Rating: 
Summary: The Truth Could Set You Free!!
Review: Michael Rose makes a credible case for anyone that has eyes. This is investigative journalism that is getting its validation on a daily basis from every form of news media in our land and abroad. The Catholic Church's current crisis is not a pedophilia crisis, it is a crisis with its deepest roots in broken sacred vows...by Priests and Bishops. Celibacy is not the problem. A married priesthood is not the solution. We faithful Catholics have sat quietly while Homosexuals were admitted to seminaries(in many cases,recruited for seminaries) and ordained to Holy Orders believing they would simply become asexual men. Mr Rose simply reports what happened between 1960 and 1990. His clarity and attention to detail is superb. The question remains, Can we learn anything from what he has documented and will we change anything because of this research?
Rating: 
Summary: Half truths
Review: I am sad that people will believe what is written in this book. It would never stand up to journalistic standards for writing the truth.As a Catholic priest who was in the seminary during the days this book purports to speak about, I can say from my experience that the story is not true. Ask any Catholic how many liberal young priests have been ordained in the last twenty years. They do not exist. We have only been ordaining the more traditional candidates. This book does a true disservice to them. If failure to adhere to orthodoxy was the real reason for the decline in vocations as the author argues, then the traditional dioceses should be doing better with vocations. The facts do not back this assertion. Just check Omaha's (he quotes Archbishop Curtiss often) numbers of vocations to the priesthood from 1991, the time of the former more liberal bishop, to the present day. You will find a decline in the number of seminarians not an increase. I would suggest that the real reason the men he writes about were asked to leave the seminary is more complicated than their desire to pray the rosary. I have personal knowledge of one of these men and the readers would be scandalized to know the real reason for his dismissal. It was not because he was orthodox! Yes, seminaries are looking for balanced, mature, spiritual men. This book takes the hurt and anger of those who were asked to leave the seminary because they did not possess a vocation and lets them tell the Big Lie in hopes of hurting the church they profess to love. The author fails to recognize the church teaching that a vocation to the priesthood is a call from the church and does not arise from the individual desire. The author has a proverbial ax to grind against particular seminaries. In the end the book is simply slander from one who claims to love the body of Christ. Another betrayal with a kiss.
Rating:
Summary: Eyes Wide Open
Review: If you've ever scratched your head as you heard a priest tell you that someday women will be priests or been to Mass and tried to follow along in the misallette, only to get lost as the prayers didn't match up with what Father was saying, then this book is a must read! For too many years there has been a bias towards anything "old" in the Church. The "new" Church after Vatican II was all about empowering the laity and minimizing the priesthood. The priesthood was a dying breed and we were going to be forced to accept women and married priests! Guess what? The cat's out of the bag. Rose's incredibly timely book finally gives an answer to all those of us who knew there was "something" wrong, but not exactly what. The Church has not changed her teachings, in spite of what many would have you believe. How did we get so mixed up? Just read this book and you'll see a clear path that will leave your eyes wide open!
Rating:
Summary: It's the only explanation that makes any sense !
Review: I really don't know what to write here. This book has left me stunned and angry beyond words. But I would still recommend it to anyone (Catholic and non-Catholic alike). All the babbling heads in the media (Dan Blather et. al.) continue to misrepresent what is really behind the headlines, so I'm thankful that Mr. Rose had the courage to write this infuriating book that has the ring of truth on every page. .... At first, I was reluctant to give her this book, but I've changed my mind. Thanks to Mr. Rose, I have the means to show her that the scandals she's been hearing about have nothing to do with Catholicism itself, but with disobedience, and self-indulgence. (Sound familiar? Try re-reading Genesis.)
Many thanks to Mr. Rose! He's done what many Bishops are even now afraid to do - see the corruption, and call evil by it's name.
Rating: 
Summary: Shoddy Sensationalism
Review: 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....
Rating:
Summary: OH GIVE ME A BREAK, MICHAEL!
Review: The very subtitle of this book should tell you that you're not going to get a fair treatment of the issue: "How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church." I guess that means that if you're conservative, or "orthodox," that's ok. If I'm not mistaken, the bishops who started the present mess we're in were all picked for their orthodoxy. As a lifelong Catholic who gets around fairly well in church circles, I've heard a lot of the stories about "gay seminaries" and the poor "orthodox seminarians" persecuted therein. Yes, there were lots of problems with seminary formation in the much maligned 70's and 80's. However, don't kid yourself: a lot of the "orthodox" guys in French cuffs and cassocks are in the closet themselves! I'm not sure the author has a real remedy program for the crisis that presently faces Catholicism, or if he just wants to mourn for the good old days when priests were "real men." Oh, please! Mr. Rose, if you're going to write history, do some more research! If you're going to keep spitting out your embittered polemics to a ready made audience who already agrees with everything you say, then keep doing what you're doing, babe! But don't blame gay priests for the problems facing the church today. ...
Rating:
Summary: Manichean rubbish.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read for Real roman Catholics
Review: Have you been asking yourself why the Roman Catholic Church in America is becoming more and more liberal and lax? Many times I have visited different parishes and wondered what happened to Catholic tradition. This book explains how the true orthodox teachings have been subverted, leading to non-traditional celebrations and moral decay. Definitely a MUST READ for us Catholics that have been wondering what has happened to our tradtional liturgy over the last 20 or so years. This book also explains why the Catholic Church is presently in the midst of scandal and crisis. The absence of good moral leadership by the Cardinals and Bishops in America exacerbates the situation. The author also explains how to rectify the wrongs and get the Church back on the right track.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Worth Reading Whether You Agree or Disagree
Review: Michael Rose's Regnery hardcover version of his softcover bestseller is both disturbing as well as encouraging. While some readers may disagree with Rose's research methodology, his lack of balance, and some of the conclusions he reaches, they cannot argue with the book's overall thesis - that a great many potentially good priests have been turned away from U.S. seminaries over the past two decades. Rose interviewed more than 125 individuals and sifted through many, many stories in order to put this book together. In the end, the book demonstrates how seminaries have used psychological testing, harassment, poor teaching, peer pressure, and other techniques to prevent good candidates from attending or remaining at some seminaries, and how similar tactics have been used to prevent "good" men from being ordained. The book highlights individual examples from a variety of seminaries (Boston's St. John's Seminary, New Orleans' Notre Dame Seminary, Oregon's Mount Angel, Chicago's Mundelien, Belgium's Louvain and others) to prove his points. Sometimes it works; at other times it does not. The end of the book is rather encouraging. It highlights the current situation among seminaries, especially those that are receiving many vocations. It also addresses the role of the priest from Pope John Paul II's perspective. The uplifting tone at the end makes up for the disturbing stories that make up the beginning of the book. Rose also makes it clear that homosexual behavior has been rampant, and largely ignored, on some seminary campuses. While his purpose is not to address the clergy sexual abuse scandal currently rocking the Church, the astute reader will wonder whether such behavior has contributed to the problem the Church is currently facing. Many observers tend to think that the two are related. Whether you agree or disagree with Rose's conclusions, the book is well worth reading. It provides a real eye-opener into the seminary problems of the past 20 years and also examines why the problems, in some cases, have not been addressed. Hopefully, the U.S. Bishops will take Rose's information into consideration when they meet in Dallas. The author makes points that are well worth investigating. If even a small percentage of what Rose documents is true, it's very likely that the worst, in the media's coverage of priestly sexual abuse, is still yet to come.
Rating:
Summary: Why all the controversy?
Review: Non-Catholics and those whose life in the Church has been somewhat sheltered may wonder at the accuracy of the portrait that Michael Rose paints in his book. In some ways it does seem too bad to be true- how could Catholic seminaries go from orthodoxy to a "gay subculture" in a mere decade? What possible factors could cause priests and nuns to reject core Catholic doctrines? Are conservatives really persecuted? However, I do believe it. Moreover, I don't think the substance of Rose's assertions can be reasonably denied. How else to explain the simple reality that in many dioceses in the USA, it is extremely difficult or impossible to find a reasonably traditional parish with solid teaching and a reverent liturgy? Orthodox and devout men are, by definition, more apt to be attracted to the priesthood than any other group. So where are these men? To suggest they are all unfit for the priesthood is laughable- unless you believe that orthodoxy itself makes a man unfit. This is exactly what the powers that be in many dioceses do believe, and that is the situation Rose describes. It is worth noting that nowhere in the book does Rose pretend this describes all dioceses, or that the situation is equally bad everywhere. The descriptions of a gay subculture I would have believed exaggerated, except for the recent revelations regarding priestly assaults on (mostly teenaged) boys. Sorry, but there is no way to explain this abysmal scandal unless we understand that homosexuality has been thriving in certain sectors of the Catholic priesthood for decades. To blame celibacy is irrational, since a heterosexual man who can't cope with abstinence will turn to women, girls or even magazines. He certainly won't turn to boys, unless we want to believe that men can be spontaneously "converted" to homosexuality by lack of sex!! Since most of the material in the book is anecdotal, it's tough to make any real conclusions about the state of the American Church in general. More analysis of the source of these problems along with more data about their scope would have made the book even more useful. I will note that some of the book's material is so scandalous, that Catholics have to be very discerning about reading it (especially true of sexual material). Let's face it, the "dirt" tends to be fascinating, and can easily distract good Catholics from their own sins and need for improvement. Granted, an educated population is in a better position to work for positive change, which is why I think the book is important and valuable. But don't hesitate to skip over certain portions, and do read only with the intention of taking some sort of action in response, even if it is only to support good seminaries, or to inform yourself about your own local programs. An appendix helping Catholics to respond to the book's information in an appropriate and fruitful way would have been a great addition. I'm recommending this book with the reservations expressed above. Catholic adults need to understand and continue to combat the realities Rose describes.
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