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A week before Easter the best Jesuit I have ever met, Fr. Lawrence McCraffery, retired from my former parish (I moved at the end of last month). At 72 he asked if he could serve at a parish instead of retiring to an old priests home.

For the last 14 years he has been blessing St. Anastasia's parish with his wisdom. He would say the twice weekly evening Masses. He heard confession 3 times a week. He had two different bible study classes. He would go say morning Mass for the nuns twice a week (at their house, so the elderly sisters did not have to leave their home early in the morning, to hear mass, on cold winter mornings)

He joked with all of us, had a very dry sense of humor, loved to encourage people to go to confession and adore the Eucharist.

Four weeks before Easter he stopped saying public Masses because his illness was effecting his balance, and he thought he might cause disrespect to the Sacred Body or Precious Blood. He cared for people and he cared for learning and teaching. He was and is what I was taught a priest should be.

When I hear people talking about how the Jesuits are not following the Magisteria and have gone all soft with social justice not true love of God, I think of Fr. McCraffrey, and I am puzzled how the Jesuits could turn out such a stellar example of a priest if they have truly gone to the dogs.

There is a big chasm among U.S. Jesuits right now, the majority having "gone to the dogs" - just look at 'America' magazine, Lavender University (Loyola), a;; the other leftist-catering Jesuit Universities, the large number of homosexual Jesuits in high places, etc. However, the good men in the order are staunchly good and orthodox. They are deliberately kept dispersed about so they cannot gain power in the organization, but they know one another. They are silent, but it seems like the Holy Father knows what's going on. This is not his first call to holiness specifically addressed to the Society.