WaPo | In the wake of a summer of sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, topped this weekend with an explosive letter
alleging that Pope Francis himself covered for an abusive cardinal,
American Catholics are agitating for major changes in their church.
Perhaps
for the first time, Catholics of all political stripes who protected
their hierarchy through what had once seemed the worst of the sexual
abuse crisis are training their ire on it. They are calling publicly for
bishop resignations, Robert S. Mueller-like investigations, and
boycotts of Mass and donations. Even the biggest fans of Francis and his
reformist agenda are now questioning whether he is actually part of the
problem.
“This is a different reaction from the
laity than I’ve ever seen before,” said Adrienne Alexander, the founder
of a nascent national movement called Catholics for Action that has
staged protests in seven cities in the past two weeks, with more planned
in the coming days. “Regular old church folks in the pews are saying:
This bishop has to go. Or: All bishops have to go. That’s just something
I’ve never seen from the laity.”
And
with the biting 11-page letter by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on
Saturday, in which the former Vatican diplomat to Washington called for
Francis’s resignation, some Catholics are voicing despair about the path
forward.
“The hope of reform on this issue: If it can’t be
achieved under Pope Francis, who can it be achieved under?” asked
Christopher Jolly Hale, who helped lead Catholic outreach for President
Obama and has until recently been a prominent supporter of Francis. He
added: “No one with good conscience can really defend him with his
record on sexual abuse. It’s been an absolute disappointment.”
Viganò’s
inflammatory yet unverified letter alleges that Francis’s predecessor
Pope Benedict XVI secretly sanctioned former cardinal Theodore E.
McCarrick for sexually harassing young priests and seminarians, but
Francis let the sanctions slide. He also obliquely implicated D.C.
Cardinal Donald Wuerl in covering up the behavior of McCarrick, who last
month became the first cardinal in history to resign as a result of
sexual abuse allegations.
The
letter “shoots the lack of trust right up the ladder,” said Joseph
Capizzi, a professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of
America. “As a lay person, and I think I speak for a lot of people, we
no longer trust these men anymore.”
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