Posted on 09/05/2002 8:20:28 PM PDT by Antoninus
I arrived home today to find the September issue of New Oxford Review in my mailbox. I was pleased to see that NOR had weighed in on the Michael Rose question that has occupied many of us on Free Republic. I have always respected their judgement, scholarship, and no-nonsense attitude.
Below are some quotes from their article, entitled, Killing Michael Rose. Though I'd like to post the whole article, NOR's policy is to preclude such reproductions until the issue is a few months old. Thus, some highlights:
Their overall opinion of Goodbye, Good Men:
"...[W]e regard Michael S. Rose's new book on seminaries, Goodbye, Good Men (Regnery), as one of the most important Catholic books published in the past three or four decades."
On the Rose's much maligned sources:
"The books sources come not only from the public record but, crucially, from interviews with 150 people, of whom 125 are or were in the seminaries, representing 50 dioceses and 22 major seminaries. That's a good data base, and they all tell essentially the same story. Were the book based on interviews with a handful of people, one might conclude that these were just tall tales from a gaggle of malcontents. But with so many folks concurring, the book rings true."
On the criticism that Rose didn't give the seminaries he critiques an opportunity to tell their side of the story:
"[T]he notion that the officials in charge would have co-operated with an investigative journalist with a reputation for orthodoxy such as Rose—giving the real reasons men were screened out or dismissed—is preposterous."
On the claim made by Our Sunday Visitor and others that the book was "scantily researched":
"Rose spent two and one half years researching and writing the book and employed research assistants....Says Fr. Benedict Groschel: 'I know for a fact that much of what Rose says is true, and that good, orthodox, chaste seminarians were discriminated against in some seminaries."
On the "agenda" of Our Sunday Visitor which has featured three articles attacking Rose:
"Rose then wrote a letter to the Editor of OSV to defend himself. Rose was told by the Editor that the letter, of 950 words, could not be printed because it was too long, but that Rose could re-write the letter with a 250 word limit. How strange! OSV has a special section in its letters section called "A Continuing Conversation" for lengthy letters. We checked through some recent issues of OSV and found, in the June 2 issue, a letter of 744 words."
Excerpts from the above-mentioned letter from Michael Rose to Our Sunday Visitor:
"First, it is reported that I base my findings "exclusively on interviews with men who say they were drummed out of seminaries for being 'too orthodox.'" That is demonstrably false. Although I did conduct 150 personal interviews, I did not base my findings exclusively on these. Many of the interviewees had substantial documented evidence from which I quoted. Textbooks, class notes, syllabi, and tapes of class presentations used in seminary courses were also reviewed and presented as evidence in the book....Furthermore, not only did I interview many former and current seminarians, about one-third of the interviewees are now ordained priests....Other interviewees served at one time as seminary professors or vocations directors."
"I am then faulted for not giving the seminaries their side of the story. Yet, in most cases I quoted from written documentation provided by the seminaries in question. Yes, they were denials. The denials from rectors and bishops have been the same everywhere over the past decades—couched in the same self-interest that grounds the excuses about shuffling around sex abusers."
"In Goodbye, Good Men I report that the seminarian [at Louvain's American College] charged that he was "harassed" repeatedly by a fellow seminarian, and that his complaints were not taken seriously by seminary staff. OSV quotes that the seminarian's charges were proved by "outside investigators to be 'wholly without merit or substantiation.'" However, Fr. Codd [rector of Louvain's American College] wrote that the allegations were investigated by Bishop Edward Braxton, President of the American College. First, Bishop Braxton is not an "outside investigator," and second, if Bishop Braxton ever did investigate the matter he never bothered to contact the seminarian who made the allegations, even after the seminarian made an extraordinary effort to make himself available."
"According to their official website, the American College at Louvain (in Belguim) had seven theology students and four pre-theology students during 2001-02 academic year. One has to wonder why a seminary operated directly by the U.S. bishops has only a handful of students. Fr. Codd calls the American College "healthy." How can a seminary be said to be healthy when only 11 seminarians are being sent there out of the entire United States?...Contrast these numbers to the only other overseas seminary specifically serving Americans: The North American College, known as one of the most conservative seminaries in Rome, presently has a student body of a healthy 175."
A final word from NOR:
The big question in all this ... is: Why are moderate Catholic papers such as Our Sunday Visitor and the National Catholic Register so desperate to discredit Michael Rose's book?
The author of a hot-selling book, with a reputation to defend, should be able to find the money to buy an ad.
The fact that Rose didn't even give "the officials" the chance to respond to what the accusers said is what is preposterous. How does the NOR know what they would have said?
In fact, if they had defended the practices Rose was condemning, Rose would have had more ammunition to back up his contentions.
As it is, he gives one side, with lots of "unnamed sources," and no rebuttals. In addition, CRISIS documents bald-faced discrepancies about Louvain that Rose should resolve, or remove the offending sections from his book.
Shoddy, shoddy journalism.
I’m sorry, but that is completely unchristian. I don’t care if they will cooperate or not, by taking this position you condemn them not by their actions but by your overwhelming bias that so clouds your judgment you are unable to see beyond your own nose.On the criticism that Rose didn't give the seminaries he critiques an opportunity to tell their side of the story:"[T]he notion that the officials in charge would have co-operated with an investigative journalist with a reputation for orthodoxy such as Rose—giving the real reasons men were screened out or dismissed—is preposterous."
Hey, no Church official will actually talk to an orthodox journalist, therefore we don’t have to call them before accusing them!
Hey, all the women accusing Clinton are nuts and sluts, therefore we don’t have to pay any attention to what they have to say either!
Etc. Its really easy to dismiss others this way.
Anyone starting with a bias like that can’t help but reach the same conclusions Rose does in the book. They may be correct, but that isn’t why these guys from New Oxford agree with Rose. They agree because their bias is so severe they are incapable of reaching any other result.
Is it any wonder he's resorting to legal action when people, even here on Free Republic, call him a liar?He isn’t resorting to legal action, from what I have seen. He is making threats, including to a priest’s Bishop in an effort to shut him up. I’ll buy the “resorting to legal action” when he actually sues. Has he done that yet?
patent +AMDG
Maybe not. But when you're playing for higher stakes, not the least of which is the truth, there are times when you must swallow your pride.
Rose is threatening to sue one priest, and I don't think he's got the balls to go through with that one. It's meant to intimidate Fr. Johansen into silence.
If the offended parties are overflowing with evidence proving themselves maligned, let them write their own book. I'm sure you'd buy it.
They're not going to "write books." They may be guilty of everything Rose accuses them of, but the fact that he didn't get their side of the story means that his book is one-sided.
As I said, all I'm accusing Rose of is sloppy journalism.
That was from NOR. Here's what Mr. Rose said about this accusation:That is why I phrased it the way I did, NOR’s defense here is horrible, Mr. Rose’s is at least a step in the right direction. He should admit, IMHO, that he should also have spoken with them, but to say that doing so would be useless, as NOR states, is an exercise in pure bias.
Seems to me that he didn't call them... he went one step farther and got their denials on paper. Hardly the work of a shoddy journalist. Is it any wonder he didn't include such denials in the book? After the events of the past year, who could take such denials seriously?I doubt I could even come close to taking denials seriously, but they should have been obtained. To not do so detracts from the work.
This continues to be my major disappointment with Rose. In what is probably the most important book of the year, he treated the subject to casually, not taking the steps necessary to make his book as bulletproof as it should have been.
He's threatening legal action, which I might add, is the proper remedy when one feels that their name is being defamed. Like I said in a previous thread, if this priest is making statements that are contrary to the truth, he DESERVES to be shut up.He also threatened the Bishop, apparently, and he has tried to kill critical articles. These are not proper actions, and cannot be disregarded, as they went part and parcel with the threatened legal action.
Many people threaten defamation suits. I have long since learned that one should not assign credibility merely on that basis. See Mr. Sharpton’s crusade against HBO, for the most outlandish example I can think of. While Mr. Rose is no Sharpton, by any stretch of the imagination, coupling a threat of legal action against the priest with a wacky attempt by Mr. Rose’s lawyer to claim that the priest’s Bishop is fully responsible for every word out of his priest’s mouth, is quite simply bad faith legal tactics. I’ve seen people try to do this sort of maneuver before, and Mr. Rose is in very bad company if that is the direction he is going to go in.
> Furthermore, I am concurrently corresponding with the Most Reverend James A.If Mr. Rose has issues with what the priest says, go after the priest. There can be only on reason to send that letter to the Bishop, and that is a bad faith reason.
> Murray, Bishop of the Diocese of Kalamazoo, under the assumption that he has
> either tacitly or expressly permitted one of his own priests to initiate and
> publish the above mentioned website.... In the event that this is not the
> case, said correspondence will clearly indicate to the diocese that this office
> considers any and all future wrongful publications by you to be published with
> the expressed or implied authorization and ratification of the diocese of
> Kalamazoo.Of course, it is absurd to hold my bishop responsible for the private opinions expressed by me in book reviews, articles, or on my website. My bishop "ratifies" my opinions about Mr. Rose and his book no more than he does my opinions about the Chicago Cubs' pennant prospects. So why drag him into this? Well, I think that Mr. Rose has taken a lesson from the recent fate of Fr. Brian Sibley and his blog, A Saintly Salmagundi. Fr. Sibley was silenced by his bishop for creating too much controversy in his blog. It seems clear to me that Rose and his attorneys hope, by threatening the prospect of legal action involving the diocese, to manipulate my bishop into silencing me. It's my guess that they hope my bishop will not want to deal with a potential legal hassle, and tell me to leave Mr. Rose alone. In other words, this is an attempt at intimidation.
patent +AMDG
and the excitement was like a bunch of brides-to-be picking out their gowns and china.Got something against china? ;-) Much to my surprise, I actually enjoyed going with my now wife to pick out ours.
patent
The truth will come out in the end and I firmly believe Rose will be vindicated.Mr. Rose is correct about the problems in the seminaries, but he will not be vindicated until he releases a second version of the book correcting the glaring deficiencies in it. He would do all of us a great service if he did so, and the attacks on him would melt away into triviality.
patent +AMDG
You think 25 year old straight seminarians don't get excited about vestments and chalices? They're too damn immature to do anything else!
When I was a transitional deacon, I went to the Cathedral in Fort Worth, and picked out a chalice that had belonged to a priest who had died the year before. I thought we ought to foster the brotherhood by taking a chalice that had been passed down.
I was still too immature for the priesthood, and ultimately decided against ordination, but I just never got this fascination with the externals of the priesthood.
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