August 31, 2018 – Pope Francis and McCarrick: where does the evidence lead?
What, then, does all this add up to? Everyone will draw their own conclusions. My own is that, while a position of agnosticism can be justified – especially at this early stage – it’s not unreasonable to believe Viganò’s central claims.
A more difficult position, I think, is to dismiss what Viganò is saying. There are two ways to do this.
The first is to say that Viganò is a liar, even a fantasist, on a truly epic scale – a sort of Catholic Mark Hofmann. It’s not enough to argue that Viganò is an ambiguous figure with an axe to grind. He would have to be much more than that: someone capable of defaming the Holy Father, while calling “on God as my witness”, and to do so with such diabolical cunning that the Pope and his closest allies are unable to immediately discredit his claims.
The second possible argument is that we just don’t know enough: that, as in a detective story, some key evidence can turn everything on its head. That if the files of the Vatican and the US nunciature were opened, or if the churchmen accused by Viganò came out to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, the picture would change dramatically.
But then the person who is most loudly calling for the files to be examined, and for the protagonists to tell their story, is Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.