"It is a sad commentary on otherwise good and decent Catholics in the modern world..."
I am sorry, Prof. Blosser, but it is a sad commentary solely on Fr.Fessio.
Dr Blosser, it sounds like you are swallowing whole the NOR version of this thing, because your blurb reads like it was lifted from "Fr Fessio Goes Ballistic".
I'm tempted to salute Fr Fessio for treating buttinskis accordingly. He does it with hypocritical ingrates like Tim Russert, and now he's doing it with Dale Vree, who is sticking his nose where there is no crying need for him to insert it.
Granted, this isn't a Thomas Reese scenario, but it certainly isn't Woodward & Bernstein against the Evil Empire, either, and Mr Vree appears to have milked this prize Guernsey for far more than it is worth. Fr Fessio is not one who suffers fools gladly, and would that there were more priests like him, instead of the Fr SpongeBobs who face controversy with the strength of tempered marshmallow.
May I issue a short appeal? The only thing that really matters is not whether we side with NOR or Fr. Fessio and Ignatius Press, but that we side with the truth. What is the truth of the matter?
Oh, and one other thought. (This will sound like "a pox on both your houses"): don't we have the so-called liberals to fight rather than grousing in house?
I'd like to put the Ave Maria administration's problems aside for a moment and remind people of a few things about Dale Vree and New Oxford Review.
NOR never took any official position in the debate. After submitting my first article (unsolicited) to NOR, Dale called me and said that, in the name of fairness, NOR would like to invite a response from Mr. Monaghan. In the end, Dale published not one but -two- articles from AMU administrators. I know that Dale even went to great trouble to accomodate Fr. Fessio and publish one of AMU's articles in an issue that was literally out-the-door to the printer. Dale has also published letters from readers that support Monaghan's administration.
And how did Fr. Fessio thank Dale for these opportunities? He used Ignatius Press, an organization that has absolutely -nothing- to do with these AMU issues, and retaliated against NOR. Dale even offered Fr. Fessio an opportunity to respond by letter. Keep in mind that, as a publisher himself, Fr. Fessio has many venues to present his side of the story, including his own Catholic World Report magazine.
Now, would you trust a person running an 'apostolic' non-profit organization 'given to the Church' (AMU) who uses his unrelated private for-profit business (IP) to exact revenge on those who associate with critics of the non-profit? Its like you punching my little sister for saying "Andrew said you're dishonest."
Fr. Fessio's childish financial slap of NOR (a small family-run pillar of the orthodox crowd) only underscores my criticism that Fessio will resort to the vindicitve means of a bully to accomplish his ends, even if it entails wielding the influence of other unrelated organizations who entrust their leadership to him (ie. Ignatius Press). There is nothing that Fr. Fessio could have done to better support the facts that these AMU administrators will employ any means (even illegitimate hurtful ones) to establish their campus.
The orthodox Catholic community has to ask itself whether it will support the use of such means - time and time again - to accomplish what I have always said are good ends (and I took a $16,000 pay cut, left my $80,000 laboratory, gave away the family dogs, and moved my wife & kids to a new state as testament to my commitment to those ends). It is precisely because I love the ends that I remain engaged in this emboglio. I've dealt with too many upset parents and students to let these men just keep bulldozing little people over.
Sadly, you can now add NOR to the long and growing list of wounded innocents.
Let me adjure you to not resort to a "pox on both houses" "you're both at fault" defeatist conclusion. This project is too important for Catholicism in America. Yes, we should be fighting liberals rather than grousing in the house. But the fact is that serious house-cleaning must be done in our Church. How many scandals need to surface years later because we were too afraid or too lazy to face the facts in the present? That's what happens when we throw up our hands and say "Let's just move on since you're both wrong and,therefore, cancel each other out." I don't want to put my support or endorsement behind AMU only to find, years later, that it used objectionable methods to build a skewed foundation.
To date, I've not been sure who to believe in all this. Messaros's non-subjective facts & quotes are stunning, if true. But, no matter how you slice it, Fr. Fessio's retribution on NOR is inexcusable! He looks like a cry-baby. It makes Messaros's claims exponentially more credible, and makes me more appreciative of NOR's importance to Catholics.
Andrew Messaros, thank you for your detailed and thoughtful remarks. And Confeitor, too, your points are well-taken.
The fact is that the ends -- however lofty and laudible they may be (in the case of the AMU project) -- do not justify the means when the means are unjust. And now NOR, along with many faculty, employees and students at AMC, appear to have been treated with dismissive contempt as they have been perceived to stand in the way of the AMU project.
Few if any of us would quarrel with the vision that animated and brought into existence AMC and AMU. It goes without saying that we need good, faithful Catholic colleges and universities -- alternatives to the Georgetowns and Loyolas that seem to have forgotten their first loyalties.
What saddens is the fact that we all recognize the greatness of so much that Fr. Fessio has achieved, and even what he suffered through the attacks of liberal administrators on his undertakings at Campion College, which had him railroaded off by his Jesuit superiors into exile until he was invited to take on the Ave Maria project.
Surely, as Mr. Garton-Zavesky notes, the bottom line is our willingness to be partisans of truth, whatever that turns out to be. And, at this point, it's looking more and more like Fr. Fessio (and perhaps Mr. Monaghan and some others) may need to find priest, make a clean breast of themselves, and make public restitution. Pray for them. A prowling lion seeks to devour and destroy a good work.
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