I know Michael Rose’s book has been out for about five years now, but I’ve only got around to reading it this week. If you’re not familiar with it, Goodbye Good Men chronicles the corruption, spiritual abuse, heresy and persecution of orthodox seminarians within Catholic seminaries over the last twenty-thirty years.
Much of Rose’s research is anecdotal and one sided. He doesn’t spend much time telling us anything good at all about American seminaries, but then I guess he would argue that he wasn’t writing a balanced report on American seminaries, but an expose of the abuses. Fair enough. If you know what a book is aiming for you know how to judge it best.
I wish I could dismiss Rose as an angry traditionalist with an axe to grind, and that he’s biased and it all ain’t true. But I’m afraid my own experiences with the Catholic Church in England only echoes what Rose writes about the situation in the USA. I know at least three Dioceses in England where the unspoken policy was not to accept any former Anglican priests (either married or celibate) for ordination. The guys were not even interviewed. They didn’t even get their letters answered by the bishop. It was assumed that they were all dangerous conservatives, and therefore unworthy.
Thankfully, many former Anglicans did make it through to Catholic ordination. In fact the majority did. But the ones who were rejected for no good reason are the ones we’re talking about, and they were rejected because of a deliberate and conscious liberal bias and ‘progressive’ agenda.
I worked for seven years with a Catholic charity and every Saturday night I was in a different presbytery. I shared meals with parish priests, bishops, vicar generals, area deans, archbishops, cathedral deans….all of them. I heard them say with pride that they planned for their dioceses to have fewer priests, not more. They planned to have a few priests living together to provide the sacraments for a whole deanery while the parishes were run by ‘lay administrators’. I heard them speak with admiration of the Church in Peru–where they have one priest for an area the size of Delaware (or some such) and how wonderful it was that all the parishes were run by the laity as little ‘faith communities’ led by their lay catechist (who was often a woman).
From the orthodox young men I would meet at places like Youth2000 and Catholic Charismatic Conferences and Faith Conferences and the other new movements I heard how the seminaries were practically empty, and how liberals dominated the faculty with the usual mish mash of New Age spirituality, feminism, sex therapy, psycho babble and modernism of all stripes. They too spoke of the homosexual subculture, the suspicion of those who were orthodox for being ‘rigid’ and the dismissal of traditional devotions such as the rosary and Eucharistic Adoration.
I think the problem with Rose’s book is that, if we’re not careful, we’ll assume that the bad news is the only news. It’s not. There are good people out there and good seminaries and good bishops and good faithful Catholics right through the whole church, but what Rose’s book should do, and what my own experience in the Church reminds me, is that within the Catholic Church there are actually two churches.
One follows the Pope and the Magisterium. It seeks to be changed by the Church, not to change the Church. It considers the Church to be divinely established through the once for all sacrifice of Christ for the salvation of the world. The other ‘church’ dissents from the Pope and the magisterium whenever posible. It seeks to change the Church, not be changed by her. It considers the church to be a human construct and the result of historical accidents. They believe the Church is there to change the world, but not necessarily to save the world.
This is the reality, and it is all well and good pretending that we can all work together and that unity is all that matters and that we mustn’t be ‘divisive’. However, that is lily livered talk. The fact is, these two ‘churches’ are diametrically opposed. Their philosophical and theological foundations are so radically different as to be irreconcilable. As one traditional bishop said after an attempt at dialog with a progressive, “It was like trying to play tennis on two adjacent courts.”
Let’s be honest. Progressives have, for a long time, been absolutely clear that faithful Catholics are the enemy. They’ve been very transparent in their contempt for us, and have been proactive in their persecution. While still striving to retain charity and the spirit of reconciliation, we must also see clearly who the enemy is, and willingly engage in the conflict.
It’s hard to fight. It’s especially hard when the enemy is a fifth column within your own community. But when the enemy is within, that’s when the battle becomes most important.
If we must fight, then we must never do so with bitterness, dirty tricks, cynicism or hatred. Instead we battle with the prayerful, cheerful, buoyance of the cavalier. We must don our armor, sharpen our sword and, like Cyrano deBergerac, step into battle with wit, intelligence and confidence. Like the mouse Reepicheep we do so with honor, valour and not a little awareness of our own ridiculousness.
UPDATE: Here is an item on the report on the most recent visitation to American seminaries. There is still much work to be done.
This reminds me of the wheat and the tares. Jesus said not to try and weed out the bad ones. You will uproot lots of good ones if you do. The reality is there are many wavering between 2 camps. There is still much good that the progressives have to offer. Sure sometimes the battles get petty and mean-spirited. That can happen to both sides. I think since Pope Benedicts ordination the worst of the progressives is coming out more. They see they are losing ground.
As someone who attended one of the seminaries Rose’s book discussed, I bristle whenever it comes up. I only skimmed the section pertaining to St. John’s, which I attended in the college program a couple of years after its publication. While some of the faculty was more liberal than others, for it to be characterized as a bastion of liberalism and homosexuality is completely unfounded. I wish I could also dismiss the author “as an angry traditionalist with an axe to grind,” but I think it is more fitting to dismiss him as an irresponsible author with no intentions of giving his slander victims an opportunity to defend themselves. –which they might be bound not to do so as not to divulge incriminating details about Rose’s sources. I found the priest faculty and most of the lay faculty at St. John’s committed to the priesthood and committed to following the Magisterium. My classmates, also are among the best men I have ever met and treasure their vocation as a service to Christ and His Church. They continued amid the persecution of priests and seminarians, especially rampant in Boston following the sex abuse scandal. They see that they carry a very heavy load to win back the trust of the faithful and do so with great love and faith in the Lord. While no one is perfect, such one-sided exposes are, in my humble opinion, merely an opportunity to sell sensational books. I don’t mean to jump on you, Father, for you care deeply about the orthodoxy of the Catholic faith and your own experience lends some credence to the claims made by Rose and others. And I see your point about the “two churches.” But I feel the need to defend those whose own faith and dedication continues to be an example to me in my married vocation. God bless.
Amen and amen, Fr Dwight
Didn’t St. John Vianney say that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests? No matter where one stands on this author’s point of view, it is very obvious that our clergy need our prayers and that not enough of us are praying and fasting for them.
That having been said, this report today shows that the state of seminaries in the U.S. do still need a lot of work.http://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=60273
I’m glad I recognized the one-sided nature of Rose’s book. Thanks for putting some balance Mike.
Philip Lawler reflected on Roses book in “The Faithful Departed” and having grown up an hour away from the Boston Diocese, I must say what he said was true. In Lawler’s book he quotes “When a culture is sick everything is affected [including the Church].” I find it stunning the contrast of 30 years between a faith community fervent, faithful and foaming around the mouth to a body of Christians who make far more than their parents do and contribute far less–and not only monetarily–these people won’t even lend their voices to sing.
In our parish, we’re living what Fr. Longenecker described. It is sad, but there is a group of those who are faithful to the Magisterium and they keep the flame burning. Being a Catholic faithful to the Pope and the Church is a lovely and quiet thing, with a tinge of subversiveness thrown in (at least to the progressives). Nothing true and good ever does get fully stamped out. The truth will out.
I do not recognise the Church in England as you describe it. I am not quite sure when left these shore, was it twenty years ago?In my diocese where you worked as an Anglican clergyman, at least 20%of the present working clergy here are former Anglicans. Of those who applied and were rejected, most were unmarried and living celibate lives.I think you are right about the fear of orthodox laymen and a fear of rigidity, I suffered from that. Things have certainly changed here, as in the States, because the only men offering themselves are orthodox, for the most part.As for planning for a future with fewer priests, I think the reason that happened was more a sense of hopelessness than a love for liberalism.Peru: that may well have been my diocese. The then bishop twinned our diocese with a diocese there and sent some priests to work there. We don’t hear much about it now. Until the condemnation of various Liberation theologians, practically everywhere thought the “base communities model”, might well have been the answer to the chaos of 25 years ago: fortunately we grew up!Certainly, 20 years ago there was a lot of “psycho-babble” in the seminary in our diocese, that has gone and the seminary now seems to be a place of spiritual formation, I think it produces good orthodox priests. Psycho-babble there was but never the “new age”, I don’t think the seminarians would have put up with that or taken it seriously.As in the US, the Church in England changed drastically during the final years of JPII and especially now with Pope Benedict. Our big problem here in England seems to be that senior leadership comes from the period of rupture, we haven’t yet had a radically orthodox bishop but it will come.
Your “two churches” description is a spot on picture of what has happened in the Episcopal Church here in the United States. For all of the desire to “talk,” “dialog,” “idaba,” whatever, the fact of the matter is that there is no “via media” any longer. There is a reason that the Dioceses of Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, et al cut ties with the national church. It was their only recourse to remaining faithful to the sacraments.
I should have said, “not living celibate lives”.Those rejected were invariably considered unstable. The problem in this diocese seems to have been many former Anglicans were received, many of those ordained, and not a few returned to the C of E.That was a serious, and well founded, concern many bishops had with many former Anglicans.
Fr Ray, thank you for your corrective balance. I accept that my own experience of the Catholic Church was limited, and I did not mean to suggest that either Rose’s criticism or my own experience represented the whole of the Catholic seminary system.
Would it be worth adding to your sound caveats that we should never count another human being as our enemy? Sin is our enemy (in ourselves or others). The devil too. But never a human person. And never a group of human beings.
For many years, my dad had a bar near one of the seminaries pointed out in the Rose book. At the time the dioceses was run by a well known liberal bishop, Bernadine and the seminary by one of his boys who later bacame a bishop himself. My dad’s place was a nice bar and he always welcomed the seminarians who stopped by and gave them a free beer or two. He saw a massive change in the clientel from the seminary as many were outright gay with little regard for the church teaching of my dads day. These were not a few, but a very large numbers and he quickly made sure they knew they were not welcome. It was fairly obvious to my dad something was severly wrong and there would be a terrible price to pay. There is much in Rose book that I heard about from my dad who saw it all first hand.
I currently work in a seminary and know people who have been or who have attempted to join seminaries in the UK. I am afraid that the claim that the problems Rose talks about are in the past is not true. Why should it be true? The staff at these places have not been significantly changed over the past ten or fifteen years, and the replacements they bring in are inevitably of the same kind as themselves. The homosexual vice has decreased (in some places) but the dominance of seminaries by heterodox lecturers, and the refusing of orthodox applicants to seminaries on account of their orthodoxy, continues. I think of a priest now of the Liverpool archdiocese who went to Ushaw about four years ago; the problems Rose identified were flourishing there, including unpunished homosexual vice. Since, as Fr. Blake notes, the bishops of England and Wales all agree with the modernist agenda – and they control the seminaries and the ordination of candidates – there is no scope for reform of these institutions. The men who get ordained are on the whole better than they were 20 years ago, simply because the men who put themselves forward are closer to the faith – or less ignorant and naive – than the men of that previous time; and you cannot refuse all the applicants to your seminary. As for the planning for a future with future priests as more the result of a sense of hopelessness than of a love of liberalism; not with the majority of these planners.