New York’s Cardinal Dolan held an online held a video conference for the clergy Tuesday and said that his sources tell him that the McCarrick report will be out later this month. He said he does not know what is in it. The latter seems believable; the former remains to be seen. Amount of Time … Read more
Things aren’t looking great for Bishop of Buffalo Richard Malone. A federal grand jury is investigating his diocese’s handling of clerical sexual abuse cases. That on top of the ongoing, state-wide investigation of New York’s eight Catholic dioceses being conducted by the state’s attorney general. And then there are the scores of civil suits filed recently under the … Read more
Sexual abuse is a plague no matter where it occurs or to whom. But one of the underexplored facets of the clerical sexual abuse crisis in the United States is the way in which marginalized and minority communities have proven particularly susceptible both to abusers themselves and to the malfeasance of bishops and religious superiors … Read more
Next month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will meet in general assembly in Baltimore. The bishops left their November meeting without any decisive action towards ensuring accountability for bishops. Since then, the American bishops have gone on retreat together — at Pope Francis’ request — and the leaders of national episcopal conferences have met … Read more
I once heard a homily on the vocation of priests, which concluded with this challenge to the young men of the parish: “If there’s not at least some part of you that wants to be a priest, then you don’t know what a priest really is.” At the time, being in my mid-20s and not … Read more
Two weeks ago, members of the USCCB executive committee traveled to Rome to ask for the Holy Father’s help in addressing the crisis engulfing the Catholic Church in the United States. They came back empty-handed. The primary goal was to convince the Holy Father to appoint an Apostolic Visitator to investigate the rot and corruption … Read more