The banishment of Fr. Fessio. (News in Brief: United States).

San Francisco, CA--Fr. Joseph Fessio, 61, is an energetic Jesuit priest who has made it his task to uphold Catholicism as rooted in tradition and history. When the philosophy of moral permissiveness swept society and that of moral and theological relativism invaded the ranks of priests and theologians, including his fellow Jesuits, he decided to fight back. In the seventies he established Ignatius Press to provide Catholics with the classical literature of their three agencies: heritage; the monthly Catholic World Report to interpret Church affairs; and the Ignatian Institute at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco (USF) for solid theology and philosophy. These enterprises were eminently successful, much to the annoyance of dissenting, unhappy Jesuit confreres.

As the world knows, there are no more intolerant persons than scorned liberal intellectuals whose efforts to undermine or bypass traditional teaching and ideas have come to naught.

Last year, the president of USF, Fr. Stephen Privett, S.J., dismissed the directors of the Ignatian Institute and reorganized its syllabus, in one critic's words "effectively gutting it as an outpost of traditional Catholic teaching in an otherwise liberal university." When Fr. Fessio appealed to the Vatican, the Congregation of Education asked the local archbishop to help mediate the dispute, indicating however that no appointment to the staff should be made of persons whose teachings were inconsistent with those of the Church. Fr. Privett paid no attention to this request and appointed among others a laicised Jesuit, who has publicly defended human cloning, euthanasia, and tissue banks using materials derived from abortions.

Fr. Fessio responded by founding Campion College near the USF campus (Campion being a Jesuit martyr under Elizabeth I), and rehiring the Institute's old staff to teach the old curriculum. This brought the wrath of the USF Jesuits on his head. In February his Provincial Superior, Fr. Tom Smolich, appointed him assistant hospital chaplain in Duarte, Southern California, 450 miles south of San Francisco. There he joined another Jesuit who had been sent there three years ago.

Fr. Fessio has accepted the new appointment under obedience. However, once he found out that it did not carry the confirmation of the Jesuit Superior-General, Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach--as he had been told it had--he appealed the ruling, asking for an explanation. Supporters are now collecting signatures on his behalf.

The Catholic Herald, a weekly of London, England, notes the case of another Jesuit defender of the Magisterium, Fr. Rodger Charles. Fr. Charles wrote a book documenting "wholesale" disloyalty to the Pope within the Society in England, a serious matter for a Society which in the past has made obedience to the Popes its special character. The book was suppressed by his Superiors in England. He too was told that Fr. Kolvenbach had approved the suppression only to discover this was not so. This allowed him to write a letter of protest to his Superior-General who then gave him permission to publish the letter.

The Catholic Herald's editor called upon the Jesuit Superior-General to forthwith end the persecution of loyal Catholics by their liberal confreres within the world-wide order.