26 February 2019

Father Rosica and Me and our Interns

I call it plain heartless of Lifesitenews to criticize my friend Fr Thomas Rosica for having spent the best years of his life devotedly plagiarizing. However, he has now explained the situation: his Interns were all to blame. He has made this so clear that he can, I think, expect a full apology from Lifesitenews. If they fail to do this, well, the Law provides ways of mitigating against calumny.

My sympathy arises from my own need to confess that I am every bit as guilty as Tom is. And my explanation is exactly the same as his: it's all these bl**dy Interns who are to blame. Have you never wondered why so much of what I write is inaccurate, poorly expressed, and offensive? There is the reason: Interns. Everything you have ever read here, that you didn't like, was not actually from my pen: the Interns did it. (I only wrote the things you approved of.)

You can have no idea how much these wretched Interns disrupt domestic life. Is it fair to expect my Cook to serve up Michelin *** meals day by day when there are thirteen Interns unhygenically plagiarizing on the kitchen floor 25/7? You know what a mess plagiarism leaves. Who do think has to clear it all up?

How can the Head Gardner get on with his mulching (whatever that means) when there are always at least seven and possibly as many as eleven Interns endlessly rutting around the rasberry bushes?

Please do have a thought for Tom and I at this difficult time.

Drafted by Millicent, Mildred, and Montagu.
Additional material by Giorgio, Gironimo, and Geraldine.
Despatched by Samantha and Sven.


18 comments:

scotchlil said...

Very gratifying to see that Mr Lyttelton's aides-de-camp are still gainfully and appropriately employed. Their participation in Fr Rosica's ministry explains so much....

Highland Cathedral said...

The problem in the Vatican is clearly not the existence of a gay lobby. All the prblems are due to the existence of an Intern Lobby.

Highland Cathedral said...

As for that St Gallen Mafia. Forget it. It's really an Intern Mafia.

Banshee said...

It was a ludicrous excuse when historians were using it. But it is simply pathetic in a news writer or theologian, especially since he usually seems to have ripped off his ideological friends.

The bit about his plagiarism going back to 1991 was interesting, because that is when he got one of his degrees.

umblepie said...


Clearly interns are not to be trusted. It's their spelling as well, hence 'gardner' is missing an 'e' viz. 'gardener' - not terribly serious I know, but …….!!

John F. Kennedy said...

He's gone.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-vatican-spokesman-fr.-rosica-resigns-from-catholic-college-after-a

GOR said...

My sympathies, Father! Of course you know that the ‘intern’ problem goes way back. If you think about it, Adam was doing fine on his own initially. Then God had to go and give him an ‘intern’ called Eve. That’s when the trouble began and things have not been the same since.

Even today if one doesn’t have an intern handy, there is always another convenient scapegoat close by, as in: “the dog ate my homework…”

Scribe said...

Oh, Father! ? Surely that should be, er....

A Daughter of Mary said...

Poor Father Roscia! How embarrassing to be caught doing something that any writer learns, early, not to even consider. It is very tempting to grab words that 'sing' on the page and make them your own. Paraphrasing comes as close as we can to using the words of other. I realize Father Rosica is a very busy guy and he has so much to offer the Church and the world that he must race through his day, relying on others for the actual input of data when he writes...but there is a fine line, no?

Of course, now the 'Vatican Watch' begins. Father Rosica has volunteered to step down from some positions at universities - will he be relieved of his place in "communications" in Rome? Sad to make this a betting matter, but I'll bet he sails along as usual. Again our trust is eroded. Is there anyone who will trust anything this poor man touches? I will pray for his conversion but it will be a tough slog.

Woody said...

I feel your pain, Father. I had the same problem many years ago in the 5th grade here in the States. My teacher rebuked me for my plagiarism and I immediately fired my interns. Never had an intern since and the plagiarism stopped.

John Nolan said...

Having watched hospital dramas in the 1960s (Emergency Ward Ten, Dr Kildare) I understood that 'intern' was the American term for 'houseman'.

Much later, after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, I learned that an 'intern' was a woman whose function it was to service the US President, in this case the priapic Bill Clinton.

Which of these functions do Rosica's 'interns' perform?

Unknown said...

Gosh. For the first 25 of the 40+ years I taught at a Jesuit university, I would get excuses for late papers of a marginally plausible nature, such as "my typing ribbon broke" or "the printing ball on my selectric jammed." But then the desktops and word prcessors entered the picture, thus denying me any grounds for skepticism: I could no longer understand the excuses.

But now at last, in the reflective peace of retirement, I finally understand the students who made the excuses. They were all interns.

KaeseEs said...

Father,

I believe this is the same approach that the "Jesus Seminar" took with the words of our Lord.

William said...

@umblepie: The fingerprints of the Interns are all over this piece. Fr H would never, ever, have used the nominative in place of the accusative, as in the final sentence.

I think Fr needs to get some better Interns.

neilmac said...

And the interns' grammar is also slipping
"...for Tom and I" (?)

John Patrick said...

Back in the earliest days of my software development career we had "coders" who took our flowcharts and turned them into computer language statements. So we had a ready excuse when the inevitable bugs turned up "the coder must have mistyped it". Never faulty logic on our part of course. So they served a similar purpose to Fr. Rosica's interns.

Unfortunately for us, the coder positions were eliminated on the theory that us lazy bums should do our own coding. So we have to invent more ingenious excuses now.

Grant Milburn said...

Team Francis are throwing a lot of unhandled exceptions.

Irenaeus said...

Haha. Thanks for the laugh, Father.