Tell Me What Home Is Like

Rating:
Summary: Coming of Age at Notre Dame
Review: "Tell Me What Home Is Like" forced me to acknowledge the brutality behind the pretty facade of Notre Dame. This book left me feeling sad for what John Vore experienced, angry for what more than 150 years of homophobia has done to the gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who have studied and worked at Notre Dame, and appalled anew by manifestations of Catholic corporate ruthlessness...

...The book was written in 1993 as a Notre Dame masterís thesis, and it shows signs of its academic origins. It contains sections of autobiography, fiction written for creative writing classes, and numerous letters, memos, and media articles, some written by people other than Vore. There are appendices, notes, and a list of sources. (No reader should skip Appendix Five, which contains an excerpt from the truly horrific letter Notre Dame spokesman Michael Garvey wrote to the National Catholic Reporter after that newspaper published its story on Fr. James T. Burtchaell's sexual abuse of students)...

...In writing about his own abuse at the hands of Burtchaell, Vore makes it clear that this brilliant but flawed priest is a symptom, not the source, of the problem. The serpent in the garden at Notre Dame was not James Burtchaell but the Holy Cross Order, or at least those members of the order who refuse to face sexual issues that no longer trouble most American high school students. In some of the most touching passages of the book, Vore relates how he came to forgive Burtchaell, whose fellow priests failed him when he needed them the most. Vore reserves his anger for two institutions, Notre Dame and HolyCross, and in this he speaks for many who have connections to the University...

John Vore has explored difficult personal and public territory and reported on his journey in a troubling and courageous memoir. How can we not admire the honesty and self confidence of a gay man who admits he had a "teen cult" of the awkward underdog Richard Nixon, who believed he too would some day be president of the United States, who loveda family
that could never fully accept him, who survived and forgave Burtchaell, who bears his breast about his desire to become the excellent writer this book proves him to be. I do not expect to read another book about Notre Dame that is the equal of "Tell Me What Home Is Like."

Rating:
Summary: Coming of Age at Notre Dame
Review: "Tell Me What Home Is Like" forced me to acknowledge the brutality behind the pretty facade of Notre Dame. This book left me feeling sad for what John Vore experienced, angry for what more than 150 years of homophobia has done to the gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who have studied and worked at Notre Dame, and appalled anew by manifestations of Catholic corporate ruthlessness...

...The book was written in 1993 as a Notre Dame masterís thesis, and it shows signs of its academic origins. It contains sections of autobiography, fiction written for creative writing classes, and numerous letters, memos, and media articles, some written by people other than Vore. There are appendices, notes, and a list of sources. (No reader should skip Appendix Five, which contains an excerpt from the truly horrific letter Notre Dame spokesman Michael Garvey wrote to the National Catholic Reporter after that newspaper published its story on Fr. James T. Burtchaell's sexual abuse of students)...

...In writing about his own abuse at the hands of Burtchaell, Vore makes it clear that this brilliant but flawed priest is a symptom, not the source, of the problem. The serpent in the garden at Notre Dame was not James Burtchaell but the Holy Cross Order, or at least those members of the order who refuse to face sexual issues that no longer trouble most American high school students. In some of the most touching passages of the book, Vore relates how he came to forgive Burtchaell, whose fellow priests failed him when he needed them the most. Vore reserves his anger for two institutions, Notre Dame and HolyCross, and in this he speaks for many who have connections to the University...

John Vore has explored difficult personal and public territory and reported on his journey in a troubling and courageous memoir. How can we not admire the honesty and self confidence of a gay man who admits he had a "teen cult" of the awkward underdog Richard Nixon, who believed he too would some day be president of the United States, who loveda family
that could never fully accept him, who survived and forgave Burtchaell, who bears his breast about his desire to become the excellent writer this book proves him to be. I do not expect to read another book about Notre Dame that is the equal of "Tell Me What Home Is Like."