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  • When Values Collide: The Catholic Church, Sexual Abuse and the Challenges of Leadership
  • Nicholas Cafardi
When Values Collide: The Catholic Church, Sexual Abuse and the Challenges of Leadership. By Joseph P. Chinnici. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010. 236 pp. $25.00.

“During the thirteen years since this Diocese was erected, to my own personal knowledge, the Saint Barbara Province of the Franciscan Fathers has used this Diocese as a dumping ground for their moral, mental and physical problems. It became necessary for me some time ago to demand the withdrawal of one misfit after another.” So wrote the Most Reverend Charles Buddy, the Bishop of San Diego, in 1950.

While he does not specifically mention sexual abuse, Bishop Buddy need not have. Moral misfit can mean more than one thing, but in the Catholic Church, in the 1950’s, it was almost always a reference to sexual abuse. In fact, the seminary of the Santa Barbara Franciscans, St. Anthony’s, has been described as a “cluster bomb” of sexual abuse and it was.

In his book, When Values Collide, Father Joseph P. Chinnici, former provincial superior of the Santa Barbara Franciscans, says that his province’s first case of child sexual abuse came to light in 1989 when “a Franciscan priest, a member of our Province, was accused of abusive behavior. The abuse was horrendous and touched an entire family. It had occurred at our minor seminary in Santa Barbara, St. Anthony’s.” If this was the first case, evidently no one at the Provincialate had ever talked to Bishop Buddy in San Diego.

Chinnici never identifies the abuser by name, but it was clearly Father Philip Wolfe, who pled no contest to having oral sex with a minor student at St. Anthony’s. Wolfe was sentenced to a year in jail and five years probation. Shortly after completing his probation, in [End Page 75] 1994, Wolfe hanged himself. None of that is in “When Values Collide.” Chinnici simply says that “He [the unnamed Franciscan perpetrator] never returned to ministry.” Obviously.

The Santa Barbara Franciscans’ second abuse case, according to Chinnici, came to light in 1992. It involved the priest director of the Santa Barbara Boys Choir, also located at St. Anthony’s Seminary. Again, the matter came to the Franciscans’ attention only when the friar, Father Robert Van Handel, also unidentified by Chinnici in his book, was charged by the state with sexual abuse of a minor. Van Handel, who, as director of the boys choir, said he had “a constant supply of attractive little boys,” pled guilty to lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The Santa Barbara Franciscans, led by Chinnici as their provincial superior, realized that, given Van Handel’s position, there were probably other victims; in fact, some others had already come forward. As he describes it in the book, the Franciscans wrote to all past members of the Choir, asking anyone who had been abused to come forward. This was a courageous move, contacting people who could sue you. It need not have been done, and it is to Father Chinnici’s credit that it was.

The next move that the Santa Barbara Franciscans took was also very courageous. Under Chinnici’s leadership, the province empanelled an independent lay board to investigate their now closed minor seminary for any instances of sexual abuse. And abuse they found. Their 1993 report details oral copulation, masturbation, simulated intercourse, genital fondling, sodomy, phony genital exams by friars acting like doctors, nude spanking, nude games with students, and nude photography. As reported in his book, the board found that from 1964 to 1987, eleven Franciscans had sexually abused thirty-four students. In that same time period, only forty-four Franciscans had served at the seminary, which gives the Santa Barbara Franciscans an abuse rate of 25 percent, compared to the 6 percent of all priests found in the 2004 John Jay Report for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Chinnici relates in his book that he was the subject of much obloquy from inside the church, and inside his own order, for the public release of this...

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