Jesuits Misbehaving Yet Again
A well-known Jesuit’s public rejection of transubstantiation raises a number of serious concerns about both the state of the Church and the validity of his Masses.
Is It a Sin to Be White?
“To fight racism, Catholics must hunger for justice like we do for the Eucharist.” This was the headline of a joint editorial piece published on America, the Jesuit magazine, upon the aftermath of a week’s worth of mob protest, extensive looting, and the disintegration of public law and order. In just a few words, the … Read more
Cyrus Habib and the Jesuits: Birds of a Feather?
Governor Jay Inslee of Washington State followed in the steps of New York and California to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, effective March 24, for a period of two weeks. In the midst of a complete shutdown of economic and social life and the rising number of cases and deaths in the state of Washington, Catholics … Read more
Scrap the Jesuits and Start Over
Imagine what Church historians of the future will say about the Jesuits: “The Society of Jesus was founded in 1540 by St. Ignatius of Loyola and played a crucial role in the Church’s efforts to extinguish the nascent Protestant heresy. Over the centuries, however, it became the stronghold of another heresy—Modernism—and was eventually suppressed on … Read more
A Tale of Two Jesuit High Schools
News of the conflict between a Jesuit high school and the midwestern archdiocese under which the school operates spread quickly last week through social media. For news outlets hungry for a story, the narrative wrote itself: a teacher at Indianapolis’s Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School had entered into a same-sex union, the Archdiocese demanded said teacher’s … Read more
It’s Time to Rehabilitate St. Aloysius
In the chest of drawers where I keep small family heirlooms is a white rectangular box that contains the lapel pin my great-grandfather wore at meetings of his parish’s Sodality of St. Aloysius. Dangling from a green ribbon, framed in a tin disk, is a small black-and-white engraving of the saint, clutching a largish crucifix … Read more
Why America Has It Wrong About Homosexuality
The Jesuit magazine America carries an editorial in its current issue titled “Unjust Discrimination.” The editorial refers to the alleged injustice committed by church officials when they dismiss employees who formally enter into same-gender civil “marriages.” The editorial argues that the Church should not automatically dismiss but rather dismiss only when there was an instance … Read more
When Jesuits Ignore Papal Decrees
On September 1, John J. DeGioia, the president of Georgetown University confirmed and published the recommendations of the university’s Working Group on Slavery, Memory and Reconciliation. For almost a year the members of this group have been studying the ties of the Georgetown Jesuits with black slaves, and particularly, with the sale of 272 slaves … Read more
“Nature’s Own Reliquary”
Have you ever imagined that a person could stand inside a martyr’s reliquary? This summer I did, and you can, too, at least as long as a courageous group of Catholic lay people are able to keep Our Lady of Martyrs Shrine at Auriesville, NY, open. This shrine, which is the location of the National … Read more
St. Peter Claver: Slave of the Slaves Forever
Odd as it may seem, that great “Defender of the Indians,” Bartolomé de Las Casas, did not originally see the injustice of Negro slavery. To be fair, he bitterly regretted his position later, and he soundly denounced the African slave trade once he was better informed. Even so, early on, he was a vocal and … Read more
Justice Beyond the Grave: The Vindication of Cardinal Danielou
“Blessed are those who are persecuted for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10). It was forty years ago this May that the body of a dead Jesuit was found in an apartment in Paris owned by a prostitute whose husband needed money for a lawyer to get him out of … Read more
Verbiest: The Priest Who Invented the Automobile
Even one who is as maladroit as I when it comes to the Internet, profits from “YouTube” with its cavalcade of some of the great people and events of more than a century. Would that it could go back farther, but there are many moving scenes to which we have access. One shows Father Georges … Read more
Pope Francis and the Catholic Way of Dialogue
“Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.” That, according to Pope Francis, is the response he gives when leaders ask him for advice about how to resolve their societies’ internal differences. It is, he recently told a gathering of prominent Brazilians, the only way for societies to avoid the dead-ends of what Francis called “selfish indifference” and “violent protest.” … Read more
José de Anchieta, S.J.: Apostle of Brazil
Although it may not be so well-known, Brazil is the nation with the largest Catholic population in the world, about 123 million strong. Nevertheless, this nation had very humble beginnings. The Catholic foundations of this great nation were in large part laid by the sons of St. Ignatius. Of the many great Jesuits who worked … Read more
Ignatius of Loyola: Lycurgus of the Jesuits
People who read the classical authors either love or hate Plutarch. I love him—and am in good company, since Shakespeare loved him, too. People who love Plutarch either love or hate his fondness for parallels between the Greeks and Romans. I love it. The modern mind rebels in the face of such simplification, but I … Read more