The Churches

Fessio to San Fran?

Fr. Joseph Fessio SJ the next archbishop of San Francisco?  Veteran religion writer Gerald Renner reports it as a possibility in the (London) Tablet.  It would put Fr. F’s fellow Jesuits “on suicide watch,” says U. of San Francisco philosophy professor Raymond Dennehy, a Fessio supporter.  Fr. F has been a thorn in Jesuits’ sides since returning from Europe a born-again conservative in the mold of then theology professor Joseph Ratzinger, who had become his mentor.  Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and he are this/close, as columnists would say.

Fessio has not been bashful about using his contacts in his cause of conservative orthodoxy. He has been credited – or blamed, depending on one’s perspective – with having the Vatican quash attempts by the American bishops to authorise a moderate form of inclusive language in the lectionaries used at Mass and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Jesuits rusticated him to a hospital-chaplaincy “gulag” (Dennehy’s word) when he got out of hand at U of San Fran.  Pizza billionaire Thomas Monaghan rescued him, making him provost of M’s new Ave Maria U. in Florida.  Meanwhile, Fessio’s Ignatius Press has a lock on Ratzinger-Benedict XVI’s books in English, and sales are going out the roof.

Renner renders what seems a most fair account of Fessio in The Tablet, which seems several cuts above church-based journalism as we find it this side of the Atlantic pond. 

Fessio’s efforts to swing the Church to the right dates back to when he completed his doctorate and returned to his California province. He was appalled at what he considered the abandonment of traditional Jesuit education.

“I was just a simple priest trying to teach theology and found many of the theologians did not accept the traditional teachings,” he lamented.

In 1976 he established the St Ignatius Institute on the campus of the University of San Francisco (USF). It was basically a great books programme, using the classic texts of traditional church teaching.

“I was helping to restore Jesuit education, a way of translating the faith consistently,” he said. Fellow Jesuits saw the institute differently, as a bastion of ultra-conservatism which considered itself under siege. Fessio himself would decide which students to accept or reject. Jesuit theologians on the university faculty were barred from teaching or even saying daily Mass. Carmelite priests from a nearby monastery officiated.

In due time the Jesuit backlash sent him packing.  But so far, he’s with the historic pendulum swing and has become

the standard-bearer of Catholic orthodoxy, one of the most powerful men – indeed, perhaps the most powerful man – in the Church in America.

posted by Jim Bowman @ 6/25/2005 07:05:00 AM