Boston Globe Gives One-Sided View of Priest Scandal

By Geraldine Hawkins
March 14, 2003

Goodbye! Good Men by Michael S. Rose. Aquinas Publishing Limited, P.O. Box 11260, Cincinnati, Ohio, 45211 1-888-260-6283 www.goodbyegoodmen.com

The Boston Globe put what has come to be known as "The Priest Scandal" on its front page for 100 consecutive days, but if they really wanted their readers to know what precipitated this appalling series of events, they would run an ad for Michael S. Rose's shocking book Goodbye! Good Men.

For generations, if a man aspiring to the Roman Catholic priesthood confessed to a tendency toward homosexuality, the Church would not ordain him. After the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, the Church revised its position with the rationale that this marginalized group could take the burden of a homosexual orientation and offer it to God like any other burden. In so doing, they would find themselves that much farther along the road to holiness. There is little doubt that many men have done precisely this.

However, there have been many—yes, many—who have flouted the Church's longstanding celibacy rule. In fact, this has been widespread and flagrant enough to have created "a gay subculture" within the priesthood. This phenomenon was vividly described by Stanley Kurtz in a stunning article in The National Review entitled, "Gay Priests, Gay Marriage." It is further illustrated, largely through anecdotal evidence, in Goodbye! Good Men.

"The problem in vocation offices and seminaries is a profound spiritual problem, a sickness of untold proportions," writes Rose. "Boston's story is simply a repeat of other heinous scandals exacerbated by Catholic officials across the U.S. and in other countries as well. What happened in Boston is routine in many other dioceses. . The root of this problem goes back to the very place where vocations to the priesthood germinate. Too often men who support the teachings of the church, especially the teachings on sexual morality, are dismissed for being 'rigid and uncharitable homophobes' while those seminarians who reject the Church's teaching or 'come out' as gays to their superiors are wined and dined, given preferential treatment, and then ordained to the Catholic priesthood. . A protective network starts in many seminaries where gay seminarians are encouraged to 'act out' or 'explore their sexuality' in highly inappropriate ways."

This has had the effect of scaring off a lot of heterosexual men, since normal men generally would rather not be surrounded by obvious homosexuals. Rose quotes Donald B. Cozzens, author of The Changing Face of the Priesthood, that there has not only been a "heterosexual exodus from the priesthood," but that the "overwhelmingly gay clergy culture will have an effect on how the laity views the priesthood and it will have an effect on incoming vocations. Potential candidates for the priesthood who are heterosexual will be intimidated from joining an institution where the ethos is primarily that of gay culture."

Many seminaries have relied to a mind-boggling extent on psychologists who use secular criteria in screening candidates. Men who have lived by the Church's teaching are rejected as "sexually immature" and "sexually dysfunctional." Rose quotes Dr. William Coulson, who wrote in an article called "The Religion of Self" that many psychologists screen out the most worthy candidates, "If they admitted they were the right people to bring into the seminaries, they would have to admit that their whole program is wrong. If you look at the data on the religious beliefs of licensed psychologists, you would find that to a much higher degree than in the general population they are non-believers. I should say, they're not non-believers; they believe in something totally different from what most people believe in."

Faculty members aren't much better. "There were three terms that were frequently used at the Oblate School of Theology [in Arizona]: 'openness,' 'tolerance,' and 'pastoral.'" One former seminarian told Rose. "'Openness' meant we must be open to other perspectives, including heretical ones. 'Tolerance' meant we must tolerate deviations from our moral and doctrinal beliefs to the point of abandoning our beliefs. 'Pastoral' meant anything goes; don't deny anything to anyone except the traditional teachings of the Church. . The theological relativism, false ecumenism, and the loss of the missionary imperative that I experienced there was very upsetting and heartbreaking. I feel sorry for any seminarian who is sent to this school."

Do the pew-sitters care? When the gentleman quoted above published two articles about his seminary experience in a newsletter for the Diocese of Phoenix, "Many people were absolutely shocked by his claims, figuring that the teaching couldn't be as bad as he made it out to be." This attitude is what in Al-Anon is called "denial."

"If the bishops and rectors don't know that this kind of rot is eating away at the innards of the church, that's malfeasance," writes Wisconsin priest Father Charles Fiore in Goodbye! Good Men. "If they do know, but do nothing to stop it, that's malfeasance! And the faithful should demand top-to-bottom house-cleanings where such situations exist! Certainly they are not morally obliged to support this ecclesiastical incompetence."

Rose adds: "Overt heterodox teachings and attitudes - what Fiore calls 'rot' - on the part of seminary faculty members and others charged with the formation of future priests not only result in the 'miseducation' of the clergy who transfer their teachers attitudes to Catholics in their care. They also contribute significantly to the decline of orthodox vocations. Many good men who are aspiring priests are either driven out of the seminary system for refusing to embrace the political agenda of the day, or they walk away from their vocation disgusted with the seminary, and disenchanted with the Catholic Church."

There is hope. Some seminaries are a lot worse than others. St. Mary's in Baltimore, known as "the Pink Palace" because of the effeminate men there, and Notre Dame ("Notre Flame") are in marked contrast to more traditional institutions such as St. Charles Borromeo in Philadelphia, St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers and Mount St. Mary's in Emmittsburg, Maryland.

The most hopeful sign is that many younger seminarians rebel by taking conservative, Biblical stands that oppose the middle-aged, '60s generation priests who have let things go to seed.

"A sort of inverted generation gap began to widen throughout the Clinton years," writes Rose. "One pities the aging radicals who thought they offered such progress but are living to see that Holy Mother Church still knows best, and that the generations of priests younger than them aren't interested in their dated ideas and agendas."

Another sign of health in the Catholic Church has been the revitalization of orthodox Catholic colleges such as Ave Maria, Christendom, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Thomas Aquinas College. At Boston College, philosophy professor Peter Kreeft, himself a convert, has brought many into the Church through his popular books with their clever, clear, and thoroughly traditional expositions of Catholic Christianity.

As Presbyterian minister turned Catholic apologist Scott Hahn has said, "No one was ever molested by a celibate priest who was faithful to the teachings of the Church." Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, a convert from Lutheranism and editor of the magazine First Things, says that the prescription for the Church's current ills is "fidelity, fidelity, fidelity." That is a conclusion heartily supported by Rose's remarkable book.