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We must assume that Vere didn't know about the sexual attacks on novice seminarians...

None of us did. We all held Huels in high esteem, even though we did not always agree with him. Huels was a great teacher who treated everyone fairly. The traditionalists (and keep in mind that Vere was one of about four or five in his class) all shared Vere's respect for Huels because he treated them with respect, was objective in terms of grading, and traditionalists tended to rank at the top of his class. In time, the other profs came to appreciate the traditionalists in the programme, but Huels was the first to really reach out to them. So pretty much everyone from the class will say the same thing -- they are very disappointed by what it turns out Huels had done, but they continue to respect him as a professor of canon law.

Is this supposed to be a good thing?

No. And you won't get any argument from me here. As I mentioned in another response, I warned Vere and the other traditionalists at the time that allowing the liturgical libertarians to defend the traditionalist cause would later come back to haunt traditionalists. (Although admittedly, I never envisioned it would happen like this.) While it would have taken much longer for the indult to gain footing (think Europe), it would not have raised as many eyebrows.

Huels was a great teacher who treated everyone fairly.

Your explanation seems fair and reasonable. It should serve as an object lesson regarding being fooled by charismatic personalities and allowing them to overcome one's principles. Or as an object lesson regarding an even greater problem, not knowing the principles in the first place, so you don't realize that this charming character has just charmed your pants off.

For example, Bill Clinton is supposedly a very winning person. If one had him for a professor, I'm sure even many hardened traditionalists would be won over. My Dad met Ted Kennedy one time, and he said that he could easily get Eskimoes to buy iceboxes from him.

We see the world-wide spectacle of a cult of personality revolving around the current pontiff. But is he really upholding Catholic principles, or has he charmed the pants right off the Catholic population?

And to get back to Huels, at the same time that he was winning over the enthusiasm of his students, he was teaching liturgical functionaries in virtually every diocese of the US and Canada how they could overcome any pesky canonical restrictions that stood in the way of liturgical wreckovation. He was clearly an agent of the revolution, even if he was fair in his grading. These are the most dangerous of all characters. I'm sure that one would have found Kim Philby to be an outstanding teacher if one happened to take a course from him.

And the hardest thing of all is to take a stand against a popular and charming person because you recognize that his principles are fundamentally flawed. Everyone will look askance at your "attacks" on this wonderful person. My own wife used to be shocked by the things I would say about the pope -- namely that his principles are fundamentally not Catholic. And to take an example that's even more controversial here on FR, try saying that George Bush is not really pro-life, he's only marginally less pro-death than Al Gore or John Kerry.

John Huels was an evil double agent working within the Church for its own destruction. Someone with Catholic principles would have recognized that before he was exposed as a homosexual rapist of novice seminarians. This post-conciliar revolution has been a learning experience for all of us, and I know that I've been fooled before by those who claimed they were fixing the problems in the Church when really they were undermining Catholic doctrine and practice. But at least I hope I've learned enough from that experience to avoid writing books that accuse others of being "More Catholic than the Pope."