Dear St. E’s parish family,

This week a Pennsylvania grand jury report immersed us in the horror and monstrously evil scandal of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests and the many failures of bishops to address this abuse.

And we were already reeling from the Archbishop McCarrick scandal.

We will be addressing these devastating scandals in a variety of ways over the months ahead.

For now, I would simply ask for your prayers for the survivors of clergy sexual abuse, for their abusers, and for our bishops. We will incorporate such prayers into our Sunday Masses at St. E’s on a regular basis.

Just as importantly, please pray and press our bishops for the whole truth about these scandals, including the truth about who knew what and when did they know it? We need this truth as a starting point for authentic reform towards a holier Church.

Below is the homily I gave the first Sunday after the Archbishop McCarrick scandal was reported. I believe it’s still relevant.

Sincerely in Christ,
           Monsignor Bill Parent

Today we celebrate the birth of the son of our parish patron saint, the birth of the greatest prophet in the history of the world apart from Jesus himself, the birth of a man who spoke the truth at all times regardless of the personal consequences.

In honor of John the Baptist, and in light of the terrible news about Cardinal McCarrick that came out this week, I feel compelled and obligated to tell you the truth about events that are still unfolding before us – events that can only be healed by truth.

As some of you know, I was the director of priestly vocations for the Archdiocese of Washington for a little over four years. I started with Cardinal Hickey, and then served for about a-year-and-a-half with Cardinal McCarrick.

As the vocations director, I worked more closely with him than anyone else in his administration except for his priest secretaries. I am personally devastated by the news that broke this week. But I’m also deeply troubled by the related news that’s still breaking.

By now you have undoubtedly heard the terrible news of allegations involving Cardinal McCarrick and a 16-year-old altar boy 47 years ago as a priest in the Archdiocese of New York. The allegations have been deemed credible by the Church, and we’ll publish Cardinal Wuerl’s statement about this in next Sunday’s bulletin. It’s available on the archdiocesan website if you want to read it sooner.

But there’s another closely related but ultimately distinct story that’s still breaking. It’s distinct because it does not involve the abuse of children but rather the abuse of power. This other story has been in the blogosphere for several days but hit the New York Times today in Ross Douthat’s column. The title of the column says it all: “#MeToo Comes for the Archbishop” – an allusion to Willa Cather’s classic novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop.

The gist of the article is that many people in the Church have known for decades about allegations involving Cardinal McCarrick and sexual misconduct with priests and seminarians while he was the Bishop of Metuchen and Archbishop of Newark.

Since Ross Douthat is a Catholic conservative, some of us may be tempted to dismiss his article as a hit job. But listen to this tweet in response to Douthat’s column by Fr. James Martin, the Jesuit author and an editor of the Jesuit magazine, America, certainly no conservative. He tweeted:

I agree with @DouthatNYT. No matter what it means for conservatives or liberals, or for gay or straight priests, we must face up to the truth that some clerics have used their positions of power to prey on younger priests and seminarians.

Like the broader MeToo movement, this is rapidly becoming a two-edged sword of a story. It cuts one way in asking what exactly happened, and it cuts the other way in asking who knew about what happened and when did they know? I believe we all deserve the truth on both edges of this sword.

And I owe you the truth as an insider in the McCarrick administration. You’re going to read and hear that everybody knew about these allegations, which is true but also untrue in important ways.

Here’s what I knew in the early 2000’s: there were widespread stories about Cardinal McCarrick’s past social gatherings of priests and/or seminarians at a New Jersey beach house. Many of us heard those stories, invariably accompanied by innuendo but no facts.

When I heard these stories I pressed for facts:

•  Did you witness anything yourself?

•  Do you know anybody who witnessed this alleged misconduct?

•  Do you know any specific names of priests or seminarians involved in this misconduct?

The answers to these and similar questions were always, “No,” and the innuendo always seemed to me to be nothing more than a vicious rumor.

And so I defended my Cardinal Archbishop. Many times. In 2002 I even wrote him a personal letter promising him my support in defending him from what I honestly believed were vicious rumors.

Also in 2002, at the height of the media’s coverage of the Church’s sex abuse scandals, it was widely rumored that the media was going to out an actively gay American Cardinal. Everyone assumed it was Cardinal McCarrick, but the story never came out. I thought at the time that this non-story confirmed that these stories were all just vicious rumors.

But today I’m not so sure. The news that’s coming out now about these accusations is deeply troubling. And I agree with Ross Douthat and Fr. James Martin that the truth needs to come out so that we can be certain that this kind of abuse of power has no place in the Church in the future.

Allow me to add a brief, much happier epilogue: the truth has power to heal, often in ways we don’t imagine possible.

My last incoming class of seminarians was during the height of the scandals in the summer of 2002. An amazing thing happened: 16 men started seminary in that class. It was a huge class for Washington. We didn’t keep historical records of incoming classes, so we didn’t know how long it had been since we had a class that big, but we knew it had been at least 20 years.

I kept hearing the same thing from these men over and over again. “I’ve been sitting on the fence about this vocation for a while, but with all the news about these scandals, it’s time for me to get off the fence and to try to help my Church.”

And today our Church needs all of us to help. This is not a story about celibacy any more than the MeToo movement is a story about marriage. This is about the abuse of power and the way such abuse can corrupt institutions. Only the truth will set us free, and we can help our Church by demanding truth.

So we pray for all who have been harmed in any way by clergy abuse, we pray for their abusers, and we pray for truth that will heal us. 
St. John the Baptist, pray for us.