c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) I’m tired of being used as an epithet.

Here’s a plea from a real-life Jesuit: Can we stop using the word “Jesuitical” to mean deceitful, dishonest and dissembling, like Hillary Clinton seems to have done last weekend?

Last Sunday (Jan. 13) on “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert grilled Clinton over her support for the Iraq war. Russert first asked whether she or Barack Obama showed better judgment in October of 2002, when the Senate voted on the war.

“You know, look, judgment is not a single snapshot,” Clinton replied. “Judgment is what you do across the course of your life and your career.”

“A vote for war is a very important vote,” said Russert.

In response, an exasperated Clinton said, “Well, you know, Tim, we can have this Jesuitical argument about what exactly was meant.”

To me, it sounded like she was using the distinctly pejorative (and standard dictionary definition) of the term: “crafty and duplicitous.”

Look, I like Hillary Clinton. I think it took guts for her to stay in public life after her husband’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. I think she’s used her considerable intellect to help the people of New York, where I live. I’m not sure if I’d vote for her (I normally don’t get too excited about candidates until November) but I think she’d make a pretty good president. All in all, she is a smart, talented capable person.

So why did she have to trot out the old definition of a Jesuit? Did she learn it from her Jesuit-educated husband? Bill Clinton is a Georgetown grad, who was once asked by one of his Jesuit professors if he had ever considered the priesthood. (Clinton, flattered, replied that he would first have to become Catholic.) Russert is also Jesuit-educated, too, and has received umpteen honorary doctorates from our universities, but made no objection over the J-word.

This use of the term “Jesuitical” came from a variety of sources. Some believe it originated from the suspicion of Jesuits acting as the (almost literal) power behind the throne in the early, and more politically influential, days of the Society of Jesus.

Others posit that it stemmed more from the Jesuit tradition of “casuistry,” another word that has taken on unpleasant implications. In moral theology in the 17th century, Jesuit theologians introduced a type of reasoning that asked the person to consider specific cases (thus the word “casuistry”). In other words, to consider the context of any moral decision, an insight that is widely accepted today. But soon this was taken to mean a kind of “anything goes” morality, where anything could be justified, or explained away.

Pretty soon, the skulking Jesuit, with his black cassock and deceitful ways, was a stock figure in modern fiction. At the same time, the word “Jesuitical” became a favorite epithet. In James Fenimore Cooper’s book “The Pioneers,” he writes, “It was a jesuitical, cold, unfeeling, and selfish manner, that seemed to say, `I have kept within the law’ to the man he had so cruelly injured.” Jesuitical had become an insult.

You still may believe that the Jesuits in the 16th and 17th centuries were always crafty, power-hungry priests, or cunning in their moral theology. (I don’t.) But does it mean that we have to use that same word in 2008? When I think of Jesuits today, I think more of our tradition of caring for the poor, of spreading the gospel and of serving people on the margins of society.

Imagine if a candidate had used any other word that reflected poorly on any other ethnic, social or religious group. (Use your imagination here; there are plenty to go around.) What would the response be?

Few people are afraid of losing the “Jesuit” vote: there are only a few thousand of us in the United States these days, and we’re no longer the power behind the throne. I once read a book published in the 1990s that purported that we secretly ran the U.S. government through none other than Bill Clinton, the Georgetown grad. (“Would that we did!” a Jesuit friend laughed.) So there’s no real downside in annoying us _ unless you want one of your kids to get into college.

I propose that we retire the word “Jesuitical,” the same way we’ve retired other offensive words that stem from a stereotyped or prejudiced view of a particular group. That way, we could say the same thing without needlessly offending a whole group of people.

It would be a wonderful step forward: gracious, compassionate, and far-sighted _ positively Clintonian.

(James Martin is a Jesuit priest and author of “A Jesuit Off-Broadway: Center Stage with Jesus, Judas and Life’s Big Questions.”)

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