Editor’s note: This is an excellent article about Jesuits. It makes me want to sign up myself! Sadly, I lack the youth or the brains.-BB
Click here to read (for an index of the priests mentioned see: Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit)
Click here to read the inaugural issue of America magazine, April 17th, 1909
Catholicism Pure & Simple 
My uncle (my father’s brother) was one of those so-called ‘Good Jesuits’. He lived through turbulent times within the Jesuit order after Vatican II, but I can never remember him being anything but a holy, faithful and hard-working priest (who always dressed like a priest too, unlike many of his contemporaries.) Sadly he died very suddenly when he was in his sixties from a heart attack, two or three weeks after arriving in Australia where he was due to tour around giving spiritual retreats.
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The front guy looks as if he is about to strangle somebody with his beads. They both look very grumpy.
Toad thinks.
“Fr. Walshe Murry, S.J., the “Hollywood Jesuit” who analyzed with Hollywood writers their scripts for their moral content and decency.”
Toad bets they enjoyed that! ‘Analysed’, forsooth!
Many thanks for the wonderful articles, Shane. Toad loved the old ads!
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This old time Society of Jesus is long gone, sadly. Will it make a comeback? Only the Holy Spirit can work it. I pray for it, as well!
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There certainly are many active and interesting Jesuits around.
Take a look at this: http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=10620&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CatholicWorldNewsFeatureStories+%28Catholic+World+News+%28on+CatholicCulture.org%29%29
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Sadly Omvendt, it is a truth though that following Vatican 2 the Jesuits (along with many other religious congregations) rather ‘lost their way’. From being the canon lawyers of the Church and exceedingly orthodox (I beieve it was originally the Jesuits who founded The Tablet’) they are now mostly liberal and ‘unorthodox’. That is not to say that there are many good and holy men within their order…they are just not the great order of the Church they once were. Some say that their involvement in the Liberation Theology politics (now widely discredited) of the Americas in the sixties might have had some part to play!!
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Toad is right, the one holding the rosary like it’s a noose is a bit intimidating. I bet he wouldn’t have put up with any liberal nonsense
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Toad – yes the ads are glorious.
Badger – liberals, eh?!
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The gentleman in the foreground is my father Thomas David Guerin. He later left the Society, got married & raised a family as a civil engineer. He always spoke highly of his years in the Society, while also stating that the priesthood was not for him. A great many very interesting Jesuit were frequent dinner guests throughout my childhood.
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What Max didn’t say, he possesses restraint I do not… Is, our father, the aforementioned grump, was the single most gentle, kind, and generous person I have ever known.
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Maxim and Alison,
Thanks for your interesting testimony. “Grumpy”, says Toad? What baloney! I think your father has a fine face with strong, noble features. His profound, pensive expression as he holds his Rosary and stares into the distance is fascinating.
“The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the soul” – St Jerome.
Take no notice of Toad-the-stirrer; he would probably prefer the feeble, superficial, giggly expression of pro-sodomite James Martin, SJ.
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