The new North American 'martyrs'—Jesuit missionaries for a very different cause

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 14, 2015

America magazine, the Jesuit weekly, has a painstakingly balanced editorial in response to the Obergefell decision. A stranger to the argument could read the editorial from stem to stern and still not know, with any degree of certainty, whether the editors think the Supreme Court was right or wrong. But more perceptive readers should be able to recognize the subtle signals:

The temptation to see the court decision in black and white terms is also evident among some of those who see the court’s action only as one more attempt to marginalize the church and diminish religious freedom. We should resist this temptation as well…. In engaging in such debates, Catholics must be careful not to develop a “Masada complex” that would reduce our self-understanding to that of a besieged minority. Such a narrow self-perception is contrary to the generous, expansive nature of the good news we seek to share.

For an understanding of how most American Jesuits actually responded to the decision, it might be more useful to read the earlier editorial in the Jesuit Post, which is published by young Jesuits still in formation. Where their elders hesitate, the younger men rush in:

And there’s a danger if religious voices continue to react as if advocacy for same-sex marriage is in itself a form of religious persecution. It simply is not. … To equate what many perceive as correcting an injustice with religious persecution is to invite that persecution.

Read that last sentence again. Is the Jesuit Post telling us that if we keep talking about religious persecution, we’ll get what we deserve? No, that’s not quite the message. But it’s close.

”It’s a mistake to reduce the Church’s position on same sex marriage to be against equality and for injustice,” the young Jesuits tell us. That’s encouraging, I suppose; they don’t think that the Church’s position is simply evil; it’s more complicated than that. Still this editorial leaves no question that the writers applaud the Supreme Court decision and lament the lingering Catholic resistance to acceptance of same-sex unions.

#LoveHurts is the hashtag on this remarkable editorial. What “hurts” the editors of the Jesuit Post is the failure of old-fashioned Catholics to share their delight with the Obergefell decision. To read the editorial in its entirety is to realize that these young Jesuits see themselves as missionaries, determined to make converts. However, unlike the Jesuit missionaries of an earlier age, they do not aspire to bring pagans into the Catholic fold. Their goal—not even hidden in this editorial—is to persuade Catholics to adopt the sexual ethics of an increasingly pagan society.