by Christopher A. Ferrara
Remnant Columnist

In my series The Neo-Catholic Heresy I discussed how at the turn of the 20th century those St. Pius X described under the heading “the modernist as reformer” advocated virtually the same program of liturgical, theological and disciplinary “updating” that the more liberal of today’s neo-Catholic spokesmen laud as a great boon of Vatican II¾the Church’s long overdue advance to full spiritual maturity as she finally shed her “Tridentine shell” (to recall the phrase employed by George Sim Johnston). This kind of thinking represents an ultra neo-Catholicism that goes beyond the more conservative neo-Catholic’s comparatively passive defense of the post-conciliar novelties. In the manner of a true revolutionary, the ultra neo-Catholic openly despises the Church’s past and rejoices in its burial.

Fall of a Neo-Catholic Icon

In America, I argued, this ultra neo-Catholicism is being amalgamated with the policies of the Republican Party, especially its war policy, to produce a modern-day version of the old Americanist heresy, which I would call American Republican Catholicism. This amalgamation produces a curiously selective loyalty to the current Pope. The American Republican Catholics who applaud every novelty of John Paul II do not hesitate to reject his leadership when it comes to the Republican Party’s war policy. In the last part of my series, which has just gone to press, I noted that the foremost exponent of American Republican Catholicism is Deal Hudson, publisher of Crisis magazine, a staunchly Republican journal that has (not coincidentally) become America’s most prominent forum for the bashing of “Tridentine Catholicism”¾that is, the traditional Roman Catholic faith as it was always practiced before the Second Vatican Council. Knowing full well that John Paul II is against the Iraq war, Hudson did his Republican duty by rejecting any Vatican interference in the carnage:

The Vatican officials making these comments [against the Iraq war] might claim that they were not meant as expressions of policy. But bishops with titles like “prefect” and “secretary of state” really don’t have private personas that allow the Catholics reading their remarks in the press to know they’re speaking without official authority… One of the most serious consequences of official criticism is the undermining of our elected leadership….[1]

In short, according to Deal Hudson Rome has no business disagreeing with Washington when Washington wants war. Hudson’s brand of Catholicism is thus no small thing. The rise of American Republican Catholicism involves matters of life and death and political power on a global scale. As I noted, Hudson had somehow managed to become the leading spokesman for his own politico-religious constituency, the man the White House went to first for advice on how to sell Mr. Bush to Catholic voters.

But all that has changed. Just as the final installment of my series was going to press, Deal Hudson suddenly and spectacularly fell from his high pedestal. The thrice-married Baptist minister convert¾the beneficiary of two Novus Ordo “annulments” since his entry into the Church in 1982¾was toppled by his own remarkably sordid past. It seems we didn’t know the half of it.

On August 19th the National Catholic Reporter broke the story of Hudson’s sexual predation of an 18-year old freshman student of his at Fordham University, where he was a professor from 1989-1994. Hudson, then age 44, was already married to his current wife when he seduced Cara Poppas and had his way with her in his car and office on “Fat Tuesday” in 1994. According to the written account Poppas supplied to Fordham’s legal counsel (none of which Hudson has disputed), Hudson knew beforehand that Poppas was emotionally disturbed and that her unfit parents had left her a ward of the state. The details of the sexual favors Hudson obtained from his vulnerable student are not fit for publication, although NCR published them all. Before Hudson took advantage of her, Poppas had gotten falling down drunk at a drinking party in a West Village restaurant to which Hudson had invited her, even though he knew Poppas was three years below the legal drinking age. (Hudson helpfully promised not to tell anyone how old she was.) During the drinking party Hudson indulged in disgusting displays of carnal behavior with two other women, all the while holding court as the center of the table talk. In short, Poppas’ account depicts a wildly libidinous egomaniac, completely unconstrained by his marriage vows. After Poppas brought a grievance against Hudson with university officials, he “surrendered his tenure at Fordham,” according to vice president for student affairs, Elizabeth Schmalz. Now unemployable in academia, Hudson reinvented himself as a magazine editor and Beltway insider at Crisis, which he joined in 1994. In 1996 he quietly paid Poppas $30,000 to settle her suit for sexual harassment, and that is where the matter lay until the NCR exposé.

A day before the NCR story broke, Hudson resigned his position as Catholic liaison on the Republican National Committee. His days of “A-level” White House access, and his control of White House access by other Catholics, are clearly over. And it seems doubtful Hudson can remain editor of Crisis since he will no longer be able to pronounce credibly on moral issues of the day. NCR was only too happy to point out the hypocrisy of Hudson’s prior statement that it is a “lie that a person’s private conduct makes no difference to the execution of their [sic] public responsibilities.” NCR quite rightly notes the relevance of Hudson’s conduct to his “political and public mission [that] relies heavily on public moralizing, often about personal sexual ethics.”

Hudson’s defenders will no doubt piously observe that this sort of thing could happen to anyone in a moment of weakness. Hardly. Natural virtue alone, even simple prudence, should be enough to keep anyone in Hudson’s position from behaving as he did. It’s not as if the sexual exploitation of students by Fordham faculty members was a commonplace, even if other sins might be. (We are all sinners.) What is more, Hudson had recourse to the sacraments, whereas many Fordham professors (as this Fordham alumnus knows) are not even Christians, let alone Catholics, yet Poppas was safe from them. Hudson’s conduct was much worse than an understandable example of human weakness. This middle-aged man went after a vulnerable teenage girl and preyed upon her sexually, warming up to the deed by consorting lasciviously with two other women in a public place. This was pathological behavior.

The Poppas affair aside, one must ask how a man with three marriages and two annulments became a neo-Catholic icon in the first place. In addition to his position as editor of Crisis, Hudson has his own show on EWTN, The Church and Culture Today, and is a frequent guest on EWTN anchorman Raymond Arroyo’s talk and news show, The World Over. Hudson was also lionized on the front cover of Pat Madrid’s neo-Catholic glossy, Envoy, where he was depicted as a knight in shining armor for Catholics in America. Was no one concerned about this man’s obvious baggage and the potential for future scandal arising from his manifestly shaky grasp on commitment to women, which he himself confesses in his own published memoirs? Apparently not. Hudson’s magnetic personality and his star value as a Washington insider were enough to insure his rise to the top of the neo-Catholic establishment. Yet traditionalist writers and speakers are systematically shunned by the same establishment, which constantly deplores the “schism” of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and other refugees from the Novus Ordo regime of novelty.

UPDATE

DEAL HUDSON TO LEAVE POST AS PUBLISHER OF CRISIS MAGAZINE

The full text of the story is available at: EWTN