November 23, 2008
The Fragile State of Priesthood
When I got the call Monday about Jim McCarthy, I have to say my first reaction was relief.
It was grown women this time.
Not teenage boys.
I dont want to call that a miracle. But finally, we have a Catholic priest in trouble and not just any priest a popular auxiliary bishop with a big future ahead of him whose romantic desires turn out to be downright conventional.
Grown women? That doesnt even violate the secular law.
It shows what a fragile state the priesthood is in as the American bishops gather in Dallas for their most important meeting ever. A New York bishop is accused of having a number of affairs with women. We think we got off easy.
I spent 10 days once with Jim McCarthy. Both of us were chasing John Cardinal O'Connor half way around the world, me for the readers of this paper, him as the cardinal's personal secretary.
He was a already monsignor but most people who knew him still called him Father Jim.
He had come out of St. Bernard's Parish in White Plains and Archbishop Stepinac High School, then right into the seminary. He was good-looking and smart and loose and funny, and he had a quiet way of soothing big egos.
We flew to Rome then to Cyprus, then choppered into Beirut, where we spent a dicey five days before heading back to Rome.
Beirut was a scary place back then. Americans were still being taken as hostages. The militant mullahs were railing against the West. The trip was loaded with political sensitivities and religious landmines.
O'Connor, with only a laymans understanding of the region, decided he wanted to leap right in.
O'Connor would make sweeping pronouncements. Theyd be met with predictable uproar. Father Jim was there to sort things out.
The American ambassador thinks the cardinal is being reckless? Jim will talk to him, O'Connor said.
The Maronite archbishop wants more financial support from Rome? Jim will hear him out, the cardinal said.
The Mossad reports genuine threats on the cardinal's entourage? Jim will see how credible they is, O'Connor said.
McCarthy just smiled when he heard the cardinal talk like that. We're just trying to keep everyone alive, he shrugged the first time I asked him about his role.
First as a parish priest, then as a chancery insider, later as the auxiliary bishop in charge of northern Westchester and Putnam counties, McCarthy was truly one of the golden boys of the New York church.
Super-smart. With a modern understanding of politics and the media. Warm and charismatic and able to laugh at himself. He was a walking recruitment poster for the priesthood. He made an aging church feel alive.
And now we learn Jim McCarthy was a human being too.
He needed love. Not only the adulation of a sprawling congregation. Not only the respect of his fellow clergymen. Not only the spiritual kind of love that binds a priest to his vocation, his church and his God.
He needed love like the rest of us. Human love.
Personal love. Intimate love. Yes, say the word, sexual love.
If the priesthood has lost Jim McCarthy, his beleaguered fellow bishops really do need to ask: How can a church hope to survive, if its arcane rules drive the good men away?
In his emotional apology Tuesday, McCarthy didn't equivocate. He didn't dodge or excuse or explain. He faced the facts.
I have asked the Holy Father to accept my resignation, he said. Penance for these sins requires that I spend time in a retreat and contemplate what I have done, the lives I have hurt and the church I have failed. I hope to continue to serve the church, whom I love, in some capacity.
It would be a shame if the Catholic priesthood isn't broad enough to have a place for a man like Father Jim.
The bishops, now on life support themselves, ought to find a way.
Mixx it!
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