Customer Reviews

Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

Having spent ten years in the seminary studying to be a Catholic priest for the Diocese of Orange in California, I picked up Rose's piece of work on a whim. The first couple of pages scared the hell out of me because he is right on target. The seminary system in and of itself is corrupted at its core... more time was spent in class discussing heretical theologicans and the need for openness towards women than the actual studies that would help us be priests! Homosexuality was in full force and more than a few guys were openly dating each other. Rose exposes these troubled times within the seminary system with a full force that should be acknowledged. Until the Bishops of America decide to overhaul the seminary system and strengthen the requirements of prayer and the Mass and eliminate the feel good spirituality classes that are taught there, the Church will continue to suffer. I personally know some of the persons written by Rose... and none of it surprises me.

Michael Rose's Regnery hardcover version of his softcover bestseller is both disturbing as well as encouraging. While some readers may disagree with Rose's research methodology, his lack of balance, and some of the conclusions he reaches, they cannot argue with the book's overall thesis - that a great many potentially good priests have been turned away from U.S. seminaries over the past two decades.

Rose interviewed more than 125 individuals and sifted through many, many stories in order to put this book together. In the end, the book demonstrates how seminaries have used psychological testing, harassment, poor teaching, peer pressure, and other techniques to prevent good candidates from attending or remaining at some seminaries, and how similar tactics have been used to prevent "good" men from being ordained.

The book highlights individual examples from a variety of seminaries (Boston's St. John's Seminary, New Orleans' Notre Dame Seminary, Oregon's Mount Angel, Chicago's Mundelien, Belgium's Louvain and others) to prove his points. Sometimes it works; at other times it does not.

The end of the book is rather encouraging. It highlights the current situation among seminaries, especially those that are receiving many vocations. It also addresses the role of the priest from Pope John Paul II's perspective. The uplifting tone at the end makes up for the disturbing stories that make up the beginning of the book.

Rose also makes it clear that homosexual behavior has been rampant, and largely ignored, on some seminary campuses. While his purpose is not to address the clergy sexual abuse scandal currently rocking the Church, the astute reader will wonder whether such behavior has contributed to the problem the Church is currently facing. Many observers tend to think that the two are related.

Whether you agree or disagree with Rose's conclusions, the book is well worth reading. It provides a real eye-opener into the seminary problems of the past 20 years and also examines why the problems, in some cases, have not been addressed.

Hopefully, the U.S. Bishops will take Rose's information into consideration when they meet in Dallas. The author makes points that are well worth investigating.

If even a small percentage of what Rose documents is true, it's very likely that the worst, in the media's coverage of priestly sexual abuse, is still yet to come.

I'm a product of 16 years of Catholic education. For the past 15 years or so I've been told that we have a 'vocations crisis' within the Church -- that young men are no longer interested in becoming priests. A litany of reasons is given for this: young men are too materialistic today, celibacy is too difficult for us 'enlightened' moderns, young men don't agree with the Church's positions on moral issues, the Church hasn't done enough marketing, and (most disingenuous of all) leftover orthodoxy from the pre-Vatican II period is driving young men away.

Those 'liberals' within the Church offer up a predictable laundry list of "solutions" for this 'vocations crisis': Married priests, priestesses, "lay ministers", etc. Until very recently, these ideas almost looked reasonable. Not anymore.

This book positively blows the lid off of all the false reasons for the 'vocations crisis' and uncovers the shocking truth and hidden agendas behind what's going on in Catholic seminaries across the U.S. I used to think that a good Catholic fellow who believed and followed what the Church taught about such issues as abortion, contraception, homosexuality, the primacy of the Pope, transubstantiation, the immaculate conception, etc. would be a shoe-in for the priesthood. What this book demonstrates is that such devout young men are being routinely TURNED AWAY from the seminaries for no other reason than that they hold and believe these eminently orthodox positions! Who are being accepted in their places? I think the current and growing scandal within the Catholic Church in America provides a clear-cut answer. Now, institutionally, the Catholic Church in America is suffering an evisceration that Antonio Gramsci would be proud of.

In short, if you are a Catholic and you honestly care about what's been happening within our Church and why, you simply can not ignore this book. It will be very difficult reading for many of you, but if we are to weed out the wolves-in-sheep's-clothing among our leaders, we must begin with an honest appraisal of the situation. This book offers just such an appraisal and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

A friend of mine who entered an orthodox seminary two years ago warned me about a "homosexual problem" at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, MA (under Cardinal Law). I consider myself to be an orthodox Catholic but I wrote off his concerns as paranoia. Sadly, he seems to have understated the problem. In the book, Rose describes the case of one orthodox seminarian at St. John's who was sexually harassed by homosexual seminarians and whose allegations were ignored by the faculty to the point where he was forced to obtain a restraining order against the offending seminarian.

Many similar cases are presented throughout the book which is largely a compilation of anecdotes. This does not constitute an indictment of the book. The book is not meant to be a sociological, statistical analysis of homosexuality in the priesthood, but rather an on-the-ground description of the situation in heterodox seminaries. The reader will get a sense of the oppressive atmosphere for orthodox seminarians in seminaries controlled by heterodox and/or homosexual cliques.

In fact, one can deduce a pattern of networking and conspiracy amongst heterodox/homosexual priests and seminarians to root out orthodox candidates from the priesthood. The anecdotal evidence presented in the book is simply overwhelming, as is the fact that the vast majority of reported cases of sexual abuse by priests consists of the abuse of teenage boys, indicating that homosexuals comprise a disproportionate percentage of priests in comparison to their existence in the general population.

Certainly homosexual priests are abusing teenage boys in far greater proportion than heterosexual priests are abusing teenage girls. This fact explains why this book is not getting general play in the media and why the scandal is generally portrayed as one of "pedophilia" rather than ephebophilia. But this book will help you to understand the nature and roots of this present crisis.

(This book gets knocked down a star for its anecdotal nature, but five stars for its importance)

After spending over two years interviewing ex-seminarians and ordained priests about the homosexual subculture dominating Catholic seminaries in the United States, Michael Rose could not have picked a better time to release Goodbye, Good Men (Regnery Publishing, 2002).

Some may say his timing is providential. Whatever you call it, this book is a "must-read" for Catholics who want the real story of how homosexual predators have become so notorious in the Catholic clergy and how liberal Catholicism brought corruption into the Catholic Church.

Trained as an architect, Rose gained a reputation as a thorough and insightful author of several successful books dealing with the deplorable state of modernist Catholic Church architecture. His new book on the priesthood is a shocking documentation of the homosexual infiltration of the American Catholic hierarchy, and accurately identifies widespread dissent from core Catholic teaching by the Catholic clergy in the seminaries as the root of the so-called vocation crisis.

Ironically, the Catholic media have been pretty rough on Rose. Critics have faulted him for the use of fictitious names; they have nit-picked petty details, and accused him of bad journalism. While many of Rose's sources have chosen to remain anonymous to protect themselves from retaliation, the consistency of the testimony, coupled with the sad stories of men who go by their real names, results in a highly credible and accurate account of the situation. One wonders whether the Catholic media's negative responses are an effort to save face because they remained silent while they were aware of the homosexual corruption in the seminaries.

Rose documents the bizarre exams administered by admitted anti-Catholic psychologists, the feminist nuns in charge of diocesan recruitment programs, and the openly homosexual formation advisors and faculty at the seminaries, all of whom systematically identified orthodox, truly Catholic young men and drove them away from the priesthood. Catholics will find the seminarians' stories -- Rose documents dozens of them occurring all over the country -- to be infuriating in light of the growing shortage of priests in America.

Some orthodox men left the seminary of their own accord after suffering sexual harassment by homosexual faculty and students. Others, who admitted to being against homosexuality or women priests, were drummed out as being "too rigid", for having a "lack of openness to new ideas", or for being "unaccepting of others as they are", often after they had completed years of study and sacrifice.

Those who survived the initial weeding out process often did so by posing as liberals. Having survived the first cut, the orthodox seminary student was then subjected to mandatory classes that included homoerotic films, pornography, heterodoxy in theology, and in some cases, outright heresy. Rose documents the case of one student who actually sued a seminary for falsely advertising they were Catholic, when the theology classes were openly hostile to well established Catholic teachings. To avoid the lawsuit, the heterodox theology professor involved was dismissed.

Because most seminaries continue to be overrun by dissenters and homosexuals, particularly in the area of formation and recruitment, it should come as no surprise that finding "straight" males willing to endure years of being cloistered in such an environment is nearly impossible. Rose provides a mountain of evidence that the shortage of priests has been effectively self-imposed by a liberal, feminist, and disproportionately homosexual clique dominating church administration.

My only criticism of Rose's outstanding book is that he fails to acknowledge any culpability or complicity on the part of Rome for the debacle in the church. The mess in the seminaries didn't just happen unnoticed or overnight. Since Vatican II, complaints to Rome about homosexual priests and bishops, sexually perverse seminaries, heterodox or heretical clerics, and the scandal of liturgical and sacramental abuses have been virtually ignored. In my own experience over the last 5 years, none of my letters regarding abuses in the church addressed to Rome or the Papal Nuncio have been acknowledged. I know too many other concerned Catholics who have had the identical experience, from Rochester, New York, to Oakland, California. When the Vatican finally did respond to the decades of complaints of rampant and unchecked homosexuality in U.S. seminaries, the process of investigation and the outcomes were highly suspect.

Rose identifies the fact that so-called Vatican investigations of the American seminaries during the 1980's (the Marshall report) were conducted by American Catholic Church insiders, who were treated to 'Potemkin village' tours of seminaries, and submitted their largely misleading, milk toast reports back to Rome. He quotes Notre Dame Professor Ralph McInerny, "Here indeed was a failure, and by churchmen, who had to make a determined effort not to acquaint themselves with the facts they were supposed to be investigating". To make matters worse, the homosexual infiltration of the Catholic Church does not stop in America. Veteran Catholic commentators have indicated a distinct possibility that there were highly influential homosexuals in Rome who helped to suppress the real story.

Part of the problem lies in the re-organized conciliar Catholic Church, in which the Vatican has effectively ceded away much of its authority to administer, regulate and discipline to regional councils like the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. These conferences are often part of the process of recommending candidates to the Vatican when episcopal vacancies occur. Typically, the Vatican accepts these recommendations, trusting that local prelates are in a better position to find "the right man for the job". But this system is also open to abuse, and abused it has been.

Rose stops short of saying so, but I doubt he would object if the Vatican began to assert itself in a more authoritative way regarding open dissent and disobedience by American clerics. In the absence of such discipline, the Catholic laity are left with the obvious impression that the refusal to accept certain Catholic doctrines is acceptable behavior. If the local priests and bishops can dissent from Church teachings and get away with it, what incentives are there for the laity to abide by the Catholic doctrines they object to?

Rose concludes with an upbeat assessment of how orthodox seminaries are succeeding in attracting vocations, and producing good priests. The crisis having reached a high water mark, Rose speculates things are turning around; good priests will emerge in greater numbers and the dissenting sub-culture in the Church will become extinct. It's true that seminaries like Mundelein, Illinois are not as bad as they were before, but there's a long road ahead for many seminaries before they begin to look Catholic inside and out.

Though the seminaries may be improving, the broader problem is the sorry state of the Catholic population in America. The most tragic consequence of dissent and this scandal has been has been the declining influence of Catholicism in the lives of American Catholics over the past 40 years. Mass attendance is now down to 20% of registered parishioners, and churches are being shuttered for lack of funds and parishioners; the sacrament of Penance is ignored, and not for lack of sinning; Catholic divorce and abortion rates are at the same levels as the general population. "Goodbye, Good Catholic Parents", is my suggestion for a Rose follow-up to his well timed, and much needed, "Goodbye, Good Men", which will hopefully spark reform now that it has caught the attention of the nation.

Michael Rose makes a credible case for anyone that has eyes. This is investigative journalism that is getting its validation on a daily basis from every form of news media in our land and abroad. The Catholic Church's current crisis is not a pedophilia crisis, it is a crisis with its deepest roots in broken sacred vows...by Priests and Bishops. Celibacy is not the problem. A married priesthood is not the solution. We faithful Catholics have sat quietly while Homosexuals were admitted to seminaries(in many cases,recruited for seminaries) and ordained to Holy Orders believing they would simply become asexual men. Mr Rose simply reports what happened between 1960 and 1990. His clarity and attention to detail is superb. The question remains, Can we learn anything from what he has documented and will we change anything because of this research?

Many priests in the "know" have said that this book must be taken with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, they don't know how true Mr. Rose's book is. The previous review mentioned a seminary in Indiana. I happen to know for a fact that this seminary has a homosexual underculture manifested and the rector and vice-rector are indifferent and think nothing of expelling good, holy and orthodox seminarians while advancing the gay culture. Sure, they put on a good act of piety, but they demoralize, rob the dignity and integrity of the good seminarians and push the development of the "evil". Yes, evil is still thriving in our seminaries. I know, I have experienced it. I was a seminarian in this seminary for 2 years.

I am a Roman Catholic who goes to daily Mass, has 7 children, a great wife and have a blessed life all because I have listened to orthodox Catholic priests and JPII's teaching for the last 20 years. I recently spoke with an orthodox priest friend after reading "Goodbye, Good Men" and his own seminary experience confirmed the information that Rose outlines in his book.
I found this book has helped solidify my own struggle in following my conscience and rejecting trendy clerical advice. I believe that we are in a time of God cleansing our church of the humanist rot from the past 30 years and Rose's book explains why we find ourselves locked in this present scandal and points out the path back to orthodoxy.

I entered seminary last year and believe me, if you aren't part of a clique or kiss up to the formation staff of this seminary in Indiana, then look out for some not very nice surprises during the annual evaluation. This happened to a good, orthodox, holy seminarian (who because he didn't play the political game) was given a bad evaluation and he left the seminary sadly disillusioned and heartbroken. The formation staff never took into consideration the good he did.....untiringly faithful as head sacristan and heading up the teams to deliver wood to the poor on weekends. Yet, there are gay seminarians here...who are deemed ready for ordination who are out visiting priests who they became good friends with while they were here and they are propositioning them. So, yes, good holy men are still being told to tone down their "piety" while the "gay cruising" seminarians advance to the highest heights. Then they wonder why they leave the priesthood after a few years. Its sad, but true.

In recent years a rising clamor of voices have argued that the dramatic decline in the number of men aspiring to the priesthood is evidence that the Catholic Church should ordain women, and married men. Michael Rose offers a valuable alternative to that view. In his very readable book, Goodbye, Good Men, Rose argues that the spirit of dissent in some seminaries has also contributed to the problem.

Actually, Rose seems to argue at points that the rise of liberalism and dissent is *the* cause of the problem, and in doing so he overstates his case. His argument is built on interviews with "orthodox" priests and those who feel their vocations were derailed because they were too orthodox. There is enough detail in these cases for one to suspect that Rose has hit on something that is a problem But as a reviewer below notes, one should be reluctant to accept at face value the stories offered by individuals who clearly have an axe to grind (especially those who for some reason or another were not able to become priests).

Rose's book offers no material from interviews with those who might disagree with his position. In some cases, it is not hard to read between the lines and realize that the facts presented are being presented in a contentious way. And since Rose offers no statistical analysis, the reader is left with no way to judge how important this phenomenon is. One can believe that a bias against orthodoxy has reduced the number of priests by some amount; it is much harder to believe that this is the entire explanation.

Still, I think this book makes a contribution to our understanding of what is happening to the priesthood in America today. And it provides balance to the more liberal case that is most frequently aired in the press today. By all means read it. But I don't think it's the last word on the subject.