Posted on 10/01/2004 10:37:34 AM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
The Fall of a Leading Catholic Operative
by Jeremy Lott
October 2004
Crisis magazine's Deal Hudson was both powerful and reviled. Sad was Hudson's response to recent revelations that he sexually assualted an 18-year old student while a professor at Fordham University. He could have answered like a human being and penitent sinner. He might even have managed to hold onto his job. But instead he tried to spin the story his way. And he's still spinning.
When news was about to break last week that Deal Hudson is being forced to step down as publisher of Crisis magazine, a D.C.-based conservative Catholic monthly, he tried to get out ahead of the story. In an e-mail to supporters last Tuesday, Hudson wrote that the move was his decision, because he was "tired of being a lightning rod." He announced that a new position had been created for him as head of the Morley Institute, where he would raise money for Crisis and pursue his own pet projects, starting with a Catholic version of Rock the Vote.
Both the action and the announcement were in keeping with how Hudson had been dealing with the revelation that he lost his tenured position at a Jesuit university on morals charges in 1994. In August, Hudson resigned as an adviser to the Bush campaign and published a pre-emptive response to a story that the liberal National Catholic Reporter was about to break, to be followed by a second blast from the New York Times. Last week's attempt at narrative control was, if possible, even less effective than his August public relations debacle.
Last time around, some of the wagons started to circle. Hudson's strategy was to admit to vague wrongdoing; paint it as far in the past, done with, and paid for (to the tune of $30,000, it turns out); and then lash out at the political motives of the paper looking into his history. This, the charge went, was payback for the fact that his open campaign against any official Catholic cooperation with John Kerry had resulted in the sacking of one Ono Ekeh, who had been simultaneously an employee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and proprietor of the Catholics for Kerry website.
In a press release, Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, minimized the charges against Hudson and attempted a joke at the Virgin Mary's expense. "Effective today," Donahue wrote, his organization had "a new requirement for all future employees: all candidates must show proof of being immaculately conceived, that is, they must demonstrate that they were conceived without sin." Patrick Madrid, publisher of the non-political Catholic outreach magazine Envoy described Hudson as a "fundamentally good man trying to do good things for the Church" and asked readers to pray for him.
Lay theologian and sometime Crisis contributor Mark Shea (disclosure: we're good acquaintances) went the furthest of any of Hudson's defenders. Shea wrote that the National Catholic Reporter "covered itself in ignominy. Period." Though Shea allowed that "from a purely journalistic perspective" he could see why someone would want to pursue the story, he alleged that reporter Joe Feuerherd had "no other object in mind than to destroy somebody whose politics are inimical to the editorial posture of the National 'Catholic' Reporter." Shea called the Reporter's coverage -- and I wish I was making this up -- "as satanic a violation of the Sacrament of Reconciliation [Confession] as a predator priest is of the Sacrament of Holy Orders."
BUT IN THE LAST month, the wagons began to return to the trail. Responding to complaints, the Catholic League has removed the press release from its website and nothing was forthcoming when Hudson was forced out. Shea has backtracked some. Though he defends his broader point about the importance of forgiveness, and his bizarre, expansive interpretation of the Sacrament of Confession, Shea wrote last Thursday that Hudson strikes him "as a GOP Operator who happens to be Catholic much more than as a Catholic who happens to be a GOP Operator."
In an interview, Patrick Madrid told me that he didn't know Hudson very well and that while he initially thought the story was a counterattack for the Catholics for Kerry incident, he now takes Feuerherd "at his word as to why this article came out the way it did -- that he originally intended to write a profile piece and it morphed into this other thing because of what he was hearing." Though Madrid still worries this incident may frighten people away from doing "something good for the Church" for fear of reprisal, he acknowledges that Hudson did a lot to bring the roof down on himself.
Indeed, the interesting thing is how Feuerherd got his hands on the damning information. He insists that it came from Hudson's own associates with very little coaxing on his part. When the Reporter reported that Hudson had invited a "vulnerable freshman undergraduate, Cara Poppas, to join a group of older students for a pre-Lenten 'Fat Tuesday' night of partying at a Greenwich Village bar. The night concluded after midnight in Hudson's Fordham office, where he and the drunken 18-year-old exchanged sexual favors," it did so not based on leads from Catholics for Choice but from conservative Catholics with axes to grind.
(More from the article):
http://www.cruxnews.com/articles/lott-01oct04.html
Some of the grownups REALLY need to start showing up at the meetings of Catholic organizations.
from Catholics with axes to grind.
I've always thought this was true.
Ping
(traditional Catholic ping list - freepmail if you would like to be added or removed)
I do not think that I would have hired someone for that position with an academic sex scandal or controversy lurking in the background. Knowingly, that is.
Christ offers forgiveness and grace to all who are penitent. That is not the issue. Certain types of employment require tougher standards. One can think of other personal qualities, other than the lack of sexual indiscretions, which are essential for directing a Catholic magazine which pontificates on matters of faith and culture.
Hudson admitted the Cara Poppas incident. Other allegations apparently have enough legs for Hudson to leave and his supporters to back down.
People in positions of authority are held to higher standards as they should be.
Some of the grownups actually have a life, which precludes showing up at all these damn fool meetings--which thus allows others to run the orgs.
And, as you well know, when the grownups actually DO show up for meetings, the parish poofterwonks and their feminazi Praetorian Guard can make certain that the grownups will have little to do--or NO effect whatsoever.
Would I volunteer again? Yup. But only if I knew, in advance, that there was a purpose other than having the "token orthodox Catholic" on the scene.
Personally, I'll accept the decision which was evidently made by Fr. Neuhaus on this. I think that N. is a pretty careful guy and is certainly pre-disposed to be sympathetic to Hudson.
It must have taken more than a will-o-the-wisp to get Neuhaus to move.
Hudson admitted sexual misconduct when confronted by the university. He later admitted that is why he was fired.
He was dismissed from his university position long before the Bush campaign or Crisis magazine.
No one has alleged rape. The allegation is sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage (adulterous for Hudson) and an inappropriate student-teacher relationship.
NCR's motivations for digging up this incident are irrelevant to the truth of what happened years ago.
My only comment about this whole unfortunate turn of events is that,if Deal was not responsible for printing those articles then someone at "Crisis" remains,under cover, on the other side. I wish I could know,it would identify one more big player, "imposter" and help in the search for truth among the ruins.
The definition of sexual assault includes rape but is not limited to rape. There are other means of sexual assault.
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