Father John: Who is SHP’s New Priest?

For the first time since its founding, SHP has employed a full-time priest: Father John Whitney. Born and raised in San Mateo, California, and an alumnus of Bellarmine College Preparatory, Father John knows the Bay Area well.
But who is he?
Growing up, Father John floated the idea of being a priest, “because I had really good priests where I grew up.” More than that, his parents both “found joy in the Church… It was something that gave them strength. Their vision of faith really inspired me.” He described his father as “the biggest hero in his life… He had a core that he kept, a principle that he kept to, which I admired.”
He later graduated from Bellarmine and went to college at Georgetown University, where he was a writing tutor. He found he really enjoyed it. He described the experience of teaching as “giving my life to other people.”
After university, he decided to join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, where he “taught in a high school for Native Students” in western Alaska. Upon his return, he got a job at a restaurant in Chicago.
During our interview, Father John chuckled as he recalled how he “thought, well, I’ve got all that do-gooder stuff out of me.” But even after thinking this, one busy Saturday night, “I was in the back, at the cash registers… and people were complaining.” He paused, then said, “it was just, bang, in my hands. I don’t care about any of this. I don’t care about how much tips I get. I don’t care if people…know your orders are wrong or not to their liking. I just don’t care.”
He turned to the person behind him and said “I think I’m going to go join the Jesuits.”
Though he does not recommend this for anyone, he finalized his decision by taking a Bible, flipping through it, and “boom, [putting] it down.” Right above his fingers was John 15:16. “You have not chosen me. I’ve chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit.” He was stunned. “I said to myself, maybe I should try two out of three.” But he followed up on it. He called Loyola University in Chicago and asked how to get in touch with the Jesuits.
Now, after 41 years as a Jesuit and 30 years as a priest, Father John reflects on his faith journey. “My vision at my job is giving people that which belongs to them.” He noted that “there’s a lot of priests and bishops who feel like, ‘I’m gonna tell you what you should think and what you should do.’ My job is ‘okay, you inherited all this history. You inherited everything all the way back to Jesus, and farther than that… Now you get to choose how to use it.’” Father John smiled and continued, “I’m in sales, not manufacturing.”
Along with his parents, Father John mentioned one of his “closest friends in the Jesuits,” Father Pat Lee, as a great influence on his faith. When Father John was a novice, Father Lee was his confessor. Once, Father John confessed, “I don’t pray as much as I should.” Father Lee said, “The question really is, do you pray as much as you want to?” Father John reflected, saying “that’s been a huge influence on my life: to turn from all the external ‘shoulds’ to realizing that the real core of where God is working is internal.”
Father John was later named provincial, which he described as “surprising… I never expected that.” But, while in that position as head of the Jesuits, the sexual abuse crisis arose in the Northwest. He recognized that “it was [his] job to accept responsibility on behalf of the Jesuits. [He] would talk to every single person who would talk to [him]… who said they’d been hurt.” Father John said that while he was talking to survivors, Father Lee was “one of those people who was in my mind… I would think, ‘what would those people expect of me?’” He knew that they would want him “to be compassionate…more than concerned about protecting our reputation.”
This wasn’t the only time Father John faced challenges during his career. While a Pastor at St. Joseph Church in Seattle, he worked to include LGBTQ+ individuals in the church community despite backlash. He said, “the Church teaches, and I believe, that to go against your nature is sinful…but when I knew gay and lesbian people, I knew they [weren’t] acting against their nature. They’re trying to recognize their nature.” St. Joseph’s Church became “friendly to people who are of various sexual orientations.” Reflecting personally, he said “I’ve never found that you changed anybody from being gay by pushing them out of the church. I find that when you bring them in, you find people thriving.”
When asked what advice he would give to SHP students struggling with their faith, Father John mentioned that “the first thing I’d say is this great line, which is, trust your heart and listen to your head…Begin to trust your heart. And I think that’s a hard thing to learn, because I think there’s a lot of pressure to fit into a mold. And the truth is, the molds never make you happy.” He later said, “the thing that’s made me make the best choices in my life, is that… I knew I was loved.” He chuckled again as he recognized, “we kind of have in the back of our head [the questions of] ‘will you love us until we abandon you and you love us until we torture you, and you love us until we kill you?’ And then Jesus is like, ‘yeah, I love you even now.’ They’re like, ‘huh?’”
He referenced a prayer by a Native American Jesuit, which says: “Behold God beholding you and smiling.” Father John frowned when he talked about how “one of our problems in church is [that] we portray a God who is looking at us and not particularly happy. But that’s not God. God is always looking at us and smiling.”
As for why Father John came to Sacred Heart, he put it this way: “My whole reason for being here is so people can maybe see somebody who isn’t trying to push anything down their throats… I just want to help them define themselves so they don’t get abused [or] hurt, [but, instead] find hope.”