I read this article elsewhere, and I just want to defend Spellman. I grew up in NY and I remember one time on a rainy day walking down Madison Ave. (behind St. Pat’s, where the episcopal palace was located) and seeing Cdl Spellman emerge from the residence, escorted by handsome clergymen holding a virtual tunnel of umbrellas over his head. He was very short and looked like an Irish bowling ball of a man, and while he may have been careful to make sure only the best and most handsome of underlings stood next to him (the way the military chooses an honor guard), I don’t think he was actively homosexual or even necessarily promoted people because he thought they were homosexuals.
Spellman was quite conservative, but he also regarded himself as just under orders: if the pope said jump, you jumped. He was not very scholarly, just a pragmatic Irish guy, and it would never have occurred to him to say no to anything he was told to do. So when Vatican II hit, he did what he was told, and was particularly intimidated by the “intellectual” crowd who hung out at the Paraclete bookstore and were big supporters of the most radical stuff of VII.
He was one of the few clergy who supported the troops in Vietnam and he spent a lot of his career visiting military installations and inspiring a lot of men who were about to go out to die in a war that the US had decided it was going to lose, thanks to the leftists. So be careful what you say about this man. God only knows, but from what I saw, while he may have been bad with his appointments (because he regarded them as smarter and more polished that he himself), he was a sincere and honest and ethical Christian gentleman and bishop.
Most people have never heard the word “pederast.” Is that to keep the public from knowing about so much homosexual activity among Catholic clergy? I wonder how often a young post adolescent boy is seduced by an adult male and then Figures he is a homosexual, even if he had no inclinations that way before seduction. What a horrible situation for those boys.