The Pope's Troubled Marines

By John Kohan

For the Society of Jesus, a change in leadership is at hand

"No storm is so insidious as a perfect calm, no enemy so dangerous as the absence of enemies," St. Ignatius Loyola once told his followers. He need not have worried that the Society of Jesus, which he founded in 1534, would ever be without enemies. Over the centuries, Jesuits have been accused not only of seeking to undermine various rulers (including a number of Popes) but of plotting to assassinate no fewer than four European monarchs. By the 18th century they had become so powerful that enemies referred to the superior general of the black-clad order as the "Black Pope." The word Jesuit eventually became synonymous in the popular--though mainly Protestant--imagination with duplicity, equivocation and intrigue. Yet the society's demanding training, rigorous discipline and pioneering work in education also earned its members a reputation as "the schoolmasters of Europe." They trained, among others, Moliere, Voltaire, Descartes and James Joyce. Even their most ardent critics grudgingly respected the superhuman feats of Jesuit missionary fathers who risked their lives to carry the Word to palaces and peasants on five continents.

The Society of Jesus was formed originally as a kind of spiritual Marine Corps to check the advance of Protestantism during the Counter Reformation. But in recent years Jesuit theologians have championed change within the church, most notably during the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council. But if the Jesuits have stood strong against all manner of assault from without, they have not weathered so well a storm of change from within. The society is still the largest single Catholic order. But its ranks, thinned by the turmoil in the church since Vatican II, have dwindled from an alltime high of 36,038 in 1965 to 27,053 last year.

More change lies ahead. Early last month, Superior General Pedro Arrupe, 73, who was responsible for overseeing the society's troubled course in the stormy years since the Second Vatican Council, was felled by a stroke. A Spanish Basque, like Loyola, Arrupe served nearly three decades as a missionary in Japan before being elected the order's leader in 1965. Though Arrupe is expected to leave the hospital this month, he is not likely to resume the arduous job of managing the Jesuits. Just last year, in fact, Arrupe made the unprecedented announcement that he wished to resign because of advancing age, but was dissuaded "for the time being" Pope by John Paul II.

Jesuits spend at least 15 years in the society before taking final vows. Unlike other Catholic orders, which vow chastity, poverty and obedience, top Jesuits are also bound to the Pope by a special pledge of fealty. Yet throughout history, Popes have accused them of arrogance and disobedience. In 1773 Clement XIV even suppressed the order because European governments and jealous clerics complained that Jesuits had too much power. The order was not revived until 1814.

When John Paul held his first formal meeting with the Jesuit leadership in September 1979, he criticized its "secularistic tendencies." In particular, he lamented its inadequate stress on the church's official teaching and on the priestly character of the Jesuit mission. The Pope made clear that he was just repeating criticisms voiced by his immediate predecessors, Paul VI and John Paul I. But his rebukes prompted speculation that he was dissatisfied with Arrupe's direction. Arrupe has delegated greater authority to provincial superiors around the world, and one high-ranking Vatican source feels that the Pope may see him "more as an inspirer than a governor."

Nowhere is the crisis in the society more visible than in the U.S., where differences between conservatives and liberals have lately sharpened. The specific issues are familiar: social activism, birth control and the ordination of women. In a general effort to get priests out of politics, John Paul set off shock waves among American Jesuits last May when he kept Massachusetts Democrat Father Robert Drinan from seeking a sixth term in Congress.

To conservatives, the real problem is not political activism but the loss of discipline and intellectual rigor that set in during the experimental '60s. At that time, many younger Jesuits were influenced as much by the radical politics of Antiwar Activist Father Daniel Berrigan as they were by the society's venerable manual, Spiritual Exercises. As Catholic Historian James Hitchcock of St. Louis University sees it, a "self-probing, inward-looking, almost narcissistic" mentality has crept into the order today. Liberals contend that they are only trying to do what Jesuits have always done: make the church and the teachings of Christ more relevant to the contemporary world.

Perhaps the greatest area of papal concern has been Jesuit activity in Latin America: one activist Jesuit has already been murdered in El Salvador and two have been killed in Guatemala for advocating greater social reform. Rumors have spread--so far, officially denied--that the Guatemalan authorities were set to banish the society from the country entirely. As John Paul made clear to Latin American bishops in Puebla, Mexico, two years ago, he approves of the church's defending the rights of the oppressed--but not by political means that have more in common with Marxism than Christianity. Many local Jesuits disagree that any kind of Marxism is their goal. Says Father Jon Sobrino, who teaches at the Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Cannas in San Salvador: "We Jesuits have not chosen an ideology. The basic problem is reality itself. When you see corpses or children starving, what makes you react is reality, not some abstract idea."

Around the world, Jesuits now await word of a General Congregation that will choose a new Black Pope. But the meeting is not likely to be convened until the fall of 1982. In the meantime, conservatives hope that John Paul will use his considerable influence to see that the next superior general is a man in his own mold, while liberals look for a successor who will further open the order to change. Yet both see the present discord as the sort of storm that Ignatius Loyola regarded as useful. Says Father Thomas Cullen, an American missionary in Brazil: "There is always going to be tension within the Jesuits between the sacred and the secular."

--ByJohnKohan. Reported by James Willwerth/SanSalvador and Walter Galling/Rome

With reporting by James Willwerth/SanSalvador, Walter Galling/Rome

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