Quote from SanskritC. "Who is Fr. Urritgoity? Why was he accused of modernism? When did your brother Steve finally decide to leave the seminary due to modernism? "
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Fr. U's mother knew Pope Jean Paul II as a friend, from what I was told.
He was very talented, Specialist in Chant, and a leader. He always sought the ancient beauty of the Church, and if you ever see his first Newsletter announcing his "Society of St. John" you will understand. We could almost qualify it as "Antique Glory of Tradition", which is not evil in itself, but when $$ becomes unaccounted for, and his other ventures, and his focus on the glamorous aspect of life, there is a problem. His cassock was pure fine wool, if you get the picture.
He was an OK friend in early 1989, but then he had a "Clique", complete with High masses in secret, incense Rosaries by invitation, and seems to have been granted special privileges by Priests.
+W gave him 48 hours to leave.
He probably need prayers today.
So ... there were numerous counts on which Urrutigoity was Modernist in his thinking. Steve did not decide to leave the seminary, but he was sent to St. Mary's and had basically been told he would be there for a long while ... which was one way to get rid of people without kicking them out, since they had no reason to actually kick him out. They would send them there for potentially years, in order to demoralize them so badly that they would just leave on their own ... which is what Steve ended up doing. As he was finishing his year there, he had been told that he would remain there another year, and at that point Steve got concerned that they would drag it out so that, in the end, he would be nearly thirty by the time they cut him loose. He had made the decision to leave there shortly before Easter of 1995, and did attend Holy Week at St. Mary's in a lay capacity, including Easter Sunday Mass ... on April 16, 1995, where that one "Traddieland" book claims McVeigh had been at Mass. FBI docuмents actually put the lie to that, as McVeigh hadn't been a practicing Catholic at all, and was already in OKC by Sunday afternoon (not enough time). So, the bombing took place on Wednesday April 19, but Steve set out on the road for home the day before, on April 18, and he was taking his time, as it was long drive. And there had been reports of McVeigh sightings in several locations that Steve said he had in fact stopped in while passing through to home ... and which the FBI later said had been false sightings once they had reconstructed McVeigh's actual movements.
What Steve had done is to have gone on a longer Summer retreat, where he had the opportunity for a different spiritual director, and to that director Steve had expressed concerns about Fr. Urrutigoity having been a Modernist. Perhaps the greatest scandal in this entire thing was that this spiritual director spilled the beans to the seminary staff about Steve's comments and concerns, which had been made in the context of spiritual direction, which is indirectly covered by the seal of Confession.
I dispute this bizarre perception that Urrutigoity has some special talent. I would have many discussions or debates with him on a regular basis regarding various theological matters, and I found him to be below average intellectually ... and I've come to the conclusion that Urrutigoity got people to believe in his prowess simply because he deliberately attempted to project that perception.
As for his love of "beauty", there's a very fine line between loving created beauty and ... being materialistic and sensual, and Urrutigoity clearly crossed the line into the latter. He and his followers wore these ornate and fancy lace surplices that almost gave you the sense that they were wearing lingerie, and Urrutigoity boasted of using excessive quantities of wine to offer Mass ... and at one time he showed a number of seminarians a movie with female nudity in it (all in the interests of "beauty").
Oh, anyone who wasn't an idiot saw the "clique", or, one might say, cult following around Urrutigoity ... and that's very disturbing given that Bishop Williamson had bee given instructions by +Lefebvre to watch Urrutigoity like a hawk, especially where it came to particular friendships.
Bishop Williamson banished him at the time for having conspired to create his own Society, and not yet for the various deviant behavior, the details of which had not come out yet ... although I do believe that some seminarians had already reported Urrutigoity's bizarre activities, such as his unexpected nocturnal visits in their rooms and asking them to strip naked in front of him.
Topic: Timothy McVeigh Sightings at St. Mary's (Read 932 times)