"Are You A Homosexual, Bishop?"
The interview was recorded on September 23rd, after the 8:00 AM Mass at Resurrection Parish, were Bartosic presided the New Mass replacing Pastor Paul Kalchik who was cast out because he burned a gay flag.
After Mass, Spalding asked Bishop Bartosic, “Are you a homosexual?” Bartosic understandably answered: “I can't believe you would ask that.”
Spalding tells his readers that in Chicago this question is usually redundant, “The Chicago archdiocese is gay.” And, “Every Chicago Catholic knows this.” According to Spalding the "homosexual network" within the Chicago archdiocese has been a "plague".
For Spalding it is “extremely troubling” that all three Chicago auxiliary bishops appointed on July 3 - Bartosic, Casey and Hicks - graduated from the "Pink Palace" Mundelein Seminary from the same 1994 class in a time when active homosexual behaviour among seminarians was public and pervasive and many good normal candidates were driven out of seminary. Part of the1994 class was also former Father Daniel McCormack, Chicago's most notorious gay predator priest.
Spalding writes, “I met Fr. McCormack once in 1995 right after he was ordained, and that very day I reported to seminary officials how off Father McCormack was!”
He asks, “How could these three men live with a man like McCormack for four years, day in and day out, and not know or at least be suspicious of his character? Are they not already compromised if they knew or suspected what he was and did not say a thing?”
During the interview Spalding asked Bishop Bartosic whether he believed that seminarians with deep-seated homosexual tendencies should be admitted to the priesthood.
But Bartosic refused to answer, “I'm not going to engage this conversation that you're having with me.”
Spalding insisted, “So even though that's the rule of the current Catholic Church, supported by Pope Francis, you're not going to go on the record supporting that?” Bartosic was adamant, “I'm not going to talk to you about this.”
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