Incestuous, "elder abuse" by Staten Island priest

The verdict just came down in the case of the 86 year old Staten Island priest who was accused of compelling an adult, female relative to perform a sex act on him, while he was visiting Texas. Father Stephen Valenta, whose home was at the St. Francis friary- oops sorry- I meant the St. Francis Center for Spirituality- has been sentenced to five years probation after making a deal with the prosecutors and pleading no contest to a lesser charge of "injury to the elderly". He now will reside in a "monastery-type home for priests during his probation, and can't leave unless someone goes with him."
Except for a couple of cases, Staten Island really hasn't been touched by the church sex abuse scandal. Our priests may be apathetic, uninspiring, and sometimes heretical, but they seem to have kept their noses clean when it comes to the more vicious crimes, thank God. At first I thought this accusation was bogus. After all, how would it be possible for an 86 year old man, who by all accounts is in poor health, to force an adult woman to do such a thing? Also, several lay people who know him came forward to testify to his upright character. Now he pleads no contest to this charge and is sentenced to supervision in some sort of monastery/halfway house. Sure sounds like an admission of guilt to me. I see that his own "ministry" (which for some strange reason is based out of Iowa) seems to have stripped its website of every reference to him. Very sad.

Michael Voris on Staten Island

A few weeks ago I attended a speech by nascent Catholic celebrity Michael Voris at Holy Child church. Mr. Voris started a Catholic media company in 2008 and has recently begun to garner a lot of attention on the internet for his uncompromising orthodoxy and hard-hitting reporting on Catholic issues. Mr. Voris is a 48 year old Notre Dame graduate, a one time seminarian, and a former Emmy award-winning news anchor. At least that's what he's told us.

I have no reason to distrust him, but I'm finding it increasingly odd that I have not been able to find one single piece of independent information about this man on the internet, except for what he himself has revealed. And all of the various websites that rave about him are simply repeating the facts he's provided in his own biography and interviews. I have no solid reason to be suspicious, but I'd like to know a bit more about the man before I'm comfortable seeing him elevated to the position of orthodox Catholicism's public face in America. Where was he born? Who are his parents? Where did he go to school? Why did he leave seminary? Is he now or was was he ever married? Does he have children? Are there any skeletons in his closet that could potentially embarrass the Church and the faithful should they be revealed?


Barring my unease over how little we know about him, I really like the guy. He's a powerful and dynamic speaker, he's zealous and intelligent. So I was eager to hear him in person.

There were a lot of people at the church, although it was by no means full. It might have helped if it were advertised a bit more. The announcement I received said that he was speaking at 7:30, but the Stations of the Cross were just beginning at that time. I didn't mind. The Stations are always spiritually salutary. I'd never seen a priest just stand at the altar and recite the prayers though. Usually, they make the little pilgrimage to each station along the wall. I was disappointed at that. Anyway, Voris came on the stage at 8 and was introduced by the parish pastor.

His theme was "Christ and Caesar" or something to that effect. He spent too much time, in my opinion, merely reiterating the Gospel stories which we all know, but the speech was ultimately a rousing success. His peroration was especially fantastic. He said things that need to be said from Catholic pulpits over and over again, but never are. He basically told us how we need to suffer for the Faith, because there is no value in any other life than one in which we take up our Cross and follow Him. We need to be proud of our Catholicism and publicly witness to it, despite the repercussions. It was an excellent speech.

It made me feel ambivalent though. It was kind of odd to see a layman up there preaching the Gospel from the altar, with a priest sitting meekly in the first row. It made me sad that the clergy has so abdicated their responsibility to preach the Gospel with the power of the Spirit that we need a layman to get up there and give us spiritual meat. I for one have never in my entire life heard a priest speak with such passion and inspiration. I'm sure it was a novel experience for most of the people there as well. Still, I couldn't help feeling ashamed for the Church that a layman from Michigan had to come all the way to Staten Island, NY so we could be inspired with the Gospel message. This parish has multiple priests in residence. Why aren't they giving lectures and inspirational sermons on Friday nights? Why aren't they evangelizing? Why aren't they tending to the spiritual needs of the flock? Why did they need to bring in Michael Voris? (no offense to him).

One last thing- in keeping with Catholic tradition of audio ineptitude, the sound system completely failed at one point, but luckily it was only about 2 minutes before the end of his speech.

Mysticism, gay Jesuits, and Catholic abortion providers

Just a few links that piqued my interest: The first is this very perceptive article from the NY Times, about the death of mysticism in contemporary religion, specifically Catholicism. The writer is absolutely correct. When was the last time you felt transcendence in a Catholic Church? When was the last time you felt the Spirit of God at Mass?? The last time I felt those things in Church, my priest was a man who took his vocation and our Faith seriously, whose attitude spread to the entire congregation. What I see now in my church-shopping travels are priests who seem to view themselves as bureacrats or administrators of some sort, who rush through Mass in 30 minutes, who would rather tell jokes than preach repentance, who would prefer to talk about the Yankees than the Gospel.

The other article was also from the Times. It was the obituary of a gay Jesuit who was one of the key figures in the gay rights movement for over 30 years. There's a picture of him marching in a gay rights parade with 3 other priests, all wearing their clerical collars. Can someone tell me how this man was permitted to remain in the priesthood for one second after "coming out"?

The 3rd article is about how the group which represents Catholic hospitals has come out in support of President Obama's health care bill, despite the fact that abortion supporters are telling their people that it will allow federal funding of abortion.

Catholic Church Chopping, Part IX: The Purell Parish

The next place I visited was a North Shore church which had- for the usual reasons I suppose- (falling membership, lack of money) been administratively joined with a nearby parish whose membership has become predominantly Mexican. The church building was one of the uglier specimens of modern church architecture. The church space was square, with primitive, cartoonish stained glass windows adorning one wall and an enclosed chapel/cry room. The traditional paintings and statues only served to emphasize the incongruity with their surroundings. The heavy concrete ceiling resembled a packing crate and gave me the feeling like it was going to fall down on us at any moment. Directly over the altar the architect had installed a gigantic tube. The purpose, I assume, was to cast down light upon the priest. Instead, I kept expecting to hear a loud flush and see the appropriate product come flowing down the pipe.

The music chosen by the pianist was probably the worst I've ever heard. All of the songs were written in the 80s and 90s and were consequently horrible. No melody, no tempo, no life; just a bunch of random notes that made these hymns utterly un-singable. The lyrics were hippy-dippy and were supposed to convey joy, but the hymns were dirge-like when played. It was utterly depressing and discouraging. No one sang.

The priest spoke in an odd, sing-songy manner, which made me think he might have been drunk, but as he held himself pretty steady on his feet, I suppose it was just a vocal idiosyncrasy. His sermon actually made sense. He compared sin to drug addiction- how we start off with just a little bit and before we know it we're sinning more and more and can't stop. That would have been a great theme for a sermon, but unfortunately he delivered it as if his intended audience were 12 year olds. I would have loved to hear the adult version.

The most embarrassing part of the Mass took place after the handshake of peace. The priest came down into the aisles and shook hands with everyone in sight. When he returned to the altar, he took out a big bottle of Purell, dispensed himself a dollop, and spent 30 seconds rubbing his hands with it. He then left the bottle on the altar for the rest of the Mass, right next to the Body and Blood of Christ. First of all, it's incredibly insulting to shake hands with someone and then disinfect yourself right in front of them. If he's so concerned about catching swine flu, he should just forgo the handshake and remain at the altar, as most priests do. Secondly, leaving a bottle of Purell up there on the altar next to the Eucharist was sacrilegious in my opinion. He made himself, the Mass and our Faith look absolutely ridiculous.

On a positive note, this parish has Stations of the Cross, a Bible Study and is having a "Mission". However, in yet another instance of bizarre Catholic thinking, the Mission is held during the week at noon, and the Bible study is at 9AM on Saturday mornings. Come on- let's try to schedule these things so people can actually come!


I returned to this church again this week. The pianist had a small choir this time and the hymns were slightly better, although still sub-par. No one sang. There was a different priest this time, a mustachioed gentleman who looked like an old cowboy. He had a loud, booming voice, which was good. Unfortunately, his sermon rambled from one disconnected platitude to another. When the handshake time came, he too went and shook everyone's hands. As for the Purell, it retained its position of honor on the altar next to the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, Humanity's Savior and Lord of the Universe.

Archbishop to flock: "get off my back"

The Catholic New York contained an interesting article from the archbishop last week. Usually these columns from the throne aren't really worth reading, since their entire purpose is to say absolutely nothing and offend no one, but I found this one slightly noteworthy. Archbishop Dolan grudgingly acknowledges that there is a lot of criticism of priests in this archdiocese, but then petulantly belittles the criticism by 1. giving an anecdote about how the holy Cure de Ars (the patron saint of priests) was a target of criticism, and 2. how he (the Archbishop) gets complaints about his priests from both liberals and conservatives. The implication here is that 1. if even a saint was criticized in the past, that must mean that criticism of priests today is invalid and baseless, and 2. if both liberals and conservatives are complaining about priests, that must mean that the criticism is invalid, and that priests are talking a wise middle road.

Archbishop Dolan wallows in self-pity for a while, saying "[p]riests can't seem to win", it "seems 'open season' on priests", "[p]riests might as well hang a bull's eye on the clergy shirt", etc. Then he changes tack and attacks the critics with the charge that they are reviving the ancient heresy of Donatism!

This column was insulting, from a number of perspectives: his dismissal of the magnitude of the problem and the way he flippantly reduces the critic's legitimate complaints to "homilies or occasional crabbiness". Good Lord, it's so much more than that; just read my blog, just listen to your flock. For goodness sake, go undercover to one of your outer borough churches and see how your priests are driving the Church into the ground.

In addition, his liberal/conservative argument was sneaky, I thought. There are no liberal or conservative positions when it comes to Catholicism. There's either faithfulness to the Magisterium or unfaithfulness to the Magisterium, orthodoxy or heterodoxy. Put those terms in place of "liberal" and "conservative", and I think you'll see the actual basis of the respective complaints. The so-called conservatives are most likely complaining about heretical sermons, feminist nuns, gay rights advocacy, indifferentism, and all the rest of the panoply of outrages and active destruction that suffering Catholics have to deal with. The so-called liberal complaints most likely have to do with priests who show too strong a devotion to Catholicism, and too little dedication to the Democratic party agenda and progressive overthrow of our Faith. The point is that the real situation is not as rosy as it looks from the vantage point of the Cathedral, and if the Archbishop really doesn't know that, he should quickly inform himself, instead of defending the indefensible.

Catholic Church Shopping Part VIII: Little Italy

The next stop on the tour was a big church in a North Shore neighborhood of Staten Island known for its narrow, labyrinthine streets and its large Italian population. This neighborhood is home to a famous Marian shrine that is an official national historic site, where a big holy day celebration is held every year, which for some reason involves a lot of gambling and dancing to the oldies. Anyway...

The parish has been around since 1902, but the old church was replaced in 1957 with a tan brick structure, whose design and materials I have seen used in other boroughs around that time period. The Vatican II era church must have thought that Catholics were too spoiled by all those centuries of beauty and grandeur, so it decided that we needed to look at blank brick walls as penance. As a nod to the past, and to avoid total disorientation, a large Byzantine-style mural was painted in the apse. I noticed an Italian flag beside the altar, but no American or Vatican flag, but I may have overlooked them. The Stations of the Cross seemed to have been taken from the old church. The only bulletin was in Italian.

The pastor of this church, at only 38 years old, is already a real big shot in this archdiocese. He's a professor of canon law at the seminary in Yonkers and was recently appointed judicial vicar of the Interdiocesan Appellate Tribunal, which is the highest court in the state for annulment cases. I believe it was he who said the Mass I attended, as the priest was young and had an air of leadership.

It seemed surprisingly sparse for an 11:00 Mass, with maybe around 75 people. The organist sang from the usual canon of modern church music, which is to say that the hymns were nothing remarkable. They were not the worst she could have chosen though. Surprisingly for a Catholic church, a few people were actually singing along. She probably didn't want to push her luck though, so she didn't sing more than 1 verse of each hymn.

The only thing to remark on about the Mass was that the sound system was screwy, as is usually the case in Catholic churches. Like some primitive tribe cowering before their first encounter with a missionary's flashlight, the concept of electronic amplification seems incomprehensible and terrifying to Catholics. The sound system is usually just terrible in Catholic churches while, as I've often complained, the tiniest storefront church has enough hardware to host 50 Cent. We just don't seem to get it. The priest's lavalier worked fine, but the microphone at the pulpit was so bad that the lector was almost inaudible. We were able to make out when he stopped speaking, which was the only way we knew when to give the responses.

As for the sermon, the priest chose to speak about that day's second reading, which was Paul's famous disquisition on love (as an aside, the lector not surprisingly chose to read the short form of the reading. I will spare you my rant on that subject). The priest had a good speaking voice. However, his subject- love- was a difficult one, being so broad, and I'm afraid he wasn't up to the task that day: love, love, love, blah blah blah, love is a charism, love is a choice, etc. More vague and ethereal platitudes. I didn't follow any of it.

Incredibly, this Mass was yet another sprint to the finish line. Some local priests seem to be trying to break some sort of record. I timed it at 35 minutes.

Mt. Manresa

In our continuing pictorial documentation of Staten Island's Catholic institutions, today we'll look at Mt. Manresa Jesuit retreat house. I've previously written about some of the scandalous activities that go on at this place, but today I'm only dealing with images and history.

In 1911 the Jesuits purchased one of Staten Island's grand estates for the purpose of establishing a lay retreat center, as had become popular in Europe. In addition to the original 20-bedroom mansion, the Jesuits constructed several new buildings through the years. In 1964, the old house was knocked down and replaced with a modern conference center/office building/dining hall. A more complete history can be found here. The center continues to host a wide range of retreats and public programs. My class went there for a retreat in high school and I remember being very impressed by the facilities. I would not describe them as opulent, but to me the dark wood furniture, the well-stocked library, the soft arm chairs and the tasteful, serious decor was the last word in comfort, such as you would find in rectories, traditional funeral homes or the club room of a Victorian gentleman. If a man was going to give his life to the Church, I thought, this was the way he deserved to live. Anyway, here are some pictures.

The original mansion:


Its dining room:


The entrance:


The water tower, dating from the 1800s:


Shealy Hall, I believe:


Stairway up the hilltop...


...which has a great view of the Manhattan skyline


Entrance to the Sacred Heart grotto: