Medium-Security Monastery: McCarrick House Arrest Skirts Civil Justice System
Accused clergy, like Theodore McCarrick, face church-imposed "prayer and penance," but not courts.
On July 27, Pope Francis responded to charges that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the retired Archbishop of Washington, D.C., had been credibly accused of sexual abuse. The pope accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals, barred him from public ministry, and ordered him “to remain in a house yet to be indicated to him, for a life of prayer and penance,” pending a canonical trial.
Having been victimized by a priest who was similarly sentenced to what lay people may view as house arrest, I knew that the
