Retired priest reprimanded...

[Piccoli Fiori JMJ]

VIRGINIA BEACH — The Rev. Thomas J. Quinlan Jr. famously loves to jar congregations with bluntly worded homilies, but he went too far when he mentioned the Virgin Mary’s birth canal during a Christmas Eve service – a Catholic bishop has banned him from performing any priestly function in public.

“Your shock content was crude, offensive and disturbing,” particularly to families, youth and visitors, Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo of the Richmond Diocese told Quinlan in a Jan. 17 letter. The bishop cited a sermon that Quinlan, known as “TQ,” gave at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Virginia Beach.

DiLorenzo said Quinlan’s record of similar behavior “engenders such anxiety and emotional upset that it interferes with the pursuit of the individual’s religious experience.”

The bishop’s censure means Quinlan cannot celebrate Mass publicly, preach, teach, perform weddings and funerals or conduct any other sacramental rituals. He can still celebrate Mass privately.

DiLorenzo declined a request for comment on Quinlan this week. The Catholic Virginian, the official newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Richmond, published a two-paragraph notice of Quinlan’s censure in its latest edition. The notice did not mention the Christmas Eve homily.

Quinlan, 77 , served South Hampton Roads parishes for 20 years before being sent into retirement last spring. B ecause of a clergy shortage in the diocese, many retired priests such as Quinlan are asked to perform Mass in local parishes.

Quinlan, who provided a copy of DiLorenzo’s letter, said Thursday that his Christmas Eve homily was an attempt to separate lore from the facts of Christ’s Nativity.

“When the baby Jesus came out ” of Mary, “he was a man, just like us,” Quinlan said. “I was knocking the traditional idea of Christmas.”

Quinlan said his sermon also tried to show that Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth were not strictly historical accounts, but rather, one of several different forms of literature in the Bible. “There was nothing wrong with my behavior,” he said.

Quinlan has long been one of the most colorful priests in the diocese. His exploits included riding a police motorcycle into the sanctuary during a Palm Sunday service at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Norfolk.

Over the years, his earthy language at Mass and in wedding sermons generated complaints by offended listeners who contacted the diocese’s bishop and the Vatican’s official representative to the United States.

“I’m always graphic,” Quinlan said Thursday, and he has taken glee in his reputation as an iconoclast. His retirement apartment at Church of the Ascension in Virginia Beach is decorated with mounted press clippings of his exploits. The headlines include “Fool for Christ” and “St. Mary’s Radical Priest.”

While Quinlan has many critics, he also has many supporters.

“That man has helped more converts come to the church than anyone I’ve ever known,” said George Hamilton , who attends Church of the Holy Family in Virginia Beach, Quinlan’s last full-time parish post. Hamilton said he attended the Holy Spirit service and recalled nothing particularly offensive in Quinlan’s homily.

The Rev. Thomas J. Caroluzza , a retired priest in Portsmouth, said Quinlan’s “foul mouth” and “occasional zaniness” were always intended to jar parishioners out of complacency and into a more active faith.

Quinlan said he was crushed by DiLorenzo’s censure. “They’ve sucked the lifeblood out of me,” he said.

Yet Quinlan said he has no regrets about his salty, flamboyant style. “If you believe in the truth,” he said, “you have to preach it as you see it.”

Reach Steven G. Vegh at (757) 446-2417 or steven.vegh @pilotonline.com.

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[catholicinsd]

That's stupid.

[Tindomiel]

Yeah. Some people

[jezic]

it is good that he wants people to wake up, but i don't think this is the best way to do it.

(i really don't like the motorcycle idea)

[Dave]

I've read quite a bit about this priest who goes by "TQ." I think when he mentioned Our Lady's birth canal it was just the final straw. In other words, it wasn't just that but EVERYTHING he'd ever done or said.

This article says it all. Let's pray for him.

[quote]"FOOL FOR CHRIST": PRIEST WHOSE BEHAVIOR SOMETIMES SHOCKS BRINGS HIS UNORTHODOX MINISTERIAL WAYS TO BEACH CHURCH
Published: Saturday, June 24, 2000
Section: DAILY BREAK , page E1
Source: BY LIZ SZABO, STAFF WRITER

© 2000 Landmark Communications Inc.


SOMEWHERE IN Rome is a file on the Rev. Thomas J. Quinlan. A fat one. And, quite possibly, one of the Vatican's most amusing.

Catholics have been firing off enraged epistles about Quinlan for most of his four decades as a priest. He eats it up. The 71-year-old Quinlan, a chain smoker with a voice like sandpaper, displays the missives as if they are star report cards.

``Don't you think Jesus ruffled the feathers of everyone he ever met?'' Quinlan asked at his desk, laughing between drags on a cigarette.  There was the time in 1969 when Quinlan carted off his church's statues to the city dump. ``This is not a new concept of Catholicism,'' an enraged woman wrote to the bishop. ``We are victims of vandalism led by a sick man.''

That same year, Quinlan held a psychedelic Mass with special lighting effects. Four years later, his priestly orders were nearly suspended when he featured an interpretive dancer at Holy Thursday Mass.

In 1974, a Time magazine profile quoted him calling his parish ``spiritual white trash'' who casually drop into Mass to ``fill up at God's gas pump.''

Quinlan shocked more than a few Catholics when he rode down the center aisle of the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception on a police motorcycle, blue lights flashing, for the Palm Sunday procession.

Jaws dropped, too, when he dressed for Mass on one occasion as Superman, on others as the Grinch or the Blue Angel. And when he led the nearly all-black congregation to Suffolk to re-enact the trial of Nat Turner on Good Friday. And when, at a wedding in 1989, Quinlan went into detail about the sexual imagery invoked by the long, narrow candles used for the liturgy.

``It's not funny,'' Quinlan said, a mischievous grin folding new creases into his wrinkled face. ``It's serious business trying to get people to come to Mass.''

Quinlan promises to go easy on his newest parish, the Church of the Holy Family in Virginia Beach. He celebrates his first Mass there tonight. His best friend, Monsignor Thomas J. Caroluzza of Holy Spirit Catholic Church, shakes his head when he imagines how Quinlan's new parishioners will react.

``God help them,'' said Caroluzza, who was ordained with Quinlan 42 years ago. ``It's going to be exciting for Virginia Beach.''

Quinlan's friend doubts T.Q., as Quinlan likes to be called, will be able to hold back for very long.

``I'm going to try to be quiet for a while,'' said Quinlan, who lives like a hermit but swears like a sailor. ``Caroluzza gives me two weeks.''


Quinlan has a reputation not only for entertaining his flock but also for demanding much from them. At the congregation Quinlan just left, St. Kateri Tekakwitha Catholic Church in Poquosan, Quinlan asked everyone to tithe 5 percent of their income. As a result, Caroluzza said, Quinlan's flock contributed more money every week - an average of $28 each - than any other congregation in the diocese. Most churches average only $5 a week per member.

``His idea is that if you are a committed Catholic, then it's not just a Sunday thing,'' said Claudette Starrett, a member at St. Kateri. ``If he felt like you were slouching, if it appeared to him you were living a lifestyle not commensurate with what you were bringing in, he would call you on it.''

Against his congregation's wishes, Quinlan decided to build a church thrift store, Caroluzza said. Now, the members thank him for doing it. The store's proceeds allowed St. Kateri to donate more than $42,000 last year to the poor. The store also provides low-cost clothing to needy people too proud to accept charity, Quinlan said.

As a pastor, Quinlan also sent ``red letters'' every year at Pentecost to members who hadn't participated in some kind of church ministry. Either start helping, Quinlan told them, or you're out.

Those kinds of demands drive some parishioners away, he acknowledged. ``The new members all beesh about it. Not everybody can take me.''

Some Christians are put off by Quinlan's colorful vocabulary, too, Starrett said. After complaints about Quinlan's wedding sermons - particularly his rather earthy advice about the importance of sex in a marriage - some engaged couples chose to ``sneak off to another parish'' to exchange vows, she said. Many of the letters on file with the bishop and the papal nuncio include complaints about T.Q.'s salty language from the pulpit.

``I've loosened up a lot,'' Starrett said. ``But I don't think I ever got used to hearing all the sexual innuendo.''

Children, especially, aren't sure what to make of T.Q., said Betty Jones, St. Kateri's vacation Bible school director. ``When the children are a little bit younger, they're afraid of him,'' Jones said. ``He is kind of scraggly.''

And not always patient, as Quinlan himself admits.

``All the little kids come up to me and say, `T.Q., you've got to stop smoking,' '' Quinlan said. ``I tell them to get the hell out of the way. They're all brainwashed little suburban monsters.''

Quinlan's shock tactics are simply his way of getting people's attention, said church administrator Elaine Riley.

``I wouldn't call it silly,'' Riley said. ``Coming down the aisle on a motorcycle isn't so important compared to having people go home and spend three hours discussing it. . . . Most people go home and they don't remember the homily five minutes out the door. But with T.Q., whether it's negative or positive, he makes you reflect on what you've heard.''


St. Kateri, although only 14 years old, now has 850 members. During Quinlan's tenure at St. Mary's in Norfolk, from 1974 to 1985, the congregation tripled in size.

And 1,500 people turned out two years ago to participate in Quinlan's grandest production yet - his own funeral. Or, to be precise, ``a pre-funeral gala'' on Quinlan's 40th anniversary as a priest. Mourners marched in a long procession led by a New Orleans-style brass bands playing upbeat hymns. Quinlan rode in the hearse.

``You can't talk at your own funeral,'' said Quinlan, who at over 6-foot-3 is gaunt and haggard but still kicking. ``I wanted to talk at mine.''

Caroluzza belted out ``Don't Cry for Me, Church of Richmond,'' to the tune of the theme song from ``Evita.'' Even Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, who has long tolerated Quinlan's antics, read a poem called ``An Ode to the Blue Angel.''

It was only at about the time of Quinlan's mock funeral that he began revealing his real age, Caroluzza said. ``Each time he's moved, he's taken another year off his age,'' said the monsignor, the regional vicar for southeastern Virginia. ``He only started telling the truth when he hit 68, because he knows you can only retire at 70.''

T.Q. dismisses the idea of stepping down from the priesthood. ``What would I do - retire and write dirty novels?''


But Quinlan is more than just a jokester, Caroluzza said. He is, in the words of St. Paul, a ``fool for Christ'' - a label that Quinlan relishes as a great compliment.

``If it were just zaniness, it would be one hijink after another,'' Caroluzza said. ``The zany stories are the only ones people remember. They don't remember his visiting the sick. That's the real T.Q.''

If Quinlan refuses to behave, Caroluzza said, it's partly to avoid ``playing footsie with authority.'' The mischievous priest is determined to stay on the margins, to avoid the trappings and temptations of power.

``His quirks offend some people,'' Starrett said, ``but he's just very human. He doesn't want to be put on a pedestal.''

Quinlan's congregants feel free, too, to speak their minds, Starrett said. They confront him when they think he's gone too far. And they intervene when they see him in serious trouble.

Quinlan, like so many artistic personalities, has a drinking problem. Alcoholism runs in his family, and Quinlan has battled the problem since he was a teen-ager, Caroluzza said. The bishop has sent him to alcohol counseling in the past. In newspaper interviews in the 1980s, the priest said that he had been able to quit.

But last year, Quinlan was convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol. He was fined $250 and referred to an alcohol recovery program. Quinlan didn't want to talk about the conviction, but he said that on that occasion he was only driving a few hundred feet to a store. He hasn't had a drink since September, he said.

Starrett said her priest's problem is well-known.

``It's part of his humanness,'' she said. ``Some people can't accept that from a priest. . . . It's a disease. But some people don't see it as a disease. They see it as a frailty - particularly in a priest - and think that's worse.''

Congregants such as Jones say they appreciate Quinlan's honesty. ``There's no way you can keep this quiet,'' she said. ``He's very upfront. . . . He's working on it.''

Caroluzza said Quinlan was both humble and courageous when facing up to his parish.

``He went to his congregation and said, `I can leave.' They said, `We don't want you to leave. We want you to change,' '' Caroluzza said. ``His community really loved him. They loved him into sobriety.''


He's only been gone a few days, but many at St. Kateri miss Quinlan already. Jones has a feeling that Quinlan's reputation has preceded him to Holy Family. She envies that parish, though, for its chance to be with her old pastor.

``I hope they give him a chance,'' she said. ``Learn to love him the way the rest of us do. He's a good man, with a good heart, an intelligent man who can teach them a lot.''

Some who attend Holy Family don't know what to expect.

``When it comes to church, this is the word of the Lord and it should be respected with utmost dignity,'' said Tom Pauls. ``If this guy comes in on a motorcycle, I'm going to find another church.''

Others are looking forward to the adventure.

``I think he'll be a tremendous asset to the parish,'' said Dan Creedon, who also has not yet met his new pastor. ``I know that he's very dedicated to the poor. That's what the church is about.''

Quinlan knows that it may take time for his parish to get used to him. His most loyal fans always come 20 years after he's left, he said. And, these days, it's getting harder and harder to shock anyone.

``I'm the age now that I can do no wrong,'' Quinlan said. ``It's sort of sad.''

Reach Liz Szabo by calling 446-2286 or online at lszabo(AT)pilotonline.com


[b]Quinlan Quips[/b]

On life after death, in a 1981 interview:

``There's just God and me and you. No devil. No angels. But there is a heaven, and Jesus is in it. And I can't wait to get there.''

On his inattention to his health:

``People ask me `Who's your doctor?' I say, `Franklin Funeral Home.' ''

On the Rosary:

``I hate the Rosary.''

On his priorities as a Catholic:

``To me, if you don't serve the poor, then forget it.''

On celebrating marriages:

``The sermon could be seven minutes longer or 27 minutes. If I don't like the bride and groom, I'll talk even longer.''

On himself:

"I hope I haven't scandalized you. I wouldn't mind if I did."

On being a free-thinker:

``When you come to the Catholic church and dip your finger in the holy water, don't throw your brains out at the same time.''

On the design of his last church:

``I hired a Jewish architect. I told him, "If you make it look like a church, I'll kill you.''

Recommendation for his epitaph:

``He was odd.''[/quote]

Edited February 3, 2006 by Dave

[Cow of Shame]

[quote name='catholicinsd' date='Feb 3 2006, 04:08 PM']That's stupid.
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What? ...the priest or the censorship?

[toledo_jesus]

UGGGHHH!!! I've been talking about this guy for days now!


Anyway, he's got a national reputation. This is the culmination of a long string of profanities and offenses. The one good thing he did was blast PeTA publicly after they got on him for a parish carnival where he sold goldfish.

[Norseman82]

[quote name='FutureNunJMJ' date='Feb 3 2006, 02:05 PM']His exploits included riding a police motorcycle into the sanctuary during a Palm Sunday service at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Norfolk.
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Oh....him. Somebody posted about him before, didn't they?


[quote name='Dave' date='Feb 3 2006, 02:59 PM']This article says it all.  Let's pray for him.
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I don't mean to make light of the situation, but there's some serious comedy material in there. Think of "Sister Act" meets "Sanford and Son"

[crazymaine catholic]

he hates the rosary?!!! is there a smiley with it's jaw dropping? oh yeah, there it is...

[Ash Wednesday]

It seems like he's an attention junkie making his ministry all about himself.

[toledo_jesus]

[quote name='Ash Wednesday' date='Feb 4 2006, 12:21 AM']It seems like he's an attention junkie making his ministry all about himself.
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apt description.

He also says crossing yourself during Mass is a "meaningless pietistic gesture."

[zabbazooey]

[avemaria40]

How could anyone hate the Rosary? I can understand not having time or patience or a preference to pray in your own words, but still, hate it?

[peacenluvbaby]

To me, it sounds like he was unconventional in his methods, but doing a lot of good and that he loves God. Not everyone has to love the rosary... for many people personal dialogue with God, like a conversation is much more fulfilling and amenable than a bunch of repetitive words that perhaps you had bad experiences with (like nuns at school making you say it kneeling while tired, or parents forcing it on you, but they were abusive...it can have baggage)

Lastly, if you look at the converts he's brought in, and the help for the poor...I think we should follow the "the person without sin should cast the first stone" on this one. He has his conscience and has done what he saw as correct... there is no claim that he denied any dogmas or things like that...so let's celebrate the good he has done for the community and the people he brought in. Do you really think Peter or Paul or those guys had great personalities or vocabularies and were very tactful...I dont. And his alcoholism should not be an issue, everyone is human and has problems that we try to work through...plus there was a hereditary disposition added to it.

Peace

[Dreamweaver]

Yeah, I still don't understand the whole "I hate the Rosary" thing.... Isn't he doing a disservice to his congregation by saying that? It might not be the best prayer for everyone, but so many graces come from praying a good rosary.