The John-Henry Westen Show - Here’s How the Jesuits Cancelled One of Their Most Faithful Sons

00:00:00.000 I went to Hollywood cocktail parties and told everyone I was working on a novel about the

00:00:04.520 nature of evil and I thought that was very sophisticated. And then I got to be on page

00:00:08.920 250 and realized that I couldn't look at the nature of evil without looking at the nature of good.

00:00:20.680 Hello my friends and welcome to this episode of the John Henry Weston Show.

00:00:23.640 So we are at the Coalition for Canceled Priests conference and wanted to show you a glimpse of

00:00:32.000 some of the canceled priests. And we have with us an author who was a close personal friend of

00:00:39.900 one of the canceled priests. In fact, one of the canceled priests canceled back when it wasn't

00:00:44.080 cool to be a canceled priest. But you might know him because if you've been around in the Catholic

00:00:48.900 world, you would remember that over at Catholic World News, they had a writer who was unnamed

00:00:55.660 under the pen name Diogenes. And this writer was so keen, so on the mark, so plugged in,

00:01:03.540 everyone thought, ooh, he must be like in the hierarchy or he must be, he's someone who really

00:01:09.620 knows, but he's really, really good. And there was all these rumors about who it could be.

00:01:14.660 Well, that priest was Father Paul Minkowski, a Jesuit, and therefore silenced, if you will,

00:01:23.620 canceled by the Jesuits. We're going to get into this picture of a canceled priest with the author

00:01:30.860 of the book. Here's the book, The Sound of Silence, Karen Hall. Stay tuned.

00:01:37.000 Mighty nations stumble, world war threatens. There's destruction on the battlefield and also

00:01:43.300 in the womb. And all this is happening because man has forgotten God. Pope Pius XI said men must

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00:02:34.160 Karen Hall, welcome to the program.

00:02:35.640 Thank you. Thanks for having me.

00:02:37.560 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:02:46.400 So, The Sound of Silence, the publication is by, it's a crisis publication. You were close to Father Paul

00:02:53.500 Monkowski. He was, we were very good friends for a long time. And it made no sense because only God

00:03:01.300 could have put that together because I had been a television writer for 35 or 40 years when I met

00:03:07.560 him. And he lived to be 66 and he never owned a television. His family didn't have one when he was

00:03:13.560 growing up. So, you know, that was God keeping me humble because I had all these accolades that meant

00:03:18.880 absolutely nothing to him. What shows did you write for? I started on MASH. Oh, really? I went from

00:03:25.580 there to Hill Street Blues. And then I did Moonlighting. I did a lot of movies and miniseries.

00:03:31.820 I did five years of a show called Judging Amy that my sister was the executive producer of. And I did a

00:03:37.860 couple of episodes of Good Wife and a lot of other stuff. Wow, the later iterations, I don't know, but

00:03:43.100 MASH and even Moonlighting, Bruce Willis and I forget who else. Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, no, I probably

00:03:50.200 watched your work. Very good. So that was pretty secular though. It was very secular. And I tell this

00:03:58.640 story in the book. I converted myself in the process of writing a novel. I grew up Methodist. I moved to

00:04:06.100 Hollywood and declared myself an agnostic. And so, you know, Hollywood was thrilled to have me as an

00:04:12.580 agnostic if I didn't have the guts to be a full atheist. So I got a lot of support. And I started

00:04:17.980 writing a novel in 19, around 1990, 91. The story of the novel was a friend of mine had a mother who

00:04:25.340 thought there was a demonic curse on their family. And I knew the story of the family. And I thought

00:04:30.820 that her case would hold up in court. So I thought, I want to see if I can write that as a novel and make

00:04:36.340 an intelligent case for that being true. So that's what I did. I went to Hollywood cocktail parties and told

00:04:42.340 everyone I was working on a novel about the nature of evil. And I thought that was very sophisticated.

00:04:46.900 And then I got to be on page 250 and realized that I couldn't look at the nature of evil without

00:04:52.180 looking at the nature of good, which is something that I hadn't given any thought to in a long time.

00:04:57.220 So I decided I had to go back to church and I had last left me at a Catholic church. I had a Catholic

00:05:04.100 boyfriend and started to go into mass with him and loved it. So I went back to church so I could remember

00:05:10.420 why anybody could possibly believe this, you know, what at the time to me was nonsense. And it took

00:05:16.260 me about a month before I realized that I was where I was supposed to be. So I joined the church. But,

00:05:23.220 you know, so there's two halves of my Hollywood career. And the first half was, you know, I was an

00:05:28.020 agnostic and a bleeding heart liberal and, you know, no one, no one was unhappy with me. And then after

00:05:34.820 conversion, they were less happy with me. But when I first converted, it was during the period of time

00:05:40.980 when spirituality was considered cool. I don't know if you remember, but there were shows on like

00:05:46.980 Touched by an Angel and things like that. So Christianity fell into the umbrella of spirituality

00:05:53.700 is cool. And that lasted for about five years. And then the world changed and all other spirituality was

00:05:59.540 cool. But Christianity was not. And as the world changed and Christianity became less popular,

00:06:07.620 I didn't get as many jobs as I used to. So which is fine, because I really think I was born to do this.

00:06:15.780 Interesting. How did you meet? How did you meet Father Minkowski?

00:06:20.580 After I converted, I converted in Los Angeles, which means that, you know, I thought I had converted to

00:06:26.580 Catholicism. I had really converted to Mahoneyism because Colonel Mahoney, you know, all the priests

00:06:34.260 had gotten to the point that they agreed. He was like the Pope of Los Angeles. Yes, very much like,

00:06:40.260 if anybody's wondering, the reference very much like Theodore McCarrick, with all the same proclivities.

00:06:44.820 Yeah. And so my mother-in-law was a member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. And so she knew

00:06:54.420 Father Minkowski. And she wanted me to be a real Catholic. There was a meeting of the Fellowship of

00:06:59.860 Catholic Scholars that he was going to be a speaker at. And so she sent me in her place. And she told me,

00:07:06.260 do not get on the plane to come home if you haven't introduced yourself to Father Minkowski.

00:07:12.100 And she was a scary lady. She was a third order Dominican. She was holier than, I mean, more Catholic 1.00

00:07:18.020 than the Pope back when that meant something. And so I was not going to get home and tell her I didn't do it.

00:07:22.980 So I went up and introduced myself and I gave him my email address. And he sent me an email a couple

00:07:29.300 of days after I got back home and was talking about things I had said to him at the conference.

00:07:36.020 In fact, the email is in the book. When I went back, when I went to write the book,

00:07:39.700 I kind of wanted to look back and see how did this friendship build. And I realized that it never did.

00:07:45.220 We met as foxhole buddies. It's like we knew, we knew we were in the same business. And we were just like

00:07:52.420 best friends. It's nice to meet you. So beautiful, beautiful. So what happened to Father? I mean,

00:08:00.340 such a brilliant man. Yes, a Jesuit. But no, no, that sounds weird. But very brilliant mind.

00:08:08.020 Very great writer. I mean, gosh, he could write. Yes, he was.

00:08:11.220 But what happens to bring him to cancellation and why? I wrote about it in the book in detail. So I can just

00:08:18.100 tell you that the short version is that he came out against Robert Drinan, who was a Jesuit who ran for

00:08:25.300 Congress, ran several terms. And he's basically the godfather of abortion in the Democratic Party. 0.70

00:08:33.700 He ran as a Democrat from Massachusetts. And he went up to Hyannisport and explained to the Kennedy

00:08:41.140 brothers why it would be okay for them to say that they were personally not in favor of abortion, but they

00:08:47.220 shouldn't tell anyone else what to do. So he really is. He has so much blood on his hands. It's

00:08:53.940 unfathomable. Father Paul wrote, he was going to write an article. He ended up deciding not to write

00:09:00.340 the article. And he gave all the research for the article to a man named James Hitchcock, who's a

00:09:06.580 church historian. The research showed that the Jesuits' father general, a man named Pedro Arrupe,

00:09:13.780 had tacitly given permission to Grinan to run. Because, you know, St. Ignatius didn't want Jesuits 0.96

00:09:23.540 running for public office. And so he ignored that. And that's what he did. Well, when the Jesuits found

00:09:31.540 out that Father Paul had given the research to James Hitchcock, and then James Hitchcock wrote an article

00:09:39.060 about it. So basically, you know, all their dirty laundry was aired. And so that's what got him

00:09:46.420 canceled. At the time they told him not to, he couldn't write anymore under his byline. And so

00:09:52.660 that's why for a few years after that, he took the pseudonym of Diogenes and he wrote under Diogenes.

00:09:59.540 Yeah. But like you said, it didn't take people long to figure out who was writing Diogenes. And so the

00:10:05.780 Jesuits told him that he couldn't write under any byline. And so that's when he stopped writing.

00:10:11.380 He got canceled again. So he's canceled once and then canceled again. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, we have that.

00:10:17.220 They would dig him up and cancel him again if they could get away with it.

00:10:21.860 Now, what did you, you say he was a holy man. You say he was good. What, what was it about him that

00:10:27.460 struck you so, so profoundly? He lived radically. He, his foul poverty was such that

00:10:32.740 he never owned more than you could put into a medium sized box because, you know, in case of

00:10:39.140 sudden relocation or being kicked out. And, um, I went to his room with a couple of

00:10:45.380 judgment friends of his after he died and, uh, and he had told the truth. There was really no more

00:10:51.780 there than you could put in a medium sized box. He had, uh, I think four shirt, black shirts.

00:10:58.500 He wore clerics all the time, four black shirts, two black pants, one pair of black shoes. That's his 0.90

00:11:04.020 clothing. And, um, they, most of them came from dead Jesuits who he would go and raid their closets. 0.91

00:11:12.020 So, um, he just, he took his vow of poverty really seriously. You know, he just had an air of holiness.

00:11:18.420 If you were around him, you just knew. But the thing that was so surprising and why people treasured

00:11:24.740 him so much is that he was one of the funniest people we'd ever met. We would argue over who

00:11:29.460 was going to get to sit with next to him at the table. Um, so he wasn't somber and holy,

00:11:34.980 you know, he was hysterically funny. Give us, if you have an example of that, we'd love it.

00:11:39.540 Of his, of his humor. Of his humor, yeah.

00:11:43.060 I was going to, uh, give one this morning my speech, but I was afraid I'd get excommunicated.

00:11:48.180 So, uh, I'll, I'll just let them read that in the book.

00:11:50.980 Oh, okay. His, his wit, at least as Diogenes, was, was quite biting. It was very, very good,

00:11:57.540 very insightful. I think for that reason, the character of Diogenes over at Catholic World News

00:12:03.060 really developed the following. Oh, yes.

00:12:05.220 There seemed to be sometimes a different writer and then sometimes, uh, it was Father Paul.

00:12:11.860 I didn't know it was Father Paul at the time, uh, but reading it, you'd recognize, oh,

00:12:16.020 oh, that doesn't seem like him, but oh, well, whatever. Maybe he's having a bad day. But we

00:12:21.460 learned later, uh, from Phil, Phil Lawler, uh, that indeed sometimes, at least in the beginning,

00:12:26.900 as you said, uh, there's, there was another writer or two, uh, using the pseudonym.

00:12:31.380 But then he was clearly so much better that he just became Diogenes. Yeah.

00:12:35.940 And, um, he referred to, uh, himself as Uncle Di when he was going to tell you something that Diogenes

00:12:41.700 would say. So I would write him an email about some problem I was having and he would write back

00:12:46.500 and say, well, your Uncle Di would tell you, whatever it was. What happened to him? He passed

00:12:52.340 away? He passed away. He had an aneurysm, September 3rd, 2020. And, you know, we, we had no notice.

00:12:58.740 It wasn't like he had had an illness. I just got the phone call and, and he was gone. Wow. So it was

00:13:05.140 really devastating to the ones of us who were close friends. And you were still able, unlike the rest of

00:13:10.900 people, to hear him, to hear his take on things that were going on. It's a very interesting period

00:13:17.460 of time because we're dealing with the start of COVID already. You're dealing with lockdowns already.

00:13:22.580 What was his take on, on that? He actually got grounded by the Jesuits

00:13:26.660 for leaving the house to go, uh, say, mass for the nuns down the street. Another of his friends

00:13:33.060 and I were planning to fly to Chicago to take him out to dinner. And, uh, he said, don't bother

00:13:39.140 because they wouldn't let him leave the house. This is 66 year old man. I know. I know. Held under

00:13:46.420 house arrest. Yeah. That's incredible. Was he allowed to receive guests at all? I don't know.

00:13:52.740 Cause you know, we couldn't take him out to dinner. We weren't going up. You know, what really got me

00:13:56.900 because the Jesuits who, uh, you know, it wasn't just the superiors, the people who were his contemporaries

00:14:03.380 were really awful to him. Um, you know, he, he never had a friend and a Jesuit residence.

00:14:11.540 He was always the odd man out. You know, when he died, uh, Father James Martin, there was no love

00:14:17.380 lost between the two of them. And Father James Martin put up a thing on Facebook saying that he

00:14:22.900 had lost a brother Jesuit. And I saw it and I thought, really? And so there was a long strain of

00:14:29.700 people, uh, giving him condolences for losing his good friend, Father Minkowski.

00:14:36.660 So, and that might've been the moment when I decided to write the book. I don't know.

00:14:43.140 Do you have some understanding of what, uh, Father Paul thought of Father James Martin and were

00:14:48.260 there exchanges? No, I mean, not that I know of. I, there was a time when I was friends with both of

00:14:54.020 them. This was, yeah. And so that was a little bit of whiplash because I had met, uh, Father Martin

00:14:59.540 before I met, um, Father Minkowski. And so when I, when I, when one knew I was going to see the other

00:15:06.660 one, they would say, you know, tell him that I said hi. And then Father Minkowski would usually say,

00:15:14.340 and more than that, I dare not say, he, he got a chance to review Father, uh, Father Martin's book.

00:15:23.060 So he got a chance to say some things. Oh, interesting. That's, that's one of the things

00:15:28.340 that's really, really strange is that this with Father James Martin, it's, he is, he plays a careful

00:15:36.340 game, but most people by now have caught him at doing things that are completely off the mark.

00:15:42.260 And yet it's accepted by the powers that be. What was Father Paul's take? Do you know his take on the

00:15:51.380 powers that be in Rome on the change in the church from like 2013 on? It was pretty radical, I think,

00:15:57.860 for everybody. It was. And by the time we met, I mean, we already knew that we were in that trouble.

00:16:02.580 We didn't know how bad it was going to be. The arc of our friendship kind of started at,

00:16:07.780 it has to get better. And as time went on and it didn't get better. And it really ended with

00:16:13.620 the last two or three emails I got from him, he signed them waiting for the asteroid.

00:16:19.140 And so he had really like, and he would say to me, I just don't know what to tell you anymore,

00:16:24.820 you know, because he had words of wisdom for a long time. And he really changed in the last year.

00:16:29.940 And I spoke to one of his sisters who said she felt the same way. He really had kind of lost hope

00:16:36.100 of anything getting better. There was no loss of hope in our Lord or in the faith or anything else?

00:16:42.500 No, no, no. Not at all. He had such an underlying joy in the calamity. Yes.

00:16:49.700 Did that retain? Did he retain that as well? Oh, absolutely. And I kind of have that a little bit,

00:16:55.220 too. So, you know, you know how things get so bad that you just laugh because it's just too bad.

00:17:00.580 Yeah. And we were like that. There was a lot of gallows humor that went back and forth.

00:17:06.340 If you could tell people one thing to take away from your relationship, your knowledge of your

00:17:11.300 reading of Father Minkowski, what would that be? I think I would tell them because he's hard to

00:17:17.780 describe. He was a very complicated person. He was a philologist. He spoke something like 13 languages,

00:17:25.220 and half of them were dead. And I thought, you know, it's because he's brilliant. And he told me it

00:17:30.100 was because language was an easy A. So that's why. That's why. I would tell them that had the Jesuits 1.00

00:17:37.620 not silenced him, I think he would be as much of a household word as Fulton Sheen or Father Mike Smith.

00:17:44.420 You would know him. That's who he was. He would have been huge. And the Jesuits knew that,

00:17:49.460 you know, because he was so faithful and so orthodox that, you know, would not have been good 0.99

00:17:57.780 for their team if he had had a voice. Or you could say it would have been good for their team.

00:18:02.660 Well, it would have been good for our team. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I see what you mean. The team of that kind.

00:18:07.620 Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Well, Karen, thank you so much for joining us. This is the book, The Sound of Silence,

00:18:13.620 The Life and Cancelling of a Heroic Jesuit Priest by Karen Hall, put out by Crisis Publications.

00:18:20.580 Go grab yourself a copy. Karen, thank you so very much. Thank you. God bless you.

00:18:24.260 You too. And God bless you. And we'll see you next time.

The John-Henry Westen Show - August 01, 2024

Here’s How the Jesuits Cancelled One of Their Most Faithful Sons

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