Pope Francis recently rejected a preening offer of resignation by German Cardinal Reinhard Marx.
It is hard to say which gesture was phonier: the offer or the refusal.
Intended as proof of the Church’s commitment to “reform,” this exchange between Pope Francis and Cardinal Marx only exposes its hollowness. The faithful have grown weary of these exercises in manipulative public relations. They hear windy talk about “accountability,” even as those responsible for the abuse scandal remain in power.
Marx is a beneficiary of a papal double standard: strictness for conservatives, leniency for liberals.
The letters between the pope and Marx are peppered with pompous references to taking “responsibility,” which is just a euphemism for dodging it. The pope’s open orchestration of the exchange — he gave Marx the green light to publish his letter of resignation before he refused it — punctuates the phoniness of it all.Marx will rise, not fall, as a result of his offer of resignation, supposedly made out of contrition for his role in mishandling abuse cases. Marx is a beneficiary of a papal double standard: strictness for conservatives, leniency for liberals. We have seen Pope Francis hastily accept the resignations of conservative bishops while letting compromised liberal bishops linger on. Enablers of the defrocked rapist Theodore McCarrick, for example, preserved their positions. Some of McCarrick’s cronies have even enjoyed promotions. McCarrick’s former roommate, Cardinal Kevin Farrell, got bumped up after the scandal to the prestigious position of camerlengo. One of McCarrick’s proteges, Cardinal Blase Cupich, is now the chief bishop-maker in the United States.
