Yes I know I am a snob but I am a missionary so I am allowed a few vices.
– Fr. James Martin
On January 3, 2020 James Martin’s biography was published. It was written by a Catholic man named Jon M. Sweeney. Now just how Catholic is Sweeney? Well, he just wrote a flattering biography of the demon Fr. James Martin. He’s also married to a female rabbi of the Reconstructionist persuasion. The Reconstructionist Jews are more liberal than Reform Jews. I suppose one can say that Sweeney’s Catholicism is just as “theologically sound” as his wife’s Judaism. But let’s get to the book.
It seemed that Martin didn’t really know the faith as a child, or a teenager, or a young adult. He had a career at General Electric before he applied to the Jesuits. We’re then brought on the journey about the long trek through the journey of a Jesuit. I knew the Jesuits took a long time to get ordained and boy does this book show it. In my opinion it’s such a waste if they’re producing clergy like Fr. Martin.
I wanted to see if this book shows how the guy went off the rails but nothing is really surprising. He never really knew the faith. Some people had the faith then collapsed; Martin never had it. He was never a Christian. At one point the author mentions that he really enjoyed a feminist philosophy class during his second year. Also, he was publicly promoting homosexuality as early as 1998 and truth be told, it was probably sooner.
So, you’re probably wondering if this book reveals that Fr. Martin is a homosexual. The topic is never discussed and I think intentionally. I can usually tell in biographies or memoirs if they’re purposefully excluding something and I think that this is the case. It never mentions that he had a girlfriend before entering the Jesuits.
In 1993, Martin was sent to Kenya for regency. In his first year of regency he supposedly fell in love and had a vocation crisis. The author discusses it for three pages and never once refers to Martin’s love interest as a woman. No feminine pronouns are applied to this love interest. To be fair, the love interest is never identified as a man but it’s a bit fishy. If I had to guess, it was a man but I admit that I could be wrong.
Don’t buy this book. I read it in less than a day and wish that I had done something else. It’s the story of one of the greatest enemies of Jesus Christ. Sure, you get to learn about him a bit more but it doesn’t change the fact that he is a man betraying the once glorious order of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
What a pathetic review. Your hatred of Father James Martin is obvious throughout. Father Martin at least acts like a Christian. Better to use your time trying to help those who suffer. I’m buying the book.
I don’t hate Fr. Martin. I pray for his conversion. He’s not helping those who suffer. He’s helping them suffer more. He pretends to be their friend but is truly their greatest enemy.
Well, you may not be spitting mad with him, but how else to describe what you wrote. If you believe in civility, you would chose your words with better care as I perhaps should have done when commenting on your review.
I would voucher that any of your own musings on faith, regardless their acerbity, would never be critiqued in such an uncivil manner by Father Martin. Why is it that you express your thoughts in such an un-Christian manner. One could never imagine our Lord using such language.
James Martin is an enemy of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. He’s also an enemy of homosexuals. How should I have expressed myself?
Allan (if you permit me), the answer is, with compassion. You risk to become a prisoner of your own making if you don’t consider the challenge to be Christ-like, as painful as it may feel to you. Achievement in spiritual matter comes at the cost of our own sense of righteousness. We need eventually to submit to the quiet voice within, especially when it leads us in a direction unanticipated, like that which came to Saint Paul. We can’t imagine how painful it was for him to understand that almost all of what he had believed, up until the time of his conversion, was far from reality.