More Problems for Chicago Jesuits, Dating from the Era of Fr. Robert Wild

Hard on the heels of a scandal over Marquette’s handling of rape cases comes a reminder of another scandal involving Marquette’s President Robert Wild.

From Good Jesuit, Bad Jesuit:

An Illinois judge sharply criticized the Jesuit order in a ruling issued yesterday for not taking adequate steps to rein in defrocked priest and twice-convicted child molester Donald McGuire, asserting that McGuire was preying on teenage boys “right under the noses” of his superiors and that rules established to protect minors from him were “a sham.”

The ruling allows punitive damages to be levied against the Jesuits if they lose a lawsuit over McGuire’s four-decade career as a predator priest that is now pending in Cook County Circuit Court. The lawsuit names as a defendant the Chicago Province of the Jesuits, where McGuire was technically based. McGuire -- an eminent Jesuit who served as spiritual adviser to Mother Teresa -- taught at the University of San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s, and ministered to Bay Area families extensively throughout the 1990s.

“The court accepts that the Jesuits are a religious order with a rich history of service to the faithful,” Judge Jeffrey Lawrence wrote.

“However, the leaders of the Chicago Province fell far short of this ideal. Plaintiffs have amply demonstrated a reasonable likelihood of proving facts at trial which would support an award of punitive damages.”

The lawsuit is being brought by several victims of McGuire, including one of two boys from Walnut Creek he allegedly molested. The Jesuits had argued that punitive damages should not be permitted in the suit because McGuire’s bosses had no way of controlling him and the wayward priest flaunted his order’s vows of obedience. But Lawrence,

. . . noting that the Jesuits received nine “credible” complaints against the priest over 33 years, rejected that argument.

He stated that rules the Jesuits issued forbidding McGuire from ministering to minors were never enforced. “The guidelines they set for him were a sham,”

he wrote in his ruling. Moreover, Lawrence noted, the Jesuits proactively lied to other church officials about McGuire’s troubled past.

Of course, Marquette President Robert Wild was the Jesuit Provincial in Chicago who failed to bring McGuire under control.

It is hugely ironic that Wild, who has caved in to the campus gay lobby, giving them essentially everything they have demanded this year, has failed to handle matters involving sex competently when upholding Church teaching would have demanded it.

While he was lenient with a child molester, and his administration has given the impression that they don’t really much mind campus rapes, he has pandered to homosexual activists.

He is leaving the University with his own personal reputation, and the status of Marquette, much diminished.