Crisis also quotes Kellenyi’s classmate Fr. Joseph Marcoux as saying, "I certainly never experienced a gay subculture at Louvain. I never saw anything like that." Like what? Fr. Marcoux, ordained in 2001, and now Assistant Pastor at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester, N.Y., himself conducts gay/lesbian workshops. For example, according to the newsletter of the Diocese of Rochester’s Gay and Lesbian Ministry, Fr. Marcoux conducted one last year at Our Lady of Peace entitled "Gay and Lesbian People in the Church."
The Diocese of Rochester and Bishop Matthew Clark (Van Durme’s and Marcoux’s boss) in fact have long bastardized the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. Consider this gem from Bishop Clark during a homily at a highly publicized Mass for "gays, lesbians, and bisexuals" at Sacred Heart Cathedral: "I’m afraid the Bible is used in ways that are not life-giving, but destructive, as it’s quoted about gay and lesbian people. I think we need to learn from the human sciences" (March 1, 1997). According to The Wanderer’s News Editor, Paul Likoudis, who attended the Mass, during his homily Bishop Clark "not only affirmed the ‘lifestyles’ of gays and lesbians, saying they had much to teach the wider Church, but delivered a stinging rebuke to faithful Catholics and admonished them to ‘update’ themselves on contemporary biblical scholarship."
Their "gay issues" agenda: ...working for the "conversion" of those Catholics who still object to homosexuality.
The following year (1998) Bishop Clark hosted the annual conference of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries. Participants included a long list of the most radical dissenters from Catholic teaching on homosexuality. Their "gay issues" agenda: blessing same-sex "marriages" in the Church, transforming Catholic high schools into "gay-friendly" schools, adoption of children by gay and lesbian couples, introducing gay themes in Sunday homilies, and working for the "conversion" of those Catholics who still object to homosexuality. (See http://www.aquinas-multimedia.com/catherine/nacdlgm.html for in-depth detail on what was taught at that conference.)
According to a photo-caption in the September 21, 1998, issue of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Patrick Van Durme (Kellenyi’s accused harasser) attended that bizarre gay/lesbian conference. There’s even a photo in the Democrat & Chronicle to prove it: Van Durme is pictured receiving Communion from Bishop Clark, whose hand oddly rests on Van Durme’s shoulder.
The Crisis article also relies on too many assumptions as evidence. For example, Crisis states that Van Durme was once engaged to be married, leading readers to believe that this fact renders any accusations of the man having homosexual attractions devoid of credence. On its own, the fact that Van Durme was engaged proves nothing. After all, notorious homosexual priest/abuser Rudy Kos of Dallas, among others, was once engaged and married.
While Crisis spends an inordinate amount of time on the question of whether Van Durme is "gay" or not, it’s worth pointing out again that Kellenyi accused him of sexual harassment: an abuse of power. The difference between a homosexual and a homosexualist may be a small one. In his peer review of Kellenyi, Van Durme accuses him of not being interested in "gay issues." Van Durme attended a conference that promoted "gay issues" that radically undermine the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. The bishop who sponsored Van Durme has personally promoted teachings and proposals that are at odds with the Catholic Church on homosexuality. Van Durme is said to have been friends for 15 years with Rochester priest Fr. Joseph Marcoux, who teaches gay/lesbian workshops. And as I quoted Kellenyi as saying in my book, "He [Van Durme] told me one time that the way I was sitting in my chair made him want to fly across the room and grab me." That doesn’t necessarily make Van Durme an active homosexual, but any normal, red-blooded male would surely want to avoid such a person, would not want a "close relationship" with him. There’s enough evidence to suggest that Kellenyi’s impression of Van Durme is not as outrageous as Crisis makes it sound. In the end, whether or not Van Durme is "gay" is irrelevant.
Crisis Fails to Ask Around About Louvain
I talked to others in both Louvain and the U.S. who corroborated Kellenyi’s "impression" of the Louvain seminary. In fact, I spoke to two successful vocations directors who said neither they nor their bishops would consider sending seminarians to Louvain, one of the reasons being the seminary’s "effeminate reputation." Could they prove that there was homosexual activity going on inside the walls of the seminary? No, said both. But that wasn’t the point.
(Crisis gets perturbed when I quote unnamed sources. As I stated in the introduction to Goodbye, Good Men, priests fear reprisals from their fellow priests and especially their bishops. Here’s a case-in-point: Earlier this year Fr. Bryce Sibley of Lafayette, Louisiana, was censured for six months by his bishop because he publicly corroborated Kellenyi’s impression of the homosexual clique at Louvain. Fr. Sibley said his impressions were formed while on a week-long visit to the seminary in 1997, during which time he was a student at the North American College in Rome. Shortly after Fr. Sibley posted his article online, a letter of complaint from Louvain Rector Fr. Codd resulted in the swift removal of the offending article from circulation at the demand of his bishop, and Fr. Sibley’s subsequent silencing.)
...out of the entire United States, Joseph Kellenyi was the only man to enter the Theologate in the Fall of 1999. In other words, Kellenyi was the only man in his class. He had no classmates!
The vocations directors I spoke with indicated that many of the U.S. bishops have been very reluctant to send their seminarians to Louvain, and that for some bishops Louvain "isn’t even on the radar." The statistics bear this out. Crisis neglected to mention that during the year Kellenyi attended, the American College at Louvain had only 14 seminarians. In fact, out of the entire United States, Joseph Kellenyi was the only man to enter the Theologate in the Fall of 1999. In other words, Kellenyi was the only man in his class. He had no classmates! According to the seminary’s website, the entire student population of the seminary’s Theologate during the 2001-02 academic year had dwindled to seven men with an additional four in the pre-theology program. [The Theologate further dwindled to five men during the 2002-03, making for a student:teacher ration of 1 to 1]. These numbers don’t even justify a fraction of the cost of running the seminary. And one wonders if donors to the American College are aware of this. When I spoke by phone with Barbara Henkels, a member of the Advisory Board for the Louvain seminary (and a member of the Publication Committee for Crisis), she seemed genuinely surprised — even shocked — when I explained that Kellenyi was the only man in his class. Out of the 184 U.S. dioceses, only six sent a seminarian to Louvain’s American College in 2001-2002.
When wondering why only a handful of bishops send men to Louvain, consider that Louvain "boasts" many world-renowned liberal Church theologians. Prof. Joseph Selling, Chairman of the Department of Moral Theology at Louvain, for example, has become a controversial figure in the U.S. At the pro-"gay" New Ways Ministry National Symposium in Pittsburgh in March 1997 (at which Bishop Matthew Clark was also a guest speaker), Selling spoke of his expectation that the Church will approve of homosexual sodomy. Is the Church’s teaching on sodomy going to continue to evolve, he asked?: "With respect to the homosexual relationship, will it evolve toward encompassing it? Yes, it will!" he emphatically replied.