As the Wisconsin criminal court evaluates McCarrick’s competency to stand trial for the last pending criminal case, we lay Catholics should take this time to assess our own competence to meaningfully exercise our prophetic charism to reform the American Church in light of the McCarrick nightmare. Specifically, what remains to be done as to McCarrick, from the Local Church’s perspective, is for we lay Catholics to fulfill our Apostolate to meaningfully reform the morals of those most responsible for the McCarrick stain on our Local Church. At a minimum, we lay Catholics should fulfill our lay Apostolate by revealing, in truth, the moral failures of those responsible for McCarrick – principally, those members of the hierarchy who supported McCarrick for decades, orchestrated his re-emergence under Pope Francis, and then offered us deceptive messaging about their close ties to McCarrick in the aftermath of the 2018 chapter of the sexual abuse crisis.
We must begin with St. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching regarding the appropriate exercise of the charism of prophecy for the purposes of addressing immoral behavior (such as the evils involved in the McCarrick nightmare). According to Aquinas, although the Old Testament prophets taught the faith and addressed moral behavior, once Jesus revealed God to humanity, the ongoing role of the prophetic charism was thereafter directed to reforming immoral behavior of the faithful. Thus, according to Aquinas, the charism of prophecy “whose objective is to reform morals, does not cease, nor will it cease.”
With this ancient teaching fixed in our hearts and minds, we can then turn to Vatican II’s texts to update this ancient teaching in light of Vatican II’s teachings as to the actual role of the laity in the life of the Church. Here, we must start anew with Vatican II and resist the temptation to nostalgically recall the great reformers in our Church history as they all historically preceded the ecclesiology and pneumatology of Vatican II. Indeed, even the great reformers like Catherine of Siena lacked what we now have – a robust theology of the laity which provides us with the authority to lead in moral reform and not just speak to the Hierarchy about their moral failings as outsiders.
In short, Vatican II’s teachings firmly entrust the laity to not only sanctify the outside world, but to concomitantly sanctify within by sanctifying all members of the Church. Although the Church understandably emphasizes our lay Apostolate in sanctifying the outside world, the texts of Vatican II provide lay Catholics with the authority to sanctify members of the American Church, including our hierarchy. We need to fulfill our lay duty to sanctify the Church, from within, precisely so that can fulfill our lay duty to sanctify the world since McCarrick remains an impediment to evangelization.
Moreover, the hierarchy cannot, in good faith, oppose our moral reform since the hierarchy failed to usher in an era of truth when the McCarrick scandal finally broke in 2018. As someone who had warned my fellow seminarians about their predatory bishop sending notes of affection signed “Uncle Ted,” and was specifically worried about the grooming of two of the priests numbered in the McCarrick Report, I had waited for thirty years for the dark closet hiding McCarrick to be opened. But when the dark closet hiding McCarrick was finally opened, in 2018, we did not get to see McCarrick revealed in the light of day. To put it into Pauline imagery, from the perspective of the American Church, we have remained in a state of pre-dawn darkness when it comes to McCarrick.
Thus, because the bishops have failed to give us the truth, much less lead us in experiencing the Spirit of Truth above all else, we lay Catholics must now exercise our lay Apostolate to sanctify “in the Church” itself. (Decree on the Apostolate of the Lay People, 5). And although the Vatican’s decision-making regarding McCarrick is beyond the scope of the American laity’s authority, what remains to be seen is whether or not we can collectively set aside our deep divisions in the American Church, eschew all convenient categories that obscure historical truths, and do what Vatican II requires of us in sanctifying the American hierarchy in light of the McCarrick component of the 2018 chapter of the sexual abuse crisis.
For the sake of McCarrick’s Wisconsin victim/survivor, we can hope that McCarrick is deemed competent to stand trial in the State of Wisconsin. But for the sake of the future of the American Church, we can also hope that we lay Catholics are competent to do what our Tradition asks us to do in light of the McCarrick stain on the American Church.
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