This week HBO Max announced that it is pulling the 1939
classic film ‘Gone With The Wind’ from its streaming service amidst the racial
turmoil gripping the nation. This is not a new issue--over the past decades
debate has swirled over erasing or retiring problematic art, be it statues,
books, or movies. But in this case the cancellation has a unique and almost
cruel twist. The first black actor to ever win an Oscar did so for her part in
‘Gone With Wind,’ and shedoes not deserve to have that performance disappeared.
That’s a credit to him, that he at least had pangs of conscience; whereas these other orders, like the Jesuits, even when they saw that the IHMs were almost extinct, nevertheless they invited the same team in. Oh, yes. Well, actually we started with the Jesuits before we started with the nuns. We did our first Jesuit workshop in ‘65. Rogers got two honorary doctorates from Jesuit universities…. A good book to read on this whole question is Fr. Joseph Becker’s The Re-FormedJesuits. It reviews the collapse of Jesuit training between 1965 and 1975. Jesuit formation virtually fell apart; and Father Becker knows the influence of the Rogerians pretty well. He cites a number of Jesuit novice masters who claimed that the authority for what they did—and didn’t do—was Carl Rogers. Later on when the Jesuits gave Rogers those honorary doctorates, I think that they wanted to credit him with his influence on the Jesuit way of life. But do you think there were any short-term beneficial...

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