Operating on one plaintiff's testimony, county police have quizzed Maskell about his knowledge of a murdered nun whose body was found in 1970, though they have since generally discounted him as a suspect. Meanwhile, city police are still puzzled over why Maskell ordered the graveyard burial of a small mountain of psychological tests and other documents he'd compiled during years of pastoral counseling.

Still other Maskell critics have emerged, with more than a dozen of them telling Baltimore magazine in recent months that the public allegations of sexual misbehavior fit a pattern. Many of those interviewed remember Maskell for his imperious, manipulative or lewd behavior. A group of Towson lawyers claims that, in addition to their two plaintiffs, they've met with 15 people who say Maskell subjected them to one or more sexual violations. And a third alleged rape victim, the first willing to be publicly named, has stepped forward to share her story with Baltimore.

Should the charges against Maskell eventually prove little more than faulty 20-year-old memories--some of them retrieved after a long period of alleged amnesia--the simple damage of public accusation may have already made it impossible for Maskell to pursue his vocation again.

While declining to be interviewed for this story, Maskell has repeatedly maintained his complete innocence. And a large group of friends and former parishioners feels that--but for the tragic misaccusations that have ruined his life--Maskell would have continued to be an exemplary priest. His sister, Maureen Baldwin, puts it most emphatically: "My brother has done nothing--repeat, nothing--wrong."

FOR A BRIEF MOMENT, SHORTLY AFTER his exile to Connecticut, it looked like Fr. Joseph Maskell's nightmare might go away.

As a follow-up investigation, two diocesan representatives met with Maskell's first accuser, Jennifer*, who by now had gotten herself an attorney. When pressed for the names of witnesses or other victims, Jennifer chided her questioners to prove the case without her, and began naming at least a dozen other people who'd allegedly abused her sexually--including a former Baltimore city politician. In the church's eyes, her credibility diminished with each new allegation.

Jennifer and her attorney soon parted ways, while the archdiocese continued to search for corroboration without her help.

According to diocesan spokesman William Blaul, investigators talked with "dozens" of other Keough students and came away empty-handed. (Though during the years that Jennifer was in high school, some 1,500 students attended Keough.)

Meanwhile, doctors at the Connecticut psychiatric facility, the Institute of Living, conducted a nearly six-month course of evaluation, after which the archdiocese determined Maskell was "able to return to ministry," says Blaul.

After hearing from canon lawyers that his clerical rights had been violated, says his sister Maureen, Maskell demanded a parish assignment. And with no legal grounds on which to refuse, the diocese gave him an administrative post at St. Augustine in Elkridge.

The reprieve was short-lived. Some St. Augustine parishioners, tipped off about Maskell's circumstances, protested his arrival. One woman is even said to have handed out anti-Maskell fliers in the parking lot.

Diocesan representatives tried to smooth things over with the parish leadership. And Maskell himself addressed the issue from his new pulpit one Sunday morning, assuring the congregation that he would not run from these untrue allegations.

Maskell knew Jennifer had not let the matter rest, but he clung to the hope that his vocation would endure. "If I lose this parish," he told his half-brother Tom, "I don't know if I'll be able to handle it."

SINCE CHILDHOOD, ANTHONY JOSEPH Maskell seemed destined for the priesthood. Born in 1939 and raised in Northeast Baltimore near Clifton Park, his favorite childhood game was "Mass." In child-sized vestments his mother had sewn for him, Joe would gather neighborhood children into the family's basement, where he would dispense the body of Christ in the form of white Necco wafers.

His mother, Helen Maskell, was very keen on her son becoming a priest, recalls childhood friend Bill Heim. "I always wondered if he was going to revolt at some point," Heim says. "But he never did."

When young Joe was old enough to join in sandlot baseball games, he would dress in black and take his position of choice behind the plate, calling the balls and strikes. According to Heim, Maskell liked having the authority to say: "This is right; that's wrong."

A fastidiously clean kid, a teenaged Maskell one year spent so much time immersed in his bathtub ritual, Heim recalls, that his father announced his displeasure over it. Joseph Francis Maskell, an office-furniture salesman with Lucas Brothers, was known for his short fuse.

At 14, Maskell went off to St. Charles Seminary in Catonsville, but returned after about a week because he was homesick. When he tried seminary again, after high school, he liked it fine, and revelled in the privileges that came with being a third-year sacristan, which included free social time after mass while the congregation prayed. The perk seemed to appeal to his ego. "He used to say with a smile, `We're sacristans. It is our place to be back here,'" recalls long-time friend and fellow seminarian William Kern.

Once ordained, Maskell was known for delivering thoughtful homilies with a compelling bass voice, and for excelling in the heroic moment. When Holy Cross parishioner Lynn Gerber Smith gave birth to an ailing baby, the priest rushed to the hospital and performed an emergency baptism. When Maskell's friend Albert Griffith called to say he was depressed and thinking of "blowing my brains out," Maskell drove to Severna Park within 15 minutes.

Maskell chaplained for the Baltimore County Police, the Maryland State Police and the Maryland National Guard. He was in his element holding an improvised mass on the hood of a jeep, or cheering up troops in the rain, or walking over to a county police station with one of his own pistols to target shoot with the boys.

Maskell's police credentials made their greatest contribution on January 4, 1987--the night of the Chase Amtrak crash that killed 16 people. Maskell had been monitoring his police radio and was on site and past the barricade within 45 minutes. Kneeling in the gravel by the railroad ties, he administered last rites and tried to comfort those still alive, including a woman who had been carried from the wreckage without one of her legs.

"I could tell by the arch of his back that he was personally feeling the suffering that was in front of him," remembers Chaplain Robert K. Shaffer. "That woman was dying and Joe knew it."

Tired and distressed by what they'd witnessed at the crash, Shaffer and Maskell left the scene around 11 p.m. Shaffer, a Protestant, went home to his wife of 36 years. As a Catholic, however, Maskell had long ago forsaken any such comfort.

THE SPIRITUAL VALUE OF CELIBACY, IN theory, is to demonstrate a priest's religious commitment--and his link to Christ. One of the Church's most controversial codes, clerical celibacy has long been a time-honored tradition, but it's hardly a founding doctrine. Indeed, some popes, including the very first, Saint Peter, enjoyed the worldly pleasures of family life.

In their 1993 book, A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse, and the Catholic Church, authors Elinor Burkett and Frank Bruni characterize the ascent of celibacy--between the fourth and 12th centuries--as an attempt by leaders of the Western European Church to maintain control of Church property and power, which might otherwise have passed to clergy members' offspring. As far as the authors are concerned, this power play endures. "Mandatory celibacy allows the Church tight control over its priests, who have no dividing loyalties to wives and offspring and thus require minimal salaries," they write.

Although the Church demands celibacy of its priests, it does little to prepare them for the rigors of that life, says Lutherville psychotherapist Richard Sipe, one of the nation's foremost experts on the subject. A retired Catholic priest, Sipe is the author of A Secret World: Sexuality and the Search for Celibacy and the just-published Sex, Priests and Power.

In the comfortable home he shares with his wife, psychiatrist Marianne Benkert, Sipe recalls one seminarian's experience. Confused about his commitment to celibacy, the student asked his rector for advice. "Don't worry," the rector replied. "Once you get ordained, it all falls into place."

But it doesn't, says Sipe, who believes that celibacy--when followed out of a well-examined, internal commitment--is noble, but that it is ill-suited to institutional obligation.