On Easter, WaPo Celebrates the Decline and Fall of ‘User-Friendly’ American Jesuits
Liberal reporters just can’t seem to grasp the idea that making Christianity more “user-friendly” – that is, more liberal and “relevant” and free of conservative “dogma” that opposes divorce, abortion, and homosexuality – doesn’t end up attracting users. Just like liberal “mainline” Protestant churches are in decline, inside Catholicism, the Jesuit order is shrinking in America. On Easter Sunday, Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein never found anyone to notify her that it’s exactly the “user-friendly” liberalism that’s shrinking it. Jesuit theology, which tends to be open and positive , is well suited to American spirituality in 2011, said the Rev. James Martin, a corporate executive turned priest and writer. He calls his order “user-friendly” and wrote “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything” last year, aimed at a non-Catholic audience. “The message that God meets you where you are is very appealing, because we are a very experiential crowd today,” Martin said. “Seekers want real-life experiences of God; they don’t want just dogma.” Indeed, the stereotype of Jesuits stands in contrast to that of the Catholic Church hierarchy, which many U.S. Catholics consider remote and doctrinaire . How can Boorstein, who as a reporter who’s supposed to be a keen observer, missing that it’s hard for Martin to claim his approach is “very appealing” as they cannot attract new priests? Can she explore the fact that the priests are signing up for what liberals call the “remote and doctrinaire” church instead? But of course, the Post cannot call Jesuits “liberals,” they’re just activists: Jesuits are often seen as rebels, and the Vatican shut down the order for several decades in the late 1700s because of the perception that its members were meddling in Colonial politics. In recent decades, Jesuits have been associated with high-profile activism , such as in Latin America and, earlier, the protests against the Vietnam War. Because Jesuits tend to work within the culture — in schools, research and cultural institutions — they sometimes are seen as less wary of contemporary Western life than Catholic Church officialdom. “It’s a very positive view of the world, of culture, this idea that God desires to be found wherever people are. It’s a very different mentality than what has characterized Catholic mentality — a siege mentality, that the world is bad, the material world is bad, we need to defend ourselves,” said the Rev. Mark Horak, pastor at Holy Trinity, which recently hired someone to “form” lay people in Jesuit spirituality. If Boorstein’s story had any notion of journalistic balance, another Catholic priest might differ from Horak and suggest that the “siege mentality” is written into the Bible, that worldliness or appeals to the worldly can water down the Good Book’s message. Boorstein might recall that at Georgetown University, the Jesuits have struggled with removing crucifixes from the classrooms , or covering up overtly
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on April 25, 2011. Filed under