‘Zero-tolerance’ is supposed to be a reality, not a slogan
I spent my first year in journalism wondering how, how something as big as McCarrick could play out in plain sight for so long and go unchallenged. And, as a canon lawyer with a few years of practice in abuse cases under my belt, I wondered how the basic legal mechanisms of reporting and justice could have failed so spectacularly for so long.
The answers to both those questions became apparent to me in relatively short order. The legal processes failed because McCarrick was — for many, many years — too big to fail in the ecclesiastical world.
He was too highly placed, too well-connected, too well-financed to be held to account by ordinary means. And he was so influential as a tribal figurehead, patron, friend, and source to so many people in the Catholic world that he could count on any rumor about his crimes being dismissed as just that: rumor.
McCarrick could also rely on a knowledge gap in the Catholic press when it came to how abusers operate, and how the Church’s legal system is meant to work, which would prevent people from understanding what was in front of their noses —and make them willing to take any explanation offered to them.
All this came to mind when, amidst the deafening silence surrounding the Príncipi affair, JD wrote about an oft-styled senior and respected figure in Catholic media’s analysis of the case — so far as I am aware practically the only analysis of the case not published at The Pillar.
You can read JD’s reaction to that here, if you haven’t already, and I would urge you to do so.
For me, reading John Allen Jr.’s analysis brought everything I thought and wondered and learned during the McCarrick saga sharply back into focus.
Continue reading at Substack