Denver Newsroom, Oct 12, 2020 / 04:35 pm (CNA).-
Archbishop Gregory Aymond on Saturday consecrated a new altar at the Louisiana parish where a priest reportedly filmed a pornographic video atop the parish altar with two women last month. Details have emerged about the priest, who is expected to face criminal and canonical charges after the episode.
Those who know the priest say he kept to himself, while a seminary professor said Clark was a poor student who made little effort, which should have been a red flag.
“The desecration of this church and altar is demonic, demonic,” Aymond said at Sts Peter and Paul Church in Pearl River, Louisiana Oct. 10, during a Mass at which he also reconsecrated the parish church.
“Let me be clear, there is no excuse for what took place here. It is sinful, and it is totally unacceptable. Travis has been unfaithful to his vocation; he’s violated his commitment to celibacy; and also, he was using that which was holy to do demonic things,” Aymond said, according to the Clarion Herald.
“He will not be able to serve in priestly ministry, and he will not be able to serve as a priest anytime in the future,” Aymond emphasized, while urging the parish to “continue to focus on the Lord Jesus and his mission and ministry here.”
The altar upon which Clark and two women engaged in filmed sexual congress was destroyed – burned – at Aymond’s order, which came as soon the learned on Oct. 8 the details of Clark’s activity in the parish Church, a spokesperson told CNA.
Clark and two women were arrested Sept. 30 and charged with obscenity after a neighbor observed through a window that they were filming sexual relations atop the altar, which was illuminated by stage lights. The priest was removed from ministry by the archbishop on Oct. 1.
One of the women with whom Clark made the pornographic film refers to herself as a “Satanatrix,” and the “proprietress of the Church of Satanatrix,” who posted on social media Sept. 29 that she would be traveling with another woman to “defile a house of God.”
The women’s attorney said in a statement this week that it is “appalling” that his clients are “being vilified” and facing charges for conduct he said was not illegal, because the church in which the filming took place was on private property. But police said the church’s altar was visible from the street, apparently through the glass doors of the parish entrance.
Aymond celebrated Mass at the parish Oct. 3, last weekend, after Clark was arrested. The archbishop celebrated Mass on the desecrated altar, an archdiocesan spokesperson told CNA, “because we were not aware of what had happened in the church.”
“As soon as the archbishop learned of the details, arrangements were made for the altar to be removed and a new one consecrated and the church reconsecrated,” the spokesperson added.
The archdiocese said that “there was no desecrating of the Blessed Sacrament,” during the sexual episode, and that “we are not aware of any other sacred vessels being desecrated at this time.”
Clark was ordained a priest in 2013 and became pastor of St. Peter and Paul last year. The archdiocese told CNA that the priest had “never before been the subject of any sexual misconduct claims.”
When he was ordained a deacon in 2012, Clark told the Clarion Herald that among his role models was Fr. Patrick Wattigny, a high school chaplain who admitted this month that in 2013 he sexually abused a minor, and who is accused of sending “grooming” text messages to a high school student earlier this year.
Priests in the Archdiocese of New Orleans told CNA that Clark is a quiet guy with a reputation among the presbyterate for keeping to himself. Priests in the archdiocese that Clark’s nickname in the seminary was Lurch, in reference to the gloomy, shambling butler on television’s The Addams Family.
Some priests said that Clark is regarded as kind, attentive to the Serra Club and other projects, but was known by some to have a compulsive video game habit, sometimes staying up all night to play games.
Priests also told CNA that they are praying for Clark and his parish. Some speculated that the priest might have gotten involved with the women through a pornography addiction, and failed to appreciate the escalating circumstances until it was too late, especially regarding the demonic aspect of the pornographic performance he was filming.
Still, one priest said that while many in the presbyterate are surprised by Clark’s action, the priest has no excuse for his choices.
Chistopher Baglow, a theologian who taught Clark in seminary, told CNA that he believes Clark’s misdeeds point to a problem with seminary evaluation.
In the seminary, nothing about Clark’s behavior suggested that the priest would later do the things he is accused of, Baglow said. But he did recall concerns about the seminarian.
The theologian remembered Clark for being a student who didn’t participate in class, was negligent of assignments and seemed often “to be flying under the radar.”
“It was clear he wasn’t trying, and some made it known,” Baglow said. “It was often countered that pastoral gifts and holiness do not require great theological genius, and the concern was expressed by some colleagues that we should avoid focusing too much on academics.”
But Baglow said his concern about Clark, or other students who gave evidence of not trying, was not about academics, but about character.
Baglow said he does not expect academic excellence from all students. But he does believe seminaries should expect effort, and evidence of virtue in students and seminary life.
“Tolerating mediocrity in a man allows tolerance for other kinds of unacceptable things.”
“Mediocrity can be a cover for other problems — sometimes very serious problems,” Baglow said.
Condoning “mediocrity” in the evaluation of seminarians, the theologian said, lowers the Church’s standards in the caliber of men who become priests. The Church should accept men for priesthood who want to be excellent academically, spiritually, pastorally, and morally, Baglow told CNA.
The theologian told CNA that in his view “the system isn’t broken, it’s just missing a part.”
He urged that seminaries develop committees of “well-formed knowledgeable Catholic lay people who are part of vocation evaluation and discernment.”
Such committees would give recommendations about the suitability of candidates for orders independent of seminary staff or faculty, Baglow said, giving bishops the benefit of perspective and judgment outside the clerical and ecclesiastical milieu.
CNA asked the Archdiocese of New Orleans what canonical penalties Clark could face, and whether he will face the prospect of penal or administrative laicization.
“It is Archbishop Aymond’s intention that Travis Clark never again practice priestly ministry. He is in conversations with canon lawyers about the appropriate actions to take moving forward,” the archdiocesan spokesperson said.
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I get the point that parents have the right to shield their children from gender ideology, especially transgenderism and material that is contrary to their religious beliefs and I support that. What I don’t understand is why no one is objecting to public schools teaching something like transgenderism that is so absurd, fantastical, UNSCIENTIFIC!, and political to children. Oh, wait. Could it be to make such a thing seem common, ordinary, unremarkable, NORMAL? In my view this is child abuse and criminal. I hope my comment is not considered inflammatory or needlessly combative; it is heartfelt.
Your comment and concerns are perfectly legitimate and appropriate. Gender ideology, including transgenderism, is a grave moral evil that should be unilaterally resisted.
About books still on library shelves (a quote, below), the Maryland modernday Duncedom would do well to at least recall their history, whereby Maryland, founded by a Catholic, was a rare example of religious freedom in the colonies. Gone with the Wind, as in breaking wind. How far has the deep state/school bureaucracy fallen, or stooped, or whatever—parents now replaced by brainstem illiterati fixated on below-the-belt perversions.
For historical perspective, this:
“Maryland was founded on the broad principles of religious freedom, and Puritans expelled from Virginia found shelter there. During the period of the Commonwealth, however, the very men who had sought an asylum in Maryland overthrew the authority of Lord Baltimore and passed severe penal laws against the Catholics, sending all the priests as prisoners to England. In a few years they returned and resumed their labors under great disadvantages. Though a law of toleration was passed in 1649, it was of brief duration” [until 1654]. (John Gilmary Shea, “The Catholic Church in the United States”, 1896).
And the issue isn’t even primarily about religion; it’s about the baked-in and universal natural law versus mandatory pornography and grooming.
“Religion”?: “The Church is no way the author or the arbiter of this [‘moral’] norm” (St. John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 95).
It’s astounding that the right of parents to protect their children from depraved homosexual indoctrination in public classrooms must be appealed to the Supreme Court. Morally disturbed drag queen men sexually gesticulating before our children deemed legitimate education by who? Rhonda Randi Weingarten, president of the American federation of teachers. A disciple of atheist John Dewey, among other philosophers, psychologists, radical educational reformers.
Trump had proposed, among others, a more sane mindset to dissolve the immorally diseased public education system, as it operates under the auspices of the targeted for dismantling US Department of Education.
That an enforced, atheist and immoral system of education could have come into existence tells us how dangerously far our Nation has devolved. Academia has also become, as attested to by Larry Chapp and other educators, a closed, intolerant forum for forming woke, iconoclastic radicals. We have no choice but to address the injustice that exists within our education system if we are to survive as a Nation under God with liberty and justice for all. The actual meaning of Liberty and Justice restored to what the founding fathers intended.
As a rejoinder American Catholic universities that are no longer Catholic deserve the obligatory discipline that should come from Rome.
Supreme Court will decide on parental right to shield children from gender ideology in school. It’s astounding that the right of parents to protect their children from homosexual indoctrination in public classrooms must be appealed to the Supreme Court. Depraved drag queens sexually gesticulating before our children is deemed legitimate education by who? Rhonda Randi Weingarten, president of the American federation of teachers. Weingarten, psychologist, philosopher, educator, a disciple of atheist John Dewey among a cadre of philosophers, psychologists, radical educational reformers.
Trump has suggested we dissolve the public education system, as it operates under the Department of Education. That an enforced, atheist and immoral system of education could have come into existence tells us how far our Nation has devolved. Academia has also become, as attested to by Larry Chapp and other educators, a closed, intolerant forum for forming woke, iconoclastic radicals. We have to address this injustice, a delicate issue due to the principle of free speech, if we are to restore Justice as the founding fathers intended.