Chicago St. Mary of the Lake Mundelein Seminary Still a Pink Palace?
From TomRoeser.com, 7.29.2008.
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Roeser Blog
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7/29/2008
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| Mundelein seminary. Same old sex scandals continue but don’t hold your breath until the supine media cover them. |
Rockford.
The Rockford, Illinois diocese will not send seminarians to St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein for training. Two upperclassmen propositioned a Rockford youth for homosexual favors. So much for the change that has been promised in archdiocesan public relations pronouncements.
Thus the Rockford diocese has decided it is finished with Mundelein. Thus you have the archdiocese of Chicago where layman Chancellor Jimmy Lago (believe it or not that’s his baptismal name, not to be confused with his brother Timmy, his baptismal name as well)…Jimmy the best precinct captain onetime Democratic Cook county chairman now under indictment Ed Vrdolyak ever had… has been put in charge of combating sexual abuse and the same-old, same-old is happening. Of course the supine Chicago “religious” press is asleep at the switch. The “Tribune’s” religion correspondent, one Manya Brachear, was sold a bill of goods by Lago who convinced her to write he is the guardian-at-the-gate implying the Cardinal archbishop is lax. She writes a blog which calls herself the “Seeker.” She is so naively liberal she swallowed the bait, hook and all, which Jimmy dangled before her.
Furthermore, don’t expect the remainder of the Chicago media to inquire. And if it does and goes to the top office in the archdiocese, it will get the regular parsing that goes with every question born of the view that with two doctorates all distinctions can be blurred with requisite sophistry. An authenticist bishop in another diocese told me that the parser should be teaching in a university where administrative expertise is not required. As far as controlling events in this archdiocese, the bishop said, “the parser can’t run a two-car funeral.”
Kicanas.
The man who ran St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein when it was a hot-house of homosexual excess…and who was quoted in the “Sun-Times” as saying he does not regret ordaining Fr. Dan McCormack, who is now serving time for child abuse…is second in command of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is Gerald Kicanas, now bishop of Tucson, having been promoted from Mundelein (as were all others who ran the dissolute institution) to auxiliary bishop of Chicago and then to Tucson. In Tucson, Kicanas led Tucson through the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization to the point where he ponied up $22 million in settlement for victims of priest child abuse.
Last month Kicanas received an award name for…who else?.. the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin whose departure from this world was serenaded by the Gay Men’s Chorus at Mass…for “efforts in handling the sexual abuse both locally and nationally.” The Common Ground initiative formed by Bernardin which selects recipients for the honor described Kicanas as “a champion of dialogue on contentious issues.” Kicanas received the award at Catholic University in Washington, D. C. where Tim Russert, moderator of “Meet the Press” was supposed to be the keynote speaker at the event. Russert was unavoidably detained by death which prompted a national wailing and a funeral Mass celebrated by- (who else?) Theodore Cardinal McCarrick (ret.). Russert in his earlier incarnation as Democratic strategist convinced both Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator from New York and Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, to support pro-abortion initiatives. Because he couldn’t attend the Kicanas tribute, Russert was lionized in death by the group.
Kicanas is slated to become the next president of the U. S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. If there is any justice at all, his automatic election should be greeted with grassroots opposition…not that it will make any difference with an organization that meets in a marble palace and has a huge roundtable with every bishop fortified with microphone based on the UN Security Council. The archbishop of Chicago is president of the USCCB who was elected on the same ticket as the former Mundelein rector Kicanas.
Chicago Weak in Review.
Chicago “Weak in Review” run by Joel Weisman at WTTW is running out of gas. It was originally conceived as a feisty review of city news by the reporters who cover it but for years the fatigued Joel Weisman has forbidden dissent on the show and presides over a panel from the Land of Nod. The reporters are all pro-Daley and do not enunciate any divergent opinions. The payoff last week came when even Weisman, the establishmentarian, tried to evoke some discussion as to whether the Barack Obama tour of the Middle East and Europe was excessive.
Naw, nobody felt that way. Weisman worked but everybody sat there transfixed. Then when the issue came up about Senate President Emil Jones who has refused to call his body into session to grant relief for the poor who are in substance abuse treatment, the Land of Nod moved smoothly. No one had anything critical to say of Jones-least of all the grimacing Weisman who makes a hollow pretense of being objective. When Todd Stroger’s tenure came up everybody nodded and thought he is doing a good job-this despite the fact that he has become a celebrated city, almost national, scandal.
That is the way liberal politics have corrupted so-called panel shows under the malleable Dan Schmidt as vacuous as a door-to-door salesman, who has no core beliefs except to solicit money to keep his station running and pay his exorbitant salary. No conservative is ever invited to appear in any media panel. Conservative positions and views don’t exist in WTTWland. And feminist liberal Carol Marin wouldn’t know a conservative position if she bumped into one, so inured is she in lefty formulations. She is a pathetic one-person monopolist of lefty slanted news: political editor of the “Sun-Times”…political editor of NBC-TV Chicago…and an interviewer at WTTW…paid by two private enterprises and a third partly with federal cash. Doesn’t bother this “ethics” maven.
WTTW’s highly trumpeted pro-gay rights documentary…introduced by Phil Ponce, a hollow man unburdened by belief in anything who has a number of look-alike sons scattered in high media roles throughout the city…turned out to be gay rights advocacy was paid for by a wealthy donor who has been involved in gay rights causes. This paid infomercial comes close to a scandal at WTTW where a group of wealthy liberal donors call the shots on what the station presents. It doesn’t both Schmidt who is a loose rudder twisting to and fro and who has a public relations man’s knack of parsing-but it should prompt some interest in paid-for-advocacy if there was such a thing as an aggressive news media in Chicago…which there isn’t.
Posted By: Tom Roeser
at 7/29/2008 7:34:00 AM
6 Responses to “Chicago St. Mary of the Lake Mundelein Seminary Still a Pink Palace?”
August 1, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Mr. Roeser’s gratuitous “She is so naively liberal she swallowed the bait” is totally unwarranted. As one of the thousands of liberal Catholic priests who left the priesthood when it became obvious after Pope John XXIII’s death that the conservatives were back in charge and the liberal reforms of Vatican II were being rolled back, most of the shit that has hit the fan since then has to be blamed on the conservative clergy and hierarchy “left behind”.
What liberals stand for isn’t priests abusing children, whether heterosexually or homosexually. Liberal Catholics have been saying what the reforming founder of the Trappists tried to tell the papacy in the year 1135 `Take from (the priests of ) the Church an honourable marriage and an immaculate marriage bed, and do you not fill it with concubinage, incest, homosexuality and every kind of uncleanness?’ ” (See much more at my http://JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/Churchvsex.html web page.)
It’s CONSERVATIVES who insist on maintaining an unnatural system of mandatory celibacy which has proven itself a dangerous mirage thousands and thousands of times, over and over again, not just in one or two countries, but all over the world.
August 2, 2008 at 1:11 am
Who IS this guy Roeser? He appears to be equating homosexuality with pedophelia, a claim that has long since been disproven. It is whispered (and more than whispered) that at least one of our recent Popes was homosexual, and that it might have interfered with an extremely important decision that has affected the American Church for decades (why? because other top Curial officials threatened to blackmail him—so much for the Doctrine of Infallibility, when speaking ex cathedra on matters of faith and morals!) The “medical” reasons for sexual identity and sexual preference issues are in the brain—when are we going to grow up as a Society?
Does that mean we may have to screen out certain candidates for certain professions (including the clergy?) Certainly! But does that mean that talented homosexuals (who should not be trolling for sexual encounters on the street anymore than heterosexual seminarians should be trolling for female prostitutes—-would hearing of THAT shock our deliciously name-calling Mr. Roeser as much?) Should all gay people be barred from the Catholic clergy? Does Benedict TRULY think that would solve the sexual abuse crisis? Or is it OK for little GIRLS to be sexually abused as long as little BOYS are not? Let’s get REAL, people!
August 2, 2008 at 6:52 am
“Manya Brachear, She writes a blog which calls herself the “Seeker.” ?
maybe she is watching too many Harrt Potter movies?
http://www.harrypotterforseekers.com
deanna
August 2, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Roeser seems to blaming the Chicago’s seminary for the behavior of seminarians who were selected by the conservative bishop of the Rockford diocese in consultation with the vocation director for the Rockford diocese. That diocese has an unusually high number of seminarians. Perhaps they aren’t being stringent enough in their selection process. Roeser also doesn’t report where the behavior took place. He reports that it was a Rockford youth who was propositioned. Were the seminarians in their home diocese under the supervision of priests in their diocese when this occurred?
I don’t blame the Rockford officials though. They aren’t mind readers. People live secretive lives. Especially now that the seminaries are not to admit men who admit to being homosexuals, applicants are especially careful to conceal homosexuality. And as for whether these men might be pedophiles, they certainly wouldn’t reveal that to the the bishop of Rockford or to the vocation director for the Rockford diocese.
And to blame Mundelein officials is ridiculous. They don’t turn people heterosexual or homosexual and they certainly don’t turn people into pedophiles. Obviously, Roeser has his own axes to grind with the Archdiocese of Chicago. Who knows, maybe there aren’t enough Masses in dead languages to suit his anachronistic tastes. You know, people who speak Latin don’t molest kids.
August 3, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Homosexuality has become an unofficial new civil rights movement. Gay liberation is celebrated by many interested in the latest in popular religious politics.
The Roman Catholic priesthood publicly professes total sexual continence as being constituent to the institutional church. Both hetero and homo sexual activity is included in this prohibition and clearly defined in Canon Law.
According to many sources, including the acclaimed Donald Cozzens or the detail rich work of Richard Sipe, our RC clergy is predominantly gay and many priests and bishops are sexually active. The secrecy they maintain to hide this reality provides a fertile seedbed for the litany of sexual abuse incidents and financial improprieties we continue to witness in our church.
Tom Roesser is definitely on to something here, but it is clear from the previous posts that it is dangerous to be critical of organized gay men in the priesthood. Our gay clergymen have trained many Catholics to attack anyone who has the courage to publicly challenge their double lives. In this atmosphere, they will continue to do whatever they want knowing that they will be well protected by those enlightened Catholics who want freedom of expression for all.
Gay men have embedded themselves in the RC tradition and they promote the noble aspects of community and acceptance – which includes gay liberation in our society. Their secret lives, which go against their public promises of sexual continence as priests and bishops, are a double standard that most Catholics do not even want to consider, much less challenge in a public forum.
When all Catholics can become aware of their codependence to their gay politics infused institutional church, they might muster the courage to examine the duplicitous reality that Roesser addresses, a duplicity that plays a definite role in in our church’s sexual and financial problems.
Until then, Catholics on a bipartisan level will continue to kill any messenger like Roesser bringing up this issue so they don’t have to really deal with brutal details of their church’s troubled situation.
August 5, 2008 at 1:25 pm
[...] The Voice from the Desert carried that Roeser blog entry recently. [...]