Cardinal Spellman of New York, the city’s archbishop from 1939 until 1967, was for years the target of credible allegations that he violated his celibacy vows with men. Clarence Tripp, a respected psychologist associated with Indiana University’s Institute for Sex Research, the pioneering research center founded by Alfred Kinsey, tracked down a Broadway dancer who was the subject of the most persistent rumors. Tripp was convinced that the male dancer, who was regularly chauffeured around Manhattan in the cardinal’s limousine, had been in a long-term sexual relationship with Spellman. The American journalist Lucian Truscott IV reported that, when he was an army cadet at West Point in the 1960s, he was groped when he and two other cadets interviewed the cardinal for a student magazine. “Spellman put his hand on my thigh and started moving it toward my crotch,” Truscott wrote. “He was just about to reach my private parts when a monsignor, who was standing behind him, reached over his shoulder, grabbed his wrist and put his hand back in his lap, as if this was a common occurrence.” Allegations about Spellman’s sexuality were due to be published in 1984 in a biography by a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal. The New York archdiocese pressured the publisher to remove the material. The pressure campaign was led by Spellman’s longtime secretary, Monsignor Eugene Clark. There was no little irony when Clark, who went on to become rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, was forced to resign from that post after New York tabloids revealed his affair with a female secretary.
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