New book details the silencing of a brilliant, outspoken Jesuit 

Jesuit leaders asked the late Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J., to either stop defending Catholic teachings on hot-button social issues or leave their religious order. A candid new book shows he chose to obey, but with difficulty.

Author Karen Hall recalls the priest who asked her to call him “Paul” as a man of integrity who struggled for 44 years with those Jesuits working to subvert rather Church teachings against divorce and civil remarriage, women’s ordination, homosexuality, and contraception.

A longtime Hollywood screenwriter who worked on the hit television show MASH, Hall documents Fr. Mankowki’s tense correspondence with his Jesuit superiors and his efforts to get around their instructions that he limit his writings to biblical scholarship. She also recalls her decades-long friendship and correspondence with him.

“I trust my superiors in all the unimportant things but not in the important things,” Fr. Mankowski admitted to his direct superior in Rome, writing in 2003 while teaching at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

That email is one of many letters he shared with Ms. Hall, who reprints them in the new book The Sound of Silence: The Life and Canceling of a Heroic Jesuit Priest.

She notes that hers is the third book to appear on Fr. Mankowksi since his death from a ruptured brain aneurysm in September 2020, following Jesuit at Large: Essays and Reviews by Paul Mankowski, S.J. (Ignatius Press, 2021), edited by George Weigel, and Diogenes Unveiled: A Paul Mankowski, S.J., Collection (Ignatius Press, 2022), edited by Phil Lawler.

Together, the three works present the bulk of every article and review the Midwestern priest published on controversial topics before his order silenced him in 2007, many of them appearing in Catholic World Report.

Weigel’s book covers the essays he wrote under his own name before the Society of Jesus shut that down. Diogenes was the pen name Fr. Mankowski used to publish satirical articles through Lawler until the Jesuits ended that anonymous column as well.

Hall’s book includes both the priest’s correspondence with superiors and her email correspondence with him and other Jesuits who knew him.

As she recounts his story, Paul Mankowski grew up in the Chicago suburbs and was “pugnacious” from the start. He was a boxer and joined the Jesuits after graduating in classics and philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1976 because he felt drawn to their missionary charism of defending the truth in difficult circumstances.

He later received a Master’s degree from Oxford, two graduate degrees in theology from a Jesuit seminary, and a PhD in Semitic philology from Harvard. He was ordained a priest in 1987.

The book notes that Fr. Mankowksi spoke openly about his issues with the leftward drift of the Society of Jesus, and often clarified Church teachings that his superiors left intentionally vague or unspoken.

His direct and often biting style quickly alarmed his higher-ups, who in 2003 threatened to expel him from the order as he prepared for final vows.

“Perhaps the most encouraging thing to me in all this is the honesty with which you have always presented yourself and, in particular, during our recent conversation,” his Roman superior wrote in 2003, explaining his reason for not moving to dismiss the priest.

Founded by the former Spanish soldier St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, Ms. Hall notes that the Jesuits became known over the centuries for their rigorous intellectual defense of the Magisterium.

Reflecting that, St. Ignatius arranged for fully professed Jesuits to take a special fourth vow of obedience to the pope on top of the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience common to religious orders. But in the years after the Second Vatican Council, many of the Jesuits turned away from that reputation, seeking to soften and dispense with moral teachings that modern people found odious or burdensome.

They became known after 1978 for feuding publicly with Pope St. John Paul II and his bishops, who worked to emphasize and clarify those teachings in documents such as the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor.

After accommodating the demands of his superiors that he stop writing on controversial topics, Fr. Mankowski finally professed his vows in 2012. Eight years later, he died at age 66, prompting his friends to release decades of his suppressed writings.

Reading The Sound of Silence can be a daunting experience as it narrates decades of inside baseball surrounding Fr. Mankowski’s silencing and attempts to subvert what he saw as the subversions of his religious order. It is often difficult to read, discouraging, and sad.

The book covers a range of topics, from emails about the priest’s fishing trips to serious allegations of same-sex relationships among the clergy, unfortunately without the benefit of an index or other supporting materials.

The tone throughout the work is unapologetically admiring, as Hall recalls Fr. Mankowski as a “heroic Jesuit priest” who counseled her through spiritual trials during the pandemic. “This book is a memoir of friendship,” she writes in the opening words of her preface.

The book will appeal to those looking for a behind-the-scenes look at the contemporary Jesuit order from a dissenting perspective. On a personal note, this reviewer spent 16 years in the Jesuits before leaving to discern marriage. I met Fr. Mankowski only in passing, but I know enough to recognize the authenticity of the documents Ms. Hall presents, much to the presumed chagrin of Jesuit leadership.

From that perspective, the strength of the book is that it states the facts and leaves readers to decide for themselves how to interpret them.

I have no doubt that it presents the real Fr. Mankowksi, not merely the image he felt constrained to present by the restrictions his superiors placed on him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” the book quotes Fr. Mankowski as saying often, on the last page. “I’m right.”

The Sound of Silence: The Life and Canceling of a Heroic Jesuit Priest
By Karen Hall
Sophia Institute Press/Crisis Publications, 2024
Paperback, 240 pages