# Great article, Alphagene!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-article-alphagene/40659>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [November 10, 2000, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-article-alphagene/40659 "2000-11-10T16:20:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-article-alphagene/40659/21 "2000-11-14T02:30:56Z")

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SJ = Society of Jesus. Impersonating God is just the sort of thing a Jesuit would be likely to do, too 😉

Seriously, though… All this talk about “a tradition of scholarship” and whatnot… Can’t that be said of most Catholic orders (well, OK, maybe not the mendicants). The Benedictines and the Augustinians are both also very scholarly (hey, they produced me!), to begin with.  
And Cranky (may I call you Cranky?), I know that my high school (Benedictine of Cleveland), at least, always had swanky college fairs.

Thanks for the clarification about the Inquisition, **Alphagene**. I’d always heard that it was primarily run by the Jesuits and the Dominicans, but then again, this was from Benedictine and Augustinian schools. I still think I’ll try to find an unbiased source, though.

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**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\
**Post date:** [November 14, 2000, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/great-article-alphagene/40659/22 "2000-11-14T22:26:25Z")

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If we _must_ bring up the word “Inquisition”, please note that a distiction should be made between the Spanish Inquisition (originally an anti-Moorish, anti-Jewish, later anti-Protestant, instrument created by Spain with the Church’s somewhat reluctant support, eventually destroyed in the Napoleonic era) and _the_ Inquisition, an office of the Church that still exists to this day for the purpose of investigating allegations of heretical teaching within the Church – not that _its_ historic record is terribly clean, either, but it’s a lot more respectable than the Spanish Inquisition was.

At any rate, the Jesuits have always tended to be on the liberal side. For example, it was the Jesuits who championed the doctrine of Probablism, which means (very, very roughly) that you have to _prove_ that something’s a sin, instead of the other way 'round. It was _this_ that got them their terrible reputation among Protestants, and that gave the word “casuistry” – literally, “getting down to cases” – a bad name.

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