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‘Giant Empty Houses’

What is life like at the Buffalo seminary? A Catholic reader's thoughts

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxYuNqdM0zc]

I’m not sure what to make of this letter from a Catholic reader, but it adds meaningful detail to the stories we’ve been getting about a culture of sexual abuse and corruption in the seminary of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, NY. The pieces of mine he refers to are, in chronological order, here, here, and here. All the ellipses below are in the original:

Your coverage of the Buffalo diocese has been…..surreal. My wife is from Buffalo, her entire family still lives there, my oldest son was born there, and for the year and half I lived there I visited the seminary library a few times a month. Almost every person you’ve mentioned in the articles I’ve met and know. I sang in the choir at that Latin Mass parish in Cheektowaga that Fr. Nowak was at. I met Bishop Malone and was originally under the impression he was great.

But hopefully you and your readers are asking….why does Buffalo have a seminary? What other diocese has its own seminary?

I wanted to give you an idea of the seminary, in case people are picturing a college campus in the middle of downtown Buffalo. It’s in the middle of nowhere. You go down Transit Rd for about 15 minutes if you’re starting in Depew, then you turn left when you go under a bridge and see a diner on your left, and then you drive further and further and further into the woods, you see a Fisher Price sign (which is located in East Aurora) and when you’d left civilization you’re there.

It can house 250 priests, and was obviously built back when a diocese like Buffalo had 250 vocations any given year. Now it’s less than 20 (which is actually an uptick I think). So imagine being a seminarian in rural upstate New York, on about 200 acres of land, with maybe 12-18 other people (some of whom are significantly older than you if you’re a young man). It’s quite different from going to a seminary where multiple diocese send their guys. You’re basically a monk in Buffalo. And the truly crazy part is some of the parishes in Buffalo have residences that can accommodate 20 priests, but have only 1. So instead of giving these guys communities to support each other, they’re all living in giant empty houses.

I’d go to the library in the evenings after work if my wife was meeting her family for something. It was eerie. You pull in to a poorly lit parking lot with a statue of St. John Vianney (the only welcoming thing you see). You wouldn’t know people lived there. It was always so quiet. I’d walk into a pitch black library and turn on a few lights, and even though the door said it was open (and I’m pretty sure they never locked it) I felt like I was breaking the rules by being there. I only ever once saw someone (I assume a professor) and we just quietly, awkwardly avoided each other in the half lit building. Wonderful library though. Had just about any book on Christianity you could imagine. I heard from a seminarian that he’d go sit in the Mary section when he got lonely (which I imagine was a lot). The chapel is hideous. Looks like a prison from the outside, and my understanding is it’s even worse on the inside. There’s a big pond you can walk around, and a basketball court on the far side.

It’s just a very, very strange vibe. Even if there weren’t molesters roaming around, no man should be subject to that life as part of preparation to become a diocesan priest. Vocation to become a Carmelite? Sure.

I knew a lot of the seminarians, and it always seemed like they’d use any excuse to get away. The seminary would do old lady spiritual retreats and stuff like that, because it is a very serene area. But….even if it was a good seminary they should close it down and send the guys elsewhere. I’m sure they could sell the land to a film company to make a horror movie. You could probably keep some of the faculty for it………

The embedded video above is an interview with Stephen Parisi, the dean of seminarians, who quit the seminary last week, alleging widespread corruption there, and in the Diocese of Buffalo. In the clip, he talks about a culture of sexual “blackmail” within the priesthood of the diocese. To be specific, he says that priests stay silent about sexual misconduct and abuse because they are afraid of being exposed.

I’m interested to hear from clerics, seminarians, and others about the culture of formation inside seminaries. You don’t have to be Catholic to weigh in. I’m thinking about a friend who graduated from an ELCA seminary, but who told me a few years ago that the atmosphere there was oppressively woke, and that anyone who didn’t toe the ultra-progressive line was marginalized and silenced.

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