Cardinal Wuerl's New Strategy: Crocodile Tears and Painting Criticism as a Plot to Get the Pope

Darn! I should have brought a handkerchief
with some onions so I could produce some tears!

The rot is out in the open. What happens next will determine whether the outcome is a serious purification or a new cover-up.

Circling the wagons and waiting out the crisis has worked in the past. Can it work again?

Not likely.

So the new strategy is crocodile tears, promises of change, and painting the angry reactions to sex abuse and the cover ups as a plot to get the pope!

Cardinal Wuerl sent out a letter to his priests yesterday which seems to me to be implementing the new strategy. He wants, he says to "be close" to his priests, an expression that made me snort in view of what the crisis is all about. It immediately brought to mind McCarrick asking seminarians to share his bed. Now that's getting "close!"


And then came the crocodile tears. "On too many occasions over these past three decades as a bishop," Wuerl wrote,  "I have sat with survivors and their families to listen, to try to be present, to pray and often simply to cry together." Oh my! Lions and tigers and tears, oh my!

I confess I found the entire letter a desperate exercise in damage control. "Your, and I hope my own, ministry is the beginning of some healing...Your ministry is a precious gift to those you serve – to the Body of Christ. I want you to know my desire – even if I have not well expressed it – [get ready] to be close to you." Frankly, the thought of being close to Cardinal Wuerl makes me feel a little sick.

And then:

This Sunday in our churches all across this great archdiocese, I ask you please to let your people – the men, women and children – we love and minister to and hold in our pastoral care know that I do recognize and share their pain. [Omigosh, he "shares our pain!" Obviously all must be forgiven so things can continue as usual!] Let them know I wish I could wipe it away even though that is simply not possible. I would give anything, as would all of us, to turn the clock around and have the Church do everything right. [The Church? It wasn't "the Church" molesting boys and young men and using the faithful's contributions to hush up the scandals, Your Eminence. It was YOU!] But I do join them in sorrow for all that has happened. I plead for their prayerful support as I with you and them try to do whatever I can to help move this Church closer to the pathway that leads us from this darkness.

Well, it's dark all right, and Wuerl and his ilk are a primary source of that darkness enabling men like McCarrick and the lavender mafia.  They live like sultans and pander to the rich and powerful to the point of giving cover to politicians who champion child-killing. How "close to" the little babies waiting to be born is Cardinal Wuerl? They haven't been worth his notice. What can they do for him after all?

Ah...but now the pièce de résistance of the new strategy:

Finally, we need to hold close in our prayers and loyalty our Holy Father, Pope Francis. Increasingly, it is clear that he is the object of concentrated attack. At each Mass we pray for him by name. As we do so with our voices may we do so as well with our hearts.

Give me time. I'm sure I can squeeze
out a few tears!

Wuerl's words echo those of his cronies like McElroy, Cupich, and Tobin -- all pro-gay propagandists who have joined the National non-Catholic Reporter (aka the fishwrap) in a strategy to paint Vigano's letter as a "putsch" against Pope Francis. According to Doug Mainwaring writing at LifeSiteNews:

Perhaps the most significant tie that binds this trio – Cupich, Tobin, and McElroy – is that each owes his rise to dizzying heights in the Roman Catholic hierarchy to disgraced former Cardinal McCarrick. 

“The appointments of Blase Cupich to Chicago and Joseph W. Tobin to Newark were orchestrated by McCarrick,” noted Archbishop Viganò in his testimony. 

“The appointment of McElroy in San Diego was also orchestrated from above,” said Viganò, “with an encrypted peremptory order to me as Nuncio, by Cardinal Parolin: ‘Reserve the See of San Diego for McElroy.’

“McElroy was also well aware of McCarrick’s abuses,” added Viganò.

All these clerics are raising the specter of a right-wing plot to get the pope led by that EVIL archbishop Vigano. Paint him with twirling mustachios and a leering grin. He is really EVIL! [Can we get some scary music to go with the picture?] 

Like a magician who distracts with one hand to perform the trick with the other, these hucksters are attempting to refocus from their committing and/or hiding abuse to a right wing conspiracy to destroy the pope. The fact that the fishwrap promotes their song and dance is very telling.

And who wrote the article? Michael Sean Winters, gay propagandist and anti-Trump zealot who recently said he would happily knit like Madame DeFarge while Republicans were sent to the guillotine. Unbiased eh? Unhinged is closer to the truth.

Cardinal Wuerl closes his letter saying, "I now ask myself what is the way I can best serve this Church"

The answer is easy. Leave! And take your crocodile tears and your friends in the lavender mafia with you.