The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, originally known as the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition, has found former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick guilty of serial homosexual abuse.
According to a Vatican statement, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a “decree finding Theodore Edgar McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington, D.C., guilty of the following delicts while a cleric: solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.”
The decree was issued on January 11 at the conclusion of a penal process, the Vatican said, imposing on him “the penalty of dismissal from the clerical state.”
Having examined McCarrick’s defense, the CDF confirmed the prior decree and notified McCarrick of the decision on February 15, 2019.
Pope Francis has recognized the “definitive nature” of this decision, the Vatican statement added, meaning that no further appeals will be admitted.
Better late than never. Pope Francis should have defrocked McCarrick upon learning of his crimes back in 2013, but at least the Catholic Church has an office with the judicial authority, moral weight, and centuries-old pedigree of the Inquisition. Even the most Modernizing, anti-traditional pope would think twice before outright ignoring their verdicts.
It’s encouraging to see that Holy Church is finally taking steps to purify the corrupt among her hierarchy. The CDF should open inquisitions in every country worldwide to smoke out the abuse-committing and concealing rats before turning their attention to rooting out Modernist heresy.
Lay Catholics can’t just sit back and expect the hierarchy to do all the heavy lifting themselves. Consecrating the world to Christ is our job. We must find the courage to stand up and speak out for right doctrine and proper worship.
Don’t entertain any illusions. There will be social and perhaps even economic costs to standing up for the truth. I’m not asking you to do anything I haven’t done myself. I’ve incurred the wrath of the self-important and spiritually indifferent HR ladies who all too often run the Church’s nominal institutions while bishops cower. But as is becoming increasingly clear, the rabid death cult now in power in the West is first and foremost bent on destroying the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
The enemy knows better than many of us that the Church is the sole living pillar of Western civilization capable of defeating their diabolical war on truth, life, and beauty. Because that pillar is the mere tip of an inverted iceberg descending from heaven to touch the earth. The enemy cannot, in the end, succeed, but the question left for us to answer is: How long do we wish our posterity to toil in the ruins before the ember of civilization kindles once more into a blazing light unto the world?
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