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.”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?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.
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.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.. . . 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?
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.)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.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 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.
