Archbishop Gomez ‘deeply disappointed’ that USA Act will not be debated

Denver, Colo., Mar 9, 2018 / 10:46 am (CNA).- The Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac once noted a correspondence between the Reformation’s criticism of Mary and its criticisms of the Church. That correlation is in some sense logical – you can’t have Mary without the Church, nor the Church without Mary. They exist in such an intimate and mutual relationship that one cannot be fully understood without the other. And we see clearly enough in our present day what happens when they are separated: Mary, elevated in excess, loses her humanity and begins to appear as a quasi-fourth-person of the Trinity; and the Church, reduced in excess, loses her divine foundation and appears as an exclusively male-run institution.

This is far from the vision of the early Church, where Mary and the Church were viewed together in a single reality – the New Eve. Jesus Christ, the New Adam and the true spiritual father of mankind, fittingly chose a New Eve to be his helpmate and the true spiritual mother of mankind. This New Eve has two forms: the personal form of Mary and the collective form of the Church. But Mary precedes, being the Church in seed-form before Pentecost.  She alone was given the singular grace of her Immaculate Conception in order to take on the unique role as the Mother of God. She stands at the foot of the Cross as the Church, but also more than the Church; for she personally participates in her Son’s redemption and his foundation of the Church.

At Pentecost, Mary’s mediating maternity becomes the heart of the Church, permeating it with an all-encompassing Marian character. Mary is the Church’s mother, and in her, the Church is mother. For this reason, we can marvelously say – through Mary’s divine motherhood, the Church gives birth to Christ sacramentally in the Eucharist and spiritually in souls!

This beautiful vision of Mary and the Church was largely lost to modern man until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). There, the treatise of Mary was placed within that of the Church, restoring the ancient relationship (cf. Lumen gentium, Ch. 8). But with that came a tragic turn. After the council, Mary’s identity seemed to dissolved into the Church, and Mariology went into a kind of post-conciliar winter.  The modern Catholic sentiment towards Mary changed – now, some thought, we were “rid” of the shame of our bizarre medieval fixation. Now, some claimed she was finally “one of us” – relatable, authentic, truly in the Church.  

But Pope Paul VI, with prophetic intuition, saw through those theological illusions and countered them by declaring that “the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of the Church” (Paul VI, Address at the conclusion of the third session of Vatican II, 21 November 1964). If Mary is the Mother of Christ, and the Church is the Body of Christ, then Mary is the Mother of the Church. He knew, as did his successors, that the defense of Mary’s dignity is intimately tied to the preservation of the faith’s integrity.  

Last Saturday, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had decreed a new liturgical memorial. Beginning this year, on the Monday after Pentecost, the Church will universally celebrate Mary as the Mother of the Church. By this, the Church is not merely encouraging Marian piety. The Church is inviting us to see more deeply the Marian character of the Church’s maternity.

St. Leo the Great formulated this fifteen centuries ago on Christmas: the birthday of the Head is the birthday of the body (Sermon 26, De Nativitate). Meditating on the unique Christian mystery of the Incarnation reveals the pattern of all divinization – re-birth in the order of grace. And birth always requires a mother. To celebrate liturgically Mary as the Mother of the Church is to weave into an organic unity the cross, the Eucharist and maternity. Only through them, St. Leo said, does one “quit the old paths of his original nature and pass into a new man.”

And in our age of self-reliance and neo-pelagianism, perhaps we would do well to quit another old path: that of Marian minimalism, and pass into the newness of this feast, celebrating with joy and filial love, Mary, Mother of the Church.

Father John Nepil is a priest of the Archdiocese of Denver. His opinions do not necessarily reflect the editorial perspective of Catholic News Agency.

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Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick arrives at Massachusetts’ Dedham District Courthouse for his arraignment, Sept. 3, 2021. / Andrew Bukuras/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 30, 2023 / 16:20 pm (CNA).

A group known as BishopAccountability.org, which tracks sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, condemned a Massachusetts district judge’s Wednesday decision to dismiss criminal charges against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

The criminal charges involving the sexual assault and abuse of a minor were dismissed Wednesday after a judge ruled McCarrick, 93, was not mentally competent to stand trial.

Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the bishops accountability group, told CNA that “the dismissal of the case against McCarrick is hugely disappointing” and that “our hearts go out to the courageous victim who brought this case, and to all of McCarrick’s victims.”

McCarrick, the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, D.C., was facing three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14 relating to allegations that he sexually abused a teenager who was a family friend at a wedding ceremony in the 1970s at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. 

That teenager was identified by NorthJersey.com in February as James Grein, a now-64-year-old former New Jersey resident.

The charges in Massachusetts were the first criminal charges that McCarrick has ever faced following several accusations of sexual abuse of minors and seminarians. 

Doyle asserted that Wednesday’s dismissal “is a reminder of the Catholic hierarchy’s cynical strategy of cover-up.”

“McCarrick’s predations were an open secret,” Doyle said. “Many of his fellow cardinals and bishops knew, and they did nothing. They didn’t report him to law enforcement, they didn’t go public with the information, and they didn’t reach out to those he assaulted.” 

According to Doyle, “McCarrick might have been prosecuted years ago if even one of his brother bishops had called the police.” 

“Instead,” she said, “yet again, a predator has evaded accountability. While the institution may have been spared the embarrassment of an ex-cardinal on trial, the disgrace of its complicity with McCarrick remains.” 

Despite the group’s frustration over the dismissal, Doyle said the case remains an important milestone. 

“McCarrick was the first U.S. cardinal and only second U.S. bishop ever to be charged with abuse,” Doyle said. “Two years ago, the world witnessed what was unimaginable 20 years ago, when the Catholic abuse crisis first broke in Boston: a former U.S. cardinal in a courtroom answering to criminal charges of child sexual abuse.”

Once a powerful figure in ecclesiastical, diplomatic, and political circles in the U.S. and around the world, McCarrick was formally removed from the clerical state by Pope Francis in 2019. 

Criminal sexual assault charges filed against McCarrick in Wisconsin in April are still pending, as are several civil lawsuits.

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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 17, 2024 / 18:05 pm (CNA).
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on National Collections announced that it has awarded $10.5 million in … […]