Passion and prejudice are dangerous emotions. When you combine abortion and Jesuits in one sentence, you trigger both. People are very passionate about abortion and few people are able to discuss it dispassionately, unless they have been deliberately taught to do so. On the other hand, there is a prejudice against the Jesuits.
Part of that prejudice is triggered by the behavior of some of some very vocal members of the Society who have said or done some things that raise eyebrows. Then there is intolerance. Like every large religious order, the Jesuits have been struggling to define their direction. They have a disadvantage that most religious orders do not have. St. Ignatius never wrote a rule for them. Not because he didn’t want to do so, but the Church would not allow it. The last rule that the Church approved was the Rule of St. Francis. After that, every religious community founded had to adopt one of the previously existing rules or have none at all and govern itself by statutes that the founder and the membership voted on and edited at will.
Five-hundred years later, this is not working for the Jesuits and the many communities that were founded without a rule. Those statutes have kept changing and as they change, so does the direction of the community.
While the Jesuits struggle to preserve the charism of St. Ignatius, they also struggle to figure out what that charism is supposed to look like today. Unlike Franciscans who have a rule written by St. Francis and are not allowed to deviate from it. The most we can do is to write statutes, into a constitution, that address whatever St. Francis does not mention, leaving the direction of our way of life untouched, because St. Francis and the Church commanded that it not be touched. That rule tells us how to govern ourselves, how to pray, how to relate to each other, our place in the Church, our mission, and our boundaries. It even tells us what to obey and how to obey. The Jesuits don’t have such a tool. The Church never allowed them to have one. The Church demanded that they define their way of life and mission as things evolved. The statutes that St. Ignatius left them are not as specific as the rules of Benedict, Augustine, and Francis.
Today, they are trying to figure out how to best follow the example of St. Ignatius in new situations. Whereas, a religious family like the Franciscans doesn’t have to think that way. We have a rule and then there are new situations in the world. If we can’t live the rule in a given situation, we simply do not get involved. It’s pretty simple. There is an intolerance, on the part of the many people, for a community that is trying very hard to figure out what to do in so many new situations. We don’t deal well with ambiguity. That’s where the Jesuits and many religious communities without a rule are at. Their goals and mission are ambiguous given the changes in the world and the Church. Because we don’t deal well with ambiguity, we attack those who are not giving us those neatly wrapped absolute answers that we want.
There is also the element of intimidation. The Jesuits are wonderful men and highly educated men. They don’t always speak the same language as the rest of mortals. Today, more laymen and women religious are better educated than before. Whereas male religious have always had the benefit of very good advanced theological and philosophical education, this was not the case for the laity and women religious. There is a competiveness that the latter groups bring to the table, almost like the youngster fresh out of school who has to prove himself.
It has been my observation that when they run up against the Jesuits or anyone who is that well educated, they feel intimidated. Instead of admitting that they don’t have a clue what a Jesuit is saying, they are quick to condemn. Unfortunately, many Jesuits are not simple talkers. In other words, they’re not St. Francis or St. Dominic who were very popular preachers. By popular I mean that they spoke in the common man’s language. This made the Dominicans and Franciscans loved by most people, because people understood what they were talking about, not so with many Jesuits.
If you observe carefully, male religious and diocesan clergy do not have the same problems with the Jesuits that some women religious and some laymen have. Why not? Because either they are academic peers or we don’t see a need to know as much as a Jesuit knows. We simply meet them at their own level and debate with them or we accept that they are smarter than we are and we move along. To this day, the relationship between the Jesuits and the male religious and diocesan clergy is a good one.
If you ask a Franciscan or a Dominican what he thinks about a Jesuit, the typical answer is, “Unless he’s committing a crime, I don’t think about what a Jesuit says, because it does not bother me and I’m not in competition with the Jesuits. They have their mission and I have mine.” The absence of intimidation makes for a harmonious and fraternal relationship where there is a lot of respect.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
, LOL. No . . . in all honesty, it’s not that way at all. It is a fact of life that religious communities, male and female, are made up of saints in the making. Most of us are very rough around the edge. If someone comes thinking that they’re going to find heaven on earth, they are going to be disappointed. On the other hand, negative reports is not a reason for not entering a community. One joins a community to follow a charism and live according to that charism. If Christ calls a person to follow the Ignatian charism, however that is defined today, that person has an obligation to respond with great charity. Part of that charity is accepting his brothers as they are, not as one wishes them to be.