Would St. Bellarmine Recognize A Current Jesuit?

Ahh, the Jesuits. God has given us the good, the bad and the ugly. Do the current Jesuits know their history? That's a good question. Some we know do and others, well lets just stop there. But we can compare, can't we? Let us compare a current Jesuit and two friends of St. Bellarmine. The first is Jesuit Fr. Donal Godfrey, the current Director of University Ministry at the Jesuit University of San Francisco. The next two are friends of Professor Robert Bellarmine, Melchior Cano and Jesuit Professor John Maldonatus.

Fr. Godfrey has been quoted by the London Daily Mail as saying, “being gay is not special” – “it’s simply another gift from God who created us as rainbow people.” Godfrey finds it paradoxical “that it is precisely at a Jesuit Catholic university that we can find God’s image in people whose color, faith, culture, language, background, and sexual orientation is different from our own.” Godfrey wants the ministry “to help celebrate that we are Jesuit, Catholic, and a place that welcomes those of all faiths and none, all at the same time.”

"Godfrey has been a fixture at San Francisco’s Most Holy Redeemer, a parish deeply involved in homosexual activism, including participation in the city’s yearly Gay Pride parade." The mission of the San Francisco Pride Parade is to liberate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people. "Last October, Godfrey presided at a prayer service (broadcast by the BBC on April 22) celebrating homosexuality. At the service, Godfrey said, 'most often our churches make it difficult to acknowledge, let alone celebrate, the truth of the rainbow. But in all of this I believe it is God who calls and loves all of us, whatever our sexual orientation.' ” This all directly comes from the California Catholic article "The 'Truth of the Rainbow' at USF".

So that is case number one, Jesuit Father Godfrey. I am curious to know what he thinks is "the truth of the rainbow."

Would The Founding Jesuit Fathers Support Father Godfrey?
Would Father Godfrey Support His Founding Jesuit Fathers?

So, here is the next person to compare, Melchior Cano. The following is his quote:

Would to God (he exclaimed) it had not been given me to experience, in this sixteenth century, the sophistry and stupid subtlety with which theology is debased by so many doctors in our universities. It was the devil's doing, and a thing I cannot speak of without tears. When Catholic theologians should have been armed to meet the invasion of heresies from Germany, they had nothing but silly bits of stick for weapons. And so they were laughed at, and deservedly laughed at... because it was not theology that they ran after, but the smoke of theology.

Now Jesuit Professor John Maldonatus while addressing fellow professors and theologians:

Most theologians have for a long time neglected Scripture, the Fathers, and the pure tradition of scholasticism. They concentrated their thoughts on Aristotle, and employed their hours and powers inventing and solving an infinity of complicated questions, in which the subtlety of their wits had scope to shine. This mania for hair-splitting got such a hold of them that the schools resounded with endless disputes, puerile cries, and hot arguments which, in time of serious war with the foe, proved rather a hindrance than a help to the triumph of the truth. If we should see a man who had been challenged to a duel with swords practising meantime most assiduously with a bow and arrow, what could we do but laugh at him? Now that is precisely what they do who confine their teaching to useless and superfluous questions which have no relation to the Holy Scriptures or the needs of the age.

When I see them thus squander such precious opportunities, I feel constrained to cry out to them: "What is it you are about, O slack and neglectful soldiers? The enemy is at your gates while you waste your time playing like children. Let your theology come forth from the cloud in which it has been wrapped until to-day. Scour off the rust which has grown on it through inaction, and let it abandon once and for all the pleasant, shady twilight of philosophy, and descend boldly into the arena...."

But does this mean, you may ask me, that we are to abandon scholastic disputation altogether? No, gentlemen; the true way, I think, is to be found in the union of Scripture with the methods of scholasticism, so that when any question arises we shall not run to Plato or Aristotle for its solution, but to the Prophets, the Apostles, Our Lord Himself and His Church, and Christian antiquity. Furthermore, in all our work we shall consult the needs of our time.

So what are your thoughts? In order to maintain charity, I shall allow you to draw your own conclusions.

Let us pray for our priests that God grant them the grace to proclaim the fullness of the Truth. God knows the only way we are going to get good priests is through prayer. Wouldn't you agree?

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