MINNESOTA
Minnesota Public Radio
Anyone in a position of authority in the Roman Catholic Church should have been able to see “red flags” in the behavior of the Rev. Curtis Wehmeyer, a priest now in prison on charges of child pornography and child sexual abuse, says a former priest who now works as a counselor in the field.
Wehmeyer served for years in parish positions in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, even as a series of allegations suggested that he was cruising for anonymous sex, propositioning strangers and spending unsupervised time with young boys.
“These are red flags,” said Richard Sipe in an interview with Morning Edition. “These are danger signals,” he said, that should have portrayed Wehmeyer as “compulsive and having a hard time controlling himself, as was very clear to the bishop and to the priests — some of the priests, certainly, in authority in St. Paul.”
Sipe, a former priest and professor at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn., is now a clinical mental health counselor in California. He has spent years researching celibacy and mental health among Roman Catholic priests.
He said the outlines of the Wehmeyer story are familiar, “and that’s the problem. Sexual behavior by priests and bishops is very, very common.
“Now, most of it is not illegal. It might be hypocritical, and certainly at times it is abusive, with women or with men, but many times it is consensual. Many times it’s activity that many men have. But it should not be in the priesthood.”
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