The treasure the Jesuits squandered

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 03, 2026

Six years ago today, Father Paul Mankowski, a brilliant Jesuit scholar and frequent contributor to the CatholicCulture site, died suddenly and unexpectedly of a brain aneurysm. Some of us are determined that his life and work—and the gross injustice done to him by the Society of Jesus— should not be forgotten.

Today Father Mankowski is fondly remembered by longtime readers of this site (who saw his work under the pseudonym “Diogenes”), by students at the Biblicum in Rome and the Lumen Christi Institute in Chicago, by former West Point cadets and current Oxford dons, by scholars and policy-makers in Washington and Rome and New York and London and Canberra. Yet while his influence has been enormous, his name is not well known. That is the injustice.

By rights “Mankowski” should be a household name among American Catholics. But during the most productive years of his life he was not traveling the lecture circuit, and his essays were not appearing regularly in print, because he was silenced by his Jesuit superiors: penalized for the “offense” of telling inconvenient truths.

As a conservative young man in a liberal environment, Paul Mankowski had been viewed with some suspicion from his earliest days as a Jesuit. Why did this novice persist in kneeling at Mass? Why did he avoid the disco parties? Why would he not join in the dinner-table conversations about the damage that Pope John Paul II was doing to the Church?

Gradually Jesuit leaders realized that they would not be able to bring this young priest around to their way of thinking. Years later, preaching at his father’s funeral, Father Mankowski would say:

…anyone—anyone—who tried to get Jim Mankowski to move away from Catholic doctrine found a man
Who.
Would.
Not.
Be.
Budged.

Like father, like son.

But the single episode that brought the disciplinary hammer down on the young priest was the publication of a Catholic World Report essay by the late historian James Hitchcock, based on information that Father Mankowski had found in the Jesuit archives, showing conclusively that Father Robert Drinan had systematically and intentionally misled Pope John Paul, with the connivance of Jesuit superiors, when he ran for a seat in Congress and served there for a decade, becoming one of the country’s most important proponents of legal abortion. The Jesuit leadership was outraged by the disclosure of internal documents—despite Father Mankowski’s clear evidence that he had permission to search the archives. What is more revealing, however, is that the same Jesuit leaders did not deny the accuracy of the report.

As punishment for this perceived betrayal, Father Mankowski was forbidden to publish in his own name. He obeyed, but skirted the rule by writing under pseudonyms (thus “Uncle Di”) until that too was forbidden. But he was still allowed to write for publication on topics related to his own scholarly specialty: ancient languages. That slight opening allowed him to publish a devastating critique of Elaine Pagels’ influential Gnostic Gospels, and more recently, a shattering takedown of Father James Martin’s popular call for acceptance of homosexuality in Building a Bridge.

The latter review had a revealing consequence. Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich was so outraged by the criticism of Father Martin that he hinted at withdrawing permission for Father Mankowski to minister as a priest in the Chicago archdiocese, where he was living at the time. (So much for openness to alternative viewpoints, and to freedom of academic discourse.)

Today Father Martin is the most prominent Jesuit in the US: a media celebrity, a popular lecturer, a consultant to the Vatican. His success demonstrates how the Jesuit order—with its network of schools and universities, publishing houses and magazine—can promote a talented priest. But that machinery was never employed to promote the work of Father Mankowski; on the contrary, it was used to suppress his voice.

No American Jesuit, living or dead, has written with the elegance of style, the breadth of vision, and the rapier wit that characterized the work of Paul Mankowski. If you have not yet discovered his work, you have a treat in store. When you have discovered it, ask yourself why you are only hearing about it now.