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Interview with Cardinal McCarrick; Mexico Slaughters Chickens; Man Freaks Out At Airport

Aired February 27, 2013 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CARDINAL THEODORE MCCARRICK, ARCHBISHOP EMERITUS OF WASHINGTON, D.C.: He expressed his own -- this humility comes out, this humility and courage, this extraordinary combination of virtues that Pope Benedict has.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Now, he did talk about the joy that he felt after eight years as pope. He also mentioned the difficulties. He talked about the gravity of his decision, about the novelty of this decision.

He talked about having faced hard times, also, that the church had been buffeted on agitated waters but that he was sure that God would not allow this church to sink.

He clearly was referring not just to the usual challenges of the church but to some of the scandals, some of the difficulties that have rocked this church.

How do you think his papacy has dealt with them and how does the next pope have to deal with these scandals?

MCCARRICK: Those are two very good questions. I think his papacy has dealt with them as well as he could. I think the instrumentalities, he has used them. He's done everything that he could do, I believe, to take care of this.

I think as we go on and trying to figure out how best to serve God's people, how best to present the church in this world of ours, probably his successor is going to have to do what we did 50 years before Pope Benedict came. The church needs that every few years.

AMANPOUR: What does that mean?

MCCARRICK: It means to bring us up to date. The doctrines never change. But the way we present them has to change, the way we talk to people because the people have changed. The people won't listen to 100 years ago.

AMANPOUR: Let me ask you about that because, obviously, the next big issue will be the conclave. You are not going to be taking part in electing. You've reached an age whereby you can no longer vote?

MCCARRICK: Yes.

AMANPOUR: That's as kind as I can put it. You voted the last time around and so many cardinals have been elevated by Pope Benedict the XVI or by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

Americans are saying perhaps there needs to be a new direction. Fifty-one percent say it should stay the same. What sort of reforms do you think should happen?

MCCARRICK: You're asking me the $64 million question, but I think definitely we have to continue to keep involving the laypeople.

We don't have enough priests. We should have more priests. We must work on that.

The Holy Father has done that. Bishops around the country have done that. Around the world have done that. We haven't done it well enough.

We must keep praying for it. We must keep attracting the young people, priests and religious, too.

We need wonderful religious women to continue the teaching functions, the peacemaking function of our world.

AMANPOUR: Do you think, as some have subjected, including Cardinal O'Brien because of the problems that he's in, have decided not to come to this conclave, but he said that he thought it was time that priests should be allowed to marry. That discussion should happen.

Fifty-eight percent of American Catholics think the priests should be allowed to marry.

Can you imagine that happening and do you think that would be a good idea?

MCCARRICK: I certainly can imagine it happening under certain circumstances, like, even now, when priests who are married come in to the church, they are able to continue in their married states.

AMANPOUR: You're talking about Anglicans who come into the Catholic Church?

MCCARRICK: And other Protestant ministers who come in.

So, I think there's a -- this is not an impossible situation, but we have from the Lord and from the Epistles of St. Paul that presentation of celibacy is a very important thing in the life of a priest.

I was a bishop at the diocese for 25 years and, you know, there's not only a spiritual advantage, a very practical advantage there. You want a man who's married with a family to move to another place where you desperately need him. And he says, I can't go. My wife has a job, my kids are in school, I can't do this.

So, there are factors. These are not the major factors, but there are, for bishops who are trying to serve God's people, these are things that happen from time to time and they are very important.

But I think the nature of giving yourself to the Lord completely is hard to do. Maybe many of us don't do it as well as we should do. Maybe I'm not doing it as well as I should be.

You're selfish sometimes. You plan on things. But basically just to give yourself to God, those are the priests who really touch God's people.

AMANPOUR: Do you think it's time for a non-European pope? We've had Europeans. We've had mostly Italians for hundreds of years, but the church is growing the fastest in places like after Africa and Asia and parts of the developing world.

Is it time for a pope from there and will it happen?

MCCARRICK: I need to say that many feel that way and I think there are so many wonderful bishops and cardinals from the third world.

It would be certainly a beautiful thing to have -- to show the universality of the church in that particular, personal way.

I would certainly -- if I were voting, I certainly would consider voting for a non-first world pope.

AMANPOUR: What about the American pope? Do you think that's likely this time around?

MCCARRICK: I love my brothers, but I don't think it's likely. It's not needed. We have a lot of gifts that the American people have, that the American bishops have.

AMANPOUR: Do you accept with what some people say, a lot of Catholics in Europe and in America believe the church to be in a certain element of crisis, mostly because of these sex abuse scandals that have rocked the church?

Do you accept that there is a crisis that needs to be ended?

MCCARRICK: I accept that there's a crisis, but I don't think that this is the only crisis.

The crisis is the world that we deal with. We're living in a world at war. We're living in a world where there's so much persecution, Christians and Catholics, too. Not just in Muslim countries but other countries, too.

There's a secularism in our society and that's the crisis more than anything else that the church is facing today.

AMANPOUR: Again, just to push you on this because there's so many Catholics who love their faith but feel very letdown and disappointed by the hierarchy and by these priests that have been vindicated and the priests that have hidden the crisis, what should the church do to let people love their faith again? MCCARRICK: They must continue to do what Benedict the XVI has done very clearly in so many instances, and other bishops, hopefully most of us, have tried very clearly to say we cannot continue to have this problem in the church.

We've got to make sure in our seminaries, in our psychology of dealing with people, we've got to be able to present our priests, our sisters, our lay leaders to the world as people who are interested in them and not in themselves.

AMANPOUR: I was very interested to hear this time around the pope -- well, his spokespeople, saying that it's up to certain cardinals to decide whether or not to come here and we're talking specifically about Archbishop Mahoney of Los Angeles.

There's a petition going around that people say he should not come because of the allegations that he shielded priests from accountability.

Did you think that it was up to him to decide? Do you think he should have taken part, or not?

MCCARRICK: You know, it's hard to get inside a man's mind, a man's heart.

We make mistakes. But I know Father Mahoney and I think this is a good man who wanted to do the right thing and who felt at the time this was the right thing to do.

Turned out he was wrong and that's a shame. That's unfortunate. But this is a good man who really tried in so many areas to take care of people and we can all fall in some mistakes, every one of us, and when this happens, obviously it hurts the church.

It hurts people and it hurts the man himself. These things are really so complex, Christiane. They are so complex. You have to get into a man's heart, into a man's mind when these things are happening.

And then there's always the possibility and the hope that you grow in your understanding and you grow more clear about what your duties should be and you follow it through.

I think you have to give somebody the grace of saying, you know, maybe that was a mistake 10 years ago. I've learned since.

AMANPOUR: As we go into a new conclave, we're not sure when it's going to start, but perhaps in the next two weeks, certainly, do you feel a pain at what's happened to the Catholic Church and the way it's being viewed in many quarters and how do you think this conclave might or might not be affected by these challenges?

MCCARRICK: You always ask good questions.

I think we all feel the pain. We would all like to walk in with everything fine and the sun shining.

But that's not the world today. So these internal problems in the church are hurting us all.

But then the external problems -- I keep talking. This is a world that is really in trouble and the church is there to cure the troubles of the world. The church is there to say, God loves you and, all of these things deep in our heart, how do we express them, back, too?

This is going to be the great challenge of this conclave, I think, to be able to go back into the modality and find that they are very courageous, brilliant men who said, we've got to change the way we talk about things.

We've got to change a lot of things. Not the doctrine. We're going to keep following what Jesus Christ told us, but we've got to make sure that the people of this generation understand and that we help them to understand by the way we teach, by the way we preach, by the way we pray and show we love them.

AMANPOUR: Now, I know that in the conclave no cardinal is allowed to speak outside the conclave or tweet or do anything like that. But you've been there. Tell us what it's like when you make this incredible choice in decision.

MCCARRICK: Can I tell you the story that I've been telling in many, many conferences over the past few weeks?

The key moment of the conclave, you have your ballot in the hand, you're going to put it in the urn, you've written down one of the names of the cardinals and in front of you is Michelangelo's "Last Supper" -- "Last Judgment," rather.

And before you put the ballot in, you read an oath. It's something like this. "I call on Jesus Christ, my Lord, who will be my judge," and there's Michelangelo in front of you.

Who will be my judge that I'm voting for the man that I feel under God should be pope, the man that I feel God wants to be pope?

So, it becomes a discernment. You don't pick your buddy. You don't pick somebody that's going to move to you a better place or give you a lot of ancillaries.

By your oath, you pick the man you think God wants to lead his church in the next how-many years. That's the real thing that you go -- and I can talk about that because that's in the document that we all have to do, the public document.

But when you go inside and do it, we did it more than once, but every time you do it, you see that same thing.

Lord, am I doing the right thing? Have I picked the right man? Is this what you want me to do?

Maybe if we had more of that in our lives, we'd have a better opportunity to serve God's people.

AMANPOUR: let me ask you a serious question. You say pick the right man. Do you think there's any chance that one day they'll pick women to be priests at least?

MCCARRICK: I sort of have to go back to what John Paul II said. He really issued a document that makes it of faith.

So, I'm a man of faith and I'm a man of the church. I don't think that's going to happen.

But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't develop more and more opportunities for women to serve because they come with so much strength, not just goodness, so much strength. We need a lot of that today.

AMANPOUR: Faith and hope spring eternal.

MCCARRICK: Amen.

AMANPOUR: Cardinal McCarrick, thank you so much for joining me.

MCCARRICK: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: Back to you, Suzanne and Michael.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CO-ANCHOR, "CNN AROUND THE WORLD": All right, thank you.

MICHAEL HOLMES, CO-ANCHOR, "CNN AROUND THE WORLD": Thanks, Christiane. Appreciate that fascinating discussion there.

MALVEAUX: Yeah, absolutely.

HOLMES: We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back, though, with more right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: To Mexico now where authorities have slaughtered more than two million chickens. They are actually worried about a bird flu outbreak that is taking place there.

HOLMES: Yes, again, bird flu again. Almost three dozen farms were inspected. This happened in the central state of Guanajuato. Eighteen were affected by the bird flu outbreak.

MALVEAUX: I want to bring in Rafael Romo.

So, Rafael, tell us about what we think this kind of impact, whether or not they were really afraid that this outbreak was real.

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN SENIOR LATIN AMERICAN AFFAIRS EDITOR: That's right. Well, the good news is that it -- the outbreak seems to be concentrated to the state that Michael just talked about. The state of Guanajuato in central Mexico. We're talking about 38 farms that were inspected. Fifteen were found to have the infection. Not every single chicken, but many of them. So the Mexican authority decided to go ahead and slaughter the chicken. Now, we're talking about a very high number, 2.1 million chicken. And let's go to the numbers. Let's talk about some numbers here because it is very important to contextualize this story. They're going to slaughter 900,000 chicken, that are chickens for consumption. When it comes to chicken producing, 722,000 and then 519,000 that are egg- producers for a total of 2.1 million.

Now, the entire universe of chicken for consumption in Mexico is something like 440 million, which is -- when you take a look at those numbers, the percentage really is 0.4 percent. So what Mexican authorities say is this. This is not going to affect production. Let's hear what the Mexican agriculture minister had to say about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ENRIQUE MARTINEZ Y. MARTINEZ, MEXICAN SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE (through translator): The situation gets more complicated, as with climate change, where we have prolonged drought and adverse weather conditions. Freezing conditions where we had none before, and now we see this more frequently, as well as sanitary problems such as this one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: And Mexican authorities saying that they already distributed 20 million vaccines for this outbreak this week. They said they're going to distribute another 40 million doses just in case it's needed in the rest of the country.

HOLMES: Very quickly, affect the U.S. at all?

ROMO: That's the first question I had when I heard this story. And the Department of Agriculture just got back to me and they said that currently the United States does not import chickens from Mexico. It doesn't mean that they won't in the future. But there's no reason for American consumers to be worried about an outbreak.

And, again, Mexican officials are saying this virus does not affect humans, only affects the chickens. So that's why they do proactive action.

MALVEAUX: All right. Thanks. And happy birthday, by the way.

ROMO: Yes, thank you. Thank you for saying that on the air. Thank you.

MALVEAUX: Oh, of course we're going to say that on the air.

HOLMES: You don't look 50. I'm telling you, you don't look 50. You're doing well.

ROMO: Thanks, Michael.

MALVEAUX: Ah, 50's the new 30.

HOLMES: All right. Are you frustrated with your airline? We've all been there, haven't we? MALVEAUX: But in China, so this guy got a little out of control when his travel plans changed. Now it's going viral, of course. That's up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: We're going to take you to Shanghai, China, now. A passenger went nuts after his family missed not one but two flights.

MALVEAUX: Yes, you can't believe this. Security cameras capturing him ripping out computers, trying to smash through the glass doors that are leading to the planes. And, of course, Jeanne Moos. She's got the story on this airport banter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fasten your seat belt, extreme turbulence ahead. A Chinese executive traveling with his family missed not one but two flights. And when he, his wife and two sons weren't allowed to board after missing the second flight's boarding announcement, what went flying was computer equipment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On this episode of China uncensored, watch a Chinese official go nuts.

MOOS: And watch bystanders back off. Get me away from this guy. He turned out to be Yen Lin Coon (ph), the vice chairman of a state-run mining company and an adviser on a Chinese political committee. Not to mention an expert desk kicker. Thought that might have hurt.

He definitely meant to hurt the glass doors leading to the airplane. And when he couldn't break through, he slammed the sign on the desk.

MOOS (on camera): And just in case the husband may have missed a little something --

MOOS (voice-over): His wife picked up an object and smashed it on the floor. We haven't seen a rampage like this since the British guy ransacked a T-Mobile store because they wouldn't give him a refund. Or the drive through customer who couldn't get Chicken McNuggets because this Ohio McDonalds was serving breakfast. She not only smacked the server, when they finally shut the window on her, she managed to smash a hole in it.

MOOS (on camera): The McNuggets slugger ended up being sentenced to 60 days in jail. She also paid a $1,500 fine for damages to the window.

MOOS (voice-over): Funny thing was, that 15 seconds after she broke the window, the next guy through the drive-through was handed his food.

The angry T-Mobile guy ended up with fans.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What that guy did, mmm, kudos to him.

MOOS: But the air rage rampager has attracted comments like, "what a contemptible, self-important arse."

The Chinese air traffic system is a hive of delays. There's little sympathy for tantrums by those considered elite. Yen (ph) has been suspended from his job and he's already apologized saying, "I failed to be a qualified political adviser, as well as a good father." One of his sons seemed to try to diffuse his dad, or at least disarm him. Eventually security stepped in. You, sir, are caught on camera. That's no boarding pass, buddy.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MALVEAUX: Yes, see, now everybody gets to see it all over the world, right?

HOLMES: Exactly. I mean, yes --

MALVEAUX: Bad behavior.

HOLMES: A lot of problems here with senior officials behaving badly in China. Yes.

MALVEAUX: Although, you must admit, sometimes you want to do that at the airport.

HOLMES: All right, coming up, say it ain't so.

MALVEAUX: Yes, Budweiser getting sued for allegedly watering down the beer. How much? That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HOLMES: All right. AROUND THE WORLD. It is International Polar Bear Day and you couldn't be happier.

MALVEAUX: I like polar bears.

HOLMES: A big polar bear lover.

MALVEAUX: I love them. A global initiative design to call attention to how the way we live affecting the amount of sea ice that is inside the arctic circle.

HOLMES: And people behind the International Polar Bear Day want everyone to adjust the temperatures in their homes or offices down a few degrees today. The goal to reduce carbon emissions. Awe, look at that.

MALVEAUX: And they're adorable. They're really cute.

HOLMES: (INAUDIBLE).

MALVEAUX: But you said they're actually dangerous in real life, yes?

HOLMES: Yes, killer. MALVEAUX: Mean son of a guns.

HOLMES: I wouldn't be patting one.

I've got to go now.

MALVEAUX: All right.

HOLMES: All right, you day is not done. Mine is. You're done with me, aren't you?

MALVEAUX: I am.

HOLMES: All right.

MALVEAUX: But I'll see you tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.

HOLMES: Let's do that.

MALVEAUX: All right, thank you, Michael.