FROM THE PRESIDENT'S KITCHEN TABLE
Dear Readers,
My son does a great imitation of a comedian named Emo Phillips. One
of Emo’s routines has a great punchline, “Ambiguity…the
devil’s volleyball.” I recalled Emo recently during an e-mail
exchange with Fr. Stephen Rossetti, CEO of St. Luke Institute in Silver
Spring, a treatment center for priests with problems, or one might call
it a problem treatment center for priests. St. Luke has a troubling history.
We cover a little of it in The Twilight Zone and there’s more on
our website and in a thickening envelope in my filing cabinet.
Trying to pin down Fr. Rossetti on the truth about St. Luke is like trying
to nail jello to the wall. Father claims St. Luke is Catholic through
and through. But can his word be trusted? Or are we playing a volleyball
match? He sent me a glowing three-page “visitation report”
by the Archdiocese of Washington. I couldn’t help wondering if it
has the same value as the Vatican-required 1981 seminary visitations described
by Chuck Wilson of the St. Joseph Foundation as a “total sham.”
Cardinal McCarrick is not himself an icon of trust for orthodox Catholics.
I wasn’t raised to be a critical thinker and it got me into trouble
as a young person, because I trusted everyone in authority. Blindly. Every
doctor was Albert Schweitzer. Every priest was Jesus. Every teacher was
Annie Sullivan. I was easy to fool. My moral theology teacher propagandized
for situation ethics. I bought the lie. On a college retreat a priest
convinced me my Church was “outdated.” My ob/gyn did abortions
on the side. I found it out many years after he convinced me to allow
him to induce my second child for his own convenience.
What opened my eyes and made me a critical thinker? The pro-life movement.
Abortion is a black and white issue if there ever was one. No shades of
gray. No ambiguity. Murdering the innocent is immoral. Period! If doctors
could be Joseph Mengele, then teachers could be Joseph Goebbels. Priests
could be Martin Luther. It should have been obvious. But I was a starry-eyed
idealist, a naif who wanted to believe the best of everyone. Disillusion
made me grow up and realize that some people don’t deserve trust.
How do you know? One measure is clarity. Truth is like a glass of distilled
water – crystal clear. No impurities, no ambiguity, no beating around
the bush. Say yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. How does
Fr. Rossetti measure up on the clarity scale? The glass is cloudy. How
does he measure up in the volleyball game? He’s playing both sides
of the net. Serve: “One of my first acts as President of Saint Luke
Institute was to discontinue using the penile plethysmographies.”
Volley: he apparently allowed the immoral test for years. Serve: “I
believe everything the Church teaches about human sexuality.” Volley:
His silence indicates he used the gravely immoral test with his own patients
and he has downplayed the homosexual nature of the sex abuse crisis and
denies homosexual abuse is a problem. Serve: “I am grateful for
the witness of the great saints.” Volley: But he quotes secularists,
an occultist and a heretic in his presentation – not a single saint.
Father’s words and actions set him squarely on both sides of the
volleyball net. So who is he? The devout Catholic priest in total conformity
with the teaching of the Church? Or the homosexualist who sees no problem
with “age-appropriate” sodomy? I wish I knew.
It pains me to say it, because I would like to trust everyone, but I have
no reason to trust Fr. Rossetti and a growing number of reasons to distrust
him. When someone won’t give you a straight answer to a direct question
you wonder what he’s hiding. But I have promised Fr. Rossetti prayers
and I urge our readers to pray for him as well.