Jesuits Used To Evangilize The Rich And The Ruling Class In Order To Christianize Societies

New Decree on Jesuit Identity
March 5 , 2008
Why is it necessary to have a new document on Jesuit identity, given the excellent texts of recent General Congregations?

A new document is needed because a new context exists. This context is global; therefore we need to act now, more than ever, as a universal body with a universal mission. This context is the changed landscape in the Church were the place of apostolic religious orders has to be defined anew.

This context is the new courage that we experience especially through the Holy Father’s encouragement and his invitation to work with dedication and scientific rigour in the dialogue of culture and faith. This context is the “new nations” to whom we are sent – as Fr. Nicolás put it in the homily the day after his election –, ‘nations’ beyond geographical definitions, who today include those who are poor and displaced, those who are isolated and deeply lonely. A religious order – like any human institution as well as any human being, for that matter – has to answer periodically to questions like “who are you, that you do these things … and that you do them in this way?” We have tried to answer these questions in a way that attracts, rather than prescribes, that permits and engenders for hope, rather than sticks to the all too well-known problems, that sheds new light on central Ignatian images, rather than using conceptual language. We – i.e. Jim Corkery (HIB), Benjamín González Buelta (CUB), Ntima Kanza (ACE), George Pattery (CCU) and Hans Zollner (GER) – have thus proposed what we were asked for by GC 35: a text that inspires to take up the road again, reaching out to people close by and on the frontiers.

We are convinced that Jesuit identity and Jesuit mission are so closely linked that if we speak of the one we inevitably speak of the other. Our charism is alive. We rediscover it with gratefulness and hope. We have experienced these in our unity-in-multiplicity

and in the up and down of “motions” in individuals and in the GC as a whole during the last two months. It is Christ Jesus who is the fire at the heart of our identity and our mission, He is “the fire that kindles other fires” (Saint A. Hurtado SJ). This fire burns in us when we live out the polarities which are so typical for Ignatius: being and doing; contemplation and action; being completely united with Christ and completely inserted into the world with him as an apostolic body.

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Hans Zollner SJ

Link (here)