This post has been coming for quite a while. I have mulled over it, slowly editing, transcribing, and cleaning up what I have found for publication. The events blogged about earlier this week (the sexual assault lawsuit against Thomas Rosica) have caused me to consider it again. Therefore, I have made the decision to publish what follows.
The purpose of this publication is to document an occurrence forty years ago and provide a historical record of certain activities at St. Augustine's Seminary in the Archdiocese of Toronto and the corruption of the times, the power and influence from the 1980's which are still being felt today. One of the priests featured below is retired, yet, as recently as a few months ago, remained on the Archdiocesan Priests Council. This is not an accusation of anything untoward on the part of the new Archbishop, now Cardinal Francis Leo, Indeed, this history may likely be news even to him and if this provides any service to him, to know the history and the rot and expose those who have worked against the faith, then that alone is worth its publication. The Catholic faithful of the Archdiocese of Toronto have a right to be aware of things that happened forty years ago that have long been forgotten or covered up and still affect the Church today. Many think that we have had no crisis of sexual perversion or abuse. This is not true. What we have is enough money to buy off the victims and force them into signing non-disclosure agreements.
Let me raise some points without names of scandals that happened here.
- A certain highly placed cleric, a Monsignor, in the chancery, fathered at least two children whilst in his high clerical office of Chancellor of Spiritual Affairs and Vicar General. What became of the mother?
- A priest professor at St. Augustine's Seminary raped and sodomized a young seminarian so badly that he was taken away by ambulance to repair the anal rupture. Years before, the Cardinal at the time, Aloysius Ambrozic, was told to get rid of him, to which he responded. "I have nobody else to teach liturgy." That injured seminarian was later ordained in the United States where he remains in a religious order. He was ordained by a Toronto Auxiliary Bishop in Washington. Odd, no? Police were not called. Charges were not laid. The crime was never reported. It was covered up. The perpetrator is now dead and judged.
- That same priest professor in a former post as a religious order prior was a pastor in a Mississauga (west of Toronto) parish and could very well be responsible for at least two other priests he may have "groomed." One of these is an openly homosexual man who left the priesthood, played the piano as a lounge singer, married a woman, divorced her and now lives in a same-sex relationship with another man. The other, whose theology and priestly formation skills were warped by the 1960's and the radical and false "spirit of Vatican II", was, in 1976, Toronto's own James Martin of his day. He rose to rank as Rector of St. Augustine's and later Judicial Vicar. You will read about him below. Both of these men were formed as youth or young priests under that same Friar in Mississauga.
- A certain "hunk" of a Monsignor with the same Irish surname as a then Toronto Police Chief was frequently brought home to the Rosedale mansion of Cardinal Carter, "daddy," drunk and in drag from the gay district on Church Street.
- Another priest professor at the seminary was known to fondle young men and worse and was found coming out of the St. Charles Tavern on Toronto's Yonge Street and bragging about it in secular media.
- Several deaths of priests and professors from AIDS.
In the photo of a book page above, the late Anne Roche Muggeridge refers to a document called, "A Dialogue of Trust." It was written by the then Rector referred to above, who was fired for it, sent away to the Catholic University of America in Washington to study and then returned to the Archdiocese of Toronto and served at a senior level in the chancery structure as the Judicial Vicar. All true. He kept the keys to the vault on matters such as lawsuits, assaults and abuse. As referred to earlier, as of a few months ago, he still remained on the priests' council. As a point of personal reference, I actually attended his first Mass at St. Domenic's in Mississauga. My father was the family barber.
These crimes and abuses happened in the age before the internet and search engines. The money of the Archdiocese silenced who it had to and forced non-disclosure agreements upon them. Stories abound about car accidents and bicycle accident deaths, one in particular of a prominent priest, but none can be proven. All of the information above has been given to me by priests of the Archdiocese of Toronto. They know. Some know more than others. All has been covered up and all the names are known. As for the letter referred to by Anne Roche Muggeridge, nobody had a copy of "A Dialogue of Trust." It disappeared into history, it was never written, it didn't exist, nobody had it, and it was not published and could not be found. Until now.
What follows was transcribed from a microfiche copy by the writer. Bear in mind, that it was written for an audience sympathetic to the cause.
TORONTO'S ARCHBISHOP TRIES TO HIDE HIS GAY PURGE, BUT THE STORY GETS OUT
Cardinal slams the closet door
Tensions
over the apparent presence of gay students in a seminary in Metropolitan
Toronto have escalated, with the help of Gerald Emmett Cardinal Carter, into an
anti-homosexual witch-hunt which has led to the dismissal of three faculty
members and the expulsion of two students.
Some
details of the purge at St Augustine's Seminary in Scarborough, the preeminent
school for the training of Roman Catholic priests in English-speaking Canada,
were made public in two reports published by The Globe and Mail on September 7 and
8. The stories said that the Rev Brian Clough, St Augustine's rector, and the
Rev Thomas Dailey, dean of studies, had been dismissed the first week of June
and that the Rev John Tulk, a professor of church history, had been fired early
in September.
Globe
reporters Stanley Oziewicz and Peter Moon uncovered the following facts:
•
Carter, the archbishop of Toronto, ordered the dismissals after an
investigation of the seminary conducted at his request by the Most Rev Marcel
Gervais, auxiliary bishop of London, Ontario;
•
Carter asked Gervais to investigate after coming into possession of a document
about "tensions" between gay and straight seminarians that was
distributed to St Augustine's sisters, students and faculty
by Clough;
•
The tensions had arisen from allegations of homosexual behaviour at a party held
in Tulk's rooms at the seminary.
Beyond
these few facts, little has been revealed about the origins of the dispute.
Although he had reported the June dismissals when they occurred, Oziewicz first
learned some of the details several weeks
later from an anonymous letter. In their September stories, Oziewicz and Moon
wrote: "Sources, including members of the faculty and student body at the
seminary, members of religious orders and
laymen, agreed to talk for this article provided they were not identified. Many
feared for their future careers if their names were used...." TBP's
own investigation has encountered similar fears. Most of those interviewed said
they feared retaliation by Cardinal Carter. A priest told TBP: "The
diocese is actively trying to find out who gave
that information to The Globe and Mail." A member of a religious order
commented: "He (Carter) doesn't show any sensitivity toward people, so
they're afraid to speak out." When told TOP had been
able to learn much of the story and would publish it, the member added,
"It will do a lot of good because it shows how they really operate."
In
addition to those quoted, TBP's account of the tensions leading to the
dismissals and expulsions has been gathered from a well-placed source who
wishes to remain anonymous, and from documents which
have come into our possession. Brian Clough could not be reached for comment. A
copy of this article was sent to Margaret Long, Assistant to the Director of
Communications of the Archdiocese of Toronto, for comment, but she did not
return any of TBP's calls.
Cardinal Carter: a secret operation
against creeping Protestantism and homosexuality
The
presence of suspected gay students in the seminary apparently first became an issue
during the 1982/83 seminary year when some first-year students complained about
the campy behaviour of some
other students. The issue was taken up by an informal group of about a dozen
conservative seminarians who were united by their dissatisfaction with the
faculty's generally liberal interpretation of
Catholic theology. They came to be known as "the machos." Defenders
of those accused were dubbed "the effeminates," the group to which
the two students who were expelled belonged. Most students belonged to neither.
(According to Oziewicz and Moon, Gervais found that between six and 12 of the
approximately 50 students were "homosexually oriented." Our source
suggests that even Gervais's upper figure may be much too low.)
Gossip
and paranoia flourished. Dennis Hayes, a seminarian who says he belonged to
neither group, explained: "When you group a number of people you have a
fishbowl type of effect; when people start talking, these things spread.. an
innocent comment can turn into a vicious attack."
In
March 1983 several students were criticized in their written year-end
evaluation by faculty for their "feminine mannerisms."
A
month later, the authors of an annual letter from students to faculty
complained that the faculty was tolerating a "vigilante group" that
was harassing suspected gay students. The letter also said that criticism of
some students for their mannerisms had exacerbated the situation.
By
September it appeared that the letter had had some effect: at the week-long
retreat which starts the school year, most of the faculty who spoke of the
matter called for tolerance of differences in the seminary.
But
the complaints continued. Charles Lewis, a former RCMP employee said to be in
the "macho group" — an allegation which he did not deny — told TBP he
himself had lodged a complaint about sexual activity in the seminary:
"guys doing things they shouldn't be doing." But he admitted he
hadn't witnessed such activity himself. On the other side, rumours flew that
"the machos" were searching
Toronto's
gay bars for seminarians.
TBP has found no evidence to support this allegation.
Tensions
between the two factions became so acute that, in the late fall, Clough held
separate meetings with members of the two groups and with unaligned students in
an attempt to cool the dispute.
But
after a party held in Tulk's rooms following a joint religious service with
Anglican seminarians on January 26 of this year, events started to spiral out
of control. Although Gervais later was to find
that nothing amiss had occurred at the party, rumours circulated of drunkenness
and homosexual activity.
In
a speech delivered to St Augustine's seminarians at a special house meeting six
days later, Clough criticized "the rumour mill" and appealed for an
end to gossip about the party. On February 8 he met
again with members of the factions and other students, this time in a joint meeting.
Then,
on March 19, a three-page letter, "A Dialogue in Trust," apparently
written by someone who had been at the February meeting, was distributed on
Clough's authority to the seminary's students, faculty and sisters.
Compassion and the Cardinal
The
Archbishop of Toronto knows how to pick friends, and if you're not one of them.
. . .
"CARDINAL CARTER AIDS DAVIS: No
Solidarnosc for T.T.C. Workers" — that was the heading on a leaflet
twitting Gerald Emmett Cardinal Carter, archbishop of Toronto, for backing
strikes in Poland while opposing a threatened transit strike at home that would
have cut into attendance at, and profits from, the recent papal tour.
Carter,
a close friend of John Paul II, was a supporter of the Second Vatican Council,
which reformed the Catholic Church. Yet, his critics say, Carter is more
zealous for the letter of the reforms than for their spirit. Last year, when
the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops issued an economic report that blamed the
profit motive for widespread poverty and unemployment, Carter disavowed the
document, siding with the outraged bankers and industrialists. And early this
year he authored a pastoral letter which condemned
attempts to elaborate a Catholic theology that would allow birth control,
abortion and the ordination of women.
Carter's
record on gay issues is not completely black. He once wrote a report on
police/minority relations which devoted a few lines of criticism to homophobic
verbal abuse. But he has also barred the local chapter of Dignity, the gay
Catholic organization, from the use of a church for their meetings and has told
homophobic jokes to an audience of police officers. The fear and silence
surrounding the purge
at St Augustine's Seminary point not just to the man's power, but to the way he
exercises it. "Insensitive" is the word which most often comes to the
lips of his critics. But Carter may have inadvertently illuminated the issue
when he dismissed Thomas Dailey. According to the press reports, he told the
priest, "You are much too compassionate." Perhaps it is not others,
who are too compassionate, but the Cardinal who is not compassionate enough.
Although unsigned, the names of Clough and three students appeared at the
bottom of the letter. A notable feature of this letter is its twice-stated
concern that news of the tensions within the seminary might get beyond its
walls. The fearful reference to "having 'outsiders' resolve those issues
for us" appears to have been an allusion to Cardinal Carter.
"A
Dialogue in Trust" proved to be the means of betrayal: within a few days,
a copy had been conveyed to Carter. And by the second week of April, Gervais
had begun his investigation into theological and sexual deviation at St
Augustine's.
In
the purge of St Augustine's, a harmonious constellation of authoritarianism,
sectarianism and homophobia can be seen at work. Since
the Second Vatican Council, part of the Catholic clergy and laity have been
moving away from both the church's traditional insistence on authority as the
source of truth and the concomitant paranoia about Protestant theologies. The
council suggested that truth is not absolute, that a changing world can pose
new questions and demand new answers.
St
Augustine's Seminary has been influenced by this new current in Catholicism and
has exposed its students to the interaction of social activism and feminism
with traditional teachings. As one of the eight theological colleges that
jointly make up the Toronto School of Theology, an ecumenical project, the
seminary has encouraged an open-minded comparison of Protestant and Catholic
beliefs.
But
as the new Catholicism has developed, so has the conviction among some
Catholics that the revolt against authority and the flirtation with Protestantism
— often the same thing to their eyes — have gone too far. It is common
knowledge in the Diocese of Toronto that Cardinal Carter and other
conservatives are less than fond of St Augustine's, where the now thin trickle
of future priests — the seminary's
approximately 50 students rattle about in a building that could hold 200 — are
thought to be in danger of contamination by rebellion and creeping
Protestantism. Once Carter had indisputable evidence that the place of
homosexuals in the priesthood was, however informally and tentatively, being
explored at the seminary, he struck.
The
purge was carried out in a secrecy induced by fear: everyone who knew, even the
victims, was too intimidated to speak out. To this day, Carter refuses to say
why the firings occurred. Gervais's report remains a secret.
According
to the Globe, although Clough, Tulk and the tenured Dailey were instructors at
the Toronto School of Theology, the Cardinal ordered them to resign without any
explanation to the school. Carter told TST officials that any protest from them
over his neglect of due process could result in the withdrawal of St
Augustine's from the joint project.
Some
of the homophobia was blatant. Gervais is reported to have asked students about
homosexual activity, but not about heterosexual activity. And he told faculty
they should not admit gay students to the seminary. When the teachers protested
that there is nothing in the rules about the sexual orientation of priests, he
backed off slightly but still insisted that a gay seminarian would have to have
been chaste for five years before admission. Apparently, he made no such
stipulation for heterosexual applicants.
But
to speak of discrimination is merely to scratch the surface; the homophobia
here is deeper and subtler than that.
A trust betrayed The confidential
dialogue that didn’t stay confidential
What
follows is the complete, unedited text of ' 'A Dialogue in Trust, ' ' the
letter circulated by St
. Augustine's Seminary Rector Brian Clough to students and faculty on March 19,
of this year. (1983)
The
following are reflections on discussions that occurred during the past year in regard
to issues and tensions that were present in the house. These discussions were
alluded to in Fr. Clough's address to the
house in February. Initially, Fr. Clough met with three distinct groups composed
of second, third, and fourth-year students. These groups represented different
viewpoints on tensions that were growing within the first few months of the seminary
year. The three distinct meetings allowed students to articulate their perceptions
of what was occurring within and between emerging factions. These meetings were
completed by the end of the first term. A collective meeting of the three groups
took place a week after Fr. Clough's February address.
The
purpose of the collective meeting was to provide a forum for dialogue and for
the definition of issues that each group perceived. A second issue was to
receive feedback on Fr. Cough's February intervention
in regard to the house social with Trinity College. It was hoped that the meeting
would be an initial step toward resolution of various problems. The meeting
began with an attempt to identify what the
problems were. The general consensus was that there was misunderstanding of viewpoints,
attitudes, and behaviors. This was characteristic of all, not of a certain few.
It was recognised that many of us did not know each other well enough and were unsure
about positions held, which generated unease and, perhaps, a little suspicion. Within
an institution there will be a broad range of personalities and attitudes. Such
a situation can all too easily lead to conflict, which itself produces
intolerance and insensitivity. It was felt that we were categorizing each other
as to lifestyle and orientation. It should be noted that in Fr. Clough's February
address there was mention made of a general nosiness of other's business and a
consequent breakdown in trust. The problem, then, was one of misunderstanding
and unfamiliarity that led to insensitivity and intolerance. Discussion ensued
with each group expressing its feelings on the problem. It was felt that each
group was given a free and equal opportunity to express their views. As the
discussion progressed, it became evident that group boundaries were breaking
down and that each was expressing his views as an individual, rather than as a representative
of a group.
It
became clear that the issue would be lost if the discussion were limited to the
surface problem: that is, a tension between those perceived to be
"macho" and those perceived to be "effeminate". It was agreed
that such exclusive terms are damaging and denigrating. It is all too easy to categorize
someone because he acts differently. The issue was then not how to limit those
who act differently, but how to come to know the other with greater appreciation
and understanding of his uniqueness.
Five
main points were made during the discussion:
1: to equate homosexuality with effeminate behavior is false. A person's sexual orientation
should not become a preoccupation for others. The issue is not one of homosexuality
or heterosexuality within or outside
the seminary, but one of sensitivity to others who may be different than ourselves.
2:
it is important to be sensitive to the effect that our behavior has on others
and the possible effects or perceptions that can result from the cumulative
effect of group behavior in a particular situation.
3:
it should be recognized that feelings of being threatened by another's
uniqueness have their source within ourselves and must be resolved within
ourselves. The problem should not be 'how can I change the
other', but 'how can I come to terms with myself so that I can appreciate the other
more'.
4:
out of an ignorance of another's pain can come a desire to avoid that
individual because he is different. Thus the challenge must be recognized: to
confront someone with a problem is harder than not dealing with him.
5:
the seminary community has a right to resolve its own issues without having
them communicated outside the house or having "outsiders" resolve
those issues for us.
The
immediate results of the meeting were generally positive. It was felt that dialogue
which occurred within the context of the meeting could be transferred to a less
formal setting. Much misunderstanding was identified and corrected. It may be correct
to say that tolerance was learned and that out of that learning came a greater
appreciation and comfort with others who were different than ourselves: that
is, a tolerance that was embedded in charity and mutual respect. With the reduction
of tension through the expression of difficulties came a more relaxed atmosphere
in the house. An important result was that the "silent majority"
spoke-up and took an active part in the discussions. It was agreed that the
meeting was an initial step to the resolution of the issue. Though the issue
was not totally resolved, the meeting provided an opportunity to dialogue in
trust.
The
less immediate results were just as important. The meetings that occurred this year
served as a first step to dialogue that can and will hopefully occur in years
to come. It was recognized that there will always be problems in institutional
living and that these problems should be addressed. Thus, the path was opened
to future dialogue. It was suggested that the services of professionals, such
as Sister Dickson, be employed in addressing issues such as sexuality,
spirituality, tolerance, etc. It has been suggested that an opportunity be provided
for year groups to reflect on the year with their representatives to the extended
faculty meetings. It was also suggested that new students precede returning students
at the start of the year by a day or two in order to better prepare them for seminary
life and to ease the process of assimilation. In all, these discussions came out
of an experience of grace; an experience that was felt by the whole seminary community.
The meeting of the collective closed with the hope and the positive anticipation of
greater interpersonal communication and friendship
19
MARCH 1984
M. CENERINI
FR.
B. CLOUGH
J.
MURPHY
D.
REILANDER
This
document has been distributed to the sisters, faculty, and students of St.
Augustine's Seminary. Its purpose is specifically for the members of the house,
i.e. the document is confidential to members of the house. This is why the
document has not been posted on the bulletin board.
END
Single-sex institutions in the world.
Homosexual
activity is inevitable; that a certain fraction of its members will be gay is
inevitable. Yet it remains a great unspoken concern. Mary Malone, a St Augustine's
faculty member, says: "The presence of gay students among seminarians is
not new. Until recently, we pretended it wasn't there."
The
St Augustine's purge was directed not so much against gay seminarians as against
those, gay or straight, students or faculty, who dared to break the silence — to
push or pull open the closet doors just a
crack. The purge would be a warning to those still in the closet to stay there.
That's perhaps why only two students were asked to leave the seminary, although
Gervais estimated that there were as many as 12 "homosexually
inclined" students there. That could be the meaning of Carter's
explanation to reporters of Clough's dismissal: "To talk about it is one
thing, but to put it in print (in "A Dialogue of Trust") is a
problem."
Malone
describes Clough and Tulk as "honest, compassionate men." "Their
integrity," she says, "helped something come into the open that
others would have preferred to keep secret." Clough, Dailey and Tulk are
gone from St Augustine's, but those responsible failed in their goal. The
secret is now out in the open.
The Rector referred to above, Father Brian Clough, after being fired for the scandal went on to become the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Toronto. This article is from the Globe and Mail on May 8, 1976. As of a few months ago, Clough was still on the Priest's Council.
