News - November 2020 RSS Feed

The McCarrick report remains in the news and probably will remain in the news for some time as we absorb some of things that have been related in it. Greg Erlandson, director and editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service, commented that that were heroes in this sad story. One such hero was the late Cardinal John J. O’Connor who tried unsuccessfully to stop our former archbishop Theodore McCarrick’s appointment to the Archdiocese of Washington where often the Archbishop receives the red hat. Even more courageous were the victim survivors who tried to speak up, the mother who sought to protect her children, the counselors who warned of the allegations that they were hearing. Sadly, the impression that we receive is that those who wanted to raise concerns were not given an attentive listening and rumors were dismissed rather than investigated thoroughly.

Even though we have waited for nearly two years for the McCarrick Report and knew that the news in it wouldn’t be good, at least I am still dealing with the shock of some of the details in it. One detail from the Vatican’s report on our former archbishop that saddens me is the following. Repeatedly senior officials were warned that something was unsuitable and inappropriate with promoting McCarrick and that charges from serious people needed to be considered. On each occasion a Vatican official disregarded the testimony of lay people, priests, and religious and based decisions exclusively on the advice of other bishops.

This week we will go over the answers to the last ten questions in the Faithful Citizenship Quiz.

As you read this, Election Day has come and gone. The call to be informed and faithful citizens remains. To that end let’s go over the answers to the first ten questions in the Faithful Citizenship Quiz that I put in last week’s bulletin. We’ll go over the answers to the remaining questions in next week’s column.