MOVING TOWARD THE PRESENT
In 2008, after twenty-five years as general, during which cordial relations generally prevailed with the Vatican, Kolvenbach resigned. It was time, he said, for new leadership. He was succeeded by Adolfo Nicolás, a Spaniard who like Arrupe before him had spent his adult years in Japan as well as other parts of East Asia, where he held many responsible positions.
Jesuits had in the meantime taken seriously the responsibility that General Congregation Thirty-Two imposed upon them to be more active in trying to alleviate poverty and injustice, especially in parts of the world where those ills were more prevalent. They sometimes did so at the risk of their lives. Between 1975 and 2006, forty-six Jesuits died violent deaths, most of which occurred because their efforts in trying to improve the situation brought them into conflict with vested interests.
In 1989 in El Salvador occurred the most shocking of the assassinations. The country was in the midst of a bloody and vicious civil war. The government and its military correctly suspected the Jesuits at the Jesuit university of sympathizing with the rebels. Although they knew better, they accused them of storing weapons for the rebels and training guerrillas. In the early hours of the morning of November 16, commandos of the Salvadoran army entered the campus and brutally murdered six Jesuits, including the president of the university. To ensure there were no witnesses, they also murdered the Jesuits’ cook and her daughter who were sleeping in a nearby room.
The military’s attempt to blame the assassinations on the guerrillas proved impossible to sustain. As the killings began to be reported in the media outside El Salvador, they sparked an outrage that applied international pressure to learn who the killers were. In the end, the scandal of the murders helped speed negotiations and consolidate the peace.
Most Jesuit efforts to help those in need or distress such as the Jesuit Refugee Service took place without drama and public attention. In 1995, for instance, the American Jesuit John P. Foley founded in Chicago the first Cristo Rey school for disadvantaged boys and girls to enable them later to enter a university. The experiment succeeded, and in the next fifteen years Christo Rey schools grew to twenty-five spread across the United States. In cooperation with local businesses and government agencies, the students engage in a closely monitored work-study program. They work in law firms, banks, hospitals, universities, and business offices. The revenue generated from their work is the primary source for the funding of the school, which is open to students of all religious, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. Virtually one hundred percent of the graduates are accepted into a tertiary-level school.
Older and incomparably more extensive is Fe y Alegría. In 1955 the Jesuit José María Vélaz (1910–1985) set out to create in Venezuela an effective program for the education of the country’s most deprived children. He thereby launched the spectacularly successful Fe y Alegría, whose purpose is to promote through education a more just society in which all members are capable of participating constructively. Today in almost every country in Spanish America as well as in Spain, Chad, and elsewhere, it enrolls almost a million persons in at least one of its many programs. The network consists in more than 2,000 centers in which some 2,500 service units function, including a thousand school plants and sixty-seven radio stations. A Jesuit acts as coordinator for the International Federation of Fe y Alegría.
Even with such initiatives, the Jesuits continued to do what they in one form or another had been doing since the beginning. By far the largest percentage of Jesuits around the world are still engaged in education. In 2013 there were 189 Jesuit universities or other postsecondary schools around the world and a much larger number of secondary schools. In South Asia alone (primarily India), the Jesuits are responsible for 229 secondary schools plus another 164 primary and middle schools. Many Jesuits are of course engaged in traditional pastoral work in churches, hospitals, retreat houses, and similar institutions.
In the period between 1945 and 2000, the Jesuits entered another important era in their history as a missionary order. Members of the Society from every so-called developed country went in notable numbers to various parts of the world. The earlier missions to Africa stabilized, and new ones opened, with considerable success. In 1946, for instance, French Jesuits arrived in Chad and Cameroun, the seed from which the Province of West Africa was formed in 1983. The province today has about 255 members. The first Jesuits arrived in 1947 for the beginning of what developed into the Province of East Africa, which now numbers about 190 members. The other two African provinces have had similar patterns of growth. In 1960, India, until relatively recently considered a “mission country,” had so prospered as to be able to send missionaries to Tanzania and shortly thereafter to the Sudan.
Since then India has continued to send Jesuits abroad in ever growing numbers to help others. In East Asia, Korea stands out as another success story. Jesuits from the United States came there only in 1960. Korea is now a province with almost two hundred members, virtually all of them Korean. Sogang University in Seoul, founded almost as soon as the Jesuits arrived, has achieved a distinguished reputation.
By the turn of the millennium, therefore, many lands once considered missions had matured into full-fledged provinces. As those provinces have grown, membership in the provinces that originally founded them has decreased. The decline in membership that first occurred in the 1950s in a few countries of western Europe continued and, as mentioned, meanwhile spread to others. By 2010 the Jesuits were about half as many as they were at the peak year of 1965. In Europe and the United States/Canada, the drop in the number of men entering the Society has been considerable, whereas the number entering in other parts of the world, though sometimes relatively small, has grown or remained stable. The areas of growth have been Africa and Asia, most especially India.
Thus the proportion of men entering the Society in different parts of the world has reversed from what it was several decades ago when by far the greatest number of new Jesuits came from the developed world. This demographic shift is one of the most significant changes in the history of the Society since its origins. In recent years some 75 percent of new recruits have come from outside Europe and North America. If this trend continues, for the first time in the Society’s long history, the overwhelming majority of Jesuits will be from Africa and Asia. The Society of Jesus, a global institution from its first moment, will become at that point a global institution in an altogether different way.
On March 13, 2013, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church stunned the world by electing as pope the Argentinean Jorge Mario Bergoglio—a Jesuit, the first Jesuit pope in history! Upon his election the members of the Society were as utterly surprised by the choice as was everybody else and perhaps more so. They in no way anticipated that one of their own number might be chosen. Whether that event will have any direct impact on the Society remains to be seen. Nonetheless, having a Jesuit as pope, an eventuality that through the centuries seemed almost unthinkable, might somehow open a new page in the history of the Society of Jesus.
EPILOGUE: LOOKING BACK AND LOOKING AHEAD
I realize these pages have done little more than glide over the surface of a long and complex history, yet I hope the journey has resulted in a somewhat better understanding of those mysterious creatures, the Jesuits. But the mystery has not been altogether dispelled. The history of the Society of Jesus is not only rich and complex; it is extraordinarily rich and complex. It stretches over centuries, continents, and cultures, in which the Jesuits have played a strikingly wide range of roles.
For that reason the Jesuits resist easy categorization. They are priests but also astronomers. They pledge obedience yet are encouraged to cultivate initiative. They pronounce a solemn vow to be missionaries, yet the largest percentage of them even today are resident schoolmasters. Although they have a reputation for cultivating the high-born and have been the confessors of kings, they have consistently devised means of reaching every stratum of society, with a special con
cern for the most wretched.
The Jesuits have provoked fear and envy in ways and to a degree not verified in any other Catholic religious order. The phenomenon has produced a large stream of vituperation, at the headwaters of which are the Monita Secreta and the Lettres Provinciales. Such works created myths and misunderstandings about the Jesuits that entered so deeply into the public domain that they seem impossible to eradicate. In virtually every Western language the adjective jesuitical means devious, slippery, sinister.
Even for the fair-minded the Jesuits can be difficult to understand because of the changes the order has undergone over the course of the centuries. Some changes were the result of deliberate decisions of the members, some the result of forces from outside. Even such a brief book as this has provided examples of both types of change.
Some of those changes are of course more important than others. In the history of the Society, four are undoubtedly pivotal. Each of them has marked a significant moment in Jesuit self-definition that was at the same time a partial redefinition of the Society. These moments were turning points. A more dramatic way to express the phenomenon is to say that the Society has several times refounded itself. Although each refounding has drawn its core identity from the past, it has partially reshaped the past or moved beyond it. If we adopt the conceit of a prologue and four foundings to organize the history of the Society of Jesus, the following is the result.
THE PROLOGUE
In 1534 Ignatius and six other students at the University of Paris pronounced a vow of poverty and determined to travel together to the Holy Land. They were no longer simply students who associated with one another; they were now bonded together in a common enterprise. Though they were not aware of it, they at that moment took the first step that would lead to the official founding of the Society. Before they left Paris they were joined by three other students. They began to describe themselves as members of a compagnia di Gesù, a brotherhood of Jesus.
THE FIRST FOUNDING
In 1540 the companions of Paris now bound themselves together permanently as members of a religious order, formally recognized as such by the church. This meant they replaced their informal and egalitarian lifestyle with that of members of an organization with Constitutions, procedures, superiors, and subjects. From a close-knit band of ten friends, they had grown by the death of Ignatius to a membership a hundred times larger.
THE SECOND FOUNDING
Sometime around 1550 Ignatius, in consultation with his closest advisers, took the momentous step of committing the Society to formal schooling as its primary ministry. This was a decision of immense import for the future of Catholicism but more immediately for the Society of Jesus. The original ideal of a band of missionaries and itinerant preachers now had to be modified to take account of the Society as also a band of resident schoolmasters. Moreover, Ignatius’s decision wrought a profound change in the culture of the Society, as Jesuits became specialists in every branch of knowledge and every cultural form, including theater, music, and dance.
THE THIRD FOUNDING
By virtue of the papal brief of 1773, the Society of Jesus had ceased to exist. By virtue of a papal bull forty-one years later, it was restored to life. The Society was restored as part of a wave of conservative restorations initiated in that year, 1814, and its self-understanding began to reflect that fact. In its essential identity it was the same Society as before the suppression, yet its cultural, political, and even religious mind-set reflected the culture of restoration prevalent in Catholicism in this period.
THE FOURTH FOUNDING
General Congregation Thirty-One, 1965–1966, made its decisions under the influence of two powerful factors that no previous Congregation had had to take into account. The first was the cumulative effect upon Jesuit self-understanding of the intense study of Jesuit sources that had been under way for the previous half-century. That study had resulted in an understanding of the early Society and its normative documents that was more flexible and less moralistic than the understanding generally operative since the restoration in 1814.
The second was Vatican Council II, which ended just as the Congregation was beginning. The Congregation saw its major task as implementing for the Society the ideals and vision of the council. It gave the Society the mandate, for instance, to promote understanding and dialogue among people of all religious faiths. It in more general terms took account of the great cultural shifts that had occurred since the restoration of 1814 and moved the Society beyond certain positions it had formally or informally adopted in those circumstances.
In the meantime the four Congregations that have subsequently taken place have directed the Society along those same lines. What is clear is that the Society is now evolving in new ways in a world that seems to be evolving even faster. Its challenge now, as always, is to retain its identity while at the same time exploiting its tradition of adaptation to persons, places, and circumstances.
There is reason to believe the identity will hold. Through all the changes over the years, the Jesuits have had to guide them some remarkable resources that have continued to be their touchstones for authenticity. Absolutely primary among them are the Spiritual Exercises, the Formula, and the Constitutions. While each of these documents counsels flexibility and adaptability, the principles that undergird them are firm. They provide the foundation for an identity that in its general contours is discernible by an alert eye.
FURTHER READING
The quantity of literature on the Jesuits is overwhelming. Although earlier writings about them often still have merit, most are marred by either apologetic or polemical concerns. About the middle of the last century that situation began gradually to change, but only in the past twenty years have studies of the Jesuits for the most part altogether shaken off those prejudices and in other ways entered an entirely new phase. The Jesuits currently excite more interest among scholars of almost every discipline than ever before, and they do so on an international basis. I limit myself here to a highly selective sampling of works written in English.
GENERAL HISTORIES: MONOGRAPHS
Arrupe, Pedro. One Jesuit’s Spiritual Journey: Autobiographical Conversations with Jean-Claude Dietsch. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1986.
An important testimony from one of the Society’s most important superiors general.
Bangert, William V. A History of the Society of Jesus. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1972.
Although somewhat outdated, the most thorough and reliable treatment.
Lacouture, Jean. Jesuits: A Multibiography. Trans. Jeremy Leggatt. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1995.
A lively but selective account by a leading French journalist and biographer.
Padberg, John W. The General Congregations of the Society of Jesus: A Brief Survey of Their History. Saint Louis, MO: American Assistancy Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality, 1974.
The best account of the central component of Jesuit governance, to be complemented by Padberg’s later study of the recent Congregations.
GENERAL HISTORIES: COLLECTIONS
O’Malley, John W., et al., eds. The Jesuits; Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Together with a further volume published in 2006, impressive studies on a wide range of topics related to the Jesuits and cultural issues.
Worcester, Thomas, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Jesuits. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
This volume complements the Toronto volumes with topics more related to the institutional history of the order. It includes a bibliography.
FOUNDATIONS
Brodrick, James. Saint Peter Canisius. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1962.
Originally published in 1935, this biography of one of the order’s most important members is outdated and hagiographical but still basic and unsurpassed.
Dalmases, Cándido de. Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits: His Life and Work. Trans. Jero
me Aixalá. Saint Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985.
On the pious side, but impeccably reliable in factual details.
Lazar, Lance Gabriel. Working in the Vineyard of the Lord: Jesuit Confraternities in Early Modern Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
A careful study of a generally unrecognized but important enterprise of Ignatius and the other Jesuits of that generation.
O’Malley, John W. The First Jesuits. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
The standard work on the first generation of Jesuits.
Tellechea Idígoras, José Ignacio. Ignatius of Loyola, the Pilgrim Saint. Trans. Cornelius Michael Buckley. Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1994. A lively, somewhat romantic biography by a distinguished Spanish historian.
ANTI-JESUIT WRITINGS
Burke, Peter. “The Black Legend of the Jesuits: An Essay in the History of Historical Stereotypes.” In Simon Ditchfield, ed., Christianity and Community in the West: Essays for John Bossy. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001, 165–82.
An overview of the problem by a distinguished historian.
Maryks, Robert Aleksander. Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. An interesting study of this important aspect of the culture of the Society of Jesus, which concludes with a chapter on the Jansenist offensive against probabilism.
The Jesuits Page 11
