August 30, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Is there a direct link between clerical homosexual sex abuse and the legalization of abortion?
The biggest legal victories for the abortion movement in 2018 took place in Chile and Ireland. Both of these countries legalized abortion during or shortly after revelations of massive clerical homosexual sex abuse cases. Chile and Ireland historically were some of the most Catholic countries in the world, but have suffered immensely due to the combined pressures of the mainstream culture's increasingly aggressive secularization and the disillusionment by many Catholics with a Church that perpetrated and covered up countless cases of homosexual sex abuse.
The recent exposé of Cardinal McCarrick and the incredible fallout from it reminds me of another time Cardinal McCarrick was in the news causing grave scandal to the Church.
It was 2004, and I was fresh out of law school; I was just beginning to work in the pro-life movement at American Life League. I remember the first assignment Mrs. Judie Brown gave me was to draft and translate into Spanish an informational brochure on the need to deny communion to pro-abortion politicians based on canon law 915.
It was a daunting assignment given my relatively recent conversion to the Catholic faith, and the fact that my training was in civil law as opposed to Church law. But it made perfect sense to me. If Catholics truly believe that abortion is the intentional killing of a child, then how could people who are active advocates of this horrific crime be in communion with the Church?
At the time, the most notorious pro-abortion politician was Sen. John Kerry, who while running for the presidency described himself as a Catholic in good standing and boasted of having been an altar boy. American Life League had the courage to call out Cardinal McCarrick for allowing this notorious pro-abortion politician to receive communion in Washington DC. In interviews before the election, McCarrick had stated that he was “not comfortable” denying communion to politicians based on their stance on abortion, so American Life League took out a full page Ad in the Washington Times, which showed Jesus on the cross with the question “Cardinal McCarrick: Are you Comfortable Now?”
At the time it seemed to me that it was an aggressive strategy, and perhaps even uncharitable. But as is now so painfully clear to all Catholics, serious crimes require serious consequences, and Cardinal McCarrick deserved much more than a critical full page ad.
I remember explaining this campaign to my non-Catholic friends at the time in the following way: imagine if abusing children became legally acceptable in our society (like it had been in ancient Greece) and that it was overwhelmingly supported by one of the two political parties (like abortion is by the Democrat party today), should Church officials be able to get away with allowing advocates of child abuse to receive communion in order to, as Cardinal McCarrick and his staff stated, avoid politicizing the sacrament?
Little did I know that what I intended as an analogy was actually happening, in fact it was even worse than I imagined in my analogy because not only was McCarrick giving Catholic moral cover to a political advocate of murdering children, he himself was a child abuser and a promoter and enabler of other abusers.
McCarrick's corruption reached such a level, that when he was instructed by Cardinal Ratzinger to communicate to the American bishops that they were to cease admitting pro-abortion politicians to communion, McCarrick withheld Cardinal Ratzinger's memorandum and lied to his fellow bishops, stating instead that it was up to each bishop to decide.
The modus operandi of how McCarrick dealt with communion for abortion advocates is eerily similar to the allegations made by Archbishop Vigano in his recent testimony regarding the handling of child abuse by many in the Church hierarchy. First, a grave moral sin born of a deep disorder is perpetrated through an abuse of power. Then, a conspiracy is formed among the guilty parties leveraging the shared grave immorality in order to amass more power and harden the conspiracy. Lastly, a pattern of corruption is orchestrated with mafia-like carrots and sticks to prevent discovery of the crimes while amassing ever more power at higher and higher levels in the Church.
The act of abortion also shares many similarities with the act of child abuse by a priest. While abortion clearly ends the life of the child in the womb, it also involves the violation of that most central aspect of womanhood which is motherhood. It changes a woman's role from heroic protector of her young to a co-conspirator in murder. It also changes the role of doctors and health care providers, from healers to killers. Likewise, sexual abuse by priests violates the most central aspect of a priest's vocation, which is to be a pastor and protector of his flock. With sexual abuse by priests, the one who should have been protecting the most vulnerable in the flock often becomes the source of perdition to many.
The fallout to the pro-life movement in the United States remains to be seen. For decades the American people have been more pro-life than the courts (or their bishops' conferences) have allowed them to be. Thousands upon thousands of laws have been struck down by pro-abortion courts ensuring almost 100% coverage for the abortion on demand industry. But what if as a result of the clerical homosexual sex abuse cases, even these failed attempts to pass imperfect pro-life laws are abandoned by the majority of America?
What if after 40 years of attempting to change the composition of the Supreme Court, we finally get a court willing to overturn Roe v. Wade, and then it turns out that the secularist culture and the Catholic hierarchy has destroyed the Church to such a point that there is no longer the desire to prohibit abortion? What if abortion is up to the states (the most likely legal scenario) but every state becomes a Massachusetts?
What if America goes from the fourth largest Catholic nation, and the most financially generous, to becoming a national version of the Archdiocese of Boston, a wasteland of scarred fallen away Catholics?
What is clear beyond a shadow of a doubt is that much of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is so corrupt and corrupting that the sooner the full truth comes out, the sooner we can begin to rebuild the Church. It will not be easy and it will not be quick, but we have the certitude that brave pastors like Archbishop Vigano and countless priests and religious will stand up and defend her and remind us that “Christ will never abandon His Church! He generated her in His Blood and continually revives her with His Spirit!”
God help us.