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‘To Bear Witness to Corruption in the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church Was a Painful Decision’
So begins the third “testimony” of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, on the ongoing sexual abuse/coverup scandal in the Church (h/t @9thdistrictneighbor). With this latest installment of “he said”/”he said,” Archbishop Viganò restates the key points of his original testimony and also answers the rebuke he received from Marc Cardinal Ouellet.
It was good to have the key points listed succinctly and to have an answer to Cardinal Ouellet’s letter, but what touched me most were the reasons Viganò gave for writing his testimonies. He strikes me as a man of great faith (which is in direct contrast to how I view those involved in this scandal).
He opens strongly:
To bear witness to corruption in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was a painful decision for me, and remains so. But I am an old man, one who knows he must soon give an accounting to the Judge for his actions and omissions, one who fears Him who can cast body and soul into hell. A Judge who, even in his infinite mercy, will render to every person salvation or damnation according to what he has deserved. Anticipating the dreadful question from that Judge – “How could you, who had knowledge of the truth, keep silent in the midst of falsehood and depravity?” — what answer could I give?
As a good shepherd, knowing that the Church exists to give glory to God and for the salvation of souls, Archbishop Viganò continues as to why he had to speak:
I testified fully aware that my testimony would bring alarm and dismay to many eminent persons: churchmen, fellow bishops, colleagues with whom I had worked and prayed. I knew many would feel wounded and betrayed. I expected that some would in their turn assail me and my motives. Most painful of all, I knew that many of the innocent faithful would be confused and disconcerted by the spectacle of a bishop’s charging colleagues and superiors with malfeasance, sexual sin, and grave neglect of duty. Yet I believe that my continued silence would put many souls at risk, and would certainly damn my own. <snip>
Therefore I spoke. For it is the conspiracy of silence that has wrought and continues to wreak great harm in the Church — harm to so many innocent souls, to young priestly vocations, to the faithful at large. With regard to my decision, which I have taken in conscience before God, I willingly accept every fraternal correction, advice, recommendation, and invitation to progress in my life of faith and love for Christ, the Church and the Pope.
After listing his key points and responding directly to Cardinal Ouellet, Archbishop Viganò alludes to the “public remonstrances directed at (him)” and notes “two omissions, two dramatic silences.”
The first silence regards the plight of the victims. The second regards the underlying reason why there are so many victims, namely, the corrupting influence of homosexuality in the priesthood and in the hierarchy.
Referencing the first silence, Archbishop Viganò once again returns to the theme of salvation of souls:
As to the first, it is dismaying that, amid all the scandals and indignation, so little thought should be given to those damaged by the sexual predations of those commissioned as ministers of the gospel. This is not a matter of settling scores or sulking over the vicissitudes of ecclesiastical careers. It is not a matter of politics. It is not a matter of how church historians may evaluate this or that papacy. This is about souls. Many souls have been and are even now imperiled of their eternal salvation.
And to the second silence, he strongly rejects Pope Francis’s explanation that the scandal is due to “clericalism”:
As to the second silence, this very grave crisis cannot be properly addressed and resolved unless and until we call things by their true names. This is a crisis due to the scourge of homosexuality, in its agents, in its motives, in its resistance to reform. It is no exaggeration to say that homosexuality has become a plague in the clergy, and it can only be eradicated with spiritual weapons. It is an enormous hypocrisy to condemn the abuse, claim to weep for the victims, and yet refuse to denounce the root cause of so much sexual abuse: homosexuality. It is hypocrisy to refuse to acknowledge that this scourge is due to a serious crisis in the spiritual life of the clergy and to fail to take the steps necessary to remedy it….
It is well established that homosexual predators exploit clerical privilege to their advantage. But to claim the crisis itself to be clericalism is pure sophistry. It is to pretend that a means, an instrument, is in fact the main motive.
Seeming to break away from his earlier call for the Holy Father to resign if he would be found complicit in this scandal, Archbishop Viganò returns again to the theme of the salvation of souls and pleads for strong leadership from the Pope:
Denouncing homosexual corruption and the moral cowardice that allows it to flourish does not meet with congratulation in our times, not even in the highest spheres of the Church. I am not surprised that in calling attention to these plagues I am charged with disloyalty to the Holy Father and with fomenting an open and scandalous rebellion. Yet rebellion would entail urging others to topple the papacy. I am urging no such thing. I pray every day for Pope Francis — more than I have ever done for the other popes. I am asking, indeed earnestly begging, the Holy Father to face up to the commitments he himself made in assuming his office as successor of Peter. He took upon himself the mission of confirming his brothers and guiding all souls in following Christ, in the spiritual combat, along the way of the cross. Let him admit his errors, repent, show his willingness to follow the mandate given to Peter and, once converted let him confirm his brothers (Lk 22:32).
Finally, Archbishop Viganò closes with an appeal to his brother bishops to reveal the truth, while reminding them what is at stake: the salvation of souls.
In closing, I wish to repeat my appeal to my brother bishops and priests who know that my statements are true and who can so testify, or who have access to documents that can put the matter beyond doubt. You too are faced with a choice. You can choose to withdraw from the battle, to prop up the conspiracy of silence and avert your eyes from the spreading of corruption. You can make excuses, compromises and justification that put off the day of reckoning. You can console yourselves with the falsehood and the delusion that it will be easier to tell the truth tomorrow, and then the following day, and so on.
On the other hand, you can choose to speak. You can trust Him who told us, “the truth will set you free.” I do not say it will be easy to decide between silence and speaking. I urge you to consider which choice– on your deathbed, and then before the just Judge — you will not regret having made.
I believe Archbishop Viganò when he says the decision to bear witness to the corruption in the hierarchy of the Church was a painful decision for him and remains so.
I also believe that his motives are true and good: for the glory of God and His Church and for the salvation of souls.
May the truth set us free.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
It’s kind of obvio0us that a lot of the priests, bishops, cardinals, etc. currently running things are not actual believing Catholics. Rather, they are leftist organization men, committed to a political ideology.
Benedict did the church a great disservice when he chickened out on the clean-up and left the wasteland to the politicians.
Pope Francis must step down. Now.
My impression is that the New Testament does not play favorites or take partisan positions but is the unerring Word of God.
As a Catholic who has studied Scripture and apologetics and the writings of the early Church, I disagree with you completely that the Protestant view of the Christianity sola scriptura, by Scripture alone!, makes any sense whatsoever to describe the early Church, since the New Testament Scriptures were not even written for decades after the death and resurrection of Christ.
The Church is the instrument Christ left us for salvation.
The Church is the instrument which codified scripture so we could know which writings are inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The Church is the instrument that caused thousands to be baptized when they heard the Word of the Lord proclaimed, as Luke recounts in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, how Peter and the others of the Eleven spoke in Jerusalem and by their words and actions brought many to Christ.
As St. Ignatius of Antioch, bishop, said in the first century in letters to his flock on his way to martyrdom in Rome,
Doesn’t sound like the early Church was very Protestant to me…
I agree with you. I hope one day we find out why he felt he didn’t have the strength to continue to fight.
Perhaps there is some good to come out of this. We had two monumental popes in Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. Many who were great fans of JP2 and B16 are vociferous critics of Pope Francis (myself included). As Xavier Rynne II writes:
My faith has been strengthened during this disastrous (IMHO) papacy of Pope Francis. I love the papacy, but we need to keep the office in perspective.
I understand the sentiment Mike, but disagree. Having two living ex-Popes would be a disaster to an already confusing time in the Church.
I’m with Archbishop Viganò on this (remember that he initially called for the Pope to resign if the allegations of his complicity in the coverup were true). As he wrote in his letter:
Will Pope Francis do this? Who knows? But I see it as the only good solution.
Right there with you, Scott.
“But to indict all criticism of and challenge to the Holy Father as “dissent” is not serious theologically; it betrays a certain nervousness about the plausibility of the prosecutor’s own position; and it certainly isn’t what used to be called “churchmanship,” which is badly in need of revival these days.”
Some of us are fans.
I’m just glad that Francis can’t have Vigano burned at the stake, like previous popes did to people who asked inconvenient questions. Not every change in tradition is bad.
I am curious – do you think that there would ever have Bibles in vernacular languages without Luther? Even if you do not like the process, the result can be beneficial. The modern idea of the nation-state was born out of Catholics and Protestants butchering each other until Europe was exhausted. I have an authorized (with a N.O.) Catholic history of the Church that discusses early Catholic opposition to a democratic republic and freedom of religion. That changed later, and John Paul the Great became a great champion of freedom against tyranny. I do not see how America could have existed in any recognizable form without the existence of Protestantism.
I think you don’t have a strong sense of the history of the Bible.
Perhaps you fail to realize that the Vulgate Bible, the translation of St. Jerome for the most part, was itself putting the Bible into the vernacular.
Have you ever heard of the great saints, the brothers and bishops Cyril and Methodius? They created the writing called cyrillic today, and around 866 A.D. translated the Bible into Slavonic.
Alfred the Great had a large part of the Bible translated into the English of the day in around 900 A.D. The Catalans had a complete Bible in their language in the early 1300s and in 1488 a Czech version came out.
So yes, even before Luther or Calvin, Scripture was available in the vernacular.
I thought the Vulgate Bible was in Latin.
Are you being funny?
Latin was the language that most Christians spoke every day in Europe in the 300s, not Greek or Aramaic or Hebrew. In other words, the vernacular of the day.
Except for the Greeks, of course, who still spoke Greek then. But also Latin.
I’m not being funny. What per centage of the population of Europe do you think spoke or read Latin? 1? 2?
I don’t know how many people could read, but I doubt that half the population could read any language.
As for speaking, I think the answer is much higher than half, or more than 50% of the population.
Perhaps you could start here with this Wikipedia entry on “Languages of the Roman Empire.”
It doesn’t give an exact number, and of course there were not a lot of polls or what have you done back then that have survived to the present day to give us a clear number, but the W entry makes it clear that Latin was the language spoken by the vast majority of the Roman empire, even if the inhabitants also spoke another language.
There is a reason European languages are called Romance languages. They developed from Latin dialects, hence the “roma” part of the name.
I was thinking the Vulgate came along in the ninth or tenth century, not the fourth.
Why was there opposition to a Bible in languages other than Latin during the Reformation era? Was it dislike because of who was advocating it? Was it a desire to keep the Bible strictly in the hands of nobles and clerics? I get that you all love Latin intensely, but it was not the common language – except among scholars.
I mean, Jerome was criticized for the Vulgate – people were upset because it sounded different from the previous versions they had used.
Ah.
Well, it was the vernacular translation of the Bible and was intended as such.
Actually, the opposition was to bad translations. (I know, I know, that’s not what you’ve heard before and it sounds fishy to you. I have lots of Protestant friends… as well as a good number of formerly Protestant friends.)
Gutenberg’s Bible was printed around 1460 or something. Suddenly books became much much cheaper, and many books proliferated.
Here’s an encyclopedia entry that explains it all, in great detail, since I have to go work on my Sunday dinner. Enjoy!
The Word is so super important that it is super important to make sure we get it right. Otherwise we have things like the Jehovah Witness bible translation.
He’s right. The problem isn’t men wanting to have sex with men. The problems are:
It would be nice if it was just a homosexuality problem, because then you could just put on some gay porn and kick out every guy who gets aroused. The problem is the widespread ignoring of responsibilities to teach, correct, and protect the souls under one’s care.
Homosexuality in the priesthood makes this problem ten times more severe that it likely would otherwise be. That is abundantly clear from the actual abuse statistics. Severe enough to turn problems that tend to be isolated and therefore identifiable and punishable into problems where multiple evil individuals act in concert to hide, excuse, rationalize, and perpetuate the filth.
I agree that the desire to not stigmatize and even normalize homosexuality is a huge part of why this rot has gone so far. But change these perverts’ preferences to women, and the problems of ignoring doctrine and vows while enabling predators do not become less vile.
Heck, if anything, what’s happened should be an argument against letting women into the priesthood. If we can’t keep the men from being raped and pressured into sex, what change to the potential deaconesses and priestesses have?
I don’t think Cupich has ever been right on anything regarding the Church and he swung and missed on this one too.
Archbishop Viganò has it exactly right (and I’ll repeat the quote):
These men are diabolical narcissists.
As to your numbered list, #’s 2, 3, and 6 exist because of the diabolical narcissistic scourge of men having sex with men. #’s 1 and 4 stem from the wishy-washy “spirit of Vatican II” and the terrible catechesis in the Church since V2. #5 seems to be the same as #6.
As Pope Francis said, “Who am I to judge?”. You’ve got this right. The reign of gay is here.
That’s like saying, “If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle”. Stick with what is happening – it is men having sex with men that is driving this scandal.
Exactly.
Don’t forget the follow up:
Straw man alert! I said nothing about how vile it is. Just that homosexual priests and deacons magnifies the problem.
Indeed. It would. (Not to detract from the doctrinal reasons…) Putting people under one roof who are sexually attracted to others with them is very much a problem. Precisely why priests and monks don’t live in close quarters with nuns. Avoiding the “near occasion of sin” as one would say. Precisely the problem that tolerating homosexuals in the priesthood produces.
I would suggest that the history of the Protestant churches favors the Catholic view, and the history of the Catholic hierarchy sure makes it hard to disagree with some Protestant criticisms.
Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian are all descendants of Latin. That those languages exist suggest that a much larger portion of the populace in the Roman Empire spoke Latin than you are recognizing.
This is not only cleverly worded, but I think it is a fair summation.
I don’t think Martin Luther had no valid points or criticisms — the Church needed correction for sure.