The statement from the Vatican was short on details, but spoke volumes.
Solicitation of sex during confession. Abuse of power. And sins with minors and with adults against the Sixth Commandment.
It was an indictment against a once-powerful cardinal. With the dramatic defrocking on Saturday of Theodore McCarrick — the one-time archbishop of the Archdiocese of Newark and the highest-ranking American official to be cast out of the priesthood — Pope Francis put his church, its hierarchy and the faithful on notice.
“I think it sends a huge message,” said Jo Renee Formicola, a Seton Hall University political science professor who has written extensively about sex abuse in the church. “This is a different day. This is a different time.”
She said defrocking someone with the credentials of McCarrick represented a major moment for the church.
“There is no harsher punishment,” she noted. “Defrocking a priest means they cannot carry out their ministry any longer. They cannot participate in the life in the church anymore.”
Defrocking, or dismissed from the clerical state, strips McCarrick of the rights of the priesthood. It means he can no longer celebrate Mass or other sacraments, wear clerical vestments or be addressed by any religious title. He is now known not as Cardinal or Father, but as “Mr. McCarrick.” Yet it’s not the only punishment McCarrick may face.
He could be prosecuted.
The church does not deal with criminal matters. That’s the purview of the state. But now that the Vatican has spoken, there are no assurances that authorities will not proceed with an investigation and ultimately seek to criminally charge the former cleric.
“This church’s nightmare is nowhere near over,” declared former prosecutor Dennis T. Kearney, a criminal defense attorney at Day Pitney in Parsippany. “Whether an 88-year-old cardinal will be the poster boy for Round 2, I cannot say. But judgment day is coming.”
McCarrick, whose appeal of his dismissal was rejected, said last year he had “absolutely no recollection of this reported abuse, and believe in my innocence.” It is not known what he told the Vatican committee in the closed-door canonical proceeding that had found him guilty of soliciting sex during confession and committing “sins” with minors and adults “with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.” His lawyer, Barry Coburn, has declined comment.
But when it comes to the sexual abuse of children, prosecutors can bring charges in cases that may be decades old.
Following the disclosures last year by a Pennsylvania grand jury of sex abuse by priests who preyed upon children for decades, New Jersey last year launched a clergy abuse task force headed by former Acting Essex County Prosecutor Robert Laurino, to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by members of the clergy within all the Catholic dioceses of the state.
Last month, Rev. Thomas P. Ganley, a well-known Phillipsburg priest, was arrested on sexual assault charges involving a teenager in Middlesex County nearly 30 years earlier as a result of the task force investigation. The arrest came just two days after the victim made a call to the clergy abuse hotline set up by the state, according to authorities.
While the statute of limitations may constrain the ability of authorities to bring criminal charges in connection with the alleged abuse of adult seminarian students who claimed they were victimized by McCarrick, there is no such bar when it comes to the abuse of minors, as the arrest of Ganley showed. That could expose McCarrick to possible prosecution.
The Vatican’s accusations included the abuse of children. Among them was James Grein, who testified to church officials that McCarrick had repeatedly groped him. The Virginia man told The New York Times that the abuse, which went on for decades, began when he was 11 and living in Northern New Jersey.
However, the state statute does not mean that prosecutors cannot look at the allegations against McCarrick involving older victims, noted Kearney.
“Buried in the justified moral outrage for sex crimes against minors are the sex crimes by priests in authority against seminarians. You couldn’t have a better prosecutor looking at this part of the picture than Bob Laurino,” he said. “This aspect of sexual assault crimes by priests is now surfacing — you see that with McCarrick using a position of authority to extort sexual favors from young men wanting to be priests. A young man submitting to sexual abuse as a price of admission to the priesthood is no less a crime.”
Those in a supervisory position over the seminarians can tip the scales as to whether a crime can be prosecuted decades later., he explained.
“To the extent there has been ongoing coverups and obstruction of justice, that’s a whole new game,” Kearney said.
Other legal experts, though, expressed doubts that McCarrick might be in real peril of arrest.
“Without knowing the specific allegations and proofs, it is hard to gauge the likelihood of prosecution. However, given the age of Mr. McCarrick and the likely age of the allegations and evidence against him, I would not expect criminal charges,” said former federal prosecutor Lee Vartan, now a West Orange criminal defense attorney.
McCarrick has been living in seclusion since he was forced last year to resign from the College of Cardinals, after the Archdiocese of New York announced that a review board had substantiated claims of abuse of a teen by the priest 50 years ago, when McCarrick was serving as a priest in New York. He is currently at St. Fidelis Friary, a religious residence in Victoria, Kansas, where he was sent by the pope to contemplate a life of prayer and penance.
A LEGACY OF SCANDAL
Here in New Jersey where McCarrick served for so many years, many in the church are still coming to terms with the shocking disclosures from the Vatican.
In the Diocese of Metuchen, where McCarrick served as the founding bishop from 1981 to 1986, Bishop James F. Checchio sent a lengthy and emotional letter to parishioners in the wake of the action against McCarrick.
“Today I am praying particularly for those lay people and priests who are survivors of Theodore McCarrick. While the news does not take away the pain these survivors have experienced, it is hopefully a further step in their healing and a statement by the church that these crimes and sins are certainly not to be tolerated, in any way,” he said.
At the same time, he noted that McCarrick as the first bishop of Metuchen will always be associated with the history of the diocese.
“His legacy has become one of scandal and betrayal,” wrote Checchio. “However, I was reminded in prayer that our diocese is not founded on Theodore McCarrick, but Christ the Lord, who renews His Church in every age.”
Then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of the Archdiocese of Washington as he arrives at the Vatican in a limousine in 2002.AP
The bishop said the announcement of McCarrick’s removal from the priesthood by the church was “a just response to the hidden destructive life that he apparently led, and a signal to the church throughout the world that everyone in the church is called to the integrity of the Gospel.”
Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin, Archbishop of Newark, the state’s largest Catholic diocese, called it “profoundly disheartening and disturbing to know that a church leader, who served and led our Archdiocese of Newark for 14 years, acted in a way that is contrary to the Christian way of life as well as his vocation as a priest of Jesus Christ.”
Tobin expressed his “profound sadness and heartfelt apologies” to those abused by clergy, and especially the victims of McCarrick.
And in Washington, D.C., where McCarrick was Archbishop Emeritus when he was abruptly removed from public ministry, the diocese said it hoped the decision to defrock the former cardinal underscored the gravity of his actions.
“Our hope and prayer is that this decision serves to help the healing process for survivors of abuse, as well as those who have experienced disappointment or disillusionment because of what former Archbishop McCarrick has done,” the Washington diocese said in a statement.
Formicola, the author of a number of books about the church, including “Clerical Sexual Abuse: How it Changed U.S. Catholic Church-State Relations,” believes the uproar over McCarrick could well be a turning point for the Catholic Church. She said the very public defrocking of a high-profile cardinal by itself suggested change.
“If this had been done in the past, it probably would have done secretly. I think a lot of things that come down from the Vatican are not made public necessarily. They don’t have to be,” said the Seton Hall professor. “But this is a crisis that has grown exponentially not just in the U.S., but the world. This needs to come out and it needs to come out now.”
The timing of the Vatican’s judgment of McCarrick was especially telling to Formicola, coming days before Pope Francis is to lead an extraordinary gathering of bishops from around the world over the sex abuse crisis. She said it was an action by the pope to show they are doing something more than talking about the crisis.
She said she felt “cautiously optimistic” that there will be new policies on sex abuse that will come from this week’s meeting in Rome.
“This is the moment,” she said. “They have to seize the moment.”
Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Facebook: @TedSherman.reporter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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