WASHINGTON D.C.
Washington Post
November 23, 2018
By Elizabeth Bruenig
The only thing that can save the Roman Catholic Church in America is the truth, and the truth is going to hurt. This is the choice facing the ecclesial establishment, which must decide either to release its vast records related to clergy sexual abuse, or wait for state and federal investigations to deprive them of those documents by force of law. If the church awaits the latter, then the Pennsylvania grand jury report that sparked this summer’s blistering revisitation of the sex abuse crisis will only be the beginning.
On a certain level, the church seems to know that disclosure is not only what its members desire but also the only way ahead. Even Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who resigned as archbishop of Washington after revelations that he protected sexually abusive priests while a bishop in Pittsburgh from 1988 to 2006, seemed to intuit as much. One of Wuerl’s last official acts was to release a list of 31 clergy credibly accused of sexual assault over the past several decades. The move, Wuerl wrote, represented “a necessary step toward full transparency and accountability and the process of healing.”
Wuerl’s diagnosis was correct. But the list left survivors and parishioners unsettled, with lingering doubts about the archdiocese’s honesty.
The list included Peter Michael McCutcheon, a Maryland priest who pleaded guilty in 1986 to sexually molesting three boys over several years. The archdiocese document asserted that McCutcheon’s conduct had come to its attention only in 1986, the year he was arrested and convicted. But those familiar with McCutcheon’s brief career found themselves questioning the archdiocese’s claim.
“When the list stated they knew in 1986, I thought: They are continuing to give the impression of innocence on their part,” said McCutcheon’s sister-in-law, Diana McCutcheon, the mother of two of the priest’s victims. “And how will anyone believe what they have to say going forward?”
Diana McCutcheon’s doubts are not unfounded. Court documents and interviews with parishioners familiar with Peter McCutcheon’s behavior suggest that church officials had ample indications of his disturbing conduct several years before his arrest. But instead of dealing with it, they appear to have moved him from parish to parish while the abuse continued.
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