Anyone else feel kind of gross about this random flattery shout-out, featuring a quote by a pope who is currently being criticized for the ways in which he received flattery from an abuser? https://twitter.com/firstthingsmag/status/1326677337128267777

Also would like to point out that

1) Courage’s founder advised bishops to “rehabilitate” abusers

2) Last year one of Courage’s most prominent speakers (who wrote for First Things) was discovered to have had an online sexual relationship with a child

It just reads like a weird martyrizing love letter. I’ve received similar messages from people in the past who’ve read my stuff and I was always like, “Ummm. You don’t know me. Also, instead of an idealizing love letter, maybe actually do something to make our lives easier?”

Messages like these risk encouraging a sort of martyrdom complex I’ve seen with many SSA people. I’ve suffered from that, being preoccupied with how glorious and Christlike it was that I was sad and alone. It’s really distorting and lends itself to manipulative behavior...

Weigel sounds like McCarrick. A quote by McCarrick from the report: “You are called to leave the comfort of a sexual life of your own to go to pastoral ministry and service. You are so often texted by loneliness, by lack of affirmation, by lack of understanding your needs...”

... All of this is true. But it lends itself to a disposition where one becomes preoccupied by a rejection of one’s affective life, and risks seeking affirmation and gratification in unhealthy, manipulative, and sometimes abusive ways.

Also in the McCarrick report is psychiatrist Richard Fitzgibbons, who has been highly influential in Courage. After evaluating Priest 1 because of sexual contact with children, Fitzgibbons told the Diocese of Metuchen that Priest 1 "has been victimized and is not the victimizer"

There’s this weird thing in many Courage-like circles, where agency gets sucked out of sexuality. The SSA diagnosis is often accompanied by a taking-on of a sort of helplessness, especially when treating sexuality like alcoholism...

This helplessness is then used to alleviate culpability for all sorts of behaviors, treating them almost as demonic compulsions, rather than one’s own acts. There’s a sort of removal of one’s sexuality from one’s agency, preventing culpability and change

And this is a situation where one even loses accountability and a sense of agency in relationship to one’s abusive acts. Under that disposition, you are always a victim to your own sexuality, even when it hurts others