On Saturday, the Jesuit Order worldwide marks the end of the commemoration of the bicentenary of its restoration in 1814 by Pius VII. In this last of four articles, Fr Robert Soler SJ discusses the past two centuries in the life of the Society of Jesus, particularly the 50 years since the Second Vatican Council.

After complex vicissitudes stretching over 41 years, the Jesuit Order was restored by Pope Pius VII in 1814. This final article covers two periods: firstly 1814-1965, when the restored Society of Jesus expanded again. Secondly, the past 50 years, as the Jesuits lived out the implications of Vatican Council II.

The post-restoration Society of Jesus grew quite impressively throughout the 150 years until Vatican II. From 1814 onwards, the order spread over the five continents, running various pastoral, spiritual, social and educational works. Foreign missions were launched. Retreat houses were built. Social initiatives sprouted up alongside research-oriented social institutes. Colleges were set up, even in mission territories. In Rome, the society was entrusted with the Gregorian University and the Biblical and Oriental Pontifical institutes. Jesuit intellectual apostolate was also expressed in the order’s many philosophy or theology faculties and academic publications, and in universities, particularly in the US.

In this period, some consider particularly the 19th-century Church in Europe and the Jesuits as being still too tied to the pre-French Revolution monarchical model, while failing to see anything positive in the dawning democratic world. By contrast, critics judge the Church and the Jesuits in the US as having been more open to cultural and socio-political developments.

This is partly true, but one must also note that in the 19th century, European Catholicism was still powerfully opposed by the Enlightenment. The proponents of Reason and the Enlightenment-inspired Freemasonry sought to achieve total control over government institutions, seeking to undermine revealed Christian religion and rein in the Church’s influence.

In this struggle, Enlightenment figures had the Jesuit Order particularly in their sights. As Italy, for instance, moved towards unification (1859-1870), Cavour and Garibaldi made the Jesuits a prime target. Cavour’s Piedmont seized 57 Jesuit houses, including colleges. Garibaldi expelled the Jesuits from Sicily.

In France, at the beginning of the Third Republic (1870), Enlightenment figures teamed up with Freemasons scheming to dechristianise the country. In 1901, the ‘lay’ State passed a law against all Catholic teaching orders. The Jesuits were forced to leave 24 colleges, two technical schools and two minor seminaries entrusted to them. In this context, the European Jesuits could hardly be as free and creative in their thinking as their American counterparts. One can understand their having reservations about an emerging culture that was avowedly hostile to the Christian religion.

The Jesuit Order returned to Malta after the restoration. After the 1839 visit by the Polish Jesuit orator Fr Maximilian Ryllo, the English Jesuits between 1845-1855 set up St Paul’s College, first in Mdina, then in Valletta, until difficulties put an end to the project.

The Jesuits expelled by Garibaldi from Sicily in 1860 had a noviceship and house of studies in Malta; in 1866, they started running the Seminary in Gozo, but returned to Sicily in 1905. The English Jesuits ran St Ignatius College in St Julian’s from 1877 to 1907; that same year, the Sicilian and Maltese Jesuits opened St Aloysius College in Birkirkara. The Jesuits ran Sarria church, Floriana, as from 1924.

The independent Maltese Jesuit vice-province was set up in 1947, becoming a province in 1983. Loyola House novitiate opened in Naxxar in 1945, and Manresa retreat house was entrusted by Gozo Bishop Giuseppe Pace to the Jesuits in 1953. Jesuit residences opened in Senglea in 1957 and Valletta in 1962. Mount St Joseph retreat house was inaugurated in Mosta in 1964.

In this pre-Vatican II era, numerous Maltese Jesuits went to the Santal Mission in northeastern India. Their labours thankfully reaped abundant fruit: there are now three dioceses with Indian bishops in the area, along with the flourishing Jesuit Dumka-Raiganj province.

The contemporary Society of Jesus (1965-2014) has responded as faithfully as possible to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), with its dual stress on return to the sources (ressourcement) and aggiornamento. For a religious order, return to the sources implies a radical re-appropriation of the founder’s charism and spirituality, while aggiornamento represents the thrust to live those same values concretely in a culturally-relevant manner in the contemporary world.

Fr Pedro Arrupe SJFr Pedro Arrupe SJ

Over the past 50 years, the Society of Jesus has had three superiors general (Fr Pedro Arrupe, Fr Peter-Hans Kolvenbach and Fr Adolfo Nicolás) and five general congregations (decision-making bodies with representatives from all provinces of the society), the most recent in 2008.

Central to Jesuit thinking in the post-Vatican II Church is mission. The Jesuit mission, elaborated by three general congregations, can be summarised as follows: “The aim of our mission received from Christ... is the service of faith. The integrating principle of our mission is the inseparable link between faith and the promotion of the justice of the Kingdom.” These require appropriate ‘inculturation’ in the specific context, and dialogue with other religious traditions. In today’s globalised world, the mission of the Jesuits also includes the active seeking of reconciliation – with God, with human beings and with creation (ecology).

The mission of the Jesuit Refugee Service is to accompany, serve and defend the cause of forcibly displaced people

Jesus Christ remains at the heart of Jesuit existence and identity. All Jesuits, like St Ignatius in the 1537 La Storta vision, feel ‘placed’ with Christ carrying the cross. There is a fire in the hearts of Jesuits worldwide that unites them with Jesus and one another. They wish to light that fire in the hearts of others. Like their founder, they do this in special fidelity to the Holy Father.

Fr Adolfo Nicolás SJFr Adolfo Nicolás SJ

Every Jesuit, acknowledging himself a sinner, knows he is also graced by God, and sent by the popes to the ‘frontiers’ – described by Benedict XVI as “those geographical and spiritual places where others do not reach or find it difficult to reach”.

The Jesuits recognise that, after Vatican II, joyous collaboration (with laity, priests and religious) in this broken world is at the heart of mission.

The mission outlined very briefly above evidently colours the formation of young Jesuits and all apostolic sectors. It sets the tone for what Jesuits nowadays are and do.

The spirituality sector covers all the pastoral work that Jesuits do. They bring their own distinctive charism to their ministries, whether giving retreats, preaching or hearing confessions or working with groups. In this sector the society runs retreat houses and centres of spirituality.

Jesuit retreat houses offer Ignatian retreats that can last a month, a number of days or a weekend. They can be preached retreats for groups, or one-to-one ‘directed’ retreats. As envisaged by St Ignatius himself, people nowadays often do the spiritual exercises ‘in daily life’, dedicating time to prayer daily while carrying on with their normal routine. The person giving an Ignatian retreat need not be a Jesuit: a trained priest or a lay or consecrated person can guide the retreat.

Jesuit centres of spirituality sprang up all over the world after Vatican II. They form lay people and religious to become Ignatian retreat-givers and accredited spiritual directors. Some centres offer workshops of ongoing spiritual and human formation to a wide public.

Jesuits share a common spirituality and collaborate with Christian Life Communities, formerly called Marian ‘sodalities’ (founded in 1563).

In Malta, the Jesuits are responsible for two retreat houses, one on either island. The Centre of Ignatian Spirituality is run by a Jesuit-lay team. The fourth course in spiritual formation and accompaniment, with emphasis on Ignatian spirituality, has just come to an end: it lasted three years. The 26 participants personally experienced the Ignatian spiritual exercises. The retreat houses and the centre also organise retreats, workshops and days of recollection.

In the social sphere, Jesuit involvement has grown exponentially since Vatican II because faith and justice are strongly linked at the heart of the contemporary Jesuit mission. Jesuits work with the poor in mission areas and in the slums of big cities. Relevant contemporary social action includes initiatives in Malawi and Kenya to care for victims of HIV/AIDS, while striving to prevent the spread of the disease through Christian moral teaching.

In many countries, Jesuit centres of faith and justice were set up to analyse and combat the profound root causes of injustice in society: this has led to many different initiatives, including networking with NGOs involved in justice issues.

Malta’s Jesuit Centre of Faith and Justice, set up along with a new community in Żejtun in 1989, has sought to make known to a wider public the Church’s social doctrine: courses are offered in conjunction with the Pastoral Formation Institute. The centre has organised seminars on social and justice issues, sometimes inviting speakers from abroad. It identified the problem of illiteracy, acting to combat it. It has been involved in preparing reports for the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency about the effective respect for human rights in Malta. It is active in Malta’s anti-poverty network.

A major international social initiative was launched with great vision by Jesuit Superior General Pedro Arrupe. In November 1980, he set up the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in response to the crisis of the Vietnam/Cambodia boat-people: he saw in those fleeing terror the poorest of the poor. Arrupe had written: “The help needed is not only material: in a special way the Society is being called to render a service that is human, pedagogical and spiritual. It is a difficult and complex challenge: the needs are dramatically urgent.”

JRS has its headquarters at the Jesuit General’s Curia in Rome, and is a Jesuit-lay collaborative venture. The mission of JRS is to accompany, serve and defend the cause of forcibly displaced people. It has responded to several crises worldwide. The challenges nowadays are, if anything, even more complex than in 1980. Defending the cause of displaced people requires advocacy; so JRS teams also include lawyers. A Maltese Jesuit has led international JRS projects in Africa and is now doing so in Lebanon and Syria. A Maltese laywoman has served at JRS Rome headquarters and now edits the international JRS review Servir.

Fr Arrupe’s reference to a ‘pedagogical’ service has found concrete embodiment: some 300,000 refugees in different contexts are nowadays offered education from pre-school to university level and/or vocational training, life skills and adult literacy. In 2010, JRS, along with Jesuit universities, launched a previously unimaginable project of online higher education: refugees on the margins of international society can now access university education. This evidently nourishes their hope.

JRS (Malta) was founded in 1993. It had a Jesuit director until 2011 and is now headed by a female lawyer. JRS helps migrants spiritually, including through Mass for refugees in detention and in other centres. JRS offers the service of two psychologists, two social workers and a nurse. Legal advocacy is a JRS priority, so three lawyers help migrants secure what is rightfully theirs. Four Jesuits work at JRS Malta. Through an ‘outreach programme’, JRS staff members visit schools to make students aware of the human face and reality of immigrants in Malta.

The worldwide educational apostolate of the Jesuit Order is evidently strongly marked nowadays by the mission of the society, whether in its institutions of tertiary education in 35 countries, or its secondary schools in 46 nations. In line with the society’s mission today, Jesuit education seeks to facilitate deep reverence for God, other people and creation. It endeavours to form men and women for and with others – Christians with conscience, wisdom, competence and compassion.

Jesuit education nowadays stresses the commitment to a faith that does justice – an awareness of the needs of others and of the root causes of injustice, and a readiness to make a difference through the use of one’s talents, instead of concentrating mainly on one’s own future career.

It is characteristic of Jesuit education to have a personal concern for each student, to strive for excellence, to further critical thinking and to emphasise actions rather than words.

Jesuit education is world-affirming – helping students discover a world “charged with the grandeur of God” (Gerald Manley Hopkins SJ). It encourages study of all reality, promoting the search for God in all things. There is a typical Ignatian pedagogy, derived from the founder’s Spiritual Exercises.

Jesuit education stresses the commitment to a faith that does justice

Apart from formal schools, the Jesuit Order runs various institutions that provide non-formal education. This happens mostly in countries in the southern hemisphere.

St Aloysius College, Birkirkara, offers primary, secondary and sixth form education to over 1,500 students. The primary and secondary schools are for boys only, the sixth form being co-educational. Only the rector and a few Jesuits form part of a staff of 260. The school’s vision statement reads:

“The educational community at St Aloysius College is inspired by Christ’s teachings and a faith that promotes evangelical justice. Through Ignatian pedagogy, we strive to holistically empower all students to excel in their abilities and develop their conscience to discern God’s will in their lives. Together we aspire to foster compassionate and responsible men and women with others and for others, committed to the poor and persons in need. We promote dialogue with people of other cultures and religious traditions in a common effort to build a more peaceful and ecologically just world.”

The Jesuits in Żejtun came in close touch with illiteracy which, university research has since shown, is more widespread in our islands than earlier thought. So in 2000, the Jesuits set up the Paulo Freire Institute in rented premises in Żejtun. With the help of many volunteers, the institute helps children, their parents and some adults to obtain literacy skills. This is one way through which the Jesuit educational apostolate helps the poor and disadvantaged.

Closely connected to education is the Jesuit intellectual apostolate. Fr General Adolfo Nicolás wrote to Jesuits on May 24: “The long tradition of the involvement of the Society of Jesus in the intellectual apostolate forms part of our religious identity… the first companions came to know one other in Paris while they were studying to become Masters of Arts… I invite the Society to a renewal of the intellectual apostolate, particularly in the field of research.”

The intellectual apostolate, at the service of the Church’s mission, can be lived out in various ways, such as teaching at tertiary level and writing, Fr Nicolás added. He spelt out the spiritual attitudes required for the Jesuit intellectual apostolate and called for appropriate planning to strengthen the “ministry of research”. Fr Nicolás concluded: “We have many instruments at our disposal that can help us renew the intellectual apostolate so that it may be a true service to the mission of the Church in today’s world… we need to continue our efforts in this field, seeking to adapt our efforts to present realities.”

Over 20 Maltese Jesuits have taught abroad at tertiary level in 11 countries. The Maltese province at present contributes to the worldwide intellectual apostolate six of its men, four of them based at the Gregorian University and two Roman pontifical institutes. In Malta, the Jesuits opened a residence close to the University in 1972, and, besides being active in the chaplaincy, have taught in five university faculties. They presently teach in the Theology Faculty and are involved in other forms of learned ministry, notably through preaching and writing.

India closed its doors to missionaries in the 1960s, so Maltese Jesuits have since gone to Lebanon and Egypt in the Middle East, to Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Sudan in Africa, and to Brazil and Chile. They have worked within diocesan structures and in Jesuit institutions.

The Society of Jesus is also present in the virtual world. Interesting initiatives exist, for instance to help people pray daily, such as the Irish Jesuits’ ‘Sacred Space’, and ‘Pray as you go’ by their British counterparts.

Jesuits are aware they exist in and for the Church, with a special allegiance to the pope, to whom they are bound by their special vow of obedience.

In March 2013, Jesuits experienced an absolute novelty when their confrere, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected Bishop of Rome. The whole Church rejoiced at the humility and spontaneity of this pastor from another continent, who in 18 short months has already won over so many people on the fringes of the Catholic community, attracting other Christians and even many non-believers.

(Concluded)

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