WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
January 15, 2019
By Mike Goggin
Recent days have seen calls for greater accountability from top-ranked U.S. Catholic clerics. First, a former priest revealed that D.C. Cardinal Donald Wuerl has been untruthful about what he knew of sexual misconduct allegations against his predecessor as archbishop, Theodore McCarrick. Then on Monday, there were new calls for McCarrick himself to publicly repent for alleged abuse of youths and adults.
These past few days have prompted a basic question: Why can’t these clerics just say they’re sorry?
It’s a particular conundrum for those of us who are Catholic. The sacrament of reconciliation provides us with the opportunity to confess our sins to a priest, apologize for them, make amends and resolve to do better. When many of us prepared to practice the sacrament for the first time as children just reaching the age of reason, we were taught that lying was a sin. As we moved into adolescence, we learned that any sexual activity outside of marriage was likewise a sin. So why are our confessors finding it so hard to apologize for these very same basic sins?
Having worked for the Roman Catholic Church for the past 25 years, I think it may have something to do with the dramatic change in the status of religious leaders in my lifetime.
Growing up in the Boston of the 1970s and early 1980s, where neighborhoods were still divided along the parish boundary lines despite a growing presence of non-Catholic immigrants from around the world, great respect and even reverence were directed toward the parish priest and his assistant clergymen. These men could do no wrong. They were arbiters of grace, and their Sunday evening visits for family dinners demanded the use of the best china. The church itself taught that the members of the clergy are in their very being different because of their ordination (in the church we use the term “ontological”). While they look like any layperson, there is a fundamental difference in their being. The church still teaches this today.
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