Radical Disobedience

Pope Francis has approved the decision taken by the Jesuit’s superior general, Fr. Adolfo Nicolás and five other members of the Jesuits’ international council to dismiss Fr. John Dear for being ‘obstinately disobedient to the lawful order of Superiors in a grave matter.’ 

Fr. Adolfo Nicolás states, Fr Dear “was duly informed … that his failure to obey the command that he return to the specified house of the Order by a specified date would be cause for his dismissal from the Society of Jesus.” 

 Fr John Dear is famous in the USA for his protesting  a wide range of issues, including U.S. policies on Latin America, nuclear weapons development, and the cooperation of Jesuit educational institutions with American military recruiting programs such as the ROTC. He is also a regular columnist in the dissenting US journal, The National Catholic Reporter. In an emailed statement to NCR Monday, the provincial of the Maryland province, Jesuit Fr. James Shea said Fr. Dear was dismissed from the order as of Dec. 20 “following an extended period of dialogue between the leadership of the Maryland Province and John regarding his ministerial assignment and time he requested to discern his vocation. The process was initiated in the fall of 2012 after John declined to return to his Province to live in a Jesuit community while continuing his ministry of peace and social justice, including lecturing and writing’.

Link (here) to Protect the Pope to read the full story

Peace Jesuit Can't Make Peace With Provincial, Quits

Dear being arrested

This week, with a heavy heart, I am officially leaving the Jesuits after 32 years. After three years of discernment, I’m leaving because the Society of Jesus in the U.S. has changed so much since I entered in 1982 and because my Jesuit superiors have tried so hard over the decades to stop my work for peace, most recently, when my provincial ordered me to Baltimore but gave me no assignment and, I felt, encouraged me to leave, as many other superiors have done in the past. According to my provincial, the Society of Jesus in the U.S. has renounced its commitment to “the faith that does justice.” It’s also deepened its financial involvement with the culture of war, and decreased its work with the poor in favor of serving through its universities and high schools. Given this change and the lack of support and at times censure which I have endured over the years, and its debilitating effect on my health, I realized I could no longer stay. This decision was sparked three years ago when Archbishop Michael Sheehan of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe in New Mexico removed my priestly faculties because he objected to the prayer vigils for peace and against nuclear weapons development that I was leading at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of nuclear weapons. He had received many complaints regarding my peace efforts over the years from the local pastor in Los Alamos and other Catholics who work in Los Alamos building nuclear weapons.

After this, Fr. James Shea, my Jesuit provincial, the head of the Maryland Province, ordered me to leave New Mexico and return to Baltimore, to be near province headquarters. Instead of supporting my work for peace, he was embarrassed by it. I moved to Baltimore where the Archbishop there gave me full priestly faculties as a priest in good standing, though I was not given an assignment by my provincial. 

Over the course of several meetings, I felt he was urging me to stop my work for justice and peace and leave the Society. He said, for example, that nothing I have done over the last ten years has had anything to do with the Society of Jesus.

He explained that the Society of Jesus has renounced Fr. Pedro Arrupe’s groundbreaking vision of justice and the documents of the 31st and 32nd General Congregations, which call for a radical commitment to justice. 

It no longer advocates for justice or works for justice, he said. The Maryland Province has closed all its projects that serve the poor. From now on, he said, because the number of Jesuits is in sharp decline, U.S. Jesuits will only serve in our 25 universities and 25 high schools. This direction, it seems to me, differs vastly from the Order I entered in 1982, with its visionary call to “accompany Jesus as he carries the cross in the struggle for justice.” If I stayed, he said, I would have to work in one of the Jesuit high schools. In recent years, I’ve been saddened to see many Jesuits involved in the U.S. military, our schools deepen their involvement in the U.S. military, and Jesuits permitted to work even in places such as the Los Alamos Labs, West Point, and Abu Graib prison in Iraq. As far as I can tell, Jesuits who work for the military can continue their work. I’ve been especially saddened that the Jesuits at Loyola University in Baltimore have been allowed to hold an annual Mass where after communion, they bring their nearly 100 ROTC cadets onto the altar to profess to the Blessed Sacrament the ROTC oath “to kill the enemies of the United States.” I told my provincial that I consider this blasphemy, a mockery of Jesus and the Eucharist, but he said he had no problem with it. So after five months in Baltimore, as a priest in good standing, I moved back to New Mexico, went on a leave of absence from the Jesuits, continued my discernment, asked to leave and this week have now left the Society. I’m still a Catholic priest, but have no priestly faculties. I doubt that any U.S. bishop will give me faculties, because most also object to my work against war and injustice, so I’m not sure if I will remain a priest.

Read the open letter (here) at John Dear's website

Archbishop John Nienstedt, "I Have Been Impressed With His Scholarship, His Teaching Abilities And His Organizational Skills.”

Archbishop John Nienstedt

Jesuit Father Peter Ryan has been named the new executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs. The selection of a Jesuit spiritual director, teacher and scholar, who has defended Church teaching in his academic work, will draw renewed scrutiny of the U.S. bishops’ efforts to address problematic theological texts, while also recruiting academics to help advance the New Evangelization. Father Ryan’s primary responsibility is to serve the USCCB doctrine committee, which provoked a furor among some American theologians after it issued a 2011 statement strongly criticizing a popular undergraduate textbook written by Sister of St. Joseph Elizabeth Johnson, a theologian at Fordham University and the former president of the Catholic Theological Society. The USCCB announced on May 28 that Father Ryan would replace Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy, who had signaled his decision to resign earlier this year.

Archbishop John Nienstedt of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, the chairman of the doctrine committee, told the Register that Father Ryan first came to his attention “eight years ago, when we worked on the Vatican seminary visitation together. I have been impressed with his scholarship, his teaching abilities and his organizational skills.”

Archbishop Nienstedt also underscored the distinctive mission of the committee: “Unlike other USCCB committees, doctrine is less pro-active in terms of initiatives, serving, rather, as a resource to the bishops in clarifying doctrinal issues.” However, the committee has also reached out to scholars, organizing a March 2013 exchange between bishops and academics that addressed the need to promote the New Evangelization and focused on potential areas of collaboration.

“Father Ryan’s work as a moral theologian will prepare him for his duties as the director of the committee on doctrine of the USCCB. Much of the committee’s work will deal with questions emerging from the field of moral theology,” Brian Benestad, a professor of theology at the University of Scranton, told the Register.

“He is a very fair person who will listen carefully to what theologians have to say about their approach to theology and to the various theological issues that are being discussed today. Thinking with the Church will always be an important source of guidance for Father Ryan,” added Benestad, who has served with the Jesuit on the executive board of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

Link (here) to the National Catholic Register

The Vice President Visits A Jesuit Volunteer Corp Fundraising Event

Laura Magnotta met Vice President Joe Biden last week. Laura, a Scranton native working with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Washington, D.C., was at a fundraiser at the Franciscan Monastery.

"There were rumblings once we got there that the VP, Joe Biden, might be in attendance, but no one was sure,"

Laura wrote to her friends, including Johnny Mesko, a JVC volunteer in Cleveland, in an e-mail.

"The vice president's son, Hunter, was in the JVC in Portland, so there was speculation he might attend the event. "

At around 6:30, the Secret Service showed up confirming that yes, indeed, the VP was coming. We didn't know when though," Laura noted, adding,

"So it was my turn to be the greeter, and I turned around from hanging someone's coat up and I saw him - Joe Biden."

Link (here) to the Jesuit Volunteer Corp. website highlighting the event and (here) to the full original piece in the Scranton Times-Tribune.

Vice President Joseph Biden on Abortion (here) , (here) and (here)

St. Claude la Colombiere Jesuit Community Residence

The Jesuits of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus recently completed a breathtakingly modern new building on their northern Baltimore campus which marries the outdoors with the steel and concrete structure -- bringing nature and light into and throughout the 60,000 square-foot residence. This new residential community is designed to offer senior Jesuits assisted-living services while also enabling them to continue their ministries in and around Baltimore and throughout the Maryland province. The new St. Claude la Colombiere Jesuit Community Residence, designed by the architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, replaces the previous residence on the property which was built in 1961. Designed around a stone entry courtyard, the two-story chapel is the central design feature and the heart of this Jesuit community home. The facility provides rooms for the 38 members of the community along with a dining hall, commercial grade kitchen, living room, library, office and work space as well as recreational facilities. In the video piece, created by Halkin Photography, Jesuit Father William Rickle,superior for the Colombiere Jesuit community, and James Casciotti, socius for the Maryland province, discuss how the building ties in with the spiritual elements of Jesuit community life and, in turn, how the building fits into the landscape of the property.

Link (here) to Youtube

“Grow Where You Are Planted.”

Father Vince O’Brien, S.J. had some favorite sayings. Allow me to share a few. “Grow where you are planted.” When I see wild flowers blooming in inconspicuous places, I notice how they just grow where they are. They don’t seem to be looking for anyone’s approval. They don’t seem to care if anyone even sees them. They just are. They give glory to God by just being. Do roses feel guilty because they have thorns? Do dandelions care if no one likes them? Do they worry about dying in a short time? How much we can learn from flowers of the field. Just be you, the you God created you to be!

Link (here) to the article by Father Joseph Breighner at the Catholic Review a publication of the Archdiocese of Baltimore 

A Jesuit In Purgatory

Fr. James Pellentz, S.J.

One night the Voice made the Livingstons get up three times to pray for a certain soul in Purgatory. And when one of the girls began to think- "...after all the souls could have saved themselves and so they have deserved their pains! And besides the whole thing is exaggerated" when suddenly they all heard a voice shrieking: 

"Help! Help!" When asked what kind of help was needed it replied, "Prayers, for we are in excruciating torments!"

At that moment a human hand was burned into a nearby piece of clothing, leaving the spaces between the fingers not scorched. The entire family saw both the flame and the hand. Father Demetrius A. Gallitzin asked for and was given this extraordinary piece of clothing with the burnt hand impressed upon it, and later he often showed this "relic" while giving testimony to the supernatural events that occurred in the Livingston home. On another occasion the mystic Voice once asked Mr. Livingston to pray for three hours for the soul of a "Fr. Pellins" (Jesuit Father James Pellentz, S.J., Bishop Carroll's recently deceased Vicar-General).

Link (here) to the supernatural case of The Wizard Clip

What is Purgatory? (here)

Doctor of the Church St. Robert Bellarmine, S.J. on Purgatory (here) , (here) and (here)

Evils Of Trusteeism

EVILS OF TRUSTEEISM

By Fr. Gerald C. Treacy, S.J.

Archbishop John Carroll of Maryland

On opening the very first pages of the history of any of the older parishes in this country, we find mention made of the Board of Trustees. They were a body of laymen (in later times one or two clergymen might be found to enjoy membership), elected by the congregation to administer Church property and to look after the temporalities of the parish. They formed a corporation with a legal existence, created and acknowledged by the laws of the several States. Their duties were manifold, their rights extensive. The upkeep of the property of the Church devolved upon them. They hired the sexton, the organist, and choir-master, and what strikes us as strange nowadays, even the pastor. The bishop would give his priests faculties and they would go before the Board of Trustees and arrange with this body all the details of parish duties as well as other important incidentals, namely, salary, lodging, variety of Church services, and ministrations. If the pastor proved distasteful to the congregation or unsatisfactory to their elected representatives, the Board of Trustees, the bishop was notified that the services of a new priest were in requisition.

It may not be amiss to mention here parenthetically that in the Maryland mission all Church possessions were in the hands of the Society of Jesus, and when the Suppression came, the Fathers very wisely incorporated under the title of "The Gentlemen of Maryland," and handed down the property by will, till the Restoration, when, with the approval of Bishop Carroll, they came into their own again. Hence Jesuit parishes were free from the vexations and troubles of trusteeism, that afflicted the American Church in the first fifty years of our country's history.

The beginning of the system is traceable to two causes. The Catholics, a negligible minority in the different States, were influenced by the vestry system of the various Protestant sects, controlling Church affairs, administering Church property, appointing clergymen by the votes of a lay committee. Again, the civil law acknowledged the right of a congregation to hold property, insisting, however, that the trustees should be elected by all the members of the said congregation.

So Bishop Carroll tolerated the system, and his successors and fellow-members of the episcopate did likewise. Again it must be remembered that the great majority of American Catholics came from Europe, where the Committee of Control, or Fabriques, administered Church property. But while the European governments of the day recognized the peculiar constitution of the Catholic Church, in America it was by no means certain how the different States would deal with the legal conflicts that might arise between the bishop and the lay trustees. 

That the system was dangerous and liable to grave abuses, is patent to the most casual observer of the Church's development in the United States. Scandals and schisms were the outgrowth of the system, that darkened the early days of the American Church, and forced its first bishop to go before the civil power, and prove his right to govern American Catholics, and to appoint the priests whom he chose to labor in the field. Fortunately in these early times, by a decision of the Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, the bishops' supreme control over clergy and laity alike was acknowledged by the State. However, the trouble was not settled by this decision. Bishop Carroll suffered the humiliation of having his appointment of priests vetoed by the trustees of different churches, who insisted on keeping the pastors of their own choice, stubbornly maintaining that the right of appointing the clergy belonged to those who supplied the revenue.

Maryland Province To Conduct An Investigation

Fr. Louis Bonacci, S.J.

For the second time in six months, Jesuit authorities in Maryland are investigating allegations that a priest with ties to Scranton may have s@xually abused a minor. The Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus received information last month that the Rev. Louis A. Bonacci, S.J., may have inappropriately touched a minor in a family home between 1978 and 1982. During that time frame, Father Bonacci was serving as the assistant director of campus ministry at Loyola College in Baltimore. Father Bonacci served in the Scranton area, holding positions as a campus minister and adjunct professor of theology at the University of Scranton from 2003 to 2004and an adjunct professor at Misericordia University in Dallas in 2004. Starting in 2006, he served as the coordinator of spiritual direction for priests and deacons for the Diocese of Scranton, according to a statement released by the diocese.

Link (here) to read the full article at Citizens Voice

Adultry Awarness Week At Loyola Maryland

Spectrum, Loyola's GLBTA pride group, held S@xual Diversity Awareness Week this year from Monday, March 28, to Thursday, March 31. With help from moderators Dr. Charles T. LoPresto and Dr. Barbara  H. Vann, Spectrum officers and members planned the events for the week to raise awareness about the GLBTA community, especially on our campus and to encourage appreciation of the diversity that exists in our world. In 1995, three students approached Dr. LoPresto to ask him to moderate a pride group on campus. GLOBAL was formed as Loyola's first GLBTA organization, and three years later GLOBAL became Spectrum.  

"Many people have told me…that having a GLBT organization at a Jesuit university is very powerful and speaks to the progress that our particular university has made in accepting sexual diversity," said senior Andy Choi, president of Spectrum. According to Andy, one motive behind S@xual Diversity Awareness Week (SDAW) is so that "the GLBT community can feel especially proud about who they are and what they have become on Loyola's campus." ....... 

This event was intended to invalidate many misinformed notions about what it means for a gay person to have a family. On Tuesday, Dr. LoPresto moderated the 1 in 10 Forum which was based off of the statistic that for every 10 people, one person of the 10 is primarily or exclusively attracted to members of the same s@x. The t-shirt exercise was established by Dr. Kevin Atticks when he was a student at Loyola. This event made a visual impact on campus by showing how many people actually fall into the s@xual minority, whether or not they are out yet.

Link (here) to the full article at The Greyhound.

Rejection In July 1968

Maryland Province's Colombiere House

As head of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, which extends from North Carolina to Ohio, the Very Rev. Edward J. Sponga, 50, was, in effect, the Jesuit equivalent of a bishop. Last week Father Sponga quietly abandoned his vow of celibacy to marry Mary Ellen Barrett, 33, a nurse at a Roman Catholic hospital in the Philadelphia suburb of Darby, Pa., and the divorced mother of three children. In so doing, he became the highest ranking ecclesiastic of the 350 or so priests who have left the Catholic Church in the U.S. within the last two years in order to wed. The marriage came as a considerable shock to Father Sponga's fellow Jesuits, none of whom had any clue to his intentions. 

Born in Philadelphia, he joined the Jesuits at the age of 17, earned a doctorate in philosophy from Fordham, and became a strong advocate of reform within the society. In 1957 he was named head of the Jesuits' Woodstock College, where he helped develop a brilliant staff of teaching theologians, which included the late Father John Courtney Murray. 

Three years ago, Father Edward J. Sponga was named Maryland provincial, supervising 800 priests, lay brothers and seminarians. Sponga first met Mrs. Barrett several years ago, when she came to him for spiritual counseling. She was divorced from her husband last February and was granted custody of the children. Although automatically excommunicated for marrying, he insists that he is "still Catholic" in outlook and will continue to attend Mass. "I had to make a decision between those values I had lived as a priest and new values," he says. "It was a question, basically, , of what I wanted as a person. It's not that I reject the values of the priest hood." Nor does he reject the value of celibacy. "I can see many difficulties," he adds, "if priests tried to operate as married men."

Link (here) to the full July 1968 Time Magazine article.

Photo of Fr. Edward J. Sponga, S.J. (here)

Was Removed From All Ministries

Maureen Locher, from the Maryland Province, said Neil McLaughlin, now 82, was removed from all ministries and barred from practicing or describing himself as a priest publicly in 2006, two years before the recent allegation. That action was taken after the Province had reviewed McLaughlin’s record and discovered a much earlier allegation of s@xual misconduct that apparently had not been acted on, Locher said. The entire first incident occurred before the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued its “Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.” The charter was a response to the priest s@x abuse scandal that started in Boston and swept across the nation. Coupled with new mandates from the Vatican, it was designed in part as an answer to numerous allegations that bishops had concealed the problem by reassigning accused priests rather than removing them from duty. Locher noted the Jesuits are technically not bound to the charter since they are not diocesan priests, but they follow it.

 Link (here) to read the full article at the Times Leader

There May Be Other Victims

Jesuit officials in Maryland are looking into allegations that a Jesuit with ties to Scranton Preparatory School, the University of Scranton and St. Thomas More Church in Lake Ariel s@xally abused minors while in Scranton. The Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus, in a news release, said it was seeking information about possible "abuse of minors" by the Rev. Neil McLaughlin "during his ministry in Scranton." According to Jesuit officials in Maryland, the Rev. McLaughlin has "disclosed that there may be other victims of similar s@xual misconduct in the Diocese of Scranton." The Rev. McLaughlin taught at Scranton Prep from 1961 to 1983 and held various administrative jobs with the Alumni Association at the University of Scranton, including Alumni Chaplain from 2002 through 2006, the news release said.

Link (here) to read the full story

Cristo Rey Financials

Cristo Rey Baltimore

Upgrades made during a $7.4 million renovation were on display Tuesday night at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, in Fells Point, where students have a new library, suites for college counseling sessions, updated classrooms and high-tech laboratory space. 

The school, a coed college-prep academy for low-income Baltimore students sponsored by the Maryland Jesuits, has an enrollment of 320; families pay tuition of $550 to $2,500, based on income. 

The upgrades were paid for by private donations, including a $1.2 million gift from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation and $500,000 each from Mary Catherine Bunting and the Charles T. Bauer Foundation.

Link (here)

Jesuits And 40,000 Pounds Of Tobacco

Newtowne Neck was home to the Piscataway Native American Tribe and their ancestors for many centuries before its settlement by the colonists. The property, Newtowne Neck, is the site of the first settlement in Maryland after the original settlement in Saint Mary’s City. The original colonists landed on St. Clement’s Island in 1634. In 1640, William Bretton was granted 750 acres from Cecelius Calvert for the Newtowne Neck tract. In 1668, the Society of Jesus acquired the property from William Bretton in exchange for 40,000 pounds of tobacco. William and his wife, Temperance, donated one and one-half acres of their property in 1661 to the Society of Jesus to established (pictured) St. Francis Xavier Church and Cemetery. The property was maintained by the Society of Jesus until they withdrew from the land in 1967 to work in other areas. 

Link (here) to the original State of Maryland website

Jesuit “We All Think We Are Good Preachers”

A Jesuit priest and liturgist is keynote speaker for the 2009 Archdiocese of Portland Assembly in November. The gathering convenes priests and pastoral councils.

Father J-Glenn Murray, director of the Office for Pastoral Liturgy in the Diocese of Cleveland, speaks at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 20, at St. Pius X Church in Portland.

Father Murray, tall and with a graying beard, knows how to captivate an audience. He has a deep, commanding voice and a background in theater. Often, he aims to help priests improve their preaching.

“We all think we are good preachers,” he told a convention of priests in Florida. “But if we were all good preachers, then people would not be asking for better preaching. So we are probably not the wonderful preachers that we think we are. So we always stand in need of reminding.”

He’s been a member of the Maryland Province of Jesuits for 40 years and was ordained a priest in 1979.

Father Murray has been a parish priest, a campus minister at Duke University and vice principal at St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, the oldest black Catholic high school in the western hemisphere. He holds a doctorate in liturgy from the Catholic Theological Union.

Since 1989, he has worked in liturgy for the Diocese of Cleveland, and has directed the office since 1995. He’s taught at seminaries and has lectured widely.

Link (here) to the original piece in the Catholic Sentinal

342 Years In Service To Our Lord

St. Mary's County Sheriff Timothy K. Cameron unlocked the pine and oak doors of the rebuilt Brick Chapel last weekend in Historic St. Mary's City, reversing the actions of the county's first sheriff, who locked the original doors under orders of the royal governor in 1704.

After living side by side with Catholics for years under the rule of the Calvert family, Protestants in the colony of Maryland led a revolution against the third Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert, in 1689.

England appointed royal governors who moved the colony's capital to Annapolis in 1695, and under "An Act to Prevent the Growth of Popery within this Province," the Brick Chapel and other Catholic schools and churches were locked nine years later. "It is nice to have the sheriff here with us and thank him for this time opening the church," Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl told the nearly 200 people gathered in front of the chapel Sunday. Wuerl said that the unlocking of the rebuilt $3.2 million chapel, after about 15 years of fundraising and historically accurate construction, was a historic moment and that people should take pride in the settlers' "vision and their foresight and their courage." The settlers worked to "establish a society, a civil community, in which everyone is free to worship who they chose," he said. The rebuilt structure is a "visible, tangible testimony to the great human, inalienable right that comes to us simply because we are alive," he said.

Jesuits built a wooden chapel first, not long after the Ark and the Dove ship brought 150 settlers to Maryland in 1634. That chapel burned down in 1645. The Calvert family took charge of Maryland in 1660 with the restoration of King Charles II and, in 1667, built a brick Roman Catholic chapel. After the Brick Chapel was locked, Mass was held in the priest's house nearby.

But the Jesuits dismantled the chapel so that the bricks could be used to build a manor house at the St. Inigoes mission. They sold the property, which also had a cemetery, to a farmer, William Hicks.

"The first time I saw it, it actually brought tears to my eyes," said the Rev. Edward Dougherty of St. Ignatius Church in Port Tobacco.

He described the settlers' actions as "the experiment that was derailed a bit but has never stopped and has grown to what it is today." Silas D. Hurry, curator and director of the archaeological laboratory at Historic St. Mary's City, said that great efforts were made to reconstruct the chapel as it was built in 1667.

The current chapel stands on the foundation of the original, which is five feet deep. The bricks were created from local clay and hand-carved to hold mortar to give the appearance of stone. He said the outside appearance was fashioned based on texts of Jesuit structures of the time.

Peter Himmelheber, a blacksmith and a docent for History St. Mary's City, used tobacco tools to create the four-foot-tall cross on top of the church. He said he scrounged iron from various places to forge the hinges and locks for the doors.

Even the scaffolding was historically correct, with ropes and wooden planks that were secured into the building, leaving holes in the facade. "To see that was amazing," said Sara Wigginton, a Leonardtown resident who attended the opening with three generations of her family. "It was a beautiful, inspiring day." Loren Santa Maria of Lexington Park said watching the doors open was "breathtaking." "It is a rebirthing, helping to bring back the roots of Christianity as a whole," he said. "It represents the freedom of religion from the crown. It is important for us to remember that." Fifteen years ago, when the Rev. Francis Early joined Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Bushwood, he attended a Mass at the chapel's site off Route 5 in Historic St. Mary's City.

He said he thought that in his lifetime he would see only the chapel's ghost frame, the bare-bones representation of the original structure. As he gazed inside the chapel, which smelled of fresh paint, he said, "I never thought I'd live to see this."

Money is still being raised to furnish the chapel. It will be open to the public as construction allows, and a visitors pavilion will open next summer.

Link (here)

$56,900,000.00 On A 319 Year Investment

When the Maryland Department of Natural Resources took title to 1,700 acres in St. Mary's in late April, the state was taking over land owned by the Jesuit Order of the Roman Catholic Clergymen for hundreds of years.

The Jesuits needed money to fund medical care for its aging members, and the state, which is aiming to protect waterfront land from development, paid $15.8 million for 910 acres at Kitts Point in St. Inigoes and $14 million for 790 acres at Newtowne Neck in Compton.

The Jesuits allowed farming on the lands for generations and some houses even went up. Now that the state has ownership of the two tracts of land, what happens to those tenants? There is a house on the water at the end of a gravel road in Newtowne Neck. There are barns and six houses on the land at Kitts Point. Both properties are peninsulas. Tim Brower, Eastern region administrator for the land acquisition and planning division of Maryland Department of Natural Resources, said the farming leases there will be extended for at least five years.

The overall purchase of Jesuit properties in St. Mary's, Charles and Cecil counties was 4,473 acres for $56.9 million.

The deeds for the two properties in St. Mary's date back to 1793, but the church has had ownership of them since shortly after the founding of Maryland in 1634.

Link (here) to the full story.

$10 Rent

In 1974 during a run of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Mr. Rothman watched the blaze and was determined to rebuild. He later appealed to the Rev. Anthony Zeits (RIP 1995), treasurer of the Jesuit Maryland Province, for the order's nearly vacant Loyola High School and College buildings at Calvert and Monument streets.

"He argued that we try to affect audiences in the same way you try to affect your congregations, for the betterment of humankind," said Peter Culman, Center Stage's longtime executive director, who accompanied him that day. "He said, 'Father Zeits, consider giving us the building free.' "

The deal went through - and the religious order agreed to relinquish the property for a $10 annual ground rent.

Link (here)

Just A Little Money For Tabacco

For centuries, the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus earned money for its ministries by renting out land to tobacco farmers and others in Southern Maryland. Then the tobacco industry died, Washington's suburbs swelled, the Jesuit priest population aged and the land became more valuable than the rent. But the Jesuits did not want to sell their large parcels of rural, undeveloped land to just anyone. Then state officials came along and offered to buy and protect it.

Link (here)

Photo of a tobacco field