UNITED STATES
Catholic Culture
By Phil Lawler
Apr 25, 2017
There’s irony in the news that a laicized priest, who once ran a counseling center, has agreed to counseling as a condition of his parole.
In case you missed the story, Edward Arsenault resigned from his post as head of the St. Luke Institute in Maryland in 2013, after he was charged with financial as well as sexual improprieties. He was eventually sentenced to a 4-year prison term after pleading guilty to misappropriating over $300,000 from the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, where he once served as chancellor. The sexual improprieties, involving an adult male recording artist, were not criminal offenses.
One more disgraced priest; one more instance of clerical corruption. But the fact that this particular priest was once the president of the St. Luke Institute—the most prominent of the centers that treated pedophile priests—begins to look like something more than ironic happenstance.
The St. Luke Center has an unhappy leadership history. Its founder, Father Michael Peterson, died of AIDS in 1987. In 1989, the institute brought aboard a Jesuit, Father Curtis Bryant, as head of therapy. Writing in Catholic World Report in February 1997, investigative journalist Lesley Payne quoted one therapist’s report on Bryant’s odd behavior:
Sometimes a visiting bishop would meet Curtis, seeing him prance around like a peacock, and say, “Who the hell was that?” We’d say, “Oh, he’s our director.”
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