Fr. Gerald E. Murray: Viganò’s “Testimony,” One Year Later

Fr. Gerald E. Murray, The Catholic Thing, August 22, 2019

Friends: Today’s column by Father Gerald Murray will be the subject of a special Papal Posse segment tonight at 8:00 E.D.T. on EWTN’s “The World Over.” Host Raymond Arroyo, Father Murray, and Robert Royal will discuss the Vatican’s continued silence on the predations of Theodore McCarrick, as outlined a year ago by Archbishop Viganò. EWTN shows are also available shortly after broadcast on the EWTN YouTube channel.

The first anniversary of the Testimony of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is upon us today. That document, and the events that followed this bombshell, say a great deal about the crisis now facing the Church.

It’s a crisis of truth, of grave immorality and cowardice, of unaccountability by Church hierarchs, of powerful clerics resisting revelation of facts known to them, but hidden from the faithful. It’s a crisis of the ongoing refusal to come clean about what was known about Theodore McCarrick and others, and why decisions were made that protected men who were known to have done great evil, and yet continued to enjoy favor and protection.

On August 22, 2018 Viganò wrote: “Bishops and priests, abusing their authority, have committed horrendous crimes to the detriment of their faithful, minors, innocent victims, and young men eager to offer their lives to the Church, or by their silence have not prevented that such crimes continue to be perpetrated.”

These words are not unlike what Pope Francis himself had written two days earlier in his Letter to the People of God (August 20^th): “With shame and repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives.  We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them.” ….

Read more at  https://www.thecatholicthing.org