Posted on 06/08/2002 1:52:09 PM PDT by maryz
I did this transcipt from a tape I made of the show. For easier reading (and typing), I omitted 'um' and 'uh', 'you know', false starts and such, as well as repeated identification of show, host and guest, and other non-central material. Everything substantive, however, is here.
HOWIE: We are now joined by Michael Rose. He is the author of the book Goodbye! Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church. The title of the book is Goodbye! Good Men, and it’s published by Regnery. Michael, thank you very much for being on the Howie Carr Show
MICHAEL: Thanks for having me on, Howie.
HOWIE: Listen, what is the problem with the Roman Catholic bishops? They still don’t get how angry both the laity and elements of the clergy are about this whole scandal, and they’re still talking about this one-strike rule as if that’s some kind of viable alternative. Why do they not understand that that can’t be tolerated?
MICHAEL: That’s a good a question. I’m not sure what they’re thinking – I’m never sure what they’re thinking. The one-strike policy would be a good place to start, but I think it runs a lot deeper than that. They need to lay down some moral principles. I think a lot of these priests are actually saying they didn’t even know that what they were doing was wrong. Something is seriously wrong, there if that’s what they’re saying.
HOWIE: I was reading something on-line last night, and someone was saying, “Well, if one molestation in the past is all right, why isn’t one in the future OK? I mean, do you get to rob one bank? Is that OK? Is one stabbing all right? Would that be all right? Why is a molestation of a young person OK?” It doesn’t seem to make any sense. I was reading your book, and I just flipped it open, and the first thing I saw was Rembert Weakland, the now deposed archbishop of Milwaukee. I mean he’s sort of symptomatic of the way the Roman Catholic Church has been going in recent years, isn’t he?
MICHAEL: Well, I think so, and I think he represents more than any other bishop in the Unnited States the element of moral and religious liberalism in the church in the United States.
HOWIE: And he said, “New priests have had multiple sexual experiences, and that is great!”
MICHAEL: Right. Which gives you a little bit of an indication of where he’s coming from. If we look back at Reverend Weakland’s record, we find that the way he goes about training his seminarians – in 1980, he had them take these homosexual workshops as well as these sex workshops – which promoted viewing explicitly, well, pornographic films showing males humping one another and oral sex, anal sex and all these different types of sexual positions and so forth.
HOWIE: He was showing these films in his seminaries?
MICHAEL: He was showing them to his seminarians, yes. It’s also significant that one of the men who was teaching the homosexual workshop actually was arrested a few years later for molesting a 15-year-old boy and actually served some prison time. But at the time when the lay Catholics in Milwaukee protested what Reverend Weakland was doing through this priest, he fully supported this priest who was later found to be a sex abuser.
HOWIE: He also lied about his own sexual orientation. I mean, I read those quotes in the New York Times that they pulled out of the New Yorker where he was talking about how he had fallen in love with many women and that he always had to resist the temptation of women, but he was – he had no attraction to women – he was just trying to cover up for himself, wasn’t he?
MICHAEL: Well, he could have been, yes. But the problem is probably even deeper than that. It goes back to the libertine sexual attitude that was promoted in a lot of the seminaries over the last 30 years through most of the teachings. I look at it as a systematic malformation of conscience on sexual matters.
HOWIE: We’ll take some calls in a moment here for Michael Rose. I think [the book] is doing pretty well, isn’t it, Michael?
MICHAEL: That’s what I hear.
HOWIE: It’s got a huge display section in the front of the Barnes & Noble I go to – that’s usually run by pretty liberal people, but I think they know it’s going to “move product” right now. Let’s take some calls for Michael Rose. Jim, you’re next.
CALLER: Hi, Howie and Michael. This is a great book, and it’s a book that every Catholic has the obligation to read, I think. Listen, I want to ask you – there’s been a lot in the news about the infamous class of 1960 at St. John’s Seminary in Boston, from which we got Paul Shanley and Joseph Birmingham and Lane and O’Sullivan and Bishop John McCormack, who’s covering up for them all. Do you know anything more about what went on at St. John’s in the early 1960s?
MICHAEL: Well, unfortunately, I don’t know any specifics as early as that in Boston, because most of the research I did was post-Vatican II, but from what I hear some of the seminaries had the same exact problem that all the other ones did in the 1970s.
HOWIE: What Jim is saying, Michael, is that in some cases it goes back further than 30 years. Again, the class of ’60 at St. John’s, and then there was sort of an “echo class” in 1968, where I believe there were four or five more molesters came out of that one year’s class, right?
CALLER: It’s really hard to believe, I think, that you have that many of these criminals coming out of the same seminary classes and then -- all of a sudden -- they started to act out when they got into parishes? That seems implausible to me.
MICHAEL: Well, from my research in what happened in these seminaries, there’s a protective network. There’s a very tight-knit structure in the seminary system, and these guys end up protecting one another once they get out – as well as when they’re in the seminaries.
HOWIE: If you had to go to a year or a particular decade, I guess, when did Spencer Tracy start being outnumbered by Paul Shanley?
MICHAEL: I’d say in the 1960s. I think the revolution was complete by 1968.
HOWIE: Wow. Thanks for the call, Jim. Roger, you’re next with Howie Carr and Michael Rose, the author of Goodbye! Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church.
CALLER: Hi, Michael and Howie, this is Roger. My question is about the Kinsey sex report. Dr. Judith Reisman (sp?) wrote a book called Kinsey, Sex and Fraud. That report came out in 1952 or ’53, which basically we found out later was based on interviews with, by his own words, prostitutes, pimps, prisoners – 25% or more were prisoners – and there was some guy was abusing even babies. The whole sex ed program is based on that in our public schools. I wonder how that had an impact on those guys in their formative years, so to speak.
MICHAEL: Well, Roger. It’s interesting. I just talked to Judith the other day, and she was relating to me that there was a – that this goes hand-in-hand. The Kinsey sex researchers developed a whole method of “sexology,” and a lot of the men and women who were teaching in the seminaries during the 60s were these sexologists – they bought into the whole Kinsey report, and she writes that those policies and the things that they were doing, such as showing these films – I was talking about what happened in Milwaukee with this “Sexual Reassessment Program” whereby they showed explicit films in order to re-form the way young men think about sexuality – well, this program was developed by people related to the Kinsey Sex Institute.
HOWIE: Michael, what about the fact, though, that these guys have been willing to – I mean, why would they get into the priesthood if they’re into this kind of lifestyle? That’s what I don’t understand. OK, pre-1969, pre-Stonewall, when gay liberation was a real minor thing -- OK, I can see maybe becoming a priest. But in the 70s if you’re gay, and you want to live a gay lifestyle, you don’t have to become a priest. I don’t understand why the priesthood attracted gays any more than it attracted heterosexuals – and it hasn’t attracted heterosexuals, at least in large numbers, for at least the last 35 or 40 years.
MICHAEL: Well, what I found was that in many Catholic seminaries, the radical subculture has been systematically rooting out and turning away men who actually believe in the Catholic Church and especially the teaching on sexual morality. So –
HOWIE: Give us an example of the kind of stories that you uncovered about heterosexuals being driven out of the seminaries.
MICHAEL: OK, I’ll give you an example. In St. Mary’s in Baltimore, you know, several seminarians actually recounted to me seeing students and faculty members dressed up in leather to leave on the weekend to cruise the gay bars. Now, I’m talking about faculty members and seminarians as well. And when Andrew Walter, for example, complained about this, he was actually sent away for psychological counseling because he was homophobic, and he was labeled “sexually disordered” and he was later expelled for being rigid and intolerant. Now, he was expelled simply because he objected to this active gay subculture involving the faculty and the students at this seminary. So here we have someone who wants to serve the Church and believes in the sexual moral teachings of the Church, and they’re made into the issue – they’re made into the problem. The same thing happened at St. John’s in Boston there, too. I know a couple of years ago, one of the stories in my book I recount is one seminarian who was sexually harassed by another seminarian there, so threateningly that he was forced to file a restraining order against a fellow classmate. And he only did that after the administration of the seminary would do nothing to protect him – nothing at all. But what’s even worse than that is that the victim was scolded by the seminary administration for embarrassing the seminary, while the gay seminarian advanced toward ordination. He ended up leaving the seminary because of it.
HOWIE: What do we make, Michael, especially those of us who are in the Northeast, who watch all these bishops who worked under Cardinal Law, and now it’s very clear that they covered up for all these gays, these molesters, these predators, and they were involved in moving them from place to place, they made sure they had plenty of money to set up their nude, gay resorts in Palm Springs, they made sure the new parishes knew nothing of their backgrounds of molestation. I mean, should we just assume that everybody high up in certain archdioceses and dioceses is gay above a certain level?
MICHAEL: Well, I don’t think we can assume that everyone is, but there certainly is a significant population of them, and I’ve heard from insiders that would estimate that around 30% of the bishops are among those ranks in very high position – and we’re talking cardinals, archbishops and bishops here. And the scenario that you paint – the roots you’ll find are actually in the seminaries where they have the same protective network. At St. Mark’s Seminary in Erie, Pennsylvania, for instance – I think this is a good example – their high school seminarians, who are 14-, 15- and 16-year-old boys we’re talking about here, they were preyed upon by the older college seminarians who saw the high school as sort of a farm team. And not only that, the most important part of that is that the faculty members looked the other way – they turned a blind eye to all this and sometimes actually encouraged this sort of activity if not took part in it themselves. And so a gay subculture – one that’s an active gay subculture I’m talking about here – and also a protective network allowed that behavior to flourish.
HOWIE: What about the guy who became Bishop O’Connell in Palm Beach? He was running one of those teen seminaries in Missouri –
MICHAEL: That’s right – he was a seminary rector in Missouri.
HOWIE: – he had nude wrestling among the seminarians, and the future Cardinal Law used to go down and visit that seminary. I mean, what was the attraction for Cardinal Law that he kept visiting down there?
MICHAEL: That’s a good question. I had heard about the nude wrestling, but that’s quite interesting.
HOWIE: You could spend all day just surfing the Net and find out there’s at least two or three of these grotesque stories, new every day. Sometimes they involve little girls, but mostly little boys. Frank in the car, you’re next. [Call breaks up but caller mentioned “apology letters”]
HOWIE: You know what’s astounding, Michael? I don’t know how closely you’ve read these files as they’ve come out in the Archdiocese of Boston, about when these priests leave, Cardinal Law will write these fawning letters to them about their “fine service in the priesthood” and “you know, it’s been difficult, but I’d like to thank you on behalf of God and the Archdiocese and myself” and time after time he writes these letters! I mean you’d think he would just write them some kind of curt “This should serve as your official notice that you are hereby laicized.” I mean there’s something going on here – and I try not to be overly suspicious, but what conclusion can I possibly draw otherwise?
MICHAEL: Well, it’s quite outrageous and unconscionable. There was a story that came out maybe about a month ago now. A Father Barthold (sp?) who is the seminary administrator at St. John’s, was making sexual advances and, you know, kissing one of the seminarians. He rightly was dismissed from St. John’s – at least that’s one good thing – but he was written a recommendation by Cardinal Law to go teach at another place, down in the South.
[short unclear portion]
HOWIE: Yeah. Cathy, you’re next.
CALLER: Howie, God bless you!
HOWIE: Thank you.
CALLER: It’s wonderful that you would have Michael Rose on. Michael, I am so familiar with your book – you’re doing an incredible job, waking up the Catholic religion here in the United States. The question I have after reading your book – You know the connection of the 1960 graduating class of St. John’s seminary in Massachusetts – Lane and Birmingham and Shanley and, of course, our bishop of New Hampshire all came from the 1960 graduating class –
HOWIE: We took that question earlier, Cathy, but go ahead, Michael.
MICHAEL: I was going to say that Howie just mentioned, and I brought up earlier, the whole idea of the protective network that develops in any class. You know, like minds attract like minds, as someone told me yesterday – alcoholics tend to hang around alcoholics, drug addicts tend to hang around drug addicts, and so forth. So, once you get men like Shanley in positions of control or authority –
HOWIE: Or McCormack, his good buddy, McCormack.
MICHAEL: – or McCormack, yes, there’s some sort of tie there that they can’t seem to break.
HOWIE: And they keep writing these letters back and forth, and they’re buddies, they’re pals, and McCormack is the director of personnel – so he’s got the entire file sitting in front of him. I’ve known people who’ve gone away to prison, but I don’t write them -- even if I liked them, I wouldn’t put it down on paper. I mean, these guys are crazy! I don’t get it. Jim, you’re next.
CALLER: Yes, I’d like to make a couple of comments. You wonder why there are so many homosexuals in these particular classes at St. John’s. I think the answer is that word got out among homosexuals that this was a “safe haven” and, in a sense, they recruited. I have a friend who went to St. John’s – about 25 years ago, after he got out of Boston College, a very good student – and he was harassed by some gays there. He complained about it. He was told that he’d have to get used to “a new vision of the priesthood” –
HOWIE: A “new vision”?!
CALLER: – a “new vision” and, you know, to get along. By the end of the year, eight or nine of his classmates had also been harassed and were in a very uncomfortable state, and in a class of 30 seminarians in St. John’s that year in his class, he and nine classmates – that’s a total of ten – left and never came back. So that’s one-third of that class.
HOWIE: So that sort of confirms what you were saying earlier, Michael, doesn’t it?
MICHAEL: Absolutely, and that’s where I get the name of my book, Goodbye! Good Men. These men often go into these seminaries expecting to find wise, strong men like Spencer Tracy and Bing Crosby, and what they find instead is Village people, and a lot of them leave in disgust.
HOWIE: You know, that’s a good line, Michael! Let’s take another call here. Who’s next? Bob in the car. Go ahead.
CALLER: First time caller. I’m telling you, what would be great is to see on-line the 1960 yearbook for St. John’s –
HOWIE: Bob, we published the class photo in the Herald with all the perverts circled. We should probably do that again. Or, Michael, some people have suggested we should put out trading cards for the pervert priests. Then you’d always have, like the rookie team from 1989, and that’s what you’d put in from the St. John’s class from ’60 and ’68.
MICHAEL: You could probably put those up on the wall and throw darts at them, right?
HOWIE: Right!
MICHAEL: You know, the point that Jim and Bob were both getting at – the recruitment. There is that recruitment there that I’ve found in my own research. In the 70s and 80s, especially, you have a vocation director, you have a seminary rector, you have seminary faculty who are not only gay, but gay activists and really want to highjack the priesthood in order to change the church from within – He talked about this “re-envision” the priesthood, so to speak. Well, that’s no joke – that’s actually what they call it.
HOWIE: “New vision.” Who’s next? Alice? Go ahead, Alice.
CALLER: I wonder if you know what happened to Father John J. Whyte. He was the class of ‘67 and was the companion of Fr. Paul Shanley, since they sold their bed-and-breakfast –
HOWIE: Yes, the gay nudist bed-and-breakfast in Palm Springs. And then they moved Father Whyte back to Billerica, right, Alice?
CALLER: And he was invited by Father Philip Hurley [Earley?], the head of – one of the heads of Catholic Charities to join together with Charles Connors –
HOWIE: Yes. We’re out of time. Michael, thank you for being with us. Come back to Boston, cause there’s a lot – for the paperback edition you can find out a lot more stuff about St. John’s, especially.
MICHAEL: Thanks, Howie.
HOWIE: Goodbye! Good Men. I’m Howie Carr.
Sounds like Law may be that east coast Cardinal everyone has been wondering about.
All of this just goes to show that the American Bishops have no intention of policing themselves. They don't see a problem with their behavior. And yes, I'll say it, some of these guys are downright evil. The only way any kind of cleanup will occur will be if it comes from Rome. Rome must cut off the heads of this creature. The laity are in no position to do it.
Actually, the betting around here (in Boston) is that Shanley may decide to spill his guts (which is, in Fran Lebowitz' phrase "every bit as charming as it sounds"). There is some indication in documents produced that he tried to blackmail -- sort of -- Cardinal Medeiros (just before Law), who pretty much laughed it off in a draft letter produced to plaintiffs. And Shanley undoubtedly knows a lot.
Sounds like Law may be that east coast Cardinal everyone has been wondering about.
Maybe, but it's hard to picture. He seems very cowardly, not the type to risk being caught, which the Page Six cardinal doesn't seem to care much about.
Rome must cut off the heads of this creature.
I love classical references!
Seriously, I understand your reluctance to read the book. It is a distasteful subject. But living here in Boston, between the daily paper, the Howie Carr Show, the morning WRKO show and most people I know, I can't get away from it. I'm at the point now that I just want everything to come out fast, no matter how painful, so we can start picking up the pieces. I adjust to one phase, and something else breaks, again and again and again -- ad infinitum it seems (I'm not a total loss as a classicist myself).
A friend of mine is married to a guy who graduated BC College with a couple of guys who then entered St. John's Seminary - both later dropped out because they said it was like living in a gay bar. This would have been in the early 80s. I don't know how much things have changed since then.
Last night I saw Fr. Richard John Neuhaus on "The World Over" on EWTN. Fr. Neuhaus said that we haven't seen the end of the outing of gay Cardinals or Bishops. I guess he is someone who would be "in the know." I'm with you, I wish it would just all come out and we'd deal with it. This is so slow and painful.
I've never heard about Cardinal Law visiting the nude wrestling college, have you? This is the second or third time lately I've seen it intimated that he is "one of them" - but I don't think he is a homosexual... I had never heard that about him in all his years here in Boston.
I'm going to type up the intro to Goodbye! Good Men by Dr. Alice Von Hildebrand, it is terrific.
I thing there's a place on the WRKO website where you can e-mail them. You could suggest it. I might myself. Actually, the lines were full for Rose's segments, and Howie's done a lot on the scandal (much of it at the guffaw level, but it lends itself to that). So he might be amenable.
It might not be for a while; if Rose was on Howie Carr, he's probably being booked on every talk radio show Regnery can get him onto.
But it doesn't hurt to ask.
The thing that can't come across in a transcript is just how different it felt to be hearing about the nuts and bolts of the scandal as homosexual and not just pedophiliac on the air and not just in print. It really made it seem more public, somehow. If Rose makes the whole talk show circuit -- as seems likely -- this view may hit critical mass, and the mainstream media, not to mention the bishops, won't be able to continue to ignore this aspect.
We shoudn't expect to see Michael Rose being interviewed on Eagan and Braude's show.
Our local efforts to "educate" Catholics here. (A local Catholic runs the statewide office of a huge billboard company. He built a new billboard from the ground up, just to hang this billboard so our local bishop could see it near his diocesan offices. Sometimes Catholic activism if fun ;-)
I finally picked it up at the Catholic homeschooling conference in DC today (excellent conference...Joe Sobran, Bob Dornan, Fr Levis, Alice Von Hildebrand, Fr Perricone, many other great speakers!)
I'm looking forward to meeting Michael Rose next week. Anyone near central PA, come to Altoona on June 18 for a talk by Michael Rose, Free admission!
Your lips to God's ears.
Has O'Reilly had him on yet? What's he waiting for?
It sounds like a great lineup. Is there a Web site for this conference/organization?
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