Local Episcopalians have no immediate plans to investigate a former Cathedral of All Saints dean who has admitted sexually abusing four boys while working as a rector in central New York.
The Rev. Marshall Vang, the dean of the cathedral, said Wednesday he was not aware of any local complaints against the Rev. J. Edward Putnam, who led the Albany Episcopal Diocese’s mother church between 1993 and 1997. He also served as a chaplain for the state Assembly.
Putnam, 66, recently admitted in a written statement that he engaged in “inappropriate conduct with minors” as rector of St. James Episcopal Church in Skaneateles, Onondaga County, between 1986 and 1993, according to the Post-Standard newspaper of Syracuse.
“I think if anything had developed, we would have learned about it long before this,” Vang said.
We all can hope he’s right:
“I think if anything had developed, we would have learned about it long before this,” Vang said.
In the case of Ralph Johnson in the Diocese of Central NY there are still rumors of molestations in two other churches he served in the diocese. I do not know the level of scrutiny that these rumors have received.
We’ll just skip it, OK?
why are comments allowed on this when the thread from 8/15 that is materially the same (“Former Episcopal priest in Central NY admits to sexual abusing boys”) there are no comments allowed?
Putnam spread disaster, if perhaps less heinous, far-and-wide:
This pewsitter is quite familiar with one of Putnam’s interim parish assignments … my parish. _Highly_ recommended by the bishop and the deployment officer, the first thing he did was to demonize the previous rector, retired after 30 years there.
And at one point he started promoting loopy ‘pentagrams’ in various forums. For a clueless initial moment, this Men’s Bible Group member thought that Putnam was intending to engage us in Biblical _anagram_ or _pangram_ word-play.
Then Putnam abruptly aborted his interim assignment, fussing about how the collective personality of the parish was stressing him out.
On a Sunday just before he left, the Episcopal flag extending out from the choir loft was found to be upside down! To Putnam, this allegedly was signalling the extreme upset at his leaving. (The community was mostly relieved; who _really_ was responsible for that silly flag gesture is now obvious).
Putnam quite thoroughly torpedoed the interim process at our parish. And the parish hasn’t recovered yet, several years later, even with a permanent rector.
Moral?: Somebody has to improve the screening of the priestly set, especially those foisted on parishes in transition.
Am I wrong in believing that a very dysfunctional paradox is developing? It seems to me that I am hearing a line that ‘the RCC is vile [i]because[/i] it has looked the other way when it’s priests are accused of abuse.’ But when it comes to our own priests I just hear excuses. Please, someone tell me I need to listen better!
I hope +Love will ensure that there is a thorough investigation and housecleaning wherever such abuse is alleged in Dio of Albany, and I believe he will.
Nikolaus,
I was thinking the same thing.
Nikolaus, your comments are spot on! Many of us who have disaffiliated from TEC are watching intently to see if there is a real difference in leadership….
How is it that we hold ourselves to such high moral standard that we disaffiliate from a church body that condones sexual immorality in the form of homosexuality and sex outside the bonds of marriage, yet we reinstate someone to work in an orthodox church whose sexual misconduct betrayed the trust of his parish, staff, vestry, deanery, and diocese?
The rest of the comment removed at present because it contains too much personal information about an individual and risks taking the thread off topic to focus on that individual-ed.
Edited out because it takes thread off topic.
Like all cases of abuse in any church this situation is tragic. But Episcopalians should consider themselves lucky in one respect for most of the media doesn’t spread stories of their derelict clergy very far.
I am used to reading of cases of bad Catholic priests from anywhere on the earth in the Boston Globe and elsewhere in the MSM. But, for example, we had two extremely sensational cases in one of the Episcopal churches in our city which is only 7 miles from Boston. But do you think the Globe or the AP picked up the stories–Noo way!
And one of the stories was a colorful beaut. The pastor was a woman. Her associate pastor was formerly a Roman Catholic priest and chancellor of a diocese down South. He left the Cathoplic priesthood to marry and became an Episcopalian priest. But then the woman pastor (who was also married if my memory is correct) and the ex-Catholic-now married– priest simply ran off with each other. In the meanwhile the very long-time youth worker at the same church (and a member of a very prominent family in the Boston )
area) was let go on pedophile issues.
Ok, correct my reading. This seems to say that a priest is justly accused of homosexual contact with boys, that he has admitted it. Then it appears that the dean knows nothing of this? Thinks that nothing will come of it because ‘nothing has developed”? And Putnam has confessed? What have I missed? Does this mean that Putnam’s crimes will be overlooked officially? I don’t understand. LM