Passionate Uncertainty: Inside the American Jesuitsby Avery Cardinal Dulles
First Things April 2002
An excerpt.
The testimonies of Jesuits under forty are encouraging. A thirty-seven-year-old Jesuit says, for instance, that “our order, by its very constitution, cannot ever separate itself from the Catholic Church.” It must always be in union with Rome. We cannot be a “church within the Church” or an “alternative church.” A thirty-six-year-old theology student has this to say:
“I entered to help support the direction that Pope John Paul II has given the Church. The Society has a mixed response to this direction, and the confusion it causes will ultimately hurt the effectiveness of the Society.”In the same vein a thirty-year-old student of theology is quoted as saying, very perceptively:
“If the stance of the Society is widely perceived as anti-institutional hierarchy, anti-Vatican, anti-pope, and if political and politically correct norms are used to select candidates for the Society, most of those who wish to serve Christ’s Church will go elsewhere.”On reflection it should be evident that it makes little sense to take vows and seek ordination in a religious order unless one is committed to support and serve the hierarchical Church.
Read the Avery Cardinal Dullas' full lenth article from 2002 (here) , how does the article stand up after 6 years?
2 comments:
Cardinal Dulles hit the nail on the head for 2002. And the trends he mentions are more true now, 6 years later. The only thing that struck me as having changed since then would be his comment that follows:
"The recent turn toward human affectivity and personal fulfillment may be connected with the alleged increase of homosexual tendencies among younger members in the Society of Jesus..."
I find this (over) emphasis on "affectivity and personal fulfillment" to have cooled a bit since 2002. I could say the same thing about "the alleged increase of homosexual tendencies among younger members" as well.
Of course, my perspective is limited.
The younger blokes are going to have a stormy decade or two ahead of them still as they wait for some of the older "Establishment" to either become less active, leave, or be "called home".
A friend of mine is a much smaller (yet amazingly spread out) order describes essentially the same phenomena. The younger men are solidly orthodox and well interested in restoration of more traditional models of prayer, piety and community life. At this time they are still a minority that has to contend with what my friend refers to as the "sectaginarians of the 1970s" - that is to say the guys who are 60+ who came of age in the melee of the 1970s...
Some of whom are already talking about the need to "batten down the hatches" and "ride out the storm of the Benedictine papacy" with visions of "another Bl. John XXIII" (or at least a facsimile of what they like to think he was) coming "to the rescue" in a few years.
I am tough on the Jebbies, to be sure... But that is from some rough and challenging experiences that I had with a good number of them who were of the 60+ crowd... They are still the bosses... For now.
Post a Comment