Cardinal Wuerl Concedes New Leadership Needed but Refuses to Step Down

Embattled Cardinal Donald Wuerl conceded on Thursday the growing number of calls for him to resign, emanating from even his own clergy, but stopped short of saying he is ready to step down.

Here is the letter.

Credit to LifeSiteNews.

Letter to Pope Francis from Catholic Women

If you are a Catholic laywoman, you may wish to sign.  I still believe that he should step down from the Chair of Peter.

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Your Holiness: 

You have said that you seek “a more incisive female presence in the Church,” and that “women are capable of seeing things with a different angle from [men], with a different eye. Women are able to pose questions that we men are not able to understand.”

We write to you, Holy Father, to pose questions that need answers.
We are Catholic women deeply committed to our faith and profoundly grateful for Church teachings, the Sacraments, and the many good bishops and priests who have blessed our lives.

Our hearts are broken, our faith tested, by the escalating crisis engulfing our beloved Church. We are angry, betrayed and disillusioned. The pain and suffering of the victims never ends, as each news cycle brings more horrific revelations of sexual abuse, sexual misconduct, cover-ups, and deceit—even at the Church’s highest levels.

To sign, click here.

Letter to Pope Francis by Catholic Men

If you are a Catholic layman, then you may wish to sign this letter.  Personally, I still believe he should resign.

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Dear Holy Father and Bishops of the United States:

As Catholic laymen, we are faithful husbands, fathers, business leaders, lawyers, tradesmen, medical doctors, professors, teachers, artists, and leaders of Catholic lay apostolates. But most fundamentally, we are men in love with Christ and His Church, and it is for this reason that we beseech you to purge the corruption which has so grotesquely disfigured the face of Christ’s Bride. The present scandals have placed our wives, sisters, brothers, and children in danger. Therefore, echoing the words St. Catherine of Siena addressed to Pope Gregory XI, we beseech you to “sleep no longer, and raise the standard [of Christ] courageously.” The Church needs purification, and by virtue of your offices as our shepherds, no one is more qualified to bring about this purification than yourselves. We beg you to do so without a moment’s delay.

Taking courage from St. Paul, and knowing that “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rm 5:20), we are appalled by the recent abuses. We have read of the allegations against Archbishop Theodore McCarrick; the grand jury report regarding the Church in Pennsylvania; the horrific abuse in Honduras and Chile; and the rampant reports of clerical homosexual activity, pedophilia, and ephebophilia throughout the global presbytery. Most recently, we have read Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s testimony alleging that bishops in senior leadership positions within both the Holy See and the United States have covered up sexual abuse, evidencing widespread and systemic corruption throughout the Church’s hierarchy.

Holy Father, we come to you for answers. You personally have been faced with allegations. These allegations have been leveled by a high-ranking church official, Archbishop Viganò. Further, many bishops in the United States have publicly stated that they believe these allegations should be investigated. We implore you to address them. Specifically, we request that you answer the questions posed by our sisters in their letter to you, issued on August 30, 2018.

To read the rest of this, and to sign the letter, click here.