Michael
S. Rose |
Cruxnews.com
| 16 July, 2004
No, there was no torture or
interrogation involved. No women either. They were all allegedly willing
participants—and, to a man, they were men. One among their ranks also
took photos that were published on Monday by the Austrian news magazine
Profil.
Fr. Wolfgang Rothe, vice rector of
the Sankt Poelten seminary,
in two compromising poses with unidentified
student (Profil)
The photos showed seminarians and
priests from Austria’s Sankt Poelten seminary fondling and kissing one
another and engaging in sex games. Profil also reported that some
40,000 pornographic images and films were downloaded to the seminary’s
computers, including photographs depicting acts of pedophilia and
bestiality.
Consequently,
German-language media outlets have been saturated this week with reports
of the Austrian seminary scandal chock o’block full of lurid details in
what has become the Catholic Church’s Abu Ghraib. Headlines such as
"Seminary orgy rocks Church in Austria" (Irish Examiner), "Church probes
perverse pictures" (Toronto Star), and "Porn case could torpedo bishop"
(The Guardian), made news from Britain to Australia to America.
The scandal immediately prompted
the resignation of two seminary officials, an internal investigation by
the Austrian bishops conference, and calls for a criminal investigation
since the scandal involves a large cache of child pornography—illegal in
Austria as in most other countries.
Church officials also told
Austrian Radio that they will ask the Vatican to remove Kurt Krenn as
bishop of the Sankt Poelten diocese. Martin Walchhofer, who supervises
the nation’s other Catholic seminaries, asserted that Krenn was
ultimately responsible for the scandal and "must answer before the
church and before God for all of this." (Krenn pulled Sankt Poelten's
seminary from the Austrian system, claiming that the other Austrian
seminaries were "too liberal.")
Helmut Schueller, the Archdiocese
of Vienna’s ombudsman for victims of sexual abuse, said that only if
Bishop Krenn steps down as leader of the Sankt Poelten diocese "will an
extensive investigation be possible."
Asked whether he intended to
resign over this scandal, Krenn said bluntly: "No."
The 68-year-old bishop dismissed
the Profil accusations as "groundless." He refereed to the
photographic evidence in hand as "harmless pranks" that "have nothing to
do with homosexuality."
In a nationally televised
interview, Krenn said the seminary furor was overblown, calling the
Profil report an "exaggeration." Referring to a photo of two
seminarians French-kissing one another, the indignant bishop defended
the young men by saying the photos were taken at the end of a Christmas
party, and the seminarians and their instructors were merely partaking
in traditional "Christmas kisses."
The bishop did admit, however, in
a public statement that he "may have made some wrong personnel
decisions" at the seminary.
Meanwhile, seminary rector Ulrich
Kuechl and vice-rector Wolfgang Rothe resigned their positions at the
school. According to Profil, Kuechl and Rothe, both appointed by
Krenn, had homosexual relations with students, using pedophile photos
for stimulation. Both men were pictured in compromising positions with
their seminarian students, prompting some to wonder if the priests had
abused their positions to pressure seminarians to partake in the ungodly
activities that have allegedly been a staple of life at Sankt Poelten
for at least several years now.
Although now resigned, neither
Kuechl nor Rothe admit to any guilt on their part. Kuechl characterized
the Profil report as "pure lies" and threatened to sue for libel.
When presented the photographic evidence, he, like his boss Krenn, said
the photos were "open to interpretation." He compared the actions in the
photos to the way soccer players handle one another after a particularly
good play.
Explaining his resignation, Kuechl
added: "The slander spread in the media by a former seminary member
against myself has made such a negative impression on public opinion
that my further conduct of office would probably be a great burden for
the seminary and diocese."
The scandal doesn’t stop there. In
order to understand that the homosexual transgressions were not mere
anomalies, Profil quotes one unnamed seminarian who claims that
two fellow students considered themselves a ‘same-sex couple’ and
received the ‘sacrament" of marriage in a not-so-secret ceremony.
To that accusation, Kuechl also
says balderdash.
Even Austrians who see no real
problem with grown men kissing and fondling each other in the halls of a
Catholic seminary (or anywhere else) seem scandalized by the revelation
of child pornography.
Socialist party spokesman Hannes
Jarolim, for example, urged Austria’s Interior Ministry to launch a
criminal investigation into the charges.
Reports in the U.S. media thus far
have tended to downplay the gay sex parties and honed in on the charges
of child pornography.
Photos are the key
Homosexual sex scandals are, regrettably, nothing new to Catholic
seminaries. Denial, avoidance and cover-up are also old hat in these
same circles. If it wasn’t for an unnamed 33-year-old Polish-born priest
who took photos of the misdeeds with his compact digital camera, there
would have been no resignations, no calls for an investigation, no
emergency meetings. There would only have been the characteristic
obfuscation and denials on the part of Church leaders. Conservative
Catholics would have defended the priests and bishop, calling the
accusations false and vilifying the whistleblowers as psychologically
unfit. At the same time, liberal Catholics would have dismissed the
accusations of homosexual revelry as the product of an overactive
conservative imagination. Or they may have simply ignored the whole
issue.
That’s certainly the pattern
Church watchers have observed over the past decade on these issues. When
my seminary exposé book Goodbye, Good Men came out in 2002,
detailing similar incidents (for men kissing in seminary hallways, for
example, see page 147), the claims made by dozens of former seminarians
who had experienced the pressures of the so-called "gay subculture" at
seminary were dismissed in many cases as nothing less than pure fantasy.
Despite the fact that certain
seminaries became widely known by nicknames such as The Pink Palace,
Notre Flame, and the Faggot Factory, seminary rectors and bishops could
think of nothing more original than to deny that anything was wrong,
calling the charges scurrilous and groundless. Nothing less than
compromising photos published in Newsweek would have made them
eat their words.
The Daughters of Trent
The Austrian scandal doesn’t come as a shock to those who have been
hearing the outrageous details of goings-on inside many Catholic
seminaries. What does come as a surprise to many is that such
bacchanalia fests would take place at seminaries known to liberals as
"arch-conservative" (a completely meaningless label) and directed by
priests and a bishop regarded as theologically orthodox.
Perhaps this speaks to a different
state of affairs in Austria than in the United States. But then again,
maybe not. The so-called Daughters of Trent, tradition-minded gay
priests and seminarians, have their own foothold in the American Church.
And so much more scandalous are they who practice the opposite of what
they openly preach.
Tridentine groups, for example,
have had their share of lurid homosexual scandals in recent years. Rev.
Carlos Urritigoity, the founder and Superior General of the
Scranton-based Society of St. John was suspended for sexual molestation
of male students, but only after years of denials and obfuscation by the
priest, his society, and Scranton’s Bishop James Timlin, known as one of
the more conservative American prelates. To be sure, candid photos would
have spared a lot of needless scandal in this case.
The Institute of Christ the King,
a venerable international order of traditional Catholic priests loyal to
Rome, suffered the scandal of its North American superior, Fr. Timothy
Svea, being sentenced to 18-months in jail for tying a 16-year-old boy
to his bedpost in the interest of sex games.
"It’s a wonderful thing to have
priests who will say the traditional Mass," wrote Roger McCaffery,
former editor of The Latin Mass in a 2002 editorial, "but let’s
stop the mindless cheerleading and face reality. The law of averages
suggests that there are more scandals to come on the Catholic right."
In non-traditionalist but
conservative circles, Fr. Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Rome-based
Legionaries of Christ, has been accused by at least eight former
seminarians of gross sexual abuse. Despite mounds of credible evidence
stopping short of photographs, Maciel and his order have steadfastly
maintained the now-octogenarian priest’s innocence and attacked his
accusers as anti-Catholic agitators, despite the fact that one of them
is still a priest and not one has benefited either personally or
financially by making the accusations. This whole sorry epic is
recounted in Jason Berry’s Vows of Silence, although the book
risks being wholly dismissed as empty polemic due to the author’s
thinly-veiled liberal agenda.
The Austrian scandal is just
another chip away at the false sense of security many conservative and
traditional Catholics once had in thinking they’d be safe in trusting
the clerics they admire for their ostensible orthodoxy and commitment to
the Catholic faith.
Bishop Kurt Krenn is at the
epicenter of the Sankt Poelten scandal
The ongoing scandal of Kurt
Krenn
It’s not clear how many Austrian Catholics, conservative or otherwise ,
have ever admired Sankt Poelten’s Bishop Kurt Krenn.
His defiance in such delicate
matters is nothing new. Known as a conservative if reactionary prelate
in a country of liberal bishops (most more liberal than their American
counterparts), Krenn made headline news in Austria in 1998 when he
staunchly defended Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, also a conservative,
against pedophilia charges. The cardinal was later forced by the Vatican
to resign his post as the Archbishop of Vienna after it became clear he
had been molesting students at an all-make boarding school for years.
The Groer affair came to a head
during Pope John Paul II’s 1998 trip to Austria. The Pope was greeted in
Sankt Poelten by 1,000 black balloons in the hands of Catholics
protesting Bishop Kurt Krenn. They also distributed leaflets urging the
Pope to sack the bishop. Krenn’s defiant support of a guilty pedophile
cardinal was, for them, the last straw.
Needless to say, these Catholics
now have more ammunition to use against the unpopular Krenn. They also
have a lot more allies in the campaign to oust the defiant bishop.
An open rift between Krenn and
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn has been ongoing for years, and judging
from statements coming out of various Church officials in Austria, Krenn
is not going to enjoy much support from his fellow churchmen. Homosexual
orgies and child pornography at Krenn’s seminary is over the top—even
for them.
There is, of course, a silver
lining to this scandal, as with most that play out in this way:
reasonable people can no longer deny the sickness. It’s exposed now and
needs more exposure, until the situation heals properly. That means a
thorough cleaning of the Augean stables.
Michael S. Rose is the author a
several books including the New York Times bestseller
Goodbye, Good Men.
He is Executive Editor of Cruxnews.com.
