GetReligion
Monday, April 14, 2025

Jesuits

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Kenneth Woodward on l'affaire Douthat and who is qualified to write about religion news

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I admit that I have been biting my tongue during the post-Synod 2015 firestorm about New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and the large army of liberal Catholic academics who have expressed their displeasure that such a theological lightweight has been allowed to comment on the Catholic faith in the world's most influential op-ed space.

Surely readers will join me in being shocked, shocked that a Times columnist has published controversial commentary about the Catholic Church. Can I get an "Amen"?

I mean, this is the same editorial setting in which a columnist named Bill Keller – a few months after 9/11 – compared the Catholic leadership, in the era of Pope St. John Paul II, with al-Qaeda. Readers may, or may not, recall the outcry from Catholic progressives in the wake of these words from Keller's May 4, 2002, column entitled "Is the Pope Catholic?"

What reform might mean in the church is something I leave to Catholics who care more than I do. ... But the struggle within the church is interesting as part of a larger struggle within the human race, between the forces of tolerance and absolutism. That is a struggle that has given rise to great migrations (including the one that created this country) and great wars (including one we are fighting this moment against a most virulent strain of intolerance).
The Catholic Church has not, over the centuries, been a stronghold of small-c catholic values, which my dictionary defines as "broad in sympathies, tastes, or understanding; liberal." This is, after all, the church that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition.

So what happened to Keller after that theological outburst? A year later he was named executive editor of the Times.

Back to Douthat and his theological commentary about Pope Francis and the 2015 Synod of Bishops. You see, there is a journalistic issue here that affects reporters covering hard news events and trends, as well as commentary writers who are free to write their own opinions.


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Does the priest in this Los Angeles Times story have a reason for his season?

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Once again, we’re reading one of those Los Angeles Times’ “great reads” stories from A1, in this case a long feature about an unusual individual who has some involvement with religion.

Such is this story on a Los Angeles priest who has mentored gang members for three decades. It sounds like a thankless job for someone with a deep calling to be in a difficult place. Here's the interesting question: It's a story about a priest, but is there a faith element in here somewhere?

We start here:

In a small mortuary in East Los Angeles, a mother wept over the silver casket holding her son. Behind the pews, photos of Roger Soriano showed a young man throwing up gang signs with friends, a tattoo reading "J13" for Jardin 13 etched into his scalp.
He had been killed at 21, shot dead as he allegedly tried to rob a shopkeeper.
Behind the pulpit on that July day, the priest betrayed no strain in conjuring up virtues from the short arc of a life that had ended so messily.
"I knew Roger when he was a little kid and later on when he was a teenager, and you could always see the goodness. Always," Father Greg Boyle said. "Where Roger is right now, he has the same perspective that God has. The same God that is too busy loving us to be disappointed."
For decades now, young men who died by the gun have gotten their final benediction from Boyle, who began as a fresh-faced, thirtysomething priest in an era when the City of Angels churned out gang carnage on an industrial scale, inspiring movies such as "Boyz n the Hood" and "Colors" and making "drive-by" part of the country's lexicon.


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Pope Francis press watch: @JamesMartinSJ kicks off the week with #PapalGoofs

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If you are interested in (a) the Jesuits, (b) old-school Catholic liberalism, (c) humor, (d) religion news or (e) all of the above, then you really need to be following Father James Martin on Twitter – @JamesMartinSJ. You are really going to want to jump on board this week to get his take on the @Pontifex visit to America's elite media corridor between Washington, D.C., and New York City.

Father Martin is well known for his popular books (such as "Between Heaven and Mirth" and "Jesus: A Pilgrimage"), for his analysis work at America magazine and as the official chaplain of the old "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central. He is also, as you would expect, a skilled observer of religion-beat work in the American press.

This weekend, he got an early jump on the papal-coverage tsunami by starting a lively hashtag noting some early mistakes made by print and broadcast journalists in their coverage of the Pope Francis stop in Cuba – #PapalGoofs. He was very gentle in this series of corrections, providing no URLs pointing directly to examples of these media mistakes. Surely some of these helpful tips were offered as preemptive strikes?

Obviously, #PapalGoofs refers to goofs that journalists may or may not make while covering the pope, as opposed to goofs that observers believe have been made by the pope. Francis critics will need to start their own hashtag.

We will jump into those tweets in a moment – Bobby Ross, Jr., style – but first I want to note that many, or even most, of the mistakes illustrated in the first (let's hope he continues) #PapalGoofs stream are addressed in the online stylebook of the Religion Newswriters Association. You may want to bookmark that right here at ReligionStylebook.com.

Now, here we go. And the last shall be first:


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The usual: Covering Pope Francis the pastor, as if he is Pope Francis the politician

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The usual: Covering Pope Francis the pastor, as if he is Pope Francis the politician

Does anyone remember the big religion-beat story of the week BEFORE Rowan County clerk Kim Davis went to jail in Kentucky?

I am referring, of course, to the alleged move by Pope Francis to liberalize or modernize or do something radical to his church's teachings on abortion.

Right. That story, the one discussed by our own Bobby Ross Jr., in this post and then Julia Duin in this update, the post featuring that must-see MSNBC headline. We then offered this bonus essay by a GetReligion reader, veteran Catholic scribe Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz. The key: Pope Francis was extending – for one year – the ability of priests around the world to hear the confessions of women who have had abortions, or women and men directly involved in performing abortions, and to absolve these sins without their local bishops being involved in the process.

As is often the case, the American press rushed to portray this as another:

(a) Brave move by media star Pope Francis (actually, the two previous popes had taken the same action at one time or another).

(b) Confrontation between a compassionate pope with culture-wars bishops in the United States (actually, many or even most American bishops had already extended this right to their priests).

(c) Subject sure to cause tensions with ugly Republicans during the pope's upcoming visit to the Acela Zone between Washington, D.C., and New York City.

All of this was discussed, this week, in my "Crossroads" podcast chat with host Todd Wilken. Once again, the key to understanding the pope's move was to view it in pastoral terms, rather than political terms. Click here to tune in that conversation.

Now, here is another way to understand what the pope is doing.


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So the first Jesuit pope comes to D.C. and visits one not-so-scary Catholic campus

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If you follow religion news at all, you have probably heard of this Pope Francis fellow. You may even have heard that he is coming to the United States this fall, including a series of media-friendly events in Washington, D.C., and New York City. Readers may even have heard that Pope Francis is the first Jesuit pope. Hold that thought.

Detail-oriented folks may want to inspect the actual details of the schedule by clicking here. Yes, we are talking about a hug from President Barack Obama, an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, an address to the United Nations and other events that are automatically "news," on every conceivable level.

Now, the pope will also do some obviously Catholic stuff, which led to a recent report in The Washington Post that focused on one interesting college detail, when comparing this papal Beltway trip with others in the recent past:

For the Catholic faithful, a papal visit is always historic. For one university in the nation’s capital, the upcoming visit of Pope Francis provides special bragging rights: It will be the third papal stop at the Catholic University of America in less than 40 years.
Pope John Paul II came in 1979, and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, came in 2008.
The university in Northeast Washington is a natural destination for a traveling pontiff. Founded in 1887 under a papal charter, Catholic U. is overseen by a board that includes numerous bishops and other church clerics. It is not just affiliated with the church; it is the church’s national university in the United States.

Bragging rights? Hold that thought, too.


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The Oregonian finally has a religion writer who's pursuing the beat

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Seattle University is one of those institutions that conservative Catholics love to hate.

Not only does the Jesuit school host an annual Lavender Celebration that has honors such as the “Sylvia Rivera Award for Queer Activism,” but it includes faculty who write books such as “A Brief, Liberal, Catholic Defense of Abortion.” Alhough it's odd that a Muslim cleric might feel at home there, what is interesting is that the story about this imam first ran in the Oregonian.

The premise of Abdullah Polovina's story sounds like the start of a bar joke:
A Muslim imam walks into a Catholic university...
Except it's true. Polovina, who leads a congregation of Bosnian Muslims in Portland, did walk into a Catholic university.
And in June, he'll walk out to "Pomp and Circumstance." The 41-year-old recently completed a master's degree at Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry, where he was the first Muslim to ever enroll.
"I was looking for a place to be accepted as myself and to be the true face of Islam, though I am not the best follower," Polovina said.

I first spotted this story in a Washington state newspaper, which had picked it up because there’s a reporter at “the Big O” who has reinvigorated the religion beat. Or the “faith and values” beat, as they call it. Whatever.


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Ignatius, what happened? The Atlantic looks at 'rebranding' of Jesuit colleges

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A new article in The Atlantic looks at how many Jesuit colleges are rebranding themselves to project an image of fidelity to so-called "Catholic values" without proclaiming fidelity to actual Catholic teachings.

There is a lot to chew on in Autumn Jones' "The New Brand of Catholic Universities," and more than a few religion ghosts – that is, hints of valuable religion angles that are left unexplored. Key words? Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

Two points especially call out for clarification. The first is that of what happened to the Jesuits. Jones writes:

A fourth of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities currently have lay presidents, and the number of Jesuit priests who are active in everyday operations at the schools isn’t nearly as high as it once was.

That is putting it mildly. Here's how the Washington Post reported the decline in local Jesuit vocations in 2011, which reflects a global trend:


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AP finds distortions in Boston Globe story on Vatican sex-abuse prosecutor

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After I expressed concern that a Boston Globe story on the Vatican prosecutor's alleged failure to report abuse left unanswered questions, Religion News Service's David Gibson tweeted to GetReligion:

@GetReligion @tweetmattingly Worth checking this out, @nwinfield did some asking around http://www.sfgate.com/news/crime/article/Top-US-Jesuit-defends-Vatican-sex-prosecutor-5917303.php …

The Associated Press's Nicole Winfield sought to fill in the blanks from the Globe story and uncovered a significant distortion:

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The head of the Jesuits in the United States defended the Vatican's new sex crimes prosecutor Tuesday, saying he had virtually no role in the order's handling of a notorious pedophile now serving a 25-year prison sentence.
The Rev. Timothy Kesicki, president of the U.S. Jesuit Conference, spoke to The Associated Press after The Boston Globe reported that the prosecutor, the Rev. Robert Geisinger, failed to report the abuser to police when he was the second highest-ranking official in the Jesuits' Chicago province in the 1990s.
Kesicki said Geisinger only worked for the Chicago province for about 14 weeks, from late December 1994 through March 1995, and never again. He was brought in as a temporary executive assistant to the acting provincial while the regular provincial was in Rome for a big Jesuit meeting. Geisinger had no governing authority and was tasked mainly with maintaining correspondence for his boss, said Kesicki.


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Boston Globe story on Vatican prosecutor's alleged failure to report abuse leaves unanswered questions

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The Boston Globe ran a story over the weekend alleging that the Vatican's top prosecutor on sex-abuse cases failed to report an abusive priest to civil authorities when he was a high-ranking official in the Jesuits' Chicago Province.

Given the legwork that reporter Michael Rezendes put into culling the sources for the story, the piece is well worth your time, but it leaves some unanswered questions. There's a lot of smoke here, to be sure, but it leaves me with the feeling that the Globe could have gone to greater length to locate the source and extent of the fire.

Here's the lede, the wording of which suggests some delicate legal vetting:

A prominent American Jesuit recently named by Pope Francis to prosecute priests accused of sexually abusing minors under church law was himself one of several Catholic officials who allowed a notorious abusive priest to remain in ministry for years after learning of his long history of sexual abuses, legal documents show.
The Rev. Robert J. Geisinger, named in September as the Vatican’s “promoter of justice,’’ was the second-highest-ranking official among the Chicago Jesuits in the 1990s when leaders were facing multiple abuse complaints against the Rev. Donald J. McGuire, a globe-trotting priest with many influential supporters, including Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
But the Jesuits failed to notify police or take effective steps to prevent McGuire from continuing to molest minors.

Got that? Geisinger was "one of several Catholic officials" who knew about McGuire's abuse but "failed to notify police or take effective steps" to prevent him from re-abusing. What is being suggested is not that he actively sought to cover up, but that he enabled evil to perpetuate by failing to do the right thing.

The story continues:


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