A relatively decent wire story on new priests being ordained and how the Scandal affected them had one disturbing glitch. We hear a lot from them about how their faith was unaffected, how they were disappointed in the priests who abused and the leaders who abetted them, but then there’s this:
At St. John’s, seminarians held discussions and participated in a weekend workshop on healthy male sexual identity with a featured speaker from the St. Luke Institute in Silver Spring, Md., a rehabilitation facility for psychological and spiritual disorders.
St. Luke’s is the place that declared guys like John Geoghan “cured,” where the place was allowed to empty on a certain weekend so the patients could attend a gay pride parade, where they were subjected to pornography in order to de-sensitize them, and so on. In other words, St. Luke’s was at the heart of the problem, and is certainly not the cure. The place has never demonstrated that they have reformed (and they haven’t), so why this continuing trust? And I had been hearing that St. John’s has come a long way with reform under Archbishop O’Malley. If they’re turning to St. Luke’s for help, I’m not so sure.
You mean besides mine?
Not just yet, but it’s early. Once people discover it, I think we’ll be seeing more.
What you’ve got there is seminarians, who have been watching porno flicks. Through no fault of their own. But still. That’s pretty crappy.
Basically, just more of the same sexual corruption in the Church which led to the homosexual molestations of thousands of teenage boys. Ya think someone somewhere would have learnt a lesson. But no… We do not deserve the idiotic and sicko people who lead our Church.
“Through no fault of their own.”
Well, I respectfully disagree, michigancatholic. Those priests should have the collective and singular gutsoids to stand up and leave and to reject the garbage they are being fed. That they don’t is scary in and of itself.
I can’t believe St. Luke’s hasn’t been closed down. Who runs it anyway?
I also think the Boston chancery needs a good cleaning. It disturbed me, too, to see that Lennon (former rector of St. John’s and the interim archbishop) is still around.
I have heard that when O’Malley was in Fall River he took a very “hands-on” approach—lots of parish visits, etc. (I believe many were unannounced.) I’m hoping he does the same kind of thing here. Granted, Boston is much bigger and there are more tentacles to the mess.
Does anyone know much about the inner workings of the Chancery? How much of his mail does O’Malley personally read? Who decides what he gets? (Cynically, how easy is it to keep things from him?)
Fr. Stephen Rosetti, a priest from Syracuse, is still the director of St. Luke’s in Silver Springs. While he has been roundly criticized in the media, Fr. Rosetti still enjoys substantial support from the hierarchy and other institutions within the Church. He shows up on the speakers’ platform at all sorts of Catholic gatherings, including continuing education for priests. I heard him at one of these gatherings, making several presentations on the Scandal and an appropriate response. In none of his presentations was anyone ever to hear even the passive voice explanation ala Watergate [“Mistakes were made…”]. In fact, he makes it clear that in some cases the recommendation from St. Luke’s was ignored and the bishop reinstated a priest for active ministry against the recommendation of St. Luke’s. Of course, he never identifies who those bishops are who reinstated pervert priests. Perhaps he did when he was interviewed for the USCCB’s abuse committee report. Fr. Rosetti is a pleasant enough man, very articulate, and a board certified psychologist. And St. Luke’s is still raising money: I’ve received several flyers in the mail recently. So don’t hold your breath on the impending closure of St. Luke’s, as it is not likely to happen. The bishops still want a place to send their errant priests. And Fr. Rosetti et al are far more astute and proactive to let the media coverage of their institute disintegrate as it did for the now-closed and disgraced Paraclete Institute out in New Mexico.
Actually Bishop Lennon is a good guy, as is O’Malley, although I disagree with their approaches on some things and I’d like to pull my hair out sometimes.
I have met a number of Boston’s seminarians, and all of the ones I’ve met are solid, orthodox guys who are going to be assets to the Church. O’Malley’s cleaned out most of the dead wood from the seminary, the guys who were most likely to promote the wrong kinds of things. The new rector is also popular among the orthodox seminarians, and heavily criticized by the old guard priests, which I think is the best sign of all.
That’s what makes this St. Luke’s thing so baffling. It goes against all the evidence that things at St. John’s are better.
Alena, the archbishop has steadly cleared out the remnants of those who surrounded Cardinal Law and brought strongly orthodox priests. His secretary, for instance, is a Steubenville grad. I don’t know how much of his mail he reads or how it gets to him, but I suspect that he gets a lot of mail and it is heavily filtered. Otherwise, he’d never get any work done for all the mail he’d be reading.
Then Fr. Rossetti is a diocesan priest, i.e., not attached to an order. Does that mean St. Luke’s is actually owned and operated by the Church?
I really don’t anything about Lennon except that he used to be rector of St. John’s, and that made me suspicious. I don’t even recall seeing how long he had been there.
Two of the priests in our parish are fairly recently out of St. John’s—one was ordained last year, the other two years ago. Both seem orthodox.
I believe that St. Luke’s is a not-for-profit institution. It is listed in the Kenedy directory [the official directory of Catholic institutions in the US], under the archdiocese of Washington. The directory reads as follows: “Rev. Stephen J. Rosetti, Ph.D., D. Min., Pres. The Institute is a licensed and accredited treatment center for priests and religious, and a center for education and research. Total Assisted 650; Total Staff 65.” While it is recognized in the directory, it does not necessarily mean that it is run by the archdiocese. I imagine that it has its own board of trustees, etc.
Regarding mail read by Archbishop O’Malley, I sent evidence of the plans of Fr. Walter Cuenin,Our Lady Help of Christians, Newton, to have members of his parish attend the PFLAG-sponsored Gay Pride Celebration on Sat. June 12 and the Interfaith Service featuring Bp. Gene Robinson all under the theme of celebrating gay marriage(invitations in his parish bulletin; Jesuit Urban Center plans to join them, BayWindows article,Local Briefs,Apr.29,2004;Chuck Colbert’s article”Sharper Focus”,Innewsweekly,Apr. 29,2004 describing plans in detail including Our Lady’s banner.) I received an acknowledgement and the fact that Archbishop O’Malley found it disturbing and was sending it to Bp. Lennon for his immediate review. I followed up to make sure Bp. Lennon got the information and finally on Fri.,June 11, his secretary said Bp. Lennon had received all the information. Whether or not he spoke to Fr. Cuenin about his plans is a mystery to me but on Fri. afternoon the JUC had a notice about when and where to meet up with Fr. Cuenin’s contingent at the Gay Pride Celebration to march under Our Lady’s banner.If they went forward with these plans then it is a scandal.
Father Rosetti (as Dom mentioned some time back) gave three talks to the priests of the Arlington diocese at a recent priests’ convocation. There was quite an article about it in the Arlington diocese paper. Interestingly enough he was just as prominent under Bishop Keating. He gave part of the mandatory sex abuse training for volunteers, as far as I can tell, since 1992 when it began.
link to the article in my post above –
http://www.catholicherald.com/articles/04articles/priests0603.htm
Dom, sorry about the double post.
Well, yes, sinner, I agree with you. So often these men are scared to death to lose their chances of ordination. For many years the only way to get ordained was to come through one of these official “channels.” Some of them are pretty near whorehouses, from what I hear.
We had one here in Michigan that was shut down by the Vatican it was so bad. I think it’s in Michael Rose’s book, but a lot of us knew about it before the recent scandal broke.
Alice,
I agree that I would like a much more public rebuke to prevent the scandal, but it seems that’s not Archbishop O’Malley’s style. He prefers to do things slowly and without much public fanfare. With all these parish closings, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some interesting reassignments going on soon.
Well, they’d better consider this: For every minute they putz around, people are leaving the church in disgust and even more are refusing to enter because of the scandal.
They’d better get off their muffins and stop enjoying their lattes and get something done.
Didn’t O’Malley say that Mass participation was down 16% since 2002? Around here, it’s more than 12%. It makes me so damn angry that I know scores of good Catholic men and women (though mostly men) who will no longer go to Mass, and who will not take their families, and who will not even have their kids confirmed. MichiganCatholic is right. Lots of kids my kids know consider the Catholic Church to be a pervert factory. There are A LOT of very demoralized Catholics around here.
Here too. I work with a bunch of them. Now I know more ex-Catholics than Catholics.
I do know a few people who have come into the Church in the last few years. They tend to be well-educated fighters with strong protestant backgrounds. They know how shabby our history is and have to overcome that to come in; it gives them the strength to stand in the face of the horrible corruption we have now. It’s not that they’re naive at all (like many Catholics)—it’s that they come in because what the Church teaches is true and they are willing to fight for it.
If only we had some of these types as bishops!
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2004-06-12 12:04:11
2004-06-12 16:04:11
Ok, I’m jealous. =) Are you seeing lots of iBooks around?
I wonder when WiFi will reach the point where people at home can just dump their overpriced cable modem and get broadband from the Starbucks across the street? Even nonfree WiFi like T-Mobile’s is cheap compared to wired broadband. Hmmm….
tried to get on today and although the signal strength was showing ‘excellent’ nothing would load. saw a woman with an ibook having the same problem. emailed newburyopen.net and they said the essex street antenna might be out.
all i was trying to do was to make downtown salem hipper….
Please remember that wireless is a WONDERFUL invention—for people who want to hijack your data and protocol settings.
I won’t use it. Not at the home, and CERTAINLY not in a public ‘wi-fi’ zone.
To each his own. I use a Mac, thus my ports are closed and filesharing is secure. I also use WPA when appropriate and never do anything like send financial data over WIFI. I guess it depends on your risk matrix. For me the convenience outweighs the risks.
Susan, I guess they’re still working out the bugs. Still it’s nice to know that people are starting to use it.