So, I arrived at the seminary about a week earlier than I was required to report during a very hot and humid late August in Winona, MN in 1989. I had no idea where to go, not knowing the layout of the place, so I walked into the chapel, and there was a single seminarian in there, praying, but he saw us, wearing lay clothes, and realizing therefrom that we were newbies, came over, helping us get to where we needed to go. He would later be ordained as Father Steven Soos. Interesting that he greeted me there, as we're both of Hungarian ancestry, he on his father's side, and I on both sides.
Turns out that getting there early was a terrible mistake ... except for the great merit to be acquired from some significant penance. I had thought I'd be able to prepare spiritually for beginning life as a seminarian, praying, studying, etc. Instead we were subjected to backbraking labor in the serious heat (and humidity) there in Minnesota (people don't realize how hot and humid ... due to the lakes ... it got up there in the Summers, and then later with a black cassock on and no air conditioning, it was tough ... but we didn't have cassocks yet of course). We had to carry lots of furniture (as in very heavy solid wood stuff, and large pieces since they were like pews and large classroom tables) a very long way across the grounds.
In any case, on the second day after our arrival, one of the two other guys I had given a ride up to Winona from the Cleveland / Akron area simply no-showed from the work detail. So I went looking for him and eventually found him kicked back in a chair with a large fan blasting him (he had gone into town to purchase it), so I asked him what was up, and he responded, holding up his hands, "These hands were made for chalices, not callouses." ... and then laughed. So, this guy was, how would you put it?, of the extremely effeminate orientation, complete with some hand gestures and even the lissssp. On the trip up, we had the windows open to get air, and he was in the back seat when some rather large moth flew suddenly in through the window. I had never in my life, and never since, heard such a loud ear-piercing, blood-curdling, girlish scream as I heard emanating from the back seat. I had to pull the car off the side of the road until we could evict the moth. In his defense, sortof, it was very dark, and the moth was very large, so we really didn't know what had just flown in the window. But had he been dirving the car, we all likely would have died. Now, it should have been obvious to me at the time, but I withheld judgment, not only out of charity for him, but also out of charity and respect for the SSPX, believing that certainly the SSPX would have vetted this guy, at least interviewed him, as his effeminacy was over-the-top obvious. He would register on a proverbial gαydar with a scale from 1-10 at about a very solid 12. I later confirmed it to be true, nor is this detraction, first because you don't know the guy, and second because I later found (when the internet got better) that he had actually headed up an LGBT group as his college campus near me and he was interviewed in the newspaper in Akron (so it's public info). Now, as I said, this was late 1980s so the SSPX had no good way of finding this info out, since this wouldn't have been on the internet, but I had assumed everyone would have gone on a visit, that this guy had been vetted, especially for you-know-what, since his effeminacy was over the top ... and so I concluded that it was just my perception and withheld judgment, assuming they would have found out that it was JUST effeminacy. It wasn't. And in retrospect, I'm shocked they didn't at least pay a bit of money for a background check on people, as it would have uncovered his very public and vocal LGBT advocacy.
So, first year seminarians were required to take a class named "Acts of the Magisterium", taught by Bishop Williamson himself. That was one of THE best classes at STAS, and I learned more there than in many of the others combined. That was an introduction to the crisis in the Church from the perspective of the Magisterium, and it's where Bishop Williamson traced it all the way back to the Renaissance/Enlightenment (giving a lot of detail). So, during either the first or second day of class, very early on at any rate, His Excellency asked us to take out a small scrap of paper for us to write down an answer to a question and then turn it over so no one could see their answers. He asked everyone how many Jews had been killed during the h0Ɩ0cαųst. I wrote down 0 myself, since there was no "h0Ɩ0cαųst", even if a certain number of Jews did die or even were executed during WW2. So Bishop Williamson walked up and down the aisles, asking people one at a time to turn over their paper as he walked by to see their answer. He made no comments and then just asked everyone to throw away their answer, evidently filing it away in his prodigious memory. I think this was a brilliant move, so he could see which seminarians had been brainwashed and might be in need of some deprogramming.
Then, by the end of the very first week of class, this aforementioned extremely effeminate individual that I gave a ride to told me he was leaving the seminary. I asked him, if he didn't mind saying, why he was leaving, telling him that it's fine if it's none of my business. So he told me that he just couldn't accept Bishop Williamson's "Anti-Semitism." So Bishop Williamson's "Anti-Semitism" saved the world from this guy ever getting ordained. While that's a plausible explanation, given how liberal this guy was, it's also equally possible that he was released on account of his overt appearance of having sodomitical tendencies.
Topic: Ex-Seminarian stories (Read 120163 times)