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Books Jesuits caught in crosscurrents of modern church
PASSIONATE
UNCERTAINTY: INSIDE THE AMERICAN JESUITS By Peter McDonough and
Eugene C. Bianchi University of California Press, 380 pages,
$29.95 |
REVIEWED By WILLIAM
CLEARY
This will be a widely read book -- a must read for
ex-Jesuits, a should read for Jesuits, a need-to-know for
religious and priests everywhere, fascinating reading for anyone curious. The
University of California Press has published it in sturdy hard covers because
the reader wont believe what he or she just read, and will page back and
forth -- not to mention trips to the world of footnotes at the back. In the
good old days, those same footnotes used to be at the bottom of the page.
Those good old days are gone forever, my friend. You thought
theyd never end? Youll realize theyre over as you listen to
these 430 impassioned voices speaking anonymously, as if in a darkened
conference room. Two-hundred-twenty-four of them are present-day U.S. Jesuits,
206 of them are ex-Jesuits. One hundred of the interviews were taken in person,
the rest via essays answering dozens of questions, such as: Why did you join
the society? Why did you leave? Why did you stay? Where are you now,
spiritually?
Often the answers are unexpected. I wore out my eyes pouring over
these 380 pages of amazingly honest, burning words. Passionate
uncertainty was indeed the overall feeling among the respondents, like
people living near a simmering volcano. Nobody really knows what is happening,
but it is scary.
Jesuit membership in the United States peaked in 1965 at 8,395
men. By 2000 the number had slipped to 3,635. My brother Tom and I found
ourselves among the olims, a Latin adverb meaning once upon a
time, now a euphemism for what has become a brotherhood of broken
dreams -- those men who left the order.
Olims gather for retreat days, meet some of the old,
still-in friends for lunch, even hunker around melancholy listservs and talk a
lot of the old talk. But its all different. We are 5,000-plus, this poor
mans society, more thousands than remain inside. We have
often wondered out loud: Will the order ever listen to us? We need
wonder no more. Our ideas, our suggestions, our feelings are now public
alongside the words of our brothers who stayed -- an ideal arrangement.
The authors are a couple of pros. Eugene Bianchi, a former Jesuit,
has eight books to his credit. Peter McDonough is a political scientist who
wowed us in 1992 with the 600-page Men Astutely Trained: A History of the
Jesuits in the American Century. The new book is another treat for anyone
who loves language and a permanent contribution to religious sociology.
The content is, well, edifying -- if the edifice you care about is
a church for tomorrow and not for yesterday. The church for yesterday made
priests into heroes, and Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra were honored to play
them in the movies. Those were the days! Young men flocked to seminaries, young
women filled up the novitiates. Now almost no one wants to be a priest or a
nun. The unthinkable is happening.
The church body, while still burgeoning, wants a married clergy, a
sexually enlightened catechism, a servant hierarchy. However, the church
hierarchy, the authors point out, still hews a conservative line on matters of
pelvic theology. The Jesuits, the fabled group of educators
and missionaries whose origins date back to the Renaissance, are caught in
these crosscurrents. As the order ages and shrinks in number, its schools
and other operations are increasingly staffed and run by laypeople, leaving
Jesuits searching for corporate purpose. They are in a bind, unable
to go back to the past, as that course would entail a return to clerical
dominance in an age of lay ascendancy. But they cannot move forward without
placing their clerical identity at risk.
As for the Jesuits in the book? Read all about it in Passionate
Uncertainty. Its decidedly edifying reading -- because the Jesuits of
tomorrow will be a new quantity, dedicated first to justice, not institutions,
and benefiting more from the epistemological privilege of the
oppressed (in ethicist Sharon Welchs phrase) that comes with
heartening force especially from gays, a lot of them in the book both
out and unapologetic. Their honesty is sometimes arresting.
Said one Jesuit: I entered as a way to cope with being gay,
although that would not have been the way I put it then. Said another:
A major problem is our inability to come to terms with the fact that a
majority of Jesuits under 40 are not heterosexual. The many testimonials
about this are inconclusive, but it may be that gays are drawn to religious
life simply because they are caring individuals who make excellent priests and
teachers and, with their frequent charism for relationality, are naturals for
ministry of every kind.
In fact, to this outside observer, the gaying of religious
life (as the authors put it) suggests that little would be lost and much
gained by making the order coed altogether. If gays and straights can learn to
live in the same monastery, why not women and men? Zen monasteries and college
dorms seem to have accepted these challenges and absorbed the costs. The
Jesuits founder himself admitted two women to the order, and at the
request of the pope. So what else is new?
But inclusive monasteries will never happen. Rome wont even
allow inclusive language.
The olims in the book -- who are religiously and
spiritually all over the lot -- often speak prophetically too, and with bracing
loyalty to the Ignatian spirit, which was from the beginning innovational and
politically incorrect.
The popular song, Those were the days, my friend, ends
with a kind of lament, drifting into neutral syllables the last time through.
But its probably too early to lament the demise of the Jesuit order --
too much passionate uncertainty.
William Cleary, a former assistant editor at America
magazine, has authored 12 books on prayer.
National Catholic Reporter, May 3, 2002
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