coworkers out when I learn they're living in sinful situations. I also tend to believe I can't help people repent. But for the authority in the Church to fail to discipline its own members seems to be to be a fundamental failing in virtue, and it's really sad, even aside from the lurid nature of many situations.
You forgot 6) You think the person has repented, is struggling to reform, and further reports are either referring to past behavior or to unfortunate backsliding, which happens to us all.
There are some mortal sins that you persist in trying to help a person struggle through. There are others that require discipline. There are others that require a phone call to the police. Wishful thinking is not helpful, and neither is CYA-motivated harshness. There's just no substitute for prudence and docility to the Holy Spirit.
That's fair. It's a fine line between that and my 4), but thanks for the reminder that there can be well-intentioned motivations too.
You might be kinder than I am... I don't associate either wishful thinking or CYA-motivated harshness with well-intentioned motivations.
There can be a lot of "fog of war" involved, and that's generally my fallback for reducing culpability: humans are unavoidably stupid and ignorant and limited.
Remember, we live in an age in which sin has been re-labeled illness. Our very worldly hierarchs have learned to think this way, too.
My experience with root cause analysis of my own failings has been that I have generally failed at repentance, forgiveness, acceptance, AND believing falsehoods - at least 3 of the 4 in every instance.
"Hurt people hurt people" is quite true. There are a number of mental illnesses in which you can see physical damage to a person's brain on an MRI.
It's hard to argue that the problem is purely spiritual, even where it is fundamentally spiritual.
The modern illness approach has defined a lot of syndromes according to patterns of symptoms, and psychologists do not claim to have a cure for any of them. The Divine Physician seems to be much more successful.
Me in 20 years talking to a friend:
"Remember back when Francis was Pope that guy who was accused of something awful but the Vatican covered it up or slow played it?"
Names name
"No not that one. It was sort of like that one..."
Names name
"No, no, no... every one remembers McCarick"
Names name
"No that was mostly about money and this one was mostly about sex"
Points out that they always go together and names name
"No not him either. I remember that one though...did that stuff with the religious sisters"
10 names later
"Not those either. Oh well can't remember...I have to go babysit grandkids again"
"Cipriani first denied, then confirmed receiving written restrictions on his ministry from the Vatican in 2019, though he maintains these were lifted verbally by Pope Francis in 2020 — which the Vatican has denied, while saying that some case by case exceptions were made “to accommodate requests related to the cardinal’s age and family circumstances.”
I still think the obvious answer is Pope Francis lifted the restrictions, but the vatican, realizing what a scandal that is, are now saying it is just to "accommodate requests related to the cardinal's age", something which could be absolutely open ended. A perfectly logical explanation is "the cardinals age" meant a get out of jail free card in that such acts, if they happened, were long ago, he's a changed man, etc etc etc.
Now that the game is up, he still has restrictions, future ones will likely be understood to have happened, but to just keep a low profile.
from the greatest piece of literature in Argentina ("Martín Fierro", from José Hernández)
“La ley es tela de araña,
en mi inorancia lo esplico:
No la tema el hombre rico;
nunca la tema el que mande;
pues la ruempe el bicho grande
y sólo enrieda a los chicos.”
DeepL:
"The law is a spider's web,
in my ignorance I explain it:
Let not the rich man fear it;
"Never fear it the ruler;
For the big bug roams it
and it only makes the little ones mad."
// And the cardinal’s admission to being handed a formal penal precept back in 2019 highlights again a pattern of sanctions being imposed on senior clerics without either resolving the cases against them, or effectively restricting their ministry.
A growing list of international scandals appears to highlight a continued climate of dysfunction and special treatment for senior churchmen while delivering little in the way of justice or resolution, either for the accused or for his alleged victims.
And, given the refusal of the Vatican to answer pressing and reasonable questions about how such cases have been dealt with, and why, many may now conclude that the dysfunction is intentional, despite Pope Francis’ legal reforms to the canonical process. //
The Church is top heavy; it's run like a machine, just like most of the rest of the modern world. One wishes that its leaders could find their way to centering it once more on the life of the spirit.