Those who have denounced scandals, who ask for justice and truth, are considered guilty.
Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published his “Between the Lines” of the McCarrick report last week. He included this sentence about persecuted whistleblowers, with a hotlink embedded. The link takes you to the interview Michael Voris did with me. I appreciate the compliment, Excellency.
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The Vatican McCarrick report contains some information about the year 2006. That’s when then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick got rushed into retirement.
The report does not, however, mention the sacristy tussle between the Apostolic Nuncio and McCarrick, over who should carry the crozier into the installation Mass for the new Archbishop. And the report does not explore the confusion of the priests and people of Washington.
We knew something weird had happened. We just did not know why.
Healthy Cardinal Archbishops customarily serve well beyond their 75th birthdays. In the spring of 2006, the sitting Cardinal Archbishop of Washington remained stunningly energetic. Only a few months earlier, McCarrick had publicly declared that the pope wanted him to continue to serve as Archbishop for at least two more years.
In other words, McCarrick’s removal from office in May ’06 embarrassed him enormously. Also, as the subsequent years unfolded, a certain person almost never turned up at diocesan liturgies: the Archbishop emeritus.
The question was: Why?
We know the answer now: Because McCarrick belonged in jail. But no one in the Vatican had the guts to deal with that fact. They tried instead to keep the miscreant out of public view. (More on this foolhardy conspiracy in a subsequent post.)
On Tuesday Pope Francis appointed a long-time co-worker of our bishop to be the new bishop of Buffalo, New York.
Bishop Michael Fisher and Bishop Barry Knestout have these things in common:
Both were appointed to career-track jobs in the Washington archdiocesan office by Theodore McCarrick. Both held those positions when the unsettling 2006 Archbishop shuffle occurred. Both moved up into positions of even greater responsibility during the subsequent couple of years–when the Vatican was orchestrating its campaign to keep the McCarrick situation hidden from the public.
What did these two men know about McCarrick at that time? Did they know things that the rest of us did not? Did they know the real explanation for the sudden changing of the guard and the attempted sequestration of the Archbishop emeritus?
If the Vicar for Administration (Knestout) and the Vicar for Clergy (Fisher) did not know the reason for the strange situation, why didn’t they ask their new boss, Donald Wuerl? He had known for two years that McCarrick had sexually harassed at least one seminarian.
From 2006 on, the McCarrick situation in Washington clearly demanded an explanation. Did Knestout and Fisher not want one?
Father Mark White Blog 
McCarrick won the sacristy tussle. But then he always won. The hierarchy let Mr. Charismatic win because he made the Catholic Church look smart and trendy. Who cares about a little sex abuse when your man is a hotshot who impresses the world outside the Church?
Ann White
It breaks one’s heart to see these smiling faces and know the evil and sinfulness that resides in the hierarchy of my dear Catholic church today.
Judy
What is that saying OMG…! After reading this whole article I am left feeling totally drained. Now I am scared. Not because I can lose anything for myself or my faith but I now have lost all faith in our hierarchy and in the Pope himself. This leaves me as a parishioner watching my priest Father Mark being totally crucified as I had told Father Mark about this dream I had of that very thing happening to him. Now how do we go forward in defending our priests who were called to the priesthood by God by the Lord? Were these other men truly called to the priesthood by the Lord? Or were they called by Satan to have a place in which to hide and run with their perverted behaviors. This kind of secrecy and reports that toe tap around much of the truth it’s beginning to look like the world at Large. My prayers continue for those priests that speak out the truth and try to rectify our church from this evil. Truly only our prayers and God can help we need to be a little more vocal perhaps a lot more vocal about how the evil is putting our Parish priests out to pasture away from the souls that they were garnishing for the Lord . That’s what’s scaring me that the hierarchy the evil is removing priests who were helping us to work towards attaining our final home in heaven. God help us all…
O Jesus, I surrender myself to you, take care of everything
Granted this whole saga is complicated and hard to follow, so bear with me, but when you say that “McCarrick belonged in jail” from 2006 on, are you saying there was proof he had committed crimes against minors way back then? Surely he “objectively” belonged in jail, but they’ll say nobody knew that then, at least nobody who was willing to come forward. Is it certain that ADW or anyone else in the hierarchy would have known that back in 2006? If so, how?
Good question, Michael. Footnote 1385 on page 439 recounts how, in 1998, Mr. James Grein tried to tell Pope John Paul II about McCarrick abusing him. The report calls Grein’s statement about this “uncorroborated.” What I mean is that McCarrick was, in fact, guilty of crimes punishable by imprisonment, and I think we can say that a genuinely diligent investigation would have established proof of this well before 2006. I don’t mean to say, though, that I know anything in particular about something that someone in the Archdiocese knew, other than McCarrick’s sexual harassment of Robert Ciolek. That concrete piece of evidence, however, was certainly enough to establish in a reasonable person’s mind that McCarrick was a predator who almost certainly had other victims, which could very well have included minors.