The Farm is closed. a new life begins. My grandfather George M. Clarke loved the farm, feared Schlueter. i'm sure my grandfather was one of the boys that helped to build the stone chapel. the chapel was imported from Europe.
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Codman/Potter correspondence
Untitled letter sent by Presiding Bishop Alfred Lee to Henry Codman Potter, Bishop of New York, regarding Potter's Admission of James Otis Sargent Huntington to a Religious Order.
Archivist and Historiographer of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, 2009
The following letters will explain themselves. They are sent, not to invite any expression of opinion in regard to the act to which they refer, but simply to indicate the entire readiness of the undersigned to submit his action in a matter which he regards as involving a question of expediency, to the judgment of his fathers and brethren in the episcopate. H. C. P.
________WILMINGTON, DEL., Dec. 11, 1884.
MY DEAR BISHOP POTTER: I take the liberty of a brother bishop to express to you, with the utmost respect and affection, but with plainness and candor, the astonishment and distress occasioned by your recent unexampled act, the admission of Mr. Huntington to a so-called religious order, after requiring of him the well-known Romish monastic vows.
When first mentioned, I discredited the report. Upon reading the published account I find the ceremony, with the language used, even more objectionable than had been represented. In that service not only the whole monastic system was sanctioned by you, in your official character, but attributed to divine inspiration, the solemn language of our Ordinal being adopted. This system is no untried experiment. It has been on trial for hundreds of years, and with whatever of sincerity and zeal started under different forms, the fruits have been evil and pernicious. It was utterly repudiated by the Church of England at the Reformation, and has been since rejected with loathing by several Roman Catholic countries. Sacerdotal celibacy has a history of shame, suffering, and sin traced in indelible character. The corrupt morals of the priesthood where Romanism is in the ascendant is a notorious fact, and frightful comment on the attempt to override God's laws, and to set up a purer standard than Holy Scripture. No attempt, however specious, to introduce the system in our Church can fail to awaken earnest and indignant condemnation.
Now, my dear brother, this is not a matter that concerns simply yourself or your diocese. The whole Church is most deeply concerned, and especially the episcopate. We are one body. The character, reputation, influence, and official acts belong, in a sense, to all.
I will not now remark upon the phraseology employed, so unknown in our formularies, and open to such severe criticism.
But I do entreat and charge you, in the name of God, to pause before any repetition of such an act, and I wish that it might be possible for you in some way to allay the intense anxiety and alarm which will be felt throughout the Church.
In Christian love, your own friend, and your father's friend,
(Signed) ALFRED LEE.
________NEW YORK, December 15, 1884.
MY DEAR PRESIDING BISHOP: I have your letter of the 11th, and am sincerely pained to learn from it that any act of mine should have been to you the occasion of alarm and distress.
The ceremony to which you refer was not in more than one particular, such as commended itself to my taste or judgment, but in inferring from it my "sanction of the whole monastic system," you are, I think, reading into it more than is warranted by the facts.
A young man took a vow of celibacy, poverty, and obedience to the rules of the society with which he united himself. It is in substance precisely the same vow that is taken by every woman who joins a sisterhood. Her obligations bind her to poverty, to a single life, and to obedience to the rules of the sisterhood. But sisterhoods have received the implicit if not explicit recognition and sanction of the Church in its highest missionary and legislative councils, and are to-day an established part of its machinery of service. I am unable to see that the right of sisterhoods to exist among us does not imply the same right in brotherhoods established for the same purposes.
As to the history of religious orders, I am not ignorant, and as to their possible dangers, I am sure I am not indifferent. That they became corrupt and scandalous during the pre-reformation days is a fact not open to dispute. So did the Church itself. But the Church was reformed, while religious orders in England on the other hand, were destroyed. On the theory that the Reformation was a finality, (which is, I know, the theory, or rather the profound belief of many earnest men), there is no appeal from this action, and there can be, it is assumed, no question as to its wisdom; but I cannot say that, in my judgment, the Reformation was a finality. As to its enormous benefits to the Church and to human society, I am in no doubt at all, and I revere some of its leaders with a profound and grateful homage. But they were men, and the frailties and mistakes of men are seen in even the best things that they did. The iconoclastic spirit of which one may see a characteristic illustration in the west front of Exeter Cathedral, appears in sweeping and wholesale destructions and expulsions other than those connected with material structures. Perhaps the religious orders of that day did not deserve to be spared. Certainly the so-called "contemplative orders," which claimed (as some of their successors still claim), to be known and designated as "the religious," merited scanty forbearance in an age when multitudes were perishing while they themselves were chanting litanies, and spending their days in splendid religious "functions," and over questions of upholstery and embroidery.
But what is the situation in the case of the two young men who have been admitted to the brotherhood to which your letter refers? Here are, first one young man, and then another, who feel profoundly moved by the condition of the godless thousands and tens of thousands who crowd our tenement houses in New York. Do you know, my dear and honored Presiding Bishop, what a tenement house in New York is? Do you know the profound and wide-spread apathy of the Christian community concerning these schools of poverty, misery, and almost inevitable vice? Do you know that our own Church's mission work has, thus far, but touched the fringe of this awful mass of sorrow and sin? All this these young men came to see and know by personal observation and actual contact. And then they said, and said, as I believe, rightly, "If we are to reach these people we must, first of all, live among them. It will not answer to have a home and interests elsewhere, and then to walk over to the mission chapel, and go about among the tenement-house population three or four times a week. If we are to get close to their hearts, we must get close to their lives. And then, too," they said, "if we are to do this work, we must strip, like the gladiator, for the fight. We must be disencumbered of every tie and interest that can hinder or embarrass us. We must be willing to be poor, to live alone, to obey a fixed rule (or regimen) of life, that so we may give ourselves wholly to this work. There was a time when our Master said, 'Carry neither purse nor scrip.' There was a time when His apostle said, 'He that is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord that he may please the Lord;' and again, 'Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves.' There was a time, in a word, when, in a special exigency, men voluntarily took on them the soldier-life and the soldier-rule, turning their backs on home, and gain, and a self-directed life. It is such a time and such an exigency that confront us to-day. We do not want the help of a brotherhood to retreat from the world, merely to coddle our own selfish souls, and call it sainthood; we want a rule and bond that shall bind us to a hard task under sanctions the most august and urgent."
And so they took their vow. I do not see how they can be faulted unless all particular and special vows are wrong. It may be said that their baptismal and ordination vows are enough. But if a clergyman came to you (as, once and again, such a one has come to me) and said, "I am in danger from a tendency to intemperance. I want to take a vow of total abstinence. I want to take it with the most solemn sanctions, in your presence, on my knees, with my hands on the Holy Bible," would you refuse him? Is he not entitled to every such help so long as the thing which he vows is not in itself sinful or inconsistent with his Christian calling? And is poverty inconsistent with the Christian calling? Is the unmarried state? Is obedience to a daily rule of work and prayer? To say that these things may be abused is to say what may be said of the Bible, or the sacraments, or any other means of grace. Prayer or church-going may be so indulged in as to lead to the neglect of daily duties and the most imperative obligations. But such an error is not the danger of our time, nor is poverty, nor the surrender of the privileges and pleasures of married life, nor the surrender of the freedom of one's own way.
And if it is said that such vows are the setting-up of a standard of piety not known to the Church, and the arrogating a superiority over other Christian disciples, it is enough to say, on the one hand that there is no slightest assertion of such superiority, and on the other, that the three-fold rule of this order of men only follows the accepted usage in regard to the three-fold obligations of orders of women. It is, indeed, assumed, I understand, by those who criticize them that the vows to which you refer are irrevocable, and this is regarded as an especial reason for protesting against them. If it were true, it would be. But they are not. I should have declined to administer such vows; and those which I did administer were explicitly acknowledged to be revocable, either at my own discretion or at the request of him who took them.
You conclude by remarking: "This is not a matter which concerns simply yourself or your diocese. The whole Church is most deeply concerned, and especially the episcopate. We are one body. The character, reputation, influence and official acts belong in a sense to all."
I am not quite sure that I understand this language; but if you mean (a) that the administration of a vow to any person who desires to take it is distinctly an "official"--that is, an episcopal--act, then I have only to say that it is competent to any presbyter to administer such vows as you refer to, and that my act was in no sense "episcopal." It was not a confirmation, or ordination, or consecration. It was simply receiving a promise--a vow--solemn and unique, indeed, but so, in a sense, every vow should be.
Or if you mean (b) that any individual act of mine, however unofficial, binds all my brethren, then I can only say that such a position is one which would leave me absolutely without any individual discretion whatever. I went the other day to lend the sanction and encouragement of my presence and voice to the opening of a free library by persons who do not profess even to be Christians, and whose only aim is to provide pure and instructive secular reading for poor people. I presume the great majority of my episcopal brethren would say that I had no business to be there; but if I had supposed or understood that my liberty of action in such a case would have to be surrendered on my being consecrated a bishop, I would have refused the heavy burden which I now bear as involving, not so much a burden, as a bondage not to be endured.
One word more, and I am sure you will not misunderstand it. You subscribe yourself with, I know well, true and tender affection--would that I were worthier of it!--"In Christian love, your own friend and your father's friend." Believe me, my dear Presiding Bishop, you could have conjured by no more potent earthly spell than that! I revere my father's memory as that of the noblest prelate and the wisest man I ever knew. I am not worthy to bear his name, still less his great and holy office. But all that I know of generous and fair dealing with men of various minds and faiths within the Church of God, he taught me. He dreaded the taint of Roman error, and I do. But he believed that things that had been abused were not necessarily evil in themselves. And had he lived on and into the new conditions and sore needs of our day, he would have owned, I think, that an order of men, under obligations in no essential particular different from those of orders of women, might do a John the Baptist's work, in hair shirt and leathern girdle, if need be, crying in the wilderness of a great city's sin, that men should repent and open in their hearts a highway for their Lord! If I did not think that he would have thought so, you may be sure that I would not have done what I have.
And yet I may be mistaken. I may well distrust my own judgment when it conflicts with yours. And I desire to say, therefore, that, in this matter, I shall be entirely ready to submit myself to the wisdom of my fathers and brethren in the episcopate. If they think that I have erred, or have exceeded my authority, I shall not hesitate to advise my young brother that, in administering to him the vows which have been objected to, I am deemed to have transcended my powers, and to have acted unwisely and wrongly, and that, therefore, so far as I am concerned, he is dispensed from their obligation, thenceforth and finally.
But will you forgive me if I add that, in doing so, I shall not surrender my own judgment as to the expediency and propriety of my action, until convinced by arguments more sufficient and conclusive than have yet been addressed to me?
And having said this much, will you still further pardon me if I also add that, pressed as I am by my manifold duties, which leave me scant leisure and less taste for controversy, with this letter this correspondence, so far as I am concerned, must close? Having given my reasons for the act which you fault, and having expressed my readiness to submit to the judgment of my fathers and brethren in the episcopate, I must be permitted to turn my face and my thoughts to other tasks and more immediate duties.
I am, my dear Presiding Bishop, with unfeigned respect,
Faithfully yours,
H. C. POTTER.
Project Canterbury
i'm back to thinking about Huntington and his character. have highlighted via italics above Codman's concern about the celibate priesthood. a celibate priesthood would relieve a young man that was not interested in a heterosexual relationship of the the pressures to marry. he could marry his work.
huntington was a 'holy man', some consider saint. huntington/schlueter. he took schlueter by the hand at age 3. did he save schlueter or bind him?
Monday, January 14, 2013
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
The Pigsty
The children egged him on to use the leather belt on them? and they laughed? I hear nervousness in their laughter, their hands twisting tighter to the napkin in their hands, their eyes finding the floor or the corner of the ceiling, where, if they looked long enough they could hypnotize themselves away from the pain. These are the Rev. Weed's words above. a look into the 'good' father's doings at night, under cover of darkness.
I read into these words and fill the night air with whacks and cries, and the chosen child that would not feel the full sting of the belt, but the greasy caress of the 'good father's hands as he leads the chosen child to kneel and keep the 'good father' company at his nightly prayers.
you do know that the god is only present when two or more pray together?
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Trinity Wall Street
Trinity Wall Street's blog: background on conference center
the link will take you to the Trinity Church site with a bit of background on the conference center. the photo slide show has pics from the early 50's forward. The dedication photo celebrated by Fr Heuss provides a hint of the farm as my grandfather may have known the earlier years, 1915-1930 or so.
the link will take you to the Trinity Church site with a bit of background on the conference center. the photo slide show has pics from the early 50's forward. The dedication photo celebrated by Fr Heuss provides a hint of the farm as my grandfather may have known the earlier years, 1915-1930 or so.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Cornwall farm and outfall
Schlueter's Camp to Close! the link will bring you to the July 2012 edition of the Cornwall Chronicle. Trinity Church of New York has been running it as a conference center; but, has decided to close the camp valued at an estimated $6,000,000. Trinity has not decided whether or not to sell the property. There's a lot of bad karma and tears buried in the earth, the stone, the timbers. Lots of good memories for some, thank God, but for other's the memory is bound in shame, silence.
The man that would model manhood, raise them up in the way they should go, was also the man that held the family sustenance, the young boys' hopes and dreams within his hands. I know he is the man that led my grandfather, guided him to Storr's, and eventually steered him west (which was also Father Huntington's unfulfilled dream) to the Wheelock School in Oklahoma, then Pine Ridge North Dakota, then back to New York, eventually to arrive in Manchester. Schlueter followed my family through these changes, making visits I am told (perhaps enforced time away from the parish to consider changing his pedophile ways). He would eventually retire to Rockport MA, just a few miles from my grandparents. Close tabs and cover were provided through his infiltration of our family.
The legacy of the "Good Father Schlueter" within my family? multi-generational violence, disintegration of family, post traumatic stress disorder, a father that raped and beat every one of his children.
I often wonder how many other families still feel the repercussions of this man's actions.
Gramps loved the farm, if not the man that raped him.
hard words, hard thoughts. so be truth. where there be any error, may i learn.
on the upside: That piece of property would make a terrific artist retreat center.
may there be grace and mercy, best
deb.
The man that would model manhood, raise them up in the way they should go, was also the man that held the family sustenance, the young boys' hopes and dreams within his hands. I know he is the man that led my grandfather, guided him to Storr's, and eventually steered him west (which was also Father Huntington's unfulfilled dream) to the Wheelock School in Oklahoma, then Pine Ridge North Dakota, then back to New York, eventually to arrive in Manchester. Schlueter followed my family through these changes, making visits I am told (perhaps enforced time away from the parish to consider changing his pedophile ways). He would eventually retire to Rockport MA, just a few miles from my grandparents. Close tabs and cover were provided through his infiltration of our family.
The legacy of the "Good Father Schlueter" within my family? multi-generational violence, disintegration of family, post traumatic stress disorder, a father that raped and beat every one of his children.
I often wonder how many other families still feel the repercussions of this man's actions.
Gramps loved the farm, if not the man that raped him.
hard words, hard thoughts. so be truth. where there be any error, may i learn.
on the upside: That piece of property would make a terrific artist retreat center.
may there be grace and mercy, best
deb.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The Trinity Key
The Keys to the Kingdom: a verre eglomise
with collaged shadow wall. a work in progress.
24x36"
This used to be the "Big Spender" a verre eglomise of The Banarettes working the Gloucester City Hall Building Preservation Fundraiser. It is one of the paintings that I used as a demonstration piece last month at The Cape Ann Museum. a pic of work before I took the razor blade to the glass can be found on my artblog http://www.debbieclarke.blogspot.com. Slowly the dancing women of Big Spender morphed in these keys. The work is ready to go to the easel. a bit of refinement, ready to frame and ship.
this article about the case against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia set me to work.
I've focused a lot of my Schlueter research on his work at St. Luke's, the Farm at West Cornwall, The Oblates of Calvary and his association with Father Huntington. The article against the archdiocese reminded me that St. Luke's was part of Trinity Parish when Schlueter arrived. Trinity owned the tenement houses where I assume my family lived under the protection, assistance of Schlueter. Schlueter/Trinity (where the historical files are kept)...have there been sexual abuse allegations within the Trinity Parish?
a google search brought me first to this.
OSVALDO v. RECTOR CHURCH WARDENS AND VESTRYMEN OF THE PARISH OF TRINITY CHURCH OF NEW YORK
OSVALDO D., Plaintiff-Appellant, v. The RECTOR CHURCH WARDENS AND VESTRYMEN OF THE PARISH OF TRINITY CHURCH OF NEW YORK, et al., Defendants-Respondents, Seaman's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey, et al., Defendants.
-- March 29, 2007
"Summary judgment was properly awarded on these claims, notwithstanding plaintiff's allegations regarding missing records, which are unsubstantiated and unsupported by the record."
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ny-supreme-court-appellate-division/1382000.html
i've been wondering about Schlueter's papers and how much they have been steam cleaned. Huntington warned Schlueter not to commit much to writing..
lost papers, loose papers. His journal is falling apart. back to the keys.
best,
deb.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Schlueter's journal April 19, 1929
Friday April 19th, 1929
the day begins at St. Clotilde's, several other churches and a few museums are visited, including the Pantheon and the crypts "chilly and ghastly". the boys interpret history as written through the frescoes, then to the Sorbonne. later in the day the three make their way to "Sam's Grille" for supper and pay 8francs a cup for American coffee.
after which:
"We came back to the hotel got the car, went to rue Washington and called on Mrs. Didesheim(sic). Happily we found Mrs. Simkohovitch and Mrs. Kingsbury both there. We had a very pleasant evening. Little Paul Didesheim (sic)woke up just before we left, so we had a chance to play with him and Albert a chance to try his French on him and came home and retired."
I have often wondered about Mrs. Didesheim and little Paul Didesheim. Today I discovered through photo records that are catalogued on the web in the Schlesinger archives of Radcliffe that Paul Didesheim was Mrs. Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch's nephew. I knew that Mrs. Simkhovitch and Mrs. Kingsbury (Mary's mother) traveled to Europe; but, never knew, until today, that their travels were coincident with this 1929 journey of Schlueter and the kids "Howard and Al". I've often pondered over the comment of a grown man having a chance to play with a young child, and why no other comments about the social interactions of the visit.
Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch founder of Greenwich House was a close friend of Schlueter's through St. Luke's where she went to morning mass. In her writings about Greenwich House she refers to her friend as "the good Father Schlueter".
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Priest Jokes about Abusing Boys prompts this post
Complaints against one priest going back to 1948! cover ups, cover ups, cover ups. This is the Catholic Church, but, I'm sure this has/is happening within the Anglican Church.
The last conversation I had with my father, before he died, was about Father Schlueter's prying hands. Father Schlueter followed my family everywhere. My grandfather was in his 90's and still trying to tell the story of Schlueter's bodily interference. The last conversation I had with my grandfather was about Schlueter and the choices my grandfather made to stay out of Schlueter's reach by working in the dairy at the camp in Cornwall.
My confrontation of the sexual abuse within my family caused the family to shatter. and, in a way, gave these two men the permission to finally open their mouths about this meddlesome 'priest'. way too late to confront the priest. but, never too late to tell the story. I often wonder how many other families still feel the repercussions of this priest. My father George kept saying 'they sent him away to fix him. it didn't work.'
Where did they send Schlueter? He spent time at Nashotah House, an Episcopal Seminary in Wisconsin. This seminary has had it's share of recent headlines filled with charges of sexual abuse. The environment that allows sexual abuse of children doesn't just happen.
In our family, under Schlueter's ministrations it was already there, through four generations. The sins of the fathers are truly visited upon the generations, seven generations. my daughter is the fifth generation...she was not abused, but definitely has known the cost of my healing...may the next generations of our family live free of the weight of this responsibility to heal. may they thrive, may their children and their children's children know the sound of joy when they hear our names raised. and may the names of the offenders be forgotten and trodden into dust.
I will continue to raise Schlueter's name until the full story is told. Then i will never speak it again.
following the prompt for this posting. may it stay active until the full story is told.
http://news.yahoo.com/trial-priest-joked-abusing-3-boys-week-205857367.html
ps: It is difficult for me to write the thought, but I must. I find it interesting that the introduction to Schlueter's 'biography' begins with Father Huntington, founder of the Anglican Order of the Holy Cross.
"He spotted a youngster sitting on a stoop, curly headed, blue-eyed little son of German peasant stock. He stopped and said, "You are the prettiest little boy I have ever seen" and then went on, "You have the dirtiest face I have ever seen. Come with me."
The lad looked trustingly toward the monkishly clad oldster (who must have been all of thirty years) and together they went down to 4th Street and with the face washing that followed began the making of a priest."
Huntington was Schlueter's life long friend, confessor and designer of the special orders that Schlueter lived under. He is implicated in my mind through association. in other readings Huntington describes how when women became too interested in the priest's doings he assigned them to the older women to keep them from meddling. something I understand was also Schlueter's way.
The last conversation I had with my father, before he died, was about Father Schlueter's prying hands. Father Schlueter followed my family everywhere. My grandfather was in his 90's and still trying to tell the story of Schlueter's bodily interference. The last conversation I had with my grandfather was about Schlueter and the choices my grandfather made to stay out of Schlueter's reach by working in the dairy at the camp in Cornwall.
My confrontation of the sexual abuse within my family caused the family to shatter. and, in a way, gave these two men the permission to finally open their mouths about this meddlesome 'priest'. way too late to confront the priest. but, never too late to tell the story. I often wonder how many other families still feel the repercussions of this priest. My father George kept saying 'they sent him away to fix him. it didn't work.'
Where did they send Schlueter? He spent time at Nashotah House, an Episcopal Seminary in Wisconsin. This seminary has had it's share of recent headlines filled with charges of sexual abuse. The environment that allows sexual abuse of children doesn't just happen.
In our family, under Schlueter's ministrations it was already there, through four generations. The sins of the fathers are truly visited upon the generations, seven generations. my daughter is the fifth generation...she was not abused, but definitely has known the cost of my healing...may the next generations of our family live free of the weight of this responsibility to heal. may they thrive, may their children and their children's children know the sound of joy when they hear our names raised. and may the names of the offenders be forgotten and trodden into dust.
I will continue to raise Schlueter's name until the full story is told. Then i will never speak it again.
following the prompt for this posting. may it stay active until the full story is told.
http://news.yahoo.com/trial-priest-joked-abusing-3-boys-week-205857367.html
ps: It is difficult for me to write the thought, but I must. I find it interesting that the introduction to Schlueter's 'biography' begins with Father Huntington, founder of the Anglican Order of the Holy Cross.
"He spotted a youngster sitting on a stoop, curly headed, blue-eyed little son of German peasant stock. He stopped and said, "You are the prettiest little boy I have ever seen" and then went on, "You have the dirtiest face I have ever seen. Come with me."
The lad looked trustingly toward the monkishly clad oldster (who must have been all of thirty years) and together they went down to 4th Street and with the face washing that followed began the making of a priest."
Huntington was Schlueter's life long friend, confessor and designer of the special orders that Schlueter lived under. He is implicated in my mind through association. in other readings Huntington describes how when women became too interested in the priest's doings he assigned them to the older women to keep them from meddling. something I understand was also Schlueter's way.
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