No one should be surprised by the recent revelation that Pope Francis believes that civil unions between same-sex couples ought to be legal. Just as no one should be surprised by the promotion of Wilton Gregory—Archbishop of Washington, D.C., oligarch, and political activist—to the College of Cardinals this past Sunday. The two are intimately connected, as many are probably aware. The character and quality of Francis’s papacy is abundantly clear by now and represents a continuation of the Catholic Church’s theological, cultural, and intellectual emphases since the mid-twentieth century. We should not be surprised when, fifty years hence the Church itself is performing same-sex marriages and nominating female cardinals. This is the path we are on.
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The Case Against Wilton Gregory
- Gregory was a protégé of the thoroughly disgraced Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, serving as an auxiliary bishop under him for 10 years in Chicago.
- Gregory, as Archbishop of Atlanta, maintained Bernardin’s program of gay promotion and propaganda in the Church.
- Gregory was himself identified as a homosexual by Richard Sipe, an early expert in the Catholic sexual abuse crisis.
- Gregory appointed a pro-gay priest to be diocesan spiritual director for victims of sexual abuse by clergy.
- Gregory restored priest to active ministry after involvement in a homosexual relationship.
- Gregory personally invited pro-gay Vatican adviser Fr. James Martin to give a speech titled “Showing Welcome and Respect in Our Parishes to LGBT Catholics” at both St. Thomas More Parish and at Atlanta’s Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Martin described Gregory as “thoughtful, progressive and open-minded,” and noted his LGBT outreach.
- Gregory has permitted the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Atlanta, GA) to act as a center for LGBT events, including LGBT potluck socials and participating in the city’s Pride Parade. Since 2014, he has also allowed the pro-homosexual and pro-transgenderism “Catholic” group, Fortunate and Faithful Families, to hold retreats in his Atlanta Chancery, while personally saying Mass for the group.
- Gregory gave the keynote address at the 2017 Association of United States Catholic Priests (AUSCP) conference, a dissident group that backs the ordination of women to the priesthood and is open to the idea of the Church approving the use of contraception.
- Gregory was accused of covering-up sexual abuse in Atlanta.
- Gregory built himself a $2.2 million mansion which he later was forced to sell when news broke about scandal.
- Gregory, as president of the USCCB in 2004, proclaimed that after two years of relentless investigations into priests who sexually abused children and the bishops who protected them, “the scandal is history.“
- Gregory was president of the USCCB at the time of the 2002 sex abuse crisis and allowed Theodore McCarrick to be the face of the bishops response to crisis.
- Gregory and McCarrick helped exempt bishops from the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.
- Gregory allowed Frank Keating, president of the National Review Board (the lay board created by Gregory in 2002 to help address the abuse crisis), to be forced out because he butted-heads with uncooperative bishops like Roger Mahony.
- Gregory, together with Theodore McCarrick, concealed the contents of a 2003 letter from Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger advising the US Bishops that ministers of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it to pro-abortion politicians.
- Gregory helped Chicago’s Cardinal Blaise Cupich launch high-level talks on Amoris Laetitia, the papal document that sparked calls for a change to Church discipline on marriage.