Friday 29th March 2024

Home » Frontpage » Currently Reading:

Brebeuf Prep Scandal . . . Exposes Jesuit Rejection Of Church Teaching

July 23, 2019 Frontpage No Comments

By MICHAEL ARATA

“What’s the difference between a Jesuit and a Catholic?”
That 1998 question-box submission in my wife’s Confirmation-prep class drew much laughter at the time, especially from the good and faithful assistant pastor who served as class adviser/answer man.
But the question has continuing relevance now. The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits — once renowned worldwide for educational institutions of great intellectual and moral depth — became notorious instead for radical notions of “social justice” and “liberation theology.”
(Observing similar aberrations at Saint Mary’s College, a local De La Salle Christian Brothers institution in northern California, my wife wrote editorially that “social justice has been transformed in left-wing Catholic circles from Christian charity to crypto-communism — taking ‘from each according to his [bureaucrat-assessed] ability’ and handing over ‘to each, according to his [bureaucrat-determined] need’.”)
By way of background: four U.S. Jesuit universities were signatories to 1967’s infamous “Land O’Lakes statement,” organized by Notre Dame President Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, CSC, to declare independence of Catholic universities “from authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.”
The four Jesuit institutions represented were Boston College, Fordham University, Georgetown University, and St. Louis University. Fr. Vincent O’Keefe, SJ, assistant general of the Society of Jesus, and Fr. Felipe MacGregor, SJ, rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, were also among other signers.
So was now-disgraced and laicized Theodore McCarrick, then president of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico.
In 1990, Pope (now St.) John Paul II effectively repudiated “Land O’Lakes” in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, proclaiming that Catholic universities were “to maintain communion with the universal Church and the Holy See,” including local diocesan bishops. Catholic universities were/are also to “contribute to the Church’s work of evangelization.”
Further, were problems to arise, “the local Bishop is to take the initiatives necessary to resolve the matter. . . .”
Meanwhile, the Jesuits had already largely taken another road trip, traveling far down the as-you-like-it “sexual-liberation freeway,” with its increasingly popular off-ramp to homosexualism and transgenderism.
By 2002, George Neumayr was writing that “were Ignatius of Loyola alive today, the Jesuit order he founded wouldn’t ordain him. His once-formidable society is now a corrupt club for homosexual dilettantes and anti-papal dissenters.”
So these days, many or most Jesuit colleges and universities, accompanied by places like Notre Dame, have scandalized their faithfully Catholic alumni and local populaces at large, with “pro-choice” board members and graduation speakers, dissident or overtly heretical theology departments and guidance offices, campus-sponsored “LGBTQ” activist organizations and tenured professors, drag shows, and more.
During 2013-2017, the Cardinal Newman Society, which labors mightily to push allegedly Catholic colleges into faithful conformity with the identity they claim, compiled a 124-page summary of “Catholic Identity Concerns at Georgetown University” alone, a PDF document which can be found readily by searching that title.

High Schools Also Infected

Speaking of “Catholic” identity, college-level deviations from same have percolated down into ostensibly Catholic high schools, including many Jesuit schools.
So we come now to Indianapolis Archbishop Charles Thompson’s declaration in June regarding two “same-sex married” archdiocesan schoolteachers. As two previous Wanderer articles reported, one of the schools involved complied with Thompson’s decree; the other did not.
More is now known, including the names of the two teachers and at least one of the social media sites with which they publicized their “marriage”: Joshua Payne, a Cathedral High German teacher, had “married” Layton Elliott, a Brebeuf Prep math teacher, in July 2017.
Their public “Honeyfund.com” registry suggested monetary gifts to help underwrite their “dream honeymoon” Caribbean cruise, including everything from a “spa for two” to a “carbon offset.”
After two years of discussion regarding such public announcements and their negative impact on Catholic education, with behind-scenes archdiocesan requests ultimately rejected, and citing Catholic-school teachers’ contractual responsibility to act as ministers and models of Church teaching, Archbishop Thompson finally declared that Payne-Elliott contracts could not be renewed.
Cathedral High administrators, directly under archdiocesan control, grudgingly complied. Joshua Payne-Elliott then sued the archdiocese, alleging contract interference, and filed a discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Constitutional precepts and case law (including the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2012 Hosanna-Tabor decision) say those actions should go nowhere.
When Jesuit-controlled Brebeuf instead defied Thompson’s assessment regarding Layton Payne-Elliott, the archbishop’s correct, prudential finding under Canon Law precepts 801 and 803 was that Brebeuf can no longer legitimately call itself “Catholic.”
The Jesuits are contesting that conclusion, so far within Church frameworks. Fr. Brian Paulson, SJ, provincial of the USA Midwest Province Jesuits, wrote on June 20 that with his own support, Brebeuf Prep “respects the primacy of an informed conscience of members of its community when making moral decisions.”
That, along with Brebeuf’s rejection of diocesan authority over school-personnel and policy decisions, was supposedly enough to justify retention of the school’s homosexually “married” teacher.
But as the Catechism of the Catholic Church observes, “it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments,” and “when a man ‘takes little trouble to find out what is true and good, or when conscience is by degrees almost blinded through the habit of committing sin’…the person is culpable for the evil he commits” (n. 1790, n. 1791).
And like many U.S. Jesuit schools and colleges, unfortunately, Brebeuf — where 2019-2020 tuition and fees alone will hit $18,875 — has long been training gender-sex revolutionaries. The present “same-sex marriage” conflict is merely one illustration of the degree to which Catholic teaching has been compromised there.

“Ignatian Values”?

Brebeuf has its own “Gender-Sexuality Alliance,” and annually sends students to the Jesuit-sponsored “Ignatian Family Teach-In for Justice” — wherein 2018’s attendees could hear from radical speakers about “feminist” organizing, “white privilege,” “LGBTQ inclusion,” “intersectionality” of “trans womxn. . . .” America Magazine editor, homosexuality apologist/propagandist, and “Ignatian Q Conference” favorite James Martin, SJ, was a keynote speaker.
In 2017, Brebeuf’s fall play was The Laramie Project. Described by homosexual playwright Moises Kaufman himself as a “faux documentary” which “scores a direct hit on audience emotions,” the production portrays reactions to homosexual college student Matthew Shepard’s 1998 murder.
A Mormon leader, endorsing normal heterosexual marriage, appears insensitively off the page. A Bible-believing Baptist minister seemingly morphs into crazy “God Hates Fags” Fred Phelps….
As commentator Camille Paglia, herself a lesbian, observed, “Shepard’s death was immediately transmogrified into a moral parable of sweet, saintly gay boy set upon by bigoted thugs and crucified for his homosexuality. . . .
“Hate-crimes legislation — . . . a fascist intrusion into constitutionally protected, dissident thought — would not have protected Matthew Shepard, whose assailants were low-rent outlaws and whom the bombastic excesses of gay activism lulled into a false sense of security about the world…, where the stalker can suddenly become the prey.”
Among skewed website resources apparently recommended to Brebeuf students in connection with the Laramie production were those of several homosexual-activist outfits, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN).

Cincinnati Connections

Fr. Bill Verbryke, SJ, Brebeuf’s president as of July 2018, previously occupied the same role during 1991-2001 at Cincinnati’s St. Xavier High School — just 120 miles away, and like Brebeuf, a Jesuit institution. As a St. Xavier alumnus myself and 1970s chemistry instructor/swim coach there, I wrote a year 2000 magazine article exposing that school’s ready accommodation of homosexual interests, including formation of an all-male dance club.
St. Xavier’s December 17, 1999 student newspaper had featured a front-page “press release” announcing a website for the so-called “St. X Ally Network,” which had been initiated by two homosexual 1999 graduates “to serve gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning students at St. Xavier High School.”
The two expected the site to provide “resources to help make St. X more and more gay-inclusive by raising awareness and understanding of gay issues.”
The advertised website, inactive after a few years, supplied links to numerous other sites which disregarded or scorned Church teaching, and included a link to a homoerotic “webzine” for teens.
The same newspaper issue carried a crude satire of “pious Christians,” a staff editorial fretting about “sexism” at St. Xavier, and a nearly 1,200-word article by a self-identified “pro-choice” student complaining of a pro-life presentation by the Teen Life Coalition of Cincinnati, whose nurse-psychologist leader spoke “the cloying and condescending words of an obstinate preacher,” so far as the young writer was concerned.
Homosexual issues had simmered for several years at the school, with a student being the one to take on editorially a teacher (and co-moderator of the all-male dance club) who’d complained of residual “homophobia” at the school despite annual religion-class appearances by a speaker representing Parents, Friends, and Family of Lesbians and Gays (P-FLAG), overtly opposing Catholic teaching.
Things seemed after year 2000 to calm down for a time. But by 2015, St. Xavier had invited back one of the two 1999 “St. X Ally” promoters as a speaker. Now a university “LGBT Equity Center” associate director calling himself “agender” (no established gender) and referring to himself with plural pronouns “they” and “them,” he spoke at the school’s “Ignatian Values Day” on “inclusive leadership.”
At Brebeuf, meanwhile: In a June 20 statement to parents, students, and donors, and writing on behalf of the school’s Board of Trustees, Verbryke along with Brebeuf’s present and incoming board chairmen insisted that Brebeuf’s “identity as a Catholic Jesuit institution remains unchanged” — despite Archbishop Thompson saying otherwise.
Even who-am-I-to-judge Pope Francis, quoting then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s related 2003 statement, says “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family” (2016: Amoris Laetitia, n. 251).
Francis is himself a Jesuit, of course. And he sounds like one when he comments on world government, immigration issues, and wealth redistribution.
But his remarks on the subject of transgenderism are consistent morally with those on “same-sex marriage.” Speaking to Polish bishops in July 2016, Pope Francis expressed his dismay that “children — children! — are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex,” and characterized such dangerous propaganda as “ideological colonization.”
Meanwhile, Jesuit schools and colleges continue down the brimstone path, laboring defiantly to normalize homosexualism and transgenderism, and demonstrating that there really is a significant doctrinal and devotional difference between machine Jesuits and faithful Catholics.
As I wrote in 2001 to an elderly Jesuit at Cincinnati’s Xavier University: the homosexualist invasion of once-upon-a-time genuinely Catholic institutions is one of the more destructive attacks ever mobilized against the Church. . . . But like dangerous somatic pathogens, the heretics will always be there; and it is only when the body’s immune-response resistance is compromised that serious diseases take over.
So hurrah now for Archbishop Thompson and other faithful bishops and priests, for their courageous, countercultural leadership in upholding genuine Church teaching! See Thompson’s summary of the issues involved:https//
www.archindy.org/archbishop/press-2019-faq.html.

Postscript

There really is a “gay” agenda. Readers can review its cynically destructive six-step outline by looking up “The Overhauling of Straight America.” Much of the scheme has already been perpetrated.
Ronald Bayer’s book-length Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis reveals the back story on the American Psychiatric Association’s dishonest normalization of homosexuality.
And a comprehensive research summary of the realities of sexuality and gender dysphoria is available at:https://www.thenewatlantis.
com/publications/number-50-fall-2016.
One of that report’s authors is Catholic psychiatrist Paul McHugh, Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The Courage apostolate (https://couragerc.org) offers the authentic Catholic response to same-sex attractions.

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

Abortion Advocates No Longer Consider It “A Necessary Evil,” They Celebrate Killing Babies

Last week, Kamala Harris became the first vice president in U.S. history to make a public visit to an abortion clinic. Though the Democratic party’s support for abortion is nothing new, Harris’ Planned Parenthood appearance does illustrate how that support has become a flagrant celebration of abortion as a public and personal good, essential to both “freedom” and to “healthcare.” At the appearance, Harris proclaimed,  It is only right and fair that people have access…Continue Reading

Wisconsin Supreme Court says Catholic charity group cannot claim religious tax exemption

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a major Catholic charity group’s activities were not “primarily” religious under state law, stripping the group of a key tax break and ordering it to pay into the state unemployment system. Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) last year argued that the state had improperly removed its designation as a religious organization.  The charity filed a lawsuit after the state said it did not qualify to be considered as an organization…Continue Reading

Walgreens and CVS Will Start Selling Abortion Pills That Kill Babies

The two largest pharmacies in America will start selling abortion pills this month that end the lives of unborn children by starting them to death. Walgreens and CVS will both sell the abortion pills despite the fact that they kill a developing human being and have killed at least dozens of women and injured tens of thousands more. They plan to initially roll out abortion drug sales in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, California…Continue Reading

Cardinal Burke announces novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe for ‘crises of our age’

VATICAN CITY (PerMariam) — Raymond Cardinal Burke has announced the start of a global, nine-month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, calling on Catholics to beseech Mary’s intercession on the Church and the world in the face of the “crises of our age.” In a new endeavour published online over the weekend, Cardinal Burke announced a novena beginning in March, and culminating on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.

Texas attorney general targets Catholic nonprofit, alleges it facilitates illegal immigration

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 21, 2024 / 21:15 pm Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to shut down a Catholic nonprofit organization in El Paso based on allegations that the group may be facilitating illegal immigration, harboring immigrants who entered the country illegally, and engaging in human smuggling.  Paxton filed a lawsuit against the nonprofit Annunciation House, which has operated in the state for nearly 50 years. The lawsuit asks the District Court of El Paso…Continue Reading

The King of Kings

Cindy Paslawski We are at the end of the Church year. We began with Advent a year ago, commemorating the time awaiting the coming of the Christ and we are ending these weeks later with a vision of the future, a vision of Christ the King of the Universe on His throne before us all.…Continue Reading

7,000 Pro-Lifers March In London

By STEVEN ERTELT LONDON (LifeNews) — Over the weekend, some seven thousand pro-life people in the UK participated in the March for Life in London to protest abortion.They marched to Parliament Square on Saturday, September 2 under the banner of “Freedom to Live” and had to deal with a handful of radical abortion activists.During the…Continue Reading

An Appeal For Prayer For The Armenian People

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on August 29, 2023, issued this prayer for the Armenian people, noting their unceasing love for Christ, even in the face of persecution.) + + On the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, having a few days ago celebrated the…Continue Reading

Robert Hickson, Founding Member Of Christendom College, Dies At 80

By MAIKE HICKSON FRONT ROYAL, Va. (LifeSiteNews) — Robert David Hickson, Jr., of Front Royal, Va., died at his home on September 2, 2023, at 21:29 p.m. after several months of suffering and after having received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was surrounded by friends and family.Robert is survived by me —…Continue Reading

The Real Hero Of “Sound of Freedom”… Says The Film Has Strengthened The Fight Against Child Trafficking

By ANA PAULA MORALES (CNA) —Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who risked his life to fight child trafficking, discussed the impact of the movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on his work, in an August 29 interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “I’ve spent more than 20 years helping…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This lesson on medical-moral issues is taken from the book Catholicism & Ethics. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. The email and postal addresses are given at the end of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Ethics (Pages 53-59)…Continue Reading

Color Politics An Impediment To Faith

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The USCCB is rightly concerned about racism, as they should be about any sin. In the 2018 statement Open Wide Our Hearts, they affirm the dignity of every human person: “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and…Continue Reading

Trademarks Of The True Messiah

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this essay on September 2, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages.First: The Pattern That…Continue Reading

A Beacon Of Light… The Holy Cross And Jesus’ Unconditional Love

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year on September 14 the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. The Feast Day of the Triumph of the Holy Cross commemorates the day St. Helen found the True Cross. It is fitting then, that today we should focus on the final moments of Jesus’ life on the…Continue Reading

Our Ways Must Become More Like God’s Ways

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9Phil. 1:20c-24, 27aMatt. 20:1-16a In the first reading today, God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially when we look at what the Lord…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)