Fr. Kalchik in hiding.
To avoid being sent for an evaluation. All my readers know that, but now other priests are coming forward, talking about St. Luke's Institute - where they send priests for evaluation and therapy and to get better. It sounds creepy. They seem to want chaste priests to become sexually mature, and Catholic moral teaching has no place in achieving this? It is creepy.
This is not accompanying priests. This is not pastoral. This is not mercy. This too is abuse.
How do they get away with that? Consider how many Catholic priests rant against parents or individuals seeking therapy for unwanted homosexual attraction? Yet they will send one of their own into an institution just because they are a bit too traditional.
None of my business I guess.
(Fr. Z has been posting on this, as well as Church Militant. You can go there for details if you want. I apologize, I'm just sharing my reflections. And ... I'm depressed and sad.)
Song for this post here.
A good number of our priests have psychological problems. Much of it is the result of being shut away from society in a seminary during their most formative years. Richard Siipes, who died just a few weeks ago, wrote often on this. He blamed this for much of the sexual abuse in the Church. Zuhlsdorf and Voris don’t tell you that.
ReplyDeleteHere is an interesting excerpt from a blog post from 2012 from an Irish writer by the name of Paul Malpas. I think he makes a lot of sense:
“There is also another engine driving the Church to act in very similar ways around the world when defending allegations of abuse. The clerics of the Church or at least 95% of them were brought up in exactly the same way. From the Pope down to the newly ordained priest, they were all captured and captured is not to strong a word for their preparation, they were all captured at 11 or 12 years of age and put throught he same process and then spewed out into the real world at 24 or so years of age, emotional wrecks. Their emotional development, that thing most of us learn as we drift through our teenage years and on into our early twenties, which helps us understand what is acceptable behaviour, is stopped at 12 years old. At 24 they have not a clue how to behave as a formed human being. They are totally emotionally immature and that immaturity stays with them all their lives. They cannot see the harm that is inflicted on young abuse victims, they are viewing the problem from a 12 year old conscience. In their book Sex,Priests and Secret Codes, Thomas Doyle, Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall spell out this massive problem. Tom Doyle is a Dominican priest and Richard Sipe and Patrick Wall were Benedictine monks and between them they know more about this subject than the rest of the world put together. Their book is a must for anybody interested in this subject.“
https://paulmalpas.com/clerical-emotional-immaturity/
Voris himself was kicked out of seminary because of his immaturity. Ahd Zuhsldorf is the walking definition of clericalism.
I am afraid a lot of our priests need good psychiatric help. And I think we need to completely reform the way in which our priests our formed and trained. Locking them up in a seminary is just not the way to go.
Thanks Mary - I knew you'd have something positive to add - keep me in your prayers. God bless!
DeleteFormation for a ministry usually takes place in the mist of said ministry. Seminaries are monastically organized to "form" the candidate in a certain way. ELry in my training in psychiatric social work a term that seems appropriate was commonly used. It was psychosexual development. Much pathology was directly correlated to a persons arrested development in pre-teen/teen years. The Church had/has some understanding of this phenomenon. It will take a lot more scandal and parishioners fleeing to change this thousand year old organizational mind set. I do not expect to see it in my lifetime.
ReplyDeleteSemanaries have been in use for “only” 500 years. They were started by the Council of Trent in answer to the Reformation. Trent felt the best way to train priests was by taking them as young boys starting from the age of 12 and separating from the “evils” of the world. They were kept almost completely cut off from everyone, including their families. Vatican II made some changes in opening up the seminaries. And it is interesting to note that the abuse peaked in the 80’s and has gone down since then, seeming to correlate with the changes made in the seminaries,
DeleteBut it is still a very closed environment. My contention is that Jesus Christ trained his disciples by allowing them to live in the midst of the world as He prayed to the Father not to take them out of the world but to keep them from the evil. My opinion, for the little that it is worth, is that seminarians, like those training to be deacons, should stay in the world during their formation. I think it is much healthier.
Even Zuhlsdorf had to admit that places like St. Luke's Institute are necessary and do good work.
ReplyDelete"The other day I posted about how bishops have used “psychological evaluation” as a weapon against conservative and traditional priests. At the time I acknowledged that some priests really do need help. Along with the horror stories I have received about “treatment”, I have received more positive stories from priests as well.
Here is one of them.
In fairness we have to hear of these as well."
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2018/09/a-story-about-st-lukes-i-have-seen-wonderful-moments-of-grace-there-priests-and-religious-who-limped-in-who-left-healed/
I think Fr. Z must have gotten into trouble for his first story and had no choice but to correct it.
St. Luke's Institute has been treating priests for decades. Here is a story from the New York Times from 1992.
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/12/us/giving-healing-and-hope-to-priests-who-molested.html?login=email&auth=login-email
"Dr. Frank L. Valcour, the medical director at St. Luke, said that from 1985 to last April, the Institute had treated 137 priests for sexual disorders. Ninety percent had continued in the follow-up program, including 60 who remained in some form of religious ministry. Handful of Treatment Centers
And none, Dr. Valcour said, had been accused of new misconduct."
We need these treatment centers for our priests. Those who stand in judgment and condemnation are only making the problem worse. It makes me wonder if people like Voris really want to help priests or just destroy them. Actually, I don't wonder about that at all.
Thanks for that update. The political climate in the country right now is so hostile and divisive, it parallels and contaminates every discussion in the American Church right now. It's really difficult to navigate and discern the truth amid so many erroneous opinions and stories. Thanks for this.
Delete"contaminates every discussion in the American Church"
DeleteInteresting commentary on the subject with varied opinions but only CinB provides some facts regarding the facility of St. Luke's Institute. I am giving the facility the benefit of doubt and no credibility to hearsay.
Don't be depressed and sad, my friend. Pray and be hopeful. God is allowing this evil to come to light for His own reasons. Nothing He touches fails to have something good come of it. We are in His hands. As a good priest and confessor once told me, sometimes we just have to step back and let God do what He must do. And be available for Him to use us as He will. God bless us all - Susan, OFS
ReplyDeleteI am really concerned for this priest. He is being used by both sides...the Voris, Traddie Camp as a saintly hero, and example of "manhood" (that camp is getting very whipped up about a definition of "manhood." which I don't know if their idols necessarily would live up to...and then you have Aldercreature Mell (she the sister in law of disgraced and imprisoned ex Governor..)using him to score political points in the gayborhood.
ReplyDeleteI think they pulled him for various reasons, yes to get him out of the spotlight but for his own safety and the safety of Church property. I also think that this priest may actually need some help. That interview with Voris (so smug and annoying as usual..) you could see in his eyes the the guy was hurting and a bit...off. He was abused as a kid/young man (and back in the day people wanted to keep it quiet so he may have just bucked it up and not sought out help..) and then he goes to a parish where apparently the priest is the Mayor of Sodom...(his story seems a bit out there but who knows...) and then finally the lid was ripped off the whole sex abuse problem in the church. I think the guy did "break" a bit and he might need some help and being out of the media might be a good idea for him..not to keep him quiet but to let him heel a bit. I have seen those eyes of his before from people who really were on the edge or breaking so we can only hope he gets some help.
And then Voris comes cameras in hand, messy hair and weird 70's big ass change around his neck..and asks some very "leading" questions to use this guy as a prop in his own agenda. How can he sit across from that guy, with that look in his eyes not just say "We really don't need to do this now, you need to take some time to think things out and the give us a call." Its like Mikey has no compassion only a narcissistic need to validate his own feelings about the Church and gays and sexuality and...well, Mikey needs a room at that place himself. ( a funny thought to think of Voris being carried away in a straight jacket.)
I just watched it - the interview. I think Fr. K responded fine and I think he came off stable. I see where people might perceive him to have some inclinations - but otherwise he seems fine. Voris is looking kind of haggard. The publicity doesn't help Fr. K's standing, which is too bad. If the crazy vestments were done away with quietly in the past, I think the flag should have been disposed of quietly as well. I hope the priest will be okay.
DeletePriests who go to St. Luke's end up coming back more wounded and confused then when they went there either because of a legitimate problem or because they were being punished by their Bp for speaking up too much or being too traditional etc. I know this well as I have seen this happen to many priests over the years. At St. Luke's they don't even address the priest as "Father" there, but call them by their first name and don't give them even a regular spiritual director or require them to say Mass every day - it is a sinister place that breaks down their priestly identity and reminds one of the old Soviet KGB techniques of breaking their "enemies" down, so they become docile to the evil they see. Lay people have no idea how deep this corruption is in the Church on the human side of things. Bp's get their "problem" priests to go there by saying either you go to St. Luke's or I will not give you an assignment. There is true arrogant clericalism and abuse of power- I wonder if Pope F knows about this in the US Church, and is what real clericalism looks like, or maybe he ignores it because the Bishops doing it like Cupich are his buddies and defenders in the media. Lord have mercy on the Church and Our Lady watch out for the priests being unjustly persecuted from within.
ReplyDeleteWhat is your expertise in this matter? Do you have personal experience at St. Luke's? If you feel it is wrong to use these facilities to treat priests with deep psychological problems such as abuse or alcoholism, then how should these priests be treated?
DeleteI know by knowing priests who have had to go there to St. Luke's and how they come back, more messed up then when they went there. You deal with priests who genuinely need help by sending them to a facility that actually is respectful of them as priests and willing to help get to the root of their issues, instead of beating them down more and treating them with disrespect. And not to be a tyrant as a Bishop by sending them there not because they have real problems but because they don't agree with the Bp on something or to show them who is "boss". There are such places a very good one in Alma, Michigan www.sacredheartmercy.org which is like the complete opposite of St. Luke's. Just google "problems at St. Luke's institute" there's plenty of info on that by many different knowledgeable people.
DeleteThanks Fr. R - I appreciate your responses here. I too know of priests sent away for evaluation and treatment who have tended to be more traditional and considered theologically-morally rigid - but otherwise completely normal men, no mental illness, and so on.
DeleteYeah but the thousands of stories like his and other Altar Boys and non altar boys from gay priests and the money paid in millions to the victims.
DeleteYou would think the stories would be priests getting with females would be the norm.
God said if there was such thing as 10 good gays he would not destroy them now you know why he did
ReplyDeleteSF
https://www.sfgate.com/mommyfiles/article/Folsom-Street-Fair-San-Francisco-parents-kids-13245474.php
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https://www.romereports.com/en/2018/09/28/pope-defrocks-chilean-fernando-karadima/