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.
