Pray for the Congregation of the Society of Jesus

Pray for the Congregation of the Society of Jesus
cinops be gone Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Jesuits who saved the Catholic Church during the Reformation have shortchanged our American Roman Catholic Church today. (As a graduate of a Jesuit College in 1952, this is a very serious matter.) Let us read Father Richard John Neuhaus in the May 2008 – Number 183 of First Things – Public Square 75-6

“Published accounts and personal conversations about the recently concluded 35th General Congregation of the Society suggest that it will be pretty much business as usual with the Jesuits. The big news item was the election of new general of the society, Father Adolfo Nicilas, a Spaniard who has spent many years in Asia. {In today’s America, we need all the help in the world. GHK}

In two messages to the meeting of the congregation in Rome, Pope Benedict gently but clearly indicated concern about Jesuit fidelity to the Catholic faith and life, but that apparently made little impression.

Speaking to the press after his election, Father Nicolas complained about stories suggesting a tension between society and the papacy. “The Society of Jesus,” he said, “has from the very beginning always been in communion with Holy Father…. We want to cooperate with the Holy See and to obey the Holy Father. That has not changed and will not change.” Of course anyone who has not apostatized is in communion with the Holy Father.

In view of the recent history of the society, Father Nicolas’ assertion seems somewhat insouciant. As the number of members has declined precipitously in recent decades, Jesuits have been in the lead among those who dissent from, and in some cases publicly defy, the Church’s teaching on faith and morals. The fact that those who have presided over the society’s decline expressed such enthusiasm for the election of Father Nicolas is not encouraging.

The Catholic character of many Jesuits universities and colleges – describing themselves not as Catholic but as schools “in the Jesuit tradition” – has all but disappeared. Jesuit theologians are conspicuous among those denying or fudging the unique and universal role of Christ in human salvation.

A 2005 instruction from the Vatican declared that “those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the so-called ‘gay culture’ must not be admitted to seminaries or to holy orders.” Yet Jesuits in position of leadership declare that they welcome and affirm men who are “homosexual oriented and gay.”… There is also a deep dissent on abortion, as witness a chair in the law school, named in honor of the late Fr. Robert Drinan, who did more than anyone else to provide a covering rationale for Catholic politicians who publicly reject the Church’s teaching on the defense of innocent human life. … We must hope that he (Father Nicolas) will demonstrate the courage and faith to lead the society toward a “communion and faith to lead the society towards a “communion with the Holy Father” that would recognizable by St. Ignatius. …

After emphasizing the Church’s teaching on Jesus as the sole mediator of salvation, sexual morality, the culture of life, and the understanding of marriage and family, the pope said: “Precisely for this reason I have invited you in the past and I invite you again today to consider how to regain a fuller meaning of your distinctive ‘fourth vow’ of obedience to the Successor of Peter – which consists not solely in readiness to be sent on mission to distant lands, but also – in the more authentically Ignatian spirit of ‘thinking with the Church and in the Church’"
George H. Kubeck, Duplicate and or translate into Spanish and Vietnamese.