A View from America

CARDINAL THEODORE McCarrick raises his eyebrows and slowly repeats my question to me: 'What are the main problems with the Church in the United States?' He sighs. What with the clerical sex-abuse crisis; a lack of vocations; an alleged gay witch hunt through the Vatican's seminary visitation; and friction with the secular world through its involvement in American politics over issues such as whether to give communion to pro-abortion politicians or divorced and remarried Catholics; the American Church has its fair share of concerns. For the Archbishop of Washington though, arguably the most senior Catholic cleric in the United States, whose offer of resignation when he reached 75 earlier this year was promptly turned down by Pope Benedict, the most pressing issue is the shortage of vocations.

Falling vocations

'We're facing a crisis in vocations, and it's important that we allow men who are being called by the Lord to the priesthood to hear that call and follow it,' he says earnestly. 'We need to facilitate that call and to train those men in the proper way.'
Cardinal McCarrick also points at the need to deal with the huge influx of Hispanic Catholics into the country. 'We have this overwhelming wonderful increase in the number of Hispanics in the US,' he says. 'We've done a lot to cater for their needs, but we are still not equipped enough to deal with them because in another generation half the Church will be Hispanic. We don't have the priests, we don't have the Spanish speakers, and we don't have the cultural understanding currently to cope with the situation. All of that has to be developed in the current years.'
The cardinal is also concerned about the level of Catholic education in the country. 'There's a crisis in Catholic education,' he tells me. 'We have fewer schools than we had years ago, and far fewer youngsters studying: You pay the price for that. When I was young, my generation grew up understanding what it was to be a Catholic because of the school system. Nowadays when only 20 percent go to Catholic schools, the understanding of Catholic teaching and culture becomes so much less, so we have to make sure that Catholic education is strengthened as much as possible.'
He adds that Catholic adult education is equally important, and points at the latest Vatican compendium to Catholic teaching, which he hopes will help bring adult Catholics a closer understanding of their faith. 'The compendium that the Vatican has issued is important because people will grow accustomed to Church teaching through that,' he says.

Vatican seminary enquiry

Of course, the Vatican's US seminary visitation is a major issue for the American Church at the moment, and I ask the cardinal for his response to it. The question is evidently one he's used to answering: 'It's always good to look at yourself,' he says. 'About 15 years ago I was part of the first visitation as chairman of a group that visited 4 seminaries, and they were helped by the visitations. That's important, so I expect the same thing to happen this time. It's crucial that the seminaries are looking at human formation as well as the theology and the teaching. A lot of our youngsters come from damaged families so you have to make sure that they grow in their personal development - intelligence, personal and sexual maturity.'
Although there is no seminary in Washington, the cardinal says five of his trainee priests are currently studying in seminaries elsewhere in the country. 'I'm delighted to see they'll be visited, because every time you have a visitation you have self-inspection first, and then you have that corrected or improved if need be.'

Eminent record

Theodore Edgar McCarrick was born in New York City in 1930. He attended Catholic elementary school, Fordham Preparatory School, and studied in Europe for a year before returning to Fordham University. He entered St. Joseph's Seminary in New York, and gained a BA in 1954 and a Master's Degree in History in 1958. Ordained to the priesthood in New York City in 1958, he went on to earn a second Master's degree in Social Sciences and a PhD in Sociology from the Catholic University of America, in Washington DC.
His first pastoral assignment was as assistant chaplain of Catholic University, where he went on to serve as dean of students and as director of development. In 1969, he returned to New York to serve as associate secretary for education. He became an assistant parish priest at Blessed Sacrament parish from 1969-1971 before being appointed the Cardinal's Secretary from 1971-1977.
In 1977, Paul VI appointed him as an auxiliary bishop in New York, a position which he excelled in before Pope John Paul II appointed him to be the first Bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey, when the diocese was established in 1981. In 1986 he was elevated to Archbishop, serving as the fourth archbishop of New Jersey before being appointed Archbishop of Washington.
McCarrick was elected to head the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Committee on Migration in 1986 and again in 1992, when he was also named to head the Committee for Aid to the Church in Central and Eastern Europe. In 1996, he was elected as chair of the Committee on International Policy, of which he remains a member.
He serves on the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples and the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.
A founding member of the Papal Foundation, he has served as its president since 1997. He is also chancellor of The Catholic University of America and a member of the Board of Catholic Relief Services.
A keen advocate of human rights, Cardinal McCarrick has visited many nations - such as China, Cuba, Vietnam, the Philippines, South Korea and Rwanda - on humanitarian missions, and has also travelled extensively in Eastern Europe. In 1998, McCarrick was one of three American clerics invited to visit China and discuss religious freedoms in that country. In January 2000, the President of Lebanon named him an Officer of the Order of the Cedars of Lebanon, and in December 2000, the president of the United States presented him with the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human Rights.
He was asked to serve on the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad in 1996 and, from 1999-2001, he was a member of the United States Commission for International Religious Freedom.
Installed as Archbishop of Washington in January 2001, just seven weeks later he was elevated to the College of Cardinals by John Paul II.

Historic meeting

Foreign policy is clearly a priority for the cardinal, and it was during a meeting to discuss transatlantic relations and coordinating the work of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Community (Comece) and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) that I met him for our interview. The talks, held in Brussels in September, were the first of their kind between the two groups, and Cardinal McCarrick told me that the most important thing about the meeting was 'the fact that it happened at all'. He said the bishops discussed a range of issues, including the challenge of global security, the promotion of development in Africa, the need for inter-religious dialogue with Islam, the plight of migrants and refugees, and the role of religion in public life.
An overarching theme of the meeting was the role of the Church in creating a more just and stable world in the Balkans, the Holy Land, and Africa. 'One area that has emerged is the importance of bishops giving a message of solidarity, witnessing to the fact that the Church is in union, and thereby strengthening the position of bishops in poorer countries or where they're under threat,' the cardinal told me.
The bishops reaffirmed their solidarity with the Church in the Holy Land, where they said efforts to secure a lasting and durable peace must be intensified through the crucial support and intervention of the European Union and the United States.
It was felt that in the Holy Land, the Church could provide a forum for dialogue, and has a responsibility to see that in order to continue its mission effectively they must help Christians to remain in the region.
When it comes to the Church's international policy, Cardinal McCarrick was clear where the unified position of the bishops stemmed from: 'All of us take the lead of the Pope, who gives strong leadership and guidance on issues such as the Holy Land.
'Our governments take different points of view but on the principles we Church people are united, and its helpful to us to see that we're not alone. The US is such an important policy maker in this area, but its important to us to see that our brothers in Europe are supporting us in this area - it's important to them too to see that we're on the same page.
'On the ground we want to be as supportive as possible of Patriarch Sabbah and those who work for him and helping materially the Catholic schools, hospitals, social services to keep them alive and keep them going in an area where financial support is so important because the economy is in such difficulty. It's good to exercise pressures on our governments to make sure they understand our concerns and desires and therefore become involved in moving the Road map forward.'
The cardinal was also keen to emphasise the bishops' collective position on climate change. 'We all say that we cannot continue to wait until we know the answers to some of these questions about the changing environment,' he said. 'When we see the real concerns that people have with global warming and look at the extraordinary growth of hurricanes in the US, we have to ask is this a result of global warming or not? If it is, we can't wait until the next generation to solve it, but if it's not, we need to know what is.'
As for his goals for the future, the cardinal was emphatic, 'For me it always has to be - which you can forget as you try to do the practical things - to call your people to holiness and call yourself to holiness at the same time. I'm only 5 years in Washington and the question has to be will I leave enough priests afterwards to make sure the people are served, and will I leave enough resources to help them serve them.'