|
Religious
Life A
future for the Jesuits
By ROBERT BLAIR KAISER
I once told Fr. Walter Burghardt, an
eminent member of the Jesuits New York Province, that I was going to give
a talk about the future of the Society of Jesus. He chuckled and said,
Short talk, huh? It was gallows humor. Burghardt knows the Jesuits
in this country are dying. It hurts so much all he can do is laugh.
Fact is recruits are few; dropouts and the dying are many. In
1965, there were 8,393 U.S. Jesuits. As of Jan. 1, 1997, there were 3,928. In
32 years, 5,764 Jesuits have left the Society. Some of those have undoubtedly
died. Even so, today, there are probably more ex-Jesuits in the United States
than Jesuits.
The good news is that we still live in an age of miracles. If the
Jesuits would dare to be as different today as they were 450 years ago, if they
would have the guts to do the practical things they need to do to meet the new
challenges of the 21st century, then the order could survive and thrive in the
United States. (It is, curiously, surviving and thriving in places like India,
but thats another story.)
My authority to say such a thing comes from my Jesuit roots. I was
a Jesuit for 10 years. Then I left the order -- but not really. From the time I
left, more than 40 years ago, until now, I have been a Jesuit at heart, still
impelled to dare greater things than I could have done had I stayed in the
order. I am also a self-appointed spokesman for more than a million Jesuit
alumni in the United States.
Todays Jesuits like to think the order is theirs. Its
not. It is ours. The Jesuits belong to us and to the church. We cant let
them die, these trustees of a great tradition. If they were to die, then
something of value would be taken from us and from our children and our
childrens children.
And what is that something of value? Perspective. The Jesuits have
always helped us see the big picture. Theyve helped us see God in all
things and all things in God, so that nothing in the universe is merely secular
or profane. Theyve helped us listen to the Spirit and discern what to do
with our lives. Theyve helped us be loyal, intelligent Catholics, even
when we must take a critical stance toward authority and the pretensions of
authority. In a word, theyve helped us grow, and grow up.
In a brilliant new book, Impelling Spirit, Jesuit Fr.
Joseph Conwell tells about his discovery in the Jesuit archives in Rome of a
radical new paradigm for the Society of Jesus. He found this new paradigm in a
seminal document, written by Ignatius Loyola and his original nine companions,
for the signature of Pope Paul III, then laid aside and lost in the archives
for centuries. That document, says Conwell, erases our old view of Ignatius as
the soldier-saint, a man of steely will, a coldly rational, orderly
administrator. Conwell says that view betrayed Ignatius and his first
companions and has long pervaded both the practical application of the
Spiritual Exercises and the practical living out of the Constitutions of the
Society of Jesus.
The new paradigm gives the rationale for an impelling spirit that
has long been the hallmark of the creative, pioneering Jesuit. That
impelling spirit, according to Conwell, is the Holy Spirit,
passionate, creative, innovative, wildly beyond the rational, propelling,
driving, pushing, blowing like an untamed hurricane with no predictable
path.
I do not think the order has officially begun to cope with the
implications of Conwells discovery. That, and a more careful reading of
the orders history (which revisionist historians inside the society are
now writing) should prompt the Society of Jesus to act in radical ways to save
the Ignatian vision, Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, which I translate as
the greater good of the people of God.
I would like Jesuit alumni all over the world to ask the order to
make some radical changes. But I do not think these changes are any more
radical today than the changes Ignatius made in the church of his day, more
than 450 years ago.
In order to get the job done and still remain obedient to the pope
who had limited the number of professed priests in the order to 50, Loyola
instituted a new grade in the society, the non-professed Jesuit called
spiritual coadjutor.
And he even signed up a woman, as a perpetual scholastic, who
would never live in a Jesuit community, but work from her position of great
influence in Spain. That woman was a 20-year-old widow who happened to be
Princess Juana, regent of Spain, daughter of Charles V and sister of Philip II.
Juana was a secret Jesuit, whom Ignatius had given a code name, Matteo Sanchez.
She took her vows on Oct. 26, 1554. She wasnt headed for the priesthood.
But she was, and would be, a Jesuit, to her dying day.
I submit that the Ignatius-Juana model may be the way of the
future for the modern society. The Jesuits taught us a theorem in minor logic:
Esse ad posse valet illatio. If it has been done, it can be
done.
The Jesuits should put shoes on that theorem and walk it into the
21st century. They should open up their membership to men and women, yes, even
married couples, who would not join old-fashioned Jesuit communities, or become
ordained as priests, but continue to live as they have been living, and
working, in the real world, in academe (either in Jesuit universities or in
other private universities or state universities), in the world of government
and business, in social work, in the media, in law and medicine and science and
engineering, while they find spiritual sustenance and the occasional
companionship and moral support of men and women with like minds and the same
willing hearts.
The Jesuits could make these bold moves if they let themselves be
led by the Spirit -- by the creative, innovative, propelling, driving, pushing
spirit that Conwell has identified at the core of the societys original
vision.
Worldwide, there are several million Jesuit alumni out there. We
have power. More power than we realize. I would hope that our power -- the
power of reason, not the power of power -- could propel the Jesuits to make
bolder moves. In 1995, the Jesuits 34th General Congregation encouraged
some experiments in what the Fathers of the Congregation called lay
collaboration, but they stopped short of saying these collaborators
should become a new kind of Jesuit. In fact, they said explicitly these
collaborators will not be admitted into the body of the
society.
Why not? One of the fathers who was there tells me five members of
the General Congregation wanted to do just that. But they were ignored by
others who said specifically that they did not want to blur the line
between lay and religious. I told my source that I wondered how helpful
that distinction was to the mission of this General Congregation -- to
meet the challenges and opportunities of the modern world. I told him I
didnt think the society could meet its challenges as long as it kept
drawing that line between lay and religious -- which I
suspect are code words for celibate and non-celibate.
Who drew that line? I asked him. God? Or men? And if men drew
it, then why cant men undraw it?
This man -- he was then an American provincial from the Midwest --
was amazed at me. But he seemed to enjoy my frankness.
In the conclusion to his book, Conwell says the Spirit must impel
the society even today. We must set aside fear, he writes,
fear of the future, fear of change. The call is to listen, listen to the
Spirit within, listen to one another, listen to events outside, listen to the
sights and sounds of the times, listen to the needs of Gods people and
Gods world.
I will continue to insist that the society listen in new ways to
the new needs of Gods people. We can push for this, in the court of
public opinion. If this reform makes any sense, then public opinion will grow,
and, in the end, the general and his advisers will take up the proposition --
that the Society of Jesus should start recruiting men and women -- new kinds of
Jesuits -- for the momentous times ahead.
If the society fails to do this, I believe the society will die or
become a living fossil.
I am sure that any reform of the society along the lines I am
proposing will meet with opposition, from traditionalists in the society who
fear change and so do nothing, and from some in the Roman curia whose fear of
change leads them to fight it with all their might. But these are political
problems. Politics is people, and, as the biography of Ignatius Loyola tells
us, and the history of church demonstrates, almost anything is possible for
those who have the political skills and the patience.
I am also betting that the Holy Spirit will have some say in this.
At the next conclave, I pray she will give us a pope who is ready to approve
new kinds of Jesuits, men and women who are passionate, creative,
innovative, propelling, driving, pushing, blowing like an untamed
hurricane -- for the greater good of the people of God.
This essay is adapted from a speech Robert Kaiser delivered to the
Triennial Convention of Alpha Sigma Nu, the national Jesuit honor society, at
Loyola College in Baltimore on Oct. 18, 1997. Kaiser is currently living in
Rome and working on a book about the church.
National Catholic Reporter, February 18,
2000
|
|