With all the usual caveats about how we may not know the whole story…
Last year a priest was fired from his college job becuase the school found porn on his computer.
When the school found the porn they questioned him about it. He gave a series of odd replies that led the Archabbot of St. Vincent College in Latrobe Pennsylvania to conclude that Fr. Marc Gruber was guilty. He was dismissed and and he promptly disappeared.
But that may not be the end of the story. According to a former student under oath, Fr. Gruber gave the odd answers and refused to defend himself becuase the student had confessed to him that he was the real culprit.
The young man testified that “Father Mark has protected the seal of confession admirably even to the point of losing his job, his priestly faculties and allowing his reputation to be maligned.”
…
The first police report said he gave indirect answers when investigators questioned him in the presence of his archabbot, whom he had asked to stay with him. Asked if he was the one who used the computer to look for young boys, he replied, “I don’t think that is a relevant question,” according to the report.The former student said he believes the odd answers were the priest’s attempt to signal his superior that he was protecting the seal of confession.
The former student said he last downloaded pornography on that computer in July 2009, “not too long before Father Gruber fell off the face of the earth. I didn’t know where he went.”
The priest’s office also was locked, the former student said. Father Gruber was scheduled for a sabbatical, the former student said, so it was November before he heard rumors that the priest had been banned from ministry because pornography was found on his computer. The former student said he was sure it was his fault.
He relayed a message to Father Gruber through an intermediary, he said, asking what he should do. Father Gruber sent word not to reveal what he had done, he said.
The reasons the priest gave were that he didn’t want anyone to think that he had pressured a penitent to reveal what had been said in confession. He also feared the former student was too emotionally fragile to withstand revelation of his secrets.
If this is all true, Fr. Gruber’s defense of the seal of confession is the only thing he could do. Comparisons to Hitchcock’s ‘I Confess’ are already abounding.
The student has come forward now to try and undo the damage.
This is a truly interesting story that we will keep an eye on…
October 7, 2010 at 4:50 am
Fr. Mark is a continual inspiration to me and is a large part of the pursuit of my priestly vocation. This story illustrates the deep integrity of this man.
Thank you so much, Patrick, for grabbing a hold of this story. Much has been done to ruin his good name; spreading the word of his heroic virtue will go a long way to repairing the damages.
Please pray that the Vatican acts quickly to restore his priestly faculties. Though he has faithfully acted out the role of victim over the past fourteen months, he anxiously awaits being able to once again shepherd souls.
October 7, 2010 at 2:57 pm
Anon at 11:24PM: My understanding is that even invoking the seal, in this case, may have pointed to the guilty party, so no, Father could not have publicly invoked it.
When could you invoke it? Well, suppose Father went to a prison, and it was public information that the prisoner was confessing (i.e., he asked to see a priest for Confession). If the warden asked him what they talked about, he could simply invoke the seal and leave it at that.
October 9, 2010 at 4:15 am
I have followed this story since last November and the mysterious thing to me (like anonymous above) is why this priest couldn't say simply, that he didn't do it. That breaks no seal of confession at all. Asked further he could simply say he had no more comment. NONE. Is he actually obliged to try to stop further investigation into who really did this?
And when the student confessed to him could he not have gone and expunged stuff from the computer? He should have been protecting the computer anyway.
Further, the stories in the Pittsburgh paper state clearly that whatever this student confessed to is insufficient to explain what was on the computer. I don't know if that's true or not but that's what the paper said..
And one of the things Father Mark did not like is that Saint Vincent College invited President Bush to be their commencement speaker a few years ago. That invitation seems to have torn parts of the Saint Vincent community apart. Just FYI.
October 10, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Father Gruber is a very conservative and doctrinally sound priest. I am sure any issues he had with Bush speaking at commencement had more to do with internal politics than external.
October 11, 2010 at 5:43 pm
Just a caveat:
While I have not spoken to him, I'd guess Fr. Gruber did "expunge" the porn as much as a average computer user can. However, any decent hacker can find lots of things on a hard drive that have been "expunged".