Father God, S.J.

Postquam recens nuncium meum Latine salutatus est clamoribus haeresis, illud iterare decrevi. In nostra disceptatione de Iesuitis laudabilibus dignis, notare volumus aliquot saltem misanthropes, qui per eandem sacram institutionem accesserunt. In Nova Anglia multis modis distinctos esse videtur. De caeco sanctitatis parte nonnulla scribam prolixa.*

In a recent discussion of Jesuit teachers who had an "edifying" effect in our lives, I wanted to share about some Jesuits who had a lasting effect though as they say “the jury is still out,” and although it might better that they have not been called back, I am going to violate the keep-your-mouth-shut rule.

John McLaughlin hosted the syndicated television program, The McLaughlin Group, from 1982 until he died in 2016. It was usually a wild affair, pretending to have all the subtle nuance and intellectual rigor of a Paris salon, overseen by the sagesse of a Diderot. I would side with Ronald Reagan who said that McLaughlin took the TV political commentary and turned it into Animal House. (In my second year at Dartmouth I was “rushed” by the real Animal House, Alpha Delta Phi, so I could put on my resume that I actually attended a weekend party that made it to the Big Screen, but in reality it made it to the drunkalogue part of my 12 Step work).

In my senior year at Fairfield Prep, JJ was my Latin, English, and Religion teacher. We called him Father God. Looking back he ran our home room just like his TV show. He would proffer some dry dogmatic summary of a position and then we were called upon to opine. Then he would set us straight. He was a bully. When one of us broke one of his rules, the offending student would kneel in the front of the room with arms outstretched, an old noviceship mortification. Once when the guffaws spread and Father God ordered another kid up front to kneel with outstretched arms on the other side of the raised platform, my friend Jack Madigan yelled out, “You can be The Good Thief.” McLaughlin started to laugh but said, “Pretty good Madigan but not that good. Get up here and assume the position.” Of course he provoked fury. Once he was attacked by a knife wielding student who hid himself behind one of the huge ornamental bushes that lined the path between Bellarmine Hall where he had his rooms and Xavier where most of the classrooms were located. He claimed that a thick flowing cape-like affair over his cassock providentially prevented his certain death. God had been watching out for him. He was definitely cut out for TV.

He was probably the most Latin literate of any Jesuit that I ever studied with. My memory tells me, perhaps with some faulty mechanism, that we did Cicero in our last year, though I think that most of the orations were tediously translated in third year. However I remember him being almost theatrical as he took us through the Philippics, but it might have been Contra Catalinam. Now I see that classical fluency was his entrance ticket into the political class; Cicero was almost a god. His classicism also affected his Christian doctrine. I remember his talk contra masturbation. He talked at length about the Latin derivation of the word, manus plus turbo, with particular emphasis on the strong circular motion. It was about the only instance I can remember of getting an erection studying Latin until he linked the arguments contra with some high sounding, but specious meandering into the classical virtues of virility and restraint. In retrospect it was a nearly perfect jesuitical circumlocution--he never used the English word “sex.” Not once. He said, “manus turbo, that about describes it. Let’s leave it at that.”

In 1970 he became the first Jesuit priest (and perhaps the only priest ever) to run for the US Senate. At about the same time that Bob Drinan won a seat in the US House of Representatives, McLaughlin asked for permission from his superiors to run for political office. He was denied, but went ahead regardless. He was recruited (or forced his own way in) by the Rhode Island Republican Party to put up a token fight against the Democratic stalwart, Senator John Pastore. Of course he lost, but his bombastic style gave him enough notoriety to catch Richard Nixon’s attention and he became one of Nixon's speech writers although he’d really been angling to become the Chair of the FCC. He was one of the last men standing in Nixon’s White House. When Nixon was being rushed across the White House lawn to the waiting helicopter and exile in San Clemente, McLaughlin said, "History will judge him the most moral of presidents." That's close enough though probably not something that you'll find in the official Congressional record. He’d become just an asskissing Republican whore.

McLaughlin remained a priest through a brief stint in the Ford’s White House, but, this is really just my best guess, living the freewheeling lifestyle in the notorious Watergate Apartments, “The Republican Bastille,” including his well known womanizing, eventually forced his laicization in 1975.

“Predictions!” signaled the closing moments of his TV show. Mclaughlin saw the future of TV when there were just three major networks dominating Americans’ viewing habits. I was his hand picked editor of “The Bellarmine Letters,” The Prep’s quarterly literary magazine. In reality the position was nothing more than being his gopher, doing research and requesting submissions that he would completely rewrite. In 1961 I have a very clear memory of extensive research on what he called “subscription TV.” He really did see that consumers would willingly pay for receiving a transmission signal. This was almost a decade before the advent of PBS and Turner Broadcasting.

In 1990 I wrote to McLaughlin congratulating him, not for The McLaughlin Group, but for his hosting the 200th episode of “Cheers.” I liked the show and I actually thought that I might get a response even though it was almost 30 years since Fairfield Prep. I searched the archives of my emails to see if I could find what I said, but alas it has disappeared. I can only find this brief clip of the event on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBQqWVkzACo.

I told him that he had uncovered the true hidden character of the “Mclaughlin Group '' -- the Irish barroom brawl. His buddy Pat Buchanan was a carbon copy of one of my drunk, racist Irish uncles holding forth; poor Eleanor Cliff trying to get a word in edgewise over the yelling was a misogynist’s perfect setup; I probably left out that I felt he treated Clarence Page in such a condescending way he might as well have been Uncle Tom. I was trying to be honest and yet setting a tone that might be an opening to say what I really thought. Of course he never responded. Why would he? I was just a kid who’d been his gopher way back when he was a Jesuit priest looking for true vocation as a member of the political elite, and I was being passive aggressive anyway.

All that Jesuit training, years, the best education that money can buy, and not one ounce of humility in his bones. Although as they say “we lost touch,” I could see no observable signs of any self-awareness either. I can still hear his weirdly pitched voice yelling “Wrong.” When we meet in heaven I will yell it in his ear.


*After my recent post in Latin was greeted with screams of heresy, I’ve decided to repeat it. In our discussion of praise-worthy Jesuits, I would like to point out that there were at least a few misanthropes who came through the same sacred formation. In New England it seems that we were worlds apart in many ways. I will write some long pieces about the dark side of sainthood.