The past year has seen unprecedented government investigation of the Catholic Church in the United States. Kicked off by the seminarian sex abuse cover-up scandal of former-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick last summer, the ecclesiastical atmosphere has since taken on a Watergate-like avalanche quality. The Pennsylvania attorney general (and dozens of state attorneys general since then), the FBI, and others have raided chanceries and subpoenaed bishops and their staff. The U.S. Department of Justice even put the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (a sort of trade association for prelates) on notice to get ready for a mafia RICO investigation. The crisis looms large over the bishops' semi-annual meeting in Baltimore this week.
A few days ago, the scandal morphed once again, this time into a financial corruption breakdown so great it likely warrants the examination authority of the IRS and threatens the tax-exempt status of the church in America.
