….At the Te Deum at the end of 1980, Father Arrupe’s assistants cornered John Paul at Il Gesù, demanding progress on their desire to move ahead with a general meeting and election of a new superior general. John Paul demurred. A few months later he was shot, and in August 1981 Father Arrupe had a stroke that made his continuing as superior general impossible.
John Paul had to act. In October 1981 he gave his decision. It was an earthquake. The Holy Father suspended the ordinary governance of the Society of Jesus. Father Arrupe’s authority was given to a papal delegate, Father Paolo Dezza, who would govern until the Holy Father gave permission for a general congregation and election of a new superior. It was the greatest blow to the Jesuits since the order was supressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV.
“Life in religious orders was in crisis in the years after the Second Vatican Council, and while John Paul may not have thought that the Jesuits were worse off than others, he believed their influence was so great that a period of reflection was called for,” wrote George Weigel in Witness to Hope. “The intervention was shock therapy.”
Thus the Jesuits were traumatized — many of them enraged — when John Paul came to Il Gesù on Dec. 31, 1981. Tradition dictated that they host him at their principal church, housing the tomb of St. Ignatius and the precious relic of St. Francis Xavier, just months after his thunderous vote of non-confidence and evident lack of trust in their own capacity to reform themselves.
There were no fireworks at the Te Deum. John Paul did not speak about the Jesuits. He restricted himself to general comments on the passage of time, only alluding to the assassination attempt and the declaration of martial law:
“The year that is coming to an end today reconfirms this struggle [of death against life],” he said. “Doesn’t it reconfirm it within each of us? Does it not reconfirm it in the dimensions of life, societies and nations? Does it not reconfirm it in the dimensions of the entire globe?”
The anti-climactic Te Deum at the end of 1981 would presage the eventual resolution of John Paul’s intervention. He had acted with boldness, even severity, but he would leave it to the Jesuits to follow through on the path of reform.
At the general congregation eventually convoked in 1983, the Jesuits did not markedly change direction. They would continue to hemorrhage members and their orthodoxy and discipline did not markedly improve….
Forty years after the shock therapy, under a Jesuit pope, the humiliation continues as the Jesuits shrink and shed apostolates. Though the Jesuits are led now by Father Arturo Sosa, their most prominent member is Father Antonio Spadaro and their most notable English-language personality is Father James Martin. The reform St. John Paul II had in mind did not take hold….
The above comes from a Dec. 31 article by Father Raymond de Souza, founding editor of Convivium magazine.
What a potentially great order the Jesuits are. And there are some great men who have followed St. Ignatius. I am reading Jesuit at Large, by the late Paul Mankowski S.J., a man of intellectual sophistication and unwavering Catholic orthodoxy whose life was cut short by a brain aneurysm. To a young man interested in the order, Fr. wrote: “It is my conviction that, at present, the Society of Jesus is a corrupt order. This means that it has serious problems in all its endeavors at all levels of authority, and more importantly, it has lost the capacity to mend itself by its own internal resources.”
Fr. Paul was very often personal non grata in his own order, suffering abuse and rejection. A sign that the order is reforming will be their acknowledgment of Fr. Paul’s sanctity and appreciation for his life. On a personal note, I have had many interactions with the order– some very good and one very bad. When the Jesuits are good they are great. When they are bad, well, it’s sad.
JP2’s reform was a miserable failure. Despite his appointment of a good Jesuit Fr. Paolo Dezza, as interim head of the Society, the same kind of Jesuits who should not have been advanced to higher offices in the Society were being appointed by the same kind of Jesuits who should not have been making those appointments, which were rubber-stamped by Fr. Dezza’s subordinates in Rome!
Suppress the Order, permanently.
The so-called “good” Jesuits are cowards who will not call out the heretics among them.
Send them all packing.
It’s a shame that an organization named after Our Savior should be beset by such corruption.
Pray for them and for all religious and clergy.
Doesn’t everybody pray the Morning Offering with the intentions of the Pope?
Sadly, under this papacy, I usually qualify my prayer with “holy intentions” … or I pray for him personally.
I recall well, several conversations I once had, with some Jesuits at USF, in the late 1960s. They told me that they could no longer function as an Order, and could no longer properly run their universities, under Vatican II. I had heard this from other religious orders, including nuns. And they also feared going bankrupt. They said it was a hopeless situation in our Church. Also, on the other hand, the Jesuits who were liberal educators, and liberal educators of other religious orders who ran Catholic universities, had met and made a terrible decision, at their disastrous Land O’ Lakes Conference in 1967, pulling many Catholic universities out from under Catholic religious authority. They wanted “academic freedom” for research and other intellectual pursuits, and to compete with secular universities. Especially Notre Dame U., tragically misled by the secularized Holy Cross Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C. What shocked me were the priests and nuns who wanted freedom to turn their backs on Catholic moral teaching. Fr. Hesburgh, several famous Jesuits, and many others, publicly supported birth control, and declined to support Pro-Life. Many began to support the LGBT agenda.
Well thanks for that half ccentury year old piece of hearsay. We might as well reform all religious orders because a couple of conversations you had 55-60 years ago.
Fr. Pat Conroy, S.J., a former House of Representatives chaplain, said in a Jan. 5th “Washington Post” interview, that women’s “concience rights” to choose to have an abortion should be preserved. He said that a “pro-choice” Democrat is not necessarily a “pro-abortion” person. He said that Catholics can choose to have an abortion, based on what their conscience tells them. He quoted St. Thomas Aquinas’ statement about individual conscience as having primacy, even over Church teaching, in some unusual circumstances — without properly adding, that Aquinas believed first and foremost– in an informed conscience, properly educated in faith and morals. This is a horrific evil! Conroy should be severely reprimanded by his Jesuit religious order, and by the Vatican! Another “Jesuit gone wrong!” I need to re-read this news story. This Jesuit is a huge Satanic liar and trickster, with his tongue.
Don’t forget Fr. Robert Drinan S. J., who divorced the legality of abortion from its morality, and by so so doing provided cover for the Kennedy family and other Catholic democrats to champion abortion rights. Without Drinan, there would be no Biden.
Yes, Fr. Drinan also was elected to serve in the House of Representatives (1971-1981) as a Democrat from Massachussets. He finally quit after Pope St. John Paul II asked that all Catholic clergy remain out of politics, and neutral, politically.
Look, if the Legionaries of Christ weren’t suppressed the Jesuits won’t be.
The Legionaries were a fraud from the beginning, being formed solely for the self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment and self-gratification of Fr. Maciel. They should be dissolved.
At least the Jesuits were founded by a saint.
Agreed, yeah the Jesuits were founded by a saint, but they are so far off the tracks that ole Ignatius would not recognize them.
While following a link from the Good Jesuit Bad Jesuit blogspot I discovered this which I believe will interest some of your readers:
https://www.ncronline.org/news/quick-reads/las-cruces-lawmaker-says-politics-led-denial-communion
Jesuit at Large, the posthumous collection of essays by Paul V. Mankowski, S.J., confirms what anyone who read him already knew: Here was one of the most brilliant writers of his generation, Catholic or otherwise. The late priest’s unrivaled wit and undiminished love for truth illuminate every page. Kudos to his longtime friend George Weigel for editing and introducing this volume, thus preserving Fr. Mankowski’s dynamism for all.
this was written by Mary Eberstadt
Suppress the Jesuits- no loss; they are not Catholic. There was a study and by 2030 there will be more SSPX priests than Jesuits in the world. The Holy Spirit is talking.