Blithe Spirit, the Blog

Tom Roeser on same-sex attraction in all-male seminaries:

[S]eminaries provide an attractive and welcoming association of young men, many of whom have the same associations-and makes them want to be priests since identical associations can be cultivated.

Like meets like.  They don’t dream of Jeanie with light brown hair but of each other.  Tempting, I presume.

If the hierarchy does not understand this-and there is ample reason to believe the hierarchy [in Chicago] does not-there is no hope for reform.

He argues for de-celibating the priesthood.

It seems to be an advantage for one’s career as a bishop to be obtuse in matters of priestly sexual abuse patterns. 

Consider the rector of Mundelein seminary in the 90s, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, who had three reports of “sexual improprieties” by then-seminarian Daniel McCormack, in prison since July for molesting five boys while assigned to St. Agatha parish on Chicago’s West Side.

“There was a sense that his activity was part of the developmental process and that he had learned from the experience,” Kicanas said. “I was more concerned about his drinking. We sent him to counseling for that.”

Counseling for drinking, yes.  None for his homosexuality gone rampant?  Or — dare we say it? — for his homosexuality, period?  These were boys McCormack went after — in a black parish, by the way, where the fatherless boy is common.

Do Kicanas, newly elected as vice president of the bishops’ conference with virtual right of succession to the presidency in three years, and other bishops represent the norm with a willingness to look the other way about sexual “impropriety,” in the vast majority of cases homosexual?

He got elected, didn’t he?

From the pro-life trenches:

“First of all,” Father Euteneuer said, “Holy Mass is not a forum for your self-expression. You chose the sacred liturgy and the pulpit reserved for preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the launching pad for your personal testament to homosexuality … You’ve read the same documents I’ve read about the liturgy, and none of them say the liturgy is your personal stage.”

He’s Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International.  Furthermore:

“When even a celibate priest chooses to go public about his homosexual identity as an expression of ‘diversity’ or ‘pride’, the faithful are rightfully confused and scandalized. Not only do you owe them an apology, you owe them a better example of priesthood. They deserve a priest who is clear about the Church’s doctrine about homosexual acts and who teaches it unambiguously. … If you do not clearly witness the Church’s teaching about your own vocation, how can you teach others to be faithful to theirs?”

He has two good points.  His entire comment is here, introduced with this:

On Sunday, November 4th, Rev. Thomas Brennan, S.J., revealed publicly to a parish at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia that he was a homosexual. The priest chose to “come out” during a so-called “Diversity Week” allegedly dedicated to honoring Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius Loyola.

The pastor at St. Vincent Ferrer, River Forest, in the years when a Dominican brother was reportedly abusing kids at St. Vincent Ferrer in the 70s himself was reportedly an admitted abuser in two Michigan parishes in the 90s, Wednesday Journal reports.

As part of a long and immensely informative article, writer Bill Dwyer interviewed Rev. Thomas Doyle, O.P., a canon lawyer and critic of abusive clergy in a warning against blaming religious order members for the crimes of their fellows:

Though he has been an unstinting critic of what he sees as the Catholic Church’s failures to deal openly and effectively with the issue of pedophile priests, Doyle said he believes the current Dominican vicar provincial, Rev. Michael Mascari, has reacted to the allegations against Hensley and Bryce “in a responsible and competent manner.”

“Fr. Mascari has done his best,” Doyle said by phone from his home in Virginia. “If he hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t hesitate to smear him all over the sidewalk.”

And while Doyle has not hesitated to blast the church’s top leadership for a litany of failures, he said people mistakenly assume that the criminal behavior of many priests must have been known to those who served with them.

People say, “They all had to know,” said Doyle. “Oh no, they didn’t.”

“It’s very possible in a [religious] community to become almost transparent,” he said. Priests are largely free to come and go as they please, he said.

“You can do all sorts of stuff [without people knowing].”

WHAT CATHOLICS HEAR AT MASS . . . Just returned from SSPX territory (Society of Saint Pius X), where mass is Tridentine and the calendar too.  So we had old-style 13th Sunday after Pentecost readings, which meant we heard nothing from the OT, so that I neither heard nor read Isaiah 66 predicting proclamation “to the distant coastlands” of Yahweh’s glory by means of horses, mules, and dromedaries.

Neither did I catch Hebrews 12 with its encouragement to accept trials in life as acts of discipline by a loving father, namely Yahweh, known as God to most of us.  Nor Luke 13 with the narrow-gate warning by Jesus: “Many are called, but few are chosen” in the old translation, and with “Depart from me, ye cursed” somewhat sanitized to read “Depart from me, all ye evildoers.”  The meaning is the same pastorally speaking, but the punch is about half-strength.

However, I did hear Father Michael sermonizing on the importance of frequent confession, even for those who never have other than venial sins to confess.  It’s a sacrament, for one thing, and gives grace.  Here is old-time religion: grace discussed as an aid to doing the right thing.  The word rarely comes up mainstream.  It’s part of discredited old-time theology that once reigned in seminary and pulpit.  Times do change, do they not?

I mention three new-style readings, repeated only every third year, because it’s where new-style beats old, in my opinion.  Why not multiply readings while we’re at it, at mass?  (Maybe to drive home moral points year after year, repetition being the mother of study.) 

What I do not miss, however, is the new-style handclasp or hug of peace, which has degenerated from restrained symbolic action to a festival of meeting and greeting that pokes a hole neatly into any aura of reverence one may have ginned up for devotion’s sake if not God’s.

POETRY, PLEASE . . . . What I did hear at the SPPX mass was Galatians 3, Paul talking about The Law and where it fits into the scheme of salvation, and Luke 17, about Jesus and the ten lepers whom he sent to “the priests” cured.  Of the ten, only one, a Samaritan, returned to Jesus to thank and praise him, at which point Jesus intoned one of his most quoted lines: “Where are the other nine?” further asking, “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” and concluding, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

None of this was seized on by Father Michael, unfortunately, in his well-reasoned but repetitious and somewhat dry presentation.  But “Your faith has made you well” — or “thy faith has made thee whole” — is a line that remains with the listener.  It’s something to conjure with in an off moment, when things look especially bad. 

This is a weakness with the SPPX preachers, whom I appreciate for their practicality in matters spiritual.  They need a little poetry in their souls.  We all do.

DAILY OBSERVER . . . My sole column so far for the weeks-old online Chicago Daily Observer, is “Latin mass, anyone? What’s in store for Chicago?”.

Look for #2 soon — I think, though I haven’t heard boo from the editor, Tom Roeser, since I sent it Thursday. It’s about Rev. Donald McGuire, the Jesuit convicted as a pederast last year in Wisconsin.

Since this column went off, the Wisconsin prosecutor has said he wants McGuire back for imprisonment.  McG has been living in Oak Lawn while his seven-year sentences are appealed.

Am returning The Rite of Sodomy: Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church to OP Library, which got it for me from the Oak Lawn Library.  It’s a 1,282–page stunner, both in intensity — fascinating in sense that watching a car wreck is fascinating — and shock effect.

Almsost 13 years ago, I stood in the old Kroch’s & Brentano’s on Lake Street in Oak Park and brought the store to complete silence with the mention of “gay priests.”  I was at a mike in the rear of the store facing 40 or so people who were there to hear me talk about my just published Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics. 

I was saying how I’d run across reference to the phenomenon while interviewing for my book.  Priests had mentioned their being out of the gay loop among fellow priests.  Bishop Bill McManus had told me he knew of gay priests who kept their vows and did good work.

But the very concept had quieted book buyers on a summer night.  Now we have heard much about it, even from the head U.S. bishop a few years back, and I have written about it.  And there’s this book, about which more later . . .