SOME SERIOUS QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ASKED AND ANSWERED

A few American Bishops have made statements about what they knew or didn’t know about former Cardinal McCarrick’s predatory sexual abuse of seminarians.

Their statements appear to show them as either innocent dupes or complicit conspirators.  

And they have made those statements delivering their carefully prepared and rehearsed lines in an atmosphere of deference to their Episcopal Office.

Still, a great many questions face a number of Bishops.

Who are they and what do they need to explain?

First, there is Cardinal Sean O’Malley, who of late issued a long statement about the McCarrick affair.  

Here is what I would ask him.

Your Eminence, were you not aware the McCarrick’s perverse behavior with seminarians was an open secret among Priests and members of the laity?

Were you not aware that witnesses in Priest-abuse cases, Richard Sipe for one, had long ago publicized what they knew of the behavior of “Uncle Ted” ?

Were you not aware that a concerned group of laity and Clerics pleaded their case against McCarrick in Rome before his elevation to the College of Cardinals?

Were you not aware that Churchmen across the country had another nickname related to his proclivities: “Blanche”?

Your Eminence, you have stated that you did not “personally receive” a letter addressed to you from Father Boniface Ramsey, O.P. in June of 2015, alleging McCarrick’s lewd behavior with seminarians.  

But you do not say that you were "not informed" about the letter.  You have been asked this question but have chosen not to answer.

So, are we to conclude that no one on your staff discussed the letter and its contents with you?

How could a matter so sensitive and serious be shuffled into oblivion by your staff without your knowledge of its existence?

On the same subject, were you not aware that McCarrick chose to live his retirement on the grounds of a seminary?  

Wasn’t that information contained in the letter Father Ramsey personally addressed to you?  

Was the only response of your staff to Father Ramsey’s complaints a form letter sent back to him washing your hands and your office’s hands of the situation? 

Are we to trust Your Eminence’s judgment and that of your office which allowed such a grave mismanagement to occur?

Next, there is Cardinal Wuerl, to whom I would address the following questions.


Your Eminence, isn’t it true that the Papal Nuncio in Washington, D.C. was informed in 2004 of the legal settlements for claims of sexual abuse against McCarrick?

As McCarrick’s successor in Washington, were you not informed of these settlements?

If you were informed, why did you not consider such when McCarrick requested living in different seminaries that train seminarians for your Archdiocese? 

If you weren’t informed about these settlements, did Bishop Joseph Tobin or his predecessors in Newark and did not the Bishop of Metuchen not have a duty to inform you of them, given McCarrick’s living arrangements at seminaries?

Your Eminence, do you have any knowledge of why McCarrick suddenly was asked to leave the seminary at St. Thomas Woodley Park under Father Roderick McKee?

Cardinal Wuerl, are you not a sitting member the Congregation of Bishops in Rome? 

Isn’t it true that McCarrick would lobby for certain candidates for elevation in the Church?  

Did you ever discuss such appointments with him?

Did McCarrick’s lobbying have influence upon yourself or members of the Congregation in the elevations of Joseph Tobin or Kevin Farrell?

And, if you knew of these settlements, why would you have engaged in such discussion with McCarrick?

Next, I would ask the Bishops of Newark and Metuchen why they did not inform Cardinals O’Malley and Wuerl of the legal settlements their dioceses has agreed to in compensating victims of McCarrick’s sexual abuse of seminarians.

But, these same kinds of questions need to be addressed to and answered by every member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops who might have known of McCarrick’s history of sexual predation and said nothing about it.

The sad reality is that the reaction of the Bishops and the Cardinals to this scandal goes a long way in explaining how McCarrick’s career could have flourished in such a milieu of secrecy and deceit.