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August 23, 2018
NEW YORK – A group of young Catholics has urged the U.S. bishops to “take clear action” by conducting an independent investigation of who knew what and when about actions by Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, who has been accused of sexual abuse.
They also stressed that the bishops should engage in “formal acts of public penance and reparation” for what has happened.
“An Open Letter from Young Catholics” was published online Aug. 8 on the website of First Things, a journal of the Institute on Religion and Public Life, which is a research and education center based in New York. The journal is printed 10 times a year.
The letter, addressed to “Dear Fathers in Christ,” had 43 signatures. The group includes authors, writers and editors; the heads of Catholic and other organizations; and professors, assistant professors, doctoral candidates and research scholars in various disciplines at Catholic and secular universities in the U.S. and elsewhere.
“You are the shepherds of the church. If you do not act, evil will go unchecked,” the letter said.
It asked the bishops to “agree to a thorough, independent investigation into claims of abuse by Archbishop McCarrick, both of minors and of adults. We want to know who in the hierarchy knew about his (alleged) crimes, when they knew it and what they did in response. This is the least that would be expected of any secular organization; it should not be more than we can expect from the church.”
The letter also asked that “the silence surrounding sexual impropriety in the church be broken” and that the bishops “take clear action when priests flout the church’s sexual teaching and that networks of sexually active priests be rooted out.”
The letter writers described themselves as some being younger than others but that they were “all children in the decades leading up to the sexual abuse crisis of 2002.”
They said they would speak out when they “discover clerical sexual impropriety” and would work to “protect the good priests and seminarians who are threatened when they refuse to condone the sins of their fellow clerics, or when they speak out about them.”
The letter did not mask its anger or disappointment with the current situation in the church.
“We are also angry,” the letter said, about the “credible and sustained” report of Archbishop McCarrick’s abuse of a minor and over allegations of his abuse of seminarians and young priests. The group also is angry “that ‘everybody knew’ about these crimes, that so few people did anything about them and that those who spoke out were ignored.”
The letter mentioned “reports of networks of sexually active priests who promote each other and threaten those who do not join in their activities; of young priests and seminarians having their vocations endangered because they refused to have sex with their superiors or spoke out about sexual impropriety; and of drug-fueled orgies in Vatican apartments.”
The writers said: “Bishops to make clear that any act of sexual abuse or clerical unchastity degrades the priesthood and gravely harms the church.”