McCarrick's Parting Words

By Kenneth J. Wolfe

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The country's most media-hungry bishop couldn't let his retirement get in the way of some last-minute destruction to the Church. As the U.S. Senate rejected a constitutional amendment on June 7 prohibiting homosexual "marriage," Theodore Cardinal McCarrick took to the airwaves to promote homosexual civil unions.

Interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN, McCarrick called one-man, one-woman marriage "ideal," but said: "If you can't meet that ideal, if there are people who for one reason or another just cannot do that or feel they cannot do that, then in order to protect their right to take care of each other, in order to take care of their right to have visitation in a hospital or something like that, I think that you could allow, not the ideal, but you could allow for that for a civil union."

What logic. Liberals use it all the time to apply it to abortion, drug needles and divorce. Lest anyone believe this was a one-time slip of the tongue, think again.

On Tuesday, May 9, this writer attended a "Theology on Tap" lecture in Washington where McCarrick was the featured speaker. At the Irish bar where the event was held, the archbishop of Washington was asked about the current debate over condom use when one married person has AIDS. In a room with hundreds of 20- and 30-something single Catholics, His Eminence emphatically declared it was completely permissible for such condom use. No questions. No ambiguity.

Was the issue merely one under consideration, proposed by a liberal prelate in Italy, the aptly named Cardinal Martini? Yes. But that didn't matter to Theodore McCarrick. The message young folks at that Theology on Tap heard on that Tuesday evening was: Condoms: okay.

Finally, it wouldn't be a Cardinal McCarrick story without reminding readers about his leadership in the Communion debate during the presidential election. Coming to militantly pro-abortion Senator John Kerry's defense, McCarrick chastised clergy who thought the sacrament should be withheld from Kerry until he repented of his murderous ways. Saying he didn't favor a confrontation at the "altar rail," even though one has to look awfully hard for such a rail (and it would be unused anyway at a novus ordo), McCarrick was one of two men who vocally opposed punishing pro-abortion politicians who claim to be Catholic. The other leading man was Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl, selected by Benedict XVI to replace McCarrick as archbishop of Washington, D.C.

As we mark the Ember Days this Pentecost week, we can only pray for holy men to enter the seminary and replace the crop of cockle still infesting the Church. With each passing day, more Catholic minds get confused as a result of the heresy spewed from shepherds working to destroy the Church from within. This Catholic, for one, will cringe on Trinity Sunday when the name "Theodorus" is invoked in the Canon of the Mass.

Wolfe attends the traditional Latin Mass in Washington, D.C. and occasionally writes for The Remnant. He can be contacted at wolfeken@aol.com