The Jesuits (14 page)

First, when the Congregation tried to change the stipulation in its legislation that only a restricted category of Jesuits could take part in the Society's governance at the higher levels, the pope and his advisers saw the attempt as an instance of the Jesuits' playing fast and loose with their traditions. At the audience with the delegates at the beginning of the Congregation, the pope communicated that he did not want a change, but he did so in opaque terms that seemed, at least to most of the delegates, to leave room for negotiation. The delegates were wrong. Their mistake led to a confused series of communications between the Congregation and the Vatican that gave the impression in the Vatican that the Jesuits felt free to disregard the clear wishes of the pope.

Even before the Congregation fully realized how determinedly opposed the pope was to the change in governance, a
second cause of friction had emerged. In the provinces of the Society, the idea that the church and with it the Society should take a more active role in combating various forms of injustice in the world had taken hold. The provinces mandated the Congregation to deal with the issue.

The result of the Congregation's long and difficult debate over it resulted in a decree entitled “Our Mission Today: Service of Faith and Promotion of Justice.” In a more compelling and explicit way than ever before in the Society's history, the decree committed the Society to struggle against violation of human rights. Even as the decree was being debated, certain quarters in Rome and in the Vatican saw the decree, like the liberation theology that was in part its inspiration, as tainted with Marxism and further indicative of the waywardness of the Jesuits under Arrupe. As the Congregation drew to a close, Paul VI let it be known that he wanted to review its decrees. Months later he finally gave approval even of the decree “Our Mission Today,” but he was obviously still concerned.

In 1978, three years after the Congregation ended, Pope Paul was succeeded by Pope John Paul II. The new pope, though conventionally cordial to Arrupe, was from the beginning obviously wary about the leadership of the Society of Jesus. On August 7, 1981, Arrupe suffered a severe stroke, from which it soon became clear he could never fully recover. The
Constitutions
provided for such an eventuality by stipulating that a previously designated vicar step in to conduct business until a Congregation could be held to elect a new general. On October 6, 1981, the bomb dropped. Pope John Paul II informed the Jesuits that a new Congregation could not be held until he approved and, more shocking, that
he had appointed his own vicar to replace the vicar Arrupe had designated before his illness, the American Vincent O'Keefe.

The pope's action, completely unexpected, stunned the Jesuits and left them confused and fearful about what it might ultimately mean for the Society. Was it perhaps, as some direly predicted, a prelude to another papal suppression of the order? As his vicar for the Society, the pope chose an experienced and respected Italian Jesuit, Paolo Dezza. The Jesuits soon began to realize that from their perspective John Paul could not have chosen a better man. With a gentle yet firm hand, he guided the Society and was able to quiet the Jesuits' worst fears. More important, he was able to persuade the pope that the Society was not the hotbed of rebellion its enemies had portrayed. Some of the enemies had predicted that the pope's intervention would spark a massive exodus of Jesuits from the Society, and they seem to have convinced the pope that he should expect that outcome. Nothing of the sort happened.

In a little over a year from the date of his intervention, John Paul gave permission for the convocation of a Congregation to elect a new general, and in so doing he restored the Society to its normal mode of government. The crisis, severe though it was, was short-lived. The Thirty-Third General Congregation opened on September 2, 1983, and the next day the delegates formally approved Arrupe's resignation. They then invited him, crippled and unable to speak, to join them for a few moments in the hall where they were meeting. When he appeared a thunderous applause broke out that went on for minute after minute, as if it would never end. The delegates thus bade farewell to a man they had come to admire and love, a man many of them considered a saint.

Events then moved quickly. A few days later, in another unprecedented move, Pope John Paul II let it be known that he wanted to come to the Jesuit curia to celebrate mass there for the delegates. His misgivings, the visit said, had been laid to rest. A few days later the delegates on the first ballot elected the Dutch Jesuit Peter-Hans Kolvenbach as the twenty-ninth general of the Society. Kolvenbach soon came to be deeply respected by the Jesuits and by the others with whom he dealt, who were consistently impressed by his wit, his straight talk, and his realistic assessment of situations and personalities.

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.

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 concern 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.