ALBANY (NY)
Spirit Daily
By Michael H. Brown
There's a book by a famous novelist named William Kennedy called O, Albany! I guess I'd headline this article the same.
I can not tell a lie: back when we lived in Albany, New York, there were certain "problems" in the diocese. The first priest I spoke to there was a traditionalist who had splintered from Rome. He was a nice guy, and I think sincere, but he ended up doing time in jail for theft from the parish. The next priest I saw was the pastor of a church who during Mass acted in a way that I found immediately upsetting with an altar boy. This was ten years before the abuse scandal. Was I seeing things? I knew I was not. Next was the priest who was supposed to do our pre-Cana. We went elsewhere when he gave us a marriage guide that endorsed masturbation (which is explicitly condemned in the Catechism). He also had a plaque saying something to the effect of "Respect Mother Earth," which seemed a bit New Age. Then we met a young priest at a rather hidden shrine, and enjoyed his orthodox views. We invited him over for dinner. Before he came he said he wanted us to know that he had been "falsely accused" of sexual abuse back in Massachusetts. We decided to postpone dinner.
At another nearby parish, I had two discussions with the pastor, first because a new priest there was not elevating the Host (in his humility, he started to do that when I sent him a Missal; he said he didn't know he had to raise it); the second with the pastor because the altar girls were wearing skirts halfway between the knees and hips. (Fortunately, he changed that to attire that fell to their ankles.) When we went to classes at that same church for the Baptism of our first child, the layman leading the group said that Baptism was what you made it -- that it didn't matter if you took it as a religious sacrament or as a simple occasion to have friends over and celebrate.
At the closest parish to our home was a nationally-known charismatic priest. When he couldn't come to dinner (he said he didn't do dinner at private homes), I wondered a bit, and later he made headlines when he was barred from priestly duties (and from even wearing a collar) when it was learned that he too admitted abuse.