Jesuit is a Dirty Word: Campy Faux Jesuits Make it so

This is the kind of interlocutor that gets sickening. In modern Greek, the word for boogeyman is Jesuit. Greek mothers feared the Jesuits because it was averred by their folk traditions that Jesuits would steal their more clever children to be brought to be educated as eventual members of the Order in far of lands; not even Opus Dei gets press this bad. Whether this is true as is claimed, by Communist writer and author of "The Last Temptation", Nikos Kazantzakis, who claims to have been the object of a kidnapping attempt by Jesuits himself, it certainly makes you wonder.

The Jesuits don't just have a reputation for casuistry, they have a reputation for deception and unmanly and purely ornamental distinctions whose object is objuscation. So, when writers like this following gentleman rear their schoastic heads in the press to defend the insidious, we begin to wonder if there isn't more than a little truth to Greek wives tales and warnings about Jesuits who will steal your children.

Just a word about the following article. The author warns against aattacks against the Jesuits by the "sadly right-wing". Such slurs, often preceeded by the word "sadly", like "right-wing", conjure up a liberal (see Modernist) grandmother warning his readers that there are these strange troglodytes out there who aren't moderate, intellectual, urbane, New York Tims reading, gay-friendly Jesuits who have paranoid hangups and the like.

Undoubtedly, this overeducated siren is going to warn us of the boogeymen on the "right" whose concerns for orthodoxy and puritanical morality are vain, and certainly don't apply to the Jesuits, who, despite fielding some of the most pernicious theologians, university faculties and priests since the Protestant Revolt, really aren't the baddies that those overzealous "rightists" make them out to be.

Your first warning should be to callout such a perpetrator as a man with an agenda. Maybe such a poo-poo writer has a vested interest, maybe hes part of the problem?


Putting Intellectualism Into Catholic Politics

by Anthony M. Stevens-Arroyo

"Jesuit" has a clone word: "Jesuitical." The dictionary definition of Jesuitical reads: "practicing casuistry or equivocation; using subtle or oversubtle reasoning; crafty; sly; intriguing." As a graduate of Jesuit schools several times over, I categorically reject the insidious reduction of the intellectual traditions of Jesuit education to selfish intrigue. Resentment of Catholic intellectuality and of the Jesuits' approach to defending the faith betrays the complainers' own limitations. Sadly, the Society often gets attacked not only by left-leaning secularists who resent loyalty to doctrine but also by right-wing [Do such things exist?] Catholics who think that defense of the faith precludes respect for one's opponents.

If any of this description sounds too remote from daily experience, consider a current 30-second promo for Hardball, a political commentary show on MSNBC hosted by Chris Matthews, a Jesuit product from the College of the Holy Cross. The TV ad features the voice of Mr. Matthews explaining the premise of his interviews. He uses phrases like "when they try something on me," or "when they use an argument that has been successful with others" noting his intention to "nail them." He says he derives satisfaction from this process of confronting opinion with facts and propaganda with logic. Needless to say, this is considered "Jesuitical" by some and the exercise of Catholic intellectualism by the rest of us.

Thus, for instance, a Jesuit-trained debater would have a field day with the yesterday's Tea Party placard against Health Care Reform (HRC): "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" The underlying premise of this slogan holds that government-run programs are harmful, while the current Medicare program needs no fixing. But Medicare IS a government-run program, so exposing this contradiction in the opposing argument destroys the position. Conclusion: If the objections to HCR are faulty, the so too is opposition to HCR.