Patheos blog
July 19, 2019
By Msgr. Eric Barr
Becoming CEOs of the institution and ceding the Church to lawyers rather than to the Gospel was mistake number one. Severing the sacramental connection between priest and bishop was mistake number two. However, the most egregious mistake the bishops have made throughout the entire clergy sexual abuse crisis is the third. The bishops committed the capital sin of sloth. We think of sloth as laziness, but it is not. It is self-pity, a sorrow for oneself that embraces a guilt leading to apathy. The bishops chose to become powerless to fight against the evil of sexual abuse and the abuse of episcopal authority. Out of despair or indifference, they left the battlefield to lawyers, the press, and an outraged laity.
The McCarrick Affair Revealed The Powerlessness Of The Episcopacy
The McCarrick affair and the way the institutional Church handled it shows this clearly. Outsiders still marvel at how such a person as the former cardinal could live such an evil lifestyle in plain sight of his fellow churchmen. All bishops were at least aware of his predilection for seminarians. As the Vicar for Clergy for a midwestern diocese, I knew of the rumors since 2005.
I remember a Bill O’Reilly show on Fox News where the erstwhile commentator threatened to go public with a horrendous accusation against a highly placed Catholic official the next night. Surprisingly, he never revealed that name, but at the time, I knew that if I had to guess, it would be McCarrick. Rumors are not facts, but there were priests, like Fr. Boniface Ramsey who tried many times to inform the Vatican what he knew as fact: that the cardinal was a serial predator. But the Vatican took no notice. Nor did other bishops. All bishops were aware of the rumors, but there were many who knew the facts and did nothing. The explanation goes that the Church simply did not have the structures present for bishops to discipline each other. Everything rested on the pope’s intervention and three popes appear to have been kept in the dark of the actual facts though they too had heard the rumors.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.