Remember Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano? Remember how Vigano, Dr. Taylor Marshall and New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan tried desperately to blame the McCarrick Scandal solely on Pope Francis?
The McCarrick Report: The Venom of Viganò
NOVEMBER 28, 2020 BY GABRIEL BLANCHARD
THIS SERIES DEALS WITH SEXUAL ABUSE. PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION.
AN INTRODUCTION AND FURTHER DISCLAIMERS MAY BE FOUND HERE.
O Lord God, author of peace and lover of concord: Bestow upon us, we pray, a spirit of unity, forgiveness, and charity, together with true humbleness of mind; that, in all our conversation, we may shew forth that righteousness, without which no man shall enter the kingdom of heaven; through Christ Jesus our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
How Many Extra Disclaimers Can I Fit in One Blog Series
Ho boy.
As with my section on the Pope Emeritus, I feel I should offer a disclaimer. I intensely dislike and distrust Archbishop Viganò. I did before I read the McCarrick report, and indeed, even when he released his own letter in 2018, the thing smelled fishy to me (here are my receipts for that). As with Pope Benedict XVI, but in the opposite direction, this dislike might unduly influence my evaluation of his actions, and I feel my readers have a right to know that up front. I’ll do my best.
The 2018 Letter
Carlo Viganò entered the priesthood in 1968, and began working for the Vatican five years later. He served as Nuncio to Nigeria for six years, and then worked for the Vatican’s Secretariat of State in a few different capacities. He again became a nuncio in 2011, this time to the US. In 2016, now 75 years old, the Archbishop went into retirement.
In the late summer of 2018, he published a letter attacking the Pope and a significant number of other prelates. Archbishop Viganò alleged that he had tried to expose McCarrick, and that Pope Benedict had placed sanctions on him. But (he claimed) Pope Francis lifted these, and was even now moving against McCarrick only under media pressure. He claimed to have a lot of documentation but provided little, and based a number of his claims on conjecture—phrases like “I do not know” and “as seems certain” and “I believe that” recur over and over.
Archbishop Viganò has been in hiding since that time, claiming to fear for his life. He continues to publish letters and interviews attacking His Holiness (and a number of other prelates) for following the “homosexual agenda of the New World Order,”1 as one does. He has also started criticizing the Second Vatican Council. This summer he wrote that “from Vatican II onwards a parallel church was built, superimposed over and diametrically opposed to the true Church of Christ” (emphasis his).
Let’s review the documents, shall we?
Archbishop Viganò’s Memoranda
During his time with the Vatican Secretariat of State, Archbishop Viganò wrote two documents (one in 2006, one in 2008) on the McCarrick rumors. In the first, he did suggest an investigation. Cardinal Bertone shared his concerns with the Pope. Viganò asserted that His Holiness placed “sanctions” on McCarrick around 2010, but he didn’t—he merely advised, advice McCarrick mostly circumvented. Moreover, he did this before Viganò’s involvement, and long before 2010.
The Archbishop wrote the second after reading Sipe’s letter. He claimed in 2018 that he urged his superiors to “intervene as soon as possible by removing the cardinal’s hat from McCarrick and [subjecting him] to the sanctions established by the Code of Canon Law … reduction to the lay state.” This is, cough, an exaggeration. Viganò’s 2008 letter (preserved in the Vatican archives) says only this about penalties:
Si vera et probata sunt exposita [if these things be true and proven], it would require an exemplary measure that might have a medicinal function that would soothe the serious scandal for the faithful … For once, it might be healthy if the ecclesiastical authorities were to intervene before the civil authorities and … before the scandal erupts in the press. This would restore a little dignity to a Church so tried and humiliated for so many abominable behaviors on the part of some pastors.
The Archbishop complained that these memoranda weren’t returned to him. However, according to the Vatican, there was no reason they would be. He had no disciplinary powers, after all. And the Curia were already familiar with the contents of both letters before Viganò sent them.
He also said Archbishop Montalvo had warned Rome McCarrick was a predator in 2000. We’ve seen that this seriously misrepresents what Montalvo wrote. The closest he ever came to calling McCarrick “a predator” was to say the rumors were “neither definitively proven nor completely groundless.”
MORE AT LINK - https://www.patheos.com/blogs/mudbloodcatholic/2020/11/the-mccarrick-report-the-venom-of-vigano/