Getting Rid of the Lavender Mafia

In an article published elsewhere on the scandal surrounding Washington Archbishop Emeritus Theodore McCarrick, I wrote of a phenomenon I called “the conspiracy of the well-meaning;” that is, people who temporize with or cover up evil to prevent other goods from being damaged by the exposure. What I left unsaid was that, for damning with faint praise, it’s hard to beat “S/He meant well.” All it needs is for a Southerner to tack on the end of it, “… bless his/her heart.” Marcus Junius Brutus meant well (at least as Shakespeare portrayed him in Julius Caesar). James Buchanan meant well. Neville Chamberlain meant well. It’s often the best you can say of someone whose naïveté, fecklessness, irresolution, or incompetence has led to disaster.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is full of men who, on the whole, mean well, and who meant well when they drew up the Dallas Charter and “Essential Norms” in the spring of 2002. But they were trying to put out a fire with maximal speed and at minimal cost, which meant passing up the opportunity to do a full overhaul of the American clergy, including their own ranks. By tacitly agreeing not to address episcopal behavior then and there, the USCCB virtually guaranteed that they would be forced to confront it by yet another scandal.

The cover-ups and payoffs of victims and their families that led to the “Long Lent” of 2002 were failures of moral courage. The failure to address episcopal conduct at the 2002 Dallas conference was also a failure of moral courage. Of Boston archbishop Cdl. Seán O’Malley’s statement, Fr. Dwight Longenecker huffed, “Note that nobody is actually taking personal responsibility to get anything done. Instead ‘the Church’ must do this and that and the other.” But it’s worse than that—nobody is actually taking personal responsibility for what happened, another failure of moral courage.

Here’s the problem as I see it:

1. The “lavender mafia” (or “gay mafia”) has been an open secret for longer than McCarrick has been a bishop. It isn’t simply another name to insult gay Catholic dissidents or lobby groups like New Ways Ministry; it applies to networks of gay sexual predators who have perverted—I use the term advisedly—the priesthood to the end of gratifying their pathological desire for power. They aren’t interested in changing the Church’s sexual teachings since ecclesial legitimization of gay relationships would neither help nor hurt them. Lust for power is what makes a predator tick.
2. Homosexuality is not, however, irrelevant to the problem. Various sources estimate that 30 to 50 percent of the priests in the U.S. are gay, whether sexually active or continent. These numbers, all drawn from hearsay, are most certainly exaggerations due to sources placed in sees where predator networks have gained the most traction. However, as Rod Dreher reports, predators in charge of seminaries “select on a bias for gay candidates,” who are then subjected to “tremendous pressure to have sex” and thereby open themselves up to be coerced into complicity in the network.
3. The question isn’t “What did the bishops know, and when did they know it?” Rather, the question is “Which of the bishops knew, and how did they know it?” The lavender mafia, like the Italian Mob, survives and thrives by blackmail, by coercing churchmen who have compromised themselves in some way such that to reveal what they know about the networks would ensure their own disgrace and downfall. Dreher identifies four living bishops who served under McCarrick as priests and/or auxiliaries and three—Cupich of Chicago, Tobin of Newark, and Farrell of Dallas—who may have got their red hats due to his influence. Avoiding guilt by association does not mean you avoid questioning obvious associates.
4. I have defended Pope Francis on other issues, including his “who am I to judge?” remark. He means well. He has suspended McCarrick and accepted his resignation from the College of Cardinals. But I’m sad to say he has shown no evidence that he gets the scope and nature of the “lavender mafia” problem. Take, for instance, Francis’ invitation to the Synod on the Family of Cdl. Godfried Danneels, whose tenure as the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels ended in a scandal over his mishandling of a sexual abuse case. As Charles Collins said in Crux Now, a full third of his “C9” panel of advisors on reform have been implicated in various scandals, and McCarrick has had his ear. And Ed Condon of CNA reminds us that “it was only the backlash to Pope Francis’ apparent dismissal of the victims [of Fernando Karadima], despite their persistence and credibility, during a papal visit to Chile which finally prompted action [against Osorno Bp. Juan Barros Madrid].”

The solution to getting rid of the lavender mafia will still require the active cooperation of the pope, but it will have to originate with national bishops’ councils such as the USCCB. This is a thought to make anyone except the most hopeful despair. Even before the McCarrick scandal broke open, Western bishops, on the whole, didn’t show much backbone in standing up to the LGBTQI lobby, who would be more than happy to paint the necessary measures as a homophobic witch hunt. In its wake, we the laity are left to wonder how many of the bishops have been compromised.

But the Catholic principle of subsidiarity demands that solutions come from the level of government closest to the problem, with higher levels assisting only as needed. Or, as my dad used to say, “It’s your mess; you clean it up.”

There’s no more time for what Brendan Michael Dougherty scathingly called an “expressed intention to articulate standards endorsing high standards.” There’s no more time for feigned ignorance, buck-passing, and victim-blaming. There’s no more time for well-meaning half measures. It’s time the bishops remembered that they are accountable at the Last Judgment to Christ for how they’ve run His Church. It’s time for the USCCB to collectively grow a backbone, to stop being mere pastoral administrators and become true successors to the apostles.

Your Eminences and Excellencies, Reverend Fathers all: Get your house in order. Now.