I have considered becoming a Jesuit in the future and was looking them up today when I found an article on Wikipedia (great source right?) about someone named Alberto Rivera, who is an ex-Jesuit and knows some secrets about the Church and stuff like that. I didn’t believe it, but I found out about some book called “Secret History of the Jesuits”, and heard of other “converts” like Gerard Bouffard and Robert V. Juline, who make similar claims. I found a link
here even claiming all his claims are true and backing it up with other “ex-Jesuits” I’m not very convinced of this but is there anything, preferably recent and neutral, refuting these? Like a book by a Neutral Protestant or something? Thanks.
I know a few former Jesuits here in my country that have only praise for the order they left for the love of a woman. They have never uttered a word of criticism on the Jesuits. One of them continues to work very close with the order in educational programs.
Also, they didn’t leave the Church, they remain devout Catholics. I don’t know the details, but I believe they asked for dispensation from the order to leave and it was granted. I think you can apply to them the Marines motto, Semper Fidelis.
But the order has internal problems. I would recommend the book
The Jesuits, by Malachi Martin S.J. In it Father Martin discloses the struggles of the order throughout its history. There is an excerpt of Chapter One of the book at its
Amazon.com page, you should check it. Father Martin has been called an anti Catholic, but he was not. He remained faithful to Jesus and the Church until his death.
The order was expelled from several countries and it was also influenced by several Jesuits whose not so conventional ideas are still found today among many of its members (I’ll use you great source too):
George Tyrrell (raised an Anglican), who “
was expelled from the Jesuit order in 1906 and suspended from the sacraments the following year. He was given extreme unction on his deathbed in 1909, but was denied burial in a Catholic cemetery”;
Teilhard de Chardin, who faced “
a series of condemnations by certain ecclesiastical officials that would continue until long after Teilhard’s death”; and
Pedro Arrupe, whose focus on social justice “
led to the development of liberation theology in South America, which caused great conflict within the Society and the Church”.
Many Jesuits throughout the world have been supporters of the Liberation Theology, specially in Third World countries. Some Jesuits have openly said that “Christianity and communism/marxism are the same thing” while at the same time they knew what Lenin said, that “religion is opium for the people”.
On this part of the world some Jesuits are seen as too politicized, too left leaning, too Marxists for a priest. Here you can see the traditional Jesuits and the modern Jesuits, and they keep distance from each other. It seems that if you join the order you’ll find some of this.
The fact that it is published by Jack Chick should tell you something about the veracity of the author.
I mentioned in another thread today that I personally heard a former Jesuit priest, now a vehement anti-Catholic, tell lies about Catholic beliefs because most in his audience wanted and expected to hear the “truth” about that abominable Church. He sought approval for the breaking of his priestly vows by going after an audience only too eager to applaud his desertion of the Faith.