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| Fr. Fredrick Copleston, S.J. |
Fr. Fredrick Copleston, S.J. found in the Catholic Church, an authority that he eventually recognized as emanating from the will of Christ. He writes: "It seemed to me that if Christ was truly the Son of God and if he founded a Church to teach all nations in His name, it must be a church teaching with authority, as her Master did. Obviously one might deny that Christ was the Son of God, and one might reject the claim that he founded a Church. But if these two claims were accepted, it seemed to me that in spite of all its faults the Roman Catholic Church was the only one which could reasonably be thought to have developed out of what Christ established."
Link (here) to the full article by William Doino, Jr. entitled A JESUIT AND HIS FAITH: PART I—MEMOIRS OF FREDERICK C. COPLESTON, S.J. (1907-1994)
2 comments:
Although a Catholic and, for many years, a (mendicant) religious, I have never "gotten" the Jesuits. Nothing about them ever appealed to me, not because I disagreed with them much but because the whole Jesuit thing just mystified me. It seemed as driven and yet as empthy, to me, as Calvinism. St Ignatius left me unmoved, the Spiritual Exercises felt claustrophobic, and what kind of life together the SJ's ever had seemed, by the late 20th century, to be gone. When I asked a scholastic what their common life was like, he answered, "We meet without enthusiasm and we part without regret." No help!
So, one thing I'd like to know...if you do...is what is a typical day like in a Jesuit house? Do they even pray together?
Genuinely puzzled.
ExOP, I think it varies greatly from community to community. Formation houses generally have a better sense of communal prayer, scheduled meals together, etc. But I know for a fact that many apostolic communities rarely pray together. (Please know I am speaking of my own experiences, and don't want to speak for all communities.)
Anyways, it would be great to see the Society reclaim a better sense of common life. Yes, Jesuits are supposed to be available to go anywhere at any given moment, and yes, Jesuits are not bound to recite the Office in choir (yet, still bound to recite I might add), but still, community life has many blessings that SJs could take advantage of!
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