Article in the Fenwick Review

LOL. I have come to view Fenwick as not the sharpest knife in the Jesuit drawer.

The origin of college's name can be traced to Abbe Claude Florent Bouchard de la Poterie, who was virulently anti-Jesuit, and composed a vitriolic screed "The Resurrection of Laurent Ricci, or, A true and exact history of the Jesuits", printed in Philadelphia in 1789.

Now available on Amazon.
www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Laurent-Ricci-History-Jesuits/dp/1385406534

A brief bio of Lorenzo (Laurent) Ricci S. J.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Ricci

Laurent Ricci was the last Superior General of the Jesuits, before the order was suppressed in the Eighteenth Century. Abbe Bouchard drags all the skeletons out of the closet.

The Federal government hacked at the roots in 1942, when the Navy came calling.  To that point, only Catholics were admitted.  If not for the Navy, the college may have folded during WWII.

Started out great but got a little over the top. The Worcester "Bishop has been effectively ousted from campus?" How about he has chosen not to participate in graduations because he doesn't like commencement speakers (certainly his right but let's stop spinning this like he was banned). What is an "Ignatian Yoga" retreat? And somehow, despite always being a Jesuit institution, it now has a "disingenuous 'Ignatian' slant?" What exactly is that supposed to mean? The Jesuits have been accused of being the Pope's stormtroopers in the past. The author realizes the current pope is a Jesuit, right? While "Jesuit" may not be identical to "Catholic," they are not antonyms. 

B-

The author makes some inflammatory accusations:

"No longer does the College of the Holy Cross stand as a beacon of resilience or as a radiant espousal of Catholic ideals. Instead of furthering its legacy of going against the societal grain and adhering to the truth rather than complying with the times, the College has become a mere absorber of the ideas and attitudes that surround it. Like far too many other religious and even nonreligious institutions, Holy Cross has sacrificed its institutional integrity and countercultural grit on the altar of secularization, fueled by a misplaced desire for acceptance from the masses."

"Unfortunately, the style of “Catholicism” brandished by Holy Cross in recent decades can hardly be considered dependably “Catholic” at all. It merely reflects the progressive social activist ethos prevalent elsewhere in secular American society, permeated by contemporary sociopolitical norms and almost utterly devoid of the universal truths that serve as a foundation for the faith. Holy Cross in 2020 represents a neutered, wishy-washy Catholicism that elevates so-called “Jesuit” and “Ignatian” “values” over the more decisive Catholic ones — which it has achieved by extracting from the faith only what is culturally acceptable and throwing everything else by the wayside."

I tend to see it differently. Holy Cross speaks to me as a beacon of hope for a church that needs reform. A Catholic Church that is more Christ like, with an understanding and attitude that is less archaic, less judgmental and leads with more agape. A church that has meaningful involvement of laity, that would not tolerate prolonged abuse of children, that would not cover up, that welcomes women to ordination, and that understands sexual orientation as God given. Holy Cross is an oasis. People are treated with respect. Opportunities for faith and renewal abound. There are Catholic colleges that seek to remain rooted in the days of yore. Anna Maria in Florida and Benedictine College come to mind. I find the path that we are on to be one that is more hopeful, and recognizes that Ignatian Spirituality finds God in the world and in and with other people.

This could have been written in the late 1970s rather than in 2020.  On this front, not all that much has changed since I left Mt. St. James thirty nine years ago in 1981. During my tenure, John Esposito (the Islam scholar who later went on to head Georgetown's center for Islamic studies) headed the religious studies department.  Among the most popular religious studies classes were Comparative Religious Worldviews  and Liberation Theology with Fr. Manning.  Student Scott Duffy, later of the Catholic Worker in Worcester, along with our college Pax Christi organization was protesting US support for Latin American dictatorships and having impromptu debates with the head of ROTC in Hogan.  Fr. LaBran, who famously had marched with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers was heading the Spiritual Exercises.  We celebrated alums Philip Berrigan and catholic socialist Michael Harrington, author of The Other America, which had helped inspire the war on Poverty. 

Having both my daughters attend in classes of 2012 and 2015, I have to say I found the college, and especially the student body, slightly more conservative than when I graduated in 1981.  I remember a very conservative Long Islander telling my mother in the summer of 1977, "don't let him go to Holy Cross, he will lose his religion."  I believe it was Time magazine that labelled Holy Cross "the cradle of the Catholic left" in the early 70s and the faculty and chaplains would wear that label with honor in the late 1970s early 1980s.  The idea that the local bishop might have some say about what was taught at Holy Cross or who could speak at graduation was still a decade or so away as Ex corde Ecclesiae  wasn't even issued until 1990.  This article seems to long for a Holy Cross from more than 60 years ago, if it ever existed at all.