Donald Wuerl's Career As Of 2011

I just discovered Ms Randy Engel's 2011 self-published book The Rite of Sodomy, which is widely available on the web and via pdf. So far, I can find little about Bernard Law, but there's a lot about Donald Wuerl, which in light of his resignation yesterday, is of current interest. (While the date of publication is 2011, the section on Wuerl doesn't mention his 2006 move to Washington.)

Wuerl was on a fast track from the start, aided by a mentor, Bishop John Wright, who had previously been bishop of the newly created Diocese of Worcester, MA. This diocese had a remarkable number of priest pedophiles from the start. Engel cites a sketch of Bp Wright by Gary Wills from the New York Review of Books:

Back in his mansion, the bishop took me to a large locked room that contained his favorite treasures—books, manuscripts, relics, memorials, paintings, and statues, all of them celebrating Saint Joan of Arc. . . . I left the mansion certain that I had been in the presence of a large fat baby who would never grow up. Later, as a cardinal appointed to the Curia in Rome, he would prove that he could be more pompous than any Italian prelate. . . (p 706)

But now we get to Wuerl himself:

Father Donald Wuerl was a graduate of St. Mary of the Mount High School in Pittsburgh and studied at the Athenaeum in Ohio, a graduate school of theology operated by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, and at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. where he received his Masters degree in Arts. After making a decision to enter the priesthood, he was accepted at the North American College in Rome.

The Rector of the North American College from 1964 to 1968 was none other than Bishop Francis F. Reh, one of Cardinal Spellman’s long-time protégés. Bishop Reh accepted Wuerl as a candidate for the priesthood and Wuerl was ordained in Rome on December 17, 1966. Father Wuerl’s first assignment after he returned to Pittsburgh was associate pastor at St. Rosalia Parish in Greenfield.

The time and circumstance of Bishop Wright and Father Wuerl’s first meeting is not recorded, but it wasn’t long after he was assigned to St. Rosalia’s, that Wright made Wuerl his private secretary and the young priest moved into Bishop Wright’s residence on Warwick Avenue in Oakland. (pp 706-7)

In 1969, possibly in the wake of a gay priest scandal in Pittsburgh, Wright was "kicked upstairs" to Rome, and he took Wuerl with him.

On April 23, 1969, Pope Paul VI appointed Bishop Wright, Prefect of Clergy in the Roman Curia. Five days later, Wright was made a cardinal. As for the 29-year-old Father Wuerl, he remained by the cardinal’s side until Wright’s death in 1979.

Although Cardinal Wright had a reputation for “conservatism” and “orthodoxy,” especially in pro-life circles in the United States, his actions as Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy under Paul VI continued to reflect his “progressive” mindset.

When the battle broke out at Catholic University of America over Humanae Vitae in late 1968, Cardinal Wright came down in favor of the dissenting priests over Washington’s Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle. Wright sent an auxiliary bishop, Bishop Joseph Bernardin no less, to mediate the dispute, leaving O’Boyle humiliated and high and dry to fend for himself as no member of the American hierarchy, save one, had the courage to come to his aid. (p 710)

Wuerl stayed with Wright until Wright's death in 1979.

After Cardinal Wright’s death, Msgr. Wuerl returned home to Pittsburgh to await his ecclesiastical destiny, which, given the many important connections he had made in Rome as Wright’s protégé, appeared to be very promising.

From 1980 to 1985, Fr. Wuerl served as Vice Rector and Rector of St. Paul Seminary. The seminary had a reputation for rampant homosexuality going back to the days of Bishop Wright.

On January 6, 1986, Pope John Paul II, assisted by Agostino Cardinal Casaroli and Bernardin Cardinal Gantin, ordained Msgr. Wuerl Auxiliary Bishop of Seattle. Wuerl, a “compromise” candidate of AmChurch, was assigned to monitor the “orthodoxy” of the troublesome Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen and to whip the old Modernist scoundrel into shape.

Finally, on March 25, 1988, the pope sent Bishop Wuerl back to his own town as the Ordinary of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, where Wuerl remains ever hopeful [as of that writing] that Rome will reward him someday with a larger and more prominent diocese. (p 712)

Like Bernard Law, it seems to have suited Wuerl to seem "conservative" in his public image, but he was very gay-friendly in practice.

The reader may recall that when Wuerl was appointed an auxiliary of Seattle, one of his first tasks was to clean out Hunthausen’s diocesan homosexual stables. This included severing the close ties between the Archdiocese of Seattle and Dignity. Cardinal Ratzinger had ordered that “the Archdiocese should withdraw all support from any group that does not unequivocally accept the teaching of the Magisterium concerning the intrinsic evil of homosexual activity,” and certainly, Dignity never hid the fact that it was pro-“gay,” nevertheless Hunthausen needed considerable persuasion to make the break with Dignity.

Yet, after Donald Wuerl was posted to the Diocese of Pittsburgh, he permitted Dignity/Pittsburgh Masses to continue for eight more years in not one but two parishes, St. Elizabeth in the Strip District and St. Pamphilus in the Beechview section of Pittsburgh. Dignity/Pittsburgh was one of the last chapters to be evicted from Catholic facilities in the United States. According to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette staff writer Ann Rodgers-Melnick, “Banning Dignity was a sad moment for Wuerl.” (pp 712-13)

Further,

Bishop Wuerl has created his own sex instruction program, A Catholic Vision of Love for pre-school to 8th grade parochial school children and CCD and special education students. The course is mandated by the diocese and opting-out by parents is not permitted. The program is a pedophile’s dream come true—innocence destroyed and sexual curiosity initiated even before latency begins

Under Wuerl, the Pittsburgh Diocese has become a stomping ground for nationally known doctrinal and moral miscreants including Father (now ex-priest) Matthew Fox, Sister Fran Ferder, Father Robert Nugent, Sister Jeannine Gramick, Father Raymond Brown and howling feminists Rosemary Radford Ruether and Monica Hellwig.

The Pittsburgh record is shown in greater detail in the August Pennsylvania grand jury report, but it's clear that the outlines of Wuerl's conduct were apparent while he was still living there. But there's another question that Engel doesn't fully address. Wuerl continued to advance after his first mentor's death. Bernardin appears at one point in his later career, but there must have been other angels who promoted and protected him in Pittsburgh and Washington, and I would assume they did all they could to protect him even after his difficulties this past summer.

But I don't think a J Edgar needs to "investigate" it. I assume these names are an open secret.