You have to wonder how much the 1960's really did affect Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Speaking at a conference in New Zealand about two weeks ago McCarrick placed the blame for the Catholic Church's continuing priest sex-abuse scandal squarely on the 1960's counterculture.
"It was Woodstock," he said, according to the New Zealand Herald. "People were smoking marijuana, and the sexual mores went down as all mores went down." (Source)
Well. The 1960's must have been particularly hard on the now-retired church leader. One can almost imagine the poor beleaguered McCarrick attempting to celebrate Mass in 1969 surrounded by a circle of unwashed barefoot dancing hippies. Maybe on one of those occasions someone's stash of pot contaminated the wafers or communion wine.
Yeah, a 1960's flashback. That's the ticket. How else to explain a claim that is so patently absurd?
The problem is that many of the most notorious figures involved in the sex-abuse case were ordained well before the 3-day love-in at Max Yaszur's farm. John Geoghan was ordained in 1962, well before the emergence of free love. I know. He was shaken up by rollicking events like those celebrated in the movie Animal House.
Or how about Bishop Joseph Anthony Ferrario? Maybe he was traumatized by the red scare and McCarthy hearings of the 1950's. Going further back Hans Hermann Wilhelm Cardinal Groër was ordained in 1942. His escapades must have been related to the entire trauma of the Second World War.
All these hypothesizes are equally ludicrous. And, in fact, McCarrick says as much when he concedes that the problem existed well before Woodstock.
It was also true that the problem had always existed "and that we have become aware of it just recently," the newspaper reported him as saying. "Now, having become aware of it, we have tried to do the very best we can to ensure that it doesn't happen." (Source)
So why gratuitously bash a rock concert now almost four decades past? Is it because it's easier to blame a corrupt society than to look in the mirror and examine the institution that spawned these abusive clergymen?
Of course, taking the later approach would mean conceding that the Catholic Church has made mistakes over the century. With a Pontiff who seems bent on dialing back the calendar to 1407 that doesn't seem likely.