The Society of Jesus has been a strong, consistent, salutory influence for my entire life. I grew up with America Magazine. My maternal grandfather was reading it back in the 1930s; my mother introduced my father to it. More recently, my granddaughter has worked and written for it as an intern. As a union leader, my father participated in the 1950s in the JesuitfSt. Peter's Labor Institute, Jersey City, which brought together leadership from industry and labor to share Catholic social doctrine. The Waterfront Priest was visible in our house; the book represented the Church and Union, the two institution which structured our world; and inclined me to cherish the movie On The Waterfront, which gets my vote as best movie ever made. I did not attend Jesuit prep school or college; but my two sons, son-in-law, and grandson did both; and I have delighted to see them receive such a fine education. On approaching my own high school graduation, I was drawn to the Jesuits and Maryknoll; the attraction of service of the poor and adventure overseas won out.
For the two years (1969-71) after graduation from Maryknoll College Seminary, during which we wed, I studied theology at Union Theological Seminary and Woodstock Theologate in NYC. At the former I engaged the finest minds in liberal Protestant theology of the time. But at the later I encountered two mentor/teachers who deeply influenced my faith and thought. Fr. (later Cardinal) Avery Dulles SJ was unequaled, in American Catholic theology of the second half of the 20th century, for his orthodoxy, balance, influence, humility, depth and breath of thought. He looked and presented himself like one of my uncles: long, lean, lanky, precise, thoughtful, awkward, self-effacing. He represented for me the ideal theologian! Even more personally influential was Father Joe Whelan SJ, the most holy man I ever knew. He rooted solid theology in the mystical, the life of prayer, deep within the heart of the Church. He introduced me to Balthasar's classic "Sanctity and Theology" and his "kneeling theology." He had written his thesis on Baron Freidrich von Hugel, himself a mystic, a one time "modernist" who sublimely integrated an organic Catholic conservatism with a wholesome, liberal openness to the best of modernity.
At this same time I taught religion at Xavier H.S. NYC and befriended my department chair, Fr. Neil Doherty SJ who became for me a spiritual director. Prayerful, erudite, gentle and humble in spirit, he was a true son of St. Ignatius. In the same mode was Fr. John Wrynn SJ, historian at St. Peter's College, who was spiritual director and friend to me for close to 40 years.
Our children were deeply influenced by the Jesuits of St. Peter's Prep and (then) College in Jersey City of the 1990s and afterwards. At "Prep" my sons and son-in-law were deeply touched by the famed Tony Azzarto, Browning, Keenan and others. My oldest grandson also benefited from Jesuit secondary and now university education. My son-in-law has given himself over to the mission of Ignatian secondary education.
At many levels Jesuit high schools provide an excellent education. Academically without a doubt. More importantly is the "care of the person": a wholesome environment in which young men thrive, good role models, solid values, strong extracurricular and athletic programs. In catechesis, there is a weakness: while not as drastic as that in the colleges, cultural/political progressivism has a strong, pervasive influence, especially in my NY/NJ blue location. There is more likelihood of a LGBTQ than a prolife club; more probable to hear in religion class about Critical Race Theory than John Paul's theology of the body. The leaning is to present as Catholic the progressive viewpoint on prudential issues about which we can disagree for example on immigration, climate, warfare, systemic racism and capital punishment. I was myself, nevertheless, satisfied that the positives overcame the deficits, which I as parent worked strenuously to overcome, personally and with the help of a range of more traditional-evangelical-charismatic involvements.
At "The College" there was my friend Wrynn, Kennedy, Ruane, Buckley, Lynch, Sheridan, Majewski. These were a clear and distinct cohort: the quiet generation, mostly of Irish descent, they came of age in the thriving, confident post-War Catholicism of the 1950s. They were young priests at the time of the Council (1962-5) and deeply inhaled the positivity, hopefulness, ecumenism, open-mindedness, and confidence that permeated the air we breathed. When the Cultural-Sexual Revolution exploded a few years later, their persons and philosophies were set in place; they neither participated nor resisted; they abstained and remained detached, neutral for the remainder of their lives. They were intelligent, erudite, low key, good natured, reserved, devout in a low key, connosieurs of quality alcohol and food, prayerful men of the Church. In sexuality as in piety, they were reserved, quiet, shy: virile, chaste, reverent and affectionate towards women, gentlemanly in the best old-fashioned manner. Our Church and world today would benefit from measured dosage of that residual Irish Jansenism they carried! Outstanding educators, devoted to the Ignatian "cura persona," they provided a rich environment for our young people to thrive. A deep debt of gratitude is due!"
I maintain strong connection to Maryknoll from my college seminary days; I have worked happily in schools with Lodi Felicians, Caldwell Dominicans, and Convent Station charities; and in recent years our family has become close to the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, certainly a contrasting flavor with the Jesuits. But our family and I myself have always benefited from our friendship with the Jesuits. The Society retains, even in the light of recent history, our affection, gratitude and respect.
The Authentic Ignatian Legacy
The Jesuit Order I, with the entire Tridentine Church (1540-1960), so esteemed...of Francis Xavier, Robert Bellarmine, Edmund Campion, Isaac Jogues, Mateo Ricci, Miguel Pro, John Corridan (waterfront priest), Walter Ciszek, and so many others...was militantly Catholic, theologically orthodox, fierce-fearless-virile, agonistically engaged with Protestants, communists, paganism, and union gangs. It was comfortable in argument because it was clear, certain, passionate. It took a special \vow of fidelity to the Pope. It was the "navy seals" of the Catholic Church: combative and forceful against anything that threatened the Church.
Transformation of the Jesuits in the 1960s: Three Paths
The Society underwent a profound transformation in the late 1960s. Perhaps more than any other Catholic group, it suffered the catastrophic convergence the two defining events of the time, one providential, the other diabolical: Vatican II opened the Church to the world in a posture of welcome, inclusion, affirmation and positivity; just as that world exploded in the Cultural Revolution. And so, the Jesuit Order, with the entire Church, found itself engaged, both accommodated and resisting, a godless, increasingly totalitarian modernity now sexually liberational, deconstructive of gender/family, militantly progressive, hype-technological, destructive of organic/intermediate organizations, culturally Marxist (identity politics, CRT), in worship of the isolated Sovereign Self, individualized and isolated, subservient to the mega-State and malignant corporate globalism.
Three aspects of the order, previously so combatively-counterculturally, thickly, militantly Catholic, inclined it to accommodate to modernity: its striking individualism (for example the Spiritual Exercises) and weakened communal bonds (compared to monastic and mendicant orders); it's strong academic orientation which made it vulnerable to an intellectual world going secular; and its goal to "find God in all things" which on a superficial level tends to affirm and accept current, worldly fashion. And so in the 1960s, with the Church's "opening to the world," in the middle of the Cultural-Sexual Revolution, we find three distinct pathways emerging: Progressive, Organic Conservative and Moderate.
Progressives
Four pivotal figures of the 1960s clearly represent post-Vatican II Catholic Progressivism: Teilhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, and Pedro Arrupe together represent the turn to the political, evolutionary progress, fascination with subjectivity, and the sterilization of sexuality.
Teilhard articulated a Darwinian (not Hegelian/Marxist) vison of evolutionary progress as an inevitable dynamic, like the development of a plant or animal. This inclines to a progressivism that is looking to move always beyond a past viewed as deficient. This is at least in tension with a Catholicism that looks always back to a final, definitive, incomparable Revelation in Jesus Christ and his engagement with the primitive, apostolic Church. At the heart of progressivism is a constant overcoming of the past viewed condescendingly as ignorant and deficient; at the heart of Catholicism is a retrieval and renewal of a superabundant Revelation which has been given-handed down-received, even as it develops organically and finds fresh expressions. Teilhard is himself not as fashionable and influential as he was in the 1970s; but his faith in progress is a foundation of modernity.
Lonergan and Rahner are rightly associated with each other as "transcendental Thomists" in their intention to translate Thomas into the Kantian universe with its centering of the constructive human intellect, in contrast to the receptive/contemplative intellect in the classical tradition. With Lonergan, we might highlight his concern, much like Teilhard, with historicity. Rightly understood, this awareness is an admirable and salutary development of the contemporary mind. However, divorced from a classical Thomistic ontology and epistemology, it can degrade into a "historicity" which removes stable philosophical foundations and abandons all belief and practice to change, relativism and cultural construction. And so followers of Lonergan typically discard the Greek metaphysics of Plato/Aristotle in favor of a Parmenedian elevation of change over permanence, whether in Darwinian, Hegelian or Nietezchian form.
Rahner, along with Lonergan, attempts a reconstruction of Catholicism in light of the Kantian Self, focusing on human longings, thinking, judging and deciding. There is a shift away from the vertical, objective visitation from heaven of the eternal, now incarnate Logos in the specific concrete of Jesus Christ. As with history, the turn to the personal and interpersonal is a welcome development in contemporary thought, but if imbalanced leads to solipsism, relativism, and individualism.
Arrupe, Superior General of the order in this tumultuous time 1965-83, was surely the most influential Jesuit of the time. His personal holiness is clear. He responded to his traumatic experience of the Hiroshima bombing with a turn to the political. He is credited/discredited with the embrace of social justice by the society. This was hardly a rejection of the supernatural, but surely a new emphasis on the secular and especially leftist politics. And so we have Daniel Berrigan, Robert Drinan, the brothers Cardenal in Nicaragua, liberations theologians like Sobrino and Segundo, and the embrace of leftist political ideology by the entirety of Jesuit higher education in the USA. In this he allowed if he did not encourage the politicization of the order.
Less known about him is a letter to the Society he wrote in 1968 in which he strongly, eloquently endorsed Humanae Vitae. He fiercely recalled the original Ignatian charism of fidelity to the papacy and called for thoughtful, prayerful, filial submission to the controversial encyclical. In this essential matter he reflects an organic conservatism alongside of his political liberalism. This splendid expression of fidelity to Catholic tradition was not widely emulated within the society. Rather, the embrace of contraception, the rejection of Humanae Vitae, notably by Teilhard-Rahner-Lonergan, set the tone for elite leadership, especially in higher education.
These four figures were admirable in their erudition, grounding in tradition, outstanding character and personal piety. The canonization process for Arrupe is proceeding smoothly: a 10,000 page document was submitted by the diocese to the Vatican. However, these seemingly minor theoretical errors, when handed down to the their proteges, in chaos of the Cultural Revolution, had disastrous consequences. It can be compared to the launch of a satellite to outer space: a small error can result in a large miss.
Organic Conservatism
Prominent Jesuits Balthasar, DeLubac, Danielou and others developed the Resourcement theology which largely guided the Vatican Council and developed out of that event into the Communio school. They looked to the past, Scripture and the Church fathers/doctors, to retrieve and then develop Tradition in an organic, consistent, fluid manner, in conversation with the best of modernity. Crucially, they articulated the classical Catholic understanding of sexuality as conjugal (unitive, procreative, sacred) in fresh expressions, notablyin John Paul's Theology of the Body. Unfortunately, with exceptions (Fessio, Baker, Schall, Oakes and of course the esteemed Dulles) this thought was ignored by Jesuit theology, when it was not explicitly rejected (for example by James Martin.)
They were accused (and still are) of modernism by more strict Thomists, often Dominicans, like Fr. Garrigou-LaGrange and Cardinal Ottaviani; as they were rejected as reactionary by the progressives. Their avoided the extremes of a progressivism, contemptuous of the past, and rigid traditionalism. It found authoritative expression in the pontificates of John Paul and Benedict.
Moderates
The majority of Jesuits (like most priests and laity)(and notably the quiet generation), in my experience, are neither progressive nor conservative, but moderate. They abstain from the Culture War. They could not/would not deliver a clear, firm sermon for/or/against the masculine priesthood, contraception, gay marriage or IVF. They are men of good character, fine scholars, loyal to the Church, balanced and prudent. Their neutrality is in part pastoral sensitivity to the opposing interests in the Church. It can also be seen as modest patience in waiting for the Church to be guided by the Holy Spirit. The problem is, however, that these are hard binary choices: if women can be priests, the Church is and has been misogynist. Additionally, given the dynamic power of change and "progress," there is no real ground of neutrality: to tolerate the attack on traditional Catholic beliefs is itself to enable it. It is like a security guard who decides to stay neutral when the bank is robbed. It suggests a deficiency in virile clarity-courage-decisiveness, the very hallmarks of the classical Ignatian legacy.
This condition is quite pronounced in our Jesuit Pope Francis. He has failed to present a clear, coherent vision; he implicitly rejects the legacy of his two predecessors; he has not delivered a clear liberal program; he has plunged the Church into confusion and polarization with his crusade for vague "synodality;" and so he has frustrated both conservatives and progressives.
Triumph of the Progressives
With the majority of Jesuits ambivalent/undecided and a smaller, critical mass on both sides of the divide, we see the outcome: clear victory of the liberals in all the elite Jesuit institutions, specifically the universities and America Magazine. This reflects, of course, a similar result across Catholicism and the entire range of elite, secular society. And so we have the widespread view, among conservatives, of Jesuits as Marxists, heretics and libertines. This is unfair to the majority of Jesuits; but is not without basis in the actual Culture War of our time.
Sense of Betrayal
Much that is most precious to us as Catholics...the conjugal nature of sexuality, the iconic sacredness of masculinity/femininity, the virility of our priesthood as expressive of the Bridegroom's love for his Bride, our filial loyalty to Tradition, reverence for the Magisterium...is despised by Cultural Progressivism as misogynist, homophobic, reactionary, authoritarian, clericalist, irrational, and rooted in fear, hatred and ignorance. In this context, the accommodation of our prestigious Jesuit institutions to modernity can only be felt as betrayal. It is because we love the Jesuits, because we esteem them so, because they have traditionally so encouraged and inspired us, that the betrayal is so wounding.
Enemies: A Love Story
Truth, as received within the Church, is worth fighting and dying for. The Jesuit order is remarkable precisely for the heroes and martyrs who did just that: in Elizabethan England, China/Japan, Canada and South America, Masonic Mexico, Spain of the 1930s, the Soviet Gulag. on NJ docks...around the world and through the centuries. This is a hill upon which we will die.
And so, it is an excruciating irony that in our time it is the elite Jesuit institutions (not by any means all Jesuits) who have turned against fundamentals of our Catholic faith. In the genuine Ignatian tradition of the centuries, even reflected in the Arrupe letter of 1968, we are impelled to contradict these errors, these untruths, in defense of our faith as received.
However, as we hate the sin but love the sinner, so we reject the error but not the erroneous one. Our communion within the Church is founded upon Truth. But that is not all. Dogma and morals is NOT everything. Within our families and communities we may disagree in theology and politics, but other bonds unite us: mutual affection and reverence, our life of worship, shared concern with the poor, social justice, delight in culture/art/beauty, and a shared desire for the True, the Good and the Beautiful. Fierce, passionate, intelligent, informed argumentation is part of the Jesuit legacy. And so we engage our antagonists combatively, but respectfully. They are themselves men of sincerity, honor, deep faith, intelligence, erudition, character and considerable charm. They are worthy adversaries. They are deserve our respect.
I cherish and revere my Catholic liberal friends and family, Jesuit and otherwise. It is like a healthy married couple that has learned to fight fairly and respectfully, if emotionally. The passion, clarity, certitude of my argument with the dominant progressive wing of the Jesuit society does not diminish my affection and respect. The two enhance and heighten each other. This is a love affair; if combative and passionate!
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