Posted on 10/03/2007 7:36:26 AM PDT by NYer
Readers may recall my coverage of various goings-on in the Miami archdiocese over the past couple of years.
Lo and behold, there is something new to report...
St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary recently sent out two vocation-recruiting catalogs to prospective seminarians. One version — which contained only articles and no advertisements — targeted straight men. The other version — which did contain advertisements, including the one pictured below, with two bare-chested men standing next to each other in a hot tub — targeted homosexual men.
I have, in my possession, a copy of the latter. (This is addressed to those who might cast doubt on the authenticity of the "gay-friendly" version, as certain individuals did with regard to the photos in my June 19, 2007 column.)
The catalogs were also sent to Miami pastors, at least one of whom was infuriated by the advertisements included in the "gay-friendly" version. Incidentally, said version has reportedly been "recalled" — whatever that may mean.
In addition to the hot tub ad, you'll notice the first paragraph of an ad for a South Florida restaurant, where "you're given the ultimate excuse to party," and where there are "lovers bathed in a captivating sanctuary of controlled unrestraint."
Interestingly, Archbishop John Favalora is now promoting the Courage ministry. (See his letter below, which reportedly was sent out after the catalogs were put into circulation.)
/sigh/
Like we Catholics haven’t suffered enough from homo’s in the pristhood...
shaking my head...
the Pope better be “rattling some Bishop’s cage” in Miami!
Learning from scandal - Analyzing facts on clergy sexual abuse
I have to wonder if they've learned anything from the John Jay study.
This seminary needs to be closed. We need Men as Priests, not perverts.
I have to wonder who, specifically, you mean by “they”.
The Seminary itself, among others.
Thank you!
and from what I understand, in the past, many MEN got out of the seminary because many of the seminaries were just loaded with homo’s!
What will he tell them? (Archbishop Niederauer to celebrate Mass at SF drag queen parish)
Nope!!! Not when you have Archbishops celebrating with drag queens.
Imagine ten or twenty years from now - what if a former student/graduate of the St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary is accused of (homo)sexual abuse of a parishioner? What part do you think these ads will have played? What culpability will the Seminary share in the abuser's crimes? What culpability will the Archdiocese of Miami share, as an entire institution, in the abuser's crimes?
Unfortunately, some folks will choose only to see this putrid passel of perverts, and draw erroneous conclusions about the Church from their deliberately incomplete data.
You still haven’t answered my question. Besides the seminary administration (see my comments about them above) who specifically do you mean by “others”?
Those to whom I refer in my final sentence of post #13 will know who they are.
You're absolutely right! The Catholic Church in the US has grappled with this problem and, supposedly, turned a corner. We have already seen the result of bishops 'encouraging' homosexuals to become priests while turning away healthy, young orthodox men who did not fit the mindset of the bishop.
I am glad this was exposed.
Absolutely. The place needs to be shut down, and the physical plant turned over to folks who will run it right.
Our Lord told a parable about folks who were mismanaging their master's vineyard ... the folks running this place should share the fate of those "worthless servants".
Only one?
Or am I reading too much into this and being unfair? I read this to mean that all the parishes in Miami were sent a copy and one priest raised a ruckus and contacted Abbott.
If that is the case it says a lot about this diocese and the caliber of men which staff its parishes. In a sane world, such a publication should cause an absolute revolt among the clergy and be followed by a demonstration outside the episcopal residence, a ransacking of the publication office and a public tarring and feathering of the Vocations Director.
Favalora et al., have been in the forefront of the lavender scandal from day one and it looks as if they thought things had now quietened down sufficiently for "business as usual" to resume.
It's hard to resist the thought that this diocese is absolutely overrun with shirtlifters.
**St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary recently sent out two vocation-recruiting catalogs to prospective seminarians. One version — which contained only articles and no advertisements — targeted straight men. The other version — which did contain advertisements, including the one pictured below, with two bare-chested men standing next to each other in a hot tub — targeted homosexual men.**
I thought that when they went through the seminaries a couple years ago all this got weeded out.
Time to report to higher ups — and I don’t mean the USCCB!
Some concrete evidence concerning the success of the Visitation is provided by Matt Abbott in regard to the long-notorious St. Vincent's Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida. Says Abbott:
St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary recently sent out two vocation-recruiting catalogs [i.e., its Summer 2007 edition] to prospective seminarians. One version -- which contained only articles and no advertisements -- targeted straight men. The other version -- which did contain advertisements, including [one] with two bare-chested men standing next to each other in a hot tub -- targeted homosexual men.
Abbott's column is illustrated by photos which he claims come from the magazine in question. If authentic, they put his read on the situation beyond doubt.
All seven Florida dioceses contribute to St. Vincent's, which appears, two years after the Apostolic Visitation, to employ a 2-track advertising campaign to draw new candidates for the priesthood: one aimed at normal Catholic men, the other at gays. So the normal guys get into the seminary, and then: surprise! "We're about celebrating diversity ..."
St. Vincent's gay problem is one of the most egregious and intractable among all U.S. seminaries. A 1995 article by Arthur Jones (which appeared in the National Catholic Reporter and is thus unlikely to be part of a right-wing witch-hunt) reports on a former rector of St. Vincent's named Art Bendixen, who it appears was given the job when his sexual predations as chancellor of the Orlando Diocese made life in the chancery too hot for him:
The [six] young men at various times in 1994 accused Bendixen of sex abuse during the 1980s. They came to a settlement with the Orlando diocese last year. Details were not disclosed..
Bendixen was chancellor from 1984 to 1991, the year he was named rector of St. Vincent de Paul Seminary, Boynton Beach. In 1992, an 18-year-old student at a Miami seminary alleged that during a missionary group trip to Santo Domingo that year, Bendixen attempted to seduce him.
Church authorities confirmed that an initial investigation by church authorities cleared Bendixen; three St. Vincent Seminary priests demanded a deeper inquiry. A second inquiry, headed by then Miami Archbishop Edward McCarthy again found no reason for proceeding against Bendixen.
When Bendixen was cleared, the three priests resigned in protest from the staff of St. Vincent.
The three protesting priests were clearly too far ahead of their time, and we have reason to believe that their disgust at the Bendixen whitewash led at least one of them to leave the priesthood altogether.
After his many, many years of influence as chancellor-rector-chickenhawk, Bendixen was finally forced to resign under public pressure. However, as the gay-targeted magazine ads indicate, his spirit lives on. A two-track recruiting campaign pivoting on sexual orientation is not an accident. It doesn't happen without connivance of the authorities. You can't chalk it up to a secretarial blunder when you lay-out, pay for, and publish separate "market-targeted" editions of the same magazine and then use your pastors to seed them. Abbott says he was told the hot-tub edition has been "recalled" (did they fax the pastors asking that they mail them back?), but the men who launched the campaign in the first place are still in place,
That means they're still doing the door-keeping.
Image from St. Vincent's website "Seminary Life" photo gallery
I'm guessing that picture was not taken on Halloween.
Were the ads for hot tubs? I didn’t know seminaries had hot tubs.
Both ads appear to both be for different aspects of “Wilton Manors,” which seems to be a condominium complex of some sort. Certainly, the place seems to be catering for gays. Obviously, Wilton Manors believes that the seminarian brochure is a great place to advertise to gay men, which is bad enough. But what’s also relevant is a “chain of command” issue: who prepared these ads, who approved of them, did the seminary have direct oversight, etc.
It's right next to the ad for "nearby elementary schools."
Boynton Beach is beyond notorious. I live in Florida, and I have known orthodox men who went there - and got kicked out because they weren’t gay friendly enough and also didn’t believe in women’s ordination!
The “director of seminary life” is a woman, a ravingly liberal sister whose life is all about female ordination. Or at any rate, she was the one in this position until a couple of years ago, which is when I last heard any discussion of the matter. She actively prevented men who were “too devout” or conservative from being ordained, when they managed to survive the program, telling them that they were “immature.”
Almost all of the dioceses in Florida have had huge problems with gay clergy. Much of the blame lies with the seminary, and I agree - it should be shut down.
They don’t; it’s not an ad for the seminary; it’s a sponsored ad IN the seminary’s brochure.
This is both disgusting and evil.
That's a big problem, right there ...
The “director of seminary life” is a woman,
Roma locuta, causa finita est.
prevented men who were “too devout” or conservative from being ordained
I seem to recall reading about that sort of thing in Goodbye, Good Men.
You can't just order folks like this to shape up, and expect them to do anything differently. They're true believers, utterly dedicated to their cause and faithful servants of their master. They need to go ... and we need to pray for their conversion and repentance.
a ravingly liberal sister whose life is all about female ordination.
Sad.
You wouldn't know it from his writing.
I doubt many priests have the time to look at every piece of literature they're sent.
If priests aren’t taking the time to look over the course catalogue from their diocese’s (regional) seminary ... shame on them.
I’ve never seen any kind of academic catalog/brochure/recruiting material that had advertisements for other other goods and services.
I don’t see anything on the left page that proves it’s connected to the right page.
In other words, I am doubting this story.
Mrs VS
I’ve never seen any kind of academic catalog/brochure/recruiting material that had advertisements for other other goods and services.
I don’t see anything on the left page that proves it’s connected to the right page.
In other words, I am doubting this story.
Mrs VS
I’m suspicious of this story too - and for the same reasons you mentioned!
Seems like they want more sex lawsuits.
The seminary doesn’t need to close...The liberal heads of the seminary need to be thrown out on their ears..
This update was posted today off of the original website with the seminary’s response:
Update as of Oct. 3, 2007 —
I received the following e-mail from Jim Frankowiak, of the Coastal Public Relations Group:
“I am contacting you on behalf of St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary and your column in Renew America regarding advertisements in the seminary’s quarterly magazine, Dialogue, that are directed to the gay community.
“I have been associated with the seminary since 2002. I have been part of the editorial staff of the publication since its inception and I have helped proof every edition that has been produced. We had one report from one priest in the Archdiocese of Miami regarding a copy that received with the questionable ad. He made reference to other copies and reports of other priests receiving similar copies but has been unable to provide their names.
“He did provide us with a copy. Dialogue had 13 numbered pages. The pages with the questionable ads were on pages 26 and 27. Our printer subcontracted the production and printing of Dialogue to another printer. That printer had produced other publications containing the ad promoting its product to the gay community. It appears that during the production process at least one copy of Dialogue inadvertently received pages from another publication that contained the ad. The call from the priest in the Miami archdiocese is the only report of this matter that we have received. Given that single incident, the seminary had taken no further action. That is, until we were made aware of your article.
“Why did you not contact the seminary regarding this matter? That seems to be a reasonable journalistic consideration. Yet, you chose to prepare and transmit an article suggesting the seminary is promoting itself and the priesthood to the gay community. Further, Dialogue is not a recruitment publication but a magazine for alumni, friends and benefactors of the seminary.”
In a follow-up e-mail, Mr. Frankowiak stated:
“The printer actually replaced two, four page sections of Dialogue with two, four page sections from a magazine called Flavor that is produced for the gay population. We know this to be the case with at least one copy. The seminary was provided with a copy of that copy. There have been no other reports of additional copies to date.”
M. Abbott note: My source, “Tom,” whom I trust, stands by the original account.
I feel a little better, I think.
If anyone has authentic information on this seminary, I am interested as I have a devout friend who is going to apply there for next year.
It's quite conceivable that there was a screw up at the printers. I'd normally buy that version in heartbeat.
On the other hand, there have been so many bizarre stories coming out in the last few years that it also wouldn't surprise me if this was done deliberately at the printers as a joke or if it was simply a story cooked up by damage control HQ.
It's hard to know what to believe anymore.
First, there were only 13 pages, and the questionable pages would have been 27 and 27 (suggesting the original publication had only 16 pages, including the cover, and the problematical one would have had 28 or 32, with pages having been added.)
The revised story was that 8 pages were substituted, not added (meaning they wouldn’t have gotten to the higher number of pages).
I believe that by "numbered pages", they mean pages with content that the seminary produced itself. The remaining pages, containing only ads, are not "numbered".
No alumni magazine that I am familiar with has any paid advertisement like that.
If you read the entire Matt Abbott Column which is not printed here in Free Republic, you will see the response from the Seminary that says the magazine “Dialogue” has never contained gay ads in the past and only had one now because of a printing mistake where the printer accidentally included two pages of ads from a gay magazine and mixed it up with the Diologue magazine. If St. Vincent De Paul Seminary were targeting gays, wouldn’t the magazine have a history of gay ads? Wouldn’t the page with the gay men have some sort of information linking it with the Seminary? If you look at the pages for the ads, they have no connection to the rest of the magazine, an obvious printing error. This fact seems to have escaped Matt Abbott who has been trying to save face ever since his efforts to smear the Archdiocese of Miami led a parishioner there to file a grievance against him with the Vatican. Free Republic has done one worse by printing only part of the Matt Abbott Column here. This does not make me very confident in either Matt Abbott or this publication as a source of news.
nhpk
since Oct 5, 2007
Welcome to FR. I see that this is your one and only post.
And "convenient access to highway rest areas."
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