Like climate change or plastic in the ocean?

“I’m hurting, I can’t sleep, I’m sick,” the seminarian told Cupich during an Aug. 29 gathering at which the cardinal spoke to about 200 future priests enrolled at the seminary, according to another person who was there and spoke with the Chicago Sun-Times but asked not to be identified.

The seminarian told Cupich he was a young boy during the last scandal, in the early 2000s — amid a renewed wave of child-rape allegations against priests and cover-ups by their bishop bosses — and “thought this was over,” that the bishops had done their jobs.

Cupich thanked the man for speaking up and said he, too, was sick over the situation.

Minutes later, though, the cardinal said something that struck some of the seminarians as “tone-deaf.”

“I feel very much at peace at this moment. I am sleeping OK,” Cupich said, according to the person in attendance, a man studying to be a priest, who recalled that some fellow seminarians shook their heads in “disbelief.”

Not exactly consistent.

The source said Cupich also told the group that, while the church’s “agenda” certainly involves protecting kids from harm, “we have a bigger agenda than to be distracted by all of this,” including helping the homeless and sick.

That account was confirmed by other sources, including another seminarian also present at the gathering.

One of them said he decided to speak with the Sun-Times because so many Catholics “are hurting,” the cardinal’s remarks were so “non-pastoral,” and “the people of God need to know that their seminarians care” and “aren’t going to repeat the mistakes of the past — not only not repeat them but have them cleaned up.”

He’s losing them, it seems.

More about this q&a session at Mundelein (IL) seminary at Chicago Sun-Times.

See something, say something, Francis. You’ll feel better if you do.

Many international leaders, including Pope Francis, have frequently commented on walls. In February, 2017, Pope Francis told the general audience in St. Peter’s square, “In the social and civil context as well, I appeal not to create walls but to build bridges,” On March 18, 2017, he tweeted “I invite you not to build walls but bridges, to conquer evil with good, offence with forgiveness, to live in peace with everyone.”

While Pope Francis is absolutely correct, it seems that he should follow his own advice.

Makes sense to me. Why won’t he talk about the Vigano accusations, made not by a pundit going on news reports but by a veteran Vatican hand with nothing to gain who cites detailed incidents in which Francis himself is involved?

Instead, in not only the Vigano case,

he has been a master builder of an invisible wall which separates him from much of the Catholic Church.

Unlike the brick and mortar wall surrounding Vatican City, Francis’s wall consists of ambiguity, inconsistency, passive-aggressiveness, and silence. He can be very clear on some matters, but when it comes to certain topics, he becomes vague, briefly stepping into the light, before slipping back into the shadows.

His answers are typically in the form of cryptic rebukes, often through his press office or one of his close advisors. On certain issues his message is hazy and he becomes aloof and inconsistent when asked for clarification.

He can even become living satire, such as his recent declaration that plastic in our oceans is an “emergency,” as if environmentalists need support from the pope, as he ignores a scandal in the Church which he himself could resolve with immediate and certain results.

It’s so obviously a diversionary tactic as to question if he’s losing his touch with  what sells with the hoi polloi.

more more more here: Crisis Magazine

. . . but kept silent.

Remember how, after Harvey Weinstein was busted as a serial sexual abuser, it emerged that a whole lot of people knew this about Weinstein, but never said anything about it? The same thing is true about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was outed today (by the Catholic Church) as having sexually abused a minor years ago.

I had never heard that McCarrick abused minors, but I heard from many sources that he  would go after seminarians. He had a habit of inviting them to his beach house, and always inviting one more young man than there was bed space for. The unlucky mark had to bunk with the Archbishop, who loved to snuggle.

Here are excerpts from an “open letter” to Pope Benedict XVI, written a decade ago by the sociologist Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine monk who specializes in studying the sexual behavior of Catholic priests:

more more more via The American Conservative