Edmonton Jesuit College 1913-1942

Charles Camsell Hosital

Charles Camsell Hospital: Inglewood, Edmonton

The Camsell is best known for flickering lights, screams at night and security guards posted to keep would-be ghost hunters away. The hospital opened in 1945 at a Jesuit college, (here) becoming a federally operated tuberculosis sanatorium for Inuit and First Nations patients. The current asbestos-lined structure was erected across the street in 1967, evolving into a general acute-care hospital by the 1970s. It's unlikely the haunting is spectral-voiced Roy Orbison, though the crooner checked in with bronchitis for more than a month in 1984. It was shuttered in 1996, and plans to retrofit the facility repeatedly fell through. The building eventually sold for $3.6 million in 2004. Vacant for the past 15 years, the building's mystique has been bolstered by rumours of rampant abuse and legends of a mass grave.

Link (here)

St. Ignatius of Loyola, "Pray To Our Lady To Intercede For Us"

"Pray to Our Lady to intercede for us sinners to her Son and Lord, 

that she may obtain for us grace in our labours and trials,

and may convert our weak and bad natures 

into strong and joyful ones to her praise."

Barcelona, feast of St. Nicholas, December 6, 1525.
The poor pilgrim,

INIGO

Link (here)

Puzzling

“If you go out to the statue and you spend one minute… reflecting on St. Ignatius by  reflecting on the statue, then you’re reflecting on him reflecting which  allows you to be part of a puzzle inside the puzzle,” 

Link (here) to read about Ignatian Week at Fairfield University
Read St. Ignatius' Daily Examen (here)
A reflection on the Examen by Fr. John Hardon, S.J. (here)
A reflection on the particular and daily Examen by 18th century ascetic writer Fr. Aloysius Bellecius, S.J. (here)

A Gift For A Jesuit

Link (here) to purchase a set of cuff links.

Gayola

Though some members of the student body have less than positive experiences to relate, some still think that the gay lifestyle is accepted at the university.

"I mean, our nickname is ‘Gayola.' That goes beyond being gay. In my mind, that means being accepting of people of all kinds and that means a lot to me," said Mackenzie McMillan, political science junior. 

McMillan chose to come to Loyola because of the community service opportunities available. After experiencing the accepting atmosphere at Loyola, he said that he finds it difficult to picture going to school anywhere else. McMillan encourages students to be themselves and to take advantage of the fact that Loyola will be one of the most accepting places they will experience in their lives. Though he is not associated with the Catholic religion, McMillan said, "Once I got to Loyola, I realized that the Jesuits embrace and love you for who you are."

Link (here) to The Maroon

Fordham Theology Department Under Scrutiny

Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl

In an 11-page response to Sister Elizabeth's extensive June 1 defense of her 2007 book, "Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God," the bishops said her explanation did nothing to change their minds. Sister Elizabeth said then that the bishops misunderstood and misrepresented the book's main points. The committee, chaired by Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, said that Sister Elizabeth's response to their original critique of March 24 had "not in fact demonstrated that the committee has misunderstood or misrepresented the book." Sister Elizabeth, professor of systematic theology at Fordham and a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, was on sabbatical, but issued a statement in response early Oct. 28. She said she read the committee's statement with "sadness." She also said she was "disappointed" in the way the committee addressed its response, pointing to the process the bishops undertook, the content of their message and the result of their findings. "I want to make it absolutely clear that nothing in this book dissents from the church's faith about God revealed in Jesus Christ through the Spirit," she said. The bishops noted in their statement that Sister Elizabeth explained in her response that her book expresses the Catholic faith "in different words but with the same meaning." While commending Sister Elizabeth "for her stated intention to help the church progress in her understanding of divine realities," the bishops go on to say that the book "fails to fulfill this task because it does not sufficiently ground itself in the Catholic theological tradition as its starting point."

Link (here)

Murdered Jesuits Case Still Unsolved

Fr. Godofredo Alingal SJ

1981, April 13: Fr. Godofredo Alingal, SJ, parish priest of Kibawe, Bukidnon.  Shot in his convent by three suspects. One acted as lookout, two proceeded to his room. He was shot as soon as he opened the door, according to an account published in the book, “That We May Remember” published by the Promotion of Church Peoples’ Rights in May 1989. The Bishop of Bukidnon in 1981, Bishop Francisco Claver, SJ, said, “We start with this one fact: If there is anything certain in the many uncertainties that surround the murder of Father Alingal, it is this: He was gunned down because of his unflinching proclamation of the Gospel of Justice.”

Link (here)

Jesuit Scholastic Weighs In

In a recent post at In All Things, the blog of America Magazine, Tom Beaudoin asks the provocative question: “What if ‘Occupy Wall Street’ could be attempted in the Catholic Church?” What could lead to such a movement in the Catholic Church? He muses on the reasons in the following way:
Link (here) to Jesuit Scholastic Nathan O'Halloran's lengthy piece.

Ex-Jesuit Theologian John Giles Milhaven

You don’t need to be a professional philosopher to recognize that these are what logicians call non sequiturs: arguments in which the conclusions don’t follow from the premises. The fact that something is considered modern tells us nothing about its goodness or evil, let alone whether it conforms to the truth found in Divine Revelation. It also produces very strange arguments such as the claim made in 1968 (of course) by the ex-Jesuit theologian John Giles Milhaven, that “modern people” (whoever they are) by virtue of their “modernity of spirit” (whatever that means) enjoyed a type of “standing dispensation” from God to pursue what they “feel” to be good.

Link (here) to Crisis Magazine

Seattle University Is Not Controlled By The Oregon Province

Seattle University won't be financially liable for lawsuits filed against the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesuits, said President Stephen Sundborg, S.J., in his State of the University address. In January of 2009, a lawsuit was filed against the Oregon Province of the Society of Jesuits for sexual abuse against Alaskan Native children. Sundborg was named as a defendant in the case, which sparked concerns as to whether Seattle U's assets were safe. Back in 2009, when legal charges caused the Oregon Province to file for bankruptcy, Sundborg included the following statement in an email to students, faculty and staff: "I want to assure you that Seattle University is not part of this bankruptcy proceeding. Seattle University is, and has been for more than 100 years, an independent Washington non-profit corporation. Seattle University is not owned, operated or controlled by the Oregon Province."

Link (here)

Which Jesuit High School is this? Go (here) to find out.

"Rebellion Manifesto" Author Receives Funding From Protestant Organization

Thomas Cartwright the Presbyterian founder 

My Fordham colleague Patrick Hornbeck (Theology Department) and I were awarded a grant in January 2011 from the Louisville Institute (Presbyterian)  (funded by the Lilly Endowment) to conduct a pilot study of "deconversion" among Catholics, and to begin to develop theological analyses of the reasons so many (even most) Catholics in the United States are marginally affiliated or non-affiliated with Catholicism as it is officially defined. This project will run from 2011-2013, and we intend to publish our findings in an article.

Link (here) to the personal website of Fordham University Theology Professor and America magazine contributor Tom Beaudoin 

Link (here) Tom Beaudoin's Rebellion Manifesto. More (here)  and (here)
.

From Tom Beaudoin's Project Description

This project joins fresh research in practical theology to the lived experiences of Roman Catholic laity who were once affiliated with the church and proposes to explore the process and the practice of “deconversion” in Roman Catholicism by undertaking a series of interviews with Catholic laity who have deconverted or are in the process of deconversion, as well as with pastoral workers whose perspectives on deconversion will serve as a basis for critical comparison; by observing in those interviews patterns that might help generate models that illustrate deconversion as a form of theological practice; and by correlating our findings with the limited scholarly literature on deconversion, which has relied largely on Protestant and evangelical churches. This research contributes to the

"understanding of lived Christianity in the United States by providing the beginning of a way to theologically appreciate deconversion in Catholicism,"

both in its own right and for the purpose of comparison with other Christian traditions.

Link (here) to the Louisville Institute website

Better Ways To Engage Contemporary Culture

"Are Events Such as the Vagina Monologues Essential to Gonzaga's Mission and Identity?"
Fall Family Weekend at the Gonzaga Socratic Club

(summary handout / video / Calhoun remarks)
In April 2011 Gonzaga University officially hosted a performance of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues.  The University placed some constraints on the performance of the play, such as restricting play attendance to University students, staff, and faculty.  Further, the organizers and administrators placed the play into an academic context by holding several related events during the week of the performance and a lecture one week later.

Sponsoring faculty, university officials, and others argued that performance of the play not only was permissible in the light of Gonzaga’s Jesuit, Catholic, humanist identity and mission, but that such a performance was central to or even necessary for an institution with Gonzaga’s identity.  For example, one commentator suggested that John Paul II’s call for “an impartial search for truth” (Ex Corde Ecclesia §7) demanded that Gonzaga address controversial questions and events with scholarly charity, and several defenders of the event cited Pope Benedict XIV’s charge to inhabit the place where the gospel confronts contemporary culture (Address to the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus).

At the October meeting of the Gonzaga Socratic Club, held in concert with Fall Family Weekend, Gonzaga philosophers Doug Kries and David Calhoun will argue that the official events surrounding the performance of the Vagina Monologues were academically deficient, because they avoided genuine dialogue about the strengths and weaknesses of the play as a vehicle for advancing Jesuit, Catholic, humanist identity and mission.  While acknowledging that there is reasonable disagreement about the mission value of events like the Vagina Monologues, Kries and Calhoun will argue that there are much better ways to engage contemporary culture and issues from a Jesuit, Catholic, humanist standpoint.
Link (here) to the  Gonzaga Socratic Club website
What is the Socratic Method? (here)

Whenever We Put Humanity Before Divinity

The history of the 20^th Century has shown that whenever countries violently suppress religion for the sake of human freedom (as they did in the heyday of atheist communism) the result was not only a forgetfulness of God, but a loss of human freedom as well.  Whenever we put humanity before divinity, we get neither right.

Link (here) to the full homily by Fr. Aaron Pidel, S.J.

God’s Grandeur

Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

Before the Puritans, the Presbyterians and the Transcendentalist, there was John Calvin and his counsel to find God in the “Book of Nature” which parallels other sacramental religions. The Jesuit poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, in the poem “God’s Grandeur,” penned the following vision of nature fraught with the divine: 

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God/It will flame out, like shining shook foil/It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil/Crushed.”

Link (here) to read the full article at MercatorNet

He Founded A Church To Teach All Nations In His Name

Fr. Fredrick Copleston, S.J.

Fr. Fredrick Copleston, S.J.  found in the Catholic Church, an authority that he eventually recognized as emanating from the will of Christ. He writes: "It seemed to me that if Christ was truly the Son of God and if he founded a Church to teach all nations in His name, it must be a church teaching with authority, as her Master did. Obviously one might deny that Christ was the Son of God, and one might reject the claim that he founded a Church. But if these two claims were accepted, it seemed to me that in spite of all its faults the Roman Catholic Church was the only one which could reasonably be thought to have developed out of what Christ established."

Link (here) to the full article by William Doino, Jr. entitled A JESUIT AND HIS FAITH: PART I—MEMOIRS OF FREDERICK C. COPLESTON, S.J. (1907-1994)

Novices in the Society of Jesus:Antonio Valentino, S.J. and the Novitiate at Novellara, Italy
by Fr. Peter J. Tongi, S.J.  Go read the very interesting essay  (here)

When The Last Remaining Jesuit Leaves

When John Langan came to Georgetown University in 1975 as a young Jesuit priest, he was one of 112 brothers from the Catholic order on campus. Jesuit Robert Drinan, a Massachusetts Democrat, was in Congress, and Jesuit John McLaughlin had recently been in the West Wing advising Republican President Richard Nixon. Today there are barely half as many Jesuits at Georgetown, the order’s flagship university. Gonzaga, a Jesuit high school in Northwest Washington, is down to 17, compared with 43 in 1970. There’s talk that St. Aloysius, a Jesuit parish in the District known for its social justice efforts, could close when the last remaining Jesuit leaves. And there are no full-time Jesuit staff members at the Washington Jesuit Academy, where the board chairman is Jewish.

Link (here) to First Things blog, First Thoughts the post is entitled The Archetypal and Declining Jesuits

Why Become A Jesuit?

If what's being offered is participation in the priesthood of Jesus Christ Himself, the ability to turn bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus, the ability to forgive sins through Divine power, the ability to call down the Holy Spirit... these things make those sacrifices not only worth it, but insignificant by comparison. But if what's being offered instead is no different from what you'd get at nearly any secular doctoral program in the country, why become a Jesuit?

Link (here) to a very challenging post at the Catholic blog, Shameless Popery.

Abandonment to Divine Providence

Ignatius Press has just come out with a new edition of Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s oustanding work of spiritual direction, Abandonment to Divine Providence. This work, written in the 18th century by a French Jesuit, has become one of the great classics of Catholic spiritual reading. Not only does it deserve a treasured place in each person’s library, but it is well worth revisiting at various stages of spiritual growth. 

The core of Fr. de Caussade’s approach is the insight that God reveals himself through the daily events, possibilities, restrictions, cares and sufferings of ordinary life, and that we can ensure rapid spiritual growth only by fully recognizing and accepting His merciful will in every situation. 

This, of course, is a common theme in all authentic Catholic spiritual direction, lodged deep in the mind of the Church. Some speak in terms of “resignation”, but Fr. de Caussade goes even further with the word “abandonment”, implying a relinquishing of our own wills in favor of a joyful perception of and total reliance on the will of God. His treatment of this topic is by far the most comprehensive we have in any one place.

Link (here) Catholic Culture for the full post.

Rausch To The Rescue

Fr. Thomas Rausch, S.J.

In "Occupy the Catholic Church!", while responding to a monumentally silly piece on the blog of the Jesuit weekly America, I wrote that "The Jesuits used to understand that 'practice-based theologies' is redundant; any true theology implies practice." (The author of the post Thomas Beaudoin is an associate professor of theology at Fordham University who lists "practice-based theologies" as his academic field.) I'm glad to say that there are some Jesuits who still do understand that true theology implies practice--and, just as importantly, what kind of practice true theology implies--and one of them is Thomas Rausch, S.J., the T. Marie Chilton Professor of Catholic Theology at Loyola Marymount University. Happily, his discussion of this fact can be found on America's website as well. In response to an article entitled "Beyond Catechesis" by Michael G. Lawler and Todd A. Salzman, Father Rausch laments that fact that Lawler and Salzman have no sense

Link (here) to read  the full blog post by Scott P. Richert at Theology and Practice

Fordham Theology Professor Tom Beaudoin Says Jesus, John The Baptist And Our Lady At OWS

John the Baptist this everyday theological authority in the Sacred Space area. To be sure, images of Jesus (and Mary) are on the altar, but I wonder if others find it interesting that in this improvisational spiritual space in which religious symbols and statements must sit pluralistically, John has his own sign, and as far as I know, Jesus does not (yet). Both figures (as well as Jesus’ mother, Mary, who also has her own pictures and statues at the Community Altar) are portrayed in Christian scriptures as prophetic people, invoking a divine vision and judgment on their social situation. It is easy to imagine any of them at Occupy Wall Street. Much harder to discern is who would be the first to take up drumming and which one would sport the OWS t-shirt first.

Link (here) to  Professor Thomas Beaudoin's full post at his blog entitled Rock and Theology, cross pollinated at America  magazine's In All Things (here)

The Darling Of Red China Communism Makes Film With Phoney Jesuit As Central Role

Zhang Yimou directs Christian Bale in The Flowers of War

The international trailer for Zhang Yimou’s war drama The Flowers of War (formerly 13 Flowers of Nanjing) has gone online.  Christian Bale stars as a Jesuit priest in a story about a group of people who take refuge inside a cathedral as the invading Japanese Imperial Army takes over Nanking in 1937.  If you want any further clarification on that plot, the trailer may not help you out.  Whereas most trailer we see provide some kind of narrative or over-arching theme, this one is a mish-mash of important scenes that don’t seem to have any particular order. 

In one scene Bale is acting heroic and responsible and in another he’s drunk and looking for whores 

and it’s tough to see how he got from A to B.  Yimou looks like he’s pulled off some interesting battles that almost look like he’s trying to blend the wuxia style of his Hero with the gritty war-is-hell cinematography of a movie like Saving Private Ryan.

Link (here) to Collider.com

Darling Comment (here)

The real story of Jesuit heroism of Fr. Robert de Besange, S.J. at the Nanking Massacre (here) Father saved over a 500,000 Chinese lives with his safety zones.
Who is Chiang Kai-shek? Go (here)

Who is Mao Zedong? Go (here)  

Read about the Chinese Civil War (here)

Read about the Chinese Cultural Revolution (here)

Read about the Chinese One Child Policy (here)
Blogger note: The Christian  Bale character is supposedly to be an American pretending to be a Jesuit.

Jesuit In The Wafer War

Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University said Catholics "should never become captive to any single party. Every four years, we're the swing voters who decide elections and we should treasure that." He said Catholic clergy should continue the tradition of not running for office and bishops should continue to speak on issues while avoiding partisan politics. Father Reese said Catholics must realize that appeals to Catholic theology and religious authority will not be persuasive to everyone in the political arena where there is a plurality of views. "Things like excommunication and denying Communion because of votes are not only stupid, but harmful to the goals," he said, because it gets the candidate off message and makes certain issues appear to be of interest only to the Catholic community and not the wider electorate.

Link (here) to the US Catholic 

"The Cathedral On The Prarie"

Holy Family Church survived the 1871 Chicago Fire but in 1990 the building was only narrowly saved from the wrecking ball, thanks largely to a stunt that raised $300,000 in five days hatched by a priest and a public relations executive. Since then the church has raised more than $5 million and restored much of the building's original elegance. Now the parish's current administrator, the Rev. Jeremiah Boland, said it is time to fix the front doors. "In the winter, it left such big, open gaps to the outside that we had to shovel out snow from the indoor vestibule," Boland said. "After the snowstorm last Feb. 2, we had three feet of snow to shovel out." Borg Construction has been removing layers of old paint, redoing old joinery and replacing outmoded locks on the doors, which are 12 feet 6 inches tall and nearly four inches thick. Made of Douglas fir, each weighs about 600 pounds. The doors have previously had only patchwork repairs despite their advanced age. That is perhaps a testimonial to the craftsmen hired by Father Arnold Damen after he founded Holy Family Parish in 1857. Damen, for whom the Chicago avenue is named, wanted the best and went looking for Old World craftsmen who had immigrated to Chicago. He found a German-trained sculptor who was carving cigar store Indians for a living and hired him to carve Holy Family's exquisite wooden statuary and altar. A Lutheran sculptor was hired to carve the church's much admired altar railing. Damen also commissioned the first stained glass windows in the city. What they built is sometimes called "the Cathedral on the Prairie." By the late 1980s, however, the church and the neighborhood around it were deteriorating and the Jesuits decided it was time to tear the building down. The Jesuit hierarchy said at least $1 million was needed for renovations, so Father George Lane, a Jesuit and architectural historian, started a fundraising group to meet a Jan. 1, 1991, deadline. By Christmas 1990, the group had only $700,000. Lane called a friend of his in public relations, Dick Barry, for help. Knowing that news editors are frantic for news between Christmas and New Years Day, Barry had Lane organize 30 parishioners to huddle in the bitter cold outside the locked front doors of Holy Family the day after Christmas. A press release said they had started a five-day, last-gasp vigil to reach the $1 million goal.

Link (here) to read the full article

Hold Your Nose

Go (here)

Father Jerald Linder, S.J. "Trial Delayed"

"We've had some settling snags and we're not going to be starting," said Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Vicki Gemetti. The reason for the delay is that defendant William Lynch's attorney, Pat Harris, with the Los Angeles-based law firm of Geragos & Geragos, is involved in another trial, according to Gemetti. "We don't have all the players so we need to reset it for a date that is actually going to work." The parties will now convene on Oct. 28 in Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose to set a new trial date, Gemetti added. Realistically, the trial could begin early next year, Gemetti said, adding that she was just guessing and foreseeing scheduling conflicts related to the holidays and vacations. "I'm just guessing ... but it's not an ideal [time]. I would expect, based on what I know from the courts, that it's probably going to be sometime next year." Lynch, 44, has been arraigned on one count of felony assault with intent to cause great bodily injury and one count of elder abuse under circumstances likely to produce great bodily harm or death. Authorities say he walked into the center's reception area the afternoon of May 10, 2010, asked to speak to Father Jerold Lindner. He said he had a death notification about a member of the priest's family and then allegedly assaulted him. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.

Link (here) to the full report.

Monumentally Stupid

But every once in a while, a publication runs something so monumentally stupid that it would be wrong not to say anything. That is the case with a blog post on "In All Things," the group blog of America, the Catholic weekly run by the Jesuits.

The post, entitled, "What If 'Occupy Wall Street' Could Be Attempted in the Catholic Church?", was written by Tom Beaudoin, a Boston College Ph.D. who is an associate professor of theology in the Graduate School of Religion at Fordham University, where (according to his website Rock and Theology—that's rock music, by the way, not Peter or the rock of our faith), "he teaches courses in practice-based theologies." The Jesuits used to understand that "practice-based theologies" is redundant; any true theology implies practice. Of course, that's not really what Professor Beaudoin means by this awkward phrase.

What he means can be found in the first sentence of his blog post:

While participating in the "Occupy Wall Street" protests in lower Manhattan, I have begun to wonder what would happen if Catholics took this model and applied it to their passion for and grievances with their own church.

Read the full post (here) by Scott P. Richert,  

America Magazine Blogger "Digs In" On Rebellion

A photo of the "Occupy" protest in Rome (here)

I have been participating in (Blogger Note: O.W.S. was originally and is still associated with the US Day of Rage!) Occupy Wall Street since 30 September (my first post about it is here), and was most recently on site at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan on Friday the 14th. (My post imagining Occupy Wall Street being applied to the Catholic Church is here, picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education blog here.)

Among other fundamentally irreversible influences in my life, it was my Catholic upbringing, Catholic religious education, and Catholic graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School and at Boston College, that laid the spiritual and intellectual groundwork for me to be able to recognize, in Occupy Wall Street, a possible shared work of corporal and spiritual mercy, a potential place for practicing solidarity, and a plausible habitat for more deeply and experientially learning and living love’s public name: justice.

Because of this background, I am drawn in particular to the practices and rituals that help those of us at Occupy Wall Street to appreciate and to try to act on reality. These actions and performances bear the movement’s theologies or spiritualities as much as any explicit statement on the part of any single person about what they do or do not believe.

Link (here) to read the full post at the Liturgical 
Press published / sponsored / financed  blog Rock and Theology

Link (here) to the cross post at America Magazine.
Go (here) to read Beaudoin's "Rebellion" rough draft from his early days and his associations at Voice Of The Faithful. 
Read about Occupy Wall Street and its Communist origins and supporters (here)
Read about the "Horizontal Mesh Tactics" used at Occupy Wall Street (here) 
Occupy Wall Street and its association funding provided by Ge0rge S0ros (here)  
“Occupy Wall Street”  Deface 9-11 Memorial Statue in Zuccotti Park  (here)

A Jesuit Responds To "The Rebellion Manifesto" At America Magazine

 Fordham Professor Tom Beaudoin

Did it occur to Professor Tom Beaudoin that the teachings of the Church are not designed to reflect what any society appears to want at any given time? Still, he imaginatively pits the “overwhelming majority (all non-ordained persons)” against “the small minority (the ordained).” I happen to be in the latter category, but I find the reality of being one of the ordained unlike the broad characterization offered by Professor Beaudoin does not pit me against those whom I am called by my particular vocation to serve. Having served on most weekends in local parishes for the last eighteen years since my ordination, I don’t find myself or the other clergy with whom I labor being pitted against the faithful. Rather, what I have found and continue to find in parishes across the country is that the People of God, the Body of Christ, whom I encounter, come together to pray, to celebrate and receive the sacraments, and ask God to help us reinforce our faith so that we may be worthy disciples of His Son. I do not see anyone from either segment of the Church as Professor Beaudoin describes it, “Looking at the world and the church in this moment” and declaring “that now may be some kind of privileged time for [OWS] action.” Beaudoin asks in oratorical fashion: “Will Catholics take it [i.e., OWS action] up?”

Link (here) to the full piece at Mirror of Justice blog by Fr. Robert John Araujo, SJ
Read the original "Rebellion" piece at America (here)

America Magazine Promotes Open Rebellion In The Church

While participating in the "Occupy Wall Street" protests in lower Manhattan, I have begun to wonder what would happen if Catholics took this model and applied it to their passion for and grievances with their own church. Imagine a group of Catholics whose deep care for the future of their church is matched by their sense of responsibility to name, protest and change what is intolerable about that church today: in the form of nonviolent physical occupation of spaces, in the form -- necessarily imperfect and unruly -- of democratic organization, in the form of continued open-ended articulations of visions of a different Catholic Church, without prematurely forcing the movement to take on a specific agenda. And yes, in the form of consciousness-raising and of direct action. This would be the Catholic version of the Arab Spring, to combat the long Catholic Winter.

Link (here) to rest of this disgusting article/blogpost/editorial by Fordham Religious Professor Tom Beaudoin at America's In All Things

Fordham Professor Tom Beaudoin Describes S@domy As "Real Life" Theology

Lot facing his "real life" theology

Catholicism has very little s@xual theology “from below." There are, in truth, more than a few resources that can inspire Catholicism to take grassroots LGB/T theologies more seriously, but one recent book that I hope will inspire a new kind of theology "from below" of Catholic sexual diversity is (Marquette University) sociologist Dawne Moon's book God, S@x and Politics: H@mosexuality and Everyday Theologies (Chicago, 2004). 

Moon looks at how everyday theologies appear in Methodist congregations trying to talk about h@mosexuality, and she builds a case along the way for everyday theology as the theology that matters most in people's ordinary lives. 

It seems to me that Moon agrees with (Protestant Anglican) theologian Jeff Astley's argument about the existence of an "ordinary theology" that motivates people on a day-to-day basis (see his book Ordinary Theology (Ashgate, 2002)). Both Moon and Astley show that in "real life," theologies come from and return to very personal experiences, and do not change by intellectual force alone, or even foremost. They have to do with the faith-sense people make of what they have endured in their lives. 

Link (here) to Fordham Professor Tom Beaudoin's full post at America Magazine's blog In All Things 
The Church's teaching on the subject:  Aquinas (here) , Catechism of the Catholic Chruch (here), (here) and (here)   Overview (here)

Loyola Management Company

The Society of Jesus (Jesuits), a Roman Catholic priests' religious order, owns and leases large tracts of real estate property in the Chicago area on behalf of Loyola University of Chicago. These investments are held by the Loyola Management Company, while a registered lobbyist with the City of Chicago has been appointed as the firm's president, according to Jesuit tax documents. An IRS Form for the year 2009 filed by the Loyola Management Company, located on 820 N. Michigan Ave. Chicago was signed-off by Wayne Magdziarz, the principal officer. He earned a salary of $213,766/year as an employee of Loyola University.

Tax documents filed by Loyola University of Chicago disclose on pg. 24 of 61 that Magdziarz is vice president of Capital Planning for Loyola and is a registered lobbyist with the City of Chicago. The Jesuit-sponsored Catholic university paid $199,924 in 2009 for lobbyist activism on behalf of the school.

Jesuit tax documents say, "during the fiscal year 2010, the lobbying activities of the University involved contracts with legislators and their staffs at the Federal, State and City levels. These contracts through office visits, phone conversations and large gatherings were principally for purpose of goodwill and for issues related to student financial aid and tax issues at the Federal, State and City levels."

The Jesuits hired two other lobbyists, employees of Loyola University, for services rendered, including Philip Hale, vice president of Public Affairs, a registered lobbyist with U.S. Congress and Senate, and the state of Illinois; Jennifer Clark, director of Community Relations, registered with the City of Chicago.

Link (here) to The Dallas Blog

The Fervent Atmosphere Of This Way Of Life

Bl. Peter Faber recalls the end that must determine all the actions and the order that must be present in them so that they remain regulated according to God. He indicates various practices for a new life that the exercitant ought to take up: [to dedicate] a quarter hour daily of examination of conscience before retiring “into perpetuity,” to devote a determinate time to prayer, to set for oneself fixed dates for confessing and receiving communion.  He insists that they continue educating themselves religiously, recommending to them that they do it with a Catechism.  He stimulates in them a desire for the salvation of souls.  The important thing is that, for the whole length of their life, they try to “walk along the way of salvation, ordering the spiritual life according to your state” (de grado vuestro).  So that the exercitant can more easily continue living in the practice of this ideal, he proposes in his “Instruction” various principles of perfection–a lovely bouquet of the fundamental truths of the Exercises.  By refreshing these principles through reading about “this way of life” and, above all, by assimilating them in prayer and holding them as a norm for the practice of daily life, they will keep themselves easily in the “fervent atmosphere” 

Link (here) to Fr. Aaron Pidel, S.J. and his blog post, On The Feast Of St. Francis Borgia

$498,568.00

The Jesuits declares to the IRS that the president of the college is exempt from paying income taxes, by saying,  

“Father Michael J. Garanzini, S.J. is a member of the Society of Jesus and has taken a vow of poverty. During Calender year 2009, the university paid compensation and benefits in the amount of $498,568 to the Society of Jesus, 

the founders of Loyola University of Chicago for his services.”

Link (here) toThe Dallas Blog

$379,363.00

According to the year 2000 Jesuit tax records, the Jesuits spent $379,363 for a month-long seminar to study “human sexuality” for “religious orders;” Linda Amaded, a registered nurse, received a payment of $67,500 for her services. 

1998 tax documents disclosed she received $95,000 in compensation. Tax Form 990 is quoted as saying the expenses are for,  

“the organization conducts a month-long program offering tutoring, teaching seminars and complete library in the study of human sexuality of religious orders.” 

Link (here) to The Dallas Blog

Two Kinds Of Jesuits One For Life, The Other.................

Fr. John Hardon, S.J.

Fr. John Hardon, S.J.  on the de-Christianization of the world.

As an objective viewer looks at the modern world, what does he see? And this is especially in nations like our own. Speaking at the end of a special synod, again Pope Paul VI told the assembled bishops that the world today is in a large measure a Godless and Christless world. 

Said the Holy Father, "In many parts particularly among the young the Christian faith is almost unknown." Why, because of the widespread dissemination of atheism. 

Why because the process of secularization has gone so far that evangelization has to be begun all over again in nations that were once professedly Christian and even Catholic. But, "even where the presence of the Church has previously been very strong, only a small number take an active and full part in the life of the Church." John Paul II., December 1991.We don't begin to begin to understand how desperately faith in the Real Presence must be restored unless and until we realize how widely and deeply one once Christian nation after another has become de-Christianized. What are just some symptoms of this widespread de-Christianization? The almost universal legalization of the murder of the unborn, and not just of the unborn, but now as we know in our country, of those being born.

I never thought I'd live as a member of the Society of Jesus, to read of one of my own colleagues (Fr. Robert Drinan, S.J.) publicly at length defend what is being called partial birth abortion, but is shameless infanticide.

What are some of the symptoms of the secularization of our culture? The breakdown of family life to the point where in some countries divorce is automatic on the request of either one of the married partners. How do we know that one country after another is becoming paganized?

In the all but universal practice of contraception as an accepted way of avoiding the responsibilities of child rearing and, especially, in affluent nations like our own. In the growing practice of murdering the aged and those who are suffering physical pain. 

All of this and much more gives us some idea of how widespread has been the secularization of the modern world. 

Link (here) to The Real Presence

Washington Donates Two Million Dollars To Fordham

Denzel Washington has donated $2.25 million to Fordham University, his alma mater.  The university said Monday that

Washington has given $2 million to endow the Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre, and another $250,000 to establish a scholarship for a minority undergraduate student studying theater at Fordham. Phylicia Rashad, who played Clair Huxtable on “The Cosby Show,” has joined the school’s faculty as the first Denzel Washington Chair in Theatre. 

Washington cited the late Bob Stone, who was a theater professor at Fordham, for inspiring him.

Link (here)

If I Were Dying

Fr. di Antonio Spadaro, S.J.

"Remember that I will die soon is the most important tool I've ever met to make the big choices in life": these are the words that Steve Jobs delivered June 12, 2005 in a famous speech to the graduates of Stanford. This "commencement address", was a unique opportunity for him to tell himself. Re-read this speech on the day that Steve Jobs has left this earth is probably a good way to honor him. And Steve is right. His words echo those of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, who believes that one way to make a good choice in life is to do "as if I were dying, and so smooth, I'll believe my decision ( Spiritual Exercises, 186). Death is not the case of Ignatius and Steve a bogey, but the finding that the fears, the futility and embarrassment disappear before the thought of death and what really counts is what is really important for us.I do not know if Jobs was a believer. From this discussion it is not claimed much. Here I simply speak of the inner disposition to make meaningful choices in life, focusing on what matters. No man, believer or unbeliever, can make choices in life thinking of himself as immortal.

Link (here) to Italian Jesuit di Antonio Spadaro, S.J.

An “Abuse” To Be Tolerated

"Save the altar girls.” The prestigious and influential American Jesuit journal, America, which has always been one of the most liberal examples of “Made in the USA” Catholicism, is now mounting a campaign to save the altar girls, who have been penalized by parish priests favoring males as “potential future priests.” The Jesuits, whose journal articles have not gone unnoticed by the Vatican, say that serving mass is not a sacrament, and not even a ministry. It is simply a “service” that is open to all - even to lay people. The issue of altar girls is, in fact, purely “pastoral.” The first altar girls appeared in the most “progressive” countries, such as the United States, Holland, and France immediately after the Second Vatican Council. Until 1994, the Vatican considered this “opening” an “abuse” to be tolerated. For girls to enter the space of the altar means the end of any attribution of impurity to their sex; it means that they too can have this important formative experience in religious education, a different focus than liturgy, and an approach to faith through its heart.

Link (here) to Inside the Vatican to read the full article 

Got Any Ideas For The New President Of America Magazine?

Recently Father John P. Schlegel, S.J.took over reigns at America Magazine as President and Publisher. Take the opportunity in the comment box to give your own creative ideas on ways to make America a better vehicle for the Jesuit mission. Such as story ideas, new writers, new directions and maybe more importantly constructive criticism.

Thumbs Down For The Movie "Bridesmaids"

America the Jesuit magazine of record has just published an extremely positive review of "Bridesmaids". Bridesmaids is a revolting, lurid and ought to be categorized as soft-core p@rnography. 

An excerpt from the article.

Bridesmaids has been perhaps the biggest surprise of the early movie season, both a critical and commercial success. The film was made for around $30 million, but it has already moved past the $100 million mark in its first month of business and has set up Saturday Night Live star Kristen Wiig—who also co-wrote the screenplay—as a major comedic force. What’s most intriguing about “Bridesmaids” is that it seems to have single handedly redefined the “chick flick,” a heretofore derogatory term, almost always employed by male moviegoers and critics who see their masculinity threatened when a problem on screen isn’t resolved by blowing something up. “Bridesmaids” succeeds by liberally borrowing from the (up to this point) exclusively male-driven genre of the gross-out comedy and demonstrating not only that woman can be just as gross as men, but can do so while maintaining depth and intelligence as well.

Bridesmaids is a total rip-off of the old Tom Hanks movie "Bachelor Party" with plagiarized scenes from other shows and movies, for example a Brady Bunch scene was used depicting the fictitious George Glass  in this movie. This movie was so gross and morally repugnant that I can not even write about them because they are so offensive.

I want to point out the final quote of this review.

In the end, “Bridesmaids” becomes more than a summer vehicle and moves into a comedic meditation on the grace of friendship and the building of community.

This quote is a lie.

Link (here) to the full review at America.

Link (here) , (here) and (here) to more accurate descriptions of Bridesmaids.
Movie clips (here) and (here)

Link (here) to read a post by Fr. James Martin, S.J. on this specific America article.

“Lefebvrism of the the Left” At America Magazine

This from Fr. Z at What Does Prayer Really Say?

The Jesuit run America Magazine has an article by Paul Philibert, O.P. about the “pro multis” issue. A Dominican writing for Jesuits about liturgy.  Hmmmm. I have written about this issue quite a few times.  ........He argues that people are used to the lame-duck translation, and therefore we shouldn’t change it.  

That is “Lefebvrism of the the Left”.  People are used to vices.  

People were used to the way the Mass was before the Council.  None of that made a difference back then.  The translation of “pro multis” was simply wrong. It had to be changed. He argues from the same old tired arguments about Scripture and from guesses about what Jesus really said.  Fail.  

Translation of liturgy is not the same as translation of Scripture. He  doesn’t deal with the Church’s previous explanations of why the Church says “pro multis” and not “pro omnibus” during the consecration. 

He accuses Pope Benedict of a pre-Conciliar mentality, actually being against the Second Vatican Council’s ecclesiology and he suggests that Pope Benedict doesn’t care about “evangelization”. He seems to be daunted by the possibility that he may have to explain what this means. He suggests disobedience.

Like (here) to Fr. Z's full piece entitled, America Magazine article about “pro multis” in the corrected translation.

 

A Jesuit Misunderstanding

When President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, his widow, Jacqueline, asked Archbishop Philip Hannan to deliver the eulogy because of his close personal relationship with the president, which dated back to the 1940s.

Then-Father Hannan became friends with Kennedy by smoothing over a misunderstanding that Kennedy had with a Jesuit priest.

He also officiated at a quiet reburial of two Kennedy infants in 1964 so their bodies could be near their father's in Arlington National Cemetery.

Link (here)

How Can Cohabitation Of Unmarried Men And Woman Improve Ones Spirituality?

The Jesuit Volunteer Corps is a full-time Roman Catholic volunteer organization affiliated with the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, that has been placing volunteers in organizations and agencies for over 50 years. And what I mean by full-time, these volunteers are people who are usually recent college graduates who will take a full-time staff position in a grassroots human service agency or inner city school or any place that works with people in need.

This year there are over 300 volunteers domestically in the United States and we have over 50 overseas in seven different countries. The types of agencies and organizations where we place these volunteers run the gamut.

We've got, as I said, the schools, AIDS hospices, employment services, economic development, housing, refugee services, services to developmentally challenged persons, women's services, youth work, and just about anything else that there's an agency serving a need, we have a Jesuit volunteer usually affiliated with them.

In addition to the really 40-plus hours a week of service, because again they serve as a staff person in the agencies, we also have a formation program that consists of a series of retreats and workshops that deal with not only the personal spiritual lives of the volunteers but also a reflection on their experiences,

We place them together in each location in intentional communities so that the volunteers living in a particular locale live together. They share meals.

They live in a neighborhood that’s very similar to those, the people that they're working with. how to process this experience of meeting the needy and the poor on a daily basis and really reflecting on the causes, what put these folks in this situation. There is a small cost to the agencies in terms of the volunteers receive room and board and health insurance just in order to live for the year. 
 Link (here) to the full speech by  Kevin O'Brien President of Jesuit Volunteer Board.