Bp Barron On Jordan Peterson And Sam Harris

Bp Barron has a new video that touches on issues within the so-called intellectual dark web:

I think the intellectual dark web traces its origins to the populist response to the 9-11 attacks and their aftermath. The main issue at the time was the inability of Western elites to recognize the threats from Mahometanism. I think in part this was a consequence of the end of the Cold War, in which Mahometan states which had become clients of the Soviet Union were released from obligations imposed by membership in the Soviet sphere and began freelancing into military adventurism and terrorist activity. The end of the Cold War was also unforeseen by the CIA and George XLI; the policy establishment was left without a coherent strategy. This probably fed into his electoral defeat in 1992.

Prior to the rise of the intellectual dark web (this article makes a stab at defining it, but I definitely exclude Ben Shapiro, who is an old-fashioned neo-conservative, and I would include others like Carl Benjamin -- but remember, this is the New York Times) there were two strains of US academic and policy thought, neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. Both, as the election of 2016 showed, had proven themselves incapable of addressing the challenges represented by the 9-11 attacks and subsequent developments. The US military response, a neo-conservative policy, proved extravagantly expensive yet inconclusive.

Neo-liberal tolerance of mass Mahometan migration into Western societies proved self-destructive, but it was only one result of the social disorder fostered by neo-liberal domestic policies. Dissatisfaction with both strains of thought led in part to Donald Trump's electoral success in 2016. However, there has never been a coherent strain of thought behind the populism that's replacing the older and outdated philosophies -- no National Review has emerged to give any sort of systematic presentation to the views of people like Peterson or Benjamin, while Buckley's magazine is no longer much other than self-parody.

The problem is that neither Peterson, a fully credentialed product of the academic establishment, nor Benjamin, who appears to have an elite university education of some sort, has enough of a philosophical background to articulate a fully coherent philosophy. Benjamin is a professed atheist, while Peterson clearly endorses Darwinian selection as part of an essentially materialist world view. The problem for both is where they can find an origin for questions of virtue or truth, which both clearly find important.

Here is where Bp Barron's observations are productive. Sam Harris, who is also a member of the intellectual dark web, is a hard atheist. Peterson, not quite so hard -- as Bp Barron correctly points out, Peterson finds a kind of Jungian archetypal value in scripture that promotes some sort of transcendental virtue, as opposed to Harris, who sees scripture as an evolutionary vestige and religion as pure superstition.

Bp Barron then moves to a much more important point: Peterson is coming from a modernist philosophical background, which he expresses fairly clearly. Nobody would have much disagreed with any of his points 50 years ago, when I was an undergraduate. I picked up Peterson's world view fairly well at that time, now that I think about it. The problem is that it isn't consistent, and Descartes, Hume, and Kant, not to mention Hegel or Darwin, don't form an adequate philosophical foundation for moving forward.

Actually, one reason I'm a big fan of the Fringe TV series is how much of it is a sendup of modernist thought as it's crept into elite popular culture. My wife and I are near-cultic followers. One of our favorite episodes is Momentum Deferred, in which shapeshifters from the alternate universe hijack a shipment of cryonically frozen heads, which have been preserved by transhumanists who hope to reattach them to new bodies at some future date. The shapeshifters are interested in only one of the heads, and as they go through identifying each to find the one they want, they toss the rejects away down a ravine. From a Cartesian-transhumanist point of view, this is a hilarious blasphemy.

I think the collapse of modernist thought is part of what's behind the rise of the newer, so far inchoate, movement represented by Peterson. Bp Barron doesn't quite come out and say this, but I think he agrees with Prof Feser that Sam Harris and the other New Atheists aren't worth debating. Peterson, who does think clearly within the limitations of his academic background, is a different matter, as is, I think, Carl Benjamin.

In fact, Bp Barron's explication of Kant's views on reason is quite good. Bp Barron is a Thomist. A debate between him and Jordan Peterson would be worthwhile. The problem is that, with the decline of both neo-liberal and neo-conservative intellectual forums, I'm not sure in what context it could take place.

A Visitor On The Parable Of The Sower

From a visitor:

As I was reading your blog today, it brought to mind the parable of the wheat or grain that was sown in turn on rocky land, shallow soil, amongst the weeds and in fertile, deep soil. The seed (the Word of God, and by extension, the Truth of the Catholic Church) is the same in all cases; the difference is where it lands (meaning in what kind of person or heart). It seems to me (in a sweeping generalization that in no way encompasses each individual situation) that people drawn to the Ordinariate as a stopping point rather than a way station on the path to the Original Church seem to be content with replanting every time a difficulty arises that chokes/stymies their growth rather than doing the more difficult work of conditioning the soil to make it more hospitable to receive the seed. As long as it can get away with replanting rather than actually having to bring in a harvest, the Ordinariate can stave off judgement day… until it can’t. With that kind of mentality, anybody want to make any bets about which lasts longer, the Ordinariates or the EU? It might be interesting to see what would be the Vegas Odds on that!

The idea of Anglicanorum coetibus as a way station rather than a final destination is intriguing. I'm not sure if Rome was ever completely clear about this -- notice the ambiguity about how long married priests will be allowed, as well as the deep suspicion in some quarters that at some point, it will be cut off altogether.

Fr Longenecker, a former Church of England priest ordained a married diocesan Catholic priest in the US without going through either the Pastoral Provision or the OCSP, had remarks in a similar vein recently:

People sometimes ask my what gifts I bring to the Catholic Church as a convert.

I’m not really quite sure how to answer since I feel I have received far more than I have given, and perhaps they are thinking that my answer will be that I have brought with me the Anglican choral tradition or Evensong or a love of fine liturgy or some such, but as I get older I realize more and more that while I love Anglican tradition and treasure my fifteen years in that church, I was never more than passing through.

They gave me a warm welcome, but I didn’t really fit in. I always felt like the son of the gardener in a grand house who happened to have befriended the son and heir of Lord Faunci.

I have a similar sense -- I was raised Presbyterian, fell away in college, and became Episcopalian at about 30. Like Fr Longenecker, I'm not sure if I was ever really at home there. I'm more in agreement with those I've talked with from time to time who saw Anglicanorum coetibus as "an easy way to become Catholic", but I think the implication here is that those of us who thought this way weren't intending to stay Anglican, or Anglican-like, or however else one might put it.

And of those who saw the OCSP as simply a way to become Catholic, it didn't work out for us! (I think in hindsight that was a feature, not a bug.) We had to turn around and take a more conventional route, while the ordinariate types pursued their boutique groups, flirting with the idea of not just unique, but separate.

The problem I see with how the story of the St Bede group and Fr Treco has been turning out is that overall, these people seem to want to be separate. The first link to the story I found provides a worthwhile context:

In addition to my wife and I being parishioners at the FSSP apostolate here in Minneapolis, we also from time to time attend St. Bede the Venerable, which is a mission parish of The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. While neither my wife nor myself were ever associated with Anglicans or Episcopalians, the Ordinariate Form of the Roman Rite is much more palpable than Novus Ordo masses.

While my friends and I were looking for an easy way to become Catholic (and not finding it with the OCSP, probably because there's actually no "easy way" to do it), these folks seem to have been drawn to the St Bede group because it shared their wish somehow to be more Catholic than the pope. It's a whole different approach.

This reminds me, actually, of the remarks Fr Ripperger, himself highly traditionalist, sometimes makes at conferences: he doesn't like traditionalists very much. He goes as far as to say they often make a great show of looking traditionalist while persisting in private sin. Something says to me that the most enthusiastic ordinariate people see themselves, and traditionalists see them, as at least close cousins.

Last Sunday I was enjoying the reverent mass at our diocesan parish. There are altar girls as well as altar boys. Somehow it reminded me of what I actually sort of liked about high-church Episcopalians: there were ladies in cassocks and surplices. It occurred to me that if Rome approves woman deacons, it'll be anything but a last straw for me; I never thought woman priests in TEC were a terrible scandal -- perhaps a doctrinal blunder, but not something to treat as a distraction.

There are more important things to focus on. If Rome ever ordains women priests, I'll be pushing up daisies by then anyhow.

"Why Is He In The Ordinariate, Then?"

I ran into the comment above somewhere on a blog discussing Fr Treco's removal, but I can't locate it now. It refers to his list of complaints against the Church and the seeming fact that he got his back up so hard that I would think the most pastoral and even indulgent efforts by Bp Lopes and Msgr Steenson to bring him home were of no avail. Yet he'd blogged for 15 years or so about how much he wanted to be a Catholic priest. My regular correspondent has what I think is a good insight:

Changing denominations seems to be commoner in the US than elsewhere. In the case of some OCSP clergy, as we have discussed, it seems to reflect simple careerism. But I have also encountered the kind of personality, clerical or lay, that seems perennially dissatisfied with the ability of any denomination to meet his or her high standards. For a time, each new institution seems like the One True Church, but gradually the leaders turn out to be flawed, the rules ignored in practice or even changed, the philosophical underpinning inadequate. So, on to the next! Surely certainty and perfection are out there somewhere. Perhaps Fr Treco is of this school.

This seems to have been the case with the Charismatic Episcopal Church, from which Fr Treco came. According to Wikipedia,

In the United States, the ICCEC experienced rapid growth for the first ten years of its existence. . . . In 2006 the US church experienced a crisis resulting in the departure of approximately 30% of its clergy and congregations, including seven actively serving bishops and one retired bishop. Though from diocese to diocese a variety of reasons were given for these departures, the crisis stemmed from allegations against some ICCEC leadership in America.

This is simply one fringe denomination among the pool from which Houston has been recruiting. Let's be clear: Fr Treco is the fourth OCSP priest who's required serious action by a bishop -- Fr Phillips was removed by the Archbishop of San Antonio while he still had authority over the parish, but shortly before it entered the OCSP. Under Bp Lopes, Phillips returned to the parish only as a retiree and was immediately replaced as pastor. Every indication is that Phillips had been a long-standing problem for whomever was ordinary.

In addition to Fr Phillips, Frs Kenyon and Reese have had to be removed before Fr Treco. This isn't a good record, and the two most recent, Reese and Treco, have given Houston a black eye, since they required action by the local archdioceses as well, and in the case of Reese, also made the eleven o'clock news.

This is cause for me to renew my reservations about Anglicanorum coetibus:

• Both priests and laity are likely to have a higher-than-normal proportion of malcontents who won't be satisfied in any denomination
• Priests in particular come from an applicant pool reflecting jurisdiction-hopping among fringe "Anglican" denominations, which suggests personnel issues aren't sufficiently probed in the discernment process
• Candidates for priesthood have widely disparate backgrounds, ranging from elite Episcopalian seminaries to no formal MDiv
• Both Reese and Treco are at the no-formal-MDiv end of the spectrum, and extended remedial training was clearly of no effect in both cases (UPDATE: Apparently Fr Treco has an M.Div from Trinity International University in Deerfield, IL class of 1988) This is an evangelical school that would not be much good for Catholic formation, and the degree is 30 years stale.
• The poor formation of OCSP priests raises the question of how effectively laity are catechized before they're received.

All of this suggests that the current trend of instant ordinations -- reception into the Church, ordination as a deacon, and ordination as a priest in a single weekend does happen -- has a great deal of risk attached. With a small pool of priests to start with, the pattern of one or two removals per year, sometimes amid scandal or at least public attention, is not encouraging. I don't think Fr Treco will be the last such case.

Situational Awareness

There were two major stories that affected US Catholics over the past week, the Covington Catholic hatefest and Governor Cuomo's "celebration" of New York's expansion of legal abortion. The Covington story is a serious indicator of what can happen to ordinary middle-class Catholics these days, and it should make all of us take notice. The other has raised new questions about exactly what sanctions the Church can apply to politicians who claim to be "Catholic" but support laws in opposition to Church teaching (or for that matter that are just bad public policy).

Good and faithful bishops have weighed in on both issues, and the laity on one hand has stood up for itself when directly threatened and attacked, while on the other it's loudly made its feelings known to the public figures involved. Certainly these events have served to clarify current issues for large swaths of Catholics. And, at least on the blogs and YouTube channels I've followed, nobody has claimed that traddies or Latin mass followers have the sole truth -- I get an overwhelming sense that everyone thinks we're all in it together.

I covered an additional story on this blog, of things visible and invisible, this one among the smallest -- the removal of Fr Vaughn Treco as administrator of the tiny group-in-formation in the Twin Cities area. The puzzling thing is that on the blog where it came up, this appears to be an utter tragedy that's eclipsed all others. The main issue in the comments is whether the membership -- I'm told regular mass attendance is in the range of two dozen, though probably not all are canonical "members" of OCSP -- is unanimous in supporting Fr Treco, or whether there are Quislings in the group.

By the same token, I made a rare visit to the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog and found no reference to the current crises, although several frequent contributors are from the US. The one post that seemed potentially relevant was entitled A question of identity for Catholics of Anglican Tradition (say that quickly three times), but the "question" at hand there is

The most recent flurry was precipitated by Shane Schaetzel who changed the name of a private Facebook group entitled Ordinariate Catholics to Traditional English Catholics.

Shane accompanied the abrupt name change—which he admitted was meant to spark discussion–with this essay entitled On the Use of the Word “Anglican” in reference to the the Ordinariates.

Influential people are trying to destroy the lives of Catholic schoolboys purely for being Catholic at the March for Life, bad bishops are piling on, and the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society is debating the use of the word "Anglican" over high tea. As far as I'm aware, Bp Lopes has had nothing to say on the big crises, although other junior bishops, like Scharfenberger and Strickland, have. I don't know what any OCSP priests have said to their tiny groups of faithful on these subjects -- as far as I can see, it isn't public.

Yet once more, I will not go anywhere near an OCSP group or parish.

Transcript of Bp Foys's Speech To The Covington Catholic Students

On January 25, the Diocese of Covington ran the article below in its newspaper, the Messenger, containing at least part of the transcript of Foys's January 23 talk to the Covington Catholic students. It was almost immediately overtaken by the full apology issued by Foys in a Friday-afternoon bad-news dump, covered in my post here yesterday. I've got to think that even this transcript was made public under pressure, since Foys's intent was clearly to speak only to young students without parents in attendance -- in other words, a naive and uncritical audience. He presumably hoped the parents would somehow accept this.

From comments on various sites, it appears that after a week of the Diocese of Covington not picking up the phone, people were calling the Archdiocese of Cincinnati across the river to complain. I imagine they loved that over there. I saw as well that apparently people were running ads on Cincinnati radio stations demanding that Foys apologize. It appears that the chancery was finally forced to issue some sort of response, but this clearly wasn't sufficient. And there were now two law firms on Foys's case.

It's worth noting that as of this Wednesday talk, Foys's plan was still to conduct an "investigation" of indefinite length (it "isn't going to be over overnight") and make no public statement until it was complete and the "truth" could be known. This reinforces the idea that this talk was initially not to be made public. That lasted only two days. I'll have some other reactions below after the quote: :

You could literally hear a pin drop as the faculty, staff and student body of Covington Catholic High School waited in the gym, Jan. 23, for the arrival of Bishop Roger Foys. As Bishop Foys entered the gymnasium the entire assembly stood up, waited for Bishop Foys to take his seat and then in unison took their seats. He was there to address the students about the events that took place Jan. 18, after the March for Life in Washington, D.C., where a student standing face-to-face with an elder Native American was captured on video and ignited a firestorm on social media — making headlines around the world

Bob Rowe, principal, opened with a prayer, then introduced Bishop Foys. “These last four days have been a living hell for many of you, for your parents, for your relatives, for your friends and it certainly has been for me,” Bishop Foys said as he began to address the assembly. “We are under all kinds of pressure from a lot of different people, for a lot of different reasons.”

Bishop Foys began by sharing how impressive the March for Life had been, especially the Mass celebrated at St. Dominic Church just before the march. “I know many of you couldn’t be at the Mass because you had a problem with your buses. It was really a moving time,” said Bishop Foys. “Over 1,000 people gathered for that Mass and there’s a real reverence about it.

“I told the students before we dismissed that … when they left that church and when they marched on the streets of Washington, D.C. for life, like we’ve done for the last 46 years, that they represented what was best about the Church and what was best about the Diocese of Covington; that we were sending out our best to stand up for life. It was a wonderful day, filled with real grace. That night I slept peacefully. It was the last night I’ve slept peacefully.”

Bishop Foys explained that by Saturday morning he and Curia staff were beginning to receive calls and e-mails from news stations and people from all over the world commenting about the confrontation in Washington. By Sunday morning the diocesan website was receiving over 200 thousand hits per hour and e-mails were coming in at a rate of over 10,000 an hour — crashing servers. Staff phones rang persistently for days — cell phones and office phones — until voicemail boxes were full; calls from media seeking a state ment, or comments from individuals all over the world criticizing either the students for their behavior or the diocese for their lack of support.

“Soon, my brother bishops began to text me worrying about my welfare and yours. People care about you. People love and care and are concerned about the Church and they are concerned about you.”

Bishop Foys went on to summarize the situation that he, Mr. Rowe, the students, the Covington Catholic community and the diocese are now facing and about the investigation being done. “This is a no-win situation. We are not going to win. No matter what we say, one way or another, there are going to be people who are going to argue about it, people who will try to get into people’s heads and say, ‘This is what he meant. This is what they meant when they were doing this and doing that.’ The best we can do is, first of all, to find out the truth, to find out what really went on, what really happened. So we do have investigators who are here today, a third-party who are not associated with our diocese, not associated with me or with the school, who are working on this investigation to find out what happened.

“I am the shepherd of this Church. I have to present not only to the people of our diocese but also to the world the facts. Not the facts that someone has imagined or the facts that someone thinks or facts that people might determine from seeing a video. I encourage all of you, especially the students who were there at the march, to cooperate with the investigators. This is with the permission of your parents. We’re not going to have you do anything without the permission of your parents. And the teachers and chaperones who were there, I am asking you, too, to be cooperative with this.

“Father Michael Hennigen (school chaplain) has said that ‘The truth will set us free.’ That’s true. It is my fond hope, it is my prayer, that when the truth comes out you and I and the diocese will be exonerated. But I need something to present to God’s people and say, ‘Look! Here are the objective facts.’ This investigation isn’t going to be over overnight — it can’t be if it’s going to be thorough.

“Some people’s lives, as you know, have been affected for the rest of their lives and the honor of our school has been tainted. We have received, and probably you have received, horrible, vile e-mails. This brings out the worst in people.

“We have to ask ourselves, what are we going to learn from this? One of the things I hope we’ve learned, I hope you’ve learned, is that perception can become reality. A person can be doing something that is absolutely innocent but if he gives the slightest hint, the slightest perception, that this is something wrong that is what people are going to remember, and then for them that becomes their reality.

“I’m going to ask you, as your bishop, to stay off social media in regards to this situation at least until it is resolved. Because the more you say — pro or con — the more you exacerbate the situation. You have to help, especially yourself, by getting off social media.

Right now anything we say — you or I — anything we say is questioned. The devil is real; trust me. He has taken this good thing, this March for Life, and turned it into a media circus.”

Bishop Foys then talked to the students about the statements that have been released by the diocese and the school, which have been criticized. “Some people think our first statement was too strong, but in my mind with what we saw and what we heard at the time, we had to say what we said and we meant it. If that behavior is genuine then we have to condemn it.

“We issued a second statement yesterday. Regardless of what you heard or what you’ve read or what you think— I am on your side. I want you to come out of this in a positive light.

“In our second statement I asked people to pray that we will arrive at the truth. The only way we can do that in an objective way is through a thorough and in-depth investigation. It is my hope and my prayer that, in the end, it will show exactly what happened and that we will be able to stand tall and proud. People will still criticize us one way or the other — people will believe it or not believe it — but at least we can say we’ve taken the time to talk to all the parties involved and to get all the footage we can that was taken that day and say, ‘Here, this is not what we think happened or what we would like to believe happened, but this is what in fact happened. If there was some wrongdoing we have to own up to that, too. Father Michael is right, it is the truth that will set us free.”

In closing he reminded the students how much he supports Catholic education and CCHS in particular. “Anybody who knows me knows that I support Catholic education. Over the last 17 years I have come to Covington Catholic a number of times each year. I always open your school year with Mass and I celebrate with you your successes. It pains me, more than you can imagine, having to be here today; but we can get over this. I’m 73 years old, I have faced a lot of struggles and hardships — we will get over this, there will be time to heal, it will be all right. But in the meantime preserve the integrity of the school, be the best that you can be and lay off the social media for a while.

“Know that I stand with you, that I join with you in that ‘Spirit that will not die’ and that together we will work through this. Thank you and God bless you.” As Bishop Foys turned the podium over to Mr. Rowe, he expressed his confidence in the principal. “Mr. Rowe has done a wonderful job here in his leadership. I have full confidence in him and he will continue to lead you,” he said.

In his final remarks before dismissing the assembly Mr. Rowe said, “Bishop Foys supports us — now we need to support him.”

My first impression was that Foys comes across as a 73-year-old bumbler. After reflecting overnight, I'm struck by how much of this talk is about him. His brother bishops have e-mailed to ask if he's OK. (Actually, I think this would have been a polite attempt by his colleagues to ask why he seemed to be AWOL.) He couldn't sleep peacefully for days! And the phones just kept ringing! Ah, the humanity!

And his remarks come off as tired and defeatist. “This is a no-win situation. We are not going to win. No matter what we say, one way or another, there are going to be people who are going to argue about it, people who will try to get into people’s heads and say, ‘This is what he meant. This is what they meant when they were doing this and doing that.'" This is neither the leader nor the spokesman you want. Nick Sandmann the 16-year-old did a better job.

Both here and in the apology, he mentions that the principal, Mr Rowe, is under pressure to resign. I think he's going to have to go -- the perception is that, with Foys, he threw the school, the boys, and the families under the bus. As Foys himself says, perception can be reality. I would guess there's also a great deal of pressure on Foys to resign as well. We'll have to see what shakes out.

The lesson I'm beginning to learn from this is the power of a courageous and responsible laity. There are many more important issues the laity will need to address in coming weeks and months, though.

Bp Foys Issues Sudden Full Apology

Early this afternoon, Bp Foys finally issued an apology to the Covington Catholic School families:

Bishop Roger Foys of Covington issued an apology Friday for a Jan. 19 diocesan statement that condemned the actions of some Covington Catholic High School students, following a widely publicized incident after last week’s March for Life in Washington, DC.

“We apologize to anyone who has been offended in any way by either of our statements which were made with good will based on the information we had,” said Bishop Foys in the letter, which was addressed to the parents of Covington Catholic students.

“We should not have allowed ourselves to be bullied and pressured into making a statement prematurely, and we take full responsibility for it.”

Foys also singled out Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann, the student at the center of the controversy. A video emerged Jan. 19 of Sandmann standing in close proximity to Native American activist Nathan Phillips, who was, at the time, chanting and playing a ceremonial drum.

. . . “I especially apologize to Nicholas Sandmann and his family as well as to all CovCath families who have felt abandoned during this ordeal. Nicholas unfortunately has become the face of these allegations based on video clips,” said Foys. “This is not fair. This is not just.”

Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit reports,

L. Lin Wood, recently retained by the family of Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann issued a statement Friday afternoon promising a “multitude of civil lawsuits” against those who made “false accusations and threats” against Sandmann over the incident involving him and Native American activist Nathan Phillips last Friday in Washington, D.C.

. . . Wood came to prominence representing Richard Jewell, the security guard falsely accused by the media in the Atlanta Olympics bombing in 1996. From the Wood lawfirm about page:

. . . L. Lin Wood, P.C., focuses its practice on First Amendment and defamation litigation; media management in high profile matters; False Claims Act cases, or “whistleblower” actions; fiduciary, trust and estate litigation; complex business litigation; and cases of catastrophic personal injury.

Tomorrow I'll post the transcript of Bp Foys's talk to the Covington Catholic School students on Wednesday. It was remarkably flaccid and continued to deflect responsibility. My wife thinks the hiring of Mr Wood's firm and the sudden full apology from Bp Foys are not unrelated -- clearly someone slapped this stubborn old man upside the head, figuratively speaking.

We'll have to see what further apologies are forthcoming. It's worth reflecting that Church authorities have been completely unwilling to stand up to the bullying that Bp Foys now acknowledges took place. It's taken a courageous individual lay family to force these men to begin to act like shepherds.

The MAGA Hat Issue

In something of a late hit against the poor Covington schoolboys, and as part of a liberal pushback against the exposure of the hoaxer Nathan Phillips and his enablers, Bp John Stowe of Lexington, KY, wrote an op-ed in which he implied that the kids sorta-kinda brought it on themselves for wearing MAGA hats, which meant they weren't good Catholics anyhow:

Without engaging the discussion about the context of the viral video or placing the blame entirely on these adolescents, it astonishes me that any students participating in a pro-life activity on behalf of their school and their Catholic faith could be wearing apparel sporting the slogans of a president who denigrates the lives of immigrants, refugees and people from countries that he describes with indecent words and haphazardly endangers with life-threatening policies.

This echoes the earlier views of Fr Edward Beck of CNN:

Lastly, I don't think the boys should have been permitted to wear MAGA hats to the March for Life event they attended. The "Make America Great Again" slogan has become political code for an agenda that is often in opposition with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

. . . The Catholic Church's pro-life teaching encompasses a panoply of issues such as: abortion, immigration, capital punishment, the environment and climate change, sex trafficking, and the inequitable distribution of the world's resources.

This seems to be a variant of the "seamless garment" theory promoted by Cardinal Bernardin. The teachings of the Catholic Church actually support many of the agenda items on which President Trump won the 2016 election. For instance, CCC 2241 says

Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.

As far as I'm aware, the Catechism makes no reference to climate change, and there is no entry for "climate" in its index. Offhand remarks by Pope Francis on the subject carry no particular teaching authority. As far as I'm aware, President Trump did not run on a platform in favor of sex trafficking. In fact, his position is that uncontrolled immigration fosters sex trafficking, which is common sense. The Church's position on capital punishment has changed since the 2016 election, and I don't believe President Trump has expressed any position on this pro or con.

But a recent article at LifeSite News raises questions about Bp Stowe's position on other Church teachings:

Stowe is famously a voice for progressive causes within the Catholic Church – even those which go against Catholic teaching.

He is one of five bishops who endorsed pro-gay Fr. James Martin, S.J.’s book, “Building a Bridge,” and was also a featured speaker in 2017 at a conference for the dissident group New Ways Ministry. The gathering was titled “Justice and Mercy Shall Kiss: LGBT Catholics in the Age of Pope Francis.”

New Ways Ministry was condemned in 2010 by then-president of the USCCB, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, and in 2011 by Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl, USCCB chairman of the Committee on Doctrine. In 1999 the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “permanently prohibited” the group’s co-founders “from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons,” after ruling that their teaching was “erroneous and dangerous” and “doctrinally unacceptable.”

In July 2018, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Lexington said it was “up to each parish” whether to promote homosexuality.

Michael Voris in today's Vortex addresses a broader question about the liberal bishops' acceptance of Church teaching on abortion:

See, a large number of U.S. bishops are still stuck in the 1970s and earlier, when most Catholics were Democrats — before the Democrats morphed into the Party of Death.

. . . Few bishops anywhere in the United States during those years from 1964 to 1984 said much about the direction the Democratic Party was heading. Right smack in the middle of that 20 years, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its immoral ruling in Roe v. Wade.

. . . As you know, the boys were wearing MAGA hats, which for most of the U.S. bishops is like kryptonite, so closely are they allied with their Democratic Party buds.

Actually, it isn't completely clear when the boys put the MAGA hats on. They were wearing the hats after the March, and so far, nobody has shown them wearing them during the March itself. They were waiting for the bus after a period of free sightseeing time between the end of the March and their departure. As such, they were representing only themselves. And as a self-identified never-Trump commentator puts it:

If you attend a march in Washington, D.C., while wearing a cheap red hat that can be purchased at any gift shop or souvenir stand in the city, there's every chance you'll be branded a racist for maintaining your composure while complete strangers scream at you and pound drums in your face. And even when irrefutable video evidence proves you've done nothing wrong, a pack of bigots with press passes will still blame you for angering them.

But it's worth repeating that Trump won the 2016 election with a majority of the Catholic vote. Catholics are getting smarter.

More From Bp Foys Of Covington

According to the Lepanto Institute, Bp Foys addressed the students at Covington Catholic School yesterday, January 23, but the parents were not informed, and no public transcript is available.

One parent, who said that she was upset and frustrated about the matter, told the Lepanto Institute:

“My boys are at school today (Covington Catholic) and they were addressed [by] our bishop, Roger Foys, sans parents. In fact, there has been no info given to parents about how the kids were to be treated or what would be said to them. We didn’t even know the bishop would be addressing them. The school isn’t answering phones, the voicemail is full, the website is down and we were given a statement that basically said we weren’t allowed at school today.”

Other sources, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, told us that Bishop Foys was completely unapologetic about his public condemnation. Addressing his condemnation, Bp. Foys told students that he couldn’t please everyone. He also mentioned that he has hired an investigative team to look into the incident and would not be making a statement until the investigation as completed.

Lepanto Institute is told that Bp. Foys told the boys that he is “100% on the boys’ side and always was,” while claiming that “if [their] actions had been bad, it would be a good statement.”

Again, the central principles of crisis management are to be out front and transparent with a sympathetic spokesman who acknowledges errors where they have occurred and addresses positive steps in moving forward. Instead, nobody's answering the phone.

The critical audience here, more than the students, is the parents. Foys seems pretty clearly uncomfortable about addressing adults and is still hiding behind the "independent investigation".

I don't think Foys recognizes that he's got a crisis.

UPDATE: Additional reports say Foys has told the school administration that he doesn’t want the kids doing any more interviews, although the boys have acquitted themselves quite well in them, and it's important to note that neither the diocese nor the school has offered any media corrective of its own or message of any sort besides that it has no message so far.

On one hand, normal policy for an organization is to limit media contacts to the organization's own press operation. However, this is to ensure a consistent message. The problem with the diocese and the school is they have no message -- they aren't answering the phone, while insisting that they won't say anything until an investigation is completed at some unspecified future date. Meanwhile, the Sandmann family had to take the initiative to maintain its reputation.

I suspect both Bp Foys and the school principal will be out at some point.

Crisis Management

The Sandmann family, a remarkably prudent and intelligent one, has engaged a crisis management public relations firm to manage its relationship with the press in the wake of the Covington controversy. According to the Louisville Courier-Journal:

On Sunday night, Sandmann released a three-page statement in which Nick defended his actions and offered his version of events. Describing himself as a Christian and practicing Catholic, he wrote that the Native American man, Nathan Phillips, had approached him, not the other way around. Phillips supported that in separate interviews later in the weekend.

Asked about its role, RunSwitch released a statement saying that the firm "has been retained by the Sandmann family to offer professional counsel with what has become a national media story. We are working with the family to ensure an accurate recounting of events which occurred this past weekend.”

RunSwitch partners Steve Bryant and Gary Gerdemann said that Sandmann family asked people they knew over the weekend about getting help with handling the media.

"They reached out to our firm, and we responded," said Bryant, adding that the business specializes in crisis management "all over the country."

Let's consider that efforts were immediately begun after the hoax story broke to get the boys expelled from their school, which the Diocese of Covington implicitly endorsed; publish the boys' and families' names in hopes of getting the parents fired from their jobs and the boys denied college admission; and threats of violence were issued, with scruffy demonstrators converging on the school and the diocesan offices. Both had to be closed in fear on the following Tuesday.

This is why crisis management is needed in this day and age, and it appears that RunSwitch is a capable firm -- I assume they were responsible for getting Nick Sandmann's written account of the episode into the press and his interview on the Today show Wednesday morning. Nick comes off as mature, sensible, and well-spoken. It sounds as if RunSwitch recognized this and saw him as a good public spokesman.

It's worth noting that the Sandmanns are said to be middle class, and public relations crisis management firms don't come cheap. The cost of a public relations firm to counteract hoax defamatory news would be a damage the family is entitled to recover in legal action. I assume this will be part of a prudent and intelligent overall strategy.

It does appear that legal action on behalf of the families is under way.

"Anyone who doesn’t correct and retract” libelous stories related to an encounter near the Lincoln Memorial would face a lawsuit, Los Angeles-based trial lawyer Robert Barnes told PJMedia. Corrections indicating that “a more complex picture has emerged” may not be enough, he said.

Barnes confirmed to The Epoch Times that he represents the families, who “don’t want to, but feel it necessary” to pursue the libel charges.

Barnes expressed confidence in the strength of his case. It’s easier for private citizens to raise libel charges against a person who publishes false claims about them. Private citizens only need to prove negligence, such as failure to fact check, on the part of the publisher. . . . Barnes said he will likely bring the case “as a class claim to preserve the maximum amount of anonymity” for his clients.

I still wouldn't advise Nick Sandmann to apply to Harvard (which accepted David Hogg), but I would guess Hillsdale College would be happy to have a mature, sensible, and well-spoken student like him.

On the other hand, the fallout from the episode has also developed into a crisis for the school and the Diocese of Covington. I would guess there are unhappy parents in the school, which caved with the diocese in threatening expulsion for the boys, but the fumbling over the weekend has hurt the school's reputation and reduces the chances of any student in the college admissions process. I would say that a new principal is a potential good option.

A much larger number of unhappy Catholics will want accountability for Bp Foys. So far, I don't have the impression that the school and the diocese are acting as sensibly as the Sandmann family. In fact, I don't have the impression that either recognizes the crisis it now faces.

The Developing AmChurch Take On The Covington Episode

I've had a fair amount to say about Carl Benjamin lately, and I find his take on the Covington episode and its aftermath an interesting contrast to US reaction. Benjamin, recall, is a libertarian, not a theist, and as a resident of the UK, is somewhat removed from immediate US cultural reference, and he sees subtleties in the encounter that other commentators miss:

He sees the posture and perhaps the semi-deliberate (although also just resulting from confusion and discomfort) refusal of Sandmann to move or even change his facial expression as an implicit rejection of everything the Native American provocateur Phillips stands for. Fr Longenecker has a similar take:

You realize that their dancing and drumming and chanting was not just a form of political activism? They believed they were doing something religious and therefore righteous, and they were using their religion as a weapon to intimidate others, gain ground and asset themselves in an aggressive way.

Benjamin, neither Catholic nor any sort of theist and apparently not educated to see a religious context here, leaves out that Sandmann is, well, a Catholic, and Phillips, clearly the aggressor, is a pagan. In earlier times, Sandmann would have become a martyr in such circumstances. How many saints became martyrs at the same age, perhaps not fully mature, perhaps with the same set of ambiguous circumstances forced on them?

By and large, our bishops and other Catholic leaders aren't seeing this, or if they are, they're at best trying to distance themselves from that sort of Catholic. Walkbacks of earlier condemnations have been largely ill-tempered and pusillanimous. Let's take the statement the Diocese of Covington belatedly issued yesterday after taking its website down for some hours:

Concerning the incident in Washington, D.C., between Covington Catholic students, Elder Nathan Phillips and Black Hebrew Israelites the independent, third-party investigation is planned to begin this week. This is a very serious matter that has already permanently altered the lives of many people. It is important for us to gather the facts that will allow us to determine what corrective actions, if any, are appropriate.

We pray that we may come to the truth and that this unfortunate situation may be resolved peacefully and amicably and ask others to join us in this prayer.

We will have no further statements until the investigation is complete.

So, how long will this take? Will it be a lot of mealy-mouthed equivocation that comes out months later when everyone's forgotten about it? I would guess that Bp Foys and his staff are essentially in hiding and will not emerge for some time. But let's move to Bp Barron, whose views strike me as not fully coherent:

The immediate and ferocious judgment of the internet community was that the boy was effectively taunting and belittling the elder, but subsequent videos from wider angles as well as the young man’s own testimony have cast considerable doubt on this original assessment. My purpose in this article is not to adjudicate the situation, which remains, at best, ambiguous, even in regard to the basic facts. It is to comment, rather, on the morally outrageous and deeply troubling nature of the response to this occurrence, one that I would characterize as, quite literally, Satanic.

Well, the immediate and ferocious reaction came not just from the "internet community", but from the Bishop of Covington, the Archbishop of Louisville, and celebrity priests like Fr James Martin, SJ. I'd like to assume Bp Barron is on the side of the angels here, but I'm always ready to be disappointed. Note that he won't "adjudicate the situation", which he's presumably going to leave to Bp Foys's intrepid third-party investigators, who likely will make it plain that the boys contributed to the problem with their microaggressions.

And of course, while he characterizes the judgment of the "internet community" as Satanic, he leaves out the cowardly willingness of bishops and others to cave over this judgment at the expense of decent Catholic boys, their school, and their families. Oddly, before this story broke, I read someone on the web noting how few bishops, proportionately, have been saints.

But let's take another celebrity priest, Fr Edward Beck of CNN, who hasn't walked back any of his initial condemnations:

My feelings about the #CovingtonBoys are unchanged since the first reporting and viewing many different videos. The boys acted inappropriately, and chaperones should have intervened. And boys should not have been permitted to wear MAGA hats if they were representing the school.

Let's back up a little here. For starters, "Make America Great Again" is a campaign theme that's been around for some decades and has been used by politicians of both parties in the past. In 2016, Donald Trump used it in the course of a campaign that won the election and gained him over half the Catholic vote. The message itself is optimistic and positive.

Second, let's not lose awareness that the Covington episode came in the context of the annual March for Life, a largely (though not exclusively) Christian witness that's had Catholic participation endorsed by Catholic authorities. Two factors in this year's event are important. One is that pressure from rank-and-file Catholics led to the removal of the corrupt Cardinal Wuerl as celebrant of the concurrent Mass for Life event. This likely made AmChurch uncomfortable.

But also, Donald Trump endorsed the March for Life with a televised address. Contrast this with the numerous nominal Catholic politicians, like Joseph Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and many others, who wouldn't dream of endorsing it. I think this makes AmChurch uncomfortable as well, because there's been little move by bishops to insist that these politicians vote for policy in conformance to Church teaching, especially when they use the Catholic brand to appeal to the electorate.

If you think about it, "make America great again" would certainly imply that an America that stops using abortion to control minority birth rates, returns to single-sex bathroom rules, or stops exploiting child drag queens as entertainers would be "great again". To complain that the boys, well-groomed and cheerful, were wearing MAGA hats is part of the establishment's pusillanimous and ill-tempered response to the whole episode.

What makes me optimistic is that the rank and file has been able demonstrably to make its feelings known and bring about reforms.

Fr Vaughn Treco Removed

A visitor sent me a link to this post:

Last night, my wife and I attended St. Bede’s for mass, but Fr. Treco was not presiding, nor anywhere to be seen. Instead, a diocesan priest was presiding. At the end of the mass, the priest made an announcement, indicating that as of yesterday, Fr. Treco had been relieved of his duties as pastor of St. Bede’s, with the diocesan priest being appointed the interim pastor. We were told that Fr. Treco had been removed because of the sermon he made on The Feast of Christ the King (ordinary time) on November 25 of last year. This sermon was published by The Remnant Video on YouTube, which can be found here: VATICAN REVOLUTION: Diocesan Priest’s Had Enough

We were told that Fr. Treco was visited by Bp. Lopes, who essentially provided Fr Treco with the option of renouncing what he had said in the sermon (which Fr. Treco declined), or that he be removed as pastor, wherein he would have to take… wait for it…. further education classes so that he could better understand the post-conciliar church.

I went to the video, but the controversial part has apparently been removed. The post linked above says the very small St Bede's mission is all on Fr Treco's side. However, I've already expressed concerns about Fr Treco's formation here, and beyond that, I've got to say a convert -- I'm one, too, after all -- isn't in a good position telling the Church it's doing things wrong.

But isn't this effectively an acknowledgement by Bp Lopes that OCSP priests aren't well formed? It's also worth noting that apparently Msgr Steenson, who moved to the Twin Cities area after retiring as ordinary, has never been associated with the St Bede's group.

UPDATE: A visitor referred me to a new comment on the site linked above, which says, "The priest celebrating Mass and who was appointed parochial administrator pro tempore is not a diocesan priest. It is Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, Ordinary Emeritus of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. He resides here teaching at St. Paul Seminary and as such was available to take this position."

Deacon James Orr

Several visitors have notified me that Dcn James Orr, retired from Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, passed away yesterday, January 21.

What Will The Diocese of Covington Do?

When the fake news version of the Covington Catholic High School story hit, the Diocese of Covington immediately caved and issued a statement which went onto all national media:

Covington Catholic High School and the Diocese of Covington said Saturday that they are investigating the incident that happened at the Indigenous Peoples March on Friday.

"We will take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion," the statement said.

The school and diocese apologized to the man in the video, identified as Vietnam veteran and Native American elder Nathan Phillips.

As of this morning, the diocese's website is down. A chaperone who was present, Mrs Jill Hanlon, appeared on Fox to discuss the issue:

From the diocese's standpoint, this story is out of control. Mrs Hanlon is clearly irked that the diocese hasn't stood up for its school or the faithful. I've seen in social media comments that people have called the diocese to complain that the Church will cover up abuse, but it immediately threw the students under the bus.

The bishop so far is AWOL.

Carl Benjamin On Thomistic Potential And The Right to Life

The controversial YouTuber Carl Benjamin, who is a libertarian atheist, takes a remarkably Thomistic view of the right to life here:

Ben Shapiro, whom he defends, is an orthodox Jew. What's interesting is that most of the "intellectual dark web", of which Benjamin is a member, is pro-choice. I think if you were to press Benjamin, he'd also say he's pro-choice (he asserts this, in fact, at about 17:30). This suggests that some of these people can be reached on rationalistic grounds.

A point Benjamin raises is how closely the "Baby Hitler" discussion tracks the moral issues at stake with abortion.

So, What Happened?

According to Church Militant,

Less than a week after news proving that Wuerl became aware of Abp. Theodore McCarrick's homosexual predation in 2004 — contrary to multiple statements claiming otherwise — the archdiocese of Washington, D.C. confirmed Wednesday that Wuerl will not be the principal celebrant at the Youth Rally and Mass for Life, held each year on the same day as the National March for Life.

Instead, Abp. Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio, will offer the liturgy. He will be joined by auxiliary bishops Mario Dorsonville and Roy Campbell.

At a Mass at which Wuerl presided in September, two weeks after the Pennsylvania grand jury report revealed he had protected predator priests during his tenure as bishop of Pittsburgh, one angry Catholic shouted "Shame on you!" during the homily before walking out, followed by his wife. Another woman turned her back on him throughout the duration of Wuerl's homily.

. . . Church Militant also learned that the archdiocese received multiple messages from Catholics in the past few weeks demanding that Wuerl not attend the Mass for Life.

The "multiple messages from Catholics" almost certainly refers to Fr Mark Goring's efforts on YouTube to organize his audience to send such messages protesting Wuerl's appearance. This, according to Fr Goring, made the Archdiocese of Washington unhappy with him, and in a subsequent video, he said he'd been told to "cease and desist", as his videos had "made the lives of his superiors more difficult". All of his posts on the current crisis have been deleted; the most recent one still remaining is from January 7.

Because I was interested in the Charismatic movement and Fr Goring's perspective on it, I'd subscribed to his daily e-mail. However, it appears that his daily e-mails have also been stopped. The poor guy is clearly in the doghouse.

However, it appears that the Archdiocese of Washington recognized that there are limits to what it can control. I would guess, in fact, that if Wuerl was taken off the program and replaced by the papal nuncio, this decision had to have been made in a larger context than just the chancery in Washington, and Rome was probably involved in some way, at least to approve it.

I hope that Fr Goring can quickly be rehabilitated.

Reaction To The Reporter Editorial

After a day.s reflection, I'm of two minds regarding the NCR Online editorial I linked yesterday. On one hand, it echoes Pope Francis in denouncing (though without using the word, which could be inconvenient), "clericalism", a priesthood "highly secretive, highly privileged, believed to be distinctive from the rest of human kind". This, of course, is not a scriptural view of the priesthood, which involves following the sacrificial example of the Founder, who was fully human.

I think we can say that deference to the priesthood allowed some families to give pedophile priests privileged access to young boys when they shouldn't have had it. Informed laity must avoid this now. But it's only part of the problem. Harassment of adult seminarians and tolerance of consensual same-sex conduct is an entirely different dimension that "clericalism" doesn't address -- often gay priests and bishops aren't even secretive about these things, after all.

In fact, it seems to me that the Bergoglian faction and its supporters, like Cardinal Cupich, are hiding behind their own version of clericalist authoritarianism to define the problem to suit themselves. Cupich in public remarks seeks to limit the definition of "abuse" to the pedophilia addressed in the First Crisis and insists that harassment be addressed separately in a category of same-sex conduct over the canonical age of consent, which he appears to believe is always "consensual". And he leaves out entirely the question of whether same-sex conduct is rampant in the clergy and a corrupting influence.

I think the editorial also tries to make McCloskey a figurehead for the entire traditionalist wing of Catholicism, when it's become plain that he, like several similar figures in the editorial, was a self-promoter who got media attention. His prelature exploited this for as long as it worked, as did Merton's order, but nobody fooled all of the people all of the time.

And the Reporter has only a very general suggestion for how to move forward from the problem of McCloskey. My regular correspondent is more enthusiastic than I am:

I found the NCR editorial very insightful and helpful in clarifying my thinking. I see now that while it is probably impossible to prove whether the celibacy requirement means that the Latin Rite Catholic Church attracts a disproportionate number of gays into the priesthood, that is probably not the nub of the problem anyway. It is that the celibacy requirement is a major contributor to "what the late and hastily sainted pope saw as 'heroic priesthood'."

Well, the priesthood is meant to follow the sacrificial example of the Founder. It also embraces humility, after all. My guess is that when John Paul used the term "heroic", he was thinking more in the context of the military hero who throws himself on a grenade to protect his comrades, rather than the TV wrestling hero. I think it's possible to confuse the two, but a self-promoter priest who gains media acclaim isn't the same thing as Ven Fulton Sheen, who often told hilarious jokes about himself. My correspondent goes on,

Celibacy, the renunciation not only of sex but of particularity and intimacy, is a great gift and potentially of great service in ministry, but I think it is also a rare gift and best nurtured in a religious order which provides appropriate community and support. As practised in the contemporary Church it is a badge of a clerical class "believed to be distinctive from human kind" which gets to play by different rules in far too many cases.

But let's take the North American ordinariate as a sort of beta version of a non-celibate Catholic priesthood. Frankly, it's often comical -- take the examples of the married fringe-denomination "Anglican" military chaplains who are secretively prepared for Catholic ordination so they can make their move over a single weekend and not miss a military paycheck. Compare that to the need for secrecy in post-Reformation England, where the Catholic priests who provided the sacraments to recusant families risked, and often gained, martyrdom.

And the OCSP is not attracting high-quality married candidates. The crop in Florida and Georgia hasn't been encouraging; they seem to have been highly marginal as either Catholics or Anglicans.

There are occasional married Catholic priests in dioceses. The most visible, Fr Longenecker, had anything but an instant weekend ordination. There was real sacrifice in his journey. I don't think it's a coincidence that he has almost nothing to do with the OCSP. It's a little like Gerald Ford's rueful remark, "I played football for Michigan. Reagan played it for Warner Brothers." One is the real thing. The others are phonies.

And of course, marriage is no guarantee of anything. There's been adultery as long as there's been marriage. Even a married Catholic priest is fully capable of groping a woman in counseling, or indeed abusing a preteen boy on a camping trip. It's hard for me to avoid one conclusion implicit in the NCR editorial, that at least a gay priest would be less likely to grope a married lady, but of course, even that isn't locked in.

Editorial In Yesterday's Reporter

A visitor sent me a link to an editorial in yesterday's NCR Online that I think puts McCloskey in the right context. It makes so many good points that I can only highlight a few. Of his YouTubes, it says,

McCloskey's manipulative behavior with vulnerable women was certainly, in hindsight, telegraphed in things he wrote and in a series of interviews done for an ultraconservative presentation on marriage preparation for Catholics. For the discerning, red flags were popping everywhere (and YouTube provides abundant examples), but the sirens are blaring and lights are flashing in one particularly weird segment that can be found here:

. . . You see, he explains, in those regions of the world, while feminism has made "inroads," it is nothing like it is here in the United States. So that's why these truly Catholic men who "cannot find a good Catholic American woman who they would feel comfortable with" go searching for properly submissive women elsewhere. While those same men may not have looked hard enough around the home turf, often American women they find attractive are interested in careers, he asserts, not staying home and raising children.

That is the language and thinking of someone who became the face of one of Pope John Paul II's favorite organizations. McCloskey was a perfect model of what the late and hastily sainted pope saw as "heroic priesthood."

Further,

We are paying dearly for all of that right now. The peculiarities that came with John Paul's notions of priesthood — his insistence on rebuilding a cult separate and apart from ordinary people and the utter lack of judgment he showed in choosing his models for that project — became deeply woven into the fabric of an already corrupted clerical culture. What he advanced actually reinforced the worst characteristics of the culture.

It is not the sins of the individuals that should now be the focus. All humans fail; we are all capable of deception and worse. It is the institutional corruption that they came to represent. The failings hidden for years by the institution, in the case of McCloskey, Williams, Maciel and others. The power of money, in the case of Maciel and, more recently, of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, to buy them cover in the Vatican. The refusal on John Paul II's part, time and again, to listen to serious and credible allegations against Maciel and other abusers. He set the template in this era of scandal for how church leaders should proceed.

My regular correspondent had a similar take:

As you have noted previously, in the Mafia and other corrupt organisations they have something on everybody---that pay-off you accepted, that weekend getaway you expensed---and if it furthers the organisation's interests it will be exposed and punished at some point. This does not alter the fact that such activities are the normal way of doing business, and said exposure and punishment do not in any way signal a change.

Whistle-blowers in such organisations tend to be people who got on somebody's wrong side and can no longer count on being protected, going forward. Indignation ensues, not always very convincingly. The later history of Eliot Ness suggests to me that "charismatic change agents" harbour character traits which have a darker side. Deeper cultural change has to take place in the organisation as a whole, or history continues to repeat itself.

As I've expanded the scope of this blog, I've asked myself more and more why figures like Bernardin and Law rose as they did -- but before that, there was Spellman, who spent years as a confidant to Cardinal Pacelli.

A Template For McCarrick?

At least at first glance, what seems to be a fairly successful handling of the McCloskey case might give the Church a way to handle Cardinal McCarrick. Or not. My regular correspondent does make a worthwhile comment:

While the ghost-written book reviews etc seem like a pathetic stratagem on the part of Opus Dei, they are at least consistent with the long-term attempt to cover for Fr McCloskey, now apparently over. The alternative hypothesis ---that he doesn't have dementia, but is being sheltered behind a fake diagnosis---requires him to be kept out of sight for decades, potentially. To what end? His reputation has been pretty thoroughly trashed in innumerable recent stories.

I pretty much agree, he's been thrown under the bus after what seems to have been several years of covering up his status. Naturally, the easiest and best resolution, removal from the priesthood following an investigation into the potential delict in 2002, would have eliminated the need for all the extra effort now. As this commentator noted,

The variety and complexities of such adult cases means that superiors have to exercise good judgment, prudence and courage. But in an anti-authority environment where even the Pope concedes that bishops have lost their credibility, almost anything short of permanent banishment from ministry becomes suspect, as a consequence of religious authorities having lost the trust of the faithful.

But a second- or third-best approach seems to be what Opus Dei took: temporize with the matter, however belatedly, and keep it quiet. However, when outside forces intervene, such as a complainant now requesting the matter be made public, throw the guy under the bus. (In effect, this is what the Diocese of Spokane also did with the hinky Jesuits.) Even so, as my regular correspondent put it,

Continuing to publish ghost-written reviews over the name of a man in the last stages of dementia is bizarre even before we get to the other stuff. As you point out, he can't have long to live. What were they planning to say he died of?

The ingredients for a successful crisis management in this case would be:

• A case that has already been resolved, but whose circumstances have now come to light
• A sympathetic spokesman who can appear to be sincerely transparent
• Sincere acknowledgement of errors
• A clear and sincere explanation of what's been, or will be, changed to prevent recurrence.

Opus Dei has been able to claim, though, that this is the first and only such settlement paid in the US. I don't think the Church has the same circumstances with McCarrick. It does appear that Pope Francis would like to dispose of the McCarrick issue definiteively before the February conference in Rome, but simply throwing McCarrick under the bus won't be enough. The differences include:

• Numerous cases over decades, already well-publicized
• A well-publicized history of coverup
• Unsympathetic spokesmen like Cardinal Cupich
• An unwillingness to address the real problem, gay networks in seminaries and chanceries
• No clear plan for resolving the problem, along with a perception that sincere efforts from places like the USCCB are not supported in Rome.

I think it's fairly plain that what will be needed will be a future strong pontiff, indeed, one stronger than John Paul II, who appears to have allowed the situation to reach its current point.

Is Fr McCloskey Suffering From Alzheimer's?

In his official statement regarding Fr McCloskey, Msgr Bohlin, the Opus Dei vicar in the US, said,

Father McCloskey currently suffers from advanced Alzheimer’s. He is largely incapacitated and needs assistance for routine daily tasks. He has not had any pastoral assignments for a number of years and is no longer able to celebrate Mass, even privately.

The visitor who studies Opus Dei commented,

Other reports say he is residing at the “Reston Residence” but they fail to mention that that’s an Opus Dei Study Center. I don’t think there is an advanced medical or hospital facilities there to care for a priest in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.

The Daily Beast responded,

But The Daily Beast found dozens of complex articles he wrote in 2017 and at least one article he authored as late as 2018—a book review of Aquinas and Evolution titled “How Does St. Thomas Aquinas Approach Evolution?” in National Catholic Register in which McCloskey is identified as a “church historian who writes from Virginia.”

If Father McCloskey is truly incapacitated, as his religious order says he is, it is nothing short of a miracle that he can write about such complex topics. And if he's not, it is nothing short of a lie.

Press accounts say McCloskey is currently 64 or 65, which is early for Alzheimer's. According to the Mayo Clinic,

Of all the people who have Alzheimer's disease, about 5 percent develop symptoms before age 65. . . . Most people with early-onset Alzheimer's develop symptoms of the disease in their 40s and 50s.

Naturally, I don't want to minimize Alzheimer's or its effects on loved ones. But one question in my mind is whether, whatever McCloskey's current condition, there's been an actual medical diagnosis of Alzheimer's. There are many causes of dementia outside of Alzheimer's, including alcoholism. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Opus Dei spokesman Brian

Finnerty said McCloskey’s interaction with women “was very limited in Chicago” even after restrictions were removed. He said signs of “cognitive impairment” were detected in 2010 and that McCloskey “did have a problem with alcohol . . . and he received treatment for that.”

I think the best conclusion we can draw is that McCloskey was always overrated and was a creature of the media. However, he didn't perform well at Princeton, and he clearly became unable to handle temptations in Washington. He was presumably a source of vocations and donations to Opus Dei for as long as he lasted. Whatever his current condition, he's pretty clearly being protected, and the best thing for Opus Dei is to hope other events overtake this bad publicity.

That said, Brian Finnerty has been doing a competent public relations job. He's been generally forthcoming about the details of the crisis, and he's outlined Opus Dei's measures to correct the problem, while also acknowledging errors. It's likely that subsequent stories of coverup won't emerge. The dioceses that are having to deal with other crises can take this one as an example, but so far, it appears they won't. (An exception is the Diocese of Spokane.)

I would give Opus Dei an A-minus in crisis management, while recognizing it did contribute to the crisis. The biggest flaw in the response is the ambiguity over whether McCloskey actually has Alzheimer's, but clearly he's best kept under wraps under any circumstance.

UPDATE: A visitor referred me to the last paragraph of this story, which suggests that Opus Dei submitted ghostwritten articles under McCloskey's name to keep up appearances. That may or may not be -- my impression is there was never a there there with the guy.

Maybe You Just Had To Be There

A visitor pointed out to me a few days ago that Fr C John McCloskey still has presentations available on YouTube. In the one here, he answers the key question in Catholic formation, "Do looks matter?" (I don't know if he later addresses the question of size.)

And for the spiritually troubled, he reassures them: looks matter if they matter. And he goes farther: one has to have the opportunity to get to know the person. Halfway through, he sums up -- these are truisms, but truisms are truisms because they're true.

I watched several of his videos. I really can't avoid thinking there's no there there with this guy. What was his appeal that the major papers of record in the 1990s and early 2000s were calling him some sort of clerical superstar? I'm a little puzzled at the list of converts he's allegedly recruited for the Church: Newt Gingrich, Robert Bork, Robert Novak, Alfred Regnery, and Laura Ingraham, among others. My first question is how many on this list and others still go to regular mass and confession, if they ever actually did.

Certainly McCloskey is no St Augustine, no St Bernardino, no Ven Fulton Sheen, not even Bp Barron. The strongest Catholic YouTubers I see now have the force of reason, if not flashing azure eyes: Fr Ripperger, for instance, or Prof Feser. I don't see that with McCloskey. In fact, in the clip above, he's talking to his audience as if they were 13-year-olds, which he tends to do generally. Even Fr Mike Schmitz, whose target audience is adolescents slightly older who are discerning vocations, doesn't talk down that way.

Several things strike me as I reflect on this. McCloskey grew up in Bethesda, which I know well because I went to high school there. Bethesda is an über-snobby suburb next to Chevy Chase, which is even more so. McCloskey was part of a Catholic prep school subculture that I didn't run with, but it was clearly a subgroup of the same franchise. Some in my circle went to Sidwell Friends, while my sister went to National Cathedral School. Washington is a deeply class- and status-conscious place, which is a big reason Trump doesn't fit in.

McCloskey went on to Columbia, which would be an important merit badge in that environment, and I've simply got to assume that the various Republican swamp dwellers and media mavens who were attracted to whatever McCloskey called "Catholicism" saw it as some sort of flavor-of-the-month, and they trusted McCloskey because he was attractive, he knew all the right people, and he'd done all the right things.

And it sounds like he told people what they wanted to hear.

Again, I'd be interested to know how many of the Republican celebrities he recruited go to regular mass and confession. Of Ingraham, for instance, Wikipedia says,

Ingraham has previously dated broadcaster Keith Olbermann and former New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli. In April 2005, she announced her engagement to Chicago businessman James V. Reyes, and that she had undergone breast cancer surgery. In May 2005, Ingraham told listeners that her engagement to Reyes was canceled, citing issues regarding her diagnosis with breast cancer. She has also dated political commentator Dinesh D'Souza and George T. Conway, attorney and husband of Kellyanne Conway.

She is a convert from the Baptist neo-tradition to the Roman Catholic faith. She has also studied Russian.

As far as I can see, she's Catholic as long as it serves her interests and doesn't get in the way. I can't imagine that McCloskey would have told her it was anything else.

Precisely, What Did Opus Dei Do About Fr McCloskey?

The Opus Dei spokesman who announced the settlement later sat for an interview with the Washington Post, which reported,

Finnerty said among his regrets was that the complaint came to Opus Dei in November 2002 but the community did not remove McCloskey from the Catholic Information Center until December 2003. He said he personally “hated” that decision. “The reality is he was around for a year after we were informed,” Finnerty said. “That’s the reality. It’s not good. But we may as well own it.”

The woman who reached the settlement with Opus Dei in 2005 told The Washington Post she began seeing McCloskey for spiritual direction at a time when her marriage was crumbling and she was experiencing serious depression. The priest groped her several times during tight hugs, she said. She said she expressed shame and guilt about it to him during confession and he absolved her.

It does appear that, although the Opus Dei reaction was delayed, McCloskey was eventually taken out of the public eye. For instance, a gay blogger asked in May of last year, probably sensing that there were unstated reasons, Where is Fr C John McCloskey?

Where is Fr. C. John McCloskey III? For roughly a decade, 1997-2005, the handsome, dashing, charming Opus Dei priest was storming the Beltway in his black soutane.

. . . In the years since he left D.C., Fr. McCloskey, 64, has kept a much lower profile. He’s still writing and doing pastoral ministry, but not on a secular stage. McCloskey lives in Menlo Park, California, home of Facebook, Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, Silver Lake Partners, and many Fintech companies. Perhaps Opus Dei and McCloskey have moved on to the new power elite?

However, the original mystery remains–what happened? Why would Opus Dei transfer Fr. McCloskey out of his Washington, D.C. powerhouse–the Catholic Information Center on K Street–and pack him off to obscurity in Chicago?

Opus Dei's statement about the disposition of McCloskey's case said that he would variously not be permitted to "get faculties" after his removal from Washington, and that he would need to deal with women only in the confessional, although hearing confessions, in the confessional or outside of it, would require that he have faculties. In addition, Opus Dei priests hear confessions only in the confessional in any case.

However, Opus Dei relies on other modes of counsel like "fraternal correction" that take place outside the confessional and, not being the sacrament itself, do not have the seal of confidentiality. And of course, you can't hug anybody through the confessional screen.

McCloskey, as we've seen, spent an unknown time in England after his belated removal from Washington, where he was clearly free to travel on his own and doesn't appear to have mentioned any restrictions to Fr Longenecker when he visited him. Later, he went to Chicago, where accounts differ on what his precise restrictions were. According to the Washington Post,

In 2005, the community reached the nearly $1 million settlement with the woman. (The Washington Post does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent.)

That year, McCloskey went to work in the Archdiocese of Chicago. That’s where the diverging accounts begin.

The woman says Opus Dei leaders told her they were asking the Chicago Archdiocese’s permission for McCloskey to practice there. Opus Dei priests anywhere in the country remain under the auspices of Opus Dei, not of the dioceses they work in, but they do need a letter of permission from the local diocese to fulfill some priestly duties.

The woman says she was told that Cardinal Francis George, then the archbishop of Chicago, was informed about her case and said he would only approve the transfer if he spoke to the woman.

So she spoke to the cardinal. “I was blunt and explicit,” she said on Wednesday. She got what she thought was a clear response. She said George told her there was no way McCloskey would be allowed to minister without restrictions. “I said, ‘I don’t want him to ever do this again.’ He made a commitment to me.”

The Rev. Peter Armenio, assistant regional head of Opus Dei for the Midwest, told The Post on Tuesday that George agreed to restrict McCloskey from direct ministry with women for one year; Opus Dei ensured that he followed the restriction for two years, he said. Finnerty said on Wednesday night that Opus Dei has records of McCloskey’s assignments in Chicago that show they were designed to uphold those restrictions, but he would not immediately provide those records.

In George’s own files, the archdiocese said Wednesday, he made no note of the call with the woman. Nowhere in any of its files could the archdiocese find any mention of any restrictions, of the prior settlement or of any other allegations of sexual misconduct involving McCloskey.

On one hand, it's plain that McCloskey was taken out of the public eye after 2003, to the extent that more than one Catholic writer wondered what had happened. (Now we know.) On the other, it isn't entirely clear how McCloskey functioned within Opus Dei after that. It appears that after his return from England, he lived in Opus Dei residential facilities in Chicago, Menlo Park, CA, and more recently Reston, VA. I believe that there is strict sexual segregation in those facilities under any circumstances, and he doesn't appear to have had the level of freedom he had in Washington to counsel and hug women from the general public outside the confessional.

On the other hand, he has in fact functioned as a priest. This post refers to a 2009 Opus Dei retreat in Valparaiso, IN where McCloskey celebrated mass, heard confessions, and also did counseling outside the confessional. It isn't clear if women were involved in outside-the-confessional sessions. A visitor tells me her daughter was in a similar retreat with McCloskey in Los Angeles in 2013. Whether the Diocese of Gary or the Archdiocese Los Angeles gave McCloskey faculties isn't clear.

In addition, the Washington Post account suggests that any restrictions placed on McCloskey by Opus Dei were for only one, or at most two years. Subsequent to that time, while his access to the general public was more limited, he does appear to have had access to women in vulnerable situations within Opus Dei -- and given the control Opus Dei exerts on its members, potential victims would be unlikely to complain. Thus the woman who made the 2005 settlement public clearly had reason to feel uncomfortable and question whether the assurances she'd been given were sincere.

This in turn leaves out the additional question of whether McCloskey had committed a delict in 2002 by encouraging the woman to commit what she regarded as a sin, but then absolving her of that sin in the confessional. I assume that a canonical trial would be the forum to resolve this, but nothing like it appears to have taken place.

This episode convinces me that the appropriate remedy for clergy abuse is laicization, following appropriate canonical due process, while encouraging offenders to request it voluntarily.

More Trickles Out About Fr C John McCloskey

In light of this new chapter in the Second Crisis scandal, we actually know very little about Fr C John McCloskey. Fr Longenecker's account of his encounter with him probably reveals more than Fr Longenecker intended: the chronology he gives -- he'd been waiting for ordination for eight years -- puts McCloskey in England post-2003, when McCloskey had finally been eased out of his post in Washington under a cloud.

Yet based on Fr Longenecker's version, McCloskey, who should certainly have been feeling troubled himself at the time, made no mention of his own trials. Instead, they went riding a la Kenneth Grahame on a spontaneous tour through Somerset to visit Ronnie Knox's grave, among other things. But during what must have been concurrent discussions with McCloskey's victim, she was being assured he was on a "very tight leash". Sounds more like like a fun extended vacation to me. I certainly sympathize with Fr Longenecker -- it can be a struggle to recognize people you've trusted have manipulated and betrayed you.

What's slowly coming out so far covers three areas: McCloskey's time at Princeton from 1985 to sometime after 1990; the exact nature of Opus Dei's response to the credible complaint from his 2002 victim and the actual restrictions that were placed on him after 2002; and whether he is currently suffering from advanced dementia, as Opus Dei's US vicar has publicly stated. But I suspect much more will come out. Someone who wants to remain anonymous said, "McCloskey must be their only heterosexual groper. You'd think they'd know how to deal with him." Apparently not.

There are enough questions about what happened at Princeton that I'm going to take the rest of this post to discuss them. A local Princeton-area paper reported in 1990,

The Rev. C. John McCloskey III, the Opus Dei priest whose presence at Princeton University has created strife among campus Catholics, has been removed as associate chaplain and will not be replaced by another Opus Dei priest, university officials said yesterday.

The Rev. Vincent Keane, director of the Aquinas Center where the Catholic chaplaincy at Princeton is housed, told McCloskey on Dec. 8 that he would be dismissed, McCloskey said yesterday. McCloskey said he will stay on as associate chaplain until commencement on June 12.

. . . A group of Princeton Catholics, who call themselves “liberal” or “progressive,” say that Opus Dei is moving to create two Catholic chaplaincies and the basis for an authoritarian Catholic community. The Aquinas Institute on Stockton Street has ministered for decades to Princeton’s liberal Catholics.

Central to their call for McCloskey’s removal last year were 12 signed letters from students complaining about McCloskey that were collected and presented to Keane. The letters described upsetting encounters between students and McCloskey. Opus Dei officials have strongly denied the allegations in the letters.

The nature of the encounters with the students isn't spelled out, but the story mentions that what appears to have been a second petition, signed by 12 faculty members as well as a number of students, complaining that McCloskey had impaired "academic freedom", strengthened the first group's hand and seems to have tipped the balance for McCloskey's removal. According to a 2015 article in America, a Jesuit publication, by Fr James Martin, SJ, himself controversial, (the Jesuits are sometimes regarded as in general opposition to Opus Dei):

The two priests mentioned earlier, who studied at Princeton University and worked with campus ministry, described Opus Dei’s involvement there in the 1980’s. According to both men, an Opus Dei priest, the Rev. C. John McCloskey 3d, presented himself to the campus ministry group, which welcomed his offer to assist with chaplaincy duties. Soon after beginning his work, Father McCloskey presented to the other chaplains a list of the number of communions he had distributed and the number of confessions he had heard—as an objective way of measuring whether a priest was doing his job. Said one of the ex-chaplains, “He came to the rest of us and said, ‘I don’t think the chaplaincy program is doing this work. You should be doing what I’m doing’.”

Later, Father McCloskey began interviewing all entering Catholic freshmen, over the objections of some of the staff. It was at this time that the problems began. According to both sources, Father McCloskey asked questions about students’ sexual practices, among other things, and about their parents’ religious activities. In addition: “Some of the students claimed he coerced them into having the sacrament of reconciliation, or confession, as he called it. He would say, ‘You really need to go to confession. The chapel’s right around the corner and I’m available now.’ Now I can’t cite you a line in canon law, but one is never coerced into a sacrament. I found it outrageous, and a lot of other people did, too.”

But a commentator notes elsewhere,

Note two overlapping and disturbing details in Father Martin's report in 2012 and what the woman sexually assaulted by Father McCloskey has reported: the seemingly invasive interest in the details of the sexual lives of those to whom he has ministered; and the use of the sacrament of confession in a coercive way — it seems, in the case of the woman reporting abuse by Father McCloskey in D.C., to control and silence her. There are at least suggestions of this in her reports as captured in the Washington Post article about this story yesterday.

The best we can say is that the details of the "upsetting encounters" with Princeton students have never been made public, but priests, or at least priests-in-formation at Princeton, independently found his activities of concern, and McCloskey was eased out of campus ministry. These stories were also made public well before the Washington Post published its story about the settlement.

What we frequently see in clerical abuse cases is a pattern of behavior that's repeated but consistently minimized, with the perpetrators shunted around but effectively enabled to continue. I see no reason to think we won't continue to see this pattern emerge in McCloskey's case.

Fr C John McCloskey

News of a near-million-dollar settlement paid out in 2005 by Opus Dei based on credible allegations from 2002 against Opus Dei star Fr C John McCloskey came out a few days ago. Two hooks on the story grabbed me: the first was comments by Fr Longenecker, who admired him and thought he was a friend (apparently a great many people did), and the other was that he was a predecessor of Msgr Stetson as director of the "Catholic Information Center" (i.e., bookstore) in Washington, DC.

If, like me, you were slow on the uptake with this story, here are the basics from the Washington Post story linked above:

The global Catholic community Opus Dei in 2005 paid $977,000 to settle a sexual misconduct suit against the Rev. C. John McCloskey, a priest well-known for preparing for conversion big-name conservatives — Newt Gingrich, Larry Kudlow and Sam Brownback, among others.

The woman who filed the complaint is a D.C.-area Catholic who was among the many who received spiritual direction from McCloskey through the Catholic Information Center, a K Street hub of Catholic life in downtown Washington. She told The Washington Post that McCloskey groped her several times while she was going to pastoral counseling with him to discuss marital troubles and serious depression.

The guilt and shame over the interactions sent her into a tailspin and, combined with her existing depression, made it impossible for her to work in her high-level job, she said. She spoke to him about her “misperceived guilt over the interaction” in confession and he absolved her, she said.

Opus Dei is still investigating other allegations. The chronology isn't entirely clear, but since Msgr Stetson became director of the bookstore in 2004, it sounds as though he was sent there to keep the lid on the scandal. (From my own observations on Stetson's personal style here, you can get an idea of how he'd do it.) Opus Dei's reaction is disturbingly unclear in its official statements.

After leaving Washington after the complaints, McCloskey was sent to England, and then Chicago and California for assignments with Opus Dei. The woman in the settlement said she was told by church officials in Chicago when he was sent there that McCloskey would not be allowed to “get faculties” — or permission to fully function as a priest — and would be put on a very tight leash.

She became worried last year when she came into contact with someone else who knew about McCloskey and heard he may have been working as a priest in California.

In the statement Monday, Opus Dei said that after the settlement, McCloskey was told to only give spiritual direction to women in the confessional — meaning separated physically from them. In Opus Dei, a traditional community of Catholics, that is the norm for priests working with those they are counseling. McCloskey had an unusually public, free role at the Information Center.

In interviews in 2014, McCloskey was identified as working in “spiritual direction and pastoral ministry.” In a 2014 piece for the Jesuit magazine America, he said he was a “spiritual consultant.”

As a result, the woman in the settlement said, a lack of clarity about McCloskey’s role all these years haunted her, and she wants to be sure any other women potentially harmed by the priest know they aren’t alone and can get help.

Here's Fr Longenecker's reaction (link above):

McCloskey was a good priest. He befriended me when I lived in England and was very low. I’d been waiting for ordination for eight years at that point and I kept getting beat up by members of the hierarchy. CJ took me out to dinner, listened to my story and prophesied that I would never be ordained in England but would return to my native USA and have a ministry there which would be far greater than if I had ever been ordained in England. We stayed in our home and spent an afternoon touring Somerset. We went to Bath, Downside Abbey and while zooming down one road he saw a signpost to Mells and said, “That’s where Ronnie Knox is buried! Let’s go find his grave.” So we did. He stayed in touch and eventually (I think but am not certain) helped move my paperwork forward in Rome so I could be ordained. If he is guilty of the allegations, we should remember the good things he did, not just the bad.

Here's a random, gushing encomium I found on Google, written after he was shipped out of Washington but well before any public knowledge of the scandal:

A few years ago, McCloskey was assigned by his order, Opus Dei, to Chicago. So he was only back for a visit. He has been missed. Many of us are still wondering what he is doing in Chicago.

. . . I walked into Fr. McCloskey's office and introduced myself. Within minutes were talking like old friends and wondering how we had missed meeting each other growing up in D.C. The priest who baptized me? Fr. C. John had graduated with him at seminary. A famous actor who was making a movie about Jesus? Father had just talked to him. My grandfather was a baseball player? Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn was a friend.

Apparently he was charming and manipulative and, as he apparently did with Fr Longenecker and the writer here, he could convince people he was their BFF shortly after meeting them. If they were troubled spiritually, they understandably reacted with openness and trust.

It does appear that McCloskey followed a common pattern for Opus Dei numeraries: the sketchy biographical info on Wikipedia suggests he "worked on Wall Street at Citibank and Merrill Lynch for a number of years" as a low-profile numerary before being quietly tapped to pursue ordination at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, the Opus Dei seminary. The visitor here who studies Opus Dei tells me that seminarians there have minimal supervision and are frequently ordained on a schedule faster than normal.

It sounds as though the guy was a psychopath, and quite possibly if he'd had normal supervision at a diocesan seminary, he'd have been identified and told to leave. A bit of wisdom I picked up in my secular career is to beware of flashy, attractive people on the fast track.