[Catholic Caucus] Edward Feser’s lecture canceled by Catholic seminary while Fr. James Martin is allowed to speak

“Meanwhile, the always controversial Fr. James Martin will be speaking this month at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, on the theme ‘Hope on the Horizon: LGBTQ Catholic Update 2026,’” Feser wrote.

“It appears that, for some in @ArchbishopGomez‘s archdiocese, Fr. Martin is welcome to speak about that topic to educators of Catholic youth, but I am not welcome to speak to seminarians about how to defend the Church’s teaching on the soul’s immortality.”

Ping

If they think he is controversial, wait until a guy named Jesus shows up.

“The philosophy professor noted that while he got canceled the notoriously pro-LGBT Jesuit Fr. James Martin is allowed to speak at events in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles headed by Archbishop José Gómez.” I guess their corn-holers in the catholic church.

Seems the Church will deteriorate rapidly now that the Curia homo click has taken control of Seminaries. They finally succeeded in cracking open the Sems. Now they will mess with the minds of the Seminarians thanks to Leo’s liberal policies.

St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo. . .

* * *
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2008/05_06/2008_06_20_Ebeling_LAProof.htm

LA Proof: Ties between St. John Seminary, LA Archbishop, & Paracletes Rehab Center for Pedophile Priests Shown in Deposition Testimony & Letters

By Kay Ebeling
City of Angels
June 20, 2008

http://cityofangels4.blogspot.com/

The bishops claim times were different back then, how could they know about pedophile priests? Truth is in the 1960s Timothy Manning, Archbishop of Los Angeles, was sending so many priests to Via Coeli in New Mexico, (in photo below right), he was talking with center director Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald about opening a branch of the rehab center near Los Angeles.
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Fitzgerald’s assistant, Fr. Joseph McNamara, even made a trip to San Bernardino to meet with Bishop Phillip Straling about opening up such a branch.

Below, McNamara testifies for the LA Clergy Cases about the relationship between the LA Archdiocese and Via Coeli in a June 2007 deposition. He confirms he and Father Gerald took bishops from all over the country on tours of the rehab center. Also below, Letters from 1959 and
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1960 reveal a regular conversation between hierarchy “padres” about the pedophile priest problem in the LA Archdiocese and at St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo Ca. (A young McNamara is pictured at right.)

Click the docs here to enlarge, read them, print them, there are more to come next week from this Paracletes Collection. You should be able to print a copy of the enlarged docs for yourself from your screen.

How about if 50 or so activists print these and other particularly condemning documents and take them to the US congressional offices in our regions? We can use this blog as a platform to make sure people all over the country have a collection of items. This calls for a concerted organized effort, if anyone is getting concerted and organized. In 2009, when the new US Congress begins, we could all go on the same day and drop a stack of docs on our local US representatives’ desks and say, We Want a Federal Investigation We Want Hearings.

That is just one idea. Please, click the docs, read, and cogitate, then email me with ideas:
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THERE’S MORE:
READ the First Kenneally letter below:
Document

The above letter from William J. Kenneally to James Francis Cardinal McIntyre, then Archbishop of Los Angeles (April 6, 1959, date of this letter) significant because it references Via Coeli and conversations between McIntyre and Kenneally, who was Rector of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, at the time.

Yes, St. John’s Seminary, where future pedophiles were trained by practicing pedophiles, and later turned loose on the Southern California population as parish priests.

QUOTES OF NOTE FROM THE April 6, 1959 Kenneally letter above:

“A recent letter from a priest guest at Via Coeli informs me that they have begun a series of informal lectures there for padres. I do not know whether there is any information between this fact and our recent conversations, but I thought Your Eminence might like to know this fact.”

Reveals that the Archbishop of LA and the Rector of St. John’s seminary discussed priests with sexual problems and treatment at Via Coeli in 1959.

Also in the above letter they discuss a pedophile priest Cleve Carey, from the era. We have the Rector of St. John’s Seminary saying:

“Many thanks for deciding the case of MR. CLEVE CAREY whose scrutinium was somewhat uncomplimentary. Actually we felt the same about it as does Your Eminence.”

The Rector of the seminary and the Archbishop of Los Angeles here are talking over Cleve Carey, soon to become a pedophile priest.

And it’s 1959!!!!

PROOF
The Archbishop of Los Angeles talked over Via Coeli including its tours with the Rector of St. John’s Seminary. And wait until you see the Bishop Buddy letters about San Diego pedophile priests who went to Via Coeli, soon to be scanned for a post next week.

BISHOP ACCOUNTABILITY HAS THIS TO SAY ABOUT CLEVE CAREY:

Dead. Los Angeles. Accused of abuse between 1963-1966. Died 1988. LA archdiocese says 2 accusers. Named in at least 1 civil suit.

This is from the LA Times database in bishop accountability:

(Note seven transfers since the Rector of St. John’s Seminary and the Archbishop of Los Angeles discussed him in 1959 in the same letter where they discussed Via Coeli.)

FATHER CLEVE W. CAREY
Diocese
Status: Dead

Named in civil lawsuit and in archdiocesan report.

Assignments

1961-63 St. Barnabas Catholic Church Long Beach
1964-66 St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church Gardena
1967-67 St. Kevin Catholic Church Los Angeles
1968-70 Holy Cross Catholic Church Los Angeles
1971-71 St. Luke Hospital Pasadena
1972-74 Little Company of Mary Hospital Torrance
1975-76 St. Frances X. Cabrini Catholic Church Los Angeles
1977- Retired

Lawsuits

Each entry represents an allegation of molestation of one plaintiff at the location. Some plaintiffs have accused a priest of sexual misconduct in more than one parish or other location.

1958, 1963-66 St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church Gardena
1963-64 St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church Gardena
1963-64 St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church Gardena
1964-65 St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church Gardena

************
Something tells me there are more victims of Cleve Carey.
************************************

AND THERE’S MORE DOCUMENTS HERE:

Read the back and forth between Kenneally and Gerald Fitzgerald in the 1959 letter below:
Document

In the 2nd Kenneally Letter, (at left) we have a banter about AA, and how it calls, “unscientific and outmoded the good old fashioned sensible petition of the Church. Interesting because it shows the friendship and closeness between Kenneally and Fitzgerald.
Document

But the letter (Page 2 at left) also reveals the chism Fitzgerald was beginning to feel as the new secular approaches came in and made his treatment techniques, which were based on prayer and the spirit, seem to be outmoded.

The letter above left shows a pretty close friendship between Fitzgerald and the Rector of St. John’s Seminary, and open talk about the treatment at Via Coeli.

In 1959!!!

IT DOES NOT STOP:
August 1960 letter below from Fr. Gerald Fitzgerald to “Very Reverend Provincial”

QUOTES:

“In God’s Name, get this man laicized as quickly as possible.”

“Men who sin repeatedly with little children certainly fall under the classification of those who ‘it were b better had they not been born.’

“As a layman, the civil authorities will make short work of his activity and place him in the protective custody that his type merit.

“As there are many little children in this Canyon, where I am the shepherd of souls, I could not in conscience consider receiving him here.”

August 1960 letter to Provincial is below:

Document

ABOVE: In God’s Name get this man laicized.
Could they have been talking about Titian Miani?

***********
THERE’S MORE
*****************

Coming next week, the San Diego Bishop Buddy letters and a variety of new items to read about Servants of the Paracletes and the pedophile priests who found solace and succor there hiding from the laity in New Mexico . . .

* * *
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2012/01_02/2012_01_04_VenturaCounty_LABishop.htm

L.A. Bishop, Former St. John’s Seminary Rector, Resigns, Admits Fathering Two

Ventura County Star
January 4, 2012

www.vcstar.com/news/2012/jan/04/l-bishop-former-st-johns-seminary-rector-resigns-a/

This May 2006 photo shows Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles Gabino Zavala, who resigned after admitting he fathered two children who are now teenagers. In a letter, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez says Zavala told him in December that he had two children who live with their mother in a different state
Photo by Emilio Flores

A Los Angeles bishop who was once rector of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo is retiring early after admitting he fathered two children who are now teenagers.

Bishop Gabino Zavala, 60, resigned under canon law that allows bishops to retire earlier than the standard age of 75 if they are sick or considered unfit for office, church officials announced Wednesday. Roman Catholic priests take a vow of celibacy when they are ordained.

Zavala was named rector at St. John’s, which prepares priests for the Catholic Church, in 1992. He also was a student, faculty member and vice rector at the seminary before being named rector.

“I’m disappointed. I know this has hurt a lot of people,” said Monsignor Craig Cox, the current rector at St. John’s and a friend of Zavala’s. “He was very committed to justice, world peace, the rights of all people, especially those who are most overlooked. I hope nobody closes their ears and hearts to the good things he did because of this tragedy.”

Zavala told church officials in early December that he is the father of two children who live with their mother in another state. The family has not been identified publicly.

Archbishop Jose Gomez, leader of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, announced Zavala’s resignation in a letter posted online Wednesday morning. He said the archdiocese will offer spiritual care for the children and their mother and help pay for the teenagers to attend college.

The letter also says Zavala, who was auxiliary bishop for the San Gabriel Pastoral Region, has not been in the ministry since submitting his resignation last month and is “living privately.”

Zavala was ordained in 1977 and named an auxiliary bishop in 1994.

“This is unexpected, sad and disorienting news for many people who know and like Bishop Zavala,” archdiocese spokesman Tod Tamberg said Wednesday.

Tamberg said he had virtually no details about Zavala’s affair except that it involved consenting adults and that no church funds were used.

Many believe the church’s celibacy requirement discourages men from entering the priesthood. The church allows married Anglican priests who convert to become priests. Also, Eastern Orthodox Christian churches allow priests to marry before they are ordained.

The Rev. Father Gary Kyriacou, a priest at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Christian Church in Camarillo, said he found it easier to enter the priesthood knowing he could marry and have a family.

“It helped me in answering my calling,” said Kyriacou, who is married and has three children. “It would have been a more difficult decision for me if I had to decide whether to be celibate. Everybody has their calling, and celibacy is definitely a calling.”

Cox did not have any data on priests or bishops who leave the church because they have fathered children but said it’s not common.

“It’s a sign that all of us are human,” Cox said. “But it is unusual, in my experience at least. Celibacy is a great challenge, but so is fidelity in marriage. People are unfaithful in marriage, and people are unfaithful in celibacy. It’s meant to be challenging.”

Zavala, who was born in Mexico and grew up in Los Angeles, has advocated for immigrants’ rights and fought against the death penalty. He serves on the board of The House of Ruth, which helps homeless women and children, as well as victims of domestic violence. And he has served as bishop-president of Pax Christi, which promotes nonviolence.

This year the group Clergy and Laity for Economic Justice in Los Angeles named Zavala one of its Giants of Justice.

“Clearly he’s a man who’s very invested in people other than himself,” said Rabbi Jonathan Klein, executive director of the organization.

While he believes Zavala’s work is important, Cox said he still is disappointed in his friend.

“I can understand, I guess in theory, what happened,” Cox said. “But it’s really hurtful.”

* * *
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/ca-la/mahony.html

Roger M. Mahony
Cardinal, Los Angeles CA Archdiocese

Mahony was born on February 27, 1936 in North Hollywood CA and is a graduate of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo CA and of the National Catholic School of Social Science at Catholic University in Washington DC. He was ordained in 1962, served as bishop of Fresno CA (1975–80) and Stockton CA (1980–85), and has been the archbishop of Los Angeles since 1985. Mahony became a cardinal in 1991; he is 67.

Despite claims of transparency and openness, Mahony has resisted the release of accused priests’ names and has employed constitutional challenges to keep documents from prosecutors. Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney William Hodgman has charged 9 priests with sexual abuse of minors, and may charge as many as 12 more. In Ventura County, a grand jury has questioned 4 vicars of clergy, past and present, and charged 2 priests. Under a law extending the statute of limitations for one year (subsequently increased), over 400 claims are ongoing against 120 defendants.

Among the accused, Michael Baker confessed to Mahony in 1986, but was transferred to a series of parishes until 2000. Michael Wempe was placed by Mahony in a hospital with access to children, despite a long record of abuse. Like Mahony, Baker and Wempe went to St. John’s Seminary, as did disgraced bishop and Mahony protégé G. Patrick Ziemann. As in Boston and elsewhere, seminary connections appear to have enabled abuse and fostered the cover-up, and the Catholic treatment center network was used to recycle abusive priests. Mahony’s connection with the notorious treatment center in Jemez Springs NM, run by Servants of the Paraclete, is well established.

On June 26, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against extending statutes of limitations (see opinion and dissent), and a California judge will soon rule on whether prosecutors can have 2,000 pages of chancery documents. In the July 2003 update to BishopAccountability.org, we will provide full coverage of the Supreme Court decision and its implications.

The mood and methods of the Mahony chancery as the scandal broke in LA can be gauged from the emails among Mahony’s inner circle, leaked to the Los Angeles radio station WKFI in early April 2002. (See resources on this site for two versions.) Even during Holy Week, concern for the victims is nonexistent in this email exchange, and contrition never comes up. Cynical manipulation of the victims, press, police, and even comrades in the chancery seems to be the norm.

Mahony precipitated the resignation on June 16, 2003 of Frank Keating, after Keating criticized Mahony’s orchestration of a boycott by California bishops of the National Review Board’s compliance survey. The face-off had the unintended effect of focusing national attention on collusion among the bishops, days before the June USCCB conference begins.

As prosecutors await the decision on 2,000 pages of documents, they are actively pursuing their investigations. Wempe had been released in the wake of the Stogner decision, but was recently picked up on new charges.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-nov-17-me-stjohns17-story.html

Trail of Abuse Leads to Seminary
By Paul Pringle
Nov. 17, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer
Any examination of the sexual abuse crisis afflicting the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles leads inevitably to a bell-towered campus in the rolling hills of Camarillo: St. John’s Seminary.

The 66-year-old institution has trained hundreds of clerics for the archdiocese and smaller jurisdictions across Southern California and beyond. It is the alma mater of Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, Diocese of Orange Bishop Tod Brown and other prominent prelates. Former San Francisco Archbishop William Levada, now the Vatican’s chief enforcer of doctrine, taught at the school.

But St. John’s, the only seminary operated by the archdiocese, also has produced a disproportionate number of alleged sexual abusers as it prepared men for a life of ministry and celibacy, records show.

About 10% of St. John’s graduates reported to have been ordained in the Los Angeles Archdiocese since 1950 — 65 of roughly 625 — have been accused of molesting minors, according to a review of ordination announcements, lawsuits, published reports and the archdiocese’s 2004 list of alleged abusers. In two classes — 1966 and 1972 — a third of the graduates were later accused of molestation.

The St. John’s figures are much higher than the nationwide rate of alleged molesters in the American priesthood, as calculated by a church-commissioned survey. The John Jay College of Criminal Justice study found that 4% of priests and deacons between 1950 and 2002 have been accused of abuse.

“The numbers get scary,” said Patrick Wall, a former monk who works for an Orange County law firm that represents alleged abuse victims suing the church, including about 100 who have accused St. John’s graduates. “I don’t think it’s coincidental.”

Archdiocese officials deny that the seminary was in any way responsible.

Spokesman Tod Tamberg blamed intense publicity over sexual abuse in the church for the higher rate of accusations involving St. John’s graduates, and noted that a California law temporarily lifting the statute of limitations for molestation lawsuits brought a flood of allegations against Los Angeles priests.

But J. Michael Hennigan, a lawyer for the archdiocese, conceded that exaggerated claims alone cannot account for the large numbers of alleged abusers in some graduating classes.

“There were a couple of years at that seminary where lightning struck,” Hennigan said. “I doubt we’ll ever figure out why.”

Several former students recall a licentious atmosphere at St. John’s that might have accommodated a range of sexual behavior, especially in the years before the 1990s.

They say that many classmates routinely broke their celibacy vows, that emotionally troubled students were allowed to drift though the seminary, and that administrators either were ignorant about sex on campus or turned a blind eye to it.

Some told of seminarians having sex in St. John’s dormitories, bathrooms and orange groves.

“There was an awful lot that was shocking,” said Jaime Romo, who lost his passion for the priesthood after three years at St. John’s in the early 1980s. Now an education professor at the University of San Diego, a Catholic school, Romo has sued the Los Angeles Archdiocese, accusing the late priest Leland Boyer of molesting him as a teenager.

He remembered a small group of students who dressed in nuns’ clothes during his time at St. John’s, and others who were “full-blown alcoholics.” He said the faculty avoided any talk of sex: “There was no discussion of celibacy.”

A number of active priests who attended St. John’s said they had never witnessed sexual activity at the seminary, and believed the administration would not have tolerated it. “Could guys have carried on a secret life? Sure,” said Leon Hutton, a St. John’s history teacher who graduated in 1980. “But it certainly wouldn’t have been condoned.”

The John Jay survey determined that the quarter-century from 1960 through 1984 was particularly troublesome for alleged abuse by clerics nationwide. At St. John’s, about 15% of priests who graduated during that period and served in the Los Angeles Archdiocese were accused of sexual abuse, records show.

Some of the allegations have resulted in criminal convictions or civil settlements. Most are unresolved. The accusations lodged in civil complaints have not been formally denied because the suits are the subject of a court mediation, Hennigan said.

Typically, the suits focus on incidents that allegedly occurred after a priest left the seminary. But in a 2003 suit, Esther Miller alleges that a seminarian sexually abused her at St. John’s in the mid-1970s.

Miller, now a human resources manager, accuses former priest Michael Nocita of molesting her when she was 16 and 17 while he was a deacon seminarian assigned to her family’s parish in Van Nuys.

The suit, which names the archdiocese rather than Nocita as a defendant, also alleges that St. John’s then-rector, John Grindel, once saw Nocita embracing her in his dorm room but did not ask why she was there.

“He just closed the door,” said Miller, who says that Nocita molested her in the dorm and the orange groves.

Attempts to reach Nocita and Grindel for comment were unsuccessful. They have not responded formally to the lawsuits because of the mediation process, Hennigan said.

Other suits allege that a St. John’s student molested three sisters — ages 6 to 15 — while visiting their home as part of a “field pastoral education” program in the early 1980s. The lawsuits do not identify the student.

Wayne Yehling, a Tucson attorney who received a philosophy degree from St. John’s now-closed undergraduate college in 1982, said most of his classmates had been committed to celibacy, but “there was a great deal of sexual activity among students. I saw it, and yes, I participated in it.” Yehling said he had a sexual relationship with another student for most of his three years at St. John’s.

“It was like shooting fish in a barrel to seduce somebody there,” he said of the college, a gateway to the graduate theology school. “You learned to hide what you do.”

Yehling and others noted that engaging in consensual sex at the seminary and molesting minors were hugely different things, and said no link between them should be inferred.

They also said, however, that St. John’s administrators and teachers had appeared so oblivious to sex on campus that it would have been possible for students who exhibited sexually abusive behavior to go unchecked while at the school.

Fred Berlin, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said if a “subculture of permissiveness” had taken hold at St. John’s, students prone to molestation might have found it easier to succumb to their desires.

“We often see that people, when they get into these group situations, will sometimes behave in ways they might not otherwise behave,” said Berlin, an expert on sexual disorders.

Berlin said he knew of cases in which young men tormented by their sexual urges entered seminaries in the hope that a celibacy vow would still their impulses.

“When they get there,” he said, “it’s a very different reality.”

Robert Greene, who left St John’s undergraduate college in 1972 after a year, said the vast majority of students took their vocation seriously. “But many people seemed almost preadolescent.... They were pretty much shipped through the system in this kind of numb state.” He said the seminary “did a disservice by not emphasizing spiritual and psychological development.”

Greene, a part-time Anglican minister who works in aerospace finance, said he quit the seminary because Robert Manning, who was serving as a visiting cleric at Greene’s Redondo Beach parish, had been molesting him.

“He would pick me up at St. John’s and take me home,” said Greene, who has sued the church, alleging that Manning began to abuse him in high school.

Archdiocese officials have labeled Manning a “bogus priest,” saying they cannot confirm that he was ordained. He is not a defendant in the suit and could not be reached for comment.

Luis Godinez, who briefly attended St. John’s in the late 1980s, said he left because he was offended by the promiscuity on campus.

He said he often could not use his dorm bathroom at night because it was occupied by men having sex.

In 2003, Godinez sued the church, alleging that Stockton priest Fernando Villalobos, who died in 1985, had molested him as a boy. The suit is pending.

During the 1970s and ‘80s, St. John’s sometimes played host to a Tucson priest, Robert Trupia, who brought young men interested in becoming priests to the seminary as part of his “Come and See” program, according to court documents.

Arizona authorities arrested Trupia on child molestation charges in 2000, but dropped the case because of the statute of limitations.

In 2002, the church paid a multimillion-dollar settlement to nine former altar boys and another alleged victim who accused Trupia and three other Arizona priests of molestation.

The mother of one boy who was a witness in the case wrote to church officials that her son had an “especially painful memory” of spending two nights at St. John’s with Trupia, and waking to find the priest sitting on the child’s bed.

“The bedcovers were pulled down but [he] doesn’t know or remember if Trupia touched him while he slept,” the mother wrote. “He does know that the door to his room was locked.... The door wasn’t locked when he went to bed.”

Hennigan said the archdiocese found that Trupia had been “discouraged from further visits to St. John’s,” but there was no record of the reason. “We heard he was banned,” he said.

Msgr. James Gehl, who was at St. John’s for eight years ending in 1974, first at the undergraduate college and then in the theology school, said he saw nothing of the sexually charged environment others describe. “I’m not saying there weren’t [instances of sexual activity], but I never heard of one,” he said. “Sometimes people were dismissed, and we were never given the reason.”

Gehl, now pastor at St. Bede the Venerable in La Canada Flintridge, said it “blew me away” to learn of abuse allegations against a former classmate and a second St. John’s graduate with whom Gehl shared a church residence for three years in Palmdale. “I never would have guessed,” he said.

Back then, he said, there was little if any psychological vetting of students: “When I went to the seminary college, I just went from 12th grade to 13th grade. I don’t remember being interviewed in any psychological way.”

“We were all ignorant,” said the Rev. Msgr. Helmut Hefner, a 1969 St. John’s graduate who is rector of the seminary. “I went to school with people who subsequently became abusers. I couldn’t tell. There was no hint.”

Hefner said a reluctance by seminaries to aggressively address sexual matters in the 1960s and ‘70s might have inadvertently opened the door to a few young men with abusive tendencies. “Sexual issues were taboo,” he said.

Seminaries have since adopted tougher measures to weed out candidates who might have a predilection for perversions, and Hefner says the regimen of background checks, psychological tests and celibacy counseling is working.

“It’s gotten more sophisticated,” he said. “We are much more aware of the risk factors.”

He sees a bright future for St. John’s. Enrollment has been holding steady at about 100, he said.

The archdiocese is selling 60 of St. John’s 100 acres to developers, with the proceeds to secure the seminary’s endowment.

Like other seminaries, however, St. John’s has been laboring to reverse a decline in its output of priests, a trend that resulted in the 2003 closure of the undergraduate school.

Its ordinations have lagged far behind the growth in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, the nation’s most populous with 5 million Catholics.

Today’s student body, Hefner said, is about half foreign-born with an average age of 34. He said any problems of immaturity, sexual and otherwise, have disappeared.

“The scandals have only kind of encouraged people to work harder at what we’re about,” Hefner said.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The Process

The Los Angeles Archdiocese said it did not have a comprehensive roster of St. John’s graduates. It also declined to provide The Times with access to the campus or to photographs of graduating classes. For those reasons, The Times relied on ordination stories published annually in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Tidings — an approach that church officials said would yield accurate results.

The stories listed the names of about 620 St. John’s priests who were ordained in the archdiocese since 1950. Several more graduates were identified in legal documents and in interviews with church officials and former St. John’s students.

Some St. John’s graduates were ordained into dioceses outside Los Angeles. Repeated attempts to obtain a complete list of these graduates were unsuccessful. Priests ordained into the Los Angeles Archdiocese were recruited and sponsored for the seminary by the archdiocese.

All the names were checked against those in the archdiocese’s 2004 report on alleged abusers, news accounts of molestation cases, and in some instances, court documents and supporting materials.

From that process, The Times found 65 Los Angeles priests ordained from St. John’s since 1950 who have faced abuse allegations.

https://www.tldm.org/news5/seminaries.htm

American seminaries: “hell-holes of error and heresy”...

. . .St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo, California
From a May 20, 2002 Newsweek article: “… The 64-year-old institution, nestled in the hills of Camarillo, Calif., may be one of the country’s gayest facilities for higher education. Depending on whom you ask, gay and bisexual men make up anywhere from 30 percent to 70 percent of the student body at the college and graduate levels. ‘I don’t want people to think that in a negative way,’ says a 28-year-old gay alumnus.”

...“I think we do a good job recruiting solid candidates, and welcome the opportunity to do better,” says the Rt. Rev. Helmut Hefner, the school’s rector. He accepts that his gay enrollment may be as high as 50 percent, but that hasn’t caused any discomfort to heterosexuals, much less an epidemic of straight flight, he says. (“Gays and the seminary,” Newsweek, May 20, 2002)

A May 19, 2002 article from the Ventura County Star reports:

“At St. John’s Seminary and Seminary College in Camarillo, leaders said that as long as priests and seminarians commit to celibacy, sexual orientation is not a primary concern. They are taken aback at the suggestion of screening out gay students. ‘Good heavens no, that is not the solution,’ said the Rev. Kenneth Rudnick, president and rector of the seminary college. “That’s not part of the problem. There is no problem. As long as one is celibate, that is all the church requires.” (“Local clergy disagree about gay priests, Ventura County Star, May 19, 2002)
Hello-o-o!!! “Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers.” (Sacred Congregation for Religious, February 1961)

The Ventura County Star also reports:

“Some former St. John’s students have talked about promiscuity at the campus in the 1980s. An affidavit that was part of a molestation lawsuit against an Orange County priest contended students and a priest had made homosexual advances and also included second-hand allegations of sexual abuse.” (“Local clergy disagree about gay priests, Ventura County Star, May 19, 2002). . .

* * *

https://bellarmine.lmu.edu/philosophy/faculty/?expert=kenneth.rudnicksj

Kenneth Rudnick, SJ
Senior Lecturer of Philosophy

Los Angeles CA UNITED STATES
Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts

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Kenneth Rudnick, SJ is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University.

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he 1960s Los Angeles seminary crisis
Author: John T. Donovan
Date: Winter 2016
From: The Catholic Historical Review(Vol. 102, Issue 1)
Publisher: The Catholic University of America Press
Document Type: Essay
Length: 9,659 words
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In the 1960s, tension arose between Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, archbishop of Los Angeles (1886-1979), and the priests of the Congregation of the Mission (or Vincentian Fathers) who were teaching at St. Johns Seminary in Camarillo. The fact that some seminary alumni had challenged McIntyre publicly on the question of race relations led the cardinal to suspect that the faculty was not adequately addressing church policy on obedience. This was exacerbated with the disclosure of the relaxation of rules at the St. Louis seminaries—Cardinal Glennon College and Kenrick Seminary—and by the publication of Seminary in Crisis, a book by Stafford Poole, C.M. McIntyre asked how the Vincentians could run seminaries in an inconsistent fashion, to which the Vincentians replied that they would respect the wishes of the ordinary. Despite the friction, McIntyre kept the Vincentians at St. Johns.

Keywords: Congregation of the Mission; McIntyre, Cardinal James Francis; Poole, Stafford, C.M.; St. John’s Seminary, Camarillo; Vincentians

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The study of seminary education is one of the most neglected subfields in the whole underdeveloped area of American Catholic historiography.” (1) So noted Philip Gleason of the University of Notre Dame about thirty years ago. There has been some improvement since then, with the publication of various seminary histories. (2) A less-reported history took place in the Los Angeles Archdiocese between Cardinal James Francis McIntyre (1886-1979) and the priests of the Congregation of the Mission (or the Vincentian Fathers), referred to by the Vincentians as the Los Angeles Seminary Crisis. This episode has been treated briefly in some works. (3) As of this writing, the papers in the Archives of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles remain closed on the matter, but the opening of the James Fischer C.M. Provincial Papers affords some exploration of the question. Fischer (1916-2005), the Vincentian Provincial of the era, had to contend with much of the crisis. (4)

McIntyre (see figure 1) is a central figure in this story. Pope Pius XII transferred McIntyre to Los Angeles after the death of Archbishop John Cantwell (1874-1947), doubtless on the recommendation of Cardinal Francis J. Spellman of New York (1889-1967). To this day, McIntyre remains a controversial figure in the history of Southern California Catholicism. In 1997, Msgr. Francis J. Weber’s two-volume biography of McIntyre appeared. (5) Historian Kevin Starr favorably reviewed the work in the Los Angeles Times, calling it a “locomotive of a biography.” Starr wrote, “At long last, a much vilified Roman Catholic prelate of the 20th Century ... can now have his day in court.” Shortly after Starr’s review appeared, several individuals wrote to the Times, in part to denounce Weber’s book (and Starr’s review of it), but they all used their letters to attack McIntyre. (6) “It was McIntyre’s misfortune to be an old man, although more or less a vigorous one, when the winds of change whistled through the Church,” wrote author John Gregory Dunne. “What he did not think broke, he did not want fixed.” Putting it more delicately, Jeffrey M. Burns wrote that...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_the_Servants_of_the_Paraclete

Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete

The Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete is a Catholic religious congregation of men dedicated to ministry to priests and brothers with personal difficulties. The congregation was founded in 1947 by Fr Gerald Fitzgerald in Jemez Springs, New Mexico; they are named for the Paraclete, a representation of the Holy Spirit interpreted as an advocate or helper. After a series of lawsuits related to sexually abusive priests that had been treated at its facilities, the order has consolidated their holistic programs to Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, Missouri, an unincorporated area outside St. Louis.[1]. . .

Although Fitzgerald started the Servants of the Paraclete to assist priests who were struggling with alcohol and substance abuse problems, he soon began receiving priests who had sexually abused minors. Initially, Fitzgerald attempted to treat such priests using the same spiritual methods that he used with others. By 1948, Fitzgerald had set a policy whereby he refused to take priests who were sexually attracted to children. In a letter sent to a priest in 1948 Fitzgerald said “It is now a fixed policy of our house to refuse problem cases that involve abnormalities of sex.”[citation needed] The policy was changed, possibly at the insistence of bishops, because Fr. Gerald’s letters reveal that he had indeed offered help to several priests with such sexual problems in the years between 1948 and his death in 1969.

In a 1964 letter to Bishop Joseph Durick of Nashville, Tennessee, Fitzgerald expressed “growing concern” about the dramatic change in the nature of problems that were being referred to his order:

May I take this occasion to bring to your attention what is a growing concern to many of us here in the States. When I was ordained, forty three years ago, homosexuality was a practically unknown rarity. Today it is rampant among men. And whereas seventeen years ago eight out of ten problems here [at the Paraclete facility, Via Coeli] would represent the alcoholic, now in the last year or so our admission ratio would be approximately 5-2-3: five being alcoholic, two would be what we call “heart cases” (natural affection towards women) and three representing aberrations involving homosexuality. More alarming still is that among these of the 3 out of 10 class, 2 out of 3 have been young priests. [citation needed]

Fitzgerald became increasingly convinced even then that such priests could not be cured, could not be trusted to maintain celibacy and should be laicized even against their will. Moreover, Fitzgerald opposed vehemently the return of sexual abusers to duties as priests in parish situations. Although some bishops refused to hire sexually abusive priests based on Fitzgerald’s refusal to recommend them for parish duties, others ignored Fitzgerald’s advice. In general, it appears that bishops chose to ignore Fitzgerald’s recommendations, preferring to rely on the advice of medical and psychological experts who asserted that treatment was feasible.

Warnings to the Church hierarchy
Over the next two decades, Fitzgerald wrote regularly to bishops in the United States and to Vatican officials, including the pope, of his opinion that many sexual abusers in the priesthood could not be cured and should be laicized immediately.. . .

Fitzgerald’s papers were unsealed by a judge in New Mexico in 2007 and were authenticated in depositions with Fitzgerald’s successors, said Helen Zukin, a lawyer with Kiesel, Boucher & Larson, a firm in Los Angeles.[8]. . .

Sexual abuse cases in Australia
Following the release of the findings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Australia, it was revealed that the Catholic Church in Australia had sent abusive priests and brothers for treatment with the Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete in New Mexico.

In December 1989, Ballarat priest Gerald Ridsdale was sent to the facility by his bishop, Ronald Mulkearns. The Director of Villa Louis Martin, Peter Lechner, wrote to Ridsdale on 3 October 1989, explaining the nature of the programme and inviting him to participate, explaining that the programme was both psychological and spiritual. In the first half of 1990, Mulkearns received at least five reports from the Villa Louis Martin facility regarding Ridsdale’s treatment. Lechner wrote to Mulkearns and asked that he either destroy the reports or return them to him after he finished reading them.

Following Ridsdale’s treatment, Lechner wrote to Mulkearns with a five point aftercare plan. Point three stipulated that ‘He (Ridsdale) will not engage in any ministry to minors and will not otherwise be in the company of minors unless accompanied by an adult.’ [10]

On 27 May 1993, three years after he returned to Australia, Ridsdale pleaded guilty to charges of child sexual abuse and was sentenced to imprisonment. He died in Port Phillip Prison, Truganina prison in February 2025.[11][12] On 4 October 1996, Mulkearns wrote to church lawyers Dunhill Madden Butler and informed them he had destroyed a letter from psychiatrist Eric Seal regarding Ridsdale’s sexual offending of children.

After decades sexually abusing children in residential institutions in New Zealand and Australia, in 1992 Bernard McGrath was brought to a secret meeting at St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney where he met with Brian Lucas, the man responsible with dealing with the Catholic Church’s abusive priests. McGrath’s religious order, the Hospitaller Order of St John of God, had known about his sexual offending for years, with multiple complaints being ignored or dismissed.[13]

Assessment
In April 2009, Blase Joseph Cupich then of Rapid City, South Dakota, Chairman of the United States Bishops Committee for the Protection of Children and Young People, explained why Father Fitzgerald’s advice “went largely unheeded for 50 years”: First, “cases of sexually abusive priests were considered to be rare.” Second, Father Fitzgerald’s, “views, by and large, were considered bizarre with regard to not treating people medically, but only spiritually, and also segregating a whole population with sexual problems on a deserted island.” And finally, “There was mounting evidence in the world of psychology that indicated that when medical treatment is given, these people can, in fact, go back to ministry.” This was a view which Cupich characterized as one that “the bishops came to regret.”[14]

Helen Zukin, a lawyer representing some of the plaintiffs against the Church, challenged this explanation, asserting that psychiatrists who worked at the Servants of the Paraclete’s centers have stated in legal depositions that they had rarely recommended returning sexually abusive priests to ministry, and only if the priests were under strict supervision in settings where they were not working with children.[14]. . .

Secrecy
In 1954, the former Franciscan priest Emmett McLoughlin published an autobiography, People’s Padre, which was the first book to make public the existence of the Jemez Springs establishment:

It will come as a surprise to most Americans to know that there are institutions in the United States to which priests are sent by the bishops without any trial. One is in Oshkosh, Wisconsin ... Another, supported by the hierarchy, is in Jémez Springs, New Mexico, near Albuquerque. The ‘crimes’ for which priests are sent to those institutions are generally alcoholism, insubordination, or lapses in the realm of celibacy.[20]

McLoughlin revealed a few more details about the Jemez Springs in a second book published in 1962: “The sexual affairs of priests in the U.S. are more closely guarded secrets than the classified details of our national defense.”[21]

https://thehuntfortomclancy.substack.com/p/ever-think-about-why-jeff-epstein

Ever Think About Why Jeff Epstein Called It Zorro Ranch
The Unfiltered, Raw Copy I turned in to a National Magazine on Epstein’s New Mexico Operation in 2019
The Hunt for Tom Clancy
Jul 26, 2025

. . .In 2019, I went to New Mexico to see what I could find out about secrets within the circle. Santa Fe, 23 miles away from Zorro as the crow flies, is the oldest colonial capital city in North America, one with a twisted history. The historic center of this small city in the foothills of the Sangre De Cristo mountains is the Plaza, an open-air park with a Haagen-Daas shop at one corner. This was once a drug store, Zooks Pharmacy, that doubled as a base for Russian espionage; in between filling prescriptions and ringing up customers, deep cover Stalinist spies here plotted the death of Leon Trotsky and later coordinated efforts to steal the secrets of the atomic bomb from Los Alamos (distance from Zorro Ranch: 50 miles).

There are also the sites where the Catholic Church hid pedophile priests in local parishes, until a tsunami of lawsuits from victims forced New Mexico’s largest diocese to file for bankruptcy last June. One of those places is in Jemez Springs, an isolated resort town in the middle of a melange of federal jurisdictions, Pueblo Nations, and National Forests. (Distance from Zorro Ranch: 50 miles. Here, the Catholic Church still operates one of two treatment centers in the United States for pedophile priests. They are treated by fellow members of the cloth who belong to an order called the Servants of the Paraclete — the paraclete, of course, being the Holy Ghost. One wonders about the mental health care available for the victims, or whether they will ever really rely on the paraclete again.

We travel inside the circle, from one abusive church to another. A little over 80 miles to the northwest of Zorro Ranch is Trementina Base, a bunker/vault complex owned by the Church of Spiritual Technology — an elite order within Scientology — with hardened rooms storing L. Ron Hubbard’s writings. Hubbard’s thoughts on Thetans will survive anything, as they’re reportedly inscribed on etched steel plates in titanium containers filled with inert argon gas. . .

Based on reports, testimonies, and media coverage regarding St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, the institution has faced significant criticism, particularly in the early 2000s, leading to negative characterizations.

“The Predator Factory” (or similar variations): Following revelations in 2005 that approximately 10% of graduates between 1950 and 2005 were accused of sexual abuse, critics and victims’ advocates heavily criticized the institution.

“The Gay School”: In the early 2000s, reports described a culture where some students and faculty reportedly deemed “being gay is not a big deal” or in which a “homosexual subculture” existed.

“Camp Camarillo”: A nickname used by critics to imply a, sometimes pejorative, homosexual subculture or a lax, cliquish environment at the seminary.

A friend of mine, after he graduated from St John’s Seminary, actually removed his shoes and left them behind.

[Catholic Caucus] Edward Feser’s lecture canceled by Catholic seminary while Fr. James Martin is allowed to speak

The Catholic philosopher lamented that he's 'not welcome to speak to seminarians about how to defend the Church’s teaching on the soul’s immortality' in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.