R.I.P. Mt. Manresa

I've written many times about the disobedient Jesuits of Mt. Manresa, the venerable 101 year old retreat house. There was their weekly Zen Buddhist meditation sessions, their yoga and Mandala classes, their ecumenical latitudinariansim, their leftist radicalism, and their grasping quest for money with high-priced lectures and dinners. That's not to say that Mt. Manresa didn't host good programs and events, but there were enough questionable activities going on there to make the place scandalous, in keeping with the general secular and disobedient spirit of the Jesuit order. Even this week, their own calendar indicates that they are hosting a Methodist youth group. Huh?

One just didn't get the sense of a very Catholic, or even spiritual attitude emanating from Mt. Manresa, as I noted in this blog post. The administrators of the retreat house apparently prided themselves most on being some sort of community center or social services provider, and not for their role in winning souls for Christ. They played up their role as a shelter for 9/11 rescue workers, a meeting place for drug addicts, a refugee camp for children from overseas and other sundry services. Well, the inevitable has happened, and it was announced that Mt. Manresa will be closing in 2013.

It was only less than a year ago that the administrators of Mt. Manresa threw themselves a gala ball in the Great Hall of Snug Harbor to celebrate their greatness and crow about how successful Mt. Manresa was, as if they didn't have an inkling that the handwriting was on the wall. Well, now the beautiful property which was paid for and maintained by the millions of dollars of donations from Catholic people over the course of a century will be sold off to pay for...what? Sexual abuse lawsuits? Cushy pensions? And the spectacular campus and its buildings will be handed over to...who? Townhouse developers? A Protestant megachurch? Or maybe the Jesuits will try to cut another deal with the Moslem American Society?

In any case, this is yet another body blow to the faithful in Staten Island, and just one example of what's happening in the American Church at large: disloyalty, dissent and eventual disappearance.