It has been a strange week or two around here. Almost a month after last month’s revelation that a credible allegation had been made concerning behavior by Cardinal McCarrick toward a youth almost fifty years ago, suddenly other allegations are coming forward. Two long stories in the New YorkTimeslast week finally were acknowledged this week by our own local papers. More information, more testimony, and more disturbing behavior strung together into a pattern, have brought forth more recrimination, more condemnation, and more exculpation. Everybody suddenly is an expert on how this happened, whose fault it was, and what the Church needs to do differently starting now.
I hope you will not find it unhelpful if I remain circumspect in the matter, at least in public and on the record. Love for Christ and His Church has generated much public outcry, but I warn you to be wary of the less laudable interests that have also been very much at work.
Reading a simple news story has for decades now been anything but simple. The five basic questions every news story should address -- Who, what, when, where, and how?– have yielded to the necessity of maintaining a narrative that advances a position or program. Thus it now falls to the reader to answer a question about any story he encounters: why? Why is this story here? Why is this information included, why is other information missing? Why is it published now, since nothing “new” is in this so-called “news?” Examining this can reveal far more about what the so-called journalist is trying to accomplish than what is actually occurring in the wide world.
The details about the strange life and behavior of Cardinal McCarrick are emerging in the confluence of conflicting narratives and programs. Youmay be looking at it purely in the context of love for Christ and His Church, but it would be a misjudgment to assume the same of any given reporter or commentator.
Jesus’ example of and call to kenotic (self-sacrificing) love is both an invitation to all who hear Him to take up our cross and follow Him, and an offer to provide the superabundant fruit of His own perfect sacrifice to repair the damage we do ourselves and the world when we fail or refuse to take up our cross and follow.
Jesus’ example of and call to kenotic (self-sacrificing) love is NOT universally well received. In the first Christian century, Saint Paul said to some it was a scandal and to others a stumbling-block; in our time many public voices tell us it is an outrage, an injustice, a tool of oppression, and a badge of ignorance.
The Church is Christ’s perduring presence in the world and His unrelenting activity to bring to completion His Father’s will that all mankind be saved. She cannot embrace, advocate, or advance any admixture or dilution of His saving Word, nor has she. This has ever set her apart, and for this she is abominated by the selfish ones.
There are those who say corruption in one of the ministers or members of the Church is a sign that the Church is not Holy.
There are those who say that holding Christ’s perfect sacrifice as the mark and model of authentic communion between God and Man is not human.
These two diametrically opposed opinions, sometimes held simultaneously in the minds of the same persons, are now smashing headlong into one another in the rush to analyze and respond to these latest revelations. If you examine these arguments closely, you will quickly find that rooted in such falsehood, they cannot stand. Dismiss them like so much rubbish.
Clinging to what humility I can muster, I make no prescription for the Church, or for you. Facing human sinfulness full-on, in the place we most devoutly hoped not to find it, we take refuge in the one prescription our God has both administered, and taken on Himself: the mystery of the Cross. Ave crux, spes unica!-- Hail the Cross, our only hope!
Monsignor Smith
