Last year Fr. Altier spoke about the origins of the 'crisis'.
I took some time to digest it, and despite his inclusion of the Bella Dodd communist plants conspiracy theory - which seems to have some foundation in truth - especially in Europe - I believe Fr. Altier's version of things. Especially since he had to face a great deal of difficulties in his seminary experience. He knows what he is talking about.
We need a priest like him to affirm Catholic teaching on sexuality and marriage, and especially to recognize what homosexual abuse is and how it works. Hence the title for this post. One can't wave this off. Predatory homosexuality is an inconvenient truth. Especially in an all boys to men situation as in seminaries, high schools, Boy Scouts, sports, locker rooms, and so on. Such environments can be opportune for predatory behavior - as everyone knows. A friend on Facebook posted a link to Fr. Altier's homilyalong with his personal experience of seminary life in the late '90's. His comments prompted me to post Altier's homily in order to save it in my archives.
Where is the doctrinal integrity? Where is the moral teaching? Someone that is not living it is not going to teach it.
Now if we just use the McCarrick situation, since that’s been in the news, everyone is disgusted with what this man did to boys and to young men, and rightly so. But anybody, by the way, who thinks that all of this is just great – they’re such nice people and they’re no different – look at what McCarrick did: that is what predatory homosexuality looks like.
These are not nice people who are just like everybody else. But as disgusting as all that is, think about the fact that this man was in the pulpit for 50 years, he sat in the confessional, he was in the bishop’s office making decisions about priests’ lives, about diocesan finances, about the direction of the diocese and so on. He served on Vatican commissions, he was a consultant to the Vatican, he made lots of bishops. What kind of advice do you think somebody struggling with some sexual problem in the confessional would have gotten from somebody like this?
What kind of men do you think might have been elevated to be bishops by somebody like this? - Fr. Altier
