The American Spectator

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3.21.02 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 3)

Seattle University, school of Elgin Baylor and runnerup in the NCAA tournament? Gonzaga, alma mater of John Stockton? Jesuit and Jesuit.

The basketball power of Jesuit schools isn't simply an indication that Jesuits have a thing for hoops. Back before World War II, a lot of Catholic colleges were major football powers. The ones which played in the big New Year's Day bowl games -- Boston College, Fordham, Santa Clara, et al. -- were usually Jesuit.

Enough about Jesuit school athletic prowess. Let's consider the influence of the Jesuits on the legal profession.

The Catholic Church is a legalistic institution in any case and with their reputation for sophist argumentation, we would expect that the Jesuits might be prolific founders of law schools. There are presently more than two dozen American Catholic universities with law schools. Over half are Jesuit.

The fact of Jesuit predominance in higher education was first pointed out to me back in high school by a Catholic friend, who later graduated from Jesuit Regis University of Denver. I rattled off the names of a few of the most famous Catholic universities. All but one, he informed me, were Jesuit.

The prominence of Jesuit institutions among the list of jock schools probably has resulted because Jesuit universities are large and urban. No founders of pastoral campuses nestled beside sylvan lakes, they. The Jesuit universities that aren't in big city urban areas are in gritty coal towns like Scranton and Wheeling.

South Bend, Ind. was apparently too remote and unimportant to attract the Jesuits' attention as a potential site to build a college. Thus, Notre Dame was founded by the Congregation of the Holy Cross order.

The embracing by the Jesuits of many of the most nefarious modern intellectual and moral trends may simply be a demonstration that the characteristics of the Jesuit order make Jesuits tend to be natural allies of the modern academic left. Webster's Dictionary defines "jesuitical" as "a crafty schemer; a cunning dissembler; a casuist."

Sounds like the intellectual m.o. of a typical American left-liberal
professor.
-- John Combellick

DEAR PEOPLE
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