{"id":7932,"date":"2004-02-16T19:37:28","date_gmt":"2004-02-16T19:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/more_trouble_in_albany.html"},"modified":"2004-02-16T19:37:28","modified_gmt":"2004-02-16T19:37:28","slug":"more_trouble_in_albany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/more_trouble_in_albany.html","title":{"rendered":"(More) Trouble in Albany"},"content":{"rendered":"

Albany priest found dead<\/a><\/p>\n

A priest whose name was linked with a letter accusing Bishop Howard Hubbard of homosexual activity was found dead in his Watervliet home this weekend.<\/p>\n

Watervliet police said the Rev. John Minkler was found on the kitchen floor of his home by his sister on Sunday afternoon. Police Chief Jerry Beston there were no signs of trauma to the victim or forced entry. The chief said a note was found at the home, but he provided no details about it and would not say whether or not the death was self-inflicted. An autopsy is being conducted today. <\/p>\n

\nLast week, Hubbard denied the truth of a letter released purportedly written by Minkler, which accused the bishop of homosexual relationships with two other priests. The church later announced that Minkler denied he wrote the letter, and today released a statement to that effect signed by Minkler. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The AP story<\/a><\/p>\n

He was very disturbed that his name was associated with this letter and he wanted to assure me that he was not its author,” Hubbard said Monday.<\/p>\n

“He was the one who requested the meeting,” Hubbard said in an interview. “He said `I just wanted to look you in the eye so you could see me tell you face-to-face, man-to-man, that I was not the author of the letter.”‘ <\/p>\n

“What was said in that letter was not true,” Hubbard said after he was interviewed by WROW-AM in Albany. <\/p>\n

Minkler was ordained in 1972 and had been chaplain of the Stratton Veterans Administration Hospital in Albany for about 20 years. <\/p>\n

“This is a tragedy no matter what the circumstances,” Hubbard said. “A priest has died and I have great sympathy for his family and they will be very much in my prayers.” <\/p>\n

A copy of the 1995 letter to the archdiocese in New York City surfaced following a press conference last week called by a lawyer who has represented several alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests. The Albany Diocese in a statement issued Monday said Minkler was identified as the letter’s author in a television news report. <\/p>\n

“The purported letter” to the late Cardinal John O’Connor was denied by Minkler in a written statement and no such letter was found in the files of the archdiocese, according to the Albany Diocese statement. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tuesday, am<\/strong>: Another story<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Please watch what you say as you comment on this story. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On Friday, the church announced that Minkler had disavowed authorship of the letter and had said he had never contacted the archdiocese. On Monday, they released Minkler’s signed statement to that effect.<\/p>\n

But the head of Roman Catholic Faithful, a Chicago-based group of conservative Catholics, disputed that account. Stephen Brady said Minkler had been working with him for three years to uncover homosexual activity in the Albany Diocese.<\/p>\n

“Reverend Minkler was scared to death that the bishop would find out,” said Brady, president of the group that opposes any weakening of church positions against homosexuality, birth control and abortion.<\/p>\n

“He called me Saturday and left a message on my voice mail, saying, ‘I need your help with Hubbard.’ I was not able to get back with Father Minkler,” Brady said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Albany priest found dead A priest whose name was linked with a letter accusing Bishop Howard Hubbard of homosexual activity was found dead in his Watervliet home this weekend. Watervliet police said the Rev. John Minkler was found on the kitchen floor of his home by his sister on Sunday afternoon. Police Chief Jerry Beston…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n(More) Trouble in Albany - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/02\/more_trouble_in_albany.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"(More) Trouble in Albany - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Albany priest found dead A priest whose name was linked with a letter accusing Bishop Howard Hubbard of homosexual activity was found dead in his Watervliet home this weekend. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}