Prominent Americian Jesuit Calls God The Father, God The Son And The Holy Spirit.......She

Good Jesuit Bad Jesuit ^ | 1/22/11

[markomalley]

Fr. Thomas J. Reese, S.J.

Fr. Thomas J. Reese, S.J. one of three senior fellows of the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington who spoke at “The Future of the Church: A Woodstock Forum on Sources of Hope,” held at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia on Dec. 5

 

Here are some excerpt from Fr. Reese's comments at the St. Joseph's forum.

“We are becoming a do-it-yourself church”

“Personally, as a social scientist, I tend to be a pessimist when looking at the church. But as a Christian, I think I have to be an optimist. That’s part of our DNA as Christians. After all, our religion is based on someone who died and rose from the dead.”

“At 65, I’m considered a young priest,”

“In the 19th century we lost men in Europe. We didn’t lose the women,” he said. “Today we’re losing women too. ... Mothers are more important to the Catholic church than priests, because they are the ones that pass the faith on to the next generation. They are the ones who teach the kids how to pray, answer their questions about God, etc. Women are absolutely essential. If we lose women, we might as well close shop. And then the worst thing about this is that the more educated a woman becomes, the more alienated she tends to become from the Catholic church.”

 

“If this was a retail outlet, we’d say we’re blaming the customers -- and that’s not a way to make your bottom line,”

 

“When was the last time you entered a Catholic church and actually were welcomed?” he asked. “Our churches and our liturgies are boring. That, I think, more than theology, is what is driving our people away from our church. What you need is good music, good preaching, programs for kids and a welcoming community,” he said. “If you have that, you will have a full church"

“especially when this work is seen not just as kind of an appendix to Christianity, as being a Catholic, but is integrated into our spirituality, as part of who we are, so it becomes part of who we are as Christians -- for many young Catholics this becomes attractive,”

 

On the church’s immediate prospects for the future, “maybe God knows what she’s doing,” he said. “If you don’t have clergy, maybe the job’s yours.”

 

Link (here) to the full article at the extreme left lay published Catholic newspaper National Catholic Reporter

[varon]

BTTT

[SC_Pete]

Jesuits like these should go to Big Sur and open New Age sweat houses.

[jacknhoo]

Pagan priest.

[Ann Archy]

Egad, he even LOOKS QUEER!

God will NOT be mocked, junior.

[Tainan]

Huh...when did the Jesuits go ‘Metro’?

[Russ]

Another person looking for his 15 minutes of notoriety. I am not going to judge the poor guy, God will be doing that very soon and I doubt that HE will be very merciful...

[kitkat]

***Huh...when did the Jesuits go ‘Metro’?***

It happened during (and probably before) WWII, when communists infiltrated the Jesuit order. A friend of mine had an uncle who was a priest. She told me not to trust the Jesuits when it came to matters of faith. I was stunned. Apparently she was right.

I do NOT hold all Jesuits to this low esteem. I merely point out how much harm the communists have done to my religion.

[mingwah]

Frankly, there was nothing in his words that even remotely favored truth.

[markomalley]

Frankly, there was nothing in his words that even remotely favored truth.

Something for one to consider prior to dropping $40K/year for Georgetown tuition, isn't it?

OTOH, it probably doesn't matter for most who would consider that kind of a waste of money.

[Scotswife]

Awwww heck - I hear this stuff all the time! LOL!

Haven’t we come to expect this from Jesuits?

[Bigg Red]

Mothers are more important to the Catholic church than priests, because they are the ones that pass the faith on to the next generation....

&&&
And fathers have no role in this. Oh, that’s right, in the world view of clowns like this, fathers are irrelevant. He probably favors out-of-wedlock births. I would not be surprised to learn that he favors homosexual “marriage”.

Pray for our Church.

[NHResident]

I fought against the stereotyping of Jesuits as apostates for years. I no longer can do that in good conscience. The situation changed as I met graduates of their ‘Catholic’ colleges, read more Jesuit theological rants, and subscribed to their magazine America. America reads like an extreme leftist, anti-American propaganda sheet. The theology of the relatively few religious articles is suspect and heavy on ‘social justice’, class-envy and fosters subtle racial animosity.

Not all Jesuits are feminizing the concept of God and Catholic theology but too many are. Just this morning our pastor twisted Jesus’ call to his first apostles to a become ‘fishers of people’. He explained that this made the statement more ‘inclusive’. I’d noticed he has a consistent problem in using the invocation of God as our ‘Father’ replacing it with ‘Loving God’ or ‘Supreme Being’ or other awkward phrasing that destroys the rhythm and flow of the prayer.

[married21]

I have a friend who thinks that calling God Father is so... limiting. It doesn’t say all that God really is— male and female and so much more, and bigger, and all that.

It’s probably sweet of her to feel that we are not being “fair” to God by limiting Him to mere “Father”, but I suspect what is going on is that she thinks it’s not fair to her. That is, why should she have to pray to Him as a Male?

Well, I don’t know, except that “Father” is what God’s Son suggested we call Him, and He should know a lot about how His Father is pleased to be addressed.

Prayer is for our benefit as well as God’s, but if we are really going to benefit from it, we would do better to do it humbly— His way, for His sake, not our own.

[Tainan]

Thanks for the comment KitKat.
I guess their 'Commandos of the Church' title is not totally applicable.
Opus Dei and all that.