Former Abortion-Rights Congresswoman to Train Women Politicians at Jesuit University

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You can’t be pro choice and Catholic but sadly many among us are just that.
 
pretty upsetting article, but more upsetting was the comments attacking the Jesuits in general. Especially those by supposed “Catholics”. Disagreeing with the handling of the situation is one thing, but claiming the Jesuits have fallen from Christ is ridiculous and apalling. As I mentioned in the article, the world would still be a bunch of illiterate retards if it weren’t for the Jesuits doing the wonderful work they do in teaching not only the gospel but skills needed to advance society, ie reading and writing and basic math skills etc. If everyone wants to live in the stone age then thats their choice.
 
I believe that there are two points going on here and they may not be related.
  1. The administration or whoever did the inviting should have chosen more prudently.
  2. The average layman assumes that when we say “Jesuit University” that it means that the Society of Jesus has authority over it. Most of the time, that’s not the case. The Jesuits own the property on which the university sits, because they purchased it and they built the university. But most of these universities had to surrender to lay boards of trustees to run, man years ago.
I remember Fr. Mitch Pacwa, SJ speaking about this once on TV. He said that even the Superior General of the Jesuits has no authority over the universities. Someone asked him something about teaching at a Jesuit college. He responded that for him to teach at a Jesuit college he would have to apply for a job and compete to be hired like any other professor. The Jesuit order no longer controls who gets hired and they cannot assign their own men to many of their schools.

There are few groups that still control their schools. I know that Franciscans still do so. Some Benedictines abbeys still control their universities as do some of the Dominicans. Those schools that are controlled by the religious are often turned down for grants and the students are often denied certain opportunities. These schools are not producing the high power executives, scientists, physicians, and engineers that other schools produce, because the don’t have the income. It’s a trade off that they make to keep control. As a result, some are also very expensive. The truth is that there is a prejudice out there toward Catholic schools. Many accrediting bodies look askance when they do their reviews, if a school is “too Catholic”, but they don’t use the same ruler when the visit a Protestant school or a Jewish school. I’m not saying that it’s the fault of the Protestants or the Jews. They don’t control the accrediting body. They are simply fortunate not to be at the receiving end of prejudice. The same happens with funding.

Originally, when many of these schools set up these boards and handed control over to a lay organization, the first generation of laymen who took over were very faithful to the religious charism of the school. They were very committed to Catholic education and to ideals of the religious community that founded the school. As time passes, these people are replaced by others who do not share the same vision. That’s very sad to see. I’m not sure how this is going to be legally corrected. You certainly don’t want to get into legal battles that will hurt the students.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF 🙂
 
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