February 14, 2002

By Paul Likoudis

SCRANTON, Pa. – The Society of St. John, which began just four years ago with the ambitious dream of building a Catholic city based on a medieval manor high in the Poconos, is now dogged by accusations of sexual and financial impropriety on the part of its founder, Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, superior general, and the chancellor, Fr. Eric Ensey, that could leave the order, which solicited millions of dollars from orthodox Catholics, a fainter memory than last week's clouds.

In late January, Bishop James Timlin of Scranton, Pa., relieved the two priests of their duties, and launched an investigation into charges they sexually molested young boys after arriving in the diocese.

For traditionalist Catholics, the charges against these priests, and a number of other prominent "traditionalist" clergy in other orders and societies, such as the Sovereign Institute of Christ the King and the Society of St. Pius X, raise questions concerning the fundamental premise of many traditionalists that the restoration of the Latin liturgy, ipso facto, will bring about a restoration of the Roman Catholic Church, and, by implication, the society it is to evangelize and save.

The allegations of sexual and financial wrongdoing began circulating last October, when Dr. Jeffrey Bond, the president of the College of St. Justin Martyr, one of the Society's initiatives, began sending out, over the Internet, letters alleging the improper behavior.

Bond, formerly a tenure-track professor at California's Thomas Aquinas College, who was asked by Aquinas' founder Dr. Ronald McArthur to establish the Society's college and teach seminarians in the order, claimed to have information that Urrutigoity had a certain "sleeping sickness" that required him to sleep with young men, that a lawsuit against Fr. Urrutigoity and the Society was pending, and that Urrutigoity had been expelled twice from seminaries operated by the Society of St. Pius X, in Argentina and Winona, Minn.

At the same time Bond made these accusations, which were dismissed by the Society supporters at the time as "personality conflict" between Bond and Urrutigoity over differences about how to celebrate the Tridentine Mass, an Illinois businessman who had cosigned a mortgage note for the Society's 1,000-acre tract of mountaintop land in Shohola contacted The Wanderer.

"A lot of people have been hurt by Urrutigoity," Matt Sawyer, the businessman, told The Wanderer, "starting with me."

Sawyer recounted how when he first saw the ad for the Society in The Wanderer, he was inspired to send a $500 check. "I thought this is exactly what we need, an order of orthodox priests who can help the Church, who will stick to the doctrine of the Church.

"Shortly after they got my check, Fr. Fullerton and Fr. Ensey came out to meet me and my wife, and we were very impressed.

"Then, in June 1999, they called and asked me to come out and look at this piece of property in Shohola they'd found. I spent hours negotiating the price with the owner, and more hours negotiating with the bank in Scranton. They got me to cosign on the loan, so I put my neck in the noose big time. Then, at the last minute, they called me up and said they needed more money immediately, and so I wired it.

"The next week," Sawyer continued, "I flew out there, to take a look at it. Urrutigoity lives in the big house all by himself, like a king, and I see $136,000 of brand-new furniture. I've never seen such beautiful furniture, and I've been in the homes of billionaires. Twenty-six thousand dollars for a dinning-room table, $7,000 for an executive desk . . . the rugs, the tapestries, the paintings. I said to Urrutigoity, 'This all has to go back,' and he said, 'No.'

"Then I looked at their financials. They've got 12 employees, and each has an assistant. The cook has an assistant, the cleaner has an assistant, the gardener has an assistant. So I said to Fr. Carlos, 'Why can't the seminarians and priests do some of the work around here?' and he replied, 'Oh, no. We don't do things like that'."

Sawyer was so upset, he immediately called Bishop James Timlin, and demanded to have his name taken off the mortgage. "I told him this order was off the mission, and it was going to crash."

At the time, he added, he knew nothing of the parties and the charges of immoral behavior. "But I can tell you, Fr. Urrutigoity wants to live like King Tut or Hugh Hefner. I mean, who else sleeps in a $10,000 bed?"

Sawyer says he and Bond were snagged by pride. "Jeffrey Bond and I were caught by pride. He thought he was going to be a college president, and I thought I was going to finance a Catholic village."

Bond acknowledged he was "blinded" by pride, too, by Urrutigoity, telling The Wanderer, "Fr. Urrutigoity was a very charismatic fellow, and for two years I wasn't even conscious of the behavior around me. I didn't want to think anything bad. I wanted to be a founder. I was blinded by the possibility of being a big gun."

Bond and Sawyer weren't the only ones blinded by the charismatic founder of the Society of St. John. A list of early backers of the project reads like a "who's who" of prominent Catholic laity, including Howard Walsh, founder of Keep the Faith; Dr. Ronald McArthur, founder of Thomas Aquinas College; John Blewett, a career labor negotiator, Thomas Aquinas College administrator, and former president of the Wanderer Forum Foundation. Encouraged by the array of supporters of the Society among its friends and associates, The Wanderer accepted several advertisements from the Society of St. John and also published several favorable articles about the group.

Joining these backers where thousands of other Catholics blinded by the slick graphics of the numerous fund-raising appeals and high-level trusted endorsers, who simply suspended their practical judgment in hopes of being part of a mythical city.

They envisioned a medieval Catholic city, which, according to the promotional literature, was going to attract like-minded Catholics from across the country to live in a Catholic community with the Traditional Mass, a liberal arts college, and Catholic families living, working, and praying together. It is now judged entirely infeasible. Infrastructure and maintenance costs are beyond reckoning and the Society, now, will probably have to sell the property.

As one wizened Catholic said, "Even if an angel came down from Heaven bearing this city, in complete splendor at no initial cost to any Catholic in America, its maintenance would be a crushing albatross on its inhabitants and supporters."

"What these people did was criminal," Sawyer added. "They deceived us. They were wolves in sheep's clothing, lawless renegades, who changed their story every week. They even tried to raise money from the 9-11 disaster."

According to Bond, the Society is on the verge of bankruptcy, and threatening on the horizon are lawsuits from creditors and defrauded donors.

When Bond decided to sever the connection between the Society and college, he had the first of several face-to-face meetings with Bishop Timlin, and many more telephone conversations, to discuss the charges of improper behavior he had heard concerning Ensey and Urrutigoity.

In an e-mail to the Society of St. John dated September 27, 2001, he "asked the other members of the Society to repudiate Fr. Urrutigoity's habit of sleeping with young men. It was still my hope," he explained, "that the Society of St. John might be salvaged."

"However, none of the Society's members were willing to denounce Fr. Urrutigoity's reckless behavior, despite the fact that it was becoming widely known that Fr. Urrutigoity regularly slept one-on-one in his bed with young men in his private chambers."

One month later, Bond wrote Bishop Timlin another letter, informing him that Urrutigoity was dismissed from the Society of St. Pius X seminary in La Reja, Argentina, for homosexual behavior; and after transferring to the St. Pius X seminary in Winona, Minn., was ordered to leave "in 24 hours" due to accusations of excessive attention to certain young seminarians.

Bond also claims that the SSPX's Bishop Fellay had warned Bishop Timlin about Urrutigoity; and that he has also spoken with other men who claimed to have slept with Urrutigoity after he "plied them with alcohol."

Bond also claims to have received testimony from another young man asserting he had been molested by Fr. Ensey.

Throughout November and December, Bond continued sending letters to Bishop Timlin, to the Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, and far and wide on the Internet.

In January, as Bernard Cardinal Law's troubles in Boston put the issue of clerical molestation before the public mind, the lay organization Roman Catholic Faithful (RCF) issued a press release calling for Bishop Timlin's resignation for not immediately suspending Fr. Urrutigoity.

RCF's release, which raised the issue in the local press around Scranton, prompted Bishop Timlin to relieve Urrutigoity and Ensey of their responsibilities.

The diocese's statement said: "There have been allegations made against two priests of the Society of St. John. These priests deny these allegations. In accord with diocesan policy, however, they have left their posts until the investigation is completed and appropriate action is determined.

"As wrong as the alleged actions in this case might be, and, if true, they are very wrong, certainly it would also be wrong for the Church to pass judgment on individuals without sufficient evidence. Suffice it to say that the Church's law and diocesan policies have been followed at all times and will continue to be adhered to until this unfortunate situation is resolved. There has never been any effort to cover up anything or to ignore the seriousness of these allegations. . . .

"As far as charges of financial mismanagement which have been made against the Society of St. John are concerned, the Diocese of Scranton has every reason to believe that the Society has exercised scrupulous care and restraint in this area for some time now."

In an hour-plus long interview with The Wanderer, Bishop Timlin told how, when accusations concerning Urrutigoity were brought to his attention, he immediately went to the priest and demanded he respond to the allegations, and told him to stop any activity that could be viewed with suspicion. As of the date of our interview, February 6, he said that he has yet to receive any substantive evidence or legal documents alleging molestation by Urrutigoity.

In the case of the charges against Urrutigoity and Ensey in Winona, as soon as he heard them, he immediately dispatched Auxiliary Bishop John Dougherty, his vicar general and the diocesan attorney, to investigate claims at the seminary. Since the seminary officials did say the charges were valid, he demanded that the diocese's "independent review board," made up of prominent Scranton-area professionals, make an inquiry. Its findings were that the case boiled down to a "he said-he said" because there were no witnesses.

The Society's financial problems, he charitably explained, were due to the members' "youth and inexperience." He acknowledged that the Society ran up a large debt and "spent money like there was no tomorrow"; that he was opposed to the purchase of the property in Shohola; and that he made aggressive steps to take over the Society's finances once he was alerted by Matt Sawyer to the problems, and has brought them "under control."

"The Society's financial problems," he said, "are due to ambition. They started big rather than small; but there was no malice; that's not part of their makeup."

Bishop Timlin also said that he tried for two months to resolve the dispute between Bond and the Society before it burst into public view last fall, which he attributed to Bond's desire to separate the college from the Society due to differences over the celebration of the Missal of 1962.

The Wanderer also interviewed Fr. Daniel Fullerton, who is acting as spokesman for the Society, for over an hour. He repeatedly denied any financial mismanagement, and blamed the allegations of sexual misconduct against Fr. Urrutigoity at the Pius X seminaries on "sede vacantists" within the Society upset that Urrutigoity and his friends had reconciled with Rome.

He also said, in a February 6 interview, that if Bond has witnesses to Urrutigoity's sexual misconduct, he should turn those names over to Bishop Timlin.

However, on February 7, National Review Online's Rod Dreher reported "the whole mess may soon end up in court. The young man who sent the January 12 letter to Timlin claiming he had been molested by a Society priest is said to be preparing a lawsuit against the Society and the diocese. Bond is also contemplating a lawsuit that would seek to hold the Society and Timlin responsible for the collapse – temporary, he hopes – of the College of St. Justin Martyr."

A well-informed Pennsylvania priest who knows Timlin well said this scandal involving the Society of St. John must be "an enormous cross to bear for him."

"Bishop Timlin was always open to helping his priests in all kinds of ways, especially if they had preferences for certain apostolates. Like his predecessor, Bishop J. Carroll McCormick, his entire life is marked by loyalty to and love for the Church. A stalwart defender of doctrine, his tendency is to be always open to the legitimate needs of his priests, whether it was 'conservative' or 'liberal': If it was allowed by the Church and would not bring scandal he allowed it.

"Like McCormick, Timlin is meticulous in his personal life so that no scandal would ever be attached to him or the Church. If there was anything untoward going on, as alleged, the fault is in Timlin's openness and generosity to priests of all legitimate interests so they could function in his diocese without hindrance and often with support. Timlin's large heart was manipulated or taken advantage of."

There's another warning in this story: If a scheme to launch a "Catholic restoration" sounds too good to be true, it probably is – especially if it involves a small number of priests and millions of dollars.