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.

You're Under Arrest by the Fashion Police

If you're trying to dress to get some of that long overdue respect, here are some pointers for a Roman prelate under the gun.

Oh Dear Cardinal Burke, Down in the dumps are you? I know you’re about to lose your papal stipend and get kicked out of your groovy Roman digs, but this looks like you decamped to Motel 6. Going on social media to create some sympathy as the beleaguered ecclesiastic sad face of the ancient Knights of Malta and whip up your equally dubious supporters? This will never do. Here are some tips from the Vatican’s fashion police.

Try to look the part. 

Gather around you bright young people who seem enthusiastic about the message of the Lord. 

Make sure your acolytes have had proper sleep and can pay attention to what they’re doing instead of making sure that all their pleats line up correctly. 

Let them look you in the face instead trying to avoid eye contact as if they spent all night playing with themselves, alone or with others.

You’ve included hats for any eventuality. I count three. They’re all terrible.

Be color coordinated, but that green has got to go. And what’s with mother’s mittens?

If you were a posing for Gary Larson’s Farside instead of filing dubia in favor of the deposit of faith this might pass, but let’s face it honey, go back to 1869 and play kissy face with Pius 9. You need cheering up.

Respectfully submitted, your faithful Fashion Police

Let's go back to calling it heresy

This is going to get me into trouble. Reflections on a certain kind of theological reflection that inevitably leads to trouble.

My friend the Zen teacher John Tarrant once had dinner with renowned poet Czeslaw Milosz at his house on Grizzly Peak in Berkeley. Among the tales of a fine dinner conversation was this tidbit--Milosz was very interested in studying the various heresies and heretics that have run afoul of the institutional church over the years, even back in the days when the cost of thinking outside the norm could cost your life. Or perhaps the connection between controversy and rigid thinking might be part of his Polish dissident psyche.

But there is another side to heresy that interests me. What happens when your own personal belief system just drives your mind into a wall and there is no escape? We’ve set the fires aside, thankfully, though we still have religious wars that seem as senseless as ever to the unbeliever, but heresy still reeks havoc.

Last night my newsfeed pictured Mgr Jean-Louis Balsa who was just appointed to the post of archeveque of Albi in southern France. Balsa seems to be very likable fellow, with a jolly smile, but I have really no idea why Google choose this clip other than I follow the comings and goings of Pope Francis and his response to the dubia that several recalcitrant cardinals throw out as taunts, trying to alter the direction of (in their view) an errant magisterium. I remembered that Albi had been the hotbed of a very bloody heresy a millennium ago, but it seemed implausible that Google’s algorithm reached back to 1163. The Albigensian heresy held a rather gnostic view of man’s fate, caught in a fierce battle between the forces of pitch black darkness and glorious light of an afterlife. 

So much passes as religion in this day of political and spiritual correctness. The same news feed informs me that Mormonism is the 9th richest religion in the world, just ahead of Scientology. Then they proceed to describe the LDS as a Christian sect. Not since 1896 when Mormons renounced polygamy as the price for admission of Utah to the Union has anyone dared call Joseph Smith a heretic, but I will, at least from any accepted understanding of Christianity. At least L Ron Hubbard was honest enough not to label his sect a Hollywood version of Dale Carnegie’s self-improvement courses or tell us that Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem told his followers to sell everything they owned so that he could buy a private jet or pay an astronomical price for “going clear.” But my reading of the assassination of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum in 1844 was precisely because of objections to his 40 wives, some as young as 14. This was not a practice that led the early martyrs to death in the Coliseum. (I am not saying that there are many upright god-fearing Mormons who love their children and pay their taxes, but Mormonism is a cult with very strange connections to the life and teaching of Jesus).

Returning to 10th century Albi, the Cathars held certain beliefs about Jesus and the doctrine of the Incarnation that were outside long held institutional beliefs, but there were also beliefs about human nature that the established Roman church found threatening. They held that humans were spirits trapped in fleshly bodies engaged in a conflict between the forces of Light and Darkness. The consequences of that battle were all that mattered. The institutional church of Pope Innocent III aligned with the French House of Caput found this belief so threatening that they redirected the armies of the Crusades from retaking Jerusalem from the Muslims to southern France where they slaughtered thousands of people and destroyed the remnants of these Manichean believers. Religious wars were bloody in olden times though humans still engage in this kind of doctrinal war gauging from the reported number of casualties in Gaza since October 7th. 

In New Age California, among the Light and Love crowd, there is a lot of uncritical talk about the body being some kind of learning vehicle for the soul. We are spirits having a learning experience by being incarnated in bodies, or some such bullshit. Bob Hoffman even goes so far as to try to give trapped souls an emotional component which he called the Quadrinity--the body, spirit, intellect and emotional self, each separate and distinct and operating at less than optimal capacity. I am not out to ignite a religious war to engulf Berkeley and other hotspots around the world, but this is complete nonsense springing from the supernatural understandings of the Spiritualist Church movement. 

I am going to try to resurrect “heresy” and simply define it as adherence to a particular school of thought and separate it from bloody crusades or burning at the stake. What are other heresies floating around today that pretend to be Christian?

Heresy: The Prosperity Gospel from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” to the predatory Rev. Ike and Rev. Creflo Dollar. (That can’t be his real name, but I admit that it has a kind of ring to it). Motivational speaking has been developed and honed, particularly in the United States, but it is not Christianity. 

Heresy: I have to include dear well intentioned Mary Baker Eddy and her Christian Science. Bows to Mind over Matter, elevating this prattle to a higher level, but it is not Christianity even though my Irish mother thought that Mind over Matter was the underlying rationale of the Sermon on the Mount. 

Heresy: The Westboro Baptist “Kill the Fags” cult is high on my list of perverted religious ideologies. Another cult. The leaders rely on a very selective reading of selected passages from the corpus of Christian texts. The problematic texts do exist, however the condemnation is a bit extreme and the reading very literal. God apparently abhors metaphor or analogy.

Anathema: Franklin Graham et al. Liberty University and the Empire of the Self Righteous. They just seem to be self-serving greedy pricks. I know it is the same kind of language that they hurl against the libtards, but what the hell, if we are throwing all the use of language and critical thinking to the dogs, I have chosen not to waste words. Go take care of your pool boy toy Franklin and try to keep his mouth shut. And just shut up.

The Narcissistic Heresy: There may be something about the positive psychology of Norman Vincent Peal other than to have trained Donald Trump in doublespeak, but looking at what was preached from the Marble Collegiate Church, it is nothing more than a sanctification of American greed. That he was honored by Ronald Reagan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom speaks volumes. It may be hard to really trace the lineage of Trump’s assault on the rule of law, but there is nothing positive in this line of  thinking. It is narcissism. God did not create other people for our individual abuse and exploitation. 

Enough. You get my point. 

When the Sirens of Holy Hill called to me

Blue Cliff Record, Case 34: Yangshan’s No Visit to the Mountain 

Yangshan asked a monk, “Where have you come from?” 

“Lu Mountain,” replied the monk. “

Did you go to Wulao Peak?” asked Yangshan.

“I didn’t,” answered the monk. 

“Then you don’t know about mountains at all,” said Yangshan. 

Yunmen commented, “These words were spoken out of benevolence, but the conversation fell into the weeds.” 

When I start to riff on a Zen koan that I'm working on with my teacher, I can sense my listener’s eyes glaze over. Don’t worry that is part of meditation too, but perhaps I am jumping the gun. First let’s talk about dreams.

There were certain conversational conventions between student and teacher back in the good old days of Zen a thousand or more years ago in China. The question “Where have you come from?” was a catchall for Who have you worked with? What are you up to? What interests you and how much progress have you been making? If you gave a truly enlightened answer, it might survive a millennia and puzzle future students.

A few days after I began work on this “conversation in the weeds”  I woke up very early with a dream fresh in my mind. It was not a nightmare of the terribly frightening order but still unsettling. I had been posed a question that I was expected to answer: What Jesuit theologates should be saved and which put on the chopping block? Apparently as in the dream context, my answer had consequences though part of the anxiety was that I could not put my finger on the reason why.

One thing that the dream made clear is that Jesuits have this conversation about visiting famous monasteries and working with great teachers all the time. I’d almost missed it. When we Jesuits and former Jesuits meet each other, among the “get to know you” questions are “Where did you do your theology? Did you ever work with Father so and so at Alma, or JSTB or Woodstock?” “Our mutual friend Father FX came back from Louvain a changed man, don’t you think? His French sucks but at least you can talk to him.” “ I’m sorry that I had to leave Regis before I was able to finish the series that Lonergan was giving.” (Of course now in the days of jet travel, professional Jesuit schools share their talent. I spent a summer with Lonergan at Boston College in 1968 and didn’t really understand a thing. I was so taxed trying to distinguish his work from the rote scholasticism that was still lingering after Vatican 2, I barely passed the oral exam). 

When I applied for theology I chose Woodstock. Just 6 years after the closing of Vatican 2, there was still a mystique about it. More than any other American Jesuit theological institution, it had deeply influenced John 23’s vision. John Courtney Murray had almost single handedly persuaded the assembly to adopt the ground-breaking Declaration on Religious Liberty Dignitatis humanae  which he pretty much authored. Gus Weigel died before the Council ended but, for this young Jesuit he was as important as Rahner and several people on the Woodstock faculty had been close to him. I wanted to really understand the backstory of Lumen gentium. Moving to the Upper West Side to join a consortium that included Hebrew Union and Union Theological was very exciting. When Father Minister assigned me to the small community on West 102nd Street where Avery Dulles would be our mentor, I jumped at the chance.

I was only at Mount Woodstock a little more than a year before the Sirens of New Age theology called me to Holy Hill, JSTB, Bob Ochs, Claudio Naranjo, Master CM Chen, Tarthang Tulku and the Nyingma Institute. The work was obviously very different from Woodstock. Far more introspective. By the end of that year, I’d sat a long retreat with Dhiravamsa and studied Luke’s Gospel narrative with John McKenzie. If I were a name-dropping monk, I'd hit the jackpot. 

But Yangshan and Yunmen won’t let me get away with it. What drags this conversation out of the weeds and fills it with compassion? I will go back to the meditation hall once again.

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