Jesuits With Guns....

[birdguy 3,994]

I just started reading a book titled The Last Stand of Fox Company.   It's a bout the First Marine Division at Chosen Reservoir during the early days of the Korean War.  The author describes the Marine Corps as Jesuits with guns.  Having attended a Jesuit High School and having been a Marine I think the term fits perfectly.

Noel  

[scianoir 610]

On 3/21/2021 at 7:09 PM, birdguy said:

The author describes the Marine Corps as Jesuits with guns.  Having attended a Jesuit High School and having been a Marine I think the term fits perfectly.

 

As a fellow alumnus of a Jesuit school I can see how the term 'Jesuits with guns' might not be totally inappropriate to describe the Marines!! The 'Jays', as we used to call them, were certainly very determined in their efforts to educate us!! In fact the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, was himself a professional soldier in the Spanish army until he was injured and, although I am open to correction if I am wrong, Ignatius is the patron saint of soldiers.

I have also heard the Jesuits referred to as "God's marines" and "the Pope's stormtroopers" although, from what I have read, it seems that frequently down through the years they were more of a thorn in the side of the Vatican presumably because of their tendency towards free and sometimes radical thinking which did not always fit in with the church dogma of the day. There is no doubt, they certainly taught you to think for yourself rather than slavishly following church teaching and the Religious Knowledge classes in our senior years at school were more akin to philosophy lessons than religious teaching!

Overall they were great educators although I don't think we fully appreciated it at the time. 

A.M.D.G. (you might remember that Noel!)

Bill

Edited March 22, 2021 by scianoir

[Mike A 357]

2 hours ago, scianoir said:

 

As a fellow alumnus of a Jesuit school I can see how the term 'Jesuits with guns' might not be totally inappropriate to describe the Marines!! The 'Jays', as we used to call them, were certainly a very determined bunch!! In fact the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, was himself a professional soldier in the Spanish army until he was injured and, although I am open to correction if I am wrong, Ignatius is the patron saint of soldiers.

I have also heard the Jesuits referred to as "God's marines" and "the Pope's stormtroopers" although, from what I have read, it seems that frequently down through the years they were more of a thorn in the side of the Vatican presumably because of their tendency towards free and sometimes radical thinking which did not always fit in with the church dogma of the day. There is no doubt, they certainly taught you to think for yourself rather than slavishly following church teaching and the Religious Knowledge classes in our senior years at school were more akin to philosophy lessons than religious teaching!

Overall they were great educators although I don't think we fully appreciated it at the time. 

A.M.D.G. (you might remember that Noel!)

Bill

Every Single Time, I mean Every Single Time I see PMDG, I automatically think of A.M.D.G., as it was permanently etched into my brain because I had to write that on homework in Fr. Harrington’s Latin class, & just today found out that Noel & I went to the same high school. 

Fr. Harrington was a really “old school” teacher, late 60’s, and the only one at the school who wore a cassock. He must have been teaching since the 1930s. He was so strict on the format he required on the work we turned in.  Line items had to be numbered in a certain way, i.e. 1)  2) etc., not 1 or 1. , exact location of our names & title of the class.  If any one item was not correct, he refused them. He actually had a custom ink stamp that said REWRITE in red ink, which meant we had to do it completely over.  As he would hand back your REWRITE paper, he would address you as “CREATURE!” I remember once a classmate got his paper back without the REWRITE stamp, but it was somewhat wrinkled and had a shoe print in the middle. Fr. Harrington was so upset with this paper that he refused to waste his ink on it, stepped on & twisted it with his shoe 🤣 .

Ah, but the best part was the revenge of the older former students.  Fr. Harrington’s classroom was in the corner of the top floor of the building, adjacent to a stairwell.  The door of the classroom was situated in the front right corner in such a way that if someone would open it without stepping in, you couldn’t see who it was. Several times a month, someone would fling that door open & scream “CREATUUURRREEE!!!!”  Fr. Harrington, face full of rage, would run to the door, but by that time the perpetrator had already fled down the stairs & out of sight.  Those incidents were real morale boosters 😋!

[birdguy 3,994]

5 hours ago, scianoir said:

it seems that frequently down through the years they were more of a thorn in the side of the Vatican presumably because of their tendency towards free and sometimes radical thinking which did not always fit in with the church dogma of the day.

Freedom with discipline.  AMDG

Noel

[birdguy 3,994]

1 hour ago, Mike A said:

just today found out that Noel & I went to the same high school. 

Did you go to the me one or the old one on Stanyan Street just down the hill from USF?

Noel

[birdguy 3,994]

To Bill and Mike, I hope this doesn't get me another warning and  get's hidden.

I went a bridge too far in 1st period religion class.  The Fr (I've forgotten hi name) almost went apoplectic.

At the time eating meat on Friday was a mortal sin.  I wanted to discus that in class.  But Fr I've Forgotten His Name would have none of it.  He told me the Pope was infallible and that was that.

I said,  "If God is going to send you to Hell to burn forever and ever for having a pork chop for dinner on Friday he's no better than word not allowed was for burning the Jews."  That's an exact quote.

I was sent to Fr Solon, the Prefect of Discipline.  He sent me straight home.  That evening they called my father and told him they didn't want me back.  My Mom was almost hysterical.  My Dad winked at me with a 'good work son' wink.

The next day I enrolled at Galileo High School and coasted the rest of the year.

But I have always credited my father, the Jesuits, and The U.S. Marine Corps for what I've accomplished in life.

Noel  

Edited March 23, 2021 by birdguy

[Mike A 357]

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

Did you go to the me one or the old one on Stanyan Street just down the hill from USF?

Noel

SI moved to 37th Ave in the fall of 1969, & I started there the next year. I “technically” attended at the Stanyan St. SI for 2 summers @ 1967 or so, but they were sports oriented programs for kids.

[scianoir 610]

9 hours ago, Mike A said:

Every Single Time, I mean Every Single Time I see PMDG, I automatically think of A.M.D.G., as it was permanently etched into my brain because I had to write that on homework in Fr. Harrington’s Latin class, & just today found out that Noel & I went to the same high school. 

🤣🤣 Same here! We had to write it at the end of EVERY piece of homework even maths and science subjects so I expect that when my old brain finally succumbs, the last surviving neuron will be the one with AMDG written on it!

With many seemingly eccentric teaching staff, both priests and lay, and fellow students replete with devious ingenuity, there was plenty of potential for amusing stories in our school. Almost all the teachers had nicknames - Scratchy, Willie, Little Honda (he had a scooter!), H Dot O Apostrophe (a punctuation obsessed teacher - interestingly also a Latin teacher!), Maxie, Vulture (had an oddly bent neck), Jugurtha (another Latin teacher who got his nickname from the way he pronounced the name of some Roman general), Cluney, Quirkey, etc etc.

All our teachers wore gowns rather than cassocks and corporal punishment was still in vogue for serious transgressions, usually meted out by the Prefect of Studies on the palms of your hands with his Pandybat (a leather  strap designed for the purpose and dating from Victorian days). It was not unusual to see a load of students lined up outside his office at break times all vigorously rubbing their palms together to warm them before going in to cash their dockets for the required number of slaps! It all seems very wrong now but it was a very different era then and perhaps it didn’t do us too much harm We certainly preferred it to the more politically correct punishment of ‘lines’ which came in during our later years as having to write out something thousands of times could really ruin your evening!

All in all though, they were happy fun days!

Bill

[JRBarrett 3,297]

Whenever I think of a Jesuit teacher, an image of John Cleese’s Roman Centurion character in “The Life of Brian” comes to mind, when he catches Brian writing anti-Roman graffiti in Latin and forces him to correct all his grammatical mistakes.

[birdguy 3,994]

We had a bully in our junior year.  But not for long.  Father Solon, our Prefect of Discipline, took him down into the basement where they put on the boxing gloves.  Father Solon beat the word not allowed out of him and he was a bully no more.

Yes, it was a different time, but bringing back corporal punishment in schools might not be a bad thing.  More than once in grammar school (St Brigid's on Broadway) I got my knuckles rapped with a ruler.

But sometimes it backfires.  Here's one of the collection of stories I wrote for my grandkids about my brother and I growing up in San Francisco.

Sex Education

In 1947, when I was in the seventh grade, sex education wasn't even a term.  We learned about sex the good, old fashion way.  We learned about it at the corner playground, at recess, and on the street, from our peers who didn't know much more about it than we did.

The seventh grade is that time of life when boys start giving girls a second look, but vehemently deny doing so.  Overtly, girls are silly little creatures hardly worth consideration, but covertly they are interesting little creatures we would like to know more about.

At Saint Brigid's, classrooms were divided, with the girls sitting on one side of the room and boys sitting on the other side.

Sometime during the first month of the school year, Sister Mary Bernadette had reached her limit in the futile quest of trying to keep students from talking in class.  I was giggling at something the boy behind me said, and Sister caught it.

"Noel!" she screamed, "How many times have I said there will be no talking in class?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Get your books and come up to the front of the class."

I took my books from under my seat and walked up to the front of the class.  What was going on?  What was she going to do?  The classroom was silent.

"This is what happens to people who insist on talking in class," she said.  And then I was assigned the empty desk in the first row on the girls side of the classroom.

I was stunned!  My face reddened with embarrassment as the class giggled.  I went to my new desk, put the books under my seat, and stared at the floor, too humiliated to look up.

After school the boys teased me while the girls giggled.  They asked me if I was going to wear a dress to school tomorrow.  What was I going to do?

I pleaded with Mom to transfer me to the public school.  I asked Dad to talk to the Sister and make her put me back with the boys.  But they told me I had been disobedient and I would have to face the consequences.  And besides, it probably wouldn't last long.

After the first week of sitting on the girls side of the classroom, two things happened.  First, Sister Mary Bernadette decided she couldn't win the battle of keeping her students quiet, so she started ignoring the less fragrant incidents talking in the classroom.  Second, the novelty of my new desk assignment began to wear off.

After a couple more weeks I got to know the five girls whose desks were directly adjacent to mine.  I overheard their conversations, and sometimes I was invited to join in.  After a while, they would approach me at recess or lunch and talk to me.

I found out that they weren't such silly little creatures after all, they were a lot like boys were, they just played different games and with different toys.

I began to feel at ease around them.  I wasn't embarrassed anymore when my friends caught me talking to a girl.  In fact, by the end of the school year, they were coming up to me and asking questions about various girls in the class.

When we graduated to the eighth grade, boys and girls were separated into different classrooms.    It would be the end of co-ed classrooms for a while.  And that was just the time we were clumsily becoming more interested in each other.

And I had an advantage.  I was the only boy in the eighth grade who wasn't afraid to walk up to one of the girls at recess, or lunch, or after school, and talk to her.  On more than one occasion I even sat down in the cafeteria and had lunch with one or two of them.

There were many times after I left Saint Brigid's that I mentally thanked Sister Mary Bernadette for enrolling me in sex education in the seventh grade.

Noel

 

[W2DR 1,867]

Thank God they didn't have modern weapons. From the Jesuit oath:

"I do further promise and declare that I will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly and openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Masons, as I am directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth; and that I will spare neither age, sex nor condition, and that will hang, burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle, and bury alive these infamous heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women, and crush their infants' heads against the walls in order to annihilate their execrable race. That when the same cannot be done openly I will secretly use the poisonous cup, the strangulation cord, the steel of the poniard, or the leaden bullet, regardless of the honour, rank, dignity or authority of the persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agents of the Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Father of the Society of *******."

I know the Roman Catholic church denies this oath but since it's it's been quoted for almost 500 years.......

Edited March 23, 2021 by W2DR
kant spel

[birdguy 3,994]

Two years ago I visited St Brigid's School while on a trip to San Francisco.  It was in May and the 8th Graders were about to graduate.  It was then I learned St Ignatius had gone co-ed.  I was surprised.

Another surprise was all the teachers were lay teachers.  Mother Superior told me there were only a half dozen nuns in the convent.

I was asked to speak to the 7th and 8th graders.  I gave them my 'Why do I have to learn  this, I'll never use it" speech I give to any group of students I speak to.

Noel

[scianoir 610]

 

1 hour ago, W2DR said:

From the Jesuit oath:

Well if we had known about Jesuits taking that oath before we started school under their care they wouldn’t have even needed the pandybat to keep us in order!!

Although it sounds like something emanating from the time of the Spanish Inquisition, I think there is considerable doubt about the authenticity of that document in that it may have been forged as a kind of ‘fake news’ of the day to discredit the Catholic Church in general and the Jesuits in particular. But then 500 years ago was a very different era so you never know! Perhaps someone more familiar with the Jesuit order could clarify whether that oath really existed.

Bill

Edited March 23, 2021 by scianoir

[birdguy 3,994]

1 hour ago, W2DR said:

I will spare neither age, sex nor condition

How many infants can be classified as heretics, Protestants, or Masons.

One of the Jesuit sayings is, "Give me a boy when he's 13 and he's mine for life."  I guess a 13 year old heretic or Mason would be an exception.  Of course if he's a Protestant don't try to convert him

Noel

[Mike A 357]

8 hours ago, scianoir said:

Same here! We had to write it at the end of EVERY piece of homework even maths and science subjects so I expect that when my old brain finally succumbs, the last surviving neuron will be the one with AMDG written on it!

The more I think about it, you're right!  We had to put AMDG on the assignments of our other classes as well (this was around 50 yrs. ago for me).  I guess it's the combination of Sgt Fr Harrington's Latin class being during my first year, in the morning, the obsessive attention to details, the outfit he wore, the REWRITE stamp, being called creatures, the "resistance" screaming it back at him, made his class a Jesuit "boot camp" 🤯.

You know how when either on the news or at the beginning of a video clip, they give a warning if it contains violence or other objectionable material?  I've noticed here in the U.S. for the last several months or so, some of these messages say something like "Warning: May Contain Triggers".  That is what PMDG is for me.  It's just too close to AMDG, & it brings me back to Fr Harrington's classroom 😱 🤣

Speaking of Latin, when my sister found out I was taking Latin, she recited a poem to me that she learned when she was taking Latin in high school*:

Latin is a language,

Dead as Dead Can Be,

First it Killed the Romans,

Now It's Killing Me.

All are dead who spoke it.

All are dead who wrote it.

All are dead who learned it,

Lucky dead, they've earned it.

 

* Noel, if you're reading this, my sister in the mid 1950s went to Presentation High on Turk & Masonic, just a couple of blocks from the old SI.