The Times Union (Albany); August 11, 1993: The
Rev. C. Christopher Peck, 43, of Market Street [San Francisco], who formerly
served in the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese, died Sunday at home after a long
illness.
He was born in Bennington, Vt. He received a
bachelor's degree from Siena College in Loudonville and religious degrees from
the Angelicum University in Rome, Italy. He was ordained in the Albany Roman
Catholic Diocese in 1976.
Locally, he served as associate pastor at
St. Teresa of Avila Church in Albany and St. Madeleine Sophie Church in
Guilderland.
Contributions may be made to Dignity of San
Francisco, 208 Dolores St., San Francisco, CA 94114.
Of Men and Gods
Father Peck was thin man of
medium height with a neatly trimmed, but full mustache, and a head of thick, wavy,
black hair that curled at the ends. One would almost be tempted to call it a Jewfro were he not a
Catholic priest. He had a stern, no-nonsense demeanor, which to dozens of
middle school boys was nothing less than a challenge to our integrity as the
torch-bearers of centuries of 12 and 13 year old boys whose sole existence in
life is to tweak the lion’s tail of the officious.
 |
| St. Teresa of Avila in 2008, shortly before its closure in 2009 (New Scotland Avenue Neighborhoods) |
St. Teresa of Avila was Father
Peck’s first parish after his ordination in 1976. He brought with him the
assiduous attention to detail and the letter of the law that likely brought
tears of joy to the eyes to the bald-pated miserable old coot Monsignor Hart who led
the parish with aloof and distant obliviousness.
Monsignor Hart inspired great
fear in me. In the early morning services, dressed in his black cassock,
black socks, and black shoes, his feet seemed to disappear into the shadows
behind the altar and he appeared to levitate — floating from pulpit to reliquary
like a scene out of The Exorcist.
The 1970s were a time when
aspects of the church services were invaded by more youth-oriented elements.
Younger priests in touch with the hippie Jesus-freak zeitgeist brought with
them new ideas. The priests’ ceremonial robes took on Earth tones. Community
involvement and reaching out to the poor and disenfranchised became higher
profile missions. Folk music occasionally replaced the choir. Sermons on
contemporary themes became more frequent. Into this mix came the earnest young Father
Peck whose ideas were progressive, but his approach eminently conservative.
One of his first changes came to
the confessional. Instead of slipping into a cabinet with a dark red velvet
curtain for privacy and a screen to protect your anonymity, Father Peck
insisted we sit in chairs next to each other and facing in opposite directions —
sort of like a love seat — and make our confession that way.
Weird, am I right?
The up-close and personal
approach quickly became loathed by all, particularly by my classmates, most of
who were already experimenting with alcohol, drugs, and sex, and actually had
something to confess. While the booth guaranteed some degree of privacy, this
new seating arrangement did not and we were pretty convinced Father Peck would
rat us out if given the chance.
Being essentially a nice kid, I
struggled for sins to report to Father Peck. After the usual swearing and
disobeying my parents, I began to make up sins: breaking a vase, putting
scratching powder in a friend’s bed, throwing a football at my sister — I was
just rattling off scenes from The Brady
Bunch. Given Father Peck’s tightly wound nature, I had no doubt that if I
confessed I was lying about sinning during confession he would have reached
over and slapped the shit out of me.
Another innovation to church
services that Father Peck introduced was the ceramic cruets. The
cruets are small containers about six inches tall that contain water and wine.
During communion, the altar boy’s job was to pour water over the priest’s hands
to clean them and then to pour wine into the chalice, which would be magically
transformed into the blood of Christ, however symbolic. When we used glass
cruets, one could easily tell which held the water or wine.
Unfortunately, there were no
markings on the ceramic cruets to tell which was water and which was wine. I
asked another altar boy, but he was equally clueless. When it came time for
communion, I stood for a moment sniffing each cruet, trying to tell which
contained wine while Father Peck glared at me impatiently. Not wanting to delay
it any further I went ahead and made my choice — the wrong one. I poured wine
over Father Peck’s hands and water into the chalice. After the service, a
furious Father Peck yelled at me, noting that the act of communion was invalid
because of my screw up.
“Well,” I said in my defense, “if
God can change wine into the blood of Christ then why can’t he do the same
thing with water? I mean, after all, didn’t Christ turn water into wine?”
Father Peck looked at me with
complete disbelief that I had the temerity to ask such a question, let
alone even think of it.
Knowing I was already in knee
deep, I plunged head first into the deep end.
“I think it’s a fair question,” I
said with all the wiseassitude of a 13-year-old boy.
Father Peck was not amused. Despite
the fact that he did not bother to inform anyone which cruet was which, and the
fault entirely his own, I took the fall. He told me to report the next day for
“retraining,” and my Sicilian parents insisted least I be seconded to a distant
circle of hell. Father Peck lectured me on the smaller points of altar duties I
already knew by heart; however, the more I listened to him the more I became
convinced that hell would probably be worth it to avoid this douchebag. I went
home, told my parents I was done with it, and the next day I dropped off my
cassock and surplus with the secretary at the rectory. Except for weddings and
funerals, I never stepped foot in a Catholic Church again. That was probably
the last time I ever saw Father Peck. It was 1978.
The Great Catholic Mile
St. Teresa of Avila’s Parish on
New Scotland Avenue in Albany, NY, was founded just after World War I as a
haven for the burgeoning middle-class. Its buildings included the church,
rectory, and elementary school constructed in the 1920s, followed by a middle school
in the 1950s, and a convent in the early 1960s. It existed on a
stretch of road that ran for several miles, starting from the end closest to the
fringe of downtown with Christian Brothers Academy run by the Franciscans. Approximately
a half mile up the road was the collection of buildings that comprised St.
Teresa’s Parish. About another half-mile further along, across from St. Peter’s
Hospital, was the all-girls Mercy High School. A short block after that is the campus
of the Catholic Maria College, followed by the church and school buildings of
the St. Catherine of Siena parish a few blocks after that. Several miles further up New
Scotland, one encountered the all-girls Academy of the Holy Names just across
the street from the equally Catholic Christian Youth Organization (CYO)
building.
The period between the 1940s and
the 1970s was the Golden Age of Middle-Class Catholicism for the families along
New Scotland Avenue. Including Public School 19, across from St Teresa’s, a
couple thousand students flooded the stretch of road daily. From
kindergarten to college, young Catholics were nurtured just a few blocks from
their homes.
Eventually, the “white flight” to
the newer suburban developments farther outside city limits took its toll on
these institutions of faith. Mercy High School closed down in the 1970s. The
Christian Youth Organization turned its facility over for police training in
the 1980s. Christian Brothers Academy left for the suburbs in the 1990s, and
St. Teresa’s closed for good in 2009 when the diocese sold off the church,
rectory, convent, and school buildings and merged it with St. Catherine of Siena. The new parish was renamed Mater Cristi and in one stroke the history of both churches came to an end.
Though I no longer ascribe to
the tenets of any faith, and despite the periodic disappointments and
humiliations of adolescence, I have to admit I felt a little sad when St.
Teresa’s closed. While sexual abuse allegations surrounded the Catholic Church
in other parishes, it seemed as though this plague passed by St. Teresa’s. When
the middle school was torn down and replaced by a Mormon Temple, I felt as
though a little pocket of mid-century, post-war innocence was lost.
I was only partially right as I
later found out innocence was indeed lost at St. Teresa’s in ways that evoked
every parent’s and child’s deepest fears.
A Murder of Crows and Priests
Looking out my apartment window one
day as a young man, I noticed a pigeon pecking on the ground in the parking
lot. Suddenly two crows appeared out of nowhere, as though drawn to the pigeon’s
weakness and vulnerability. They flew circles around the pigeon, who took to
flight in an attempt to escape. The crows intercepted the pigeon and broke its
neck with a loud CRACK I could hear from the window. The pigeon was dead before
it hit the ground. The crows, bored now that their prey was dead, flew off. I thought how well-suited was the grisly name for a group of crows — a murder.
While the Catholic Church sexual
abuse scandals brewed to a rolling boil in the 1990s, I counted myself lucky to
have attended St. Teresa’s. Despite the bullying by some nuns and some rich
kids, there were enough good nuns and good kids to balance it out. Despite our
family dysfunction (as noted in other stories of The Norwood Avenue Chronicles), I had friends who stuck with me and
a few good teachers. Nevertheless, the sexual abuse did visit our quiet little
corner of Catholicism. Two priests and one janitor all converged on the parish
in the late 1970s and early 1980s and preyed upon young boys left under their
supervision.
Suspect #1: Gary Mercure, ordained in 1975, was assigned to St.
Teresa's parish from 1978 to 1982. In his 20s, he had a youthful look with a
mop top of dark hair and wire framed glasses. No fewer than eight young boys
were abused and/or raped by Mercure, including two at St. Teresa’s during my
time there. Bishop Howard Hubbard moved Mercure around several assignments and
he remained a priest in the diocese until stripped of his ordination in 2008. On
February 16, 2011, Mercure was sentenced to 20-25 years in jail for the rape of
two altar boys under his care in the 1980s.
I recall Mercure very well. He was
the only priest who would engage me in long conversations about the size of the
universe and other astronomical ephemera. He reluctantly supported my choice of
“Romulus” as my confirmation name (I choose it because it was the home planet
of the Romulans in Star Trek, but
since there was a St. Romulus there was little they could do). Years later, I recall parishioners speaking about a “nervous breakdown” Mercure had
shortly after my graduation from St. Teresa’s. Reportedly, he took some extended "sick time" in the
care of his parents, though Bishop Hubbard claims to have known nothing of
Mercure's activities [“Rev. Gary J. Mercure—Assignments and Sources of Information”].
Suspect #2: David Bentley, also ordained in 1975, served as a
priest at St. Teresa’s from 1977 to 1982. While he is not known, as yet, to
have abused any children at St. Teresa’s, beginning in 1973 Bentley and three
other priests abused young boys under their charge at the former Albany Home
for Children, only about half a mile down the road from St. Teresa's. Bentley was later accused
of sexually abusing three children in the mid-1980s and was defrocked in 1986.
Nevertheless, Bishop Hubbard allowed Bentley to serve the church in Africa and
later at a parish in Deming, NM. I remember Bentley only slightly and, except
for services as an altar boy, had little interaction with him ["Diocesan Cases of Albany"].
Suspect #3: Gene Hubert, school custodian at St. Teresa’s Middle
School during the time Mercure and Bentley served as priests, raped several
young boys right on school grounds or at his small camp near Paradox Lake, NY. When
I read about the abuse decades later I realized I knew many of the victims.
Several of them exhibited wild behavior which, in retrospect, is totally
understandable though at the time it made me nervous and uncomfortable. I knew
Hubert as well and enjoyed his dirty jokes and wicked sense of humor, but was
oblivious to his actions. He died in 1997 at age 54, reportedly due to
complications caused by AIDS, and before he could be brought to justice [“Two men allege abuse at former St. Teresa of Avila School in 1970s”].
Being totally ignorant of the
situation, I feel like I failed my friends. If I had known . . . if only I had known . . .
There is absolutely no evidence
that Mercure, Bentley, or Hubert had any knowledge of each others’ activities. Nevertheless, like
crows, pedophiles descended upon the school drawn by the innocence,
naiveté, and vulnerability of the children, much like those crows were drawn to
the pigeon — like a murder of crows.
A Passing Sacrifice
Into this mix of insanity came
the officious Father Peck with his new ideas. I hasten to add that in all the
investigations into sexual abuse at St. Teresa’s never once has his name been
mentioned — not once — and I am loath to engage in guilt by association. I
wonder, however, how he could have not known of the abuse going on, but it is a
mystery that will be left unanswered.
What is known is that Father Peck
left St. Teresa’s not long after I did. He transferred to the West Coast and
served several parishes, hospitals, and community organizations in California
through his death in 1993 after a “long illness.” At the time of his death he
lived on Market Street in San Francisco and his obituary noted that those
wishing to remember him could do so by making contributions to Dignity of San
Francisco.
It would have been a bit
difficult before the Internet to find this out, but Dignity of San Francisco is
a LGBT advocacy organization and, of course, Market Street is the center of a
vibrant gay community. As a reporter who once wrote obituaries, I know that
dying of a “long illness” was often code for saying someone died of
complications due to HIV/AIDS, though it could have been any number of
conditions that caused his death. The combination of where he lived, where he
requested donations to be sent, and the mysterious nature of his passing could
lead one to suggest that Father Peck was gay. Such speculation, however, is
irresponsible, but the circumstantial evidence is compelling nonetheless.
Father Peck spent his final years
serving the ill while racked by a terminal disease himself. With two fellow
priests and the janitor active as pedophiles, what Father Peck knew and when he
knew it is a mystery. We know that he got as far away from St. Teresa’s as he
possibly could. If he was gay, he found a place to live in the Mecca of the gay
community in San Francisco surrounded by those who shared his struggles. In the
end, I like to think of Father Peck’s death as a sacrifice for those children
whose innocence was stolen by those who wore the collar — a sort of redemption.
In the absence of quantifiable, empirical
evidence we create truths we choose to believe in and hope are real. That is
what faith is. This is what heals the wounds that life bares down on us. This
is the truth I choose to believe.
 |
| 1972 Siena College Yearbook photo |
REV. C.C. PECK, 43
PUBLICATION: Times Union, The
(Albany, NY)
SECTION: CAPITAL REGION
DATE: August 11, 1993
EDITION: THREE STAR
Page: B13
The Rev. C. Christopher Peck, 43,
of Market Street, who formerly served in the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese,
died Sunday at home after a long illness.
He was born in Bennington, Vt. He
received a bachelor's degree from Siena College in Loudonville and religious
degrees from the Angelicum University in Rome, Italy. He was ordained in the
Albany Roman Catholic Diocese in 1976.
Locally, he served as associate
pastor at St. Teresa of Avila Church in Albany and St. Madeleine Sophie Church
in Guilderland.
Father Peck was chaplain and
director of pastoral care at Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa, Calif., from
1987 until 1991 and active in hospital and community organizations. At the time
of his death, he volunteered with the Davies Medical Center Institutional
Review Board in San Francisco.
Previously, he served at St. John
Vianney Parish in San Jose, Calif., until 1984, and in health-care ministry at
Humana and Memorial hospitals in San Leandro, Calif. He served at convalescent
centers in St. Leander's Parish and was director of pastoral care at St.
Leander/Assumption parishes in San Leandro, and for the Office of Hospital
Ministries, Diocese of Oakland, Calif.
Father Peck was a member of the
National Association of Catholic Chaplains and served as chairman of its
National Social Concerns Committee. He was also on the team that wrote the
Standards of Pastoral Care for St. Joseph Health System, which operates Queen
of the Valley Hospital in Napa and other hospitals in California and Texas.
Survivors include his parents,
Carlton and Bernice McMahon Peck of Schenectady.
A service will be held at 11 a.m.
Thursday at St. Madeleine Sophie Church. Calling hours will be held from 9-11
a.m. in the church before the service.
Contributions may be made to
Dignity of San Francisco, 208 Dolores St., San Francisco, CA 94114.
Arrangements are by the McVeigh
Funeral Home, Albany.
UPDATE July 2018: As discussed below in the comments section,
an assiduous Aeolus 13 Umbra reader noted that Father C. Christopher Peck is
included in the biography An American
Cardinal: The Biography of Cardinal Timothy Dolan by Christina Boyle. In
the book, we learn that Father Peck and Cardinal Dolan were classmates and
friends while attending The Pontifical North American College in Rome where
they studied for the priesthood.
 |
| Then-Father, later Archbishop, Dolan, with who has been identified as Father Peck, and Pope Paul VI (New York Times, March 8, 2013). |
Author Christina Boyle reveals in the
book:
Peck had
taken a leave of absence a few years after their ordination in 1976 and soon
fell off the radar completely. Last Dolan knew, Peck had been working in the
San Francisco area. However, despite Dolan’s best attempts to find him, Peck
had vanished. It took at least five years before Peck resurfaced. He rejoined
the priesthood and became a Chaplin at a Catholic hospital but always stayed
quiet about where he had been and what he had done. (107)
We know from Father Peck’s obituary (above)
in the Times Union, that he “served
at St. John Vianney Parish in San Jose, Calif., until 1984.” This suggests that
Peck must have left the priesthood shortly after my graduation from St.
Teresa’s Middle School in 1979 (about the same time the now-defrocked and
imprisoned Gary Mercure at St. Teresa’s may also have taken some time off as
well), so his service at St. John Vianney Parish must have been very brief;
however, I suspect the obituary may be stretching the truth in a few places.
 |
| A later photo of Father Peck. Source: The Alumni Association of the Pontifical North American College. |
More significantly, however, the
book, published in 2014, also confirms what I had long suspected and wrote
about in the essay above, that Father Peck contracted HIV/AIDS and died of
causes related to the infection. One can theorize that based on the available
evidence that Peck left the priesthood about 1979/1980 and spent several years
exploring his sexuality during which time he may have contracted the disease.
In the early 1980s, blood donations were not screened (which is how author
Isaac Asimov and tennis great Arthur Ashe contracted HIV), so it is possible
Peck got the disease through a transfusion, though there is no evidence at this
point of any operations or procedures he may have undergone at the time.
Disturbingly, additional research
also establishes that sexual abuse charges were also leveled against the
longtime leader of St. Teresa’s of Avila Parish, Monsignor James Hart. In a
Dec. 1, 2004, article in The Post Star
(Glens Falls, NY), Edmund Zampier, 61, accused Hart and another priest of
sexually abusing him in separate incidents in the 1950s. In Hart’s case, the
accusation places the abuse in the rectory of St. James Church in North Creek,
NY. So many years after the crime is reported to have taken place, long after
the statute of limitations has passed, and the case never having been brought
to court, there is no way of knowing the truth. If true, however, one wonders
what Peck must have thought, surrounded by pedophiles and struggling with his
own sexuality. It is little wonder why he got as far away from Albany, NY, as
he possibly could.
As it is typical when researching the
life of a very private person, one answer often leads to more questions —
particularly so in the age before digital footprints recorded everything we do.
What we have learned is that Peck left St. Teresa’s, and the priesthood,
exactly at the same time students at the school were being abused by the
janitor and when two other known pedophile priests were serving. Whatever drove
Father Peck away from the church, he nevertheless came back and spent the
remainder of his life in service to the sick and terminally ill. While Cardinal
Dolan's biography answers one question, mysteries about Father Peck's life
remain.
UPDATE July 2021: Since the publication of this essay,
comments left below and emailed to me by readers reveal a more nuanced profile
of Father Peck than my impressions as a 13 year old. Whereas my recollection
portrays a nit-picking authoritarian, other people remember a sincere, earnest,
and kind man. While I stand by my impression of him in that situation, the
story has evolved in a Rashomon sort-of way with different perspectives
revealing a more complex person and those memories are just as valid.
In Father Peck's defense, during his tenure
at St. Teresa of Avila's Middle School, my school mates and I were absolute
terrors. There were three grades (6-8) with two classes per grade and a total
of 150-160 students. In three years we went through four music teachers, three
physical education teachers, three English teachers, two math teachers, and two
reading teachers. It was the 1970s and, despite our young age, alcohol and
marijuana were readily available and pills, such as black beauties, red devils,
and Qualudes, were not uncommon. I personally didn't partake, but they seemed to
be within fairly easy reach if one had the money. All this, combined with the
trauma of the sexual abuse, fueled the dysfunction. I can only have sympathy
for the young priest in his first assignment after ordination.
A trusted source who
worked in mediation between the church and sexual abuse victims in Albany, NY,
confirms what I noted in my essay — that Father Peck's name never once came up
in any of the cases. On one hand, this restores some lost faith; on the other
hand it deepens the mystery surrounding Father Peck, why he left the church,
and why he came back.
● ● ●