Earlier this month, Fordham University announced that its Board of Trustees had voted to rescind an honorary doctorate awarded to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, following revelations that the former Archbishop of Washington had molested an altar boy nearly 50 years ago as a priest at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
On Thursday, the New York Times reported on another allegation against McCarrick, this one involving alleged sexual abuse of a minor. The person making the charge is identified only by his first name in the Times account, yet the story also indicates he’s filed a police report in Loudon County, Virginia.
With the growing spotlight on McCarrick, Fordham isn’t the only institution to have awarded an honorary degree to the 88-year-old retired Cardinal who has now been suspended from public ministry by the Vatican. The Catholic University of America, the University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University, Sienna College, St. Peter’s University, the College of New Rochelle, and the University of Portland are just a number of the institutions that bestowed honorary degrees to a man who, during his 50 years of ministry, was widely known as a social justice giant within American Catholicism.
The focus on American honors to McCarrick is a different conversation from the one sure to focus on Vatican and papal distinctions, above all, the red hat he’s held as a prince of the Church since being made a cardinal in 2001. While many survivors of sexual abuse lauded Fordham’s decision, it has also prompted questions about what protocols should exist in cases of stripping prelates of honors, titles, and awards after revelations of sexual abuse or cover-up, and has raised concern among others that such actions are either self-interested or run the risk of whitewashing history.
While revoking degrees has been a rare move, there are, however, multiple instances where names of embattled clerics have been removed from buildings once meant to honor their legacy.
In 2005, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bishop Sullivan High School announced that it would return to its original name of “St. Michael the Archangel Diocesan Regional High School,” and would no longer be named for Bishop Joseph Sullivan, after abuse accusations surfaced following Sullivan’s death.
Similarly, Bishop Anthony J. O’Connell – who served as bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee and Palm Beach, Florida – was the target of a coordinated effort which, after a year-long battle, successfully managed to have his name removed from a family life center following his disclosure and eventual resignation that he had abused teenage boys.
Yet while the examples provide a historical reference point, it remains to be seen whether the McCarrick Family Center in Montgomery County, Maryland – run by Catholic Charities of Washington, and which provides a range of services from legal support to immigrants to services for pregnant women – will face a similar fate.
Confronting the Past, Facing the Future
While the decision to revoke McCarrick’s and others’ honorific titles and past awards has been cheered by abuse survivors, other Catholic experts have warned that doing so runs the risk of erasing a painful period within the Church that cannot be forgotten.
Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, a website dedicated to tracking and chronicling the Church’s public record on sex abuse, told Crux that some efforts to remove names quickly from buildings or to revoke awards could be “self-serving” and viewed as a quick attempt by administrators to distance themselves from someone who was undeniably associated with the institution.
“I certainly understand survivors wanting this to be done, but I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to whitewash these negative stories,” said McKiernan.
Meanwhile, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Bill Donohue, told Crux that he was less concerned by colleges and universities rescinding honors than he was government forcing the removal of controversial statues from public places.
“In general, it’s a huge mistake to whitewash history,” he said. “Instead, we should use these things as teaching moments.”
He went on to add that he believes that these things should be handled on a case-by-case basis and that in the case of honorary degrees, the decision should be left up to administrators, with the input of faculty and alumni.
Full story at Crux.
Meaningless gesture. Honorary degrees mean nothing, so rescinding one means nothing either. Just like Pontius Pilate washing his hands. Fordham is Jesuit. They have a lot more serious deviances to be concerned about than giving McCarrick a fake, meaningless degree. What this boils down to is a fake Catholic religious community’s fake Catholic university took back a fake degree it gave to a fake cleric. You know what? Real Catholics in the pews are getting angrier than they have ever been before at the clergy.
On September 5, 2017, at Fordham University, Fr. James Martin contradicted Church teaching, saying: “I have a hard time imagining how even the most traditionalist, homophobic, closed-minded Catholic cannot look at my friend [in a same-sex “marriage”] and say, ‘That is a loving act, and that is a form of love that I don’t understand but I have to reverence.'”
Is Fordham’s board of trustees going to disassociate the university from Fr. Martin?
I believe the Cardinal is entitled to civil and/or Church legal proceedings before he is deemed guilty of the allegations. If convicted, or pleading ‘guilty’, then the Vatican should promptly remove the red hat and likely completely defrock the Cardinal. Also, the top governing authority of institutions which granted previous honors should promptly revoke these awards.
Recission of an honorary degree will not send a sufficiently strong message. Rather, it is time for the Faithful to vote with their wallets as noted in the article below:
https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/thats-my-money-your-excellency
I have now read a great many horror stories, of Cardinal McCarrick and his network of gay clerics, and what they did, to the poor young boys, and young men, that they molested! I am so sickened by all of this! Tons of young lives destroyed! Satanic!
When the award was given, they knew. Jesuits knew, board members knew, bishops knew. Yet they gave him the award because they didn’t think Uncel Ted’s secret would ever get out. Hypocrites.
The public reason they’re now distancing themselves is to make some sort of display of righteous indignation about McCarrick’s offenses. However, the more likely truth is they want to distract focus from themselves. The Jesuit order has been home to some of the most prolific homosexual abusers in the Church over the last 30 years or so, and they’ve done a pretty good job of covering that up and hiding it from the thousands of Catholic parents who send their children to one of their 28 colleges or 49 high schools in the U.S. They bankrupted their own Oregon Province in 2011 paying out some $250 million in settlements. Hypocrisy is always the least of problems in this sort of thing. It’s just the mark of a cover-up.
Further amplification:
It is written: My house is the house of prayer. But you have made it a den of thieves. (Luke 19:46, Douay-Rheims translation)
And he saith to them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves. (Matt:21:13, Douay-Rheims translation)
Our Church is dishonest! How many true Christians do we really have, in our clergy?? “Good-Bye, Good Men,” indeed! But when do those horror stories, such as in that book — when do they ever end?? Gay sex molestation of children, teen-agers, and young adults, is a very serious crime! So many young lives have been ruined forever, by clerics of our Church! And what are we to make of this?? Are many of our bishops of the USCCB, a bunch of hopeless, Godless, immoral, “Mafia-style” hypocrites, and fools too afraid to do their jobs right, for Christ?? Whom do they really serve– Christ or Satan??
Our Church is NOT dishonest! It was established by Jesus Himself (Matt: 16). How can something established with such a Divine provenance be corrupt? Rather, don’t you really mean that the individuals who are entrusted with the authority vested in them, through valid Petrine and Apostolic sussedsion, are the dishonest ones?
There is a big difference between the Church and those entrusted with giuding her.
Lou Varini– St. Francis of Assisi said the same thing as me, in his day! He would not even consider becoming a priest, due to the dishonesty and corruption in the institutional Church, of his day! Christ appeared to St Francis, and asked him to “rebuild My Church!” That is exactly what is needed, in today’s corrupt institutional Church! Of course– those following Christ’s holy teachings, as good, devout, practicing Catholics– are His True Sheep, and will oneday enter into His Kingdom! But those who are evil and corrupt– without repentance!–risk having a hot seat in Hell waiting for them– they are Satan’s!
You affirmed my original point. The Church is not dishonest. The dishonesty stems fron the individuals who are the ones in authority.
splitting hairs the church is dishonest if its leaders are dishonest because they are the voice of the church
To Anonymous—-we, the faithful ARE the Church!