The scandal of child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church has reached new levels with two of the most senior cardinals being found guilty of detestable crimes against those under their care. Theodore McCarrick, former Archbishop of Washington, was expelled from the priesthood after a Vatican investigation found him guilty of serial abuses over many years. George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney and the head of the Vatican’s finances until February of this year, was found guilty in an Australian criminal court of abusing two altar boys in the 1990s, while a previous investigation involving accusations dating back to the 1970s collapsed due to lack of sufficient evidence. Pell’s sentence is yet to be decided. He is currently appealing the verdict but, in the meantime, the Vatican has suspended him from official duties. Both McCarrick and Pell were trusted advisers of the current Pope.
As has been reported in a previous issue of this Magazine, it has been alleged that the Pontiff was aware for a number of years about McCarrick and yet chose to do nothing. A special conference has recently been held at the Vatican in an attempt to deal with the issue, and the Pope is promising to take action. But the problem simply will not go away, since it is abundantly clear that this fearful abuse has been found at every level of the priesthood from the top of the Vatican and reaching down through every part of the globe where Rome’s tentacles are extended.
It is not just a matter of abandoning the unbiblical notion of clerical celibacy – which certainly has its own baneful influence on the matter – nor is it simply that many of the priests have been closet sodomites “forced” to live double lives. The watching world can recognise that these have played a major role, but the world is not able to discern the underlying reason for the endemic moral corruption of the Roman Church. The ultimate factor is that the Roman Catholic Church is opposed to the truth of the Word of God and, in her doctrines and practices, she has fostered deceit, unholiness, misery and spiritual ruin wherever her influence has been felt. Rome is, and always will be, under the curse of a holy God, and the bringing to light of such abuses further emphasises that fact. As has been said by others, the Church of Rome is like the carnal mind: there can be no reformation for it but only destruction.
AWM