Bergoglio Gives Fancy Red Sun Hat to Evil Dominican

Radcliffe launching gay book at Oxford with Polish Dominican

Timothy Radcliffe is an interesting choice for Cardinal. As if more proof were needed of Bergoglio’s lavender associations with Sodom and Gomorrah, here’s a piece excerpted from Randy Engel.

He was and is quite the bastard: No getting around that! He was a major player in the corruption of the Dominicans for decades:

From The Rite of Sodomy: Chapter on Religious Orders;

*    The Order of Preachers

   The Lavender Mafia in the Dominican Order

On February 25, Ash Wednesday 1998, Father Timothy Radcliffe, OP, the Master

General of the Dominican Order issued a Lenten Letter titled "The Promise of Life" from his residence at the Dominican Convent of Santa Sabina in Rome.  Having carefully followed the pattern of homosexual colonization of the

Dominican Order in the United States for more than 20 years, this writer was curious to see if Fr. Radcliffe would discuss the issue of  "gay" religious in his letter to his Dominican brothers worldwide. He did, both directly and indirectly.

Radcliffe's first reference to homosexuality was an indirect one. On the subject of celibacy, he chose a quotation from American Dominican Donald Goergen: 

"Celibacy does not witness to anything. But celibates do. We witness to the Kingdom if we are seen to be people whose chastity liberates us for life."

It is strange that of all the Dominicans that Radcliffe could have quoted on celibacy, he chose Donald Goergen, a religious whose public and private life, as we shall see, has been distinguished by an open and long-term advocacy and financial support of clerical homosexuality. Why Goergen?

The answer lies in the second of Goergen's quotes cited by Radcliffe in "The Promise of Life" wherein Goergen espouses the familiar liberal litany: "If I partake of consumer society, defend capitalism, tolerate machismo, believe that Western society is superior to others, and am sexually abstinent, I am simply witnessing to that for which we stand: capitalism, sexism, Western arrogance, and sexual abstinence. The latter is hardly deeply meaningful and understandably questioned."

For many bishops and religious superiors like Radcliffe, a seminarian's or priest's homosexual activities and advocacy can be overlooked as long as the offending priest adheres to the gospel of Liberalism. It is not until their diocese or religious order is hit with catastrophic lawsuits related to the criminal sexual abuse of underage young boys and young men, including seminarians and religious novices, that the former give a second thought to the policy of ordaining homosexuals to the priesthood and religious life.

However, in the case of Radcliffe, it appears that the pressure of pederast lawsuits against offending Dominicans worldwide had not yet reached critical mass in 1998. Indeed, in the paragraph titled "Communities of Hope," just preceding his statement on the acceptance of homosexual candidates into the order, the Master General stated, "Our communities must be places in which there is no accusation, '...the accuser of our brethren is cast forth ...' " (Apoc. 12.10).

The position of this paragraph, just before Radcliffe's support for homosexual seminarians, brothers and priests, leads one to interpret his comment as a warning against in-house whistleblowers who reveal clerical sexual misconduct and criminal acts by their fellow Dominicans to superiors or public authorities and law enforcement officers.

Dominican Order Accepts Homosexuals

In his opening statement on "Community and Sexual Orientation," Fr. Radcliffe began with the statement that various cultures react differently to "the admission of people of homosexual orientation to religious life," with some holding it to be "virtually unthinkable," while others accept it "without question."  

What "cultures" outside of ancient cults that practiced certain pagan rites or followed Gnostic doctrines, accepted "without question" men who unnaturally lust after other men? The Master General does not tell us.

Even if such a culture existed in modern times, why would its beliefs influence the universal head of the Dominican Order whose sole concern, one would think, would be what Christ, His Saints (including Saint Dominic) and His Church teaches on the matter of homosexuality? And that teaching is clear from the time of the Apostles until today. For a man to lust after another man is not only sinful, it is also perverse. To act upon these unnatural desires is an abomination in the eyes of God.

In any case, Radcliffe used his Lenten message to inform his fellow Dominicans that one's sexual orientation is not important in evaluating a candidate's suitability for religious life. "It is not for us to tell God whom He may or may not call to religious life," he said.  And besides, headded, the General Chapter of Caleruega, after much debate, affirmed that "the same demands of chastity apply to all brethren of whatever sexual orientation, and so no one can be excluded on this ground."  

The actual text from the Acts of the General Chapter of Diffinitors of the Order of Friars Preachers meeting from July 17 to August 8, 1995 at Caleruega, Spain (the birthplace of Saint Dominic) reads, ". as a radical demand, the vow of chastity is equally binding on homosexuals and heterosexuals. Hence, no sexual orientation is a priori incompatible with the call to chastity and the fraternal life."

The above reference to "sexual orientation" is an extremely sophisticated turn-of-words that leaves the door open for lesbianism, transvestitism, transsexualism, pederasty, pedophilia, sadomasochism and other sexual perversions. The fact that the worldwide Dominican leadership permitted such a statement to be incorporated into an official pronouncement of the order demonstrates in a concrete manner the degree to which the Dominicans are now controlled by the homosexualists and their minions.

Radcliffe concluded his segment on sexual orientation with words of compassion for his Dominican homosexual brethren. However, he warned that the emergence "of any subgroups within a community, based on sexual orientation, would be highly divisive," and  it would "threaten the unity of the community," and "make it harder for the brethren to practice the chastity that he has vowed."  

Overall, the officials views on the acceptance of homosexuals to Holy Orders expressed by Master General Radcliffe and as promulgated at the 1995 Council meeting, represents a radical departure from traditional Church teachings on the necessity of the scrupulous screening and vetting of candidates for the priesthood or religious life.

What happens when this traditional wisdom is tossed out the window can be seen in the battle for River Forest.

The Fall of "Fairyville"

In the mid-20th century, the Dominican Priory of St. Dominic and St. Thomas in River Forest, Ill. was a world leader in Thomistic Philosophy and Theology. Its growing enrollment of candidates seeking admission to the Dominican Order was such that in the early 1950s, part of the order's theological facilities were moved to Dubuque, Iowa.

The magnificent St. Rose of Lima Priory and Seminary in Dubuque that housed the Aquinas Institute of Theology was completed in 1956. It sat just across the road from the Provincial Seminary of Mount St. Bernard operated by the Archdiocese of Dubuque. St. Rose housed more than 200 seminarians and 50 junior priests. The priory and seminary were the pride and glory of the Dominican Order.

By the late 1960s, however, the Dominican seminary had become the ‘Fairyville' of Iowa and the  laughing stock of the Dominican Order. The problem? Rampant homosexuality combined with Post-Conciliar Modernism and leftist political activism.

This was the evaluation of Fr. Charles Corcoran, OP, from the River Forest Priory.

Father Corcoran ostensibly came to teach at St. Rose Priory as Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Aquinas Institute at the request of the Provincial Superior, Fr. Gilbert Graham, in 1966.

In actuality, Corcoran, who held a doctorate in psychology, had been asked to come to St. Rose to see if anything could be done about the homosexual problem and related issues that threatened the existence of the seminary.

Corcoran was joined by another Dominican who unfortunately was of little help as he himself was a flaming homosexual.

In 1967, the Most Rev. Father Aniceto Fernandez Alonso, the Dominican Master General in Rome made a formal Visitation to St. Rose. Fr. Fernandez met with Fr. Corcoran who advised the Master General of the problems at St. Rose and named the ringleaders. Father Fernandez gave Father Graham the order to clean house beginning with the removal of two professors from the faculty known to be closely connected to homosexual clique at the seminary. However, when Fr. Graham tried to remove the offending professors, the entire faculty threatened to resign en masse. The Master General's orders were never carried out and conditions at the seminary continued to deteriorate.

St. Rose was not the only seminary having a problem with homosexuality.

Mount St. Bernard Seminary, which served all of the dioceses of Iowa, was forced to close its doors in 1969, 15 years after it had been built, due largely to conditions of moral turpitude.

The philosophy at the time was once the vice took hold in a seminary, you simply closed the doors and sent everyone home.

There were, of course, other on-going problems at St. Rose.

During the post-Vatican II era  there was a general purge of orthodox Dominicans from the Aquinas Institute. Traditional-minded candidates for the priesthood were either turned away or became so disillusioned with thehomosexual milieu at the seminary that they quit.

Finally, in July 1981, the entire Dominican operation at St. Rose and its Aquinas Institute in Dubuque was shut down and the Aquinas Institute was moved to St. Louis University in Missouri operated by the Jesuits.

The dislodged homosexual clique from St. Rose turned their sites northeast to River Forest as Fr. Cochran had predicted ten years prior. By 1985, the clique was powerful enough to engineer the election of one of its own, Donald Goergen, as Provincial of the Central Province of St. Albert the Great in Chicago.

The Rise of Father Donald Goergen

A native of Iowa, young Goergen began his preparation for the diocesan priesthood at Loras College in Dubuque in 1961, where he majored in Latin, Philosophy and French.

Originally built as a diocesan seminary in 1839 by Bishop Pierre-Jean-Mathias Loras, the first bishop if Dubuque, Loras College was later converted to an all-male liberal arts college. Today, it is Catholic in name only.  

After graduation in 1964, Goergen entered Mount St. Bernard Seminary in Dubuque, but was turned out of the seminary in 1968, his senior year, by Bishop Joseph M. Mueller of Sioux Falls. The Ordinary discovered pictures of male nudes in Goergen's room.

Having been expelled from St. Bernard's, Goergen managed to latch onto a well-connected Dominican friar by the name of Father Benedict Ashley (former Winston Ashley) at St. Rose. In 1970, Goergen was accepted as a novice at St. Rose.

Father Ashley, like Goergen, had also come into the Dominican Order under questionable circumstances. As a young man he was reported to have worked for the Daily Worker in Chicago, the official party organ of the Communist Party USA. He then experienced a "conversion" and entered the Dominican Order in August 1941. He was ordained in June 1948. Father Ashley worked himself up from a faculty member to Director of Vocations and Director of Studies at St. Rose Seminary.

One of Fr. Ashley's students who took his course on "The History of Ancient Philosophy," said that instead of the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, he and other students were exposed to a constant diet of discourses on Marxism and dialectical materialism.  

Under Fr. Ashley's tenure, a number of orthodox faculty members were removed from their job including Fr. Alfred Wilder who was found to be "incompetent," but nevertheless was immediately snatched up by Dominican officials to teach in Rome, and Fr. John F. McDonnell, who, after his dismissal, also went to Rome to teach. When the Dominicans closed shop in Dubuque, Fr. Ashley went to St. Louis.

Thanks to Ashley's backing, Goergen's experienced a rapid rise in the order. He made his first profession on December 19,1971. One year later he received his Ph.D. in Systematic Theology from the Dominican Aquinas Institute of Theology. His doctoral dissertation was on the concept of person in the thought of Teilhard de Chardin.  

Amazingly, while he was still a student, Goergen was made Director of Studies for MA and Ph.D. programs at the specific request of Fr. Ashley who had chosen Fr. Goergen as his heir apparent.  This made Fr. Donald Goergen the first Dominican in the history of the order ever to be made Director of Studies while still a student. Even St. Thomas Aquinas did not qualify for the honor.

In 1974, one year before his ordination at Saint Raphael's Cathedral in Dubuque, Goergen published The Sexual Celibate, an apologia for homosexuality that was based on notes from his lectures to seminary students at St. Rose and the Aquinas Institute.

The Sexual Celibate promotes the homosexual "continuum" theories of the Alfred Kinsey, decries "homophobia," advances the cause of homosexual "unions," defends masturbation for all including celibate priests, and claims that "homosexuality can exist in healthy, Christian and graced forms.

Goergen gives his final coup de grace in the form of an attack on the Perpetual Virginity of Our Lady.

Goergen's attack on traditional Catholic morality notwithstanding, he was ordained a priest of the Dominican Order on schedule in 1975. After ordination, he became Regent of Studies for the Province of St. Albert the Great and was appointed to the Dominican Provincial Council. From 1984 to 1985, he served as co-director of the Parable Conference for Dominican Life and Mission based at the Priory of St. Dominic and St. Thomas in River Forest. The Parable Conference is a lay-religious national collaborative effort designed to promote the work of the order "in ways that are authentic, truthful, and transforming of the human community in furtherance of God's mission in the world."  

In June 1987, Goergen gave a series of lectures on "Christology" in which he stated that Jesus of Nazareth is not the "Christ of Faith" and that Jesus is God because we are all Gods, quoting John 10:34 as his authority.

In terms of personal behavior, Fr. Charles Corcoran, is on record as stating that he (Corcoran) caught Goergen in an act of sodomy with another Dominican at St. Rose in Dubuque.  

During this same time period, Fr. Goergen was busy promoting homosexuality in religious orders. He played a key leadership role in the creation of the Homosexual Collective within the Dominican Order and AmChurch.

In The Homosexual Network, Father Rueda notes that during the 1980s there were 28 Dominicans whose names appeared on the membership list of the Catholic Coalition for Gay Civil Rights - Donald Goergen's name was on that list.

Rueda also gave Goergen three dishonorable mentions for his promotion of "homosexual rights."  

Rueda identified Goergen as an early financial supporter of Communication Ministry, Inc., an underground "ministry" for lesbian nuns and gay clergy and religious" and publishers of the newsletter for homosexual clergy and religious titled Communication..  

In the February 1980 issue of the newsletter, which serves as "a dialogue on the relationship between personal sexuality and ministry for the purpose of building community among gay clergy and religious," a Catholic  brother from the East Coast wrote:

In the years before I came out, masturbation was my only sexual outlet.

After reading Don Goergen's book (Sexual Celibate) and examining my own masturbatory behavior, I came to see it as a substitute for my need to be touched affectionately. .When I finally accepted my gayness and began to be sexually involved with others, I have noticed a sharp decrease in masturbatory behavior. .So I would have to vote for the side of the argument that that would say that masturbation can be a  positive contribution to one's psycho-sexual health providing it is a way of remaining sensual/sensuous, and of keeping in touch with the beauty of the human body.

The Battle for River Forest

Goergen's Hit List

Following his election in 1985 as the Prior Provincial for the Central Province of St. Albert the Great in Chicago, Fr. Donald Goergen and his associates at the St. Pius V. Priory, plotted the takeover of the Priory of St. Dominic and St. Thomas in River Forest.

At the top of Goergen's hit list were traditional Dominicans Fr. John O'Connor, Fr. Charles Fiore, Fr. Gerald Mannes Landmesser and Brother Robert Montgomery.

Goergen's first order of business was to kick out the orthodox Dominican Fathers at Fenwick High School in Chicago where Dominicans had taught since 1929. Fr. Landmesser and other older Dominicans were replaced with a batch of Goergen's effeminate Young Turks. The principle of Fenwick, Fr. William Bernanki, later replaced Fr. Lex Goedert as Prior of River Forest.

Father Fiore, who had warred against the Homosexual Collective in the Church since he entered the Dominican Order, thought the battle against Father Georgen to be a hopeless case. He sought and was granted exclaustration, and later joined the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. He died on February 18, 2003. After months of intimidation and harassment, Fr. Landmesser also asked to be released from the order.

In the end, only Father John O'Connor proved ready, willing and able to stand his ground for God and the Dominican Order against Goergen and Company.  The battle raged on for more than four years.

 Father John O'Connor - A Life of Faith, Devotion and Courage

John F. O'Connor was born and raised in Chicago. He entered the Dominican Order in 1949. After completing a one-year novitiate in Winona, Minn., he went to the River Forest House of Studies for three years and later to St. Rose Priory in Dubuque. He was ordained in Oakland, Calif. in 1955.

Immediately afterwards, Fr. O'Connor began his long career as a Dominican preacher, first as a parish priest, then as a  college professor of theology and philosophy. From 1969 to 1989 he was part of the Dominican Mission Band and preached throughout the United States, England and Canada. The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Rosary were prominent themes in his Mission work. In the late 1980s, he found himself once again at home at the magnificent St. Dominic and St. Thomas Priory in River Forest in the Central Province of Chicago. His Provincial Superior was none other than Father Donald Goergen.

As a faithful son of St. Dominic, Father O'Connor never had any difficulties with his superiors until Goergen arrived on the scene. Father Goergen wanted

O'Connor out.

In a conversation with Fr. O'Connor in April 1986, Fr. Lex Goedert, the Prior at River Forest let it slip that Goergen was going to suspend O'Connor on some pretext or another. By this time, O'Connor, due in part to his long association with Fr. Corcoran, had become a nationally recognized opponent of the Homosexual Collective in AmChurch and in his own Dominican Order.

The fireworks began in March 1987 when Fr. Charles Fanelli, the pastor of St. John Baptist Vianney Church in Northlake, Ill. asked Fr. O'Connor to give a weeklong Mission at his church.

A woman who attended all of O'Connor's talks said that his powerful preaching at the mission had parishioners lining up the isles for confession and that the crowds grew larger every night. Fr. Fanelli considered the event to be a great success.  

Not everyone, however, was favorably impressed with Fr. O'Connor's preaching.  

At the next parish council meeting in April at St. Vianney, the members were informed that complaints against Fr. O'Connor's preaching had been lodged with Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago.. When O'Connor attempted to get copies of the complaints, Cardinal Bernardin refused to send them to him.

On May 4, 1987, Father Goergen in the company of another Dominican priest, Father Jim Marchionda, visited O'Connor at River Forest to discuss the complaints. During a heated confrontation, O'Connor told Goergen that Fr. Cochran had witnessed Goergen sodomizing a fellow Dominican. O'Connor reported that Goergen told him, "Homosexuality is becoming more acceptable now," and let the subject drop.  

 Father O'Connor decided to go on the offensive. On May 13, 1987 he sent Goergen a letter questioning the financial irregularities of the Province especially in connection with the St. Jude Thaddeus Shrine operated by the Dominicans on the Southside of Chicago. O'Connor made specific reference to Father "Chuck" Dahm, a member of Goergen's coterie, who had allegedly been draining the treasury of thousands of dollars to finance various left-wing political causes. O'Connor asked for an independent audit of the Province's and St. Jude's financial records.

On July 22, 1987, Goergen sent O'Connor a return salvo. Goergen told O'Connor in response to the latter's request for a transfer that he had no intention of reassigning him to another Province. Goergen  repeated his demand that O'Connor moderate his preaching, stop mentioning people by name in his talks (especially Cardinal Bernardin) and stop frightening people with verbal excesses.

Goergen stated that he wanted O'Connor to sign a letter of apology to the disgruntled parishioners at St. John Baptist Vianney who had complained to Cardinal Bernardin. Fr. O'Connor, who had been physically attacked by the husband of one of the complaints responded they were lucky he was not suing them for assault and battery. On November 3, 1987, Goergen ordered all communications between O'Connor and parties involved in the parish incident to cease.

           Goergen needed a new line of attack.

On December 2, 1987, one month after O'Connor had returned from a successful speaking engagement in South Dakota, Goergen informed O'Connor that he wanted him to visit a psychological counselor. O'Connor said no dice.

Goergen backed off. It was back to the drawing board. In early 1988, Goergen made another visitation to O'Connor at River Forest.

This time the Provincial stated he wanted O'Connor to stop "isolating" himself from his community of brothers. He also stated that the head of the Province of St. Joseph in New York had requested O'Connor not to enter his domain. O'Connor agreed with the latter, but said that his special dietary and health problems mitigated against his taking meals in common with his fellow Dominicans.  

In April 1988, O'Connor who had maintained contact with the Holy See on his problems with Goergen, was advised by the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes in Rome to obey his superior (Goergen) and if all else fails, to consult with and follow the advice of the Dominican Master General in Rome.

At this time, Father O'Connor decided not to seek exclaustration. He would stay and fight.

The rest of the year remained relatively uneventful. O'Connor, as directed, limited his preaching to the confines of his own Central Province. However, much to Father Goergen's consternation., O'Connor's anti-Modernist tapes that include a section against the Homosexual Collective in the Church, continued to gain greater nation-wide circulation.

On March 31, 1989, O'Connor was advised that the Provincial Council of St. Albert the Great had issued an order forbidding O'Connor to preach - anywhere. The Council also recommended that he undergo a psycho-medical evaluation.

In a letter of June 13, 1989, O'Connor responded by asking Father Goergen if he (Goergen) was willing to repent of his homosexual life. The letter was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Two days later, Goergen notified O'Connor that his suspension was fully in effect.

On February 22, 1990, after more than 40 years in the Dominican Order, Fr. John O'Connor was informed by Goergen that the process of his formal dismissal from the order had begun under Canon 696. Fifteen days later, a second warning was sent to Fr. O'Connor and formal charges against him were transmitted to the Master General in Rome.

In his charges against Father O'Connor, Father Goergen accused O'Connor of giving "grave scandal" by his written allegations against a member of the hierarchy (read Cardinal Bernardin) and against his Dominican brothers, (read Benedict Ashley, William Bernacki, Peter Witchousky and Donald Georgen).

In February 1990, Fr. O'Connor received a letter from Master General Rev. Damian Byrne in Rome (Prot. 35/90/10) stating that Father O'Connor had harmed the reputation of the Central Province, the whole Dominican Order and the Church with his accusations against Bernardin and his brother Dominicans.

Rev. Byrne ordered Father O'Connor to engage in a period of prayer and reflection beginning February 20,1990. He also ordered O'Connor to check himself into the psycho-ward at the Guadeloupe Center in Cherry Valley, Calif. O'Connor refused.

In the meantime, Father O'Connor had hired a canon lawyer to plead his dismissal from the Dominican Order in Rome, but to no avail.  Additional appeals to the Pope went nowhere.

In the summer of 1991, Rome informed Fr. John O'Connor that he was dismissed from the Dominicans.

Father O'Connor packed his bags and left the River Forest Priory forever. On Ash Wednesday, February 28, 1990, Fr. John O'Connor wrote: 

“When I made my vow of obedience 40 years ago, it was first and foremost to Jesus Christ, His Mother and St. Dominic and in obedience to them only death will silencemy witnessing to the Truth."

           To which one can only respond, "Amen."

As for Father Donald Goergen, in 1999, he left the River Forest Priory to found the Friends of God community, a Hindu-styled Dominican Ashram in Kenosha, Wis.

On April 28, 2002, Dominican Fathers Donald Goergen, and Richard Woods, received the honorary degree of Master of Sacred Theology (STM) at the Dominican Conference Center in River Forest.  This award is the highest honor the Dominican Order can confer on its brothers for teaching, research, writing, and  "excellence in striving for sound doctrine."  

Father Woods is the author of Another Kind of Love - Homosexuality and Spirituality, yet another apologia for sexual perversion.

Woods sees homosexuals as the modern day version of the Suffering Servant. By learning to live with their "gayness," homosexuals help all men and women to "accept their sexuality" and "help heal society," says Woods.  He talks of the "joy of being gay," and the "surprisingly surplus of true love, profound happiness, and real joy," found  in individual and corporate gay living.  

In his introduction to Another Kind of Love, Woods informs his readers that a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "found a few passages objectionable for a variety of reasons," but the Vatican censor recognized his book as "having much of value."    

Father Woods currently teaches theology at Dominican University, and lectures at Blackfriars Hall, the Dominican college at Oxford University.

One final note on Father Goergen.

His Ashram experiment in Kenosha turned out to be a bust. He has since been made Regent of Studies in charge of the education of Dominicans at the Aquinas Institute in St. Louis.

The Dominicans - An Equal Opportunity Employer

In recent years, the Dominican Order has proved itself to be an equal opportunity employer - not for faithful priests like Father John O'Connor - but for homosexual perverts.

In December 2002, the Dominicans of the Central Province of St. Albert the Great in Chicago made national headlines when they approved Patrick Hieronymus Baikauskas, a prominent "gay" activist, as a candidate for Holy Orders.

In an Illinois Times article by Pete Sherman titled "A Higher Calling,"Baikauskas described himself as "divorced," "a recovering alcoholic," and "gay" (a political statement) with a former partner as well as a brother who died of AIDS.

Baikauskas told Sherman that when he first approached the Dominicans at the Chicago Province and learned that the order was committed to teaching and social justice, it reminded him of his own strivings, presumably for homosexual rights.

On January 20, 2001, he was accepted as a candidate at the St. Dominic Priory on the Campus of St. Louis University following an interview with a seven-member panel of Dominicans and a vocations director - all of whom deemed him "worthy."  After basic training in chant and a brief study of the four pillars of Dominican Life - prayer, ministry, study and community - Baikauskas was sent to the Dominican novitiate in Denver.

On August 10, 2002, at St. Dominic's Church in Denver, Baikauskas made his simple profession of the vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, pledging his intention to make them the rules of his lifetime. The vows were made orally and in writing before Father Edward M. Ruane, OP, Prior of Chicago's Central Province, the position formerly held by Fr. Goergen.  

In the fall of 2002, Baikauskas started his studies at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. He hopes to be ordained in 2007 and then become a college campus recruiter for the Dominicans.

When  Illinois Times reporter Sherman questioned Baikauskas about the possibility that the Vatican was thinking about banning "gays" from the priesthood and religious life because of the clerical pederast scandals, the Dominican novitiate criticized the idea.

Baikauskas said he was offended when people have used the gay issue as a scapegoat for the scandals in the church. "Being a pedophile has nothing to do with being gay," he said.  He added that the church has been well served by "gay" priests.

"For whatever reason, gay people seem to be very successful, compassionate, pastoral..This is exemplified by the great many people who are gay and join the priesthood," Baikauskas told the Times reporter. The priesthood has nothing to do with sexual orientation, he said. "My spiritual formators say you just have to wait and see - that nothing may come of it. Worrying about it is something I'm not going to do," he concluded.   

There is nothing in the Sherman interview that indicates that Baikauskas has repented of his past life as an active homosexual. The fact that he continues to use the word "gay" as a political statement demonstrates he is still committed to "the cause." Since he approves of homosexuals in the priesthood, there is every reason to believe that as a recruiter for the order he would bring in other homosexuals like himself.

Steve Brady of Roman Catholic Faithful, after reading the December Times article, filed a  protest with Chicago Provincial Edward Ruane based on Baikauskas background as an active homosexual, his political activism in favor of "gay rights" and his continuous allegiance to a "gay" ideology.

Brady proffered that the man was not worthy to become a Catholic priest.

On January 21, 2003 Brady received a reply from Fr. David Wright, OP, Socius (Administrator) for Prior Provincial Ruane and one of Goergen's former lieutenants.

Wright stated that Dominican seminarians are expected to live a chaste life for two years before entering the formation program and that Baikauskas has been fully informed of the requirement for the priesthood. He said that, "We do not accept anyone in our community who is sexually active, nor do we tolerate any ambiguity on the meaning of celibate chastity, nor do we allow anyone to push either a homosexual and/or heterosexual agenda." Wright thought that the article by Sherman was "imprudent" and did not reflect Baikuskas’ "genuine conversion."

Several months later, Brady received a similar response from the Holy See. Writing on behalf of the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life that governs all aspects of religious life including constitutions, discipline, studies, goods, rights, and privileges. Father P. Jesus Torres, CFM, Undersecretary for the Congregation, stated he believed the Baikauskas interview reflected "a willingness to break with the past in order to pursue a new life." The letter also stated that prior to his acceptance, Brother Baikauskas was interviewed not only by the Vocations Director, but also by a group of seven Dominicans."

Torres expressed confidence in Fr. Wright's position and said that the Dominican Order would try to be particularly solicitous and prudent in judging Bailauskas's "future suitability both for religious life and the priesthood."   

Torres denied Brady's assertion that the Province of St. Albert the Great actively recruits known homosexuals or that the Dominicans and the Church condones Baikauskas's past life.

           Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the Torres letter is what was left unsaid.

       Fr. Torres did not acknowledge the existing ban on the admission of homosexual men to the priesthood, that is, the 1961 Vatican Instruction Religiosorum institutio, which has already been discussed in depth in Chapter 13. The Instruction was issued by the very same Congregation Torres now serves.  

The document clearly states that homosexuals and pederasts be excluded from religious vows and ordination."  It specifically mentions the problem of the community life and priestly ministry, which would  "constitute a 'grave danger' or temptation for these people (i.e., homosexuals and pederasts)."

The fact that Torres did not cite the 1961 Vatican Instruction in his letter is but one indication that the Holy See, thus far, is unwilling to even acknowledge the document's existence, much less enforce its rulings.