Scouting with Jesuits

What They Knew
September 18, 2012

http://vu2103.katla.orangewebsite.com/category/jerold-lindner-sj/

The Jesuits know how to earn a Merit Badge in Cover-Up

With the Boy Scouts of America in the news recently it would seem that the barking and howling from Bill Donohue would be at a fevered pitch. The Los Angeles Times this week uncovered abuse in the Boy Scouts, HERE.

Leaving aside the anthropology and history of the Boy Scouts (and the Jesuits for that matter) as an imperialist / colonial institution… what happens when you combine a Jesuit with a Boy Scout?

The answer is a disaster of epic proportions, or otherwise known in the California Province as Fr. Jerold Lindner SJ. Besides being an epic abuser of children and still a Jesuit to this day, Lindner was active in the Boy Scouts for seemingly 50 years. One wonders where his boy Scout files are… any complaints there?

Jerold Lindner SJ application to the Society of Jesus was initially rejected by the order, according to members of his family. They said the Jesuits told him he needed to broaden his life. So he took a job as a courier for a title company and became leader of a Boy Scout troop in Phoenix. Good training for being a Jesuit one has to assume, and it worked.

In 1969 at St. Louis University in Missouri, Lindner was active in an urban Boy Scout troop. He left St. Louis under mysterious circumstances. The next year, he was assigned to teach at St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco. He stayed in the Bay Area more than a decade, enrolling at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley in 1973 and being ordained as a priest in 1976. He was also Scoutmaster for an Oakland troop and accompanied boys on weekend camping and ski trips.

Jerold Lindner SJ knew how to Scout for victims

During these years, Lindner allegedly molested six children, according to sworn testimony and interviews. How many Boy Scouts were sexually abused by Linder? We don’t know yet.

In 1982, after eight years at St. Ignatius High, Lindner transferred to Loyola High in Los Angeles and was named chairman of the English department. Lindner served as an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 1193 at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, near the Loyola campus.

Lindner was suspended from ministry in 1997 by the Jesuits. But Lindner was allowed to continue with his involvement with the Boy Scouts at nearby St. Thomas church after his 1997-1998 stay at St. Luke’s Institute. There, he launched nearly two dozen after-school programs for students, including a chess club and renaissance club, and became master of a Boy Scout troop that included mostly lower-income Puerto Rican boys. Not to be out done, the Franciscan Edmund Coakeley, who was a parochial-school teacher and a scoutmaster was also scouting for children to sexually abuse.

Guess who else went to St. Luke’s? That’s right, Donald J. McGuire SJ.

Donald McGuire SJ knew his scouting would go unpunished by his Jesuit Superiors.

Donald McGuire SJ also had some interesting connections to the Boy Scouts of America. Many of his victims rose to the rank of Eagle Scout and McGuire was happy to help recommend them as the following documents show.