UNITED STATES
dotComonweal
Grant Gallicho
August 21, 2014
Read part one here.
“Dream with us,” read a 1999 Society of St. John promotional mailer, “of a small city with winding streets scattered with warm homes, fields with children playing, an amphitheater with drama and music, a schoolhouse and markets.” The city has a “magnificent church,” where daily “the bells call the families up the hill” for Mass, and a college, where students receive “the best of Catholic education.” This place—dreamed up by the Society of St. John and its founder, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity—would stand as a beacon of “healthy civil life in our declining society.” It would, according to the brochure, be nothing less than “a new foundation for Catholic culture.” It would also require something the Society of St. John evidently had no idea how to handle: money.
If the Society of St. John was going to build a seminary, a Catholic college, and a city, it would need breathing room. The SSJ turned to its lay advisory board, which had been recently established to help manage the organization’s financial affairs. These advisers were laypeople “who had a certain stature among those attached to the Latin Mass,” according to a report written by James Earley, then chancellor of the Diocese of Scranton. They included prominent conservative Catholics like John Blewett, president of the Wanderer Forum Foundation (now called the Bellarmine Foundation), which publishes the Wanderer, and Howard Walsh, then president of Keep the Faith, another conservative publishing outfit.
In consultation with the advisory board, the Society of St. John eventually settled on a thousand-acre piece of land in rural Shohola, Pennsylvania. With the permission of Bishop James Timlin, the SSJ purchased the land for nearly $2 million on September 16, 1999—just two days after the diocesan Review Board had considered an accusation of sexual misconduct against Urrutigoity, and found the evidence inconclusive.
Diocesan property is customarily deeded to the bishop, but the Society of St. John neglected to put Timlin on the title. Instead, the property was put in the name of the Society of St. John, which had incorporated as a nonprofit organization. On September 8, Fr. Eric Ensey of the SSJ wrote to Timlin to assure him that “we·will gladly follow your advice on all points”—including putting his name on the title as trustee. But days later the SSJ claimed that they weren’t sure how to put the bishop on the property—and the closing date was too near to add him. Timlin gave them a pass. “Rather than cause any kind of difficulty, it is perfectly all right with me to proceed as you requested,” he replied.
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