Open Book 2: Conservatives On Top

From CNA, the book on Archbishop McCarrick opens a few more pages, and testimony from six priests suggest the sexual activity and secrecy didn’t end with the disgraced former cardinal:

Several Newark priests told CNA that the same atmosphere existed under Archbishop John Myers, who led the archdiocese from 2001-2016.

One priest who studied during that period recalled being told, as a newly arrived seminarian, to lock his bedroom door at night to avoid “visitors.”

“I thought they were kidding – they really weren’t,” he said.

Rod Dreher continues multiple blog posts on things. This is today’s latest. Two quotes from him:

John Myers — a conservative! —

The late Richard Sipe was very much a progressive Catholic. … What he hated was lies, double lives, and exploitation. On that last point, he and conservative Catholics would agree.

Correction: virtuous conservative Catholics. By definition, conservative Catholicism adopts some or all of these: slowing Vatican II or rolling it back, pro-institution, the culturewar, authority, obedience, faithfulness, the red and black, a vigorous anti-abortion stance for public consumption. Among other things.

Those other things might include secrecy, but I think some progressives have their secrets too. A mature believer of any ideological stripe would agree that lies, secret lives, and the victimization of others is wrong. Heck, most atheists would agree to that. There would seem to be no extraordinary virtue in that.

These days I’m inclined to think there’s no extraordinary virtue in being conservative, orthodox, faithful, or whatever adjective one wants to place on herself or himself.