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The Reactionary
Utopian
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The Case of the “Randy Rector”
 In
early August, New York City’s two big tabloids, the
Post and Daily News, ran giggly front-page
stories about one of the city’s most prominent priests, Monsignor
Eugene Clark, 79, rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  He had
been named co-respondent in the bitter divorce of his 46-year-old secretary.
Monsignor Clark, as it happens, is
an old and dear friend of mine, whom I’ve known and revered for more
than 39 years. He has been helpful to me personally. Until now, his honor has
been unquestioned. The story shocked me, and I prayed it wasn’t so. I
wasn’t giggling.
But the tabs came forth with
more details, as well as pictures of the priest and the woman at a Long Island
motel, taken by an investigator working for her husband. He was said to have
signed in under an alias. Her 14-year-old daughter had said she’d seen
the two sharing a Jacuzzi, and it was alleged they’d traveled to Lisbon
together. It looked damning, but Monsignor Clark denied any guilt. He said he
and the woman had been working on an editorial project; that was all. I
wanted to believe him; yet it was getting harder to doubt the charges. If
innocent, why would he use a false name?
When he resigned his rectorship a
few days later, it seemed as much as an admission of guilt. The story had
gotten so much publicity that I felt I had to write about it. I did so, as
tentatively as I could, without making a judgment of culpability. A friend
urged me not to touch the story, but to me that seemed a bit like not
mentioning Michael Jackson’s indictment until his trial ended.
The tabs certainly weren’t
waiting. They gleefully dubbed Monsignor Clark “the randy
rector” and assumed the worst.
Either he was guilty or he had been
cunningly framed. In a divorce case, the latter possibility can’t be
ruled out.
This week, another old priest
friend, who knows Monsignor Clark, called me to offer a very different
version of events. It boiled down to this: the pair were telling the truth.
They’d gone to the motel so the secretary could go to the beach while
he stayed in the room and worked or napped. He hadn’t used an alias
when checking in. They had never taken a trip abroad together, certainly not
to Lisbon. The daughter’s Jacuzzi story was a lie.
![[Breaker quote for The Case of the 'Randy Rector': Was Monsignor Clark framed?]](2005breakers/050901.gif) So
which of these competing accounts
is true? A fair inquiry could focus on a few crucial details.
First, did Monsignor Clark
demonstrably lie about any of the facts in dispute? More particularly, did he
use a false name at the motel? The records should be easy to check.
Second, did he and the secretary
go to Lisbon at the same time? Again, some record of such a trip should
exist — if it happened.
Third, just when and where did the
daughter see them sharing a Jacuzzi? It seems almost incredible that a
woman committing adultery would risk having her daughter catch her in so
compromising a situation with a man the girl knew to be a priest. Both
parties had so much to lose that one wondered: Had they both lost their
marbles?
If all the charges check out, it is
reasonable to conclude that Monsignor Clark is guilty. But if not, then
it’s just as reasonable to infer that he is the victim of an elaborate
calumny.
A fourth question is this: Did the
tabloids make any effort to confirm these allegations, or did they just
accept hostile testimony in their never-ending pursuit of a juicy story? Put
otherwise, were they so eager for a priest-caught-with-woman scandal that
they were willing to impute preternatural virility to a 79-year-old man? Were
they taking the word of the estranged husband for things they could hardly
have heard from any other source?
The New York
Times has covered the story with sober restraint. It might use its
considerable investigative talents to get to the bottom of the matter. In the
end, the real scandal could turn out to be the tabloids’ sacrifice of
journalistic standards — and simple fairness and honesty — to
the consuming imperative of providing titillation. The Times
has proved its integrity by reporting its own derelictions in the Jayson Blair
case. Now it can put the integrity of its rivals to the test.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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