Message Via Web Site #4

I would first like to say that I have been following your website misconductinlatrobe.com and have found your research and writings quite interesting. I appreciate you attempting to provide some sort of transperency regarding an issue very shrouded in mystery.

Perhaps more than most of my classmates, the daily lives and happenings in the monastery took on an important role in not only my academic life, but it inspired and influenced my religious one as well. I was enrolled in the Benedictine Heritage class, and took courses in the seminary – between my work with this history of the monastic community and my coursework regarding monastic heritage I was moved by the monks of Saint Vincent. Over the three years I was a student there, I built friendships and relationships with some of the monks in such a way the politics of the monastery became very real and impacted the way I viewed my Alma Mater – and I should note that this awareness, though in some ways influenced by my monastic companions, was sincerely an independent development. By the time I graduated, I had come to the decision that although I had obtained a priceless education and had experiences I would not trade for all the world, I was also saddened to realize the university (and certainly the monastery) was in an age of dramatic change and as a recent graduate I made the moral decision that I could not assist in financially supporting Saint Vincent College. Morally, academically, ethically I felt it would be wrong to encourage and provide credibility to their destruction of traditions and secularization of the campus (not to mention the politicization of the administration!) but although I knew Fr Mark Gruber was an honest man and certainly one to remain firm in his convictions, I never thought the Abbott would go to such lengths to destroy a man…and in the process create chaos in many people’s lives.

[Name provided and authenticated, but withheld]