Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuits

Rating:
Summary: Inside and Outside the American Jesuits
Review: The book is interesting, at times fascinating, and the authors have wisely backed up every assertion with quotes from Jesuits and non-Jesuits alike. The honesty of the written responses is astonishing--for an order of men so famous for nuance and "jesuitical" language, the Jesuits quoted here speak frankly about sensitive and complicated issues.

On the other hand, the book relies so heavily on the testimony and study of former Jesuits that the title and marketing efforts are misleading--it is not always a view of the situation "Inside the American Jesuits." For example, the authors draw extensively from the testimony of Jesuits who left the order between 1963 and 1975 for their analyses of issues like priestly formation and doctrinal variation. The equivalent would be asking someone who left the Catholic Church forty years ago to describe a current parish. The former Jesuits are describing their experience (as they remember it, through the distorting lens of decades of lay life), rather than the practice of the current Society.

It is worth noting that one of the authors, Bianchi, is himself a former Jesuit, and may have felt a resonance with those who left for the same reasons or at the same time. Nevertheless, this focus on a specific generation results in a book about what happened to the Society of Jesus between 1963 and 1975, rather than the advertised look "Inside the American Jesuits."

Rating:
Summary: Provocative, but biased and methodologically unsound
Review: While Bianchi and McDonough offer some constructive and provocative thoughts on the past, present and future of the Society of Jesus, their book contains serious flaws which make it more of a pulp polemic than a serious academic study. The authors make no pretense of objectivity and little attempt to conceal their biases: often, the book seems to be an argument for ending clerical celibacy and an all-male priesthood, using the Jesuits merely as a case study in support of the authors' thesis. As the previous reviewer notes, Bianchi and McDonough rely disproportionately on the comments of ex-Jesuits who left the Society years ago to make generalizations about Jesuit life today. The comments the authors quote are often very repetitive and seem to highlight views with which Bianchi and McDonough agree rather than give a well-rounded perspective on how current and former Jesuits feel about the issues discussed. More troubling is the methodology the authors used to collect the data that forms the backbone of their study. Eschewing any attempt at random sampling, the authors sent out surveys with an invitation to participants to choose other individuals who should be surveyed, allowing participants to shape the results by deciding who else should be given the opportunity to participate. Unsurprisingly, then, the results are skewed toward certain perspectives and probably do not represent the full panoply of opinions held by the target groups. As stated above, Bianchi and McDonough do make some worthwhile points in "Passionate Uncertainty," but their ill-concealed biases and sloppy methodology cast doubt on the value of their conclusions.