New Age Scum

I spent over a decade as a Jesuit with vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I’ve known and talked with hundreds of priests and seminarians, members of religious orders, and parish priests. They are scholars, missionaries, mystics, teachers and preachers, gay and straight, celibate and non-observant. The vast majority are dedicated men and women who follow the way of Jesus and give of themselves to help others. I knew only three men who were in any way implicated in the sex abuse scandals that rocked the foundations of the church, and only one had inappropriate contact with adolescent boys. Two spent time in prison. All paid dearly for their behavior, careers and lives in shatters. 

Of course, we are dealing with human nature, and human nature being what it is, we can be sure that the problem still exists. The best we can do is set some ethical standards, try to enforce them, and ensure some consequences are in place to act as a deterrent.

However, don’t imagine that sexual abuse is confined to Roman Catholic priests and religious. People like me who think that leaving the church of your mothers and fathers opened up vast fields of honey and bliss will find that some issues do not disappear by substituting one religious pantheon for another. 

What is it with these guys?

And they are always guys. I am going to talk about two cases of men in New Age groups who had to know that their sexual acting out was immoral but did it anyway. When it threatened to become public knowledge, they were swift to duck for cover. Words no longer had any meaning; it’s all circumlocution. This is, for me, key for discerning the pathology. Cardinal Edward Egan was caught in a nasty argument about condemning gay priests for the cost of paying retribution to abuse victims. His response was classic: "I would just say this. The most important thing is to clean up the truth. And the truth is I have never said anything." Of course, the truth is, Your Eminence, that you said many things. Just because your statements were lies and double talk does not cancel them out or make us deaf. They just require cleaning up. (Hint: the truth doesn’t need a thorough cleaning. It’s us, Eminence).

But before I discuss the cases of two men I know personally, I want to talk a bit about the public discussion of sex abuse. It seems there are two paths, and both have severe limitations. One is complete denial and silence; the other involves talking too much. 

Swami Muktananada hid behind the religious persona of a holy man and never admitted to having sex with underage girls. It came to light after he died. The religious sect he established continues to say nothing. The irony is that everyone knows about his sexual behavior. If followers believe in Sidda Yoga and his successor, Gurumayi, they are asked to participate in the public lie, and Muktananda gets away with his sins in the name of a higher good. The brother of his anointed successor was expelled from the group for sexual misconduct, and his name was expunged like a scapegoat. The income stream was protected.

The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was also a serial abuser, but he never pretended to be a celibate holy man. In Osho’s case, drugs clouded the picture. In my view, neither were models for living a spiritual life. It is stupid to rely on Muktananda, Gurumayi, or Rajneesh as role models to guide a life of integrity.

My example of talking too much is a man I knew who wrote a book hoping to become the poster boy of registered sex offenders. Jake Goldenflame was convicted for molesting his daughter, served a jail sentence, and then worked hard to get on Opray to talk about it. He wrote Overcoming Sexual Terrorism: 40 ways to protect your children from sexual predators (2004). I spoke with him weekly when he began his project. He eventually hired a ghostwriter with a track record and produced his book. His goal was to become the expert on protecting children against the likes of himself. In the end, to quote one of his critics, Kathleen Parker (April 2, 2005, The Spokesman-Review): “His self-outing is a form of therapeutic confession that purges his own demons while imposing them on the rest of us. He feels better, and we need a bath. Our passive complicity constitutes, if not tacit approval, at least a level of involuntary involvement that is both voyeuristic and prurient.” I should not have tried to help him. He defended his pathology by refusing to deal with it. He set a trap, and I fell for it, I suspect, out of some impulse to be fair-minded and even-handed. I didn’t recognize the pathology, and the pathology remained unchallenged.

_____________

I write with a heavy heart. On June 28th, my great friend Stan Stefancic died; We communicated briefly after he was diagnosed with cancer, and I tried to express how much I appreciated our friendship over the years. I remembered our conversations. We could talk to each other in a no-holds-barred way, even when we disagreed. Our worldviews overlapped, and we generally held similar opinions and assessments. The bone of contention was what actions were appropriate. Stan was far more conservative, supporting the status quo. Me, I am no company man.

There was one situation where the obligation of friendship prevented me from talking openly about a case of sexual exploitation by a man we both knew. Now I can talk about it. Before, the consideration that he and this man were also friends held me back. Stan used his considerable skills to try to craft a settlement to address the young girl’s needs. He failed. I remained hesitant to write, endlessly weighing the pros and cons. However, I am no longer obligated to be silent, or perhaps it has become the obligation of friendship to speak up, and I have been freed to speak. What I wish to discuss goes far beyond friendship.

The other case is a man who abused his daughter. I’ve known him for many years. We were in Claudio Naranjo’s SAT Group. I heard about his abuse from his wife whom I’ve known for decades. The mothers of both girls are dear friends, and I trust them to talk with their daughters and speak the truth. These mothers also tell me they do not talk a lot about the incidents because it restimulates the abuse. 

I cannot name names. Both the men I’ve talked about are still alive. In neither case was there a formal accusation or trial. The man from the SAT Group disappeared into obscurity in a small town on the East Coast, and the other still has a position in the Hoffman Institute. I do not have the resources to undertake an investigation, nor would it be appropriate. I am not a party to the injury. Their mothers have not taken legal action. They need to create a safe space so that their daughters have a chance to heal—another reason why abuse remains in the dark. 

However, in a broader sense, we were all injured by both men’s abuse. This is what I want to talk about. It is a difficult conversation for all of us in the spiritual community because it reflects poorly on the work of personal self-observation I value. Like the priests of my youth or Swami Muktananda, who provided comfort and reconciliation and then destroyed it, these men's actions have obstructed the path of introspection for other people. 

But we must find ways to talk about sex abuse. One of the mothers wrote, “It’s difficult to even think about. And when this happened in your own family, it’s really hard to believe it. Yet they can’t remain hidden since they’re incredibly toxic if they do.” The first step seems to be to admit that there is abuse. 

However, just holding abusers accountable does not seem to be enough. Looking at the history of a few very high-profile cases in the Zen community leaves me with the impression that permission to blame tends to restrict the conversation to blame. Communities write up what they consider to be clear ethical statements for their members and teachers or others in positions of trust and then imagine that they have fulfilled their responsibility. But the cycle of blame does not end. Sometimes, removal and discipline of the offender bring back some semblance of normalcy, but in almost all the cases I am familiar with, there is a stubborn layer of rehashing the argument that persists. Why?

Is it because the insult to our sexuality is so intimate that it touches a deep level of personal trauma--a trauma that remains unresolved and ever ready to raise its nasty interior argument? Was it that the trauma was never really addressed? Denial has thousands of dark paths. That was my situation when Bob Hoffman’s sexual abuse surfaced many years later. 

Is it because, in our attempts to be OK with co-workers of sangha members, we gloss over the subtle, covert, and offensive sexual messages that come from a staff member who had been deeply involved in a sex cult before he or she sought therapy? We’ve simply failed to identify the depth of the pathology. This was the situation with Jake Goldenflame.

Is it because after the sexual revolution of the Summer of Love, the new normal has become so muddied the water that personal boundaries are weak and ineffective? There is a thin line between setting boundaries and not judging individual choices. In cases of pedophilia, the harm is so clear that it should not be hard to keep boundaries, but in many cases, the boundaries vanish. That was undoubtedly the case of many Roman Catholic bishops and religious superiors who chose saving face over weeding out and exposing the relatively few priests and religious who abused young men and women and nearly destroyed an institution that has guided and comforted men and women for thousands of years,

Was it that in these cases, the sexual nature of the abuse forces it underground, and when it surfaces, the sudden reaction is uncontrollable? Or is it instead that we, despite our practice, have not been able to move past “the blame game?” 

It is our obligation. The practice points to the only way we can heal: deal with our reactions, settle what was hiding, and examine ourselves before and after we lay blame. Of course, it will be different for each of us. Because I cannot recommend a general fix-all, it does not free us from the obligation of dealing with ourselves.

None of the above discussion, however, removes any consequences for an abuser’s actions. I will tell anyone connected to the Hoffman Institute, directly and without hesitation--you are complicit. You can ask some hard questions if you are considering one of their programs. The organizers allowed this man to escape with no consequences, personal or financial. He is still in good standing within the organization and in the financial stream. And they have failed in their first duty as a therapist, “to do no harm.” They’ve poisoned the well. 

Don't Ask, Don't Tell—A Jesuit Strategy

Originally posted January 6th, 2008; revised July 12th, 2021

A Catholic friend who is also gay asked me how I felt about pedophile Jesuits having their despicable histories show up in the news, and the courts. After cleaning up the common confusion between pedophilia and homosexuality—it’s imperative to keep them separate even when they overlap as in the clergy scandal—I began reflecting on my own history, other gay men I knew in religious life, my experience living with my vows as a Jesuit, and my decision to leave.

I recalled two conversations I had with Avery Dulles. Avery was my friend, mentor and spiritual director. He knew my life; he’d met my parents and my friends; he tolerated my leftwing political views. His questions about my interests, my reading habits, even the issues I had working with certain professors were always insightful and never judgmental. He also knew about my struggle with my sexuality. His advice in each and every case if I asked for it, and sometimes when I didn’t, was clear and even-handed. He never let me down. I really mean never.

One afternoon in the Spring of 1973, Avery and I were walking together up Riverside Drive towards 120th and the classrooms Woodstock used at Union Theological. He asked me about a panel I was organizing about a Christian response to the Stonewall Riots in '69, only 4 years earlier. I’ve lost the particulars of the conversation, but what remains clear about that bright afternoon—he was not hesitant to link my personal struggle with Stonewall, and he let me know that if I wanted to live a productive and fulfilling life as a Jesuit and a gay man, it was entirely possible, and I could count on his support. But that to make it work, I would have to live as a fully committed Jesuit, including celibacy. My memory is of a man so human, so compassionate, and a true friend. He was also the only faculty to attend the panel discussion I organized.

After I'd left the Jesuits, we still maintained our friendship. Our last visit was in 2001, just when Pope John Paul made him a Cardinal. Driving him back to his room at Santa Clara University after a dinner organized by a mutual friend, I asked what he thought about the erupting sexual scandals that were beginning to rock the very foundations of the church.

He said that his first response was profound embarrassment—men with whom we both shared the ideals of Ignatius took advantage of their position as priests to prey on teenage boys and young adults. But then he hesitated. He said that the word embarrassed is not exactly right—he said “profoundly disappointed” might be closer. He was embarrassed for the institutional church he loved and supported, but, like me, was personally disappointed in the men with whom he thought he shared some altruistic spirit. In retrospect I think that ``disappointed” was still a euphemism. He felt betrayed.

I too have experienced the power of the Spiritual Exercises, and felt the enthusiasm and vision of Ignatius who was a religious genius. I was naive enough to believe that every priest, every Jesuit, would not sexually abuse another human, and I also believed that I had enough experience with human nature to recognize the shadowy demons that most every human has. What I learned was that not every priest is an idealist, and my experience of human nature was limited.

I felt I shared that deep feeling with so many Jesuits I admired, Arrupe, Berrigan, Chardin, Colombiere, Drinan, Faber, Nobili, Ricci, la Salle, to name just a few famous ones, but many others, ordinary men who lead prayerful, inspired lives for a few years or a lifetime, Charlie, Joe, Thom, Joep, Kaiser, TJC, Morgan, Neal, Bob, Jan, Freddie, Ray and many more. These men were and continue to be interested in dedicating their lives to help others. They are still my heroes.

But my friend’s question was not theoretical. Two Jesuits who were in the novitiate with me were credibly accused of molesting young men in their care. A man who was at one time a close friend took advantage of his position as a military chaplin to have sex with enlisted men and went to prison. Later when I was working at an AIDS-related non-profit, I knew another priest who was dismissed for having consentual sex with a young man just months before his 18th birthday.

My reaction was tremendous sorrow for those who placed their trust in a person they thought close to the teachings of Jesus, a conduit for God’s mercy and forgiveness, but were manipulated. This is not how the universe is supposed to work. This cannot be the world that Jesus has saved, or the Mystical Body that believers hold up as a beacon to the world.

There was still some piece of the puzzle missing. I could hardly believe that the pathology of pedophile priests wasn't checked. Was a bishop or religious superior not being responsible? The evidence seems to point in that direction.

I noticed that the institutional response in every diocese and religious order across the United States was always the same: stonewall all investigations and never admit guilt. There were of course plenty of apologies, especially from those whose behavior was the most egregious, Law and Mahony. As one commentator said, profound apologies are not an admission of wrongdoing. Airlines routinely issue profound apologies to families of those killed in a crash caused by mechanical failure or an "act of God," as the insurance companies’ liability claims quaintly phrase it. The game seemed to be protecting the assets and “good name” of the institution which precludes any admission of guilt. “Our lawyers will not allow us to comment any further. Thank you. Next question?”

The institutional response did not address anyone’s real concerns. When asked why he did not tell parishioners the reason he removed a priest who was arrested having sex with teenage boys in the back of a car, a Jesuit Provincial said: "Why should they [need to know]? This is an Internet cruising thing. This is anonymous sex. This doesn't involve people at the parish. It wasn't a priest thing. He wasn't dressed in a collar." No, he actually was in drag with lipstick and blush. Apparently the private life and professional conduct of a priest were now separate and distinct, something I had never learned in the 11 years that I trained to be a Jesuit. People under pressure say and do stupid things.

I never had any inappropriate contact with a minor during the time I was a Jesuit. It was simply unthinkable, even in a time when the freedoms felt after John XXIII’s aggiornamento were leading to all kinds of experimentation. It was unthinkable, and yet it happened.

I took my friend’s question as an opportunity to look again into the situation more deeply, and this time include an examination of my own responsibility as a gay man with a vow of celibacy, to see if I could find in myself something beyond embarrassment, disappointment, blame, or, yes, even relief.

My last years in the Jesuits were very difficult and painful for me. I wanted to be a Jesuit, but I found celibate life extremely difficult, and I intended to honor my solemn promises if I remained in the Society. I was in therapy dealing with my own self-sabotage, self-loathing, and unconscious homophobia—parts of myself that lagged behind my intellectual acceptance, but there was never any real doubt in my mind that being gay was totally OK, healthy and a perfectly acceptable way of living in the world.

It is an open secret that there are thousands of gay men throughout the Roman clergy, members of religious orders, and even the hierarchy. It is also no secret that the official position of the magisterium is that homosexuality is “disordered.” And the solution to this contradiction for most gay priests, even if they have never broken their vow of celibacy—Secrecy! You might talk about it with your partners, if you have any, perhaps your superiors, perhaps your confessor, but never go public. Or as I say in the header for this post: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. That is the first commandment.

Never having been circumspect about my own opinions or process, I was very open within the Jesuit community when I was coming out. I broke the first commandment.

Perhaps John McNeill had the same experience. If he had not come out openly "as a Jesuit priest, as a moral theologian, as a psychotherapist, as a person who is himself gay, and as a human being," he might have able to maintain his comfortable psychotherapy practice on the Upper West Side. I cannot answer that question for John, and I do not know if he would agree. But this I do know, if I had not come out fully as a gay man, I would have missed out on being able to know and express some of the deepest emotions that a human being can feel. For me there never really was any choice, but that non-choice, for some very difficult reasons, was the hardest choice of my life.

Most gay priests do not have that opportunity. They are forced to obey a pact of complete silence, and the cult of secrecy starts right at the top.