“If you find yourself in a rabbit hole, stop digging”

On Monday there was a lot of negative reaction to Cardinal Cupich of Chicago and his interview regarding Archbishop Viganò’s testimony. In the video clip that was going around there was some choice buffoonery in what he had to say. The memes quickly flowed from this.

Cardinal Blase Cupich said today that his Monday interview was edited unfairly.

“An NBC Chicago TV report that aired Monday night was edited in such a way that gave the false impression that Pope Francis and I consider the protection of children to be less important than other issues, such as the environment or immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Cardinal Blase Cupich wrote in an Aug. 29 press release.

Well that is always a possibility when it comes to the media.

So today the Catholic News Agency provided a transcript of the full interview done by NBC. Reading through this full interview the edited interview did not provide a false impression regarding some of the stupidity of what he had said.

So here he is directly talking about the accusations:

“But for the Holy Father, I think to get into each and every one of those aspects, in some way is inappropriate and secondly, the pope has a bigger agenda. He’s gotta get on with other things of talking about the environment and protecting migrants and carrying on the work of the Church. We’re not going to go down a rabbit hole on this.”

Rabbit hole comment ☑

“They don’t like the fact that he’s calling for more lay involvement. They don’t like the fact that he is calling for a synodal Church, where we get the advice of people. They don’t like that he’s talking about the environment or the poor or the migrants or that the death penalty is something that we should outlaw. They don’t like the fact that he is saying that economies kill. There are people who don’t like that message. And so there’s an insurgency of people who don’t like that. And, quite frankly, they also don’t like him because he’s a Latino and that he is bringing Latino culture into the life of the Church, which we have been enriched by and I think that that’s part of all of this too.”

Good to know that since both of the Pope’s parents were Italian immigrants that it makes him Latino. Will have to remember that if I go to Italy.

Race card ☑

As to his other points. Yes of course there are people that don’t like some of the Pope’s focuses. But Cardinal Cupich’s laundry list here is woefully ignorant. I can’t recall a single instance of critics of the Pope worried about lay involvement and getting advice from the people. The laity for some odd reason don’t have a problem with being involved or giving advice. He seems to think the critics want more clericalism.

Let’s not overlook that. Let’s not let this letter take us away from the fact that there was something flawed in the way that the Charter, which should have been followed from 2002 on, was implemented. We have done it here in Chicago, and we’re proud of it. I’m deeply disappointed and somewhat angry that there were people in another state, in another jurisdiction, that were not doing the things that we promised to do. We should hold each other accountable and we need an independent review of that too.

Here he is talking about the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. The problem with his summary is that most of the reported abuse was from a period before 2002. Pretty much following the same trend as is evident elsewhere. If the Chicago Attorney General looks at the same period of time there, it is more than likely that they will find the same trend. So his “we’re proud” is a bit of apples and oranges when it comes to a comparison.

Now he does make some valid points in this interview and when talking about their Attorney General investigating the Archdiocese records, he points out that “Let’s look at all the agencies and institutions that deal with children on a day-to-day basis” since as he notes we see the same problems there. Especially since this did not just peak in the past, but seems to be an ongoing problem. This point has to be made even when it seems to be deflecting.

When asked about McCarrick and what he knew about him. His defense is that surely he wouldn’t have done certain things if he had known. This might even be true in his personal case. Still it is a bad defense since there were many people in the know about McCarrick that turned a blind eye and let him advance over and over. People do bad stuff all the time when they don’t want to rock the boat or have their career curtailed. Self-interest can make you purposely blind to many things.

In summary though, the stupid things he said were not changed by editing.

The other day I quipped that he was the “Hold my beer” Cardinal. There were a lot of reactions to his comments way outside of the Catholic corridor.

Photo attribution (CC BY-SA 2.0)