c. 2006 Religion News Service
LOS ANGELES _ Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, a man both championed and disparaged as a political moderate within his Catholic Church, strode quietly to the podium last week (June 15) to address 200 bishops gathered here for their annual conference.
McCarrick, known for diplomacy in matters political and personal, said he was worried that the partisan politics prevalent in the nation’s capital, his home since 2001, have oozed into the church.
“My concern is the fear that the intense polarization and bitter battles of partisan politics may be seeping into broader ecclesial life of our Catholic people, and maybe even of our (bishops) conference,” said McCarrick, 75, who will retire Thursday (June 22).
These were strong words not usually heard at a bishops conference, where divisiveness is generally kept under wraps. They came as a rebuttal of sorts to charges two years ago that McCarrick was too soft on Catholic politicians like Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, who supported abortion rights. Some conservative Catholic bishops had said they would deny Kerry Communion, but McCarrick said he did not want to mix the Catholic sacrament with politics.
“We are called to teach the truth, to correct errors and to call one another to greater faithfulness,” McCarrick said. “However, there should be no place in the body of Christ for the brutality of partisan politics, the impugning of motives, or turning differences in pastoral judgment into fundamental disagreements on principle.”
The late Pope John Paul II picked McCarrick as Washington’s archbishop in late 2000, and in 2001 made him a cardinal. He will be succeeded in Washington by Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh, another prelate who is widely viewed as a moderate.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, McCarrick’s fellow American bishops made him chair of their Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians, a position that raised his already high profile. The task force’s goal was to determine how bishops should handle Catholic politicians whose votes ran counter to Catholic doctrine. It eventually decided each bishop should use his own judgment.
McCarrick was asked, a few hours after his speech, about the widespread view within the Catholic Church that he is a moderate on the church’s political spectrum and willing to strike a compromise now for a perceived greater cause down the road.
“I like to think of myself as a moderate, someone who’s in the center,” he said. “I think we have to stay in the middle. We have to stay in the center. There’s an old Latin expression, ‘in medios stat virtus’ _ Virtue’s in the middle.”
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A week ago, while speaking on CNN, McCarrick again made headlines by saying that while he backed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, he could accept civil unions. Some interpreted his comments to mean that he supported the very idea of civil unions, but he released a statement days later saying he does not.
He further explained his position last week when asked if he thought the idea of civil unions was as abhorrent to Catholic Church teaching as is same-sex marriage.
“Well, let’s put it this way,” he said. “If in order to get the constitutional amendment we had to live with civil unions, then I think we could do it. But it’s not something we would want.”
In imagining a political dilemma in which same-sex marriage could be banned only if civil unions were allowed, he said: “You could live with imperfect legislation if it’s on the way to the perfect legislation. To say right at the beginning that ‘I’m not going to take anything but perfect’ is crazy because we don’t live that way in our lives.”
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His words echoed comments he made when asked a question by another bishop at the conference: What should a bishop do if he can’t persuade a Catholic politician who supports abortion rights to change, especially when Catholic conservatives are publicly pressuring the bishops to “get tough” and deny those politicians Communion?
McCarrick said each bishop should use his own judgment and counseled continued dialogue with the politician: “talking to them about their own souls” and to “incrementally try to make your point known.”
He suggested that embarrassing politicians in ways that could cut off dialogue is counterproductive. He said he has known some staunch defenders of abortion rights who have moved “closer to the center on the issue,” especially with partial-birth abortion, after he has talked with them.
“My policy has been … if you can save 1,000 babies, you save them, and then you go to save the second thousand,” he said. “You don’t say, ‘I’m not gonna take anything but 100 percent.”’
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His critics call him overly accommodating. But Cardinal Francis George, vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a member of the bishops’ task force on Catholic politicians, said McCarrick’s personality helped make him a good chairman of a tough committee to head.
“In that committee there are many diverse forces, and he’s seen that each of them is heard,” George said. “He’s very attentive to people in front of him but he’s also a man who has a sense of the issues. He’s able to see the broad picture.”
(Jeff Diamant writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)
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