One mustn't - and can't - judge others' motivation, but Cardinal Marc Ouellet, in his open letter to +Vigano released yesterday, comes across as a bully. (I have belatedly realized this man is Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops.)
You know how some men, especially clerics, when contradicted or even merely questioned stick out their chest and raise their voice? Probably you didn't know that because, I suspect, priests are seldom contradicted.
Cardinal Marc Ouellet sounds like a man who's on the wrong side and believes attack is the best form of defence. He blusters about 'rumours' concerning Cardinal McCarrick.
Dear Cardinal Ouellet, that photograph of McCarrick in togs, with his arm around a young seminarian also in togs, is not a rumour, it's a fact. And although I don't know when the pic became public, it was taken in 1974. That seminarian was sexually abused by McCarrick for 20 years. The expression on his face is unforgettable; McCarrick meanwhile, grins with delight.
Obviously Cardinal Ouellet doesn't mean to, but he actually confirms what +Vigano stated, that McCarrick was 'requested not to travel or make public appearances'. He says it was 'in order to avoid new rumours' (emphasis mine). He has a cute expression also for McCarrick's odious abuse of seminarians in virtually forcing them, by a devious arrangement of beds at his notorious beach house, to sleep with him. As one journalist commented, on hearing of it, "The bishop sleeping with seminarians? ***" (Expletive deleted.)
Cardinal Ouellet's word for McCarrick's serial sodomitic abuse is 'incoherence'.
He says there are no documents restricting McCarrick's movements signed by either Pope Benedict or Pope Francis. He does not however, deny that paper shredders exist, even or especially in the Vatican.
Cardinal Ouellet tells +Vigano he must avoid calumny and defamation. Dear Cardinal Ouellet, calumny and defamation involve falsehood. So if what +Vigano says is true, you haven't a leg to stand on. When Jesus Christ called the scribes and Pharisees 'whited sepulchres', that wasn't calumny or detraction. He was merely stating the truth.
How much I wish I could help you to return to communion with (Pope Francis), says Cardinal Ouellet. What? Has Archbishop Vigano been excommunicated?
Cardinal Ouellet says +Vigano's testimony is 'scandalous rebellion'; +Vigano is 'blasphemous'. Is Pope Francis God now, that to criticize him is to blaspheme? Certainly, Cardinal Ouellet makes Francis sound godlike: Pope Francis is "a true shepherd … a resolute and compassionate father with a prophetic grace for the Church and for the world" and (ominously) "for the missionary reform he has begun".
Just how can Pope Francis, be he ever so missionary, 'reform' the Church, the Bride of Christ? He sounds more and more like a reincarnation of Luther - who our own Bishop Patrick Dunn is so keen to rehabilitate.
Catholics must believe the revealed truths of the Deposit of Faith, just as they are, unreformed, because God revealed them and the Church has infallibly proclaimed them. Not to believe them is sin of the mortal kind. Which of these truths - or how many (starting with the indissolubility of marriage perhaps?) does Pope Francis intend to 'reform'?
To all these truths Catholics must give the assent of faith. Other Church teachings which are not proposed infallibly and so carry no guarantee of truth require religious assent, required only by obedience, not faith. And if there is conflict between the two, obedience gives way to faith. We are required to be faithful even if it means resistance to false teaching, even by the Pope.
Cardinal Ouellet must have forgotten what St Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, has to say about Popes and their utterances:
"Just as it is licit to resist the Pontiff that aggresses the body, it is also licit to resist one who aggresses souls or who disturbs the civil order, or above all who attempts to destroy the Church." Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano was asking legitimate questions about illegitimate activities in the Vatican. A Prince of the Church should surely accept that in charity and humility.
The clincher for me is, Cardinal Ouellet has Cardinal Robert Wuerl, Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago and named by +Vigano as promoting McCarrick, on his side. "Donald Wuerl is a criminal," says an angry mother - reportedly one of many in the Washington DC Diocese."He sent a Gay Mafia priest into our school and he destroyed it."
And don't let's think that in New Zealand we above all that kind of thing. Bullying happens here too.
- In the cathedral of Palmerston North for example, where a parishioner is forbidden to distribute pamphlets attesting to Church doctrine, because, the Bishop says, "This is my cathedral!"
- In ostracism by priests of their few brother priests who like Archbishop Vigano are orthodox.
- In the more subtle ostracizing of lay people who don't get to be on parish councils, for the same reason.
- In the forced resignation of an orthodox lay person from their position in a Church Order made completely untenable by overt bullying
- In the gaslighting by a parish priest of a skilled but orthodox organist (who he knew would play traditional Church music), refusing to allow her to play for Sunday Mass until she can prove her good health (physical or mental?) by attending four Sunday Masses in a row, in his church.
- In a priest's manhandling of a communicant, forcing her from her knees to stand and refusing to give her Communion on the tongue.
Yes, the 'missionary reform' of Pope Francis is well under way in Godzone.
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