New Book Examines a Generation of Lost Vocations

By Maria T. Gaetano
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the issue of 7/4/02)

The cause of the current priest shortage and clergy abuse crisis in the Church can be traced in part to seminaries and diocesan vocations programs that have failed to foster good vocations and have turned away orthodox seminarians over the last few decades, according to Michael S. Rose, author of Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church.

During the last approximately 30 years in the United States, potential priests faithful to the teachings of the Church have been dismissed from priestly formation by many seminary rectors and diocesan vocations directors, who often have personal agendas for the Church, Rose says. These personal agendas include acceptance of homosexual lifestyles, admitting women to the priesthood and approval of fornication and artificial contraception.

Men faithful to the Church’s teachings and honestly answering Christ’s call to become priests are often faced with hostility, dismissal and outright persecution. Those who dress in clerics, agree with the magisterium or say the rosary publicly, for example, are marked as "rigid" and determined to be "unfit for the priesthood."

Goodbye, Good Men will shock and dismay orthodox Catholics who have prayed for priestly vocations and wondered why it seems God is not calling good men to become priests. Shocking as it is, seminaries that actively cater to the homosexual lifestyle and blatantly oppose Catholic doctrine are operating under the name "Catholic," and are determining the face of the next generation of Catholic priests.

According to Father John Trigilio, a priest who attended seminary in the 1980s, many orthodox seminarians during his time there were literally driven out because they were "too Catholic." However, homosexuals and those dissenting from Church teaching were left alone or actively supported by the faculty. Father Trigilio’s case, as transcribed by Rose, mirrors countless other experiences. Father Trigilio, however, made it through the persecution and past the liberal authorities who wanted him to be dismissed. Father Trigilio, unlike many other orthodox seminarians, was ordained.

Many seminarians, especially younger ones, who experience the persecution that Father Trigilio underwent do not make it through the seminary. Some try other seminaries, only to learn that there exists a network of anti-orthodox rectors and vocations directors. Others experience significant challenges to their faith after what they have witnessed (which often includes homosexual activity, immoral lifestyles and professors who contradict the Church) and leave for good.

Timothy O’Keefe, a former applicant to an East Coast religious order, believes he was called to the priesthood. Yet, he was prevented from pursuing his vocation, simply because of his orthodoxy and his love for the Church. After an interview with the vocations director, he was told point-blank that if he did not agree with the ordination of women, there was no place in the order for him. "I left depressed. I wanted to live in Gospel poverty; I wanted to forsake wife and children to preach the teachings of Christ; I wanted to feed the poor with bread and eternal truth. Yet all [the] vocations director cared about was the acceptance of their redundant political agenda," said O’Keefe. He has not been ordained.

In another diocese, Rose reports, the psychologist who evaluates candidates for the priesthood is an apostate, the "Worshipful Master" of a local Masonic lodge. As part of what Rose dubs the "gatekeeper phenomenon," this objectively anti-Catholic man has a huge part in deciding which men become Catholic priests and which are rejected. Since psychological counseling is mandatory for all seminarians, those who "fail" the often-perverted probe into their sexual and emotional histories are often point-blank blacklisted for their diocese and in some cases the stigma goes with them when they apply elsewhere.

Rose’s study is well-documented. He has a plethora of sources, which include former seminarians, priests, seminary professors and others who have inside views of what has gone on and still goes on today in seminaries across the country. Because of the nature of what they have revealed, many of the sources are not identified by their real names.

While Rose’s book gives much cause for sadness and even anger, the true Catholic response should be not to give up on the Church, but to be moved to act for the good of the Church — to reclaim the seminaries and vocations programs from those who would act contrary and in opposition to Christ, His teachings and His Church.

Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church, by Michael S. Rose, Regnery Publishing, Inc., (Washington, D.C., 2002). 276 pages.

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