From Crisis
By Fr John A. Perricone, PhD
As this galloping New Orthodoxy captures young heart after young heart, the Fr Thomas Reeses of the spent Society of Jesus rage as they raise their clenched fists.
Ever reliable, Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., seldom disappoints.
This former editor of America magazine, now a featured columnist for the National Catholic Reporter (both lodestars for the Catholic Left) is uncommonly consistent. With steely determination, he has been stretching the Catholic Church into shapes that bear little resemblance to the Church Christ founded.
In a recent post, Fr. Reese predictably bemoaned the much-reported boon in converts to the Catholic Church. Major news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and ABC News gave this unexpected phenomenon front-page coverage. It seems to have even stumped some members of the United States hierarchy, more accustomed to presiding over dioceses-turned-cadavers than eruptions of new young life into Catholic parishes. Sudden appearances of elated converts startled them. Even given their bureaucratized faux good cheer, genuinely human smiles of unaffected joy peeked through.
No, no, not for Fr. Reese. With concerned grimness, he announced that he feared they were entering the Church for the “wrong reasons.” Hmmm. What could that mean? Peering into the recent past of the Society of Jesus might give a clue.
For well over a half century this once formidable order has been attempting to reconfigure the Roman Catholic Church after the fashion of a United Nations NGO. They salute to an unbending credo: all that guided the Church before 1965 interdicted. Mere mention of it would be ranked among the old sins crying out to Heaven for vengeance. Take a peek at their seminary formation. Your jaw would drop.
With this snapshot, you can appreciate Fr. Reese’s alarm at this nationwide surge of converts. All of them were defying the revisionist Catholicism that he and his order have been peddling for over half a century. Given all the prestige and resources of this once vaunted Society, such backsliding should not have happened.
Fr. Reese fully appreciated the undeniable reality.
These young converts were rushing the doors of Catholicism for all the Wrong (Old) Reasons:
- Christ founded the Catholic Church as the sole path to salvation.
- Christ’s salvific death is re-presented in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
- The Catholic Church alone allows man to make a rendezvous with the Divine Trinity.
- Each Mass must resemble what John the Apostle saw in the Book of Revelation:
The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each made of a single pearl: and the streets of the city were of pure gold, transparent as glass. The city had the radiance of a precious jewel that sparkled like a diamond. …The walls were constructed of jasper, the city was of pure gold, crystal clear. The foundation of the city wall was ornate with precious stones of every sort: the first course of stones was jasper; the second sapphire…the the fourth emerald…the ninth topaz…and the twelfth amethyst. (Revelation 21:19)
(Contrast this with the deadening banality of “liturgies” designed by Jesuits & Co. Inc.) - No part of the Mass should ever resemble what titillates men in the world. Its ambience, viz. architecture, music, priest’s vestments and motions must bespeak the sublime.
- Each Mass should summon men to enter into the Mystery of the Thrice Holy God, and thus transform men into saints-in-progress.
- These new converts covet the opportunity to make the sacrifices necessary to keep their bodies pure and their souls rooted in the Faith.
The New Society of Jesus (most of them) see this as revolting recidivism—nothing more than backsliding into a dead past indifferent to the exigencies of the New Man, societal progress, and theological development.
Yes, Fr. Reese is unhappy this Easter. He is watching his Shiny New Dream starting to peel away like paint on an old wall. His once titanic Society decided to rush to the fancies of the moment. But as Chesterton warned, “he who marries the fashions of the day, soon finds himself a widow.”
Confusion at Fr. Reese’s dismay easily fades when you look at Santa Clara University. This Jesuit-run university advertised a “Slut Walk” on Friday, April 10th at 3:00pm. Or if that does not shake you to the core, then there is their Loyola University in Chicago. When the university’s student newspaper reported that Sheridan Gorman was killed by the illegal Venezuelan immigrant Jose Medina-Medina, the university office scolded the newspaper for reporting that Medina-Medina was an “illegal immigrant.” They insisted that the student newspaper simply report his Illinois city of origin.
Not only does the New Society of Jesus censure anything of the Catholic Creed, they even seem to suspend the Natural Moral Law and the tenets of right reason. Inspect the philosophy and theology courses at their colleges and universities. Or, listen to the bold statements of some of their number on the obligations of the Sixth Commandment.
They have dwindled sin to what Thomas Mann called it in The Magic Mountain, “a half jovial, familiar and mildly facetious word.” Or in Maureen Mullarkey’s biting construal, “Fear of God disappears in a fog of comforting platitudes about love and leniency…or (in a higher prelate’s) arcadian fancy, ‘respectful relationships at every level.’”
Of course, they win support with all of this with the new “accompaniment” of a Synodal Church, cemented by the decades-long silence of the Church’s hierarchy.
Yet, the Holy Spirit will not be bound by this artifice. Still, He sets hearts afire for the True Church. He seems to enjoy baffling those in High Places. These new converts, who delight in doing run-arounds about the Old Thinking, are becoming ubiquitous.
Not only converts. Look at the seminaries—the few still standing.
Like skilled CIA agents trained in the art of subterfuge, these new seminarians listen respectfully to the bloodless drone of the Seminary grandees, then they repair to the enthralling pages of St. Thomas Aquinas, the arresting invitations of St. Francis de Sales, or the rousing exhortations of Blessed Pius IX, Pope Leo XIII, and St. Pius X. After attendance at the anemic seminary “liturgies” (or worse), they surreptitiously squeeze into their cars to search for the closest Traditional Mass.
These brave men of a fiery New Fidelity seem to have digested the impassioned summons of Jacques Maritain in his elegiac Peasant of the Garrone:
I am a beggar of Heaven,
Disguised as a man of this world,
A kind of Secret Agent of the King of Kings,
In the territory of the Prince of this World.
Their hearts are inflamed for the Lion of Judah, who thunders, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). And their intellects are not blurred by any voice who contradicts the mighty St. Paul: “Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
Like skilled CIA agents trained in the art of subterfuge, these new seminarians listen respectfully to the bloodless drone of the Seminary grandees, then they repair to the enthralling pages of St. Thomas Aquinas.These New Catholic Men refuse to bow to the cellophane Christ proffered by the revisionist faculties in their tony universities. The virile stride of their Faith is inspired by the electrifying words of Isaiah 42:13: “The Lord advances like a hero, His fury is stirred like a warrior. He gives the war shout, raises the hue and cry, and marches valiantly against the foe.”
They will give the compliant nod to the bien pensant at their lecture podiums. But they see them for what they are: encased in the faded dreams of the past like some prehistoric insect trapped in amber. These new men are steeled by the words of St. John Henry Newman in his sermon “The Communion of Saints”:
When We are called to battle for our Lord, what we are who are seen, are but mere outposts, the advanced guard of a mighty host, ourselves few in number, and despised, but bold beyond our numbers, because supported by chariots of fire and horses of fire round about the mountain of the Lord of Hosts under which we stand.
Of course, the young people who rushed to the baptismal fonts this past Easter were made of such iron. They long to taste the supernatural uplands that only Mother Church’s eternal teachings can provide. They will not settle for the political posturing and therapeutic blather on offer in the typical parish. They are looking for the stiffer stuff of the Nicene Creed and the blood of martyrs. Likely, they have read Miguel de Unamuno in his Tragic Sense of Life: “May God give you not peace, but glory.”
As this galloping New Orthodoxy captures young heart after young heart, the Fr. Thomas Reeses of the spent Society of Jesus rage as they raise their clenched fists. With all that, they comfort themselves that this temporary fad will soon pass. After all, they possess the prestigious campuses, the cachet of settled academic institutions. They can boast of storied alumni and bulging endowments. They still have the ear of the Church’s Ruling Elite. They are certain that this nostalgia for a forgotten past will soon pass like recovery from a raging fever.
Almost sounds like David and Goliath, doesn’t it?
But you know who won.
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