By JEFF KOLOZE
Rose, Michael S. Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption Into the Catholic Church. Regnery, 2002. Available at amazon.com.
Why read a book that’s 18 years old? Because Pope Francis makes it relevant for 2020.
Friends recommended that I read Michael S. Rose’s book years ago, but I never “got around to it.”
Unfortunately, what Rose has to say about the aggressive gay and lesbian lobby’s activity within Catholic seminaries and the Church at large is still relevant, mainly because the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, often uses the word “rigid” when referring to his priests who are young and orthodox. If he fears these priests so much to disparage them by calling them rigid, then Pope Francis has unwittingly verified that Rose’s essential claim is just as important now in 2020 as it was 18 years ago in 2002.
At first, I was suspicious about Rose’s assertion. I even asked a parish priest whom I greatly respect and a former seminarian what they thought about Rose’s ideas (that the “Lavender Mafia,” aggressive gay and lesbian activist priests and nuns) infiltrated Catholic seminaries and deliberately frustrate orthodox men from entering the priesthood.
What I learned from these faithful men was devastating.
Rose’s 2002 accounts of sexual impropriety by gay priests and seminary leaders against orthodox seminarians are shocking. The above citations suggest that Catholic seminaries still need to heed Rose’s warnings and recommendations, which I reword as follows: Expel aggressive gay and lesbian leaders from priestly formation committees and seminaries, return to orthodox practices such as Eucharistic adoration and praying the rosary, and allow our seminarians to be masculine and not watered-down versions of leftist nuns.
Here, however, is a listing of Rose’s ideas and words to help you appreciate this important monograph.
First, orthodox men who support Catholic teachings on sexuality are called “rigid” by leftist seminary faculty and nuns (p. xi). This idea is repeated throughout the work.
Second, Rose defines “the ‘Lavender Mafia’ [as] a clique of homosexual dilettantes, along with an underground of liberal faculty members determined to change the doctrines, disciplines, and mission of the Catholic Church from within” (p. xii).
Third, “Orthodoxy begets vocations. . . . The converse is also true: Dissent kills vocations” (p. 6).
Fourth, quoting a former seminarian’s experience, homosexuality and masturbation were topics that “everyone was always talking about” (p. 65).
Fifth, a particularly egregious case of heterophobia and the militancy of the aggressive gay and lesbian lobby spans several pages (pp. 78-82).
Sixth, Rose summarizes “the dogmas of Catholic dissent” held by the aggressive gay and lesbian faculty and seminary leaders: “the Bible is not to be taken seriously because it is ‘culture bound’; one religion is as good as the next; the Pope is not infallible; the Magisterium is authoritatively abusive; the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is just an old pre-Vatican II myth; Christ was not really divine; God is feminine; Mass is simply a meal in which we should eat bread that ‘looks like real bread’; women should be ordained priests in the name of equality; homosexuality is normal; and contraception is morally acceptable” (p. 90).
Seventh, the Catholic Medical Association “recommended that seminary faculty should be clearly informed ‘that adherence to the teachings of the Church on sexuality and particularly on homosexuality is not a sign of rigidity or mental illness, but of mental health’” (p. 143).
Eighth, dropping chastity led to sexual abuses; priestly celibacy was a casualty, not a cause of sex scandals (p. 201).
Ninth, Rose provides readers with an alternative view of the lay ecclesial ministry, seeing it as something which stifles priestly vocations (p. 209).
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