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Kid in a Candy Shop
Disgraced Homosexual Priest Living at Saint Augustine High School, Hearing Students' Confessions
BY STANFORD ESPEDAL
Is a fox being given access to the chicken coop? This is the question on the minds of a number of Catholic parents who had been considering sending their sons to Saint Augustine High School. The reason for their concern is that Father James Mott, an Augustinian priest notorious for his involvement in an online site for homosexual priests, has been given access to the over 700-member student body.
Father Mott gained notoriety in June 2000 when Bishop Brom was forced to remove him from the pastorship of Saint Patrick's in North Park in the wake of the Saint Sebastian's Angels scandal. Saint Sebastian's Angels was an obscene website and chat room exclusively for active homosexual clergy. The watchdog group Roman Catholic Faithful exposed Father Mott as prominent among Saint Sebastian's 55 members.
Father Mott was also the man who in 1997 — at the invitation of Father Michael Ratajczak — started the gay and lesbian support group at Santa Sophia in Casa de Oro. Rather than seeking the conversion of sinners, these meetings encouraged practicing gays and lesbians to "regard being gay as a gift" and to receive Holy Communion without repentance or the sacrament of Confession. In a May 1998 meeting (attended by a reporter) a woman who had been "partnered" with another woman for 18 years said, "I feel funny about going up to receive Communion and I'm just not able to bring myself to do it." Father Mott asked, "Why not?" At no time during the meeting did he counsel her to end the relationship, go to Confession, or amend her life before receiving the Eucharist.
Father Mott has expressed no public repentance for his homosexual recruiting efforts while serving as Augustinian vocations director from the late 1980s through the 1990s. In one message on the Saint Sebastian Angel's website he wrote, "I have been the vocations director for 12 years, and the provincial for the last eight of these same years. I've had men on my council and on the formation team who have tried to keep gays out of our candidacy program.... I encouraged gay men to stay with us...."
In a later email, he said, "I left vocation work after 12 years straight (if I can use that expression). I wonder what they would have thought if they knew I was gay and encouraging men to join us? I have been very well thought of by the province as a whole, but if they knew ... I wonder?"
A recent call to Father John Keller, president of Saint Augustine High School, confirmed that Father Mott is currently living at the friary next door to the school. Father Keller, who is also the current prior of the local Augustinians, called Mott's past behavior "foolish, immature, and stupid." He said that Father Mott had completed a rehabilitation program in Toronto, Canada — he could not recall offhand the name of the institution — after which he served four days per week in chaplaincy at Saint Joseph's Hospital in Ojai, California. He is again in full possession of priestly faculties, working as director of formation for Augustinian novices.
The lay watchdog group, Roman Catholic Faithful reports that the Toronto treatment facility Father Mott went to is the Southdown Institute. According to Southdown's website, the institute, "offers residential and outpatient psychological treatment and spiritual guidance to clergy and vowed religious and provides education promoting health and holiness for all committed to ministry and religious life. The best of psychological science and practice are integrated with the wisdom of the Catholic spiritual tradition through the efforts of an interdisciplinary team of professionals."
Father Keller believes Father Mott's treatment has been successful, and there is no cause for alarm. When asked if Father Mott has any regular contact or dealings with the high school boys, he said "No. Father Mott is merely living at the friary next door to the high school as one of the 11 members of the community. He does not have any teaching responsibility or regular interaction with students."
But Father Keller acknowledged that Father Mott is not specifically prohibited from contact with boys at the school. And he said, Father Mott is one of a pool of four or five priests drawn upon for hearing student confessions. He hears confessions at penance services in Advent and Lent, and also occasionally on Tuesdays, when confessions are scheduled.
Asked if he thought it was appropriate for Father Mott to hear confessions and counsel boys in that forum, Father Keller stressed, "Father Mott is a priest in good standing with full faculties, and we see no reason to forbid his hearing confessions from the boys."
It's on this point that some parents are seriously questioning the judgment of "Saints" (Saint Augustine High School) and the Augustinian community. A home-schooling dad named Raymond who had been considering "Saints" as a possible high school for his seventh grade son said, "No orthodox Catholic questions that the grace of God can bring hardened sinners to repent and amend their lives. But unless there's a miraculous conversion, it's impossible for anyone involved in such sins to reform. And, frankly, I'm not convinced that modern treatment programs work. So many fallen priests have completed treatment programs only to emerge as smarter sinners. I'm not saying this is the case with Father Mott. I hope he really is a new man in Christ. But we're talking about a priest who was an active homosexual; who was encouraging gay and lesbian Catholics in their sins, and recruiting homosexuals into the priesthood and religious life! To give him access to adolescent boys in the confessional is unconscionable."
A mom named Aliece, who was planning to send her eighth grade son to Saint Augustine in the fall, said, "I consider it totally unacceptable that Saints would allow a priest with such a background to have any contact with the boys. I now have serious reservations about sending my son to that school. Confession is where the priests and the boys have the closest one-on-one relationship. That's where the boys are most vulnerable. I don't want to risk my son being exposed to erroneous advice from a deviant priest. Recruiters have special skills; they can make things sound good that are evil. That's how Satan is. That's how he made the apple look good to Eve."