UPDATED: Bergoglio and the Press

Since the release of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report regarding sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy the Catholic world has been in turmoil. That turmoil only intensified--exponentially--when retired Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò released what amounted to an affidavit accusing senior Catholic hierarchs of knowingly covering up and even enabling the abuse. Viganò's focused special focus was on the retired Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, DC, Theodore McCarrick: a prelate of vast influence in the American church, a reputed "kingmaker," one man fund raising juggernaut, close adviser to Pope Francis, and mentor to such progressive luminaries as cardinals Wuerl, Cupich, and Tobin--all among Francis' anointed. As if that weren't enough, Viganò called on Francis himself to resign for his knowing complicity in the coverup of McCarrick's crimes.

Viganò's release of his testimony was timed to coincide for maximum effect with Francis's controversial trip to Dublin--already a public relations disaster due to lack of attendance. That disaster was compounded when Francis issued his non-denial statement in response to press questions about the Viganò testimony: "I will not say a single word ..." followed by a tacit appeal to the press to basically ignore it all.

Ordinarily that type of stonewalling by a super high profile public figure would be met with a storm of protest and accusation in the media. Just such a storm did in fact ensue, but mainly in the world of Catholic blogging and tweeting. The mainstream media, on the other hand, seemed strangely (or maybe not) indifferent.

Where to begin? In the past Catholic sex scandals involving the clergy have been widely characterized as pedophilia. Knowledge that this characterization was, in fact, inaccurate, that the problem was overwhelmingly one of homosexual priests preying upon adolescents and young men, had been carefully kept in the background. With this fresh outbreak of scandal, however, the Catholic blogosphere, fueled by Viganò's testimony regarding McCarrick's abuse of seminarians, quickly galvanized around the accusation of a powerful "lavender mafia" of homosexual prelates dominating the post Vatican II Church.