Neuhaus on Church Scandal

It is true, as some readers have noted, that we have in these pages tried to maintain a certain distance from the question of homosexuality in the priesthood. Publications such as the National Catholic Reporter, on the left, and Catholic World Report and the Wanderer, on the right, have over the years given the question more attention. We countered Father Donald Cozzens' The Changing Face of the Priesthood, which offered an alarming (alarmist?) picture of the homosexualization of the priesthood, with Msgr. Earl Boyea's "Another Face of the Priesthood" (FT, February 2001), which attempted to put Cozzens' claims into perspective. We had Avery Cardinal Dulles review the McDonough- Bianchi study of the Jesuits, Passionate Uncertainty (FT, April), and he did so in his usual balanced manner, correcting some of its more exaggerated claims.

Now there is Michael Rose's forthcoming book, Goodbye, Good Men, which I have had a chance to read. It is a depressingly detailed account in support of the thesis that the so-called crisis in priestly vocations is "artificial and contrived." Diocesan vocation directors and "formation teams" in the seminaries systematically weed out the "good men" who do not jump through the hoops of psychological testing. They are deemed to be "rigid" or "inflexible" if, for example, they agree with the Church that it is not possible to ordain women, or if they are not "comfortable" with homosexuals in the priesthood and are therefore suspected of the sin of "homophobia." A subtheme of the Rose book is that some bishops actually want to intensify the vocations crisis in order to promote the abandonment of the celibacy rule and the ordination of women. A large part of the book is based on interviews with manly men who were repelled by seminaries dominated by the "lavender mafia." Rose names names, and I have checked with people familiar with some of the incidents he recounts. It seems that his reports are generally reliable, but, even if the situation in vocation offices and seminaries is only half as bad as he suggests, it is very bad indeed.

Rose duly notes that in some dioceses vocations are flourishing: Denver, Colorado; Arlington, Virginia; Lincoln, Nebraska; Peoria, Illinois; and Rockford, Illinois, are among the outstanding examples. Without exception, they are dioceses with bishops noted for their orthodoxy. Which brings us back to fidelity. It is simply counterintuitive to claim, as many do, that there is no connection between dissent from the Church's teaching on doctrine and dissent from teaching on morality. The Church teaches authoritatively on "faith and morals," and the two are inseparable. For a long time, most blatantly in the organized opposition to the encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, systematic dissent was inculcated, also in the seminaries. In 1972, the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) established a commission whose findings were published in a 1979 book from Doubleday, Human Sexuality. The seeds of everything that has come to light in recent months are to be found there.

Human Sexuality was "received" by the CTSA, which also "arranged" for its publication "as a service to the membership of the Society and a wider public of interested persons." The book is thoroughly revisionist from A to Z, flying in the face of the Church's teaching on contraception, celibacy, chastity, homosexuality, and even—albeit more delicately—on bestiality. Had the CTSA formally approved the study, it would have created a frontal confrontation with the Magisterium. But the book has been widely used in seminaries. Seminarians and priests of the time who had a woman or a male lover on the side could, and did, cite Human Sexuality to reasonably claim that a very large part, if not the majority, of the academic theological establishment countenanced their behavior. The CTSA report left no doubt that it represented the avant garde, that the Church's teaching would eventually catch up with "the latest research," and that, while waiting for the Church to catch up, priests should exercise discretion in deviating from the present and woefully benighted official teaching. Thus did academic and theological dissent promiscuously issue permission slips for an era of wink-wink, nudge- nudge, the consequences of which are now on scandalous public display.

Many of the bishops did not and do not have the intellectual self-confidence to challenge the academic theological establishment. A few hardly bother to disguise the fact that they agree with the positions espoused by, for instance, Human Sexuality. One bishop, in his self-serving statement of resignation after an unsavory incident with a teenage boy was revealed, went so far as to suggest that his problem was that he was a particularly caring and intelligent person who was attuned to the latest thinking about matters sexual. Most of the publications cited above that have been paying major attention to what is called the homosexualization of the priesthood allow that, at least in diocesan seminaries, the situation has been much improved in the last ten or fifteen years. As has been frequently noted, almost all the current scandals are from twenty or thirty years ago. We should not be surprised, however, if the relentless probings that are now inevitable turn up more recent incidents.

In all this, relatively little attention has been paid the religious orders where, according to some accounts, deviations from the Church's moral teachings are more common than among diocesan clergy. One reason less attention has been paid is that the orders have their own chain of command and, as one bishop remarked, 'The media are out for the blood of bishops." In fact, orders operating within a diocese are accountable to the bishop, but not so directly. An obvious exception in terms of public attention is the Society of Jesus, Jesuits still having a certain panache. (Catholic lay people of a certain age announce with some pride that they are "Jesuit educated." That claim is becoming less common and will possibly disappear in another generation.) Cardinal Dulles has written here that, despite the "gaying and graying" of the society, Jesuits have been through hard times before and the charism of Ignatius of Loyola will rebound in the future. We must pray he is right. The aforementioned Passionate Uncertainty and other reports suggest that the corruption is far advanced. Everybody has their own stories. A young scholastic tells me that he and others were hit on by superiors and decided to lodge a complaint with higher-ups in the society, only to discover that "the higher up we went, the deeper in we were to the lavender regime." Nonetheless, there are still a few virile young men entering the society, determined to revive the Ignatian charism in all its integrity, and one must pray them well.

In 1979, a high-ranking prelate in the Roman curia asked Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, then Archbishop of Boston, about reports of widespread homosexuality among clergy and seminarians. The inquiry was sparked by tapes on homosexuality produced by Fr. Paul R Shanlev that had come to the prelate's attention. Shanley, it may be remembered, is the flagrantly gay priest who, among other things, publicly supported the North American Man-Boy Love Association. The fact that, under Cardinal Law, he was shifted from parish to parish and finally fobbed off on other dioceses was, for many loyal supporters of Law, the final straw. In a confidential document now made public under court order, Medeiros responded to the Vatican inquiry: 'The danger in the seminaries, your Eminence, is obvious. …Where large numbers of homosexuals are present in a seminary, other homosexuals are quickly attracted. Other healthier young men tend to be repelled." "Since our seminaries reflect the local American culture," he continued, "the problem of homosexuality has surfaced there in a manner which is widespread and quite deep." He was confident, however, that the problem had been remedied. "We have a seminary which has now—within a five-year period—become almost fully transformed into a community of healthy, well- balanced young men. Our numbers are much smaller but now we will attract more young men who will be the right kind of candidate." People who know the Boston seminary very well tell me that Medeiros' confidence, with very few exceptions, was warranted.

One reason the media began searching for a new story line once the issue moved from pedophilia to homosexuality is, of course, the fear of being accused of homophobia. There was quite a ruckus in March when Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the Vatican spokesman, opined that homosexuals just cannot be ordained." He went so far as to suggest, but did not develop the idea, that homosexuals who had been ordained were not validly ordained, homosexuality being an "impediment" to ordination in the same way that there may be impediments to a valid sacramental marriage. This gets into sticky territory, given confused and conflicting notions about sexual orientation. (See above on the distinction between "homosexual" and "gay.") It seems more than likely that, in centuries past, some priests who have been canonized as saints would meet today's criteria as having a "homosexual orientation." The issue was not then, and should not be today, the nature of the temptations resisted but the fidelity of the resistance.

You have undoubtedly read in the press that the rule for homosexual priests is like the presumably discredited rule in the military, "Don't ask, don't tell." In fact, quite the opposite is the case today, and has been for some time. Seminarians are incessantly asked, and encouraged to incessantly tell, about every quirk and wrinkle in their sexual make-up and imagination. This is "the triumph of the therapeutic" that Philip Rieff wrote about in his classic 1965 book of that title. It is most particularly depressing to hear bishops offer assurances, in response to the present scandals, that they are going to add more psychological testing to the process of forming priests. Psychological testings and probings are, one may suggest, at least as much a part of the problem as of the solution.

The same bishops, more understandably, offer assurances about prompt reporting of criminal abuse to civil authorities. In such preoccupation with the psychological and legal, what risks getting lost is the commonsensical and the moral. Psychobabble and legalities aside, bishops have the job of seeing to it (episcopos = oversight) that their priests teach and live in fidelitv to the truth about faith and morals expounded by the Catholic Church. In respectfully holding their bishops to account, the Catholic faithful should cut through all the chatter about more psychological testing, updated bureaucratic procedures, and new guidelines for reporting, and ask the simple question, Have you been doing your job? The three-fold job to which bishops are ordained is to "teach, sanctify, and govern." It is obvious that some bishops have failed to teach and govern, with dire consequences also for sanctification. Had they been doing their job, we would not now be inundated by scandal. If one asks why they did not do their job, the answers are no doubt various, ranging from indolence, naivete, willful ignorance, doctrinal dissent, and cowardice to active complicity in evil and the fear of blackmail. Some of the answers may be excusable, all are forgivable, but none is edifying.

What the bishops do in their June meeting will not be very credible if they do not forthrightly address the question of homosexuality and its obvious connection with the sexual abuse of adolescent and older teenage boys. This necessarily involves a thorough reform of what Michael Rose calls the "Gatekeeper Phenomenon." The gatekeepers are the clerical and lay staff of the diocese or religious order who control the various stages of formation on the way to the priesthood, beginning with the admission of candidates to the seminary. They typically include vocations directors, psychologists, nuns and former nuns, seminary rectors, and what are called "formation teams." The would-be priest runs a gauntlet that, the accumulating evidence indicates, all too often screens out healthy heterosexual men who are religiously orthodox, traditional in their piety, and resistant to manipulative therapeutic techniques that only thinly disguise an ideology of dissent.

As one seminary rector says, "For those men who are exclusively heterosexual in orientation and devoutly orthodox in faith, the difficulty in becoming a priest at the present time must be faced in an objective and dispassionate manner." Such men who want to make it through the therapeutic gauntlet must keep their cool, resist any temptation to criticize the system, and, above all, learn how to achieve the psychobabble goal of "transparency" while being anything but transparent about who they are and what they really believe. Unwelcome theological convictions must be hidden, along with unfashionable devotional practices. The seminarian who takes the bait and strikes back at the therapeutic regime will likely be sent for special psychological counseling, which provides the formation team with additional material for a recommendation that he be rejected for ordination. To be sure, this oppressive regime does not obtain in all seminaries, but the evidence suggests that it is widespread, and was even more common ten and twenty years ago, thus lending support to the claim that the crisis in priestly vocations is, in large part, "artificial and contrived."

It should be said that not all that is submitted as evidence is convincing. Michael Rose, for instance, interviews 125 seminarians or former seminarians from fifty dioceses, and the cumulative effect is devastating. At the same time, I cannot help but suspect that some of the rejected whom he interviewed really are rigid and refractory in ways only marginally related to orthodoxy or traditional piety, and would likely not have made good priests. Yet Rose's account, supported by many others, generally rings true. A friend who is now a happy family man and distinguished academic tells how, when he was a young man, he discerned that he had a vocation to the priesthood. He joined a religious order and, along with other novices, was sent on retreat. As the novices got off the bus, they were joyfully greeted by older members of the order who gathered around giddily discussing which of the novices was the cutest. He soon packed up and left. That was more than twenty years ago...

"One bishop, in his self-serving statement of resignation after an unsavory incident with a teenage boy was revealed, went so far as to suggest that his problem was that he was a particularly caring and intelligent person who was attuned to the latest thinking about matters sexual."

It was FAR WORSE than that. He was my Bishop in Palm Beach Co. Florida. The night before he was going to be unveiled as a hmosexual molester, he faxed ALL the parishes in the county and asked the priests to come to the Cathedral for an importtant announcement. They had NO idea of the content
of the announcement nor did they realise they were being manipulated by this bastard so as to appear they had simply shown-up of their own accord to offer him their support. He began by thanking them for their support and saying he was "surprised" they were there.
He went on to admit a "mistake" (sort of like a typo, I guess)and allowed there might be "one more" incident (I think the count is now three proven cases. He blamed his "mistake" (for which he admitted he felt foolish) on Catholic teaching.
Of course, he immediately skipped town and hasn't been heard from since

Cardinal Dulles has written here that, despite the "gaying and graying" of the society, Jesuits have been through hard times before and the charism of Ignatius of Loyola will rebound in the future. We must pray he is right. The aforementioned Passionate Uncertainty and other reports suggest that the corruption is far advanced.

If Avery Dulles knows about the "gaying" of the society; pray tell, what the hell is he doing about it? As a cardinal and so called scholar, why hasn't he been shaking the foundations of the S.J.s over the corruption which seems so far advanced? It's to the point where if you don't actively fight against the corruption, you are part of the problem and corruption by way of ommission.

"If Avery Dulles knows about the "gaying" of the society; pray tell, what the hell is he doing about it?" 6 posted on 7/5/02 6:57 AM Pacific by ThomasMore

Good question. I've had a number of conversations on related subjects over the years with ranking members of the Society of Jesus, some rather high up in academia. There's definitely a certain air of mysteriousness which hangs over the inner workings of the Jesuit order. One the one hand, it's a little like any other large bureaucracy where passing the buck and misunderstandings about who has what authority contribute to some silliness. Traditionally, there was also this in-house policy of "Thou shalt not speak ill in public of a fellow Jesuit."

Dulles is, I believe, jurisdictionally in the Maryland Province of the Jesuits (I think). The current "provincial" (a grad of Georgetown?) is hardly a museum-vintage specimen of conservative orthodoxy. I believe I heard him once say that he had voted for Clinton "because of the social justice issues." That...should speak for itself of how bad things have gotten. If you've followed the ups and downs of Fr. Joseph Fessio that gives some idea of what happens to people who get a little too conservative.

'The danger in the seminaries, your Eminence, is obvious. …Where large numbers of homosexuals are present in a seminary, other homosexuals are quickly attracted. Other healthier young men tend to be repelled." "Since our seminaries reflect the local American culture," he continued, "the problem of homosexuality has surfaced there in a manner which is widespread and quite deep."

Directly from a cardinal's writing. Why didn't the vatican move on this long ago?

The precise adminsitrative procedures of the Vatican bureaucracy, in relation to AmChurch, are pretty unfamiliar to me. I did hear about an "intervention" once regarding the direction of one seminary. It does happen. Charles Curran, formerly of the Catholic University of America, was finally disciplined, but it took about 20 years. That "New Ways Ministry" (run by pro-homo nun and priest duo) was supposed to have been shut down. But the guilty parties seem to have managed to wiggle around the Vatican's condemnation. Now, this may sound woefully silly, but - and I'm gonna guess here - there may be some element of the traditional Catholic desire to avoid public scandal which explains why we don't necessarily hear about what the Vatican is actually doing at any one moment. As if there isn't already enough public scandal!

The other example which comes to mind was back in the '80s when Pope John Paul II directly intervened to rein in the Jesuits. Obviously, not enough was done. The visitation investigation of American seminaries is liable to end up being a circus-like ritual pantomime. Lot of talk, little substance. I mean, the hierarchy has just sat back and watched the gutting of American Catholic colleges and universities. That's a crime what has happened there.

If one asks why they did not do their job, the answers are no doubt various, ranging from indolence, naivete, willful ignorance, doctrinal dissent, and cowardice to active complicity in evil and the fear of blackmail. Some of the answers may be excusable, all are forgivable, but none is edifying.

This is absolutely right on the money!! This is why I like Neuhaus! He is so succinct! The last line is great; but I would add "or acceptable"!

Yet Rose's account, supported by many others, generally rings true.

There have been a few detractors to Rose over the past two months and some on this forum who have agreed with them. I think Neuhaus has the right take on Rose and "GoodBye, Good Men" and I fall in line with him.

Rose names names, and I have checked with people familiar with some of the incidents he recounts. It seems that his reports are generally reliable, but, even if the situation in vocation offices and seminaries is only half as bad as he suggests, it is very bad indeed.

If the situation is only half as bad as Rose states in his book, YES, it is very bad indeed!!!!

nor did they realise they were being manipulated by this bastard

Has he been defrocked or his actions been decried? NO. Where's the NCCB? Where's the Vatican? It seems lately these two decry anything pertaining to the war against terrorism, capital punishment, Israel, capitalism...so forth and so on...but decry one of their own? huh! No Way!

They make me ill!

Fr. Joseph Fessio is a great priest but doesn't have the political clout and has, therefore, paid the price for his confrontation with the evil that has invaded his order. But Dulles is a cardinal now; long enough to have made some very big waves. Heck, I make bigger waves when I urinate.

He's up at Fordham. That's a hotbed of dissidents. He should have started to clean house if he was concerned. I can only believe that he either doesn't care or actually approves.

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