Uppercut
Jesuit at Large: Essays and Reviews by Paul V. Mankowski, S.J.
edited with an introduction by George Weigel
reviewed by John M. Vella
Fr. Paul Vincent Mankowski, S.J. (1953–2020), stood out among his post-conciliar Jesuit contemporaries in one notable respect. He took his religious vows seriously. His commitment to the Christian gospel led him to have published (by historian James Hitchcock) archival documents that exposed the complicity of Jesuit provincial superiors in the congressional career of Fr. Robert Drinan, S.J., and, by extension, Drinan's scandalous legislative support for abortion. Mankowski's superiors took revenge by, among other things, forbidding him from writing in his own name for years. His memorandum documenting how Jesuit provincials manipulated and lied to their superior general, Fr. Pedro Arrupe, to protect Drinan's sordid political career—ended only by the intervention of Pope John Paul II in 1980—is a highlight of this collection.
Raised in a working-class family in South Bend, Indiana, Mankowski studied classics and philosophy at the University of Chicago and entered the Society of Jesus upon his graduation in 1976. After earning graduate degrees from Oxford, the Weston School of Theology, and Harvard, he taught Hebrew for fifteen years at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. His last years were spent as scholar-in-residence at the Lumen Christi Institute at the University of Chicago, until his untimely death from a brain aneurysm on September 3, 2020.
Faithful & Incisive
In his introduction to this volume, George Weigel insists that Mankowski was not an "ultra-traditionalist" but instead "a man of Vatican II rightly understood." Fr. Paul may not have been one of those icky reactionaries that Weigel finds distasteful, but it is clear from these essays that something went dreadfully wrong after, if not during, that council. For example, we read that the apparatchiks on the diocesan liturgical commissions misrepresented the council to the public so as to radically infantilize Catholic worship with guitar music and linguistically ignorant "inclusive" language. Having acquired a deep knowledge of ancient and modern languages, Mankowski could state with authority that feminists were wrong to accuse liturgical language of furthering patriarchal oppression. Fortunately, the Vatican agreed and put an end to the lunacy.
The essays, columns, and book reviews in this collection show that Mankowski did not shy away from hot-button issues. He has incisive things to say about the clerical dissent from the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae and the consequences of that dissent for religious life, as well as about the origins of priestly sexual misconduct and the resultant scandals. Mankowski is fearless in his indictment of culpable ecclesial authorities who abetted the scandals of our time.
However, his critical examination of the contemporary religious scene goes beyond church controversies. The enemies of religious orthodoxy, whether they be academic feminists or literary blasphemers, are refuted and satirized with intellectual depth and stylistic precision.
Beyond his gifts as a writer and critic, Mankowski was, by all accounts, a good and faithful priest. It will take men like him to restore the Jesuits and reform the Church.
John M. Vella has served as the editor of Crisis magazine and the managing editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review
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