Everything about Jesuit totally explained
The
Society of Jesus (
Latin:
Societas Iesu,
S.J. and
S.I. or
SJ,
SI ) is a
Roman Catholic Church religious order of
clerks regular whose members are called
Jesuits,
Soldiers of Christ, and
Foot soldiers of the Pope, because the founder,
Saint Ignatius of Loyola, was a
knight before becoming a
priest.
Jesuits are the largest male religious order of the Roman Catholic Church with 19,216 members (13,491 priests, 3,049 scholastic students, 1,810 brothers and 866 novices) as of January 2007 (the Franciscan family of first orders
OFMs,
Capuchins, and
Conventuals has some 30,899 members [20,786priests]). The average age of the Jesuits in 2007 is 57.3 : 63.4 for priests, 29.8 for scholastics and 65.5 for Brothers.
Jesuit
priests and brothers are engaged in
ministries in 112 nations on six continents. No work, if it has an evangelical perspective, is closed to them, but they're best known in the fields of
education (schools, colleges, universities, seminaries, theological faculties),
intellectual research, and cultural pursuits. They are also known in
missionary work and direct evangelization,
social justice and
human rights activities, interreligious dialogue, and other 'frontier' ministry.
The Society of Jesus is
consecrated under the
patronage of
Madonna Della Strada, a title of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, and it's led by a
Superior General, currently
Adolfo Nicolás.
The headquarters of the Society, called
General Curia, is in
Rome. The history curia of St Ignatius is now part of the
Collegio del Gesù attached to the
Church of the Gesù, the Jesuit
Mother Church.
History
Foundation
On
August 15,
1534,
Ignatius of Loyola (born Íñigo López de Loyola), a Spaniard of
Basque origin, and six other students at the
University of Paris (
Francisco Xavier,
Alfonso Salmeron,
Diego Laínez, and
Nicolás Bobadilla all from Spain,
Peter Faber from
Savoy in
France, and
Simão Rodrigues from
Portugal) met in
Montmartre outside
Paris, in the crypt of the Chapel of St Denis, Rue Yvonne le Tac.
This group bound themselves by a vow of poverty and chastity, to "enter upon hospital and
missionary work in
Jerusalem, or to go without questioning wherever the pope might direct".
They called themselves the Company of
Jesus, because they felt
they were placed together by Christ. The name had echoes of the military (as in an infantry "
company"), as well as of discipleship (the "companions" of Jesus). The word "company" comes ultimately from Latin,
cum +
pane = "bread with," or a group that shares meals.
These initial steps led to the founding of what would be called the Society of Jesus later in 1540. The term
societas in Latin is derived from
socius, a partner or comrade.
Much is sometimes made of Ignatius' military background; in fact nowhere in the Constitutions of the order is the Society of Jesus compared to an army.
In 1537, they travelled to
Italy to seek papal approval for their
order.
Pope Paul III gave them a commendation, and permitted them to be ordained
priests.
They were ordained at
Venice by the bishop of
Arbe (
June 24). They devoted themselves to preaching and charitable work in Italy, as the renewed
Italian War of 1535-1538 between
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, Venice, the pope and the
Ottoman Empire rendered any journey to Jerusalem impossible.
They presented the project to the Pope. After months of dispute, a congregation of
cardinals reported favorably upon the Constitution presented, and Paul III confirmed the order through the
bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae ("To the Government of the Church Militant"), on
September 27,
1540, but limited the number of its members to sixty. This is the founding document of the Jesuits as an official Catholic religious order.
This limitation was removed through the bull
Injunctum nobis (
March 14,
1543). Ignatius was chosen as the first superior-general. He sent his companions as missionaries around Europe to create schools, colleges, and seminaries.
When developed, Jesuits concentrated on three activities. First, they founded schools throughout Europe. Jesuit teachers were rigorously trained in both classical studies and theology. The Jesuits' second mission was to convert non-Christians to Catholicism, so they developed and sent out missionaries. Their third goal was to stop Protestantism from spreading. The zeal of the Jesuits overcame the drift toward
Protestantism in
Poland-
Lithuania and southern
Germany.
Ignatius wrote the Jesuit
Constitutions, adopted in 1554, which created a tightly centralized organization and stressed absolute self-abnegation and obedience to Pope and superiors (
perinde ac cadaver, "[well-disciplined] like a corpse" as Ignatius put it).
His main principle became the unofficial Jesuit motto:
Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam ("For the greater glory of God"). This phrase is designed to reflect the idea that any work that isn't evil can be meritorious for the spiritual life if it's performed with this intention, even things considered normally indifferent.
But his hyperbole relativizes propositional claims defined by the hierarchical Church. For him, the important things in life are not propositional definitions, but the spiritual movements within oneself.
Ignatius and the early Jesuits did recognize, though, that the hierarchical Church was in dire need of reform, and some of their greatest struggles were against corruption,
venality, and spiritual lassitude within the Roman Catholic Church.
Ignatius's insistence on an extremely high level of academic preparation for ministry, for instance, was a deliberate response to the relatively poor education of much of the clergy of his time, and the Jesuit vow against "ambitioning prelacies" was a deliberate effort to prevent greed for money or power invading Jesuit circles.
As a result, in spite of their loyalty, Ignatius and his successors often tangled with the pope and the
Roman Curia. Over the 450 years since its founding, the Society has both been called the papal "elite troops" and been forced into
suppression.
St. Ignatius and the Jesuits who followed him believed that the reform of the Church had to begin with the conversion of an individual’s heart. One of the main tools the Jesuits have used to bring about this conversion has been the Ignatian retreat, called the
Spiritual Exercises.
During a four-week period of silence, individuals undergo a series of directed meditations on the life of Christ. During this period, they meet regularly with a spiritual director, who helps them understand whatever call or message God has offered in their meditations.
The retreat follows a Purgative-Illuminative-Unitive pattern in the tradition of the mysticism of
John Cassian and the
Desert Fathers. Ignatius' innovation was to make this style of contemplative mysticism available to all people in active life, and to use it as a means of rebuilding the spiritual life of the Church. The Exercises became both the basis for the training of Jesuits themselves and one of the essential ministries of the order: giving the exercises to others in what became known as retreats.
The Jesuits’ contributions to the late
Renaissance were significant in their roles both as a missionary order and as the first religious order to operate
colleges and
universities as a principal and distinct ministry.
By the time of Ignatius' death in 1556, the Jesuits were already operating a network of 74 colleges on three continents. A precursor to
liberal education, the Jesuit plan of studies incorporated the Classical teachings of
Renaissance humanism into the
Scholastic structure of Catholic thought.
In addition to teaching
faith, the
Ratio Studiorum emphasized the study of
Latin,
Greek, classical
literature,
poetry, and
philosophy as well as non-European languages,
sciences and the
arts. Furthermore, Jesuit schools encouraged the study of
vernacular literature and
rhetoric, and thereby became important centers for the training of lawyers and public officials.
The Jesuit schools played an important part in winning back to Catholicism a number of European countries which had for a time been predominantly Protestant, notably
Poland and
Lithuania. Today, Jesuit colleges and universities are located in over one hundred nations around the world.
Under the notion that
God can be encountered through created things and especially art, they encouraged the use of ceremony and decoration in Catholic ritual and devotion. Perhaps as a result of this appreciation for art, coupled with their spiritual practice of "finding God in all things", many early Jesuits distinguished themselves in the visual and
performing arts as well as in
music.
The Jesuits were able to obtain significant influence in the
Early Modern Period because Jesuit priests often acted as
confessors to the
Kings of the time. They were an important force in the Counter-Reformation and in the Catholic missions, in part because their relatively loose structure (without the requirements of living in community, saying the
divine office together, etc.) allowed them to be flexible to meet the needs of the people at the time.
Expansion
Early missions in
Japan resulted in the government granting the Jesuits the feudal fiefdom of
Nagasaki in 1580. However, this was removed in 1587 due to fears over their growing influence.
Francis Xavier arrived in
Goa, in Western
India, in 1541 to consider evangelical service in the Indies. He died after a decade of evangelism in Southern India. Two Jesuit missionaries,
Johann Gruber and
Albert D'Orville, reached
Lhasa in
Tibet in 1661.
Jesuit
missions in
Latin America were very controversial in Europe, especially in
Spain and
Portugal, where they were seen as interfering with the proper colonial enterprises of the royal governments. The Jesuits were often the only force standing between the
Native Americans and slavery. Together throughout
South America but especially in present-day
Brazil and
Paraguay they formed Christian Native American city-states, called "
reductions" (Spanish
Reducciones, Portuguese
Reduções). These were societies set up according to an idealized
theocratic model. It is partly because the Jesuits protected the natives whom certain Spanish and Portuguese colonizers wanted to enslave that the Society of Jesus was suppressed.
Jesuit priests such as
Manuel da Nóbrega and
José de Anchieta founded several towns in Brazil in the 16th century, including
São Paulo and
Rio de Janeiro, and were very influential in the
pacification,
religious conversion and
education of
Indian nations
Jesuit scholars working in these foreign missions were very important in understanding their unknown languages and strived to produce Latinicized
grammars and
dictionaries. This was done, for instance, for
Japanese (see
Nippo jisho also known as
Vocabvlario da Lingoa de Iapam, a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary written 1603) and
Tupi-Guarani (a language group of South American aborigines).
Jean François Pons in the 1740s pioneered the study of
Sanskrit in the West.
Under Portuguese royal patronage, the order thrived in Goa and until 1759 successfully expanded its activities to education and healthcare. On
17 December 1759, the
Marquis of Pombal,
Secretary of State in Portugal, expelled the Jesuits from Portugal and Portuguese possessions overseas.
Jesuit activity in China
The
Jesuit China missions of the 16th and 17th centuries introduced Western science and astronomy, then undergoing its own revolution, to China. The Society of Jesus introduced, according to
Thomas Woods, "a substantial body of scientific knowledge and a vast array of mental tools for understanding the physical universe, including the Euclidean geometry that made planetary motion comprehensible." Another expert quoted by Woods said the scientific revolution brought by the Jesuits coincided with a time when science was at a very low level in China:
Conversely, the Jesuits were very active in transmitting Chinese knowledge to Europe.
Confucius's works were translated into European languages through the agency of Jesuit scholars stationed in China.
Matteo Ricci started to report on the thoughts of Confucius, and father Prospero Intorcetta published the life and works of Confucius into
Latin in 1687. It is thought that such works had considerable importance on European thinkers of the period, particularly among the
Deists and other philosophical groups of the
Enlightenment who were interested by the integration of the system of morality of Confucius into
Christianity. Here are two well-known examples:
Suppression and restoration
The Suppression of the Jesuits in
Portugal,
France, the
Two Sicilies,
Parma and the
Spanish Empire by 1767 was troubling to the Society's defender,
Pope Clement XIII. A decree signed under secular pressure by
Pope Clement XIV in July 1773 suppressed the Order. The suppression was carried out in all countries except
Prussia and
Russia, where
Catherine the Great had forbidden the
papal decree to be executed. Because millions of Catholics (including many Jesuits) lived in the Polish western provinces of the Russian Empire, the Society was able to maintain its existence and carry on its work all through the period of suppression. Subsequently, Pope
Pius VI would grant formal permission for the continuation of the Society in Russia and Poland. Based on that permission,
Stanislaus Czerniewicz was elected superior of the Society in 1782.
Pius VII during his captivity in France, had resolved to restore the Jesuits universally; and after his return to Rome he did so with little delay: on
7 August 1814, by the bull
Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum, he reversed the suppression of the Order and therewith, the then Superior in Russia,
Thaddeus Brzozowski, who had been elected in 1805, acquired universal jurisdiction.
The period following the Restoration of the Jesuits in 1814 was marked by tremendous growth, as evidenced by the large number of Jesuit colleges and universities established in the 19th century. In the
United States, 22 of the Society's 28 universities were founded or taken over by the Jesuits during this time. Some claim that the experience of suppression served to heighten
orthodoxy among the Jesuits upon restoration. While this claim is debatable, Jesuits were generally supportive of Papal authority within the Church, and some members were associated with the
Ultramontanist movement and the declaration of
Papal Infallibility in 1870.
In
Switzerland, following the defeat of the
Ultramontanist Sonderbund by the other cantons, the
constitution was modified and Jesuits were banished in 1848. The ban was lifted on
20 May 1973, when 54.9% of voters accepted a
referendum modifying the Constitution.
The 20th century witnessed both aspects of growth and decline. Following a trend within the Catholic priesthood at large, Jesuit numbers peaked in the 1950s and have declined steadily since. Meanwhile the number of Jesuit institutions has grown considerably, due in large part to a late 20th century focus on the establishment of Jesuit secondary schools in
inner-city areas and an increase in lay association with the order. Among the notable Jesuits of the 20th century,
John Courtney Murray, SJ, was called one of the "architects of the
Second Vatican Council" and drafted what eventually became the council's endorsement of religious freedom,
Dignitatis Humanae Personae
in apparent contradiction of Pope Eugene IV's Domini Cantate.
Jesuits today
See also the article
Jesuit Cardinal
The Jesuits today form the largest
religious order of priests and brothers in the Catholic Church, with 19,216 serving in 112 nations on six continents, the largest number being in India followed by those in the United States. The current
Superior General of the Jesuits is the Spanish
Adolfo Nicolás. The Society is characterized by its ministries in the fields of
missionary work,
human rights,
social justice and, most notably,
higher education. It operates colleges and universities in various countries around the world and is particularly active in the
Philippines and
India. In the United States alone, it maintains over 50 colleges, universities and high schools. A typical conception of the mission of a Jesuit school will often contain such concepts as proposing Christ as the model of human life, the pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning and life-long spiritual and intellectual growth. In Latin America, Liberal Jesuits have had significant influence in the development of
liberation theology, a movement which has been highly controversial in the Catholic theological community and condemned by
Pope John Paul II on several fundamental aspects.
Under Superior General
Pedro Arrupe,
social justice and the preferential option for the poor emerged as dominant themes of the work of the Jesuits. On
November 16,
1989, six Jesuit priests (
Ignacio Ellacuria,
Segundo Montes,
Ignacio Martin-Baro, Joaquin López y López, Juan Ramon Moreno, and Amado López); their housekeeper, Elba Ramos; and her daughter, Celia Marisela Ramos, were murdered by the
Salvadoran military on the campus of the University of Central America in
San Salvador,
El Salvador, because they'd been labeled as subversives by the government. The assassinations galvanized the Society's peace and justice movements, including annual protests at the
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation at
Fort Benning,
Georgia,
United States, where the assassins were trained under US government sponsorship.
In 2002,
Boston College president
William P. Leahy, SJ, initiated the
Church in the 21st Century program as a means of moving the Church "from crisis to renewal." The initiative has provided the Society with a platform for examining issues brought about by the worldwide
Roman Catholic sex abuse cases, including the
priesthood,
celibacy,
sexuality, women's roles, and the role of the
laity.
On
January 6,
2005, Fr.
Peter Hans Kolvenbach, on the occasion of the Jubilee Year, wrote that the Jesuits "should truly profit from the jubilee year to examine our way of life and taking the means to live more profoundly the charisms received from our Founders."
In April 2005,
Thomas J. Reese, SJ, editor of the
American Jesuit weekly magazine
America, resigned at the request of the Society. The move was widely published in the media as the result of pressure from the Vatican, following years of criticism by the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on articles touching subjects such as
HIV/AIDS,
religious pluralism,
homosexuality and the right of life for the unborn. Reese is currently on a year-long sabbatical at
Santa Clara University.
On
February 2,
2006, Fr.
Peter Hans Kolvenbach, informed members of the Society of Jesus, that with the consent of
Pope Benedict XVI, he intended to step down as Superior General in 2008, the year he'll turn 80. The 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus convened on
5 January 2008 and elected Fr.
Adolfo Nicolás, a Spanish Jesuit missionary in Japan, as the new Superior General on
19 January 2008. The deliberations of the General Congregation on other important policies for the Jesuit order are expected to continue until March 2008. While the Jesuit superior general is elected for life, the order's constitutions allow him to step down.
On
April 22,
2006, Feast of Our Lady, Mother of the Society of Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI greeted thousands of Jesuits on pilgrimage to Rome, and took the opportunity to thank God "for having granted to your Company the gift of men of extraordinary sanctity and of exceptional apostolic zeal such as St Ignatius of Loyola, St Francis Xavier and Bl Peter Faber." He said "St Ignatius of Loyola was above all a man of God, who gave the first place of his life to God, to his greater glory and his greater service. He was a man of profound prayer, which found its center and its culmination in the daily Eucharistic Celebration."
In May 2006, Benedict XVI also wrote a letter to Superior General
Peter Hans Kolvenbach on the occasion of the 50
th anniversary of Pope Pius XII's encyclical
Haurietis aquas, on devotion to the Sacred Heart, because the Jesuits have always been "extremely active in the promotion of this essential devotion " . In his
November 3,
2006 visit to the
Pontifical Gregorian University, Benedict XVI cited the university as "one of the greatest services that the Society of Jesus carries out for the universal Church" .
On
January 19,
2008,
Adolfo Nicolas was elected by
General Congregation (GC XXXV) as the Order’s thirtieth Superior General and was promptly confirmed by Benedict XVI. A month after, the Pope received members of the General Congregation and urged them to "to continue on the path of this mission in full fidelity to your original charism" and asked them to reflect so as "to rediscover the fullest meaning of your characteristic 'fourth vow' of obedience to the Successor of Peter." For this, he told them to "adhere totally to the Word of God and to the Magisterium's task of preserving the integral truth and unity of Catholic doctrine." This clear identity, according to the Pope, is important so that "many others may share in your ideals and join you effectively and enthusiastically.". The Congregation responded with a formal declaration titled "With New Fervor and Dynamism, the Society of Jesus Responds to the Call of Benedict XVI," whereby they confirmed the Society's fidelity to the Pope.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Jesuit'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://society_of_jesus.totallyexplained.com">Society of Jesus Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
