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 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 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 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’.”But a commentator notes elsewhere,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.”
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.
