Jesuit Jubilee

Fifty years ago this month scholarly Father John J. Wynne, editor and publisher of the Catholic Encyclopedia, gathered a group of fellow Jesuits around him in Manhattan to launch a new magazine. They called it America, the National Catholic Weekly Review, and made it a reflective, sobersided account of broad, cultural trends viewed in the long-range perspective of the Roman Catholic Church. In the 2,600 weekly issues that have slid off the presses since then, America has changed with America, reflecting not only a turbulent half-century but the turbulent views of a wide-ranging group of tough-minded intellectuals. For the Jesuits, like all Catholics, are united only in matters of faith, doctrine and moral law; outside these areas there is plenty of room for controversy.

Under the editorship of Father Richard H. Tierney (1914-25), America sparked and smoldered with passion for justice in international affairs, for the plight of Catholics under Mexican persecution, and for Ireland's struggle to be free of British rule. The next editor, Father Wilfrid Parsons, a theology professor from Maryland's Woodstock College, brought to America a crusading concern for social justice in the U.S., and the tradition was carried on by one of the grand old men of U.S. Catholicism, Father John La Farge, now 79, who founded the Catholic interracial movement. Under the Rev. Robert C. Hartnett (1948-55) and America's present editor, Thurston N. Davis, a twelve-man board has waded into such controversial issues as state support for parochial schools and U.S. diplomatic representation at the Vatican, has even been accused of "softness toward Communism" for its stand against McCarthyism and in favor of freer immigration regulations.

This week America celebrated its half-century with a special Mass at Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral and a 212-page anniversary issue crammed with congratulations and recollections. There were full-page felicitations from Pope John XXIII, Jesuit General John B. Janssens, President Eisenhower ("a scholarly and responsible magazine"), Vice President Nixon ("a balanced yet forward-looking appraisal of problems"), New York's Governor Nelson Rockefeller ("one of the best-edited periodicals"). But the most entertaining message came from Staten Island's St. Francis Seminary: a full-page ad, in which the Conventual Franciscans managed to put across a piece of quick recruiting: "In 1773, when Clement XIV issued the papal brief titled Dominus ac Redemptor [formally suppressing the Jesuit Society], no one thought that in 1959 there would be any Jesuits anywhere to be congratulated by Conventual Franciscans for anything. Yet here they are, bigger and better than ever, celebrating the golden jubilee of America . . . P.S.: We are on the lookout for recruits for our missions in Africa, Japan, Brazil and Costa Rica. Interested, unattached males between 4 and 40 write to Vocation Director."

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