I hesitate to write this because it will probably offend a lot of people but I have simply had enough of the sugar coating that has been going on concerning the latest clergy sex scandals. For years people have been gossiping about Monsignor Rossi, the rector of the Immaculate Conception basilica in DC and male Catholic University students. I am not defending Rossi. In fact, I'm horrified. If he made overtures to male students he should be removed as rector of the Basilica, public ministry, and returned to the lay state. However, he has not been accused of slipping drugs into drinks or running a Turkish prison out of his office. He may have said " How bout it?" or "Do this or I'll make sure you lose your scholarship," but the grown and in the prime of his life college student couldn't be forced into it. We treat college students like boys and girls but they are not and if you've ever been in an emergency room near a university on a weekend night you've probably seen what damage an angry college student can do using nothing but his fists.
In all the years he was preying on seminarians apparently nobody has claimed to have seen Theodore McCarrick coming to Mass with a black eye or having to make an emergency dental visit because he claimed to have been in an accident that caused him to lose a few teeth. I don't think that any seminarian over the age of 18 who engaged in sex acts with that wizened, foul imp can claim legal rape and neither can any male college student who acquiesced to Rossi. McCarrick and Archbishop Bransfield up in West Virginia are a gruesome twosome but we obviously have another problem that nobody seems to be talking about. Why did so many young men, seminarians, lay college students and young priests put up with all this? Is sex for recompense the way to get ahead in certain Catholic circles? Why are some young men golden boys in the clerical and professional lay Catholic ranks and others-- devout, smart, and liked and trusted by men, relegated to the outer Mongolias of their dioceses?
Update:
For further information about Monsignor Rossi see this post at An Archdiocese of Washington Catholic blog. I can't be shocked anymore but these things do make me sick.