WASHINGTON (DC)
National Catholic Reporter
February 8, 2019
By Tom Roberts
If there were a compass mark for a true-north Catholic, John Carr could well be the setting.
He defies the divisions within the Catholic community because he’s not divided on anything when it comes to the church. You can’t bait him into the culture wars because there is no war within him. For him, the seamless garment is more than metaphor. He wears it well and, in it, walks right down the middle of whatever tensions he may find himself mediating these days as moderator of endless discussions in his role as director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.
But the conduct of the leaders of the institution he has served his entire life, many of them friends and a few, former bosses, has pushed his forbearance to the limit. “The patience of the people of God is exhausted with the episcopal and clerical culture that puts itself first,” he said.
That was the final line he spoke at the end of a Feb. 2 news conference following two days of discussions of the clergy sex abuse crisis organized here by the Leadership Roundtable, a group of lay, religious and clergy founded to promote best management practices within the church. At the meeting were more than 200 people at more than 20 tables of participants, including Cardinals Sean O’Malley of Boston, Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, and Blase Cupich of Chicago. Joining them were 12 bishops, along with theologians, canon lawyers, abuse survivors, assorted experts from across the country, the papal nuncio and Jesuit Fr. Hans Zollner, the head of the office of child protection at the Vatican. Such a collection of people was perhaps a sign that the patience had run out and that something significant needs to be done.
During the news conference Carr offered up a self-assessment that gives expression to the feelings of many other Catholics rocked by the revelations of the past year. “I’m different,” he said. “You know the talk I gave today I would not have given 18 months ago.”
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