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.