The Cardinal McCarrick Syndrome

Richard Sipe, the former Benedictine monk and sociologist who knows more about the dimensions and details of the Catholic clerical sex abuse crisis than almost anybody (see the extended entry for details), is publicly appealing to Pope Benedict XVI to understand that much, perhaps most, of the problem is systemic in the US hierarchy. Sipe has now made public some information that lots of people have had privately for years. Here is his blockbuster allegation:

While I was Adjunct Professor at a Pontifical Seminary, St. Mary’s Baltimore (1972-1984) a number of seminarians came to me with concerns about the behavior of Theodore E. McCarrick then bishop of Metuchen New Jersey. It has been widely known for several decades that Bishop/Archbishop now Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick took seminarians and young priests to a shore home in New Jersey, sites in New York, and other places and slept with some of them. He established a coterie of young seminarians and priests that he encouraged to call him “Uncle Ted.” I have his correspondence where he referred to these men as being “cousins” with each other.

Catholic journalist Matt C. Abbott already featured the statements of two priests (2005) and one ex-priest (2006) about McCarrick. All three were "in the know" and aware of the Cardinal McCarrick’s activities in the same mode as I had heard at the seminary. None of these reporters, as far as Abbott knew, had sexual contact with the cardinal in the infamous sleepovers, but one had first hand reports from a seminarian/priest who did share a bed and received cards and letters from McCarrick. The modus operendi is similar to the documents and letters I have received from a priest who describes in detail McCarrick’s sexual advances and personal activity. At least one prominent journalist at the Boston Globe was aware of McCarrick from his investigation of another priest, but until now legal documentation has not been available. And even at this point the complete story cannot be published because priest reporters are afraid of reprisals.

Your Holiness, you must seek out and listen to these stories, as I have from many priests about their seduction by highly placed clerics, and the dire consequences in their lives that does end with personal distess.

I know the names of at least four priests who have had sexual encounters with Cardinal McCarrick. I have documents and letters that record the first hand testimony and eye witness accounts of McCarrick, then archbishop of Newark, New Jersey actually having sex with a priest, and at other times subjecting a priest to unwanted sexual advances.

Your Holiness, you must seek out and listen to the stories, as I have from many priests about their seduction by highly placed clerics, and the dire consequences in their lives that does end in their victimization alone.

Such behavior fosters confusion and makes celibacy problematic for seminarians and priests. This abuse paves the way for them to pass the tradition on—to have sex with each other and even with minors.

Sipe goes on to say:

The main point is that the dynamic is in operation and affects even good, observant clergy who cannot speak openly because the secret system will not tolerate them. Where are they to go? The press will not touch malfeasance on this level of the power system without impossible vetting that will expose the whistler blower to potential or certain destruction. Who of the many-in-the-know within the secret clerical system have that kind of courage?

What I have written to Pope Benedict (Cf. home page) is but a simple example of the systemic dynamic of celibate violation within the priesthood and some of the dire consequences for the church, the clergy, and our youth.

I have expressed my awareness of how difficult it is even for him to address this dimension of the problem that I have named the Cardinal McCarrick Syndrome. Great Saints like Pope Gregory I, Peter Damian, the patron of church reform, and the other saints illustrated in C. Colt Anderson’s Great Catholic Reformers have tried, some with more success than others. (Cf. Books of Note) There is a need for such saints today. The problem is present, operative, and of major magnitude.

Sipe has here written about an open secret among many Catholic priests and secular journalists who have covered the scandal. I will only say that what Sipe reports here is entirely credible, based on numerous interviews and conversations I've had with priests and a few laymen. I can tell you too that none of this is news to the Vatican. None of this has been in the mainstream media for the reason Sipe identifies.

I personally believe the allegations against Cardinal McCarrick are true, for these and another reason I am not at liberty to discuss. But can I prove it? Absolutely not. These remain only allegations, and hearsay. And I have never heard from a single accuser of Cardinal McCarrick that he ever did anything in violation of the criminal law.

I am thinking right now of a former priest I once interviewed -- not a priest who served under McCarrick's authority -- who left the priesthood in deep discouragement. There was a lot of gay sex going on among the priests in his diocese, and allegations of sexual harrassment of seminarians by priests at the seminary. The bishop (who had a reputation of his own for a lack of integrity on sexual matters) swept in, did a sham investigation, said there was no problem at all, case closed. It was a total cover-up. This is where the term "lavender mafia" comes from.

I once interviewed Sipe for a piece I was doing, and while Sipe is on the liberal side of the US Catholic church, he was quite open and blunt about his research into how homosexual networks form in some US seminaries, and work to advance the careers of priests who play ball, and thwart the careers of priests who don't. Sipe told me that he would advise any gay Catholic, or Catholic with any doubts about his sexual orientation, not to go to seminary now -- not because gays cannot be good priests, but because the network is so extensive, and so powerful, that the young man would be targeted and set up to be compromised.

(Sipe, who left the monastery to marry, is an opponent of mandatory celibacy, believing that it helps build structures of secrecy that makes abuse more likely. You should read his own statement in which he says that it's wrong to scapegoat homosexuals as homosexuals for the abuse scandal. It's nuanced in important ways.)

Sipe is the first person of his authority, background and knowledge to accuse McCarrick publicly. I am glad he's broken the silence. I hope that Sipe's outspokenness inspires those priests and others to whom I spoke about all this some years ago to go on the record. Cardinal McCarrick is retired now, his power diminished (though there can be no doubt that any priest who rats out a cardinal, even a retired one, is putting everything on the line). If Sipe is telling the truth, and I believe he is, this problem is by no means isolated to McCarrick. What the McCarrick Syndrome is about are conditions that good priests live under, knowing that their ordinaries are abusers or harrassers, but who cannot speak out effectively against this corruption because they understandably fear retribution.

The silence from those who have important witness to bear does not reform the Church. Yes, it's easy for me to say this; I'm no longer Catholic, and even when I was Catholic, all I had to lose was the friendship of bishops (and I did, in one case that was stinging to me). Still, there it is. Pope Benedict, I believe, has been truly and deeply affected by what he's learned about the abuse scandal. He should appoint an investigator he trusts, and send him and his team to the US to interview priests, and offer them protection. He has a great opportunity to clear out the rot. There are more than a few priests who need to talk about this sexual corruption in chanceries, seminaries and other seats of authority. It would be a mercy if the Holy Father would offer them the chance to do so.