SOCIETIES OF JESUS.

Passionate Uncertainty
Inside the American Jesuits
Peter McDonough and
Eugene C. Bianchi
University of California Press, $29.95,
380 pp.

Passionate Uncertainty is a disappointing book. This is something of a surprise because Peter McDonough is the author of the generally well received Men Astutely Trained, a 1992 study of Jesuits and Jesuit formation in the postwar era. Given the amount of research that McDonough carried out with his co-author Eugene C. Bianchi, professor emeritus of religion at Emory University, it is doubly surprising. Indeed, the bookstore browser, after reading about the authors, noting the book's provocative subtitle, and flipping through the data in the appendix would be forgiven for concluding two things: this is a book about contemporary American Jesuits, and this is a survey based on a representative sampling of Jesuits.

Strangely enough, it is neither. Almost half of those interviewed for a book about the current Society of Jesus are actually former Jesuits (206 out of 430), most of whom, according to the authors, left the order in the 1960s and 1970s. Certainly a case could be made for the inclusion of former Jesuits in a historical study of American Jesuits. But Passionate Uncertainty purports to be a snapshot of the Society of Jesus today. And when the out-of-date observations of former Jesuits are conflated with those of current Jesuits, the resulting conclusions are bound to be flawed.

Moreover, the survey technique used by the authors, "snowball sampling," is described as follows: "Once a few responses came in, we asked the men to nominate others who might be interested in taking part in the study and so on." While the authors admit the limitations of such a technique in their "Notes on Methodology," there is no assurance that the data are at all representative. A standard textbook on the subject, Social Network Analysis, by John Scott, puts it this way: "A snowball sample, of course, is not a random sample: the structure that is discovered is, in fact, 'built in' to a snowball sampling method itself." In other words, the reader will not be surprised to discover that a homogenous group of respondents have similar opinions. For example, if the authors begin with a small group of disgruntled former Jesuits, who themselves recommend other disgruntled former Jesuits, is it surprising to find a disgruntled tone in the book? McDonough and Bianchi are working with a sample that is neither random nor representative, and, at the same time, relies heavily on men whose knowledge about the Society of Jesus is limited to what they experienced thirty or forty years ago. This guarantees not only a biased sample, but also a misleading one.

Nonetheless, the authors feel confident enough to offer this thesis: the Society of Jesus, no longer governed by an overarching corporate identity, has degenerated into a "melange of countercultures." As a result, the authors conclude that American Jesuits (by this they mean U.S. Jesuits) face "demoralization and self-doubt as much as tooth-and-nail confrontation....The order limps along." Through a series of chapters on such topics as entering and leaving the order, chastity and sexuality, community life, priesthood, the educational apostolate, and spirituality, the authors seek to prove that other forces ("therapization," "democratization," and "marketization") have also served to "demoralize" the Jesuits.

The book is made up of a pastiche of quotes ("A sixty-four-year-old former Jesuit said...") interspersed with the authors' highly subjective interpretation; they make it a point to "spin" almost any quote to fit their thesis. In the chapter "Ignatian Spiritualities," for example, a series of moving passages in which Jesuits discuss their relationship with Jesus Christ is used to assert that Jesuits don't much like God the Father. "God the Father," write the authors, "has become the least popular manifestation of the deity, certainly among former Jesuits, and probably among Jesuits themselves." That particular sentence neatly encapsulates the problems with Passionate Uncertainty, advancing certainty about former Jesuits but only a weak "probably" about the putative topic of the book--"Jesuits themselves." This assertion is immediately followed by the statement that it is a "safe bet" that all of this "implies" a rejection of authority. In other words, to reach a conclusion about an important aspect of Jesuit life, the authors begin with dubious data ("probably") add a possibility ("safe bet") and follow it with an uncertainty ("implies"). This is scholarship seriously marred by subjectivity.

But what about the book's conclusions? Even if the authors' methodology is deeply flawed, is their conclusion accurate: Is the Society of Jesus in the United States devolving into a body of fiercely warring subcultures?

To begin with, their description and analysis of these "countercultures" rings false. Certainly the Society of Jesus includes in its ranks gays, neoconservatives, and social-justice advocates. But the book's description of the purported divisiveness among these groups as well as its analysis of the internal workings of these groups is inaccurate.

To take one example, the authors' explication of the "gay subculture" is largely negative. To be sure, there are many gay men in the Society of Jesus, as there are in other religious orders and in the priesthood. Overall, these men lead holy and productive lives in service to the church. In Passionate Uncertainty, however, the life of gay Jesuits is reduced to the following: Living within a separatist subculture wholly at odds with the rest of their brothers, gay Jesuits casually decide whether or not they wish to remain chaste. One's integrity means little, one's vows to God almost nothing at all. "Furtive sex" is common. Or, as the authors put it, "Explicit rules go one way, informal norms the other."

Of course I can only respond from my own observations, but this picture does not square with what I know about my fellow Jesuits. The vast majority of gay Jesuits live chaste lives. As all celibates do, they sometimes struggle with the vowed life, but if they find themselves too much at odds with chastity, they leave the order.

The authors also fail to understand that for Jesuits chastity is a way of relating to God, not just to other people. The spirituality of chastity is given almost no attention in the book. McDonough and Bianchi instead imply that the predominant approach to chastity is the "third way," that is, the sexually active celibate, a notion whose popularity peaked sometime in the 1960s and 1970s. But is it surprising to find this conclusion in a study that relies so heavily on men who left around that time?

The book's portrayal of Jesuit subcultures constantly at one another's throat also strains credulity. Let's take an example: the supposed inability of the "social-justice" group to get along with the "education" people. But if the social-justice Jesuits are against education, then why are Nativity schools, the small middle schools catering to the poor, flourishing? If Jesuit educators hate social justice, why do chaplaincy programs at Jesuit colleges and universities stress service to the poor and direct so many students to the Jesuit Volunteer Corps? Here, as elsewhere, reality is the best argument against the book's faulty data and flawed conclusions.

One of the book's most unintentionally laughable conclusions is its notion of a Jesuit subculture cohering around "non-Western spiritualities." Over the past fourteen years, I have lived in at least ten Jesuit communities and in none of them have I encountered a "non-Western spirituality" clique. When I read Passionate Uncertainty I wondered: How have I missed these great roiling crowds of sandal-wearing, incense-burning, Zen-obsessed Jesuits? Certainly I know a few Jesuits interested in non-Western spiritualities, but where was the counterculture? This baffled me until I realized that the last time such groups even existed was--once again--thirty or forty years ago. In other words, this chimerical contemporary "group" against which the rest of the Jesuits are fighting "tooth and nail" is most likely the product of memories of former Jesuits.

Now it's time for full disclosure. I am a Jesuit who is happy in his vocation, and also one who fits into the category that the authors dismissively describe as follows: "a few actually agree with what the Vatican says." So I am probably biased. (Speaking of full disclosure, the fact that Bianchi himself is a former Jesuit is buried in "Notes on Methodology" on page 325.)

But even if you think I may be biased about the book's conclusions, please trust me about its awful prose. The authors of Passionate Uncertainty rarely pass up an opportunity to use ten words when two would suffice, polysyllabic words when simple ones would do, and jargon-filled blather when clarity is called for. One example (from many): "Without the backup of pedestrian benefits or the old spiritual perks and clinquant arcana of religious life, informal movements and episodic membership in established organizations are more in evidence than institutionalized groups with routinized ministries."

Of course there are neoconservatives, gays, social-justice advocates as well as educators in the Society of Jesus (and, yes, men interested in non-Western spiritualities). The order has always been a home for men with many talents and interests, and it's natural for Jesuits to gravitate to others with like interests. But what the authors of Passionate Uncertainty misunderstand is that this is the great strength of the Society, not its great weakness. It is in this diversity that the Society is able to accomplish its work in schools, in parishes, in retreat houses, and in countless other apostolates: it leads not to degeneration but to generation. What the authors also misunderstand is that the primary devotion of Jesuits is not to some narrow "counterculture" but to Jesus Christ, whom they follow in the Society of Jesus. What the authors of this book misunderstand about Jesuits, in short, is what it means to be a Jesuit.

James Martin, S.J., associate editor of America, is author of In Good Company: The Fast Track from the Corporate World to Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience (Sheed & Ward).