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COVERING UP FOR CARDINAL SPELLMAN

NEWS: COMMENTARY (/SEARCH/CATEGORY/245/COMMENTARY)

() () () ()

by George Neumayr (https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/author/george-neumayr)

• ChurchMilitant.com • February 13, 2019 161 Comments

The Church plays dumb about his misconduct

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The recent Salon article detailing groping allegations (https://www.salon.com/2019/02/09/i-

was-groped-by-a-man-called-mary-the-world-changes-but-not-the-catholic-church/) against
Cardinal Francis Spellman, the long-serving archbishop of New York City who died in the late
1960s, couldn't possibly have come as news to officials within the Church. Insiders have long
whispered about his legacy of misconduct and the role he played in foisting McCarricks upon
the Church.

"This is the first time we have learned of this allegation, and take what the writer says
seriously, as we do all allegations of abuse or inappropriate conduct," Joseph Zwilling,
director of communications for the archdiocese of New York, said to the Catholic News
Agency (https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/ny-archdiocese-responds-to-cardinal-
spellman-groping-allegation-36449). "We have never had a substantiated allegation of abuse
against Cardinal Spellman, who died in 1967."

Notice the use of the word "substantiated" in the statement. In other words, the archdiocese
was aware of allegations against Spellman but didn't bother to investigate them. Now that
the media spotlight is on abuse again, the New York archdiocese feels the need to sound
more concerned. Zwilling said to CNA that the author of the Salon piece, Lucian Truscott,
should report "his allegation to our Safe Environment Director and/or the Victim Assistance
Coordinator, so that we might offer whatever assistance might be needed."

That wasn't the attitude of the archdiocese of New York in the 1980s about Spellman. Back
then, it didn't want to hear anything untoward about him. As detailed by the New York Press
(http://www.nypress.com/cardinal-spellmans-dark-legacy/), author John Cooney tried to
report on Spellman's misconduct in a biography but was blocked by the archdiocese.

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Cooney had spoken to a number of sources who could testify to Spellman's active
homosexuality, including a former Broadway dancer who said that Spellman knew he could
get away with his double life owing to the docility and naivete of the faithful. Cooney told the
New York Press that the Church sent an influential diplomat to his publisher, Times Books,
to make sure that the damning material didn't make it past the galleys:
 "In New York's clerical circles, Spellman's sex life was a source of profound
embarrassment and shame to many priests," Cooney had written in the
original manuscript of his book. When Mitchell Levitas, who was then the
editor of The New York Times Book Review, received the manuscript for
review, he realized it was a book that would make big news; he sent the
book over to Arthur Gelb, who was then the managing editor of The New
York Times. Gelb assigned reporter Ed McDowell to the story. McDowell
interviewed Cooney, and went about interviewing others who were relevant
to the story, including church officials.

The archdiocese, however, went ballistic when presented with the

information, and became determined to keep it from being published. ... The
church sent John Moore, the retired U.S. ambassador to Ireland and a close
friend and confidant of several church officials, to appeal to Sidney Gruson,
then vice chairman of the New York Times Co. "The Times was going to
report that Cardinal Spellman was a homosexual," Moore later told
journalist Eric Nadler, who wrote a piece for Forum about the ugly little
coverup, "and I was determined to stop it." Moore told Nadler that this was
the "third or fourth" time he had appealed to the Times regarding a sensitive
church matter. "They've always done the right thing," he said.

As Cooney describes it, he was soon told by his editors at Times Books that
his sourcing wasn't good enough, and that the four pages would have to be
cut. He could keep a paragraph that alluded to the "rumors," but he would
have to state that the rumors had been strongly contested by many people,
even though, in his research, that had not truly been the case. The
discussion of Spellman's homosexuality in the book was reduced to mere
speculation, which was branded as irrelevant.

The expunged pages from Cooney's biography would no doubt give added credibility to the
Salon piece, which features West Point cadets instead of Broadway boys. According to the
piece, Spellman, then in his seventies, made repeated attempts to grope a West Point cadet,
Truscott, who was interviewing him for a school publication. The attempted groping all
happened in plain sight, with Spellman's personal assistant in tow, to keep the groping from
going too far. It was surreal, recounts Truscott (https://www.salon.com/2019/02/09/i-was-
groped-by-a-man-called-mary-the-world-changes-but-not-the-catholic-church/):
 His assistant the monsignor showed me to a chair next to him. I took my
seat and got out my pen and notebook and started the interview, but before
I could even ask my first question, Spellman put his hand on my thigh and
started moving it toward my crotch. He was just about to reach my private
parts when the monsignor, who was standing behind him, reached over his
shoulder and grabbed his wrist and put his hand back in his lap. "Now, now,
eminence," the monsignor whispered to Spellman.

The Church is playing dumb about Spellman now, but even within the compass of this one
incident, it is clear that Church officials knew about his gay predation. Should the New York
attorney general's office obtain Spellman-related files, it is likely to find more mentions of his
predation.

“
The will to root out the Spellmans and
McCarricks remains weak. To the extent
that the Church gets around to them, it only
does so under substantial legal and media
pressure.
Gab ! Tweet
Spellman, who ordained McCarrick, is one of the godfathers of the ecclesiastical culture that
made the enabling of their misconduct possible. But, amazingly, as this picture comes into
focus, the hierarchy continues to prattle on about lesser issues.

Recently, Pope Francis implied that the abuse of "nuns" by bishops and priests is a serious
problem, which sounded like an attempt to deflect attention from the much greater problem
of gay predation. The latter problem has been well documented and is undeniably
pervasive. But the will to root out the Spellmans and McCarricks remains weak. To the
extent that the Church gets around to them, it only does so under substantial legal and
media pressure.
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