February 2009

Meet the movement that wasn’t afraid to challenge assumptions, question authority — and change the world. See how Marquette interprets the discipline of a Jesuit education amid the chaos of modern life.

So goes Marquette Universities latest ad campaign. I hope this Jesuit 2.0 release is just in Alpha testing because it has a long way to go to get to beta and be better than Jesuit 1.0. Jesuit 2.0 looks more like the Microsoft Vista of Jesuits.

“St. Ignatius revolutionary countercultural Jesuit” is not exactly the tagline that I think he would choose. Especially odd since Marquette University is about as countercultural as the latest fad. Exactly what part of the culture does Marquette resist? Going with the flow is a more accurate description. Though certainly following the Gospel is certainly countercultural in any culture and no one is more countercultural than a saint. The term revolutionary has way too many political connotations to be a good term to use, but certainly repentance and growing in holiness is a complete and dramatic change and thus revolutionary in only that context.

Meet the movement that wasn’t afraid to challenge assumptions, question authority — and change the world.

Question authority – yes that is what the fourth vow is all about don’t you know. I always hated the stupid “Question Authority” bumper sticker. To question authority you have to become the authority to be able to do it. So you then have to question your authority to question authority and on and on Ad infinitum. Now certainly there is a prudence involved in determining who has authority. But to just blindly question authority is a bumper sticker mentality. But to put St. Ignatius and the Jesuits as a movement that questioned authority is silly. St. Ignatius was humble and obedient and such a concept certainly never made it in his teaching. Maybe “Questioning Authority” is in the lost fifth week of the Spiritual Exercises. Jesus told the Apostles “Whoever listens to you listens to me” unless of course you question authority then you can just make it up as you go.

The video than goes on to list the things a Jesuit education helps you to do. Oddly following Christ was not one of the options. Now I take no pleasure in Jesuit bashing since I am quite an admirer of the Jesuit order historically and those Jesuits who weren’t tainted by modernism, but a video and ad campaign such as this drives me crazy.

The commotion over the lifting of the excommunications of the four SSPX bishops goes on and on. It seems that no one is able to make distinctions anymore or make any investigation more than reading a headline or the top lines of a story. Once again any stick will do when it comes to beating the Catholic Church and of course some within the Church are also willing to also pick up that stick and join in.

The lifting of the excommunications does not regularize the SSPX and there are quite a few hurdles to overcome before they can be brought back into the fullness of the Church. A roadblock has been lifted to show good will in the dialog that will occur.

Yet here we are being lectured by the same people that often say “Jesus ate with sinners” or “don’t judge.” The same people that are always talking about inclusion in this case don’t want nothing of the kind when it comes to the SSPX. That because of the nutty and actually offensive beliefs of some of the members of the SSPX, prominently Bishop Williamson, that the whole reconciliation effort must be scrubbed. Commonweal decries the lifting of the excommunications while at the same time crying over Fr. Haight who denies the divinity of Jesus.

From calls for the Pope to step down to a letter from Catholic Congressman it all seems to come down to the same bit of convenient fiction. To believe this you have to accept that the Pope lifted the excommunications because he accepted holocaust denying idiots like Bishop Wiliamson. They have to totally ignore everything he has written and spoke in regards to the Jewish people both as a Cardinal and Pope. Their arguments are so faulty that it is hard to ascribe anything but ill will to those who make them. They at least have not done any due diligence in doing any basic research (hello Google) before opening their mouths or putting pen to paper.

It seems like so often that somebody sees a story and then they figure out how they can use it to advance their own agenda. The service of the truth is not a requirement. Women priests are whining that the SSPX’s excommunications were lifted and theirs were not. Their arguments which include the priest-pedophile argument is a red herring. Many members of the SSPX really do want to end the schism and move into full unity. The women priest movement will not give up their heresy. Reconciliation requires repentance. I want both the members of the SSPX and the women priest movement back fully in communion with the Church, but they both make the same error of holding themselves above the Church by thinking they know better. They both think they are saving the Church.

The letter from the 50 Catholic Democratic Congressmen starts out with the same error mentioned above.

‘we are writing to express our deep concerns with your decision to reinstate Bishop Richard Williamson to communion with the Catholic Church

Obviously there are no IQ tests for congressmen. The first thing you might want to do before signing a letter addressed to the Holy Father is to make sure you are factually correct or perhaps even in the ballpark. I guess I must have missed the announcement that Bishop Williamson was reinstated – what diocese was he assigned? It is also of course true that the majority of these same Catholic Congressman have 100 percent NARAL records. I guess they are also all holocaust deniers. They deny the holocaust of abortion that has killed 50 million children while at the same time voting to support abortion. There have more than a log in their eye when condemning the Pope, I think the Amazon was deforested to provide enough logs for their eyes.

The ignorance or dishonesty of the media is nothing new, just too bad that Catholics join into this.