BishopAccountability.org
	Back to the Future Catholic World News October 3, 2007 http://www.cwnews.com/offtherecord/offtherecord.cfm?task=singledisplay&recnum=4408 Remember that much-vaunted "new and serious" Apostolic Visitation of the seminaries that was supposed to clean up Dodge City in the wake of the abuse scandal? OTR has from time-to-time expressed skepticism about the bishops' alacrity in having their own barracks inspected, and whatever findings the Visitation arrived at have heretofore remained under close wraps. Seminary Life Some concrete evidence concerning the success of the Visitation is provided by Matt Abbott in regard to the long-notorious St. Vincent's Seminary in Boynton Beach, Florida. Says Abbott: St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary recently sent out two vocation-recruiting catalogs [i.e., its Summer 2007 edition] to prospective seminarians. One version -- which contained only articles and no advertisements -- targeted straight men. The other version -- which did contain advertisements, including [one] with two bare-chested men standing next to each other in a hot tub -- targeted homosexual men. Abbott's column is illustrated by photos which he claims come from the magazine in question. If authentic, they put his read on the situation beyond doubt. A spokesman for the seminary says that the gay-oriented ads were inserted in error, by a printer who was also working on a different publication aimed at homosexual readers. If that is the case, then an inept printer has aggravated readers' unresolved concerns about the seminary. St. Vincent's gay problem is one of the most egregious and intractable among all U.S. seminaries. A 1995 article by Arthur Jones (which appeared in the National Catholic Reporter and is thus unlikely to be part of a right-wing witch hunt) reports on a former rector of St. Vincent's named Art Bendixen, who it appears was given the job when his sexual predations as chancellor of the Orlando Diocese made life in the chancery too hot for him: The [six] young men at various times in 1994 accused Bendixen of sex abuse during the 1980s. They came to a settlement with the Orlando diocese last year. Details were not disclosed. Bendixen was chancellor from 1984 to 1991, the year he was named rector of St. Vincent de Paul Seminary, Boynton Beach. In 1992, an 18-year-old student at a Miami seminary alleged that during a missionary group trip to Santo Domingo that year, Bendixen attempted to seduce him. Church authorities confirmed that an initial investigation by church authorities cleared Bendixen; three St. Vincent Seminary priests demanded a deeper inquiry. A second inquiry, headed by then Miami Archbishop Edward McCarthy again found no reason for proceeding against Bendixen. When Bendixen was cleared, the three priests resigned in protest from the staff of St. Vincent. The three protesting priests were clearly too far ahead of their time, and we have reason to believe that their disgust at the Bendixen whitewash led at least one of them to leave the priesthood altogether. After his many, many years of influence as chancellor-rector-chickenhawk, Bendixen was finally forced to resign under public pressure. However, as the gay-targeted magazine ads indicate, his spirit lives on. A two-track recruiting campaign pivoting on sexual orientation is not an accident. It doesn't happen without connivance of the authorities. You can't chalk it up to a secretarial blunder when you lay-out, pay for, and publish separate "market-targeted" editions of the same magazine and then use your pastors to seed them. Abbott says he was told the hot-tub edition has been "recalled" (did they fax the pastors asking that they mail them back?), but the men who launched the campaign in the first place are still in place, That means they're still doing the gate-keeping.
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