Archdiocese of Newark

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Thinking about 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick: Duin and Abbott say press should keep digging

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The calendar here at GetReligion — like any cyber-workplace — starts getting complicated as we move through Advent and into the entire whirlwind of Hanukkah, Christmas, New Years Day, etc. That’s even true during a pandemic that has kept us (especially older folks like me) locked up.

Still, Julia Duin is out and about this week. However I saw an interesting “other side of the notebook” piece that I knew would interest her. It was linked to the Vatican’s long-delay report about the fall of former cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick and why that story — shrouded in rumors for decades — was so hard for many journalists to cover.

The new piece — “My minor role in exposing McCarrick” — was written by Catholic scribe Matt C. Abbott and ran at RenewAmerica.com.

I asked Julia for a quick comment on the piece and she wrote back: “Matt definitely was one of the early guys to sound the alarm but like the rest of us, he had only hearsay to go on. Not that said hearsay wasn’t convincing. A number of us had been hearing rumors for years and Matt connected the dots quicker than a lot of us [in mainstream newsrooms] who were more constrained toward having to get actual on-the-record people confirm those rumors. As an independent, he could say what he wanted at the time.”

To grasp the context for Abbott’s new comments, it helps to flash back to Julia’s earlier GetReligion posts about the challenges journalists faced dragging this sordid story out into the light of day. Those were:

* “The scandal of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and why no major media outed him.”

* “Cardinal Ted McCarrick, Part II: The New York Times takes a stab at this old story.”

* “How journalists can nail down the rest of the Cardinal McCarrick story — for good.”

The story of the reporting of this story is unbelievably complicated and there are many angles and sources that are still not out in the open.

The best way to place Abbott’s new piece in context is to read a long, long passage drawn from the first of those three Duin posts. There’s no way to edit this down — because reality was complicated. Period. She starts with the fact that several journalists knew that there had been behind-the-scenes legal/financial settlements with victims, but no one could confirm how many or pin down key details:


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Catholic News Agency pulls off investigative coup in the 'Uncle Ted' McCarrick saga

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On the same day that I did a post on how Catholic media are treating the (now former) Cardinal McCarrick affair, Catholic News Agency came up with a bombshell of a story that illustrates the kind of reporting other media should be doing on this scandal.

Upon hearing about how McCarrick’s sexual predilections were well-known decades ago in the Archdioceses of Newark and New York, reporter Ed Condon dug around and found several priests from that era who agreed to talk off the record. The reporter came up with not only killer quotes, but many anecdotes on how Catholic seminaries of that era were male meat markets in every sense of the term.  

It's a must-read:

Recent allegations against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick include reports that he made sexual advances toward seminarians during his tenure as Bishop of Metuchen and Archbishop of Newark.

CNA recently spoke to six priests of the Archdiocese of Newark, and one priest member of a religious order who was a seminarian in New York in the early 1970s, while McCarrick was a priest of the Archdiocese of New York.

The religious priest who spoke to CNA said when he studied in a seminary in New York, McCarrick, who was then an aide to Cardinal Terence Cooke of New York, would sometimes visit. ... So well-known was McCarrick’s reputation, the priest said, that when McCarrick would accompany Cooke to visit the seminary there was a standing joke that they had to "hide the handsome ones" before he arrived.  

I’m cutting and pasting some of the best parts, but you’ve got to read the whole thing.

Later, there is this:

One priest worked in close proximity to the archbishop in the archdiocesan chancery for a number of years. “There were the ‘nephews,’ for sure,” he said. “He had a type: tall, slim, intelligent -- but no smokers.”  …



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A tale of two priests: Why does NJ Advance Media laud only one of them who spoke up?

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The Rev. Peter West is a Roman Catholic priest who spoke out, on his own Facebook page, on issues important to him.

The Rev. Warren Hall is also a Roman Catholic priest who spoke out, on his own Facebook page, on issues important to him.

One priest received opprobrium from NJ Advance Media, the digital age moniker of what used to be the Newark Star-Ledger and other Garden State papers owned by the Newhouse empire. The other priest was lauded as a martyr of sorts following a transfer from one field of ministry to another.

Want to guess who was praised and who was panned?

Here's a hint: Father is a supporter of Donald J. Trump. Another hint: Hall came out as gay.

Can you say (to use the appropriate GetReligion term) Kellerism? That's what came to mind when I saw the West story:

West has assailed millennials as "snowflakes" who attend "cry-ins" and described liberals as "smug and arrogant" people who find solace in puppies and Play-Doh.
He has called Hillary Clinton an "evil witch" and former President Barack Obama a "bum," at one point sharing a post that challenged Obama's authenticity as an African-American because he wasn't raised by a poor single mother in the inner city.
Were West some random internet flamethrower, his posts might garner a shrug in an age of intense political division and social media rancor.
But West, 57, is a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Newark, and some of his withering attacks, while popular with many of his 7,300 Facebook followers from around the country, run counter to the statements and philosophies of his own leader, Newark Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, and his ultimate boss, Pope Francis.

Well, I can't imagine Spencer Tracy starring in "The Father West" story, can you?


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Is it the job of the media to advocate for fired gay employees? RNS says yes

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When should an organization take a stand as to the morals and character of its leaders? 

This question has been the stuff of lawsuits taken all the way to the US Supreme Court and debates in churches as to whether their clergy should be divorced, gay or have been convicted of drunk driving. It’s been the informal chatter  for years that a good percentage of Catholic clergy are gay, but as long as they didn’t broadcast the fact it was a live-and-let-live situation between the priest and his bishop. 

Now things are changing because the legal climate is changing. The U.S. Justice Department is stressing that religious liberties -- think the Health and Human Services mandate wars -- are linked to strong denominational ties linked to clear statements of doctrines. In Christian schools and non-profit groups, that means clear doctrinal covenants and, thus, bishops are starting to let dissenters go. 

In reaction, one RNS news story openly bemoans this fact. A July 20 piece starts thus:

(RNS) In May, the Rev. Warren Hall was abruptly dismissed from his position as the popular campus chaplain at Seton Hall University in New Jersey because the Catholic archbishop of Newark said his advocacy against anti-gay bullying, and his identity as a gay man, undermined church teaching.
Now Hall has written to Pope Francis asking that when the pontiff visits the U.S. in September, he speak out against such actions because they are “alienating” gay Catholics and the many others who support them.


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