Nabi Sayeth: The Sordid History of Wheeling Charleston Goes WAAAAY Back!

Turning the Diocese of Wheeling Charleston
into an enclave for the pink and lavender
crowd has been a decades-long project!

Nabi sayeth….When one delves into the not so distant past of the diocese in WV, something very sinister begins to appear...that of a bishop who laid the “blacktop” for the highway to Lavender hell. Bishop Joseph Hodges came to, WV from the Tidewater area of Virginia just before the Second Vatican Council was convened. During his time he:

• Subsidized the minor seminary in Vienna, WV. The school was set up for junior high and senior High school boys. Numerous Lavender priests taught on the faculty. Pat Condron, a native of Ireland was credibly accused of sodomizing boys there. He left there, was defrocked and now lives as a layman. Clergyman Bob Park, who works at the chancery and who is an active promoter of the Lavender lifestyle taught there as well.

• Hodges purchased a large Victorian house at the corner of National Road and Washington Avenue in Wheeling. Many of the Lavender boys from Vienna transitioned to what was known as the House of Studies. On average 8 to 12 college level seminarians lived there while taking classes at Wheeling College. It doubled as a party house and a den of iniquity with a high percentage of homosexual late teens and young adult males in residence as they “discerned” their “vocation.”

• Alan Eddington was personally invited to WV while he was a seminarian studying for the diocese of Arlington. As he told it, “I was walking down the hall heading to lunch when bishop Hodges approached me and asked me who I was. I told him and then he asked me which diocese was sponsoring me. When I told him Arlington, he said he wanted me to come to his diocese, and that was it. He arranged the details between my bishop and himself.” Eddington worked at parishes in Logan and Huntington as well as assisting Father Cann at the canon law office in Wheeling. But then he made a huge mistake….he did an interview with the LA Times:

Controversial Issue : Gay Priests: A Dilemma for Catholics

February 16, 1987|MILES CORWIN | Times Staff Writer 

They spotted each other at a gay bar, two Catholic priests out for a drink on a Sunday night, both anxious about being seen by parishioners. 

For Father Alan Eddington, the meeting was the first step toward openly acknowledging his homosexuality. He had been a priest for three years but had never discussed his private life, never told anybody in the church that he was gay. 

"I did not feel fear when I saw the other priest, only relief, relief that there was somebody else like me," said Eddington, the pastor of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Huntington, W. Va. "I'd thought I was alone all this time." 

Eddington, who had met the other priest before but had not known he was gay, soon joined a support group in his diocese and later was named executive director of Communications, an organization for homosexual Catholic clergy in the United States. He estimates that about half of the 200 priests in his diocese have a gay orientation; some of them are sexually active. 

When this interview was reported to Bishop Schulte, the bishop who replaced Hodges after his death, Eddington, was confronted while at Sacred Heart parish in Huntington and removed from the priesthood.

 4. Father Charles McCallister encountered bishop Hodges in the hallways of the Josephinum seminary in Columbus while he was in his next to last year of studies for the priesthood, he once told a group of seminary candidates in a speech. “Bishop Hodges approached me and said he needed me in the chancery. I chuckled and told him that I didn’t think the rector of the seminary would allow me to leave school until I completed my studies. He gave me a stern look and said, ‘I’m the bishop, not him...pack up you’re coming back to WV’ ….and that was it!” 

He was given an office at the chancery and remained there until dismissed by bishop Schmitt. And all hades broke loose:

WHEELING - (West Virginia Record 3/14/08.  Cara Bailey) 

A Clarksburg man is suing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, claiming a priest sexually harassed him for more than three years, which led him to depression and suicide attempts.  

Due to the sensitive nature of the suit, the plaintiff is identified as John Doe. 
The suit was filed in Ohio Circuit Court against the Diocese, Bishop Michael J. Bransfield, Bishop Bernard William Schmitt, and Barbara Jane Arbogast, executrix of the estate of the late Charles E. McCallister.  

John Doe is a 19-year-old male from Clarksburg. He claims that when he was 15 he was sexually abused by Father Charles McCallister. McCallister, who died Oct. 13, 2007, was a priest in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, which operates the parishes and Catholic schools in West Virginia.  

According to the suit, John Doe was raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy and youth lector at the Immaculate Conception Church in Clarksburg. McCallister, although not assigned to the church, often performed mass and other duties at the church, and his office was adjacent to the meeting room of the church's youth group. 
John Doe claims McCallister began to sexually abuse him at the church and the sexual harassment frequently occurred there.  

"The abuse included mutual masturbation, and McCallister urged plaintiff to penetrate him anally and attempted to have the plaintiff perform oral sex on him," the suit says.
According to the suit, the abuse took place for approximately three years and at least 50 different sessions in the church sacristy and other location, including out of town.  

John Doe claims he believed it would sinful or wrong to make any kind of accusation against a priest or bishop, and that priests and bishops could not and would not engage in conduct considered evil or wrong or illegal, the suit says.  [Editor's Note: This is the kind  of grooming that went on with young teen boys. And if parents learned of the abuse, they were "groomed" as well through clericalism. Bishops assured them that they would "take care of the matter." Parents were urged not to "hurt the Church by pursuing criminal action." And they did -- by moving predators from parish to parish and diocese to diocese. And the predators continued to molest children over and over and over again. It's time for every member of the laity to say, "No more!" Like the security motto reads, "IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING." Stop covering for the predators and those who enable them!]

According to the suit, McCallister had a history of sexual abuse of minors prior to 2003. Because of his history, McCallister was not assigned to a church from 1991 to 2007. However, he was allowed to perform as a priest at Immaculate Conception Church. 
The suit says the Diocese had received at least one report of inappropriate conduct by the priest with a young male but failed to conduct an investigation.  

John Doe claims his family did not know about the abuse until Spring 2006, when he told his parents. In September 2006, he began college and began to suffer from depression. During his first spring semester his condition deteriorated and he was hospitalized in March 2007. He also allegedly attempted suicide more than once.
According to the suit, his hospitalization stemmed from the sexual abuse from McCallister. 

At the time of his hospitalization, his physician reported the abuse on the Wheeling Hot Line for Abuse. According to the suit, the abuse was reported to the Diocese, the West Virginia State Police and the Harrison County District Attorney.  

According to the suit, a priest in the Diocese repeatedly contacted the plaintiff, urging him not to press criminal charges.  

"Based on the investigation by the Harrison County Sheriff's Department, the prosecution offered a plea agreement to McCallister allowing him to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of third degree sexual abuse with limited information to the public," the suit says.  

McCallister initially agreed to the plea agreement but later declined, the suit says. Felony warrants were to be issued Oct. 12, 2007. McCallister was to appear to receive the warrants Oct. 15. 

 According to the suit, McCallister was found dead in his home Oct. 13, 2007. 
John Doe claims the Diocese knew of McCallister's pass and still allowed him to be around children. He claims the church exhibited an ongoing pattern of conduct involving secrecy and concealment of sexual involvement by the Diocese priests, including McCallister.  

According to the suit, John Doe suffered severe mental anguish and trauma, untold humiliation and embarrassment, extensive and permanent damages to his sexual and psychological development, loss of faith in God, shock to the system, headaches, nausea and loss of sleep upon learning of the active involvement of the church in protecting known child molesters.  

The lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Attorneys Alan H. Perer and Michael Simon are representing the plaintiff.

The night before he was due to be arraigned before the Harrison County Grand Jury, McCallister took a lethal dose of medication and died.

Nabi’s questions are ….Why did the bishop usher these hand-picked Lavenders speedily into the diocese? What did he see in them or did he know about them that motivated him to bring them into the Diocesan fold? Was he not aware of the Lavender activity at Vienna and Washington Avenue? At the least, Hodges plowed the field for a harvest of debauchery and sin…...