Help Boost Michael Rose: Review GBGM on Amazon/B&N.com

I make it a habit to review books on Amazon.com and BN.com as I read them. Of course, since I just finished Goodbye, Good Men by Michael Rose, I went and reviewed that as well. Not unexpectedly, the Call-to-Action/Catholics-for-Free-Choice/Kumbaya-Liberal-Dissenter/Dignity crowd has had the same idea and was busy writing reviews that trashed the book.

May I propose a bit of activism? If you read Goodbye, Good Men, why not hit Amazon and BN.com and review it? Of course, be honest. I gave the book 5-stars, but I certainly don't expect everyone to be completely uncritical. I think most of you will agree that the book definitely doesn't deserve some of the 1-star reviews it's getting.

To get you in the mood, here's one of the negative reviews on Amazon:

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[one star] Manichean rubbish., June 1, 2002
Reviewer: Timothy Scanlon (see more about me) from Hyattsville, MD United States

And it that sense, the author is a heretic!

There is a tendency among church "activists" these days to charge the "other" with the faults of the institution. I have been--while often challenging my peers--on the "left" side of the pavilion, hearing the homophobes, or the favorite, the "hierarchy" blamed for everything. Rose says it's the "liberals" who are at fault. They both thereby use this adversarial relationship to raise funds from their respective advocates.

In the meantime, in my home diocese, a few years back they had NO applicants for the diocesan priesthood.

I'm sorry, boys and girls, but it's not that simple. For those on the left, well, a former seminarian friend suggested that 80 percent of his classmates were gay. So maybe there is a gay element in what's going on in the present pedophilia situation, in addition to the obvious issue of authority and its role in the alleged sexual abuse. For those on the right, sorry, but we're a better educated people than we were a couple of generations ago. So we're not so prone to do what father says simply because he's father. And why ARE you so prone to defend that "hierarchy" unless you intend to partake of it?

That's not even the first page of the volumes of arguments which indicate that it is, alas, a complicated issue we're dealing with. So Rose's allegation that "da liberals did it" is as weak as, say, Matthew Fox's that "da conservatives did it."

Volumes and volumes.

Rose will make a buck off this volume, while people not lethargic enough to take it seriously ignore it. And the "left" shovels out volumes about the poor, victimized gays or women or...and the battle goes on with nothing changing except the bank balances of, again, their contributors.

The church is in dire straits these days. There ARE good men being persecuted--in some cases by men who were allegedy abused WHILE ADULTS, and years ago! (Get over it!) (For some insights on the consequences of that media frenzy, you might want to look at "The Culture of Fear" by Barry Glassner, also available from Amazon.com)

We desperately need intelligent examination, leadership, and, perhaps above all, cooperation to survive the present crisis.Rose's divisive diatribe won't help solve the problems. It will only contribute to them.

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And in case that didn't do it for you, how about this one...

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[3 stars] Shoddy Sensationalism, June 4, 2002
Reviewer: William J. Cork from Houston, TX USA

Yes, there are gays in the priesthood. Yes, there are gays in some seminaries. Yes, some of them misbehave. That's not news.

Unfortunately, Rose does a shoddy job of documenting the problem, and his book doesn't rise above the level of cheap sensationalism. He lets his informants rant without ever questioning their facts. He assumes that if a seminarian says he was dismissed for being "orthodox," that that must indeed be the reason why he was dismissed.

I've only seen one decent print review of the book, and it was in the highly conservative magazine, "Culture Wars," and it took Rose to task on just this point, because the reviewer knew some of the cases himself, and because Rose had been called on it before....

Consider this your "Call to Action"

I beat you to it. Here's my review posted a week ago:

I should have believed my friend who warned me two years ago, June 27, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Worcester, MA United States
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)

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I hope that's not a sin...