What title can we put on Dale Fushek these days? The man we knew as “Monsignor Dale” and “Father Dale?”
What do we call the man who was once vicar general and who had been the diocese’s “golden boy” for founding the international Life Teen program, having so much to do with the 1987 visit of Pope John Paul II to the Valley and then 17 months later with the Phoenix visit of iconic Mother Teresa in search of a home for her Missionaries of Charity nuns in the Valley? He has been instrumental in bringing about the new Pastoral Center in downtown Phoenix that houses diocesan offices.
That charismatic pastor had St. Timothy’s Catholic Community in Mesa buzzing. It became a kind of a model of a relevant and vigorous parish. Given all that, the 56-year-old Phoenix native had seemed to have the credentials to one day be the bishop for this diocese.
But his fall from grace was part of the spectacular litany of tragedies for the diocese that began with its dark trail of sexual child abuse scandals, which the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office helped to uncover in 2002-2003, with diocesan cooperation. Then came Bishop Thomas O’Brien’s abrupt resignation in 2003 after he was implicated in a fatal hit-and-run case. And then Fushek. Things began coming out in 2002 about how the diocese had paid off a former Life Teen staffer, in an out-of-court settlement, for a 1995 case of sexual harassment involving Fushek. Then allegations of sexual misconduct with teens began to surface. Fushek resigned as pastor of St. Timothy’s in April 2005 and was indicted that November with what were first 10 misdemeanor counts of sexual misbehavior across most of a decade with Life Teen. He is to stand trial in San Tan Justice of the Peace court on seven of those charges brought by five men who were underage at the time of the alleged incidents.
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted made public Monday his decision to excommunicate Fushek, along with Mark Dippre, one-time priest at St. Timothy’s and Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Tempe. Their violation: Ministering outside the purview of the church. They had defied the bishop by engaging in public ministry when told not to. Fushek was had been put on paid leave of absence and told to cool his heels until the teen abuse issues were legally resolved. But ego and calling drove him to minister anew, outside the bounds of Catholicism.
Fushek and Dippre, who had served together as priests in the 1990s at St. Timothy’s were excommunicated because “they have chosen schism with the Catholic Church by establishing and leading an opposing ecclesial community.” On Thanksgiving 2007, the two men founded the nondenominational Praise and Worship Center, which meets 10 a.m. Sundays at the Fiesta Fountains Reception Center in Mesa. They did not call it an alternative to Catholic Mass, but Fushek clearly has capitalized on the charisma and following he had during his years at St. Tim’s.
Excommunication means he is officially excluded from participating in the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church and from formal communion with it. But Jim Dwyer, the spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, made it clear that Fushek has not been stripped of the priesthood. He is not laicized, not defrocked or unfrocked, not dismissed from the clerical state. That takes a lot of complicated steps, mistakes must be grave and the once-a-priest-always-priest rule runs deep.
Fushek’s colleague, Dippre, was ordained a priest in 1992 and served as associate pastor at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Tempe from 1992 to 1995 and as its pastor from 2000 to 2002. He was also associate pastor under Fushek at St. Timothy’s from 1995 to 2000. He resigned from the priesthood in 2002 and later married, according to diocesan records.
On Monday, I talked to Jan and Nicpon of Tempe, members of St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church in Chandler, who attend Mass there and regularly go to the Praise and Worship Center. Stan finds nothing wrong with going to both places even if the bishop asks Catholics not to attend the non-denominational services. His order “is not going to stop people from going it,” Stan said. “The action by the bishop is really saddening and really unfortunate. It sounds more like getting even than moving brotherhood ahead.”
He described the Praise and Worship services as “discussing Christian life. It is discussing what we all need to do to be better brothers and sisters to each other and to help each other.” Nicpon called services “heartwarming. When you leave the services, you feel like you have been touched in some way. So it is a very, very wholesome experience.”
Jan Nicpon said there are about 500 people enrolled, with 250 to 300 coming to Sunday services. She said those attending don’t care what the bishop says about the appropriateness of their going to the Praise and Worship Center. “They feel it is not up to the bishop or even their local priest to say what they do in their outside life,” said Jan, who is in charge of the refreshments that are served after the 90-minute services that include lots of praise music and preaching by both Fushek and Dippre. Their homilies can be heard at the Web site (praiseandworshipcenter.net).
Diocesan spokesman Jim Dwyer said Olmsted had strived long and hard to get the two priests to abandon their independent ministry and he remains open to reconciliation with them. But Dwyer said the two wayward priests have ignored his overtures.
Right now, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Joseph Kreamer is weighing an appeal from prosecutors to allow for all five alleged victims of sexual misconduct to tell their stories in a single trial that, they say, will show a continuous pattern of abuse for the priest’s own sexual gratification, including how Fushek, during confession, requested detailed descriptions of the teens’ sexual activities. Hot tub incidents, indecent exposure and touching of private parts of teens are also part of the allegations.
Fushek had been granted separate trials by the J.P.’s ruling in September. Justice Sam Goodman determined that jurors would not be able to separate testimony of stories and incidents. Goodman said each man’s case would prejudice the evidence of another.
On Monday, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) hailed Fushek’s excommunication, but said it was “heartbreaking” that it took so long “to discipline this dangerous predator.” SNAP national director, David Clohessy of St. Louis, Mo., lamented that “it’s sad and telling that this penalty is given, not because Fushek molested, but because he opened a competing church.”
Look for whatever Kreamer rules to be appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court and prolong the start of any trial well into 2009. Cynics say that it all just serves to dim the alleged victims’ memories going back to the years 1984 to 1993.
