Essays in Idleness

Why, asked Karl Kraus, do we take dogs as symbols of loyalty? They are loyal to their masters, not to other dogs. Were I a dog, I wouldn’t trust another. I’ve seen how they treat each other. And let us not start on their sexual morality; they are shameless.

This adage came oddly to mind while reading news about Mister (a.k.a. Cardinal Archbishop) McCarrick. A friend called my attention to his revised honorific, in an article ping’d from the BBC (who of course have their own agenda). He also expressed satisfaction, in the demotion of this Prince of the Church, once a great liberal “mover and shaker” in Washington, DC. Readers of ecclesiastical news will quite understand the feeling. I have taken note of one detail. Mister McCarrick “is alleged to have” molested little boys, but mostly young adult seminarians (we used to distinguish between childhood and youth), not only alone but in groups, leaving many witnesses. That was not the detail. Rather, that it was no secret. He was notorious, and even the paper trail against him goes far back. It is very ugly. No one, who could have, had the guts to do anything about him — because he had such power. This “Uncle Ted” could more easily do something about the complainants.

What I’ve read I have read enough of. We ought to feel queasy — that men do such vicious things, in lust for a moment of sexual gratification. That for their little thrill, they are prepared to corrupt and destroy those who have trusted them. That such perverts have flourished in our hierarchy. This makes me deeply ashamed, as a Roman Catholic. It helps me to understand what happened to the Church in Ireland, and elsewhere; how so many souls could be lost to the faith, and profoundly embittered; turned, in their anger, against the rest of us “tolerant” silent types. It infuriates me when every good priest is undermined by such behaviour. I pray Christ to let us see some justice, here below, where it may still serve as a memorable warning. And that we may get the news straight, and not spun to reflect some ideological conceit, or promote the campaigns of the “gender” contortionists.

Young and old, men and women, were invited to rest their faith in Christ, through this dog-like man, with no loyalty to his fellows. The worst enemies of the Church are within, bow-wow! … It is a sign of the times.

Aren’t we (as Catlicks) in the business of forgiving everyone? I should hope we are not so antinomian. The whole topic is vexed, since the whole idea of forgiveness has “evolved” under the management of secular progressive “thinking,” some of which pretends to be Christian; in which the idea of “mercy” is made utterly worldly, and thereby depraved. We used to hang people for grave crimes. We would pray for their souls before and after — but we did not omit the duty of punishment; or even our satisfaction in seeing some justice done.

For Justice is a “thing,” too. The man who wrote the NYT bestseller, entitled, The Name of God is Mercy, left a few things out. (It is typically modern in its cravenness.)

Yes, “Mister McCarrick” is the latest “start.” Thank you, Rome, for accepting his “resignation,” even if decades after the man should have been publicly defrocked, then surrendered for trial before the civil authorities. It is dark, that only tireless public pressure could breach the smug organizational defences; that conscience alone was so insufficient, among the functionaries of Christ’s own Church, drowning as she has been in functional atheism. There remains so much heroic labour: to drain our swamps, to clean out our Augean stables; to damn all “modernity” to Hell.

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P.S. the usual complaints about this essay, to several of which I can only answer, “Oh, please.” … I confess that Karl Kraus and I may have been unfair to dogs. Indeed, my Chief Irish Veterinary Correspondent was very quick on this point. But no dog has written in against me. … On a point of fact, only the Times of London stripped the subject down to “Mister.” I merely enjoyed watching them do it. My better information is that he remains, “His Excellency, Archbishop Theodore McCarrick,” with the slight proviso that he is suspended a divinis, deprived of all faculties and of any jurisdiction. … Of course, were it up to me, he would be deprived of his licence to get up in the morning. … “But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he be drowned in the uttermost depths of the sea.” (Matthew xviii, &c.)