The Correct, Scientifically Accurate Term Is “Embryonic Heartbeat”

by James J Heaney Posted on 26 July 2019

[extremely Doc Brown voice] EIGHTY EIGHT BEATS PER MINUTE!**
*extremely Doc Brown voice* EIGHTY EIGHT BEATS PER MINUTE!**
We have recently seen the passage of a number of “heartbeat bills.” These laws provide legal protections to unborn children who have achieved a detectable heartbeat. Embyronic heartbeat begins around the fourth week after the last menstrual period (or roughly two weeks after conception). However, with current technology, it only becomes detectable around the eighth week LMP. Every pregnancy is different, but, on average, heartbeat bills end up restricting abortion after about eight or nine weeks.

This strategy is somewhat successful, because many voters are comfortable with legal abortion on demand as long as the child is still a “blob of cells,” but become uncomfortable once the child begins to take on human characteristics like a heartbeat. No one would accuse this view of coherence, but that’s life in a country with a vast, muddled middle on abortion. You attach unborn-child protections to a relatable human milestone, and you can gin up the votes to get them passed in a few states.

Of course, the pro-choice Cathedral* is unhappy about this. If there is a conflict between the political underpinnings of abortion rights and reality, it is always reality that has to go. (We’ve seen this before on this blog… and, of course, the very term “pro-choice” is a euphemism: what choice? Who, whom?)

So, on May 31st, the press dutifully invented a brand new term for fetal heartbeat: “embryonic pulsing.” A few days after that, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) announced the henceforth official terminology for “fetal heartbeat”: “electrically induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart.”

This whole thing was a bit awkward. Ordinarily, the journalism arm of the Cathedral knows better than to start using the new euphemisms before they have been officially promulgated by the “medical experts.” The New York Times jumped the gun, which exposed the game they are playing.

We should take a moment to notice that, despite ACOG’s official decree, it’s not actually “fetal tissue.” At this age, it’s still embryonic tissue. Yes, a medical doctor speaking on behalf of tens of thousands of medical doctors made an obviously false medical statement in a sentence that was supposed to clarify medical reality. Yes, it’s the very same distinction that pro-lifers get hammered on all the time by the exact same people. (“It’s not a fetus; it’s a blastocyst!”)

No, it’s not surprising. It all makes sense once you realize that they don’t actually care about the embryo/fetus distinction; they only use these terms so they can avoid the ordinary English term: “baby.” ACOG holds pro-lifers to strictly accurate terminology for prenatal development, but they have no reason to hold themselves to the same standard.

So, the new official term is medically inaccurate. But ACOG hath spoken, and We the People are supposed to pretend that ACOG is an objective body of experts acting on pure rationality. “Fetal heartbeat” is now going to be safely suppressed for being, they say, “medically inaccurate.”

Please remember that they are lying.

I try to reserve that strong term, “lying,” for clear cases of deliberate deception. But that’s exactly what we have here.

The medically accurate, scientifically correct term is “embryonic heartbeat.” This term has been in the literature for generations. It is universally accepted and unchallenged, a poster child for “scientific consensus.” Just look at a tiny fragment of the literature:

“Embryonic Heart Rate as a Prognostic Factor for Chromosomal Abnormalities” (Journal of Ultrasound Medicine, 2009; deals with embryos younger than nine weeks)

“Evaluation of normal gestational sac growth: appearance of embryonic heartbeat and embryo body movements using the transvaginal technique.“(Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1991; deals with embryos between five to twelve weeks’ gestation) (of

“Embryonic heart rate in the early first trimester: what rate is normal?” (Journal of Ultrasound Medicine, 1995; embryos are six to eight weeks’ gestation)

“Embryonic heart rate in human pregnancy.” (Journal of Ultrasound Medicine, 1991; embryos are three to seven weeks old)

“Slow embryonic heart rate in early first trimester: indicator of poor pregnancy outcome.” (Radiology, 1994; “embryonic heart rate” is determined “prior to 8 weeks gestation”)

“Predictive value of the presence of an embryonic heartbeat for live birth: Comparison of women with and without recurrent pregnancy loss.” (Fertility and Sterility, 2004; embyronic heart rate obtained “between 6 and 8 weeks of gestation)

“Predictive value of early embryonic cardiac activity for pregnancy outcome.” (American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1991; embryos are 5 to 9 weeks’ gestation)

“A close look at early embryonic development with the high-frequency transvaginal transducer.” (American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1988; embryos are as young as 5 weeks 6 days when “the heartbeat appeared.”)

“What’s new in first trimester ultrasound.” (Radiologic Clinics of North America, 2003; “the primitive heart begins to beat at the end of the third week after fertilization”)

“Transvaginal versus transabdominal Doppler auscultation of fetal heart activity: A comparative study.” (American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1996; embryos are between 6 and 9 weeks of gestation when “fetal heart rate” is detected.)

I pulled all those off Google Scholar in twenty minutes. There’s tons of them. I had room to be choosy for this article, but give me an hour and I can find a hundred more examples of peer-reviewed medical doctors and scientists talking about “embryonic heartbeat” like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

That alone doesn’t prove anything. Maybe ACOG’s official new terminology is even more popular than “embryonic heartbeat.” So now we ask: how often does the phrase “electrically induced flickering of a portion of the fetal tissue that will become the heart” show up in peer-reviewed scientific literature?

Google Scholar says: Zero times!
Zero times!

Of course, Google Scholar’s not the be-all end-all of academia, but it seems safe to say that, when Google Scholar can immediately find hundreds of matches for Phrase A, and zero matches for Phrase B, then Phrase A is the more common and scientifically accurate one.

How about the New York Times‘ even more made-up phrase, “embryonic pulsing”? That gets three matches on Google Scholar, but one’s an English paper and two are about a scanning technique. None are about embyronic heartbeats. Why? Because doctors refer to those as “embryonic heartbeats.” It’s the New York Times and its friends at The Daily Beast et. al. that doesn’t want to make the heartbeats go away. (They should re-read Poe’s “The Telltale Heart;” it will resonate!)

One more: in December 2015, Dr. Jen Gunter, a late-term abortionist who is sometimes treated as a neutral source by mainstream media, asserted that the most correct term would be “fetal pole cardiac activity.” She’s since been quoted favorably on this in outlets like Wired and Forbes. Does her euphemism have any more traction than the others? At first glance, you might think so! There are 38 results for “fetal pole cardiac activity” on Google Scholar! Doesn’t hold a candle to the 735 for “embyronic heartbeat,” but still, that shows some scientific uptake of her terminology, right?

But that’s when you realize that the matches for “fetal pole cardiac activity” are actually for lists: things like “…fetal pole, cardiac activity, and gestational sac,” or, “If a fetal pole/cardiac activity is detected…” or, “presence of a fetal pole +/- cardiac activity.” Some of the authors of these articles even appeared on my list above as users of “embryonic heartbeat!” So it appears that nobody in the literature has used the actual phrase to describe an actual embryonic heartbeat except Dr. Jen Gunter… and, of course, a mainstream media that is desperate to escape the simple, uncomfortable reality of “heartbeat.”

This is a 38mm embryo, deceased at 8-9 weeks, which is at the upper end of the age we're talking about. We hesitate to include images of dissected people on De Civitate, but, as with *any* medical discussion, it's difficult for the lay reader to understand the topic without it.
This is a 38mm embryo, deceased at 8-9 weeks, which is at the upper end of the age we’re talking about. We hesitate to include images of dissected people on De Civitate, but, as with *any* medical discussion, it’s difficult for the lay reader to understand the topic without it.**

Now that the Cathedral has denounced the term “embryonic heartbeat” as wrongthink, you can expect it to disappear within a year or two. New articles will have the phrase stripped out and replaced with the new, politically correct terminology… even if it makes the articles less clear and less accurate. The authors of the articles I’ve cited will either keep their heads down or apologize for ever having used it. (They’re probably mostly pro-choice anyway.) Anyone who does use the term now will be accused of having “an agenda.” They’ve pulled this very same language trick before: with the beginning of pregnancy (it’s at fertilization), with the word “abortionist,” with the very idea of an “unborn child.” I already see it happening with “embryonic heartbeat.”

That’s why I wanted to get this down, on the record, before it’s washed away by the overwhelming coercive power the abortion industry can bring to bear on the scientific and journalistic communities: they are lying. The only people who have ever challenged the scientific term “embryonic heartbeat” are people who find that language politically inconvenient. It’s an uncontroversial term with consistent usage and universal acceptance that dates back decades.

So, when you hear a complaint that a “heartbeat bill” uses medically inaccurate or unscientific terminology, remember:

They are lying.

They are lying.

They are lying.

 

 

*I spent about 15 minutes trying to find a good, succinct, link that would define “the Cathedral” concept for those unfamiliar with it. But the term comes from Mencius Moldbug, who did nothing succinctly, and I don’t think anybody who has tried to boil it down has succeeded. So, sorry to throw an 11,000-word article at you in an aside, but it’s a pretty good one.

**Image credits: human heart development by OpenStax College. Fetal remains by Wikipedia user “Anatomist90.” All images used under their open CC BY 3.0 licenses.

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2020 Presidential Candidates, RANKED by How COOL/CHIC/FETCH You are for Having a BUMPER STICKER Supporting That Candidate in Saint Paul, MN

by James J Heaney Posted on 9 July 2019

This is the 2020 sequel to Unflattering Assessments of 2016 Presidential Candidates. I realized today that I need to get these in before candidates start dropping out like flies. I admit I am not as mean this year, but only because I refuse to devote enough mental resources to learning about “Jay Hickenlooper” and “Derek Stallwell” or whatever to render a sufficiently devastating judgment upon them.

#SMOD2020: "Just end it already."
#SMOD2020: “Just end it already.”

This post was written because my family was leaving the New Bohemia in downtown Saint Paul when we passed a car with a “BETO 2020” bumper sticker on it. I pointed and laughed. My wife, who wisely does not follow politics and had no idea who “Beto” was, asked why I was laughing, and I explained that Beto stopped being cool the moment he lost to Ted Cruz. Anyone with a bumper sticker for him must either not care about coolness or be hilariously out-of-touch.

So, my wife asked, reasonably: what presidential candidates have bumper stickers that cool people put on their cars?

Remember: this isn’t a list of how cool each candidate is. This is a list of how cool each candidate’s supporters are, specifically in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Plenty of uncool candidates have cool supporters and vice versa.

1. Amy Klobuchar – she wins ONLY in Minnesota, but oh boy does she win Minnesota, Nearly everyone in Minnesota, of both sexes, including Republicans, has an irrational love of Amy, to the point where I suspect witchcraft. She’s a solid-left Democrat and workplace abuser who has somehow fooled half the state’s Republican voters into thinking she’s a nice young lady and reasonable advocate for their interests. (My mother blames Amy’s dad.) So it’s not edgy-cool to have an Amy bumper sticker in downtown St. Paul. But cool people are gonna be like, “Hey, I love Amy, that guy’s cool.”

2. Pete Buttigieg – hot stuff right now, which is bizarre for me, since I’ve followed his career since he was just some jerk, long before it occurred to me he could be President. Could stay that way because gay dudes are cool (and it turns out he’s gay? I never realized), but more likely Mayor Pete is the New Beto and will soon end up with Beto down at #25.

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Alito’s Concurrence in FUCT Case

by James J Heaney Posted on 24 June 2019

I was surprised to see Justice Alito joining the Supreme Court majority in Iancu v. Brunetti today.

Seriously, dude, not one living human believes you, including your own customers.
Seriously, dude, not one living human believes you, including your own customers.

This is a trademark case. The U.S. Trademark Office rejected a trademark for the brand “FUCT” because of a law (the Lanham Act) that says trademarks should not be granted for “immoral or scandalous matter.” The guy who runs FUCT insists that it isn’t obscene, and actually you’re supposed to pronounce it by spelling it out: F-U-C-T.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided today, 6-3, that (1) hahahaha nobody believes you, dude, and (2) nevertheless, this law violates the First Amendment. Therefore, the trademark must be granted to FUCT.

Justice Alito joined that decision. But this struck me as odd. Alito is the Supreme Court’s obscenity-hater-in-chief and its champion against moral relativism. In Snyder v. Phelps, the Supreme Court ruled that Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church could not be sued for inflicting emotional distress after their obscene protest of a dead soldier’s funeral, because of the First Amendment. In that case, Alito stood alone to dissent. He would have allowed the soldier’s family to sue Phelps for a lot of money. That’s who Alito is. You might call him the Supreme Court’s moral scold. I call him that lovingly, because I tend to agree with him.

The First Amendment protects many kinds of speech, especially political speech and its constituent activities, but also religious speech, art, and the general free exchange of ideas, information, and stories. As American culture becomes more and more polarized into two separate and isolated camps, each increasingly inclined to silence the other, we need a strong First Amendment now more than ever (hence the Court’s correct decision in Citizens United*). But the Supreme Court has repeatedly held throughout its history that the First Amendment’s protections do not extend to obscenity. Obscenity is not free speech per se, in the Court’s view.

Thus, it is perfectly legal to outlaw pornography. It has been illegal throughout nearly all of the country throughout nearly all of its history. Indeed, pornography is technically still illegal in most places today (here is Minnesota’s anti-porn statute; your state likely has a similar one)… but it’s difficult to enforce, thanks to some Supreme Court precedents that make it difficult to prove that something really is porn (not art). The barrier-smashing power of the Internet, too, has made enforcement nearly impossible.

However, Justice Alito remembers that, despite barriers to enforcing anti-obscenity laws today, obscenity is still not actually protected speech. He sometimes seems to be the only member of the Supreme Court who does.

And here he is ruling in favor of a brand called FUCT?

So I looked up his concurring opinion. And it’s good! I really like the distinctions he draws. Were I a justice on the Supreme Court, I’d join it. I’m going to reprint the whole thing here. Don’t worry; it’s short.

For the reasons explained in the opinion of the Court, the provision of the Lanham Act at issue in this case violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment because it discriminates on the basis of viewpoint and cannot be fixed without rewriting the statute. Viewpoint discrimination is poison to a free society. But in many countries with constitutions or legal traditions that claim to protect freedom of speech, serious viewpoint discrimination is now tolerated, and such discrimination has become increasingly prevalent in this country. At a time when free speech is under attack, it is especially important for this Court to remain firm on the principle that the First Amendment does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination. We reaffirm that principle today.

Our decision is not based on moral relativism but on the recognition that a law banning speech deemed by government officials to be “immoral” or “scandalous” can easily be exploited for illegitimate ends. Our decision does not prevent Congress from adopting a more carefully focused statute that precludes the registration of marks containing vulgar terms that play no real part in the expression of ideas. The particular mark in question in this case could be denied registration under such a statute. The term suggested by that mark is not needed to express any idea and, in fact, as commonly used today, generally signifies nothing except emotion and a severely limited vocabulary. The registration of such marks serves only to further coarsen our popular culture. But we are not legislators and cannot substitute a new statute for the one now in force.

The full slip opinion is here; Alito’s concurrence is on pages 14 and 15 of the PDF.

*I know Scalia’s concurrence isn’t the controlling opinion in Citizens United, but it’ll be a cold day in Hell when I link favorably to a Kennedy-penned opinion in a case where literally anybody else in the majority wrote on the central question of the case.

The editor wishes to disclose that he successfully, if barely, resisted the temptation, nearly universal among bloggers this morning, to make this article’s title a “FUCT” pun.

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Some Church Documents #2: 1975 Nullity Case Involving a “Transsexual”

by James J Heaney Posted on 18 June 2019

The document and my discussion are at the bottom, if you want to skip down and read the darn thing. Otherwise, I have some introductory comments on the Catholic Church and gender issues.

Aw yiss, articles obscure enough you still have to find them in books!
Aw yiss, articles obscure enough you still have to find them in books!

For some years, I have tried to determine what the Catholic Church officially believes about people who identify as transsexual. This is not as easy as you might think.

Now, Catholicism has a great deal to say about specific sexual acts. To wit, unless it is a sexual act act that is open to life, performed freely in a loving, male-female marriage, the Catholic Church is Not For It. Several pages of the Catechism are devoted to going through common sex acts and gently, politely identifying them as gravely evil and harmful to all participants. Masturbation: bad. Fornication: bad. Prostitution: bad. Adultery: bad. Contraception: bad. And so forth. A little ways above this section, there’s a discussion of the importance of distinct maleness and femaleness, their complementarity, their role in driving humans to communion with one another, and how they figure in God’s overall plan for humanity.

This, then, is where we find the Catechism’s condemnation of all homosexual acts, although the authors take pains to clarify that the Church does not condemn homosexual persons. Gay and lesbian Catholics cannot, after all, be “open to life” in sex acts with members of the same sex. Even if they could, these acts would not conform to the Church’s understanding of complementarity between the sexes. Since all Catholics, including gay and lesbian Catholics, are called to chastity, this pretty clearly rules out sexual gratification of any kind within a same-sex relationship. (The Catechism notoriously fails to suggest what positive vocations gay and lesbian Catholics might be called to, but that’s another story.)

But being transsexual is not at all the same as being gay. Some people experience an interior sensation that their apparent physical sex is incorrect. People who appear to be males (and even have male genitalia) believe themselves to be truly female, and vice versa.  Often, they say they are “trapped in” or were “born into” the “wrong body.” We call these people “transsexuals.”

(To be clear: I am talking in this post specifically about transsexuals, those who desire to transform their bodies to reflect their perceived sex. There is a broader movement of “trans*” identities, which includes identification such as “bigender,” “agender,” and “genderqueer.” I confess I cannot make heads or tails of these identities, and suspect that those using them are using a definition of “gender” so subjective as to be either trivial or meaningless or both. Perhaps this subjectivity is considered a justified reaction against socially-imposed gender roles, which are real and often oppressive. In any event, this post is not about trans* identities broadly. I am aware that “transsexual” is now seen as somewhat archaic, but I am unaware of any more modern term that specifically identifies this particular subset of trans* persons)

In many ways, the transsexual experience runs directly counter to the prevailing narrative of the LGBT movement. Where gays, lesbians, and many trans* individuals insist that gender doesn’t matter at all, because “love is love” and identity is completely plastic, trans* people experience deep, profound alienation from their bodies, because they gender matters more than practically anything else. Their dysphoria is not remotely plastic, much to their regret. Our culture, led by the LGB movement at large, has worked very hard to imagine that all gender differences are the result of social conditioning and kyriarchy, a kind of gender nominalism that finds its apex in the same-sex marriage movement. But transsexual people affirm a kind of gender realism that has become almost alien to our culture–at least, outside of the Catholic Church.

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Millennials: You’ll Need $4.5 Million to Retire

by James J Heaney Posted on 5 May 2019

Today, I read an alarming report that said (among other things) that Americans are guessing at how much money they need to retire… and they are guessing wildly wrong. For example, the median Millennial “guesstimated” that he would need a $500,000 nest egg to retire.

After forty years of inflation, this will buy you two apples and a hair shirt.
After forty years of inflation, this much latinum will buy you two apples and a hair shirt.

This is great if you have generous children willing to support you, or if you enjoy eating cat food. Otherwise, Millennials, we need to shape up.

To be fair, Millennials are not being uniquely stupid here. Our parents in GenX and the Baby Boom (aka “The Olds”) are roughly the same amount of dumb about retirement. But I’m not talking to them, because (1) the Olds are so much closer to retirement they’re beyond my help, and (2) they are going to retire into a functional Social Security system, so, while their own irresponsibility might ruin their plans, it won’t ruin their lives.

But the first Millennials don’t start retiring until 2049. The Social Security Trust Fund will be empty in 2035.  Do the math.

Social Security will still exist after 2035, since the Trust Fund is only one part of its funding, but the Olds’ refusal to deal with its massive long-term funding problem now means that it is likely to pay our generation less than we were promised. You can pretty much count on receiving at least half your scheduled benefit. In fact, it’s very likely you’ll get 75% of your benefit. But beyond that? It depends on the Olds’ willingness to raise taxes on the rich, and have you seen their voting records? So let’s assume our parents are going to mess this up (as usual) and leave us with the bill (as usual), as they have on everything from student loans to the home mortgage interest deduction. You’re going to have a lean Social Security check, so you need to make sure you have enough saved up for yourself.

How much is “enough”?

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Seminarian Testament #3: Aidan Toombs

by James J Heaney Posted on 5 January 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE: In November, I put out a call for statements from priests, ex-seminarians, and ex-seminary staff. I think we, the laity, need to assess what exactly is going on in Catholic seminaries, both good and bad, and this is a space where I’ll allow people who have been there to say whatever they feel needs saying. Thank you to Aidan Toombs for sending me this.

My name is Aidan Toombs, and, until last month, I was a seminarian at Pope St. John XXIII, a national seminary for late vocations near Boston, Mass. I was in my second year of Theology. But, the week before Thanksgiving, I packed up my car with all my belongings and withdrew from seminary, and formation, in the middle of the term.

Last May, I discovered that another seminarian in my class was stealing from me – using my credit card without my knowledge and electronically transferring funds out of my checking account into his credit card account.

The seminary’s response to the theft is an example of the efforts we hear of too often by Church authorities to cover up wrongdoing and focus on blaming the victim, attacking his character and credibility, rather than holding the perpetrator accountable. It’s also an example of the culture of secrecy that apparently reigns in the Church and seminaries today. And that’s why I felt it was important to submit my statement – this needs to change.

After I discovered the theft, I shared the information with my Vocation Director for his guidance as to how to proceed. On his advice, I told the Rector of the seminary what happened. When the other student learned I had told the seminary, he sent me an angry e-mail making vague threats to defame me to the Rector. I didn’t bother to respond to him – I knew I hadn’t done anything that was in any way inappropriate. In fact, I forwarded his e-mail myself to the Rector and my bishop.

I wanted to report the theft from my checking account to the police – because what he did was a crime and he needed to be held accountable. But, my bishop strongly advised that I wait for the seminary to address the issue. So I waited.

Then, just days before seminary was to start this fall, I was shocked to learn that the other student was being allowed to return to seminary. The first day back, the Rector called the student and me to a meeting with himself, the Vice Rector, and the school psychologist. No one told me why we were having the meeting (or why a psychologist needed to be there!). The psychologist questioned me at length about my past generosity to this student. I got the feeling he was looking for nefarious motives on my part, which was very odd. I had been generous with this student, but I had been (and am) generous with everybody.

The psychologist tried to push the other student to take some accountability and make some sort of apology, but he had a really hard time of it. The student was unwilling to admit to any wrongdoing. It went something like this: “Don’t you think it’s wrong to use someone’s credit card to such an extent, and without his knowledge?” “Well, I guess so. I’m sorry if there was a misunderstanding.” As to the theft from my checking account … incredibly, he simply maintained that he had no idea who had transferred the funds into his account! And the Rector and psychologist didn’t bother to challenge his ludicrous non-defense.

Then the psychologist felt compelled to share items from my psychological evaluation (which is a standard part of every student’s application to seminary, and is strictly confidential). He started by saying, “It says in your psychological evaluation that … .” Although the comments he began to share were favorable, having to do with my generous character, he had no right to share any of my evaluation with another student! I stopped him mid-sentence and reminded him that I had not given consent for the sharing of my evaluation with anyone except my diocese and the seminary administration. What this psychologist did (reading aloud from a psychological evaluation to third parties without the consent of the one evaluated) was probably illegal and certainly unethical. The whole meeting was bizarre.

By this time, I had had enough of waiting for the student to be held accountable by the seminary, and was getting the feeling that nothing would be done. I reported the theft to the police, and then gave the Rector a copy of the police report. At this point, I still naively thought the Rector, and the student’s diocese, were interested in discerning the truth. But the Rector’s only comment to me was, “Why are you giving me this?” after which he ushered me out of his office.

I was puzzled. Why wouldn’t the Rector want to know that someone had filed a criminal complaint against one of his students?! And certainly he’d want to know the contents of the police report, for the sake of the safety of his students, not to mention the people of the diocese for which the student was studying. I assumed the Rector would consider it his responsibility to thoroughly investigate any allegations of criminal behavior by his seminarians. But I was wrong.

The student was then charged with a crime by the Weston police, and a date was set for the student to appear in court. I notified the Rector that the student had been charged. And now the Rector put the pressure on. He called me in to his office and told me that the other student had said, some time ago, that I was engaging in specific sexual activity over the summer (i.e., while as a seminarian). These allegations were false, and I saw them as clearly retaliatory and related to the threatening e-mail I had received from the student last summer.

(And think about it – if I were engaging in any illicit activity last summer, and the Rector had known about it, why did it only become an issue once the student was being charged with a crime? Shouldn’t it have been an issue as soon as the Rector learned of it?!)

After dropping this bombshell on me, the Rector dismissed me from his office with the comment that I should let him know if I had any other information about this. I felt that I was now in danger of being dismissed from seminary for sexual misconduct. So I defended myself by submitting testimonials from some longtime business colleagues and old friends who attested to my character, conduct and chastity. (Imagine how embarrassing it was to ask them for this.) The Rector was not happy with the response, however. He said to me, “I didn’t ask you for this,” and, “You shouldn’t have gone public with this.” So apparently, he wanted me to give him more information … but not if it would serve as a defense against the defamatory statements.

I learned that the defamation was also shared with the faculty, because the allegations against me came up in my advising sessions. Both my Formation Advisor and my Spiritual Director at seminary expressed that they had heard the allegations in faculty meetings, and that these allegations created obstacles to my formation. I was left to wonder – who else was in these faculty meetings and heard this about me? I felt self-conscious and embarrassed.

In my next meeting with the Rector (the Vice Rector always attended these meetings as well), the Rector came down on me hard. He clearly wanted me to drop the charges. He literally said that he blamed me for the theft, because of my past generosity to the student (in other words, blaming the victim for bringing the crime upon himself); and, he questioned my credibility, saying it was possible I had completely fabricated the theft in an effort to get the student dismissed because he “had something” on me, referencing the student’s defamation.

But of course the idea that I fabricated the theft (for any reason) was preposterous … he was effectively proposing that I had stolen from myself, and reported the non-theft to the bank by signed affidavit, and abruptly closed my account (thus incurring fees, and costs in buying new checks, etc.), and disingenuously asked my Vocation Director for his opinion what I should do before reporting it to the seminary, and filed a false police report (which is itself a crime) … all as part of a grand scheme to get this guy ejected. And anyway, how could it both be true that it was my fault the student stole from me, and that the theft never happened because I had just made it up? These are mutually exclusive theories. The Rector’s “reasoning” was bereft of logic.

The Rector also said I should never have gone to law enforcement, and that by doing so I had acted in complete disobedience to my bishop and my Spiritual Director. The latter was simply not true; both men had told me they supported my going to the police to report the theft. The Rector was just making stuff up. I tried to correct him but he talked over me. He wouldn’t hear any of it.

And then the comment that was most telling – he said, angrily, “Don’t you understand that if he [the other student] admits to this, he’ll have to be dismissed?!” Now it was all clear. For whatever reason, the Rector wanted that student to remain in formation, regardless of what he had done, and regardless of what the truth was. Indeed, the Rector didn’t want to hear the student’s admission, he didn’t want to know the truth, if it would mean having to hold the student accountable.

The Rector had every reason to believe what I was telling him, and to investigate further. I had given him copies of my bank statements, the police report, e-mails, etc. But he refused to look at the evidence in front of him … and what evidence he did see, he refused to believe. He chose not to investigate allegations of criminal activity by his student, much less to report them to law enforcement.

But doesn’t the Church have a moral obligation to investigate allegations of misconduct by its men, whether priests or seminarians, and to provide to victims, as well as the parishioners and public these men serve, a complete accounting of the misconduct?

Rather than investigating the misconduct, the Rector instead chose to find reasons not to consider my (the victim’s) allegations “credible.” He used a warped version of my (the victim’s) personal life, obtained from the other student’s (the perpetrator’s) unsubstantiated defamatory comments, to discredit me, without permitting me to defend myself. This is something we hear happening again and again – instead of investigating allegations of misconduct, Church authorities attack the credibility of the victim and attack his character.

What is also troubling is that, because this is a seminary for late vocations, that other student is not just a kid out of college. He is a middle-aged man, approximately 40 years old! And here he is, a “man of the Church” in formation to become a priest, using others’ credit cards to support his lifestyle, taking money out of their checking account to pay his credit card, lying about his actions and lying about the others’ character to protect himself. He is financially irresponsible and he is dishonest. And the Rector (and the student’s diocese) knew all this.

Also troubling is that the seminary is not following the stated, “consistent” policy of the Archdiocese of Boston regarding the reporting of criminal activity to law enforcement. The statement by Cardinal Sean O’Malley on seminary review that was posted on the archdiocesan website on October 11, 2018 states: “if potential criminal activity is discovered [at any seminary in the Archdiocese of Boston], you can be assured that it will be promptly referred to law enforcement, as has been the consistent policy of the Archdiocese of Boston with any allegations of criminal issues.” Well, that sounds nice, but my allegation of criminal issues was not “promptly referred to law enforcement.” Just the opposite: I was not only chastised for referring criminal activity to law enforcement myself, but, in addition, my credibility and character were attacked, and I was pressured to drop the charges that were brought by law enforcement.

After all of this happened, it was clear to me that my life in seminary would be hell if I didn’t drop the charges. Also, as I was still a seminarian, the virtue of obedience was used to pressure me to do so. And so I dropped the charges.

I remained in continual distress, however, and could not find peace in the seminary in light of all that had happened, especially what the student had said about me. I felt that my dismissal from seminary was a constant possibility. The other student’s lies and defamation of my character had not only been given credence by the Rector, but as I mentioned, they made their way to other faculty, and also to my bishop. Thus, they damaged my credibility and my standing in the seminary, as well as my prospects in the wider Church and my advancement in the Church.

Ultimately, I felt I had no option but to leave seminary. It is a terrible waste. I really felt that I had a vocation, and it was affirmed on all sides. I had been voted the class president this year, I was a straight A student with excellent evaluations from my pastoral assignments – according to my Formation Advisor, the best he had ever seen. I could have been a good priest.

As to the Rector’s gross mishandling of the theft, the important lesson he gave that other student (who remains in formation for the priesthood at Pope St. John XXIII to this day), is that when you’re caught in wrongdoing you should just deny it, hold fast to your denial, and deflect attention from yourself with false allegations against the victim. If you do that, the Church will protect you. On the other hand, if you report misconduct, especially if you go outside the Church and to the authorities – look what happens.

I still believe in the Church, if not in the people who administer her. But I must admit that it’s difficult to participate in the Church and to practice my faith any more, and my spiritual growth has certainly come to a standstill from this.

I hope that by telling my story some good can come from this, and that perhaps some change can be effected. And I hope that this does not happen to any other seminarian.

Do you have a story, good or bad, to tell about your experience in seminary? For the good of the Church, please reach out to me. –JJH

UPDATE 28 January 2019:

Last week, I received a number of anonymous and semi-anonymous complaints about this story, alleging that Mr. Toombs had concealed, downplayed, or outright lied about important parts of this story in order to destroy the reputation of the seminarian who (allegedly) stole from him. These claims led ChurchMilitant.com (which briefly shared this piece, with Mr. Toombs’ permission) to remove it from their website. Although these claims came from no identifiable source, calumny is an extremely serious charge, so I looked into it as best I could with my concededly limited resources.

I was not able to substantiate any of the claims made against Mr. Toombs, nor were any of the critics willing to go on the record with their disputes against Mr. Toombs’ account. For his part, Mr. Toombs denied categorically all the relevant allegations against him, insisting that the criticisms I received are part and parcel of the same campaign of defamation he describes in this testament. I wish to thank him for his cooperation and candid answers over the past few days as I grilled him on a variety of topics relating to his seminary experience and his past. Since I was not able to substantiate those allegations, I will not recount them here.

Mr. Toombs also shared with me a number of documents — the police report described in this testament, various court filings, and a lengthy sworn statement signed by Mr. Toombs as part of a lawsuit.  I carefully reviewed these documents. I found the documents and this testament consistent with one another. It is my understanding that to lie in one of these statements would constitute a low-grade felony. While I am never closed to the possibility that I’ve made a mistake, at this time, I can find no reason to correct or retract Mr. Toombs’s testament.

Despite all that, I would, ordinarily, still be inclined to remove the names of all specific individuals from this piece. In this series, I am trying to get a sense for what is going on in the Church, not publicly name-and-shame individual seminarians and seminary officers, and, if facts are in dispute, there’s no need to keep their names front and center. However, there’s nothing to remove. Mr. Toombs had the same attitude in this piece, thus named no specific individuals involved. I myself did not know the name of the seminarian in question until I reviewed the police report — and, now that I know it, I plan to try very hard to forget it.

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Seminarian Testament #2: Anon “Assistant”

by James J Heaney Posted on 6 December 2018

EDITOR’S NOTE: In November, I put out a call for statements from priests, ex-seminarians, and ex-seminary staff. I think we, the laity, need to assess what exactly is going on in Catholic seminaries, both good and bad, and this is a space where I’ll allow people who have been there to say whatever they feel needs saying. Here is one such person. Thank you to the individual who sent me this.

by Anonymous

Peter Stine’s testament filled in a lot of gaps for me. I knew Peter in passing back then, and I had wondered why he up and left Sacred Heart so quickly. Thanks for publishing it. My own, similar, story has been on my chest for a long while and I think now is the time to get it off. I am now a member of a corporation that will make it impossible for me to get permission to name names (even my own), but this is what happened to me:

My home diocese has high numbers of vocations and a great reputation, but it, too, had a kind of “system,” and I was pushed out of it, though maybe in a different way. The end of my seminary career came rather suddenly, although the writing had been painted on the wall for some time.

The vocations director for my diocese and his cadre of close supporters wanted extroverts with a certain knack for fundraising (like himself) as candidates for priesthood. To correct my deficiency in these areas, I was sent on a “spirituality year.” Surprise surprise, I was assigned to be the personal assistant of another diocesan priest… one who happened to be a close relative of the vocations director. I was kept busy, starting at about 3:30 am and working until 12 am the following morning. I could maybe get four hours of sleep on the weekends. Some activities were legitimate, like helping in the school and at Masses/ liturgical functions, but I’m not sure picking his drunk self up from a lake cabin on the weekends at 1 am qualifies as useful formation.

The 900 calories per day diet he put me on for 7 months wasn’t great either. I dropped 80lbs in 7 months. It was weight loss, which admittedly, was needed, but far from healthy. I would cook fancy meals for him and his guests, but was expressly forbidden from getting any myself, so as to not ” spoil my diet.”  In addition, he made me get rid of most of my belongings, including my truck, 1/2 of my guns, even my health insurance (with no diocesan back-up planned) all for “formation.” If I questioned anything, I was doubting his just authority and would be dismissed. Yet, despite everything, I did it to the best of my ability.

In the end, all it took was one vaguely worded letter of complaint that I was not a suitable candidate – from one of the vocations director’s closest friends, go figure – and I was out. I got a text from the vocations director two days before Christmas in which he indicated that all was well and that I was doing great. When he arrived, however, he had a look on his face that suggested otherwise. 9am: I was golden. 10 am: I was not good for the job and out. That was it. Merry Christmas to me, right? There was no explanation or exit strategy; the decision was made. It was nice seeing you, goodbye.

After everything, I was essentially kicked to the curb and spent the next year in a deep depression. I even went so far as considering ending it all, but didn’t want to leave a mess for my landlord. I have since bounced back, thanks be to God, and am doing quite well now. But the sudden end to it did a number on me.

Sorry that got long. Like I said, it’s been on my chest for a while. Sorry to offload.  Rant over.

While this is published anonymously, the author confirmed his own identity for me, as well as the name of the vocations director named in the story. I verified that the author was a seminarian of the diocese in question at the same time as that vocations director, and confirmed that said vocations director served alongside a close relative. The author remains a practicing Catholic.

Do you have a story, good or bad, to tell about your experience in seminary? For the good of the Church, please reach out to me. –JJH

 

 

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Seminarian Testament #1: Peter Stine

by James J Heaney Posted on 3 December 2018

EDITOR’S NOTE: In November, I put out a call for statements from priests, ex-seminarians, and ex-seminary staff. I think we, the laity, need to assess what exactly is going on in Catholic seminaries, both good and bad, and this is a space where I’ll allow people who have been there to say whatever they feel needs saying. Here is one such person. Thank you to Peter for sending me this. –JJH

Vere dico vobis

by Peter Stine

I am a faithful, orthodox Catholic, who only wants the best for the Church as she grapples with the latest wave of the sexual abuse crisis. Thanks to the most recent revelations, we now know this crisis spread to the seminaries decades ago and festered there for a generation. I have been in seminary recently, and many people have asked me what my experience in seminary was like. Is there still a culture of homosexuality? Is the culture of secrecy and clericalism still in place? I believe that I may be able to shed some light on these questions.

I am not a victim of the sexual attentions of any priest or prelate. However, I did witness (and experience) the abuse of clerical power.  In fact, I was drummed out of the seminary because of it.

You may say that I, therefore, have an axe to grind with the Church and so anything that I say about the current situation is tainted and should be paid no heed. I cannot pretend that I am not angry, but I shall do my best to tell you the truth, uncolored by my feelings. You will have to decide whether or not I succeed. I am going to use the actual names of the people and places involved, not because I am seeking a vendetta, but because I believe we must break the Church’s habit of cloaking serious problems in shadow and innuendo. I do not hate the Church; I love her. However, we must distinguish between the Church as infallible Divine Institution and the sinful human beings—myself included—who imperfectly serve her.

Why am I writing this now and not earlier? Part of it has to do with the fact that I believe that the hierarchy is focusing on the consequences of the abuses, rather than the environment that allowed them to flourish. They seek quick fixes when only systemic reform will help. Another reason is that to write some of this requires that I dig up parts of my past that I would rather not face, as they are extremely painful. And, yes, a lot of my hesitancy comes from the simple fear that, if I release this, I will be permanently censured and forbidden from applying to any seminary ever again. I firmly believe that priesthood is what the Lord wants for me, but I have absolutely no faith in the current, human, institutional part of the Church to act justly in this regard.

And yet…. Si Deus quoddam vult, fiet. I have avoided writing this for a very long time, but it has come back to me repeatedly. This time, when my friend James asked to tell him about my experience in seminary, I said yes. I pray that this is what the Lord wishes.

Having both qualified and discredited myself, let us proceed.

When people ask about the seminary in light of the abuse crisis, the main questions they ask are about homosexuality and clericalism. Many say that the abuse crisis was precipitated by one or the other. I believe that the truth is somewhere in the middle. There is some truth to both claims and both, to varying degrees, are currently present within the Church.
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Call for Seminarian Testaments

by James J Heaney Posted on 28 November 2018

It seems that the reality inside some (many?) Catholic seminaries does not match the brochure.

I know several people in this picture. Some advanced to priesthood. Others are married. All are good guys.
I know several people in this picture. Some advanced to priesthood. Others are married. All are good guys.

We’ve all seen public accounts by priests and ex-seminarians (here is just one) describing Catholic seminaries as hothouses where clerical authoritarianism, combined with tolerance or encouragement of sexual immorality, drives good men out of priestly vocations. This (allegedly) leaves behind a clergy where yes-men, political chameleons, and sexually active gays (and straight allies) are overrepresented… the next generation of the “lavender mafia.” Many of us are familiar with Goodbye, Good Men, Michael Rose’s book about how this culture operated during the ’70s and ’80s, where it advanced under the flag of theological liberalism. I’ve heard enough hair-raising accounts of seminaries in those days to be confident that Rose’s narrative is basically correct.

However, as The Scandal rolls into its 33rd year, we are seeing indications that, even as conservatives have largely changed the theological orientations of most Catholic seminaries toward Tradition, the underlying culture of clerical authoritarianism and sexual impropriety… maybe has not changed so much as we’d like to believe. Cardinal McCarrick’s recent and notorious abuse of his own seminarians, even as JP2 elevated him to cardinal and McCarrick served as the bishops’ PR guy on abuse, seems to be but the tip of the iceberg (look at Lincoln).

I know a lot of recent ex-sems, and I hear stories. Some of them are very good! Most ex-sems I know have many very fond memories of their time in seminary.

But some of the stories are… weird. Any one of them, I might dismiss as an aberration or somebody with an axe to grind. In the aggregate, though? Combined with everything else we’ve been seeing in the press? I have found reason for concern.

But I don’t have the full picture. Outside the clergy, I’m not sure anybody really knows what overall American seminary culture is like.

I think it’s time to change that.

If you were recently a Catholic seminarian or seminary employee, I’d like to hear from you. What was your seminary like? What’s working? What’s not? Did you find a culture where clericalism and/or sexual immorality were problems, or no? If so, how so?

Write me at james.j.heaney@gmail.com, and I’ll publish what you have to say right here on De Civitate.

A few ground rules:

  • I’m asking about recent seminarian experiences, particularly since the abuse scandal went national in the U.S. in 2002. So if you haven’t been in a seminary since before 2003, this isn’t directed to you.
  • If you are currently at a seminary, this probably isn’t for you, either. It’s going to be tough to be objective or candid about your experience while you’re still having it.
  • I’m happy — in fact, eager — to publish both positive and negative accounts of your seminary experiences. My intention is to get a sense of what seminaries are like today. If it turns out seminaries are, by and large, doing great, that would be fantastic (if somewhat surprising) news.
  • I will publish anonymous accounts. However, if you choose anonymity:
    • You may not name names, either of seminary personnel or the seminary you attended. The line between speaking uncomfortable truths and gossiping is whether you put your own name on it.
    • You still have to tell me who you are, so I can do some cursory verification that you are who you claim to be.
  • If you publish under your own name, you can be as specific as you consider prudent and just.
    • On the one hand, don’t commit detraction.
    • On the other hand, don’t delete or obfuscate important details just because you’re afraid somebody somewhere might accuse you of detraction. McCarrick survived another decade in office because one Dr. Fitzgibbons wouldn’t go on the record about it in 2002 out of fear for McCarrick’s reputation. Our Catholic reflex to talk about troubles without identifying the troublemakers has gone on long enough, hasn’t it?
  • I may lightly edit for spelling, grammar, clarity, and so forth. I won’t go further than that (unless asked). Even if I disagree with what you say, I’ll print it. This is a soapbox for you to speak honestly about your experience of the seminary. My job is to get out of the way and let you say what you feel needs saying, be it 100 words or 100,000.

Again, my email address is james.j.heaney@gmail.com. I have a brand-new baby at home (Irene Amelia, born November 5th, named for St. Irenaeus of Lyon, she’s great), so I might not get back to you immediately… but I will get back to you.

I hope this project sparks enough response that we are able to gain a more complete picture of what seminary life is like for young Catholics today.

And I hope the news is better than I’m expecting.

UPDATE: I have received and posted several testaments, linked here:

#1: Peter Stine

#2: Anonymous Assistant

#3: Aidan Toombs

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2018 West Saint Paul Municipal Voters’ Guide

by James J Heaney Posted on 4 November 2018
Come on over to West St. Paul / Summer, spring, winter, fall / we've got it all / in West St. Paul (SOURCE: the town anthem, available on YouTube)
Come on over to West St. Paul / Summer, spring, winter, fall / we’ve got it all / in West St. Paul (SOURCE: the city anthem)

Fellow residents of West Saint Paul:

Tomorrow, we vote. I have done a little research on the races in our city, and I have some gentle recommendations.

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