Since the allegations against Theodore McCarrick began to emerge over a month ago, one senior US churchman after another has disowned knowledge of his behaviour – some more credibly than others. They should have known. They should have made it their business to know.
The question we need to be asking, after McCarrick's resignation today, is: why didn’t they know?
Bishops must have heard rumours: after all, two New Jersey dioceses had reached settlements over McCarrick's actions, and as more than one writer has noted, stories about the then-cardinal had a wide circulation. The bishops needed to look into those rumours. They didn’t. In this, too, they failed: a truly execrable miscarriage of the duty to care.
