PLEASSE help me understand my pastors

[caroljm36]

I go to a Jesuit church with 4 priests. They keep saying God really really loves me but the more I hear it the less I believe it, kind of like a self-esteem program in grade school. Anyway, now one has a column in the local paper. Can’t link to it because it hasn’t been updated yet, but here is the main part.

“What if we could dip a measuring stick down into the collective reservoir of the human spirit and check the level of the authenticity of the spirit for our age? No the level of ideological fervor, the invincibility of dogmatism, the intensity of partisan politics, the volume of violence, the ferocity of aimless dissipation or the creativity of trivial distraction. No, the world’s collective level of cooperation with that which is best within us…They say ther is a spirit to every age. Let’s get back to checking that dipstick that measures the level of cooperation with the Spirit within our spirits that is the source of that which is best within us. Ah yes, just as I feared! The spirit of our age is one in which it gets easier and easier to settle for less and less”

This is a lot like his homilies. He is very emphatic and goes on at length but I’m never quite sure what he is saying. He did tell us before the election not to vote on the basis of greed. I wondered, did he mean greed to not pay more taxes, or greed to want more benefits, say, so I could quit my job and still have health insurance and not lose my assets due to illness? I didn’t ask because I was afraid it would come off sort of rhetorical, and imply that he was incomprehensible. But they all seem that way to me, much as I respect & love them.

Is this a Jesuit thing?

 

[Exporter]

Jesuits, huh? I have respected and revered the Jesuits for 50 years. But from what I read in Catholic Magazines such at The New Oxford Review and St Anthony Messenger over the past eight to ten years, I do question some of them.

It is known that the formation of a Jesuit used to be more complete and longer thatn other priests formation. In the old days, after ordination they were sent to teach children including Catechism. Then they returned to the University for two more years. I think teaching children grounded them - it made them have to be able to explain Theology to a child. That is why so many Jesuits were so succesful as priests.

It may be you particular priests have too much “book learing” and cannot or will not “talk” to the crown in front of him. Hey, wouldn’t you like it you could raise your hand during the homily and ask a question? But those guys with I.Q.s up over 140 dont like to be interupted. Sent him an annonomous letter, asking him to talk on the level of the laity - that you do not understand him. Maybe he is so used to talking like that at a University that he thinks he is doing "real good’.

 

[caroljm36]

Exporter:

Jesuits, huh? I have respected and revered the Jesuits for 50 years. But from what I read in Catholic Magazines such at The New Oxford Review and St Anthony Messenger over the past eight to ten years, I do question some of them.

It is known that the formation of a Jesuit used to be more complete and longer thatn other priests formation. In the old days, after ordination they were sent to teach children including Catechism. Then they returned to the University for two more years. I think teaching children grounded them - it made them have to be able to explain Theology to a child. That is why so many Jesuits were so succesful as priests.

It may be you particular priests have too much “book learing” and cannot or will not “talk” to the crown in front of him. Hey, wouldn’t you like it you could raise your hand during the homily and ask a question? But those guys with I.Q.s up over 140 dont like to be interupted. Sent him an annonomous letter, asking him to talk on the level of the laity - that you do not understand him. Maybe he is so used to talking like that at a University that he thinks he is doing "real good’.

I can understand Father Corapi, or Shaughnessy, or Groeschel, and I read New Oxford Review and Commonweal every month… Why should the Jebs at my particular parish be so difficult? I do think it has something to do with complaints from the more forceful members here, but I would not have the nerve to critique them. So everything seems veiled and vague.