And a long wait has turned, for many lay Catholics and clerics, into a kind of cynical resignation that very little might actually be coming, and even that won't be coming soon.
But losing trust over McCarrick is really part of a broader trend.
The context for the last two years in the Church's life is a growing loss of trust among Americans in all of the country's long-revered public institutions, including the Church.
Trust in the government, the media, the academy, and in religious institutions has been on the decline for years. The last three months of American life demonstrate how far that trust has fallen: In the eyes of many Americans, the credibility of the federal government, of public health experts, of the police, and of the media is reaching historic lows.
Institutions have become platforms for personal advancement and brand-building, instead of forges by which character is formed.
Amid that social change, institutional loyalties and connections have become passé. In the social media era, even with an expectation of evermore rigid political orthodoxy, each person has become a brand of one.
Practicing a religion no longer offers some unique business, civic, or social benefit for Americans. There is no longer much point to lukewarm Catholicism.
The Church asks Catholics for a kind of trust that is, in contemporary America, countercultural. And in the wake of the last two years, that kind of trust seems also counterintuitive.
To be a faithful Catholic is to say "I place my trust in the teachings, and formation, and leaders, and way of living offered by the Church so much that I will give my life over to it."
To be a faithful Catholic is to say "I surrender my will to the will of Christ and His Church."
The Church will continue to ask for that trust.
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But the McCarrick scandal has made it harder to ask, and harder to say yes. The soil was already rocky, the McCarrick scandal has made the rocks more jagged.
Answers on simple questions would probably help, accountability would likely help even more. But those things may not be forthcoming, and few Catholics are in a position to change that. Those who might be able to get answers are either asking behind the scenes, or just not asking anymore.
Still, it is too soon, two years after the McCarrick scandal, to see what its long-term effects might be.
But there is a set of questions that each Catholic, clerical and lay, can answer for himself, and must:
Amid scandal, and disappointment, and frustration, and anger, and when it is unpopular and perhaps even costly, will we continue to turn to the Lord?
Do Catholics believe the Church can form them into saints, and are they willing to be formed?