CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2020 / 04:35 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of New Orleans said Friday that a priest’s filming of a pornographic videotape atop a church’s altar was demonic, and that the priest will never again serve in Catholic ministry.
Fr. Travis Clark’s “obscene behavior was deplorable,” Aymond said in a statement released by the Archdiocese Oct. 9.
“His desecration of the altar in Church was demonic. I am infuriated by his actions. When the details became clear, we had the altar removed and burned. I will consecrate a new altar tomorrow,” Aymond said.
Clark is a New Orleans priest who was arrested Sept. 30 on obscenity charges, when he was observed filming himself in a sexual act with two women atop an altar in his Louisiana parish. The priest was removed from ministry, although the archdiocese did not disclose in detail what had happened; which was described in court records made public Oct. 9.
Clark, 37, was the pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul in Pearl River, Louisiana. He was arrested together with Mindy Dixon, 41, and Melissa Cheng, 23.
A local resident told police they noticed the lights were on in the parish church, and upon looking in the windows, saw the three engaged in sexual activity on the altar.
According to reports, the altar of the church had been outfitted with stage lighting.
Dixon is a pornographic performer and “dominatrix.” According to Nola.com, she had posted on her social media the day before her arrest that she was headed to New Orleans to “defile a house of God” alongside another “dominatrix,” presumably Cheng.
Police believe the sexual encounter to have been consensual, and have not filed charges related to sexual assault. The obscenity charge stemmed from the fact that the sex act was visible from a window.
Clark was ordained a priest in 2013, and became the pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul in 2019.
He had recently been named the chaplain of Pope John Paul II High School in Slidell, Louisiana, replacing another priest who resigned this summer. That priest, Fr. Pat Wattingy, was also suspended from public ministry Oct 1, after he admitted to abusing a minor in 2013.
It was subsequently reported that Wattingy had sent a series of inappropriate text messages to a student at the high school dating back to February; although the student’s parents alerted the archdiocese, school administrators were not told, and Wattingy was allowed to remain in ministry at the school until the end of the academic year.
In his statement Friday, Aymond did not indicate when he became aware of the nature of Clark’s arrest.
Aymond did not say whether Clark will face canonical charges. Canon law provides that a Catholic who profanes an altar can be punished with a “just penalty,” and that a priest who has “committed an offense against the sixth commandment…publicly” can be laicized.
The archbishop’s statement also addressed Wattingy. Aymond said the priest would never again serve in public ministry, and defended an archdiocesan decision not to remove Wattingy from the school when reports that he was sending inappropriate text messages first arose in February.
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New York City, N.Y., Feb 11, 2019 / 07:00 pm (CNA).- The Archdiocese of New York has said it had only recently learned of an allegation that the deeply influential Cardinal Francis Spellman groped a visiting West Point cadet in the 1960s, but says it w… […]
Michelangelo’s The Creation of Eve, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, c. 1510. / null
Denver, Colo., Nov 15, 2022 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Michelangelo’s artistic masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel broke new ground in portraying the dynamic creative acts of God, but his work also depicts the combined importance of men and women through all of sacred history, art historian Elizabeth Lev has said.
“The spirit of artistic adventure led the artist to experiment with a completely new vision of creation,” Lev said Nov. 12. “He took a book that had been painted, sculpted, mosaiced, and illuminated over and over again in the history of art and created something completely new.”
She spoke at the closing keynote Saturday evening at the fall conference of the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Lev teaches at the Rome campus of Duquesne University and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Her speech, “Creation, Complementarity, & St. John Paul II in Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling,” focused on one of the key artistic treasures of Vatican City.
The 16th-century Florentine artist Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and the upper section of its walls. This was the artist’s focus from 1508 to 1512. He later finished the Last Judgment above the chapel altar from 1535 to 1541.
The ceiling frescoes show the creation of the heavens and the earth, the creation of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the great flood, and the rebirth of humankind through Noah.
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s description of Michelangelo’s work in his poem “Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel.”
“It is the book of the origins — Genesis,” the pope said. “Here, in this chapel, Michelangelo penned it, not with words, but with the richness of piled-up colors. We enter in order to read it again, going from wonder to wonder.”
Lev reflected on the first three panels depicting the creation of the world. These show “the mighty dynamic figure of God the Father at work.”
“It’s not what God creates, it’s that God creates,” she said. Michelangelo broke ground in portraying God as “physically engaged in creation.” For Lev, this offers “a preview of the Incarnation.”
Turning to Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Creation of Adam, Lev noted that the artist depicts “just God and the creature formed in his likeness.” Adam is shown as “somewhat listless” in contrast with God’s energy. Adam is “sentient and awake but he has no will or strength or purpose to rise,” she said. “He looks completely passive and dependent despite that incredibly beautiful form.”
“It’s God who reaches towards man,” she continued. For Lev, the outstretched finger of God makes the viewer “almost lean forward in his seat waiting for that final Act of Creation, the divine spark, the Breath of Life that will release that latent energy and allow Adam to take his place as the greatest of creations.”
“This is the joy in humanity that permeates the Renaissance,” Lev said.
There is academic debate over a female figure shown in the Creation of Adam. As God the Father stretches out one arm to Adam, his other arm curls around a female figure. Some have identified this figure as Wisdom, some as Mary.
Lev suggested it is best to identify this figure as Eve, both because the figure provides visual balance to Adam and because her gaze “connects her more intimately with Adam.”
The creation of Eve from Adam, depicted next on the chapel ceiling, shows Eve emerging from Adam’s side with her hands clasped in prayer, an image of the Church and the personification of Mary, the “Second Eve.”
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s 1999 homily inaugurating the newly restored Sistine Chapel, after centuries of grime and soot were removed. The pope called the chapel the “sanctuary of the theology of the human body,” alluding to his catecheses offered from 1979 to 1984. The pope suggested that Michelangelo allowed himself to be guided by the Book of Genesis’ depiction of mankind in Eden: “the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.”
Before the fall, Lev commented, Michelangelo depicted Adam and Eve in the state of grace as “two of his most beautiful figures.”
“They are filled with dynamism. They’re buoyant. They’re luminous,” Lev said, adding that their bodies “suggest immortality.” After the fall, however, both of their bodies “lose their luminosity” and appear heavier, like a burden. Adam’s shoulder seems to force Eve into the background, “subjugating her.”
For Lev, the artistic depiction of the genealogy of Jesus Christ also deserves attention. The portrayal of the ancestors of Jesus Christ shows “a genealogy of men and women struggling from generation to generation.” These figures seem “more approachable” and “much more similar to candid family photographs.” Even though 22 women in Jesus’ genealogy are not named, Michelangelo pairs them with their husbands.
Lev noted that Michelangelo broke with artistic convention both by including mothers and by showing them as busy, everyday women “tending to toddlers, toilettes, and tasks.” His style of painting them with “incredible immediacy” adds observations of human nature: Eleazar’s wife holds the purse strings and the key to the house, and her husband looks “startled” as she surveys their son. Other depictions are “tender and intimate,” like the portrayal of the wife of Manasseh, who cradles a swaddled son while rocking an infant’s cradle.
Here, Lev drew on John Paul II’s 1995 “Letter to Women.” He wrote that womanhood and manhood are complementary at the physical, psychological, and even ontological level.
“It is only through the duality of the masculine and the feminine that the human finds full recognition,” the pope said. “To this unity of the two, God has entrusted not only the work of procreation and family life but the creation of history itself.”
Lev noted that the passing of generations “necessarily emphasizes the begetting of children.” This means that the complementarity of the sexes is essential for a population to form and for creation to continue.
In Michelangelo’s portrayal of the Last Judgment, the artist still looks back to creation but also breaks new ground. He placed Mary next to Christ, as “a foil to Christ’s sternness.”
“She is the picture of mercy gazing down towards the elect, placed by the wound in Christ’s side whence the Church sprang,” Lev said. “Mary is transfigured into the Bride of Christ, for whom he gave his life and to whom he cannot say no. She is the conduit to Christ, as Eve was the link between God and man in the creation of woman.”
For Lev, the Sistine Chapel shows the “incredible gift of creation” from the beginning of the world down through the generations, “through which all of us today are a part of that continuation of creation.”
Denver Newsroom, Oct 25, 2020 / 04:04 pm (CNA).- The upcoming beatification of American priest Father Michael McGivney is a time for celebration and reflection for southern Illinois’ Father McGivney Catholic High School, named for the founder of the Knights of Columbus who lived a life of service before dying in a pandemic.
“After the first couple of years teaching about (McGivney), I realized just how much this school is set up in a way that sees him as a model for what we do,” Craig Brummer, faith formation director at the high school, told CNA Oct. 23.
“His care, particularly for widows and orphans, has been a constant reminder that the most vulnerable always need our help,” Brummer added. “His example helps me remember what I am called to do, and his intercession continues to help this school work towards its vocation of helping shape committed followers of Jesus Christ.”
McGivney will be beatified October 31 at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, Connecticut.
Pope Francis approved McGivney’s first miracle in May. The miracle involved an unborn child in the United States who was healed of a life-threatening condition in utero in 2015 after his family prayed for McGivney’s intercession.
Following his beatification, McGivney’s cause will require one more authenticated miracle before he can be considered for canonization.
The priest founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882, with an eye towards providing spiritual aid to Catholic men and financial help to the widows and orphans of its members. Today it is the world’s largest Catholic fraternal service organization, with close to two million members worldwide.
Father McGivney Catholic High School opened in fall 2012 with just 19 students, after seven years of preparations. It is located in Glen Carbon, Illinois, a town of some 12,000 people about 15 miles northeast of St. Louis.
For the high school’s president, Fr. Jeffrey Goeckner, V.F., the success of the school is itself a miracle.
“To date, Father McGivney Catholic High School has successfully educated and faithfully formed over 400 students while promoting ‘A Culture of Life’. Truly a miracle,” Goeckner said in a statement.
Brummer said the beatification is “uniquely special for us,” as the high school is the only U.S. Catholic high school to have McGivney as a namesake.
McGivney, who was born in Waterbury, Conn. in 1852, played a critical role in the growth of the Catholic Church in the United States in the latter part of the 19th century. After his ordination in Baltimore in 1877, he served a largely Irish-American and immigrant community in New Haven.
He was serving as a parish priest during the pandemic of 1889-1890 when he became seriously ill with pneumonia. McGivney died on Aug. 14, 1890, at the age of 38. His contemporaries remembered him for his charity towards the poor, his sympathy to those suffering afflictions, his approachability, his cheerfulness and his integrity.
Brummer said McGivney’s own life offers lessons for students.
“When we offer the life of Fr. McGivney as an example of Christian discipleship, they can see that the life that he lived, as a Catholic, a child of immigrants, a priest, and a son of a deceased father, had plenty of points of connection,” he told CNA. “One year, I presented a lesson that asked students to choose someone in their life who reminded them of Fr. McGivney. Of course, the people themselves were a wide variety, but even the reasons why they reminded them of McGivney were just as varied.”
The school closes each day with a final prayer for McGivney’s canonization, Brummer said. This daily prayer calls him “an apostle of Christian family life” and invokes his work caring for “the needy and the outcast.”
“If the people who pray the prayer listen to the words, it would be hard to not be edified by the life of the man for whose intercession we are praying.”
Elizabeth Moody, the high school’s development and marketing director, said the school will celebrate McGivney’s beatification during “an intimate, socially distanced event,” live streamed to the internet.
“Father McGivney spent his entire priesthood in parish ministry and died of pneumonia on August 14, after falling ill amid a pandemic,” Moody said. “Our students can relate to Fr. McGivney on so many levels: he was young, he was rooted in service, he lived during a pandemic, and he followed the path the Lord set for him. What a wonderful reminder to our students that they too should work towards becoming saints.”
The high school will host a virtual beatification celebration Oct. 31 via Facebook Live at 7 p.m. Central Time. A video presentation will begin the event, following exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and evening prayer. Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Ill. will deliver a homily, and the event will close with benediction at 8 p.m.
The high school in a statement said its founders chose McGivney as a namesake because they “wanted to honor a person who was committed to the same values they hoped to instill in its future graduates.”
“Fr. McGivney was an idealist whose youthful vision and commitment to families led to the creation of his legacy – the Knights of Columbus,” said the school.
The high school works closely with the Knights of Columbus.
“[The Knights’] pillars of Unity, Charity, Fraternity, and Patriotism are the foundation of Father McGivney Catholic High School’s mission,” said the high school’s principal Joe Lombardi. “We are very proud of what our school has accomplished and we know that Fr. McGivney’s intercession helped get us here.”
Brummer, the faith formation director, joined the Knights of Columbus not long after his 18th birthday. After he became a high school theology teacher he took part in its second- and third-degree ceremonies, a membership initiation now merged into a single public ceremony for new members.
“At the time, I didn’t know much of Fr. McGivney other than his general biography,” said Brummer. “In the past few years, now working at a school named after him, I have felt an obligation to teach about him more so our school community understands his patronage better.”
You simply can not make up this never ending horror story
of poisoned clergy. Pray for our good priests.
BTW, the report about Ted McCarrick, where is it?
May God have mercy on all 3 souls. Immaculate heart of Mary pray for all of us, especially all americans who are preparing to vote. Please keep American Culture
Christian…
You simply can not make up this never ending horror story
of poisoned clergy. Pray for our good priests.
BTW, the report about Ted McCarrick, where is it?
You simply can not make up this never ending horror story.
McCarrick report, anyone?
May God have mercy on their souls. Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.
May God have mercy on all 3 souls. Immaculate heart of Mary pray for all of us, especially all americans who are preparing to vote. Please keep American Culture
Christian…