The Apostasy of the Jesuits

At long last, “pride month” is coming to a close. Come Monday, a broad swath of corporations and companies will return to normal merchandising and normal advertising aimed at normal people. The corporate celebration of “pride month” makes some degree of sense: it is the state-mandated month of worshipping the decadent cultural zeitgeist’s favored sin. These corporations and companies look at polling numbers and survey results and seek to ingratiate themselves with those who have money to spend. What makes far less sense is when Catholic organizations buy into the LGBT brouhaha.

This year, more than half of Jesuit universities in the U.S. offered worship in the pagan’s temple, celebrating “pride month.” According to a report from The College Fix, 15 out of 27 American Jesuit universities publicly celebrated LGBT-themed sin on their social media pages. Other Jesuit universities hosted “pride month” events.

It will no doubt come as little surprise that Jesuit schools have so blatantly celebrated the sins of sodomy and pride. Prominent Jesuits such as James Martin and Thomas Reese have spoken well of homosexual relations for years and have (both implicitly and explicitly) endorsed the contraceptive and abortive agendas of the world.

But it should be a surprise — in fact, it should be appalling. The Jesuits were once the “soldiers of God,” going to the ends of the earth to preach the Gospel and, in many cases, give their lives for love of God. Jean de Brébeuf, Edmund Campion, Alfred Delp, Isaac Jogues, Wojciech Męciński, Miguel Pro, and so many others of the Society of Jesus chose death — excruciating, torturous death, in most cases — rather than betray the sacred tenets of the Catholic Faith. (READ MORE from S.A. McCarthy: Archbishop Viganò and the Schismatic’s Pride)

When the Elizabethan persecutions swept through England and Ireland in the 16th century, Edmund Campion and his brethren did not give in to the cultural zeitgeist but boldly faced the gallows singing the ancient Te Deum. When Jean de Brébeuf and Isaac Jogues arrived in the New World to preach the eternal truths of the Catholic Faith, they did not cower before terms like “diversity,” but preached until their heads were split open and their hearts eaten out of their chests. When Wojciech Męciński brought the Christian faith to Japan, no torture would dissuade him. When Miguel Pro faced the firing squad in Mexico City, he did not beg for another chance to accept the government’s anti-Catholic screeds, but loudly cried out, “Viva Cristo Rey!” When Alfred Delp was imprisoned in Berlin by the Nazi regime, he did not cede to political power but secretly celebrated Mass for his fellow inmates until his execution.

It has become instead commonplace to find James Martin as a guest of honor at the Democratic National Convention, to read Thomas Reese’s latest op-ed on female deacons or the necessity of condoms, to hear Karl Rahner exhort his fellow Jesuits to obey not the current pope but some future pope of a decidedly modernist bent. In a 2002 article, Jesuit Paul Shaughnessy wrote:

Roughly half of the Society under the age of fifty shuffles on the borderline between declared and undeclared gayness. In 1999 the American Jesuits decided to give priority to the recruitment of gays (under the rubric of “men comfortable with their sexuality”), and the majority of American formatores, Jesuits in charge of training, are homosexual as well.

There is a good deal of dissembling among superiors here: some denying the accusation of the gay influx, some admitting it but insisting that it is a boon, most perhaps shifting from one stance to the other depending on the sympathies of their audience and the exigencies of the moment. Overall, superiors have cautiously abetted the transformation of the gay subculture into the dominant culture within Jesuit houses. The website of the California Province portrays its novitiate in frankly camp terms (a photo showing two novices in Mardi Gras masks was captioned “Pretty Boy and Jabba the Slut”). On the other coast, Boston Magazine recognized the downtown Jesuit parish as the “best place to meet a mate — gay” in its “Best of Boston” awards.

It is devastating that the Jesuit embrace of the LGBT agenda has occurred at all, and even more devastating that it is no surprise, that it is, in some sense, simply “par for the course.”

“Jesuit Universities that support homosexual conduct are proclaiming that the teachings of the Catholic Church are irrelevant and need not be taken seriously,” Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow Nathanael Blake told The College Fix. “These universities want to fit in with the world, and are shedding what is left of their Catholic identity to do so, thereby abandoning their mission of forming students through a Christian education.”

Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP) Student Action Director John Ritchie agreed, saying to The College Fix, “Jesuit universities that favor homosexual sin lead souls away from God. Celebrating the sin of pride offends the Sacred Heart of Jesus, destroys Catholic education, and undermines basic moral values.” He added, “Since June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, it is with great sorrow that we see the sin of pride.… Sin disguised as diversity.”

It is thus, in the face of Jesuit apostasy, emboldening and encouraging to see Catholics remember that June is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. According to a CatholicVote report, billboards have been erected across the U.S. honoring the Sacred Heart — from Kenosha, Wisconsin and Grand Rapids, Michigan to Omaha, Nebraska and Times Square in New York City! Across the Atlantic Ocean in Ireland, a reported 1,000 flags and banners honoring the Sacred Heart have sprung up this month — outside churches, adorning houses, implanted in front lawns. (READ MORE: Cardinal Castigates ‘Cafeteria Catholic’ Joe Biden)

In an age so captive to the diabolical zeitgeist of the world, when even the age-old centers of Catholic thought have succumbed to degeneracy, it is the responsibility of every baptized Catholic to be a “soldier of God.”

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