A week after the Vatican released its much-anticipated investigation of former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, there remain many unanswered questions. Whether journalists will delve deeply into these unanswered questions remains to be seen.
The point of any report, after all, is to uncover the culprits and hopefully detail how sins and crimes of this nature can be prevented in the future. For the Vatican, the report’s release appears to mean “case closed” on the decades-long history of sexual misconduct of McCarrick.
But is it?
Not at all. If anything, the open questions are great leads for journalists who may be interested in pursuing this story further. Depending on which publications one gets their news from these days, the two biggest takeaways were divergent.
If you read secular mainstream media, like The New York Times, Associated Press and USA Today, and Catholic media on the doctrinal left, then the fault was primarily with former Pope John Paul II, now a saint, accused of ignoring abuse allegations in the 1980s and promoting McCarrick to archbishop (and eventually cardinal) of Washington, D.C. That would pave the way for the man known as “Uncle Ted” to ascend up the Vatican hierarchy and become one of the most powerful cardinals on both sides of the Atlantic. Also, these reports tended to say that McCarrick was a very effective liar who, acting alone, fooled everyone.
However, if you read Catholic publications on the doctrinal right, the takeaway was that the report was a whitewash, aimed at protecting Vatican higher-ups and primarily aimed at exonerating Pope Francis from any wrongdoing. Also, it’s crucial that McCarrick was a leader who had colleagues and disciples at all levels of the church (see tmatt’s GetReligion post and podcast on ‘team Ted’).
Conservative Catholics have a point when they say there’s more missing in the report then what it actually tries to detail. It’s obvious that the report’s omissions and unanswered questions need further examination. Here are a few that stick out:
