Jesuits, the College of the Holy Cross, cowardice and blasphemy

UPDATE 29 March:

A friend at Holy Cross wrote:

Thanks for posting on the Holy Cross blasphemy. A clarification: Elinor Reilly, the courageous student who exposed Liew’s publications in a “Fenwick Review” article (the paper was founded by Fr. Paul Scalia) is in no way a supporter of Liew’s work. On the contrary, she is the whistle blower. Her goal was to put the material into the open but without commentary, just let the insanity speak for itself.

___ Originally Published on: Mar 28, 2018

A while back the Jesuit-run (who else?) Holy Cross College, in an entirely-predictable and yet still astonishing act of ankle-grabbing before the world’s ways, dropped their team moniker: The Crusaders.   More on that HERE.

Now we read HERE that at the same Jesuit-run (who else?) Holy Cross,…

Holy Cross Theology Professor Says Jesus Was a ‘Drag King’ with ‘Queer Desires’

The theology program at the Jesuit-run College of the Holy Cross has taken on a new tone ever since the school appointed a gender-obsessed Chair of New Testament Studies who claims Jesus was a “drag king,” a new article contends.

Writing for The Fenwick Review, Elinor Reilly of the Holy Cross class of 2018 argues in a March 26 article that Professor Tat-Siong Benny Liew’s “unconventional readings of Scripture” have brought “a new theological perspective to Holy Cross.”

Letting the facts speak for themselves, Ms. Reilly suggests that “the centrality of sex and gender to his way of thinking about the New Testament” significantly colors the way that Professor Liew presents Jesus Christ to students at the Catholic College.  [He’s not just writing this crap in journals, he’s teaching it in classrooms.  What do parents pay in tuition there?]

In a remarkable re-reading of the Bible, Professor Liew has argued that Jesus is not only “king of Israel” and “king of the Jews,” but “also a drag king,” as presented in the New Testament Gospel of John.

Saint John’s constant references to Jesus wanting water, giving water, and leaking water “speak to Jesus’ gender indeterminacy and hence his cross-dressing and other queer desires,” Liew contends.   [Sick.]

Reading everything through the lens of gender, Professor Liew finds sex in the most unlikely places in the life of Jesus. The episode of Jesus washing the apostles’ feet at the Last Supper, for example, is “suggestive,” like “a literary striptease,” and “even seductive,” because it “shows and withholds at the same time,” he claims.

Liew’s sexualization of the sacred Christian texts goes beyond the reinterpretation of actions and extends to gender identity as well. For instance, Liew stated that in his Gospel, Saint John makes very clear that Jesus is a Jew but he is less clear about “whether Jesus is a biological male.”

[…]

I can’t include the next part.

I wonder what Jesuit homosexualist activist James Martin has to say about Jesuit-run Holy Cross and this blasphemy.

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46 Comments

  1. boredoftheworld says:

    Wait a minute… I’VE been known to want water! I’ve also given water to all sorts of people… what does this mean?! This will come as quite a shock to my wife and five children.

    Goofy responses to this blasphemous and >evil< garbage being taught in "Catholic" institutions across the globe. THIS is why we can't have nice things! Because on the whole, and I'm more guilty than most, the totality of our response to these kinds of wicked betrayals of Our Lord consist of a tsk tsk, a shake of the head and no action whatsoever. But the flock can't fix this mess (I don't think) the shepherds are needed… where are they?

  2. Eugene says:

    Can somebody with greater knowledge than this simple lay Catholic please explain to me how such filth is allowed to be perpetrated by these heathens masquerading as Catholic teachers. Where in the
    ____ are the shepherds? I am disgusted by the lot of them.
    But it took them less than 24 hours to remove orthodox theologian Fr Weinandy from his position for respectfully challenging this Pope and his teachings.
    Disgusted, disappointed, disillusioned… my only hope is you Jesus, I have no hope in the human authority structure of your church… they are duplicitous, dishonest, uncaring, I pray for their conversion or for a just end to their office.

  3. tamranthor says:

    This sort of conglomerative nonsense began to really take off in the 1980’s, where a “scholar” would attach something entirely unrelated to a text or document or field of study and then, in a “brilliant” flash of light, discover something in the text or document of field of study that somehow had evaded discovery before.

    IOW, they started making things up and passing it off as scholarship.

    It isn’t, and anyone who pays money to be taught this nonsense and then be made to regurgitate it to get a passing grade is doing grave harm to their future as a scholar and as an honest, decent human being.

    I suppose this “professor” will be quite astonished in the seconds after his death to see precisely what his nonsense has wrought.

  4. Aquinas Gal says:

    In reading the New Testament that way, this professor is revealing what is in his own heart. It’s not in the text, but in his perverted interpretation of it, because that’s what’s in his heart. As Jesus said, “Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

  5. Matthew says:

    Perversion knows no bounds with some people.

  6. ChrisP says:

    If this is true, and reportedly correctly, Liew needs to be sacked. This is nasty, evil stuff he’s spouting.

  7. Ages says:

    How can it be that the earth has not opened its mouth and swallowed the whole forsaken place? There must be 2 or 3 good people there, I suppose.

  8. Atra Dicenda, Rubra Agenda says:

    I find myself wanting to go St. Nicholas on this modern heretical garbage.

  9. Sawyer says:

    This professor could very well be asked to give a workshop at next year’s Three Days of Darkness.

    The part you omitted was revolting to read. Why is such material not considered fiction? Why does the department chairman permit such outlandish things to be taught as theology? Why do students endure such blasphemous nonsense? If I were in a theology class where the professor made such outrageous claims and interpretations, I would schedule an appointment with him to talk about it and then probably make a grievance with the academic dean coupled with a request to drop the course with reimbursement for tuition paid.

  10. richiedel says:

    Just years ago, the hot, new item was that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were supposed to have been a thing. Now it’s this. These people are so inconsistent with their ideas, the only things that’s sure is their intent to provoke others in the effort to grab headlines.

  11. Kathleen10 says:

    Tar and feathers are too good for such a person. There should be a mob outside the gates of that college. Muslims will not tolerate an image of Mohammad but we tolerate these disgusting insults against Our Lord. Shame on him but shame on us. Not only do we tolerate it but we pay for it.
    The bounds of decency are crossed now as a badge of honor. These people have absolutely no decency and certainly no fear of God.

  12. tho says:

    Where are our Bishops? You know, the ones who are supposed to protect us from this filth. They should fumigate the whole college, and wreak severe punishment on whoever allows this nonsense to go on. What is happening to us?

  13. Laurelmarycecilia says:

    to those who are surprised, or think the Department Chair is outraged, or think this professor can be “…sacked…” think again. Cultural Marxists systematically populated almost all institutions in what was formerly called Christendom. Education was a primary target.

    American bishops didn’t (1) have the guts or (2) care to implement JPII’s Ex Corde Ecclesia (1990). They similarly didn’t vigorously object to the infamous Land O Lakes conference (organized by Jesuits 1967) which told the Church to go away. What can bring these educational institutions back to being solidly Catholic? At this point, my guess is – only Divine Intervention

  14. Malta says:

    If a parent wants their child to cease to be Catholic send them to a Jesuit college like Georgetown. The rampant homosexualist culture at these places destroys the Catholicity that they were so arduously founded and built to preserve. I went to the University of Michigan–one of the most liberal colleges in the world, and ironically had one of the most Catholic Professors I’d ever met in a course on Irish literature. We of course had a huge rivalry with Notre Dame University, where I also thought attending. Maybe my future Catholic faith would have never happened if I went to that also Catholic-faith-destroying place; it was strangely at the University of Michigan where I found the faith. I think these Jesuit institutions need to change their names so as to not confuse parents into thinking they’re sending their children to a Catholic institution. Or, maybe parents should do their homework before spending upwards of $150,000 sending their kids to places that destroy their kids’ faith.

  15. chantgirl says:

    Just in time for Holy week, when we remember all of the ways that Jesus suffered to redeem us.

    This man’s comments are vile, and have no place in a Catholic college. Not only are they demonic, but they can’t even be passed off as scholarship. If he were referring to Islam, these comments would be quickly branded as hate-speech.

    It seems that evil is becoming more and more brazen, exposing more, speaking more boldly, outside of the Church and within. Where are we heading?

  16. frjim4321 says:

    So, it seems like the primary source here is bbart, so it’s probably better to wait for a report from a reputable source before foaming at the mouth over this.

  17. Malta says:

    @Chantgirl “Where are we heading?” My spiritual director thinks we are headed for great destruction; I agree. Our Lady of Akita said if we don’t better ourselves a great part of humanity will be destroyed. That was just before abortion was legalized. I think we are in for a major pounding.

  18. DisturbedMary says:

    FrJim What about Elinor Reilly in the Fenwick Review?

    You might want to try gargling with Biotene — it works well for chronic dry mouth.

  19. Ave Maria says:

    Damnable.

  20. Midwest St. Michael says:

    “…so it’s probably better to wait for a report from a reputable source before foaming at the mouth over this.”

    Um, what source would that be, frjim?

  21. Viaticum says:

    I thought the same thing, chantgirl. There’s nothing like Holy Week to bring out the outrageous. It’s like clock work.

  22. benedetta says:

    Sounds like someone needs a little attention. Or, a lot of attention. As in, publicity stunt. How very Donald Trump-esque for this prof at Holy Cross. Which, by the way has a rather top heavy religious studies department for the tuition dollar. I guess they have tuition money to burn!

  23. TonyO says:

    Tuition, room & board, and fees at Holy Cross are $67,000 per year. I can guarantee you that even if they didn’t have heretical, blasphemous, disgusting (and probably dangerous) teachers and theology programs, it wouldn’t be worth that price. Or even close to that price. As it is, parents are shelling out in 4 years what amounts to the price of a house in order to have their kid’s mind, conscience, and faith WRECKED! Talk about wicked, perverted evils. The parents should be willing to pay that kind of king’s ransom to keep their kid out of the clutches of Holy Cross. But they can do much better, by paying just over half that ($35,000) to send a kid to a solid, orthodox, religiously upright school like Thomas Aquinas College or Wyoming Catholic.

    Sadly, most of the parents who are sending kids to the over 200 so-called “catholic” colleges in this country that are no longer actually Catholic SIMPLY DON’T CARE anymore that their kid won’t get a Catholic education. Imagine a Catholic parent saying “yes, we know the Jesuits don’t run a Catholic college anymore, but that doesn’t really bother us anyway”! Well, that’s what it comes to in the long run. Maybe they mouth a few platitudes about “sending my kid to a Catholic school”, but they refuse to bother doing ANY due diligence about the matter, because the fact that Jesuit schools are no longer Catholic anymore is all over the place. If you look for it, you will find it.

    Most parents would be better off having the young almost-adult live at home and go to a local public college where they don’t even PRETEND to be teaching anything Catholic than spending 3 or 4 times as much at one of the no-longer-Catholic institutions that warp and pervert Catholicism.

  24. JustaSinner says:

    Something about St Ignatius de Loyola’s life tells me if he were to drop by for a bit, modern Jesuits might taste the hard edge of cold steel. Normally, I am non-violent, but in this case, meh.

  25. Fr. Kelly says:

    No frjim4321: The primary source is Elinor Reilly, a senior at Holy Cross who published her article in the Fenwick Review March 26 titled New Ways in Theology at Holy Cross – March 2018.

    Thomas Williams reported on her article today on Breitbart. That does not make him the primary source.

    It seems you were too anxious to take a swipe at Breitbart to look more closely at the source of the original post.

  26. Thomas S says:

    Lazy, Fr. Jim. Click the link that’s right there. It takes you directly to the article in the Fenwick Review: the Independent Journal of Opinion at the College of the Holy Cross. Sorry, you’re not going to scare us off topic appealing to a Breitbart bogeyman.

  27. GM Thobe says:

    Had it not been for the example I received at (another similar institution), it is unclear whether I’d have stumbled across this blog or the “traditional movement”, which have been salvific to me. Hopefully the students will similarly smell something fishy and react, not by concluding that the whole thing is a farce, but by searching for more solid footing in orthodox theology.

  28. majuscule says:

    Fr. Jim must have missed the link to the article written by one of the professor’s students. I would call it a favorable article. I know nothing about the Fenwick Review (in which it appears) — whether it is credible or not. But I do know it is not run by “bbart”. They simply linked to it.

    Have you read it Fr. Jim? What do you think?

  29. MariaKap says:

    Fr. Jim FYI – the primary source is not Breitbart but Holy Cross’ own paper The Fenwick Review. http://thefenwickreview.holycross.edu/archives/newtheology

    As the daughter of a Holy Cross alum and former resident in the Diocese of Worcester, I have written to Bishop McManus about this. I urge all of you to write as well. This cannot be ignored.

  30. majuscule says:

    From the article:
    “Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Olivet Nazarene University and completed his doctorate at Vanderbilt University.2 Prior to his appointment at Holy Cross, Professor Liew had been Professor of New Testament at the Pacific School of Theology, and before that taught at Chicago Theological Seminary.”

    Holy Cross is probably trying to fulfill some sort of diversity quota by hiring him. No, not because of his Asian sounding name—but because his teachings are so far from being Catholic.

    Would the Nazarenes even have him now?

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  32. BJard says:

    My dad, and grandfather went there. I’m grateful they didn’t live to see this!
    $47,176 yearly Jesuit education equips students with no truth of Christ but a working knowledge of 50 Shades of Gray and Rocky Horror party with Caligula

  33. JonPatrick says:

    When you take I-290 through Worcester MA there is a sharp S curve as the road avoids cutting through the Holy Cross campus thus requiring drivers to slow down to 45 mph.

    My fantasy is that they bulldoze the campus and put the road straight through thus taking care of two problems at once.

  34. LarryW2LJ says:

    My guess would be that Fr. Martin is probably delighted. I see and read things like this; and then my mind immediately goes to that scene in “The Passion of the Christ” where that nail is being driven into our Lord’s hand – and I see the connection.

  35. Grumpy Beggar says:

    An epistemological disaster.

    I suppose I might be able to recall during the Triduum, that Jesus died just as much to save Professor Tat-Siong Benny Liew’s soul as He did mine . . .after all Prof Liew has helped me with my fasting this week: As soon as I read his article, my stomach tightened right up.

    Young Catholic people don’t deserve to be fed the kind of crap he has written.

    Please God help him, and God save us all.

    . . . wishing a very holy Triduum to you Padre , and to all who follow this blog.

  36. Ellen says:

    Sometime in the 1980’s, academic writing went downhill fast. Most of it was all centered around the theory du jour and the writer would bend, twist and distort to make the work fit the theory even though it obviously didn’t. I remember Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park being stuffed into the Colonial theory and any number of books looked at through the lens of Orientalism which was a very hot theory at the time. Now the theories are intersectionality and gender theory and even if the work has nothing to do with it, the writer will toss a word salad and make it so.

  37. Benedict Joseph says:

    Yesterday, “Spy Wednesday,” I saw this repugnance referenced in a headline at Breitbart and avoided reading it. Oddly enough it did not occur to me that it might involve a Roman Catholic theology department at a Roman Catholic University. At a Jesuit University.
    Why wouldn’t I know that by now?
    Denial remains operative even among those of us who are painfully aware we daily have acid thrown in our face by those whose office instinctively elicits our trust.
    With fear of pushing the limit but I must ask what a Jesuit Pope has to say about Jesuit-run Holy Cross and this blasphemy?
    The Holy Father participated with enthusiasm in the election of Marxist Arturo Sosa as Superior General of the “Society of Jesus.” One would think he would be willing to participate with equal enthusiasm in the corrective which need be leveled at the demonic fraudulence in Worcester masqued as a Roman Catholic institution of higher education.
    I anticipate not a single syllable, at best.

  38. Suzanne says:

    It’s unfortunately true that the majority of parents who send their kids to schools like this one neither know nor care what’s being taught in the theology department. My daughter went to a local Catholic high school. The students were asked which of them believed in God. The African American students, primarily non-Catholics, were the most likely to profess a faith in God. The “Catholic” parents didn’t go to Mass on Sunday, and the one set of parents that I knew who did attend Mass were also parents who provided their son and his girlfriend with a free apartment so they could live together. Parents send their children to these schools either because they had fun at a Catholic college or high school themselves and want to give the same to their children, or because they want the prestige of sending them to an expensive school. My daughter went there because the public schools here are so bad, but the school itself and most of the families were in districts with decent public schools. Parents who want their children to be Catholic tend to travel in circles where the Newman Guide is well known, so they already know better than to send their children to a Jesuit or otherwise “Catholic” school. And many of those parents have large families and can’t afford the Newman Guide schools so they use public institutions instead, where they have no expectation of a religious education. Pressure to change schools like Holy Cross is not going to come from the parents of current students.

  39. iamlucky13 says:

    No, the primary source is not the Fenwick Review either. Most of that is secondary.

    Ms. Reilly claims to be quoting Mr. Liew’s own writings.

  40. Michael Haz says:

    If this is true, and reportedly correctly, Liew needs to be sacked.

    As do those who interviewed him, recommended his hiring, and offered him a contract.

  41. hwriggles4 says:

    Tradition Family Property has a petition relating to this matter. I signed it. Readers can go to the TFP website and find it. Several of their petitions have made a difference.

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  43. AndyMo says:

    “When you take I-290 through Worcester MA there is a sharp S curve as the road avoids cutting through the Holy Cross campus thus requiring drivers to slow down to 45 mph. My fantasy is that they bulldoze the campus and put the road straight through thus taking care of two problems at once.”

    There are also some giant hills in the way that prevent that, but your point is well taken.

    For those who think the bishop has been totally silent on the regular insanity coming from Holy Cross, know that Bishop McManus has been fairly adversarial with them. He has not attended their graduation in years (something previous bishops always did), and has set up counter-presentations when the pro-abortion whackjobs have set up shop on campus. Alas, the institution is ultimately run by (who else) the Jesuits, so he doesn’t have all of the power here.

  44. khouri says:

    Who issued this man’s Mandatum???

  45. khouri says:

    Please stop expecting Rome to solve every problem in the Church. Bishops have authority but don’t use it. Rome cannot fix every mess in the Church; nowadays is she is not inclined to do so anyway.
    Write and commend Bp. McManus. Contact other bishops and complain about what is being taught in the schools in their dioceses, spread the word about places like Holy Cross, pray for conversion of people like Dr Liew and keep the Faith.

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