Letters

Seminaries (letter)

Andrew Sholl

Contents - Sep 2002 - Buy a copy now Editorial: AD2000's Fighting Fund launched - Michael Gilchrist Is the self-destruction of Anglicanism to continue? - Nigel Zimmerman News: The Church Around the World - AD2000 Vocations: Corpus Christi Seminary enrolments bounce back - Michael Gilchrist Promoting Catholic vocations in the Melbourne Archdiocese - Joanne Grainger CHURCH ATTENDANCE: The family, feminism and the declining role of fatherhood - Richard Egan The 1960s 'cultural revolution': from self-sacrifice to self-fulfillment - Fr Gregory Jordan The strange case of Father Damien and Robert Louis Stevenson - Fr F.E. Burns PE Australian Rosary CD wins international recognition - Colleen McGuiness-Howard John Paul II and World Youth Day in Toronto: an Anglican perspective - David Warren Letters: Church design (letter) - Greg Briscoe-Hough Letters: Renovations (letter) Letters: Abortion (letter) - Bob Denahy Letters: Seminaries (letter) - Andrew Sholl Letters: Media complaints (letter) - Michael Daniel Letters: Feminism dead? (letter) Letters: Teaching the faith (letter) - Kevin McBride Letters: Zero tolerance (letter) - J. Dekker Letters: Priestly 'uniform' (letter) - Philip Robinson Letters: Horse and cart (letter) - Arthur Negus Letters: Shakespeare (letter) - John Doherty Letters: Vatican II (letter) - Valentine Gallagher Books: Open Embrace: A Protestant Couple Rethinks Contraception - Bill Muehlenberg (reviewer) Books: The Arians of the Fourth Century, by John Henry Newman - Peter Westmore (reviewer) Books: The Lost Shrine of Liskeard, by Claire Riche - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: Christianity for Buddhists, by Frederick Farrar - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: Think Piece: Religious, Ethical and Moral Values, by Sebastian Camilleri OFM - Mark Posa (reviewer) Marilen Studios: a Christian approach to business - Joe Padero Music: CD specials from AD Books Reflection: The Christian way to spiritual maturity - Fr Dennis W. Byrnes PP

As a Hebrew-Catholic, faithful to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, I have always had a great love and affection for Catholic priests, who, because of their vow of celibacy, do not have an easy life, as some might think.

Also, I always took it for granted as axiomatic that Catholic seminaries' raison d'�tre is to train orthodox and morally-upright priests for the service of our God and fellow-Catholics.

Sadly, however, after reading Michael S. Rose's recent book, Goodbye! Good Men, my preconceptions have been badly shaken. For, it appears that not only are some, if not most, seminaries in the US hotbeds of religious dissent and heterodoxy, but sexually-speaking, also hotbeds of iniquity.

It appears that unless one is heterodox and sexually "open" (to all kinds of perversions), one is not even likely to be accepted into such seminaries. And even if accepted, the pressure on "straight" (or non-homosexually active) orthodox seminarians can be intolerable, so that they are virtually forced out and usually not re-admitted to any other seminary as they are effectively "blackballed".

Is it any wonder that a significant proportion of US priests are reckoned to be "gay"? Worse, is it any wonder that the newspapers and TV have bombarded us with hideous accounts of clergy (and religious) destroying the lives of boys and girls, men and women.

It is to be hoped that this book will finally convince those bishops who need convincing to reform the seminaries so that orthodox and morally-upright men can train as priests for the Vineyard of the Lord. To shirk their responsibilities would be too awful to contemplate, given the serious under-replenishment of an ageing priesthood.

The Church owes a great debt to Rose for articulating his premise that priestly vocations were and have been artificially kept low in heterodox and morally degenerate "seminaries", whereas, understandably, there is no shortage of seminarians in orthodox and morally-upright seminaries.

ANDREW SHOLL
Cranbrook, Qld

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 15 No 8 (September 2002), p. 13