The Incredible! Fr. John McBride, S.J.

Digging foxholes to elevating the Host - a veteran's tale

By Ed Langlois

It is the feast of Corpus Christi, 1945. In a church in northwest Germany, Corporal John McBride unloads his rifle and leaves it in the pew. Haggard, he makes his way to the Communion rail and kneels, receiving the Body of Christ next to German factory workers and shopkeepers. Three weeks earlier, they had been the enemy. Now it is autumn 2007, almost Veterans Day.

Jesuit Father John McBride, 82, pushes a frail woman’s wheelchair into her room
at Laurelhurst Village care center in Portland. Though his gait is not as steady
as when a young soldier, his mind is keen. By contrast, the woman’s uncertain
memory ranges where it will. The priest listens patiently and she seems
grateful. He gently anoints her hands and places the Body of Christ on her
tongue with steady fingers.

“I’m a great believer in pastoral care,” the gray-haired Jesuit says. “Whoever your troops are, you take care of them.” After helping liberate Europe in the closing months of World War II, Corporal McBride would return to the Pacific Northwest and get a degree at Gonzaga University. When soldiers were needed for Korea, he would join up, leading troops into battle as a lieutenant. Caring for his wounded men, it occurred to him that he could help people even more if he were a priest. Born in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, he grew up on a cattle ranch in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. He learned to tend cattle and brave the elements.

His parents prayed the rosary each evening. The nearby town boasted a beer
parlor, a one-room school and a post office.

War broke out when John McBride was a young teen. He yearned to serve. He did not so much thirst for adventure, he says, as sense a call to duty. He graduated from high school in May 1943 and by July, before he had time to visit a recruiter, he was drafted and inducted. As 1944 was waning, he was a Private First Class, riding a landing craft across the English Channel headed for the northern shore of France. He was 19. In a muddy field near Le Havre, Private McBride showed his buddies the old ranch-hand way of bedding down in hay. It had been six months since D-Day. The Allies were driving the German Army east out of France and Belgium. Optimism was in the air. Private McBride and other soldiers expected a vigorous move into Germany. But a horrendous battle was yet to come. The German code had been cracked. But in mid-December, a furious Nazi offensive centered on the Ardennes Forest at the Belgian borderlands caught the Allies off guard. The Nazis’ aim was to capture Antwerp, surround British and U.S. positions, and then push for a favorable peace accord. The Germans, safely lodged in the woods, used a relentless artillery barrage to shove a salient at one spot in the long Allied line. On maps in newspapers worldwide, that created a bulge back west into Belgium, giving the battle its popular moniker. Into this crisis came Private McBride and other green troops from the 75th Infantry Division. Two regiments from another U.S. division were forced to surrender. The more experienced soldiers gave the young men one piece of advice: “Keep your a-- low.” The troops had been carried by boxcar and truck to the front. Unmanned German buzz bombers were flying overhead and dropping randomly. German artillery from the forest filled the air and landed with fatal thuds.

U.S. artillery fired back, a sound that made McBride feel hopeful. His rifle
unit fought skirmishes, tried to advance foot by foot, and sought to capture
German soldiers as a way to extract information about enemy positions and plans.
For more than a week, thick and low clouds kept the Allied air forces from
giving support. “An infantry platoon’s war is three hundred yards in front
of you,” Father McBride explains. “You hear very little about anyone
else. There is very little information about the master plan.” It was cold
and dangerous. The company scout was killed and a handful of Private McBride’s
buddies were hurt, including one who lost an eye. The Battle of the Bulge was
the bloodiest single event of World War II for U.S. forces. Fighting would claim
19,000 American lives. “Once bullets are fired, you’re not afraid,”
Father McBride says. “The adrenalin kicks in. Until the adrenalin kicks in,
you’re shi--ing your pants.”

On Christmas Day, the fog finally cleared. Torrents of B-17 bombers flew to hit the German positions, a supreme relief to the pinned-down American troops. Later in the day, the planes flew back, many of them dotted with bullet holes and sporting shredded tail fins. “Some of them were just getting by,” Father McBride recalls. By the end of January, the Allies had regained the lost ground and were pushing toward Berlin. The recent Ken Burns documentary on World War II included a section on the Battle of the Bulge. A Jesuit confrere sent a note to Father McBride joking that he saw him in the old footage. “We all looked alike,” Father McBride answered in an email. “Dirty, haggard and cold.” Once the tide turned in the Ardennes, Private McBride’s company was moved south by rail to a town near Strasbourg. There, he was promoted to corporal. On guard duty one night, he saw the sky light up with anti-aircraft fire and witnessed the downing of one of the first German jet aircraft. Had the Luftwaffe been able to develop more of the jets, the outcome of the war may have changed. “My company was chosen to handle situations that needed attention,” Father McBride says. The next stop was the Netherlands, where after the largest Allied air attack he ever witnessed, his unit crossed the Rhine the day after his 20th birthday. The troops liberated the medieval frontier city of Venlo. They then pushed into Germany. The battered unit was given a rest in balmy southern France, where chefs simmered canned meat rations in cognac and wine flowed freely. Father McBride recalls the warm bath and soft bed as heavenly. Flowered hills surrounded Nice. He purchased bottles of perfume to bring back to the girls in his high school class. By April, there was little German opposition left. Surrender came in May. Not long after, news arrived that Private McBride and others would go on a 30-day leave to the U.S. They shipped out. In New York, sultry actress Marlena Dietrich met the returning troops and ended up sitting briefly on Corporal McBride’s broad shoulder. He was to be among the first waves in a land invasion of Japan, which everyone knew would be perilous. At his parents’ ranch in August 1945, news came that Japan had surrendered. There were reports of a new kind of U.S. bomb that had forced the issue. “I couldn’t believe it,” he says of the war’s end. He left the Army in November 1945 and by the start of 1946 was enrolled at Gonzaga University on the G.I. Bill.He and hundreds of other men walked to classes in their fading pea coats and fatigue jackets. He recalls how professors like Jesuit Father Cliff Carroll could make even economics seem exciting. Memories of battles faded. At the same time, he recalled the hard realities of war. U.S. soliders on the move would temporarily kick civilians out of their houses and move in, raiding the larders and wine cellars. Most of all, he recalled his fellow soldiers, the ones who would have risked their lives for him. “Your buddies carry you through,” he says. “You’re all together. You’re doing the thing.” With that in mind, he joined the Reserve Officers Training Corps. He graduated, along with the first women students at Gonzaga, and then signed on to go to Korea, where tensions had flared with the Communists.He was now a second lieutenant, guiding a platoon of 40 men whose former leader had been killed. As a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, he had high status among the troops, even though he was only five or six years older.

He was firm and demanding, because he knew his men’s lives depended on it. But
he showed compassion and care. “You don’t eat until your troops are
fed,” he says. “You don’t bed down until your troops are bedded down.” Whenever there was free time, he prayed the rosary. The black was worn off
his beads.

In mid-October, 1950, his unit was part of the battle to hold the port city of Pusan. The company commander had already been killed and Lieutenant McBride had to step up. The troops were advancing at night. Flares would illuminate the sky to give a view of enemy positions. The Yanks were supposed to hit the ground when the lights went up, so the enemy would not pick them up in their sights. Liuetenant McBride was tired of eating dirt, so kept walking. That’s when a North Korean mortar shell hit. Witnesses say that if he had been on the ground, he would have died. As it was, shrapnel and dirt caught him in the face and gave him a concussion. The medic who came to his aid dragged him into a ravine and provided cover with his own body. The sky continued to flash. As he lay there, the groggy Lieutenant McBride could well have thought of the wounded men he had helped. He had written letters home to parents whose sons had died. Or maybe, flashing through his mind like snapshots, were images of camaraderie in a military unit. Perhaps he felt the worn rosary stuffed in his pocket. He thought of life as a priest and belonging to another kind of company. Days later, in a hospital, an Army nurse took the bar off of her own uniform and pinned it to his pajamas. He had been promoted to first lieutenant. A chaplain came by to hear his confessions.

When the priest asked if he was sorry for his sins, the young lieutenant
answered, “Hell, yes.” After he recovered, he had time in Tokyo to
wander and think. Commanders assigned him as aide to young U.S. Sen. Warren
Magnuson of Washington state, who was in Japan trying to sign maritime and
fishing treaties with the defeated power.

U.S. interests had pushed for no rights for Japan, but Lieutenant McBride heard Magnuson remind them of the Treaty of Versailles, which showed that nations who lose wars must be able to make a living, lest worse things come. He accompanied Magnuson in meetings with the likes of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Chiang Kai Shek. He left the Army for good in 1952 and soon had plans to enter the Jesuits. His father wept for joy at the decision.After ordination in 1961, he was a high school teacher and pastor in Fairbanks, Alaska, and a retreat leader in Portland. He was a parish priest in Woodburn before answering the call to work in a federal prison, a ministry he would carry out through the 1970s and 80s. Like a soldier, he says, a prison chaplain often needs to possess and teach the art of patience. He became highly respected among guards and prisoners alike, using the same firm but compassionate leadership he employed on the battlefield. He broke up fights and defused riots. “You can’t just wear a white hat,” he explains. “You have to follow regulations. But you can still be humane.” He saw to it that Muslims and prisoners of all kinds of other faiths “got a fair shake.” He retired, as regulations for certain federal employees require once they hit many years of service. From 1991 to 2003, Father McBride was a chaplain at Providence Portland Medical Center. He then started work at three Providence Elderplace sites and Laurelhurst Village. Not long ago, he met a man at the retirement home who had been a Marine in World War II. The man’s son had also become a Marine and had been killed in Vietnam. The father had never learned the specifics of the death, something Father McBride knows is vital for spiritual and emotional health. “He was grieving and grieving and grieving,” the priest explains. Father McBride wrote to the Marines and searched out the son’s company commander. Back came a three-page letter describing the chaotic battle situation and the death. It was a comfort to get some certainty.

In 1984, on the 40th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge, Father McBride went
back to the Ardennes for commemorations. He met several of the men he knew and
they searched for the spot where they spent that cold Christmas in 1944. It was
hard to find. What had been a surreal scape of rubble and dead animals was by
1984 covered with trees and houses.

There, he met a man from Venlo in the Netherlands. When he told the fellow he had helped liberate Venlo in 1945, the man embraced him with tears in his eyes. The friendships forged in the hell of war stand out in the aging priest’s memories. His best friend, a New York City fire chief, had always called him “the hick from Idaho.” Father McBride recalls with great pleasure when his old platoon leader asked him to preside at a daughter’s wedding. Most of his Battle of the Bulge buddies are dead now and fragile health has kept him from attending reunions of the 75th.

One man who served as an 18-year-old private in Lieutenant McBride’s platoon in
Korea calls the priest one of the best men he’s ever known. “He is more than
just a soldier to me, he’s a saint,” says Richard Shields, a 76-year-old
retired mail carrier who lives in Oshkosh, Wis. Though Lieutenant McBride
relentlessly kept his men in order, and the men chafed at times, Shields is
convinced that the priest saved many troops from being killed.

The combat tips, tempered in the Ardennes in 1944, included digging deep foxholes, keeping feet healthy and ducking heads low. It all came in handy because the fighting in Korea was rough. “I was so grateful to come out of there alive and I give him great credit for that,” Shields says. Somehow, the retired mailman recalls, Lieutenant McBride was tough and compassionate simultaneously. He would make sure everyone had food and a good place to sleep.

At reunions of the Seventh Cavalry, Custer’s old outfit, Shields came to admire
Father McBride even more as he learned about the priest’s ministry in parishes,
prisons and hospitals. “I’ve seen a lot of commanders,” Shields
says. “Father McBride is the very best.”

At a dinner table in the Portland Jesuit residence where Father McBride lives, the priest admits that he is in the “twilight” of his life. Though his years in the military were short by comparison to the rest of his life, they loom large on his list of satisfactions. “I served my country in wartime and I helped liberate Europe,” he says, placing a flat hand gently on the tabletop. “To me, that is very special. I had the responsibility of leading American troops in combat. That was a privilege.”

Link to original story (here)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Went To Jesuit Stoneyhurst

Not much about Holmes in Doyle book

08 November, 2007
By F.N. D‘ALESSIO, Associated Press Writer
"Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters" (The Penguin Press. 608 pages. $37.95), edited by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was famously convinced that the dead and the living could communicate, so it might be thoughtful of his shade to return to his native Edinburgh, Scotland, and have a chat with a current resident, J.K. Rowling.
Rowling wouldn‘t get much direct advice from the current volume, though, since it contains surprisingly little information about Holmes or how Doyle created him. What she would get would be a chatty 53-year chronicle of a hardworking writer-physician‘s climb out of genteel poverty to prosperity and world fame.
This presents some problems for the editors. Context, and the handful of her own letters that are quoted, reveal Mary Doyle as a remarkable woman — intelligent, fluent in both English and French, interested in her son‘s medical and literary careers, and politically astute. But she was still his mother; and Victorian men were famously reticent about what could be discussed with their womenfolk.

The schoolboy writing home from a Jesuit school in England (Stoneyhurst) and requesting turkeys, smoked tongues, sardines and candy turns out to be doing so because he had to spend holidays at school (where holiday meals were not provided); his family was too poor to provide him a ticket back to Scotland.
Because Doyle did his medical studies in Edinburgh, where he lived at home, there are few letters from those crucial years, when he studied under Dr. Joseph Bell, the
acknowledged model for Holmes.

On the literary side, Doyle‘s letters more often refer to the historical novels he regarded as his best work, rather than to Holmes, but there are amusing passages involving William Gillette, the American actor who grew rich portraying Holmes on Broadway.
Doyle‘s second wife, the young beauty Jean Leckie, appears more often in the letters because Doyle had formed an apparently platonic connection with her while Touie was still alive.
The editors of this volume are Doyle fans out to protect his reputation, so some matters are shrouded over. We learn of Doyle‘s noble efforts to free a wrongly convicted man in a real-life murder mystery, but nothing of his defense of (spiritualism) fraudulent mediums. And little mention is made of his credulity in the "Cottingley Fairies" hoax — something Holmes would have dismissed within two puffs of his pipe.

Link to orginal article (here)

Matteo Ricci, Geometry And China

One cup of coffee adds up to a place in history
Created: 2007-11-9 1:31:07
Author:Zou Qi and Winny Wang
A CUP of coffee and 400 years of history fell into place yesterday as China and Italy celebrated a landmark in world mathematics.The descendants of Xu Guangqi, Matteo Ricci and Sabatino de Ursis met up in Shanghai yesterday to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the translation of Euclid's "Elements." Xu Guangqi was one of the great mathematicians of China. He and the Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci helped by another Jesuit, Sabatino De Ursis, translated "Elements," one of the major works of mathematics and a big influence on Chinese scholars of the day.Yesterday, at the Shanghai Sports Hotel, Xu Chengxi, the 13th generation descendant of Xu Guangqi, Luigi Ricci, a 14th generation descendant of Matteo Ricci and Paolo Sabatini, a 16th generation descendant of Sabatino de Ursis got together.For the two Italians it was not the first meeting. By coincidence Paolo Sabatini, who is the cultural affairs director for the Italian Consulate in Shanghai, is a good friend of Luigi Ricci."In 1605, Xu Guangqi and Matteo Ricci jointly translated Euclid's Elements and the translation of the first six volumes was completed in 1607, exactly 400 years ago," Xu Chengxi said yesterday. "I am excited that our families could meet for the anniversary." Xu Chengxi is a descendant of Xu Guangqi's third grandson."My father was a teacher. About 50 years ago he had Xu Guangqi's tomb officially listed as an important historical site and donated the family tree to the Shanghai Museum - he realized maintaining these historical treasures was too much for a single family," he said.While Xu Guangqi had support from his family and won acclaim and honors early on, Luigi Ricci said his ancestor was misunderstood in Italy."Matteo Ricci's father did not want his son to become a priest but Matteo persevered and came to China as a missionary," Luigi Ricci said. "In those days the feeling in Italy was that anyone who traveled far from home should return with treasure." "But Matteo Ricci brought many gifts to China and returned nothing to Italy. He left all his belongings in China and was spurned by the public in Italy," Luigi Ricci said."After 200 years had passed Matteo Ricci's achievements were at last acknowledged by Italy and we are proud to have such a man in our family," said Luigi Ricci. As Xu and Ricci worked on the translation of Euclid's "Elements," Sabatino de Ursis joined them. After the translation of "Elements," to help the exchange of Chinese and Western science and technology, Xu Guangqi, Matteo Ricci and Sabatino de Ursis translated other key works such as Tongwen Suanzhi, Taixi Shuifa and The Theory of Measurement.Xu died in 1633 and was buried on the site that has become Guangqi Park. Xujiahui was named after him.
Link to original article (here)

Boston College Creates The Worlds Largest Department Of Liberation Theology

BC adds School of Theology, Ministry
By: Alexi Chi
Posted: 11/8/07For the first time in Boston College's history, three separate theological entities will pool their wide-ranging resources to form the School of Theology and Ministry. The union will allow BC to offer students more comprehensive opportunities for theological study and spiritual formation for the ministry. The School of Theology and Ministry combines the Institute of Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry (IREPM) and the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, which focus their energies on the development of lay and religious ministers, with the Church in the 21st Century Online, which is aimed toward ongoing faith formation and spiritual renewal for adults. At the helm of the School of Theology and Ministry will sit the Rev. Richard Cliford, S.J., acting president at the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. Cliford, who obtained his doctorate at Harvard University, has been teaching at Weston Jesuit since 1970 and has served as dean of the school in the past. The revamped school has been long in the works and will join BC in practice in the fall of 2008. "The STM was largely the vision of Father Leahy," Cliford said. "He had the vision of a large and well-resourced school of theology and ministry that drew on three already-existing entities and he felt that the whole would be greater than its parts because of the stimulating connection. I have always thought Weston Jesuit should be part of Boston College because it would benefit both schools." Cliford hopes to realize the vision of University President Rev. William P. Leahy, S.J., by creating one school out of three entities that is, as Cliford said, "unified in its programs and its administration, keeping the best of each one of the constituent members and bringing them to creative contact and making them better at what they do." The School of Theology and Ministry will be housed on property acquired by BC from the Archdiocese of Boston. In August 2006, BC purchased 18 acres of land as well as academic and administrative buildings on Brighton Campus. The school will move its operations to Bishop Peterson Hall and the St. John's Seminary library, which with the integration of the collections of both St. John's Seminary and the Weston Jesuit School of Theology libraries will become the STM library.The Weston Jesuit School of Theology will become the ecclesiastical faculty at BC; its addition to the School of Theology and Ministry will assist BC in becoming one of the premiere centers for theological education and spiritual formation for the ministry. Weston Jesuit School of Theology was affiliated with BC from 1959 to 1974, but left in order to obtain the ability to grant its students civil degrees. In becoming part of the School of Theology and Ministry, Weston Jesuit will be able to expand its mission in preparing men and women for the ministry as well as grant students degrees from a University with a $1.75 billion endowment and national prominence. "In a word, with the re-affiliation come resources," Cliford said. "We broaden our audience. Then we have the stimulation of the university environment with its many professional skills. We are able to give more support, financial aid, and housing to our lay students who will become ministers in the church or who will do studies in theology."Cliford also cited ways in which the re-affiliation will strengthen the mission of Weston Jesuit. The first of these was the School of Theology and Ministry's ability to reach a far broader range of people, pulling students from BC as well as adults who are currently continuing their education through Church in the 21st Century Online."Some of our demographic is fixed - we prepare men for priestly studies - but we would like to increase the number of lay students, men and women, and we would also like to be able to support any student, even if there is any financial need. We would like to be able to offer them as much support as we can," Cliford said.Cliford also looks forward to the strength that the collaboration will create. "Both the Institute and Weston Jesuit are very strong institutions. C21 is a very important resource, but smaller. What the Institute brings is a 36-year-old tradition of religious education, adult faith formation, pastoral ministry, and a terrific summer program. We'll gain a lot from combing these two schools," Cliford said. Church in the 21st Century, which reaches out to adults working and volunteering in Catholic parishes, will reap similar benefits from its new affiliation with the School of Theology and Ministry. "Becoming a part of the school is a very exciting prospect for us because it will give us many more resources to call upon when we draw our courses and give us a solid base for us to do our work," said Barbara Anne Radtke, program manager for Church in the 21st Century Online and an adjunct associate professor of the IREPM. Radke also expressed excitement at the prospect of sharing in the international reach of the School of Theology and Ministry. "IREPM works with people from a number of countries, and Weston also has that international outreach. Our courses have been received in 77 different countries, so it's very exciting in terms of the school being genuinely international in its scope and ability to have an impact in all things theological and ministry," Radke said. The school will not incorporate BC's theology department, which will remain at its current location in 21 Campanella Way. "We have always had cordial relations with the theology department. They do not, however, prepare people for the ministry. They research in theology. We are a professional school, practitioners," Cliford said. As he takes on his new role as dean of the School of Theology and Ministry, Cliford anticipates little conflict in merging the three entities. "There's obviously going to be a breaking-in period," Cliford said, "and we're simply planning for that. We don't anticipate conflict so much as getting each position right, and we're going to be as flexible as we can. We don't anticipate any major problems."
© Copyright 2007 The Heights

Link to original article (here)

18th Century French Jesuit Fr. Lavaur Records The Battle For Gingee

The battle for Gingee is vividly portrayed in volume XV of the “ Lettres edifiantes et curieuses “ written by a Jesuit priest Father Lavaur. “ On September 11, 1750 Bussy and d’Auteuil arrived at the scene of battle towards 7 o’clock in the evening. While the besieged opened fire in un-coordinated fashion French artillery contained them within their cover. When the moon had set, a detachment under the command of three officers scaled the hill of Rajagiri". It is not known how these men were able to clear the deep breach with its drawbridge, which defended the topmost boulder, an enormous natural donjon. Then towards 4 o’ clock in the morning, a loud cry was heard coming from the top of one of the mountains. “ Vive Le Roll”. It was Mm de Saint Georges, Veri and Le Normand who, followed by their troops had carried out the order they had been given. The attack then became general. M d’ Fauteuil had the gate of the citadel blown up. Terror spread amongst the defending Moors who fired weekly several times and then fled. In less than an hour one had become master of all.”

This how French conquest of Gingee is recorded.

Link to original article (here)

Blog Watch: Catholic United

From the Lunatic Fringe. Hat Tip: CatholicCulture.com

Catholics United
Visit this site http://www.catholics-united.org/.
DESCRIPTION
Catholics United is a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose professed mission is to promote the message of justice and the common good found at the heart of the Catholic Social Tradition. The group originally started as the Catholic Voting Project and incorporated formally as Catholics United in 2005. Catholics United supports legislation that pushes contraception and was a driving force behind the effort to expand SCHIP, which the Catholic Medical Association declared contained: “significant flaws (which would allow) SCHIP funds to pay for abortion, contraception, sterilization, all without the knowledge or consent of the children’s parents.” Catholics United manipulated Church teaching and launched a nationwide campaign to bully Catholics into believing that SCHIP was a "pro-life" issue, rather than just another government entitlement program.
Karl Keating's E-Letter further illustrates how Catholics United twists the truth in its attack upon Catholic Answer's Voter's Guide.
.p for Catholic Culture Insights today!
STRENGTHS

None Reported.
WEAKNESSES

Example(s) Some staff connected to dissident organizations (Fidelity)·
Example(s) Executive Director promotes religious indifferentism (Fidelity)·
Attack pro-life polititians (Fidelity)·
Support stem-cell research (Fidelity)
MORE INFORMATION
Website Established: 08/01/04Chris Korzen info@catholics-united.org

Law And Order: Jesuit Style

I found this interesting article

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PATRICK M. COLLINS

The tough, straight-arrow federal prosecutor who spearheaded the investigation from the beginning and sent Ryan to prison is now in private practice with the blue chip law firm of Perkins Coie. Among other things, he is advising the Jesuit order in the case of the Rev. Donald McGuire, facing federal charges that he molested young boys.

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Link to original article (here)

This Georgetown Thing Is Getting Bigger And Bigger

This is a hot hot post from The Deacon's Bench.

Does Georgetown need an exorcist?
You can't blame some folks for wondering. The fabled setting for the book and movie "The Exorcist" has sometimes seemed possessed by spirits that aren't altogether Catholic. And there's been even more controversy at the home of the Hoyas lately, causing critics to ask if the nation's oldest Jesuit university is losing its way. Today, a former editor of the school's newspaper offered this opinion piece in the pages of the Georgetown Hoya:
“Give up on Georgetown. It’s not a Catholic university anymore,” an alumnus told me recently. Yes, yes, I’ve heard, and participated in, the “Georgetown is losing its identity” lament for years, but why such cynicism? Do people only attend this university because of its U.S. News and World Report ranking? Look at the crucifixes in the classrooms; Jesus’ words, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” hold an entirely new meaning. We have come to the point where our own alma mater’s identity is as shallow as the butt of a poor Jesuit joke. Georgetown’s “Catholic and Jesuit identity” is not a mere pitch for the Admissions Office and should not be defined as simply “Jesuit professors,” “social justice” or “why my student group gets no money.” My alma mater has struggled to find herself as a university as she has grown in size and scope, expanding her faculty and stretching from the Hilltop to the other Hill across the District.Georgetown needs to reclaim it’s rightful status as the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university, and there are several necessary steps to do so. Firstly, don’t fund things that contradict the Catechism. Georgetown tuition funds should not go to support or promote interests that contradict Catholic values directly or indirectly, such as providing bandwidth for the LGBTQ marriage agenda (in the form of Georgetown Law professor Chai Feldblum’s Moral Values Project), as that would be support for activities directly contradicting Catholic values by a Catholic institution. If anyone disagrees with the Pope or Catechism, there are venues to discuss the issues, such as tabling in Red Square, holding class discussions or writing into the newspaper about it, rather than using Georgetown’s official resources intended for the creation of Georgetown’s official representation. Being respectful and accepting of Catholic values should be an integral part of the campus life. Why did Jane McAuliffe, the dean of Georgetown College, feel the need to explain the actions of Cardinal Francis Arinze for opposing homosexual marriage made at the College commencement ceremony in 2003? I hardly have to mention the issue of the Law Center funding internships for students working for organizations promoting abortion. But this is not a stand-alone issue, and is symptomatic of Georgetown’s divergence from its Catholic identity.The Society of Jesus has been recognized by the Pope as a Roman Catholic order ever since 1540, and since this university was founded by the Society of Jesus, and is still considered a Jesuit institution, there should be no reason to explain for a member of the clergy articulating the official stance of the society. If Georgetown is seen as a Catholic institution, there should be no shame in members of this institution, and especially high-profile representatives of the institution, to publicly uphold the values of the Catechism. As an institution that prides itself as one of the premier institutions for diplomacy education, we must be conscious of the fact that inter-faith dialogues don’t always result in unity. Dialogues are important, but we often must recognize our differences and agree to disagree. We don’t all have to be Roman Catholics. Many Christians do not listen to the Pope: They are members of other sects of Christianity, and Georgetown’s Campus Ministry already accommodates many faith traditions (and even welcomes those with none) by providing lay and religious chaplains for a variety of faiths. We can live together and still have our own worship space.Finally, when in doubt, the institution shouldn’t do anything. In response to those who argue that it is unfair to fund one student organization and not another, I offer a very simple solution: How about the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university fund neither? Don’t fund either Progressive Alliance for Life or the Law Students for Choice. As done in other universities, such as Columbia University, the institution should just refer students to outside funding, whether it is bar association grants, government programs, scholarships, fellowships, loan forgiveness programs or stipends. If a student wishes to fight for the right to abort the unborn (explicitly opposed by the Roman Catholic Catechism), or convert to a different faith (non-Catholics cannot receive the Holy Eucharist until they receive the sacrament), Georgetown can and does provide them with assistance, and can point them in the right direction. But there is no need to advocate for external interest groups or entities.Regardless of the particular beliefs of each individual student, we all decided to attend an explicitly Catholic university, and the institution that holds true to its identity, especially its public identity, will be more respected than one that quickly accommodates external pressure to change.

It will be interesting to see what response this column receives. Stay tuned.

Link to The Deacon's Bench article "Does Georgetown need an exorsist?" (here)

Finally, McGuire Thrown Out On His A............s!

Convicted priest kicked out of Jesuits
By JESSE GARZAjgarza@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Nov. 6, 2007
A Chicago priest appealing his conviction for molesting two high school boys in Wisconsin in the 1960s has been dismissed from the Society of Jesus, according to a statement from the religious order released Tuesday.
Background
10/27/07:

Chicago Jesuit chief unveils rules to deter sexual abuse 4/8/05:

Priest to stand trial on indecency charges. Father Donald J. McGuire was handed the dismissal decree Tuesday morning, according to the statement from the Chicago Province of the Jesuit order. McGuire, 77, was convicted in Walworth County last year of indecent behavior with two boys on retreats in Wisconsin in the 1960s. He had been free on bond while appealing the conviction but was taken into custody by federal agents Friday on charges that he traveled to Switzerland and Austria seven years ago to have sex with a minor. In August, a 21-year-old college student filed suit in Illinois accusing McGuire of abusing him from 1999 to 2003. Last month a 20-year-old college student and his 28-year-old brother filed a civil suit in Cook County, Ill., accusing McGuire of abusing them between 1988 and 2002 in Illinois and on retreats in Arizona. Link (here)

Fr. Erik On: "Going Over The Wall"

A great post from Fr. Erik Richtsteig at Orthometer. We all know a priest whom has "gone over the wall" or has "been thrown over the wall". I can personally count five priests whom have gone AWOL. Everyone of them was "not quite right", if you know what I mean. Three were homosexuals and two were heterosexuals, but one common theme, they could not preach and word Salvation never touched their lips. Here is a link to an article by a former Jesuit studying a bunch of "Former Jesuits", "thrown over the wall" (here).

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Going over the wall
Every profession has it euphemisms. The Catholic clergy is no exception. For example, if a priest is sent away for treatment for some issue psychological or otherwise, one might hear that he has "gone to Camp Snoopy." (These euphemisms are by no mean universal.) If a priest has left the priesthood, usually to get married, he has "gone over the wall."Last week, it was announced that a well-known TV priest had "gone over the wall." In a letter he released, he said that he had developed a relationship with a widow that he was trying to help and as a consequence he was going, "to take some time off to prayerfully and honestly discern my future." Whenever I hear something like this, my thoughts and feeling run to disappointment, anger, sadness, and surprise. I do not propose to speak about this particular and his particular situation, but rather I want to reflect on the general issue.First, whenever I hear of a priest "going over the wall", what comes to mind is a man leaving his wife for another woman. In my view, this is a cowardly and selfish thing to do. Certainly, men have left the priesthood because they are psychologically unsuited and for these I have some sympathy especially if they wait to be laicized and then are married. But to leave because they have found 'love' is something entirely different. When one is ordained one makes an informed choice. Perhaps at one time men were rushed into the clergy, this doesn't happen any more. And this choice is for life, not just until you meet a real nice gal. (Though in my experience, most guys who have left to marry have ended up marrying 'devil women'.) Most of the men who do this are like the guys who trade in their wife of 20 years for the new, unwrinkled and unsagging model. Acts of selfishness and sin (or temptation to sin) need to be recognized for what they are. Second, I have precious little patience for the apologists who say something to the effect of, "well, the priesthood is a lonely life." A priest is no more or less subject to loneliness persons in other states of life. You are only lonely if you allow yourself to be. The solution to loneliness is healthy, prudent, holy friendships, not sex or romantic love. When I hear a priest opine that marriage is the solution to problems, it always occurs to me that he is not hearing enough confessions. Don't get me wrong marriage is a good and holy thing, but it is also a life sharing in the Cross of Christ as is the priesthood.Third, even if it makes things 'better' for the priest, it won't for other people. People especially spiritual sons and daughters of the priest will feel betrayed and they have a right to. The priest's life is not his own. He does not live it for himself and his personal fulfillment, but for the salvation of souls. The departure of even a bad priest will effect in a negative way those he has ministered to. Fourth, a word about discernment. The time for discernment is before ordination, not after.

Catholic And Georgetown: Amen, Maya!

How Georgetown Can Stay Catholic

By Maya Noronha

Tuesday, November 6, 2007
“Give up on Georgetown. It’s not a Catholic university anymore,” an alumnus told me recently.
Yes, yes, I’ve heard, and participated in, the “Georgetown is losing its identity” lament for years, but why such cynicism? Do people only attend this university because of its U.S. News and World Report ranking? Look at the crucifixes in the classrooms; Jesus’ words, “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” hold an entirely new meaning. We have come to the point where our own alma mater’s identity is as shallow as the butt of a poor Jesuit joke.
Georgetown’s “Catholic and Jesuit identity” is not a mere pitch for the Admissions Office and should not be defined as simply “Jesuit professors,” “social justice” or “why my student group gets no money.” My alma mater has struggled to find herself as a university as she has grown in size and scope, expanding her faculty and stretching from the Hilltop to the other Hill across the District.
Georgetown needs to reclaim it’s rightful status as the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university, and there are several necessary steps to do so.
Firstly, don’t fund things that contradict the Catechism. Georgetown tuition funds should not go to support or promote interests that contradict Catholic values directly or indirectly, such as providing bandwidth for the LGBTQ marriage agenda (in the form of Georgetown Law professor Chai Feldblum’s Moral Values Project), as that would be support for activities directly contradicting Catholic values by a Catholic institution. If anyone disagrees with the Pope or Catechism, there are venues to discuss the issues, such as tabling in Red Square, holding class discussions or writing into the newspaper about it, rather than using Georgetown’s official resources intended for the creation of Georgetown’s official representation.
Being respectful and accepting of Catholic values should be an integral part of the campus life. Why did Jane McAuliffe, the dean of Georgetown College, feel the need to explain the actions of Cardinal Francis Arinze for opposing homosexual marriage made at the College commencement ceremony in 2003? I hardly have to mention the issue of the Law Center funding internships for students working for organizations promoting abortion. But this is not a stand-alone issue, and is symptomatic of Georgetown’s divergence from its Catholic identity.
The Society of Jesus has been recognized by the Pope as a Roman Catholic order ever since 1540, and since this university was founded by the Society of Jesus, and is still considered a Jesuit institution, there should be no reason to explain for a member of the clergy articulating the official stance of the society. If Georgetown is seen as a Catholic institution, there should be no shame in members of this institution, and especially high-profile representatives of the institution, to publicly uphold the values of the Catechism.
As an institution that prides itself as one of the premier institutions for diplomacy education, we must be conscious of the fact that inter-faith dialogues don’t always result in unity. Dialogues are important, but we often must recognize our differences and agree to disagree. We don’t all have to be Roman Catholics. Many Christians do not listen to the Pope: They are members of other sects of Christianity, and Georgetown’s Campus Ministry already accommodates many faith traditions (and even welcomes those with none) by providing lay and religious chaplains for a variety of faiths. We can live together and still have our own worship space.
Finally, when in doubt, the institution shouldn’t do anything. In response to those who argue that it is unfair to fund one student organization and not another, I offer a very simple solution: How about the oldest Catholic and Jesuit university fund neither? Don’t fund either Progressive Alliance for Life or the Law Students for Choice. As done in other universities, such as Columbia University, the institution should just refer students to outside funding, whether it is bar association grants, government programs, scholarships, fellowships, loan forgiveness programs or stipends. If a student wishes to fight for the right to abort the unborn (explicitly opposed by the Roman Catholic Catechism), or convert to a different faith (non-Catholics cannot receive the Holy Eucharist until they receive the sacrament), Georgetown can and does provide them with assistance, and can point them in the right direction. But there is no need to advocate for external interest groups or entities.
Regardless of the particular beliefs of each individual student, we all decided to attend an explicitly Catholic university, and the institution that holds true to its identity, especially its public identity, will be more respected than one that quickly accommodates external pressure to change.
Maya Noronha graduated from the College in 2005 and is a second year law student at Georgetown’s Law Center. She is also a former contributing editor at THE HOYA and served as regent of the Georgetown University Catholic Daughters.

Link (here)

Are You An Instrument Of The Devil?

Vatican official decries opposition to Summorum Pontificum
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Rome, Nov. 5, 2007 (CWNews.com) -

In an interview with the Italian Petrus web site, Archbishop Albert Ranjith Patabendige, the secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, acknowledged that the papal document, Summorum Pontificum, has been met in some dioceses with criticism and resistance. In some cases, the Sri Lankan prelate said, the hostility amounts to "rebellion against the Pope."
Reminding the interviewer, Bruno Volpe, that every bishop swears allegiance to the Roman Pontiff, Archbishop Ranjith said that "everyone, and particular every pastor, is called to obey the Pope, who is the successor to Peter." He called bishops to follow the papal directive faithfully, "setting aside all pride and prejudice."
Archbishop Ranjith complained that in some dioceses, bishops and their representatives have set out policies "inexplicably" limiting the scope of the Pope's motu proprio. He charged that the resistance to the Pope's policy has been driven by "on the one hand, ideological prejudices, and on the other hand pride-- one of the deadliest sins."
Early in October, in an address to the Latin Liturgy Association in the Netherlands, Archbishop Ranjith had delivered an equally blunt assessment of the response to Summorum Pontificum, saying that bishops were being "disobedient" to the Pope, and stifling the impact of the motu proprio by their policies. Diocesan bishops "do not have this right," he said, and bishops who defy the Pope's authority are allowing themselves "to be used as instruments of the devil."

Link to original article (here)

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Fr. Thomas J. Reese, S.J. on the Traditional Latin Mass (here)

The Feast Of All Jesuit Saints

Jesuit Feast of All Saints

The Feast of All Saints and Blesseds of the Jesuits.Here's a list of the Saints with their biographies and feast days. There are some awesome saints on this list. And here are the Blesseds many of whom lost their lives during the French Revolution.Thanks to John Brown, S.J. of The Companion of Jesus. Do give his website a visit. He and his companions are doing good work in recovering the Jesuit spirit. We previously featured the Jesuit Review that produced videos featuring the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. The video series highlights some of my favorite saints: St. Edmund Campion, St. John de Breuf, and St. Francis Xavier.

Hat tip Argent

The Reprocussions Of Hiding, When Hero's Fall

In one of the saddest post I have read from Karen Hall's blog, Some Have Hats. Karen writes about her personal story and her encounter with the Jesuits in Chicago. The Jesuit fathers sometime forget that the laity have feelings. The Jesuit's will not find a bigger friend then Karen, but friends, if they are real friends will offer constructive criticism when needed. To even be unable to offer simple Christian hospitality to their own invited guest, how sad. The Jesuit fathers should be apologizing for this particular mess (Fr. McGuire) and the multitude of other messes and when they are done apologizing, they should be fixing the problems. Instead, I am sure, we hear the standard line of BULLSHIT! out of the Provincials and we continue to suffer more BULLSHIT! stories about academic freedom. I think it is high time for the real Jesuits to please stand up!

For real Jesuit spirituality please visit companionofjesus.com.

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I Am Not "The Media"
Sadly -- and very sadly for Ignaciophiles such as myself -- this is the big Jesuit headline currently: Jesuits Were Warned About Abusive Priest.

The story is everywhere. I am linking the NPR version so that I won't be accused of, you know, spreading conservative hate-mongering.

I am linking this story for the same reason that this story should have been acknowledged by the order a long time ago: I cannot let my love for the Society inspire me to "help" it by refusing to talk about the bad news. And every day that I didn't mention the story, I felt I was doing that. And I especially don't want to do it because I'm trying to talk a network into buying a show that says "despite whatever you may have heard to the contrary, there are good and, in fact, holy men in this order." So there's the link. They story speaks for itself, and then some.
When I was in Chicago, the first whispers of this story were in the wind. Well, obviously, given the timeline, they weren't the first whispers of the story itself. But the first whispers of the fact that the story was about to make Big Splashy Headlines, and that the Jesuit superiors were not going to come out of it looking good. Because of that, there was a lot of hair on fire about the fact that I was staying in a Jesuit residence. I was staying there because I'd been invited -- but I'd been invited either before it became obvious that the story was about to break, or simply without anyone having done the math. (I seriously doubt it was the latter.) So suddenly I was hearing a lot of (supposedly) behind my back whispering about the possible devastating effects of "the media" staying in the house.

Link to Karen Hall's original full page post (here)

If You Want To Win A Religous War You Had Better Learn About Religion

This is an awsome piece from Asia Times.

The inside story of the Western mind

Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians by Fergus Kerr
Reviewed by Spengler

It may seem eccentric to hail a theological text by a Scots Dominican, ranked 133,692nd in recent Amazon sales, as the year's most important work on global strategy. Now that I have your attention, humor me for a paragraph or two. To win a gunfight, first you have to bring a gun, and to win a religious war, you had better know something about religion. America's "war on terror" proceeds from a political philosophy that treats radical Islam as if it were a political movement - "Islamo-fascism" - rather than a truly religious response to the West. If we are in a fourth world war, as Norman Podhoretz proclaims, it is a religious war. The West is not fighting individual criminals, as the left insists; it is not fighting a Soviet-style state, as the Iraqi disaster makes clear; nor is it fighting a political movement. It is fighting a religion, specifically a religion that arose in enraged reaction to the West. None of the political leaders of the West, and few of the West's opinion leaders, comprehend this. We are left with the anomaly that the only effective leader of the West is a man wholly averse to war, a pope who took his name from the Benedict who interceded for peace during World War I. Benedict XVI, alone among the leaders of the Christian world, challenges Islam as a religion, as he did in his September 2006 Regensburg address. Who is Joseph Ratzinger, this decisive figure of our times, and what led the Catholic Church to elect him? Fr Kerr has opened the coulisses of Catholic debate such that outsiders can understand the changes in Church thinking that made possible Benedict's papacy. Because Benedict is the leader not only of the Catholics but - by default - of the West, all concerned with the West's future should read his book. I do not view religion as an instrument for strategic ends. On the contrary: we are in a strategic crisis precisely because religion is not an instrument, but rather the expression of the existential requirements of humankind. Nonetheless, we are in a war, and war concentrates the mind wonderfully. Radical Islam threatens the West only because secular Europe, including the sad remnants of the former Soviet Union, is so desiccated by secular anomie that it no longer cares enough about its future to produce children. Muslims may form a majority in Russia by mid-century, and may dominate Western Europe 100 years hence. Without the demographic decay associated with the decline of religion, radical Islam would be a minor annoyance to the West rather than a deadly adversary. The pope has no strategic agenda apart from reconciliation and peacemaking.

His work is to shepherd souls, not soldiers. But Benedict is the first pope in
the past century to draw a bright line between Islam on one hand and
Judeo-Christian revealed religion on the other, and that may destine him "not to send peace, but a sword", like his predecessor. This makes
Benedict the most indispensable man of our times, and the Catholic Church, the
founding institution of the West, its still-indispensable institution.

That outcome could not have been predicted from events of the first half of the 20th century. Nazi neo-paganism rolled over the Church during World War II, such that it could not prevent the mass slaughter of Polish priests, let alone genocide against the Jews. Yet under John Paul II, the Church emerged as the world's conscience in the face of communism, and the Polish Church opposed Moscow more effectively than the German Church opposed Berlin a generation earlier. After the fall of communism, two concepts of humankind remain in contention. One regards the weak and powerless as special objects of God's love, and believes that every individual is sovereign by virtue of divine love. The other concept values strength and service, and requires submission to the collective effort of ordering the world. Christianity addresses a God who self-reveals through love, and whose loving nature must make a world that is amenable to human reason. The other concept entails worship of a despot who rules by caprice. I have addressed the theological issues at length in this publication[1] and elsewhere,[2] and do not need to repeat myself here, for the subject is how Catholic thinking came to be what it is today. Kerr's subtitle is, From Neo-Scholasticism to Nuptial Mysticism. By this he means something quite accessible to laymen and non-Catholics. Between the early years of the 20th century, and the papacies of Wojtila and Ratzinger, emphasis in Catholic theology shifted from attempting to prove the tenets of the faith by philosophical argument, to portraying God's self-revelation through love by reference to such Biblical texts as the "Song of Songs". The present pope's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est ("God is Love"), summarizes what Kerr calls "nuptial mysticism".[3] He might well have written instead, "From the God of the Philosophers to the God of the Bible". Early in the century, under the influence of the First Vatican Council of 1871, the Church taught its seminarians that correct reasoning alone could prove correct the tenets of the faith. Reliance on reason rather than revelation and faith was associated with the greatest of Catholic theologians, the 12th-century Dominican St Thomas Aquinas. What was taught in the name of Thomism, though, bore little resemblance to the actual views of the "Angelic Doctor", Kerr avers.

Instead, the Church had adopted a form of Enlightenment rationalism deriving
from the 16th-century Jesuit Francisco Suarez. In the rationalist framework, God
was something of an afterthought. That is a caricature of the "neo-Thomist"
school that dominated Catholic theology during the first half of the century, to
be sure, but an instructive one. In Kerr's engaging account, the rationalistic
mainstream was challenged by theologians at the margin of the Church, such as
the French Jesuit Henri de Lubac and the Swiss Jesuit Hans Urs von Balthasar,
now widely regarded as the greatest Catholic theologian of the century. They
were encouraged by the research of medievalists such as Etienne Gilson and
Marie-Dominique Chenu, who challenged the Enlightenment distortion of Thomas
Aquinas These dissenters spent long and lonely years in the wilderness,
sometimes forbidden to write or preach.

Their day came with the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), and the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. A Dominican, goes an old joke, takes a vow of poverty, whereas a Scots Dominican takes a vow of thrift. Kerr is profligate in detail, but parsimonious in providing context. Unclear is what motivated the great shift in emphasis. The Church did not so much revise its Vatican I-vintage teaching as change the subject. Lost among the refined portraits of individual theologians is the landscape they inhabited. A conjecture, though, would consider the difference between the established Church prior to the First World War, and the religion of personal conscience that Catholicism became after it ceased to function as an official religion. As an official, Catholicism was the church one had to attend, not the church one chose to attend. Pope Pius IX (reigned 1846-1878) and his successor Leo XIII (1878-1903) made the Enlightenment reading of Thomism official doctrine, partly in response to the secular challenge to the political role of the Church. Pius IX was deposed as ruler of the Papal States of central Italy in the 1848 Revolution, and the Church came to grips only slowly with its transition from a position of earthly power to a purely spiritual role. An institution with secular as well as spiritual aspirations will find amenable the argument that its earthly status simply expresses the "natural" ordering of the universe. Decisive for the change in Catholic theology, I believe, was the two world wars. The Church could not dissuade Catholic countries, for example Austria and Italy, from slaughtering each other pointlessly in World War I, despite Benedict XV's attempt at peacemaking. The Church utterly lacked the power to oppose Nazism in Germany, and the Catholic political parties proved ineffective opponents. Although the papacy despised and preached against Nazism, elements of the German Church embraced Hitler, at least at the beginning of his rule.[4] War did not change the theological issues, which had been debated by the church fathers in the ancient world and again by the Scholastics in 1100-1500 (which is why De Lubac et al spoke of Ressourcement, a return to the sources). But the world must have looked quite different to the young Polish priest Karol Wojtila and the German soldier Joseph Ratzinger than to an earlier generation of seminarians. The grand edifice of the European Church lay in ruins, and had to be reconstructed with a refreshed theology. I called the Catholic Church the indispensable institution of the West, but the new thinking in the Church drew deeply on Protestant and Jewish contributions.

The great Protestant theologian Karl Barth conducted two decades of dialogue
with Hans Urs von Balthasar in the pubs of their resident city Basel. As Kerr
reports, von Balthasar's formulation of "nuptial mysticism" adopted Barth's
thinking more or less whole. Barth, for that matter, shared a Biblical view of
revelation through love with the great Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig.[5]
And Kerr reports of Ratzinger, "Reading the Jewish thinker Martin Buber was
a 'spiritual experience that left an essential mark' which he later compared
with reading Augustine's Confessions." In a recent essay titled "National
extinction and natural law", I quoted from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia
the old definition of "natural law", namely, ""those instincts and
emotions common to man and the lower animals, such as the instinct of
self-preservation and love of offspring". How could this account for the
self-extinction of so many depressed and disappointed peoples today, I asked?
Henri de Lubac rejected this mechanical concept of natural law, then taught as
Thomism. What St Thomas in fact believed, de Lubac contended, is that "human
beings were destined by nature to enjoy by divine grace everlasting bliss with
God [Kerr]." This concept of "natural law" explains why peoples
who repudiate grace tend towards self-destruction. This radical way of thinking
made de Lubac a marginal figure in the Church of the 1930s, but a mentor to
Wojtila and Ratzinger. If the "new" Catholic theology depended so much
on Protestant and Jewish contributions as well as Patristic and medieval, what
makes the Church "indispensable"?

It has to do with Margaret Mead's quip that the best thing about marriage is that you are able to finish your conversations. Karl Barth may have been the greatest theologian of the past century, but he has nary a successor among today's Protestants. No institution furthers his work. Franz Rosenzweig, the greatest of Jewish theologians of the past century, has a worthy successor in Prof Michael Wyschogrod, now retired from teaching, but Rosenzweig in many respects remains uncharted territory. No Jewish theologian, for example, is willing to tread within a stone's throw of Rosenzweig's analysis of Islam, for all its obvious relevance to the situation of Jews in the 21st century. One still encounters the influence of Rosenzweig and Buber in pronouncements from the throne of St Peter, but not in Commentary Magazine, which just appointed a movie critic as its editor-in-chief. After 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has learned to finish its conversations, or at least continue them. In the person of Benedict XVI are embodied contributions of Jewish and Protestant thinkers, which miraculously converged upon the innovations in Catholic theology recounted by Kerr. This convergence is one of the most inspiring stories of the past century, and waits in obscurity for the historian who will bring it to light. God's self-revelation through love, as I noted, is the subject of mainstream Catholic theology. Revealed religion does not merely teach doctrine to its members, but changes their lives. Whether one can prove that God exists, for example, is not the right question. It is not even the wrong question, for it makes the subject of the discussion existence, rather than God. What Christians and Jews yearn for is the love of a personal God, that is, a God who is not mere Being, but a personality. It is the experience of Divine Love that makes it possible for humane and civilized societies to flourish, for the imitation of God must honor the sovereignty of the weak and helpless within the human family. Modern democracy is a Christian phenomenon, born of the Dutch rebellion against Spain in 1568, and borne by the Puritan migration to the New World. It arose as a religious response to Europe's crisis, not as a political scientist's cookbook recipe. That is why secular political philosophy fails so miserably in the context of religious war. I have ridiculed Washington's search for a "moderate Islam" and its efforts to "democratize" the Muslim world. One cannot simply teach political systems, or as Immanuel Kant put it, devise a constitution for devils, if only they be rational. More than mere rationality is at stake. If there were nothing more to human consciousness than knowledge, what one man knows could be taught to any other man. Democracy, rule of law, free institutions, would be techniques to be learned, like brain surgery. Yet we observe Muslims who learned brain surgery as well as any Westerner building car bombs in Britain. There are things we know for certain on the strength of our own intelligence, and things that must be revealed to us. We do not have to take on faith the Pythagorean theorem, but we cannot prove that planting car bombs in front of night clubs is wrong. It is not only the character of Benedict XVI that emerges with clarity from this story. From acidic asides in Kerr's volume, we learn some disturbing things about the "metaphysics of modernity". that is, the philosophical project of Martin Heidegger and his ilk to substitute the neutral concept of Being for faith in a personal God. Heidegger never produced a consistent theory; God put Heidegger in a circular room, and told him that Being was in the corner. Yet he mesmerized the likes of Leo Strauss, the patron saint of American neo-conservatism, who thought Heidegger the greatest mind of the century, despite Heidegger's public support for Hitler through the whole of 1933-1945, and his refusal to apologize for this or to repudiate Nazism through the rest of his life. Heidegger, though, imbibed from his teachers the "sawdust Thomism" (Urs von Balthasar) of the 16th-century Jesuit Suarez. As Urs von Balthasar wrote, Suarez thought of Being as the "univocal and neutral principle that is beyond God and the World". God, in other words, is subject to Being, along with things animal, vegetable, and mineral. It is a short hop from this viewpoint to the clockwork universe of 18th-century rationalism. And if Being is superior to God, should we not investigate the metaphysics of Being rather than divine revelation? That is precisely what Heidegger set out to elaborate, albeit without the appendage of a God who already had become ossified inside Suarez' system. As Kerr reports, Chenu, De Lubac and Urs von Balthasar argued that the irreligious deism of the 18th century followed from the efforts of the Catholic Counterreformation to propagate rationalism against the Protestant emphasis on faith. That opens an investigation in intellectual history not for the squeamish. If the "new theologians" are correct, the secular philosophers beloved of the American neo-conservatives merely added footnotes to the work of 16th and 17th-century Jesuits. Heidegger, supposedly the founder of modernist metaphysics, becomes a minor commentator on the work of Francisco Suarez. Leo Strauss and his students, as it were, have lived off the intellectual refuse that the Church of Vatican II consigned to the dustbin. The recycled rationalism of the Vatican I Church reappears as the metaphysics of American foreign policy, which in its arrogance proposes to remake the world in the image of Peoria. Where is the Father Merrin who at last will exorcise the dybbuk of Heidegger from America's National Security Council?[6]

All of the really important issues were fought out over generations in the one
Western institution with a long enough memory. That is why the Catholic Church
remains the world's indispensable institution. I do not know whether that will
be true a generation from now. The Church has produced a few great leaders, but
it is desperately short of sandals on the ground. Where is the monastic order
that will fight the spiritual battles of the Church as the Dominicans did in the
12th century, the Jesuits in the 16th, and the Benedictines in the 19th? Where
are the missionaries who will preach Christianity to Muslims? Perhaps they are
being trained now in secret Protestant seminaries in China, but not by the
Catholic Church. For the time being, the West has only one public figure to
enunciate its fundamental character and interests, and that is Pope Benedict
XVI.

Fergus Kerr has done a service in making him more comprehensible to the broad public. Kerr's book has been criticized by specialists over matters beyond the scope of this review, and beyond my competence to assess (see, for example, R R Reno's review in First Things, May 2007). For the requirements of lay readers, though, it is a godsend. Alan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind claimed that the semi-educated American undergraduate is the intellectual slave of some German philosopher. The truth is even more disconcerting: the "American mind", such as it is, runs in tight little circles around issues that the theologians of the Catholic Church have debated for centuries. Notes1. Most recently in The faith that dare not speak its name Asia Times Online, June 12, 2007.2. See "Christian, Muslim, Jew", in First Things, October 2007.3. Encyclical letter Libreria Editrice Vaticana. 4 See The Laach Maria monster Asia Times Online, June 1, 2005. 5. A 2005 book by Professor Randi Rashkover of George Mason University attempts to draw close parallels between the theologies of Barth and Rosenzweig. She writes:
Religions, Judaism and Christianity in particular, as we will see in detail alter, are guardians of the human experience of divine love. Rosenzweig's phenomenological account in II:2 is an extraction from his reading of the Song of Songs. Consequently, the phenomenology here provided by Rosenzweig is not the result of a theoretical effort, nor is it even an account of a raw human experience. Rather it is a gloss on the human experience of love as described by biblical text and tradition. Rosenzweig is simply translating into prose the account of love that is already in the poetic text ... God reveals his distinction from creation by performing an act of love that is ever renewed and always momentary and therefore cannot be established as a fact. Thus, says Rosenzweig, "love is not an attribute, but an event". See Barth, Rosenzweig, and the Politics of Praise (T and T Clark, 2005), pp 57-58. This is a complex tale, for Barth claimed never to have read Rosenzweig's major work, although they frequented the same theological study circle for some years after World War I. 6. For an account of the Leo Strauss problem, along with a summary of Heidegger's philosophy, see The secret that Leo Strauss never revealed

Asia Times Online, May 13, 2003. Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians by Fergus Kerr. Wiley (November 29, 2006) . ISBN-10: 1405120843. Price US29.94, 240 pages.

Link (here)

There Are Some Lines, You Just, Can Not Cross

Officials at Chicago's Loyola University have stopped the circulation of a student magazine because it contained erotic drawings, a report says.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported Sunday that, for the first time in the school's history, a student publication was pulled from university news racks for featuring a pair of erotic pencil drawings.

The Rev. Richard Salmi, the vice president for student affairs at the Jesuit school, said the unprecedented decision at the university was made on moral grounds.

"I found the art to be offensive,'' Salmi said of controversial issue of Diminuendo. I thought some of it was pornographic.''

The two drawings, one of a nearly naked woman and the other of a nude couple having sex, were part of the magazine's featured topic of sex.

Editors at the university publication said that by stopping the circulation of the issue, school officials were limiting open discussion of the prevalent topic.

Salmi and his fellow university officials say the art violated Jesuit values and was disrespectful to others, the Sun-Times reported. (c) UPI Link (here)

The Techies, They're My Tribe

God and Geeks
By Carol Glatz11/3/2007
Catholic News Service (http://www.catholicnews.com/)
Vatican astronomer hunts for faith in Silicon Valley
In his new book"God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion," Jesuit brother Guy Consolmagno writes to his own "techies",of the wonders of God.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) - Engineers, scientists, and computer whizzes study or manipulate nature and machines to find sound, logical solutions to nagging questions and everyday problems. But if hard empirical evidence is what makes a techie brain tick, then how is he or she able to justify or believe in something as scientifically unprovable as God or as mind-boggling as transubstantiation? Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, a self-described techie and Vatican astronomer, argues in a new book that a nerd is not necessarily a nihilist, and geeks can and do believe in God. In "God's Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion," he shows that atheism is actually very rare among men and women scientists. He told Catholic News Service "the more common stance is to be agnostic -- they don't want to make a claim one way or another, but really what they're shy about is belonging to an organized church." Brother Consolmagno said some hold preconceived, mistaken notions that the people they'll find in the pews might be intellectually inferior or even "repellent." The Jesuit astronomer said, "One fellow put it to me very bluntly, 'I don't mind God, it's his fan club I could do without.'" He said the idea for his fifth book came after some techie friends asked him to explain the "nuts and bolts of how" to believe in a particular religious creed. These friends were interested in joining a church, and they were looking for "intellectual support" and help in explaining certain aspects of the Catholic faith, he said. He soon realized techies look at religion differently than most folks and likewise have different needs when it comes to pastoral care and outreach. So two years ago, Brother Consolmagno bade a temporary farewell to his telescopes and went from gazing at the heavens to peering into fellow techies' hearts and souls. "The techies, they're my tribe. I'm one of them and I want us to be better understood by the church," the planetary scientist explained. The discoveries he made from a two-month journey traveling up and down U.S. Highway 101 in California's Silicon Valley became the core of his new book. He interviewed 100 "hard-nosed, rational, dyed-in-the-wool techies" and asked them the reasons they went to church, what they did and didn't get out of church, and why they belonged to one faith community and not another. He said the answers were as varied as one would find in the general population, but that several unique characteristics stuck out. For example, skeptics weren't saying, "Prove to me God exists," but had more pragmatic concerns like "whether he exists or not, why should I believe? Why should I care and what does it get me?" Also, people in the world of science tend to be "rule followers" and see the church as a book of rules, he said. - - -Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops link (here)

Fr. James Martin, S.J., On St. Joseph And The Housing Market

Home sellers bury statue to spur bids
By SARA SCHAEFER MUNOZ
The Wall Street Journal
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Cari Luna is Jewish by heritage and Buddhist by religion. She meditates regularly. Yet when she and her husband put their Brooklyn, N.Y., house on the market this year and offers kept falling through, Luna turned to an unlikely source for help: St. Joseph. The Catholic saint has long been believed to help with home-related matters. And according to lore spreading on the Internet and among desperate home-sellers, burying St. Joseph in the yard of a home for sale promises a prompt bid. After Luna and her husband held five open houses, even baking cookies for one of them, she ordered a St. Joseph "real estate kit" online and buried the 3-inch white statue in her yard. "I wasn't sure if it would be disrespectful for me, a Jewish Buddhist, to co-opt this saint for my real estate purposes," says Luna, a writer. She figured, "Well, could it hurt?" With the worst housing market in recent years, St. Joseph is enjoying a flurry of attention. Some vendors of religious supplies say St. Joseph statues are flying off the shelves as an increasing number of skeptics and non-Catholics look for some saintly intervention to help them sell their houses. Some Realtors, too, swear by the practice. Ardell DellaLoggia, a Seattle area Realtor, buried a statue beneath the "For Sale" sign on a property that she thought was overpriced. She didn't tell the owner until after it had sold. "He was an atheist," she explains. "But he thanked me." Existing home sales fell 8 percent in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.04 million units, the lowest level in nearly 10 years, according to the National Association of Realtors. Statues of St. Joseph sold online can be as tall as 12 inches. One, made of colored resin, portrays St. Joseph cradling the baby Jesus. Yet most home sellers favor the simpler 3- or 4-inch reproductions — most of which are made in China and often depict St. Joseph as a carpenter. Most statues come in a "Home Sale Kit" priced at around $5 and includes burial instructions and a prayer. One site, Good Fortune Online, recently added another kit with a statue of St. Jude — known as the patron saint of hopeless causes — "to help those with a difficult property to sell," the site says. Another site, Stjosephstatue.com, takes orders for its "Underground Real Estate Agent Kits" at 1-888-BURY-JOE. Demand for the statues has been growing. Ron Weissman, who sells the statues at Good Fortune Online, says about six months ago he switched to online transactions because the increase in calls — from about two a week to 25 calls a day — was too much to handle. Richard Weigang, owner of http://www.catholicstore.com/, says he sells about 400 statues a month, double the amount he sold a year ago. In Catholicism, St. Joseph, a carpenter, is honored as the husband of Mary and foster father of Jesus. Representing a humble family man, he is the patron saint of home, family and house-hunting, according to the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author of "My Life With the Saints." Popular belief holds that people who wish to enlist St. Joseph's help in selling a house should bury his statue upside-down in the yard. Apartment dwellers are advised to put him in a potted plant. Methods of burying the statue vary. Instructions in one package give buyers several options, including burying it upside-down next to the "For Sale" sign, burying it 3 feet from the rear of the house and burying it next to the front door facing away from the home. Phil Cates, owner of stjosephstatue.com, says the detailed burial instructions are largely intended to prevent people from forgetting where they put their St. Joseph. His kits advise burying it facing it away from the house, to symbolize leaving. Theologians say there's no official doctrine that calls for the statue's interment. The practice may have stemmed from medieval rites of land possession, in which conquerors claimed land by planting a cross or banner, says Jaime Lara, associate professor of Christian Art and Architecture at Yale Divinity School. Lara also suggests the tradition may have gotten mixed up at some point with folklore surrounding St. Anthony. St. Anthony, known as a matchmaker, would often be held ransom, upside-down, until he found a husband for someone's daughter, he says. Some clergy aren't sure how St. Joseph would feel about his likeness ending up on its head in the dirt, and suggest displaying it somewhere in the house instead. "I think it's much more respectful than burying the poor guy," says Msgr. Andrew Connell, the archdiocesan director of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Boston. Some retailers, such as Weigang, owner of http://www.catholicstore.com/, also encourage buyers to put the statues in the house. "We don't advocate burying," Weigang says. "Some of those statues are quite beautiful." Catholic leaders also say that faith and devotion are necessary, in addition to burying a statue, otherwise the practice amounts to little more than superstition or magic. But they are also enjoying the saint's newfound popularity. "If they have a good result and they think it was St. Joseph, it might inspire them to practice more," says Connell. Once someone's home sells, the custom holds, the statue should be dug up and put in a place of honor in the new home. That's what Luna did after she and her husband sold their house shortly after burying St. Joseph. She put the statue in her office in their new home in Portland, Ore. But not everyone is aware of the follow-up step. Trudy Lopez and her husband buried a statue of St. Joseph when they were trying to sell their condo, even though Lopez is Jewish and her husband is a nonpracticing Catholic. They sneaked out late at night, worried they might be breaking a condo association rule. Soon they got an offer, but didn't realize they were supposed to bring the statue with them to their new home. "I'm afraid a lot of the statues won't be unearthed and someone will go over St. Joseph's feet with a lawnmower," says Martin, the Jesuit priest. Link (here)

Paganism, Hedonism and Pan-Thiesm At Loyola Marymount University

“God, Great Spirit, Hashem, or Allah…”

Published: November 2, 2007

More strange course offerings at Loyola Marymount University“In this series we will focus on Native American Spirituality, Islam, Taoism, and the Divine Feminine as we continue our journey through the world's spiritual traditions,” says an advertisement for a Loyola Marymount University Extension course, titled “Wisdom Walk: Practices for Creating Peace and Balance from the World’s Spiritual Traditions.” The course, scheduled for Oct. 22 - Nov. 12 at the Los Angeles Jesuit university, asks students to select a practice from each tradition, incorporating it into their “daily practice, which also includes service in the world.” The course instructor is “the Rev.” Sage Bennet, PhD – the “Rev.” coming from the fact that she is an ordained minister at the Agape International Spiritual Center in Culver City. Agape teaches, according to its web site, the “New Thought-Ancient Wisdom tradition of spirituality.” Its teachings “embrace a Reality the world’s scriptures and sacred texts endeavor to describe, even as they acknowledge the impossibility of such a task. Some call it God, Great Spirit, Hashem, or Allah, while others simply prefer to leave it nameless. Agape teaches that this Spirit is the Source of our life, that we are made in its image and likeness, which makes us co-creative participants in the three-dimensional world in which we live.” Bennet has written a book with the same name as her LMU extension course. She is a teacher at five universities, according to her web site – including the University of California-Riverside and the University of Redlands. She leads workshops and retreats, and provides spiritual counseling. Bennet offers what she calls “Wisdom Seminars” – among which is “Awakening the Aphrodite Within,” described this way in a seminar advertisement: “Come join us for time with the goddess, Aphrodite, who has much to teach us about taking time to enjoy ourselves in the splendors of everyday life.” The seminar promises to help attendees “awaken their inner goddess of love and beauty,” and offers as topics: “tuning into aliveness, passion, taking time for pleasure, integrating feminine and masculine qualities, enjoyment, and fulfillment as a practically indulgent approach to life and relationships.” As a minister for the past eight years, Bennet “has performed sacred ceremonies such as weddings, memorials, and elegant transitions rituals.” In her consultations, called “Wisdom Readings,” Bennet “shares the fruits of her intuitive development with clients in one-on-one interactions… which display a unique combination of intuition and spiritual counseling,” says Bennet’s web site. “These sessions draw from the universal source of wisdom and provide spiritual guidance about the soul’s journey. Paths you may wish to explore include: finding your soul purpose, pursuing a life dream or reaching a goal, entering a new phase of life and others.”

For a Wisdom Reading, Bennet charges $75 per half hour, or $150 per hour.

Copyright California Catholic Daily 2007. All Rights Reserved. Link (here)

From Bad To Worse, More On McGuire

Priest now facing federal charge
By MIKE HEINE Friday, Nov. 2, 2007

Fr. Donald McGuire

CHICAGO — The Rev. Donald J. McGuire was charged federally Friday with traveling to another country with a minor for the purpose of committing sex acts, according to documents. The complaint, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court-Northern District of Illinois in Chicago and unveiled Friday, says McGuire traveled from Chicago to Switzerland and Austria and sexually molested a boy he took with in December 2000. The boy told investigators McGuire, 77, molested him starting in 1999, when he was 13 years old. The repeated abuse ended in 2003 when the Chicago Province of the Society of Jesus ordered McGuire to move from the Canisius House, a Jesuit home in Evanston, Ill., to another residence in Chicago. The assaults happened mostly in the Chicago area, but also during trips to 11 other states and two other countries, the boy told investigators, according to the complaint. Another boy accused McGuire of molesting him when he was 9 years old in the late 1980s, according to the complaint. The first abuse that boy reported happened when McGuire was hearing his confession. Assaults continued at retreats the two attended together until the boy was 13 or 14, according to the complaint. Starting in at least 1991, the Jesuits placed special restrictions on McGuire regarding his contact with minors, according to documents the Jesuits provided investigators. He was ordered repeatedly not to travel with or be alone with any minors, according to the complaint. A 2002 memo from the Jesuits says six complaints were made about McGuire since 1991 that include having a young man sleep in the same room with him, having a young man wash McGuire’s feet while he showered, buying underwear for a boy, talking incessantly about sex and showing a boy pornography, according to the complaint. Under current federal law, the statute of limitations for sexual abuse of a minor extends to the life of the victim. McGuire could face 15 years in prison or fines totaling $250,000 if convicted of the federal felony. The charge comes one day after McGuire failed to win a motion hearing for a retrial in Walworth County Court. He was convicted by Walworth County jury in February 2006 of five state charges of indecent behavior with a child and sentenced to seven years in prison and 20 years probation. The charges stemmed from incidents that occurred at a Fontana residence in the late 1960s with two boys McGuire taught at a Catholic school in Wilmette, Ill. Should he choose to continue the appeal of his state conviction, McGuire will need to seek a review by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. Moments after Walworth County Judge James Carlson denied his motions for a new trial, McGuire was arrested for probation violations and taken to the Walworth County Jail. He was transferred to the federal courthouse in Chicago on Friday. Link (here)

The full story from Bishop Accountability (here)