According To Canon 705 Pope Francis Is Still A Jesuit

Many local and national religious thinkers are debating on whether or not Pope Francis is still in the Jesuit order. Pope Francis has gathered much attention for being the first pope with a Jesuit background. However, a disagreement has emerged between Jesuits and other religious thinkers. Some are arguing that Pope Francis is still a Jesuit, while others say he is not in the order anymore. According to the Rev. Peter Rogers, S.J., associate professor of languages, Pope Francis is no longer subjected to the Jesuit order because he became a bishop and was not under a superior’s orders. “St. Ignatius, when he founded the Society of Jesus in the 16th century, had it in his rule that no Jesuit was to accept ecclesiastical dignities, so that meant Jesuits were not to become bishops, cardinals and such,” Rogers said.

The Rev. Stephen Rowntree, S.J., associate professor of philosophy, also supports the notion that Pope Francis is not in the Society of Jesus anymore.“He becomes a religious superior over his diocese and over his priests,” Rowntree said. “So, he is out of the chain of command of the Jesuits.”

National Catholic Reporter’s Thomas Reese, wrote in an article, titled “Is Pope Francis still a Jesuit,” that Pope Francis is still a Jesuit, according to canon law. According to Canon 705, a Jesuit can still be a Jesuit, even as a bishop, and does not have to follow a Jesuit superior when he becomes a bishop.

Link (here) to the Maroon.

Forged Jesuit, "It Only Takes A Minute And Half To Become A Jesuit Priest"

Mark Landis dressed as a Jesuit

Most art forgers do it for the money and some have made millions replicating famous masterpieces. But 58-year-old Mark Landis, a soft spoken Louisiana native, is not your typical copy cat. The highly prolific, skilled painter, has been forging well known works of art for 30 years, with the sole purpose of donating these "originals" to museums around the country. Dressed as a businessman, or in more recent years, as a Jesuit priest, Landis has approached over 50 museums, 20 States, offering them coveted paintings for their collections. Sometimes the works will be donated in a relative's name, like his mother, other times he will offer the work simply to be philanthropic. He would never take money for the work, not even a tax deduction. Mr. Landis would often go under his own name, or Father Scott, speaking with museum heads around the country. Several accepted the works and some were even hung among their permanent collections. However many were discovered quite quickly as inauthentic. Last week, the Avant Diaries released a video inviting viewers in to the strange world of Mr. Landis where the artist explains, "About all I've got is an ability to draw or paint…Sure it's not real, but if something's attractive or beautiful that's what counts."

Link (here) to watch the documentary video

The Advent Massacre By The Natchez Indians: Jesuit Was Beheaded With A Hatchet

A letter from Fr. Mathurin Le Petit, S.J., Missionary, to Fr. Louis D' Avaugour, S.J. Procurator of the missions in North America.

At New Orleans, the 12th of July, 1730.

MY REVEREND FATHER,

The Peace of our Lord be with you :

You cannot be ignorant of the sad event which has desolated that part of the French Colony established at Natchez, on the right bank of the Mississippi river, at the distance of a hundred and twenty leagues from its mouth. Two of our missionaries who were engaged in the conversion of the Indians, have been included in the almost general massacre which this barbarous nation made of the French, at a time too when they had not the least reason to suspect their perfidy. A loss so great as this infant mission has sustained, will continue for a long time to excite our deepest regrets.

As you could only have learned in a confused manner the events of this dark treachery, I will endeavor to relate to you all the circumstances ; but first I think that it would be best to make you acquainted with the character of these perfidious savages, called the Natchez. When I have described to you the religion, the manners, and the customs of these barbarians, I will proceed to the history of the tragical event which I design to narrate, and will in detail recount all those circumstances, of which I am certain you have hitherto had no knowledge. Link (here)

Father Mathurin goes on to say.

Father Paul du Poisson, S.J. had just performed the funeral rites of his associate, the Brother Cruey, who had died very suddenly of a sun-stroke : he was on his way to consult M. Perrier, and to adopt with him proper measures to enable the Akensas to descend to the banks of the Mississippi, for the accommodation of the voyagers. He arrived among the Natchez on the 26th. of November, that is, two days before the massacre. The next day, which was the first Sunday of Advent, he said Mass in the Parish, and preached in the absence of the Cure. He was to have returned in the afternoon to his Mission among the Akensas, but he was detained by some sick persons, to whom it was necessary to administer the Sacraments. On Monday, he was about to say Mass, and to carry the Holy Sacrament to one of those sick persons whom he had confessed the evening before, when the massacre began; a gigantic chief six feet in height, seized him, and having thrown him to the ground, cut off his head with blows of a hatchet. The Father in falling only uttered these words, " Ah, my God ! ah, my God !" Link (here)

Link (here) to the book entitled The Early Jesuit Missions In North America by William Ingraham Kip

Jesuit On His Notre Dame Education

Ara Parseghian

I am not a right wing extremist priest; nor am I an activist. 

I am an 82 year old alumnus, Jesuit priest, who dearly loves the school.  I was at the University of Notre Dame at the time of Frank Leahy and Ara Parseghian.  

So, I am for excellence in football, academic and  yes, Catholic Identity.  Let us both pray that they can win the National Championship.

I am yours in Our Lady,

Father Joseph LeBlanc, SJ

Link (here) to Patheos

Four Decades After The Strake Jesuit Bankruptsy

A day that decades of alumni and past parents have dreamed about for years has arrived as Strake Jesuit has announced the reacquisition of the property Cambridge Court Apartments at 6500 South Gessner, which is immediately adjacent to the school’s Gessner driveway. The 7.55 acres of land was part of Jesuit’s original property when the school opened in 1961 but was lost in the school’s bankruptcy in 1971. “This purchase is an historic moment for the school,” said school president Fr. Daniel Lahart, SJ, “and we have acted on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity with the confidence that alumni and friends will provide us with the financial resources for this purchase and for the conversion of the property back to school use. In my tenure at Strake Jesuit alumni constantly inquire about the school buying back the property we lost in 1971.” While the property is just a portion of the land lost in 1971, it is by far the land most useful to the school at this time. "Ever since Fr. Michael Alchediak, SJ, who was then the school's president, mobilized parents and friends to help repurchase the current campus after the bankruptcy," noted Fr. Lahart, "it has always been our dream to reacquire property. This purchase, which certainly has sentimental value to generations of alumni, will also have an immediate impact on the quality of student life as soon as it is converted to school use."

Link (here) to Strake Jesuit

Jesuit On The Tea Party

While no one relishes paying taxes, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that federal, state, and local income taxes consumed 9.2 percent of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950. Jesuit Father Fred Kammer, a former president of Catholic Charities U.S.A. and current president of the Jesuit Social Research Institute in New Orleans, writes that “some 30 years of anti-tax propaganda whose most vociferous current harbinger is the Tea Party” has given many Americans the false impression that they are overtaxed. In an article for Just South Quarterly, a publication of the Jesuit Social Research Institute, Kammer noted that the United States is one of the lowest-taxed countries in the developed world. Many states also have regressive tax policies that fall hardest on the working poor. Laws that cap property taxes and other sources of municipal revenue often erode the capacity to fund public schools, transportation, and social safety nets that protect the most vulnerable. These tax policies contribute to “a widening of the gap between rich and poor to its currently morally grotesque levels and the substantial deterioration of the U.S. infrastructure,” Kammer writes.

Link (here) to the liberal slated US Catholic to read the full article.

The current misery index (here)

The current state of American taxation (here)

Economic conditions under President Obama (here)

What is Aftershock? (here)

What is Liberation Theology? (here)

Whenever We Put Humanity Before Divinity

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

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

Former Jesuit Served In Iran

Monsignor Milton L. Reisch, a Catholic priest, teacher and retreat master who was pastor of Our Lady of Divine Providence Parish in Metairie for 17 years, died July 18 after complications from surgery in mid-May. He was 81. Monsignor Milton L. Reisch His 51 years as a priest began as a member of the Jesuit order, teaching math and physics at Jesuit High School through the 1960s. Monsignor Reisch then ran Catholic missions in Mississippi, conducted retreats at the order’s Manresa retreat house and, while on a leave of absence, taught school in Iran, where he was the only priest in Shiraz, a city of more than 1 million people. Returning from Iran, Monsignor Reisch left the Jesuits to become a priest for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.

Link (here) to read the full obituary at NOLA.com.

New Jesuit Chapel To Be Built At Loyola New Orleans

Most Holy Name of Jesus Church

Local architecture firm Holly and Smith has been chosen to design Loyola University New Orlean's new  8 million dollar Jesuit Center. The firm has been based out of Hammond for the last thirty years and recently opened an office in New Orleans. Holly and Smith architects have worked on numerous academic, governmental, commercial and religious institutions across southeast Louisiana. Projects similar to Loyola's Jesuit Center include Fayard Hall at Southeastern Louisiana University and the redesign of the interior of the Saint Scholastica Academy Chapel in Covington.

The Tom Benson Jesuit Center will serve as the center for spiritual life on Loyola's campus, addressing all facets of what it means to be a Jesuit and Catholic university.  

One plan is to use part of the building to house the department of Mission and Ministry. It will also be home to a new chapel on campus.

Link (here) to read the full story at The Maroon

St. Stanislaus Seminary From 1823 Until 1971 In Florissant, Missouri

St. Stanislaus Seminary 1928

The 999 acre historical St. Stanislaus Seminary which was originally started in 1823 in the then Louisiana Territory by 8 Belgian Jesuit missionaries, including Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, under the encouragement of Bishop DuBourg and President James Monroe. This mission first started as just a log cabin residence and an Indian School near the present intersection of Howdershell and Charbonier Roads in historic Florissant, Missouri. In 1840 the log cabins were replaced with a four level stone building which became the longest running Jesuit novitiate in the United States until 1971. In 1971 most of the property was sold to United Pentecostal Church International and the historic stone building became the Museum of Western Jesuit Missions. Part of the property sold contained 351 Jesuit burials which were supposedly exhumed and moved to nearby Calvary Cemetery. This left 121 burials remaining at this historic Jesuit location including the oldest grave sites, some of which were located upon an old Native American burial mound. 

Link (here) to the full article at Haunted America Tours.

Old Issues Resurface

According to the Tampa Police Department, a man in 2002 accused Monsignor Norman Balthazar and another priest of s@xually assaulting him in 1971. The victim said he was 9 at the time and an altar boy at Christ the King. The state declined to press charges. The other priest had died by the time the victim came forward, according to police. Besides Balthazar, two other Christ the King priests were accused of molestation dating back to the 1980s SNAP said. Murphy said Christ the King's current pastor, 

Father David Toups, ran an announcement about the allegations against the Rev. Jan Sanders, a visiting Danish Jesuit during the 1980s,

in June's church bulletin, asking people to come forward with concerns.

Link (here) to the full St. Petersburg Times article.

" Ah, my God ! ah, my God!"

A Natchez Chief  "Great Sun"

Father Paul du Poisson, S.J. was on his way to consult M. Perrier, and to adopt with him proper measures to enable the Akensas to descend to the banks of the Mississippi, for the accommodation of the voyagers. He arrived among the Natchez on the 26th. of November, that is, two days before the massacre. The next day, which was the first Sunday of Advent, he said Mass in the Parish, and preached in the absence of the Cure. He was to have returned in the afternoon to his Mission among the Akensas, but he was detained by some sick persons, to whom it was necessary to administer the Sacraments. 

On Monday, he was about to say Mass, and to carry the Holy Sacrament to one of those sick persons whom he had confessed the evening before, when the massacre began; a gigantic chief six feet in height, seized him, and having thrown him to the ground, cut off his head with blows of a hatchet. The Father in falling only uttered these words, " Ah, my God ! ah, my God!" 

M. du Codere drew his sword to defend him, when he was himself killed by a musket ball from another Indian whom he did not perceive.
Link (here)

Way To Go Gentlemen! Jesuits Enter The Diaconate

Archbishop Wilton Gregory

Seven Jesuits who are students at the School of Theology and Ministry now have added the title of deacon to their credit. The seven — John Brown, SJ, Jeff Johnson, SJ, Joe Laramie, SJ, Joel Medina, SJ, Antoine Paumard, SJ, Aaron D. Pidel, SJ, and Alejandro Olayo Méndez, SJ — received the sacrament of Holy Orders on Oct. 8 at St. Ignatius Church, where they were ordained as deacons, enabling them to preach sermons, perform baptisms and witness marriages. Archbishop of Atlanta Wilton D. Gregory presided at the Mass and administered the ordination, with family and friends of the seven looking on as well as members of the STM and University communities. [See a slideshow of the event at http://bit.ly/9c3nxD] “The ordination was beautiful,” said Laramie, who was joined at the celebration by his parents, grandparents, godparents, sister and her future brother-in-law. “The music, having my family attend, along with brother Jesuits and fellow STM students — I was really able to pray during the Mass. I felt so grateful that God has called me to this life. As a deacon, I’m honored to serve the Church.” “It was a beautiful, terrific ceremony,” echoed Johnson, whose parents traveled from Tennessee to be at the ordination. A reception, sponsored by STM, followed on the Brighton Campus. The formal process of ordination involves the bishop invoking the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands on the deacon candidates. The deacon candidates then receive their vestments from a priest they have chosen to perform the vesting ritual. Johnson said he chose Rev. Brad Schaeffer, SJ, rector of Blessed Peter Faber Community, to do his vesting to thank him for all the support he has shown him. Deacon Pidel, a native of Georgia, chose his spiritual director Rev. Casey Beaumier, SJ, a graduate student, to do his vesting. “The ordination was magnificent,” said Fr. Beaumier. “It is a great sign of hope. It was a gift to me to be able to participate and their ordination is a gift to our church.”

Link (here) to the rest of the article.

Jesuit Deacon On The Depths Of Divine Love

Christ loved us while we were still sinners, the admission of sin is no longer crushing.  It is healing.  For if we believe that Christ’s love is stronger than our sins, then to explore the depth of our sinfulness is to explore the even greater depth of divine love.  And, to explore the depths of divine love is to better appreciate the darkness of sin—since our sins have been committed against so loving a Father.  And so the experience of sin and the experience of divine love grow together.  They are directly proportional, as the tax collector saw; not inversely proportion, as the Pharisee feared.

Link (here) to the full homily of Arron Pidel, S.J.

Formerly On The Track To The Jesuit Priesthood

Rep. Joseph Cao says that his greatest challenge in Congress came during the healthcare reform debate. As a moderate Republican, he was courted vigorously from both sides: conservatives and progressives from all across the country flooded his office with calls to encourage him to vote this way or that way.

Formerly on the track to the Jesuit priesthood and a devoutly religious man, Cao prayed constantly for guidance. The process leading to his votes included a grueling schedule of fourteen constituent town hall events.  

“That’s the nature of this job. It’s a pressure cooker. It was to be anticipated,” he shrugs. In the end, Cao was the only Republican to support the original House version of the healthcare reform bill, although he later rejected the final Senate version of the bill. Interestingly, his decision to vote against the president’s final healthcare reform bill came in the Oval Office with President Obama himself, whom he considers a friend. “He said that he didn’t want me to vote against my conscience, that we have to live with ourselves. And that if we were to vote against our conscience, there would be nothing left to defend,” Cao recalls.

Link (here) to read the full piece at  Frum Forum

Jesuit Is Already There

Fr. Mark Mossa, S.J. was recently interviewed on Relevant Radio by Wendy Wiese about his new book, Already There. Father Mark discusses religious and pop-culture figures including, Fr. Thomas Merton, Fr. Henri Nouwen, Adam Sandler, the rock band U2. The interview weaves through Father Mark's experience in dealing with young adults and their Catholic faith. Listen to the entire interview (here)

El Paso Texas Jesuits

Ysleta Mission Church El Paso

The Society of Jesus made a more fundamental and lasting contribution in the El Paso area. The first Jesuits to work in Trans-Pecos Texas on a permanent basis arrived in El Paso on October 14, 1881. 

These missionaries from the Jesuit Province of Naples had previously been working in the territories of New Mexico and Colorado. They assumed care of a string of neglected 200-year-old missions and went on to establish and maintain more than thirty parishes, 

thus laying the foundation for the modern Catholic Diocese of El Paso.

Link (here) to the full and fantastic article.

More on Ysleta Mission Church (here) and (here)

Fr. Rodney Kissinger, S.J. On Christ Crucified

St. Paul claimed that he knew nothing but Jesus Christ crucified. “Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, to the pagans foolishness, but to those who believe the power and the wisdom of God.” St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church, said that he got all of his wisdom on his knees before the crucifix. St. Augustine, one of the most brilliant doctors of the Church, said, “One tear shed before the crucifix is worth a year of penance.”

.

Link (here) to the blog by New Orleans Province Jesuit Fr. Rodney Kissinger

New Orleans Jesuit House Caught On Fire

Things really heated up at the Jesuit house this year for feast of St. Ignatius. Around 9 a.m. July 31st a fire started on the third floor of Loyola’s Jesuit house located on St. Charles Avenue. Loyola Professor and Rector of New Orleans Jesuit Community, The Rev. Peter Rogers S.J., went to the scene after receiving a call from The Rev. John Stacer, S.J., a former Loyola professor, telling him “the fire alarm has gone off and there’s smoke coming out of the house,” Rogers said. The New Orleans Fire Department was quick to respond to the alarm. “By the time I got into the parking lot, two fire trucks had already pulled up,” Rogers said. One of the first fire crews into the building was Squrt 16. Among them was former Loyola student Capt. Jon Bialas. “I didn’t realize it was their building until I arrived on the scene and saw the Jesuits out front,” Bialas said. “But it only distracted me for a brief second.” Rogers recognized him as a former student in the moments before Bialas entered the burning building. “When you’re in the fire you’re trying to think of a thousand things at once and prevent yourself from having tunnel vision,” Bialas said. “That’s when you get into trouble.” According to Rogers the fire started on the third floor and spread to the attic, damaging the roof. “We did a good job,” Bialas said. “All the men worked their hearts out and we were able to salvage most of the house.”

Link (here) to The Marooon

The Alamo Was Built By The Jesuits

At San Antonio, where I spent some time, there is much of interest. The first thing shown a stranger is the Alamo, which is an old ruin, built in 1718 by the Jesuit missionaries for converting and civilizing the Indians and used as a stronghold by the Texans in the siege of 1836 against the Mexicans. David Crockett, Daniel Boone, Robert Evans and William Travis, with 144 men, held the fort for ten days and nights against Santa Anna with 4,000 picked soldiers from the Mexican army, who at last scaled the walls and butchered the starving besieged.

Link (here) to read the travelogue.  
Painting entitled, "Dawn at the Alamo"