NEWARK (NJ)
Star Ledger
February 17, 2019
By Ted Sherman
The statement from the Vatican was short on details, but spoke volumes.
Solicitation of sex during confession. Abuse of power. And sins with minors and with adults against the Sixth Commandment.
It was an indictment against a once-powerful cardinal. With the dramatic defrocking on Saturday of Theodore McCarrick — the one-time archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark and the highest-ranking American official to be cast out of the priesthood — Pope Francis put his church, its hierarchy and the faithful on notice.
“I think it sends a huge message,” said Jo Renee Formicola, a Seton Hall University political science professor who has written extensively about sex abuse in the church. “This is a different day. This is a different time.”
She said defrocking someone with the credentials of McCarrick represented a major moment for the church.
“There is no harsher punishment,” she noted. “Defrocking a priest means they cannot carry out their ministry any longer. They cannot participate in the life in the church anymore.”
Defrocking, or dismissed from the clerical state, strips McCarrick of the rights of the priesthood. It means he can no longer celebrate Mass or other sacraments, wear clerical vestments or be addressed by any religious title. He is now known not as Cardinal or Father, but as “Mr. McCarrick.” Yet it’s not the only punishment McCarrick may face.
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