The Jesuits: A Religious Order of the Lie

by Mary Ann Kreitzer   

Sr. Adele Brise

Some books are worth reading and re-reading. And they aren’t all by saints or Catholic thinkers. One I heartily recommend is People of Lie by M. Scott Peck, a psychiatrist. The book is about the nature of evil and makes a judgment that flies in the face of our modern “I’m okay, you’re okay” society. Some people are not okay. Evil people exist. As Catholics, of course, we know that because we recognize within ourselves the capacity for the deepest evil. The struggle began in the Garden of Eden and continues today in our own back yards. As Peck says, “The battle to heal evil always begins at home. And self-purification will always be our greatest weapon.”

I thought of Peck’s book recently while reading an article by Anne Hendershott in Catholic World Report about Douglas Perlitz and Project Pierre Toussaint in Haiti, a Jesuit-funded mission. Perlitz personifies Peck’s point that “people of the lie” often hide in church. That’s what Perlitz did for 20 years posturing as a hero of the poor while he raped and molested some of the most vulnerable children in the worldi. How did a homosexual man, a recent graduate of Fairfield, a Jesuit university, end up running a school for boys in the Caribbean nation?

It was on a university missionary trip with campus minister, Fr. Paul Carrier, S.J., that Perlitz first saw the country of Haiti. Five years after graduation, in 1997, he returned to open a school for street boys. By the time the first students walked through the door the next year, Perlitz was already molesting some of them and the sordid story continued for 20 years. It seems unusual that a 25-year-old could find funding for such an ambitious project, but Perlitz used his connections. His mentor, Fr. Carrier, became chairman of the board for the project and Fairfield became its cash cow. Collections were often taken up during campus Masses and alumni were solicited for funds. The special relationship with Fr. Carrier took on a sinister aspect during Perlitz’s sentencing. His attorney requested leniency from the court, based in part on a “dark and abusive” relationship with an unnamed priest that began shortly after Perlitz arrived at Fairfield. Fr. Carrier, who was removed from the board of Project Pierre Toussaint after allegations began arising in 2007 was a frequent visitor to Haiti according to staff members, took vacations with Perlitz in the Caribbean, and called the younger man almost every day. He is most likely the “unnamed priest” to whom Perlitz’s lawyer referred.

One staff member reported that, after confronting Perlitz over his abuse of the kids, Fr. Carrier did not speak to him for over two years. He was sure the priest was aware of the problem and did not care. The Jesuits finally suspended Carrier last year while they investigate.

In December Douglas Perlitz was sentenced to nearly 20 years in jail for his abuse of six Haitian teenage boys, a fraction of his likely victims. The judge mentioned 16; others estimate over 30. Some of the descriptions of the abuse are painful to read.

Perlitz pled guilty to a statute criminalizing travel to foreign countries to engage in illicit sexual activity. Fr. Paul Carrier is under investigation for his part in the scandal including $120,500 in donations that remain unaccounted for. Fairfield and the Society of Jesus are also on the firing line facing a $20 million lawsuit from one of the victims.

Looking at the case from the perspective of Scott Peck’s book, Doug Perlitz and probably Fr. Paul Carrier fit to a T the description “person of the lie.” Perlitz accepted an honorary degree and accolades from Fairfield in 2002 for his “charitable work.” How much interest he had in charity only God knows, but the fact he was almost immediately molesting boys and using money raised for the project to buy sexual favors identifies him primarily as a homosexual predator. He hid his dark side in the bright lights of honor. If Fr. Carrier was Perlitz’s unnamed “abusive” priest which is likely, he too is a person of the lie masquerading as a clerical celibate while living a double life and covering up for Perlitz. Does all this sound familiar? Have we “solved” the sex abuse problem here in the U.S. only to be exporting it to vulnerable children in impoverished nations? Sex trafficking in the Caribbean is rampant. How much of it involves so-called charity workers who are homosexual predators in disguise?

But is it surprising to find this horrifying story of abuse coming out of a Jesuit school? The Jesuits as an order embraced the lie years ago persecuting and marginalizing their relatively few faithful members like Fr. John Hardon, SJ, a champion of orthodoxy. Fr. Hardon often spoke of persecution with an exclamation point. “I know what I am talking about!”   

Promoting sexual deviance has become the Jesuits’ new orthodoxy. Of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the U.S. identified by TFP Student Action, 100% have “gay pride” celebrating perversion. The obscene play, The Vagina Monologues, has found a ready welcome at many Jesuit schools and “gay pride” month calendars are filled with Queer film fests and cross-dressing day. Fairfield, the school in question, celebrated LGBT month last October with a lecture by the creator of the gay activist rainbow flag, Gilbert Baker, who spoke glowingly of Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco councilman who was totally committed to normalizing homosexual sodomy and other “rights.” Other events included an LGBTQ film festival and a mixer.

The Jesuits were founded by St. Ignatius Loyola to be “the pope’s men.” One would expect such a charism to include standing firmly for orthodoxy. But the order does anything but. They profess fidelity to the Vatican while allowing, perhaps even encouraging, members to foment dissent which is common. A few examples illustrate it.

On April 19, Georgetown professor, Fr. Joseph Palacios, issued a press release responding to the Vatican’s criticism of the United Nations’ declaration of “gay rights.” Palacios is the Director of Catholics for Equality, another faux Catholic mole attacking the Church from within. An article by Alphonse de Valk on the Catholic Insight webpage described Palacios’ statement writing:

Palacios… has pushed his earlier religious understanding of creation out of sight and now embraces the immorality of the activist homosexual lifestyle as the new preferred ideology of equality. In his press release, he rejects natural law morality; the (traditional) consensus that anti-social behaviors must be forbidden by law (pedophilia and incest being two examples); the Church’s refusal to accept sexual orientation and gender identity as human rights categories; her refusal to accept any model other than the male-female one as pro-creators in the natural order of biology; and her subsequent non-recognition of LGBT… persons. In other words, Palacios stamps with both feet on the traditional natural law anthropology (which has existed since Jesus Christ) and its recognition of the divinely ordered human family of father, mother and children.

This rampant dissent from the Church’s sexual morality is, sadly, characteristic of many Jesuits and not limited to the U.S. In April a Mexican priest, Fr. Luis Arriaga, SJ, who heads up the Miguel Pro Centre for Human Rights (PRODH) in Mexico City, was banned from speaking in a Canadian archdiocese because his group partners with others working to expand abortion. The Jesuits themselves, however, have nothings to say. Whether they are dealing with a heretic priest on campus or one running a so-called Catholic apostolates, these people of the lie are welcome within their ranks.

The Jesuit order has much for which to answer. Jesuits are among the primary instigators of liberation theology in South and Central America which defends use of violence to achieve “justice.” In 2007 the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith issued a notification against Jesuit Fr. Jon Sobrino saying his works, "contain propositions which are either erroneous or dangerous and may cause harm to the faithful." The note included information about an exchange between Fr. Sobrino and the Vatican office:

"In March of 2005, Fr. Jon Sobrino sent a 'Response to the text of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith' to the Congregation. This response was studied in the Ordinary Session of the Congregation on November 23, 2005. It was determined that, although the author had modified his thought somewhat on several points, the response did not prove satisfactory since, in substance, the errors already cited in the list of erroneous propositions still remained in this text…..For this reason, it was decided to publish this Notification, in order to offer the faithful a secure criterion, founded upon the doctrine of the Church, by which to judge the affirmations contained in these books or in other publications of the author."

In this and other situations, Jesuits have proven themselves to be “dangerous” to the faithful.

But the Jesuits role in destroying Catholic education may be their most perfidious claim to fame and illustrates most graphically that they are, indeed, an order of the lie.. At the Land o’ Lakes Conference in 1967, nine of the 26 signers of the final document were Jesuit college presidents, the largest number of order priests represented. The group essentially declared that Catholic colleges rule their own roost and recognize no authority outside themselves. Here is the section declaring autonomy which in many ways echoes the Protestant revolution:

To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself. To say this is simply to assert that institutional autonomy and academic freedom are essential conditions of life and growth and indeed of survival for Catholic universities as for all universities.

This declaration of autonomy began the dissolution of the Catholic university opening the door to every moral aberration in Satan’s briefcase. Twenty years after this disaster, Fulton Sheen warned parents against sending their children to institutions that wore Catholic trappings, but poisoned the faith within. "I tell my relatives and best friends,” Sheen said, “‘If you want your children to fight for their faith, send them to public school. If you want them to lose their faith, send them to a Catholic school.’" What an indictment, one that is all too true in the case of Jesuit “Catholic” institutions of the lie.

Among the scandals occurring at Jesuit schools documented by the Cardinal Newman Society are these:

letting students have all-night “guests” regardless of sex; promoting Planned Parenthood and allowing students to do “internships” with the abortion giant; exposing students to false teaching by dissenting theologians, even those disciplined by their bishops or the Vatican; a general university climate of dissent and hostility to Catholic morality, especially sexual morality, etc.

It’s clear that the Jesuits take their own anti-authoritarian principles personally. One can find no evidence that they ever discipline one of their own regardless of how rampant the dissent. Fr. Robert Drinan, a champion of killing little ones in the womb and a consummate liar, spent years undermining Catholic teaching. He destroyed the faith of thousands of Catholic students. At his death, Fr. Richard Neuhaus described his impact in First Things calling him "a Jesuit who, more than any other single figure, has been influential in tutoring Catholic politicians on the acceptability of rejecting the church's teaching on the defense of innocent human life.”

Fr. Drinan, an abortion extremist who publicly supported even the gruesome late-term partial birth abortion (PAB) method masqueraded as a faithful Catholic. In 1996 he wrote an article for the New York Times defending this monstrous evil where the doctor yanks the baby feet first out of the womb except the head, then feels up the spine, punctures the neck with a scissors, and inserts a tube to suck out the child’s brains. The article advised his fellow senators not to override Clinton’s veto of the bill which would have banned PAB. “I write this as a Jesuit priest who agrees with Vatican II, which said abortion is virtually infanticide, and as a lawyer who wants the Clinton administration to do more to carry out its pledge to make abortions rare in this country.” What an example of doublespeak! Drinan proved here he was the icon of Caiphas in the Passion of Christ.

How do Jesuit institutions today treat this advocate of child killing who died in 2007? In March, Boston College Law School honored him with a panel discussion featuring author Raymond A. Schroth, S.J addressing his book on Drinan described as the “first comprehensive biography” of the pro-abortion Jesuit. All you need to know about the Schroth is that he is the media reporter for the mouthpiece of Catholic liars, The National Catholic Reporter. The cognitive dissonance involved in describing Drinan as a “vigorous human rights advocate” is jarring. No rights have meaning if the first right is denied, and Drinan himself would have accomplished nothing if his own mother had chosen the murder he championed so consistently.

The Jesuit order, not surprisingly, is in collapse. In 2002, George Neumayr wrote in The American Spectator: 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. Real Catholics need no longer apply. Neumayr’s shocking statement is the plain truth. In 1965, two years before Land O’ Lakes, there were 8,400 U.S. Jesuits. Last year 2,650 remained. There are more ex-Jesuits in the U.S. than active priests. And the decline continues unabated. It is no surprise and hard to regret in view of what the Jesuits have become – a religious order of the lie. They claim fidelity with their lips as the new General Director, Adolfo Nicolas did in 2008 responding to Pope Benedict’s call for reform. While claiming fidelity, he also made this enigmatic statement:

"The only way to respond to reality today is creatively. It's the only way. I am afraid when I find a young Jesuit, or someone who comes to consult with me, with a reduced, narrow frame of mind, this person is not able to grow. To grow we need to go beyond the framework we have intellectually, spiritually and humanly…. I encourage young Jesuits to study in a way that is creative, opens horizons, helps them see other points of view, other frameworks."

This sounds eerily familiar, like statements made by the “gatekeepers” described in Michael Rose’s book, Good- Bye! Good Men. They kept orthodox candidates out of the priesthood while welcoming those who favored women’s ordination, a married priesthood, contraception, abortion, and homosexuality. Active homosexuals flooded the seminaries. Fr. Nicolas’ statement certainly gives the faithful no hope that the Jesuits will give up their commitment to the lie and pursue the truth.

The reality is that people of the lie will be with us until the trumpet calls the final judgment. Our challenge is to resist becoming one of them. The means is there in the sacraments of the Church and a commitment to the deposit of the faith. But we also need to be shrewd and learn to recognize the liars. Parents, particularly, need to teach their children to be critical thinkers. They should be forewarned not to turn their children over to Jesuits “educators” recognizing the likelihood of their being scandalized and robbed of the faith. Yes, there are good Jesuits. Fr. James Schall and Fr. Robert Bradley come immediately to mind. But there are no good Jesuit schools. All are institutions of the lie professing to be Catholic while actively undermining the faith. Yes, there are good teachers to be found here and there.Fr. Schall teaches at Georgetown and layman Peter Kreeft teaches at Boston U. But the good and faithful professors are few and far between. Unless children can be guided through the minefield of perversion and scandal, they are likely to be poisoned by the people of the lie so prevalent at Jesuit schools. It is a parent’s duty not to let that happen.

In closing, I’ll share a recent comment by editor of Inside the Vatican, Robert Moynihan, describing an “interesting observation” by a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission. “He said he had been trained by Jesuits, for many years, and appreciated that training enormously, but that he fears the Jesuit order is in precipitous decline….He thought that the single most important task for any Pope in this period of history would be the restoration, the renewal, of the Jesuit order. But he also said that he was not sure a renewal would be possible.” There is certainly little evidence for it.

Let us pray for the sake of the Church, that the Jesuits once again become “the pope’s men” as St. Ignatius envisioned; or, if not, that the Lord will raise up a new order to fulfill the teaching mission of the Church in the United States. Our Lady of Good Help, whose apparitions in Wisconsin were recently approved, told Adele Brise to “teach the children.” May her voice be heard on Catholic campuses by those entrusted with the souls of the young. Pray to God they listen and become people of the truth rather than people of the lie.

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