The Strategy of Silence

At our old house in Alexandria a beautiful old willow oak graced the front yard. It was the biggest tree in the neighborhood. I didn't love it so much in the fall when we were raking leaves, but the rest of the year it was my pride and joy. I loved to see its skeleton in the winter as it rested and the fresh chartreuse leaves in the early spring. It provided shade in the summer and a colorful display in autumn.

The year before we moved to the Shenandoah Valley (2001), my husband and I were standing at the front door during a violent thunderstorm when a huge flash and explosion shocked us! A bolt of lightening struck the willow and later we saw that it had actually blown the bark off one side of the tree. The tree "doctor" who came to examine the willow said to water and feed it and give it a year to see if it could come back. We sold the house when the leaves were just starting to come out. Things didn't look good, and when we returned to the neighborhood some time later our beautiful willow oak was gone.

I thought of our tree this morning while I was reading an article by Fr. Gerald Murray about Archbishop Vigano's testimony which began a year ago. At that time a lightning bolt struck the Church. Since then, Pope Francis and those clerics closest to McCarrick have all claimed to know nothing. It's their default position: silence. Vigano has called them out.

The response?

...................

Anyone? Anyone?

The storm in the Church over McCarrick's long reign of terror, continues. And other lightning bolts regularly strike. Bishop Bransfield of Wheeling, a McCarrick crony, has been exposed as both an abuser and a thief. Msgr. Walter Rossi who followed Bransfield as Director of the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is under investigation. The storm goes on; but the silence from those who promise us transparency continues. They hide in the storm cellar waiting for it all to go away. Fr. Murray put it well:

It’s a crisis of truth, of grave immorality and cowardice, of unaccountability by Church hierarchs, of powerful clerics resisting revelation of facts known to them, but hidden from the faithful. It’s a crisis of the ongoing refusal to come clean about what was known about Theodore McCarrick and others, and why decisions were made that protected men who were known to have done great evil, and yet continued to enjoy favor and protection.

People with power seem to have at least one big thing in common. When lightning strikes in the way of exposing evil, they often fall into a default position -- silence. Well, not exactly silence, because they frequently start tap dancing and waving their arms or putting on silly hats to draw attention away from the scandal and pretend to be actually doing something. Like Bill Clinton who used war in the Middle East to distract attention from the blue dress, they plan synods and shout about global warming and integral ecology and welcoming migratory invasions.

But the heart of the matter, those things for which they have responsibility and are called to be accountable...their reaction to them is...

..........

..........

SILENCE.

Tonight Fr. Murray and Robert Royal, the papal posse, will be with Raymond Arroyo discussing the Vatican's on-going silence about Vigano's testimony.

I'll be watching...and praying.

"Silence like a cancer grows...."