by Fr. Jos Vercruysse, SJ
translated by Sr. Wil de Vogt, rc

The German-speaking and Dutch Jesuit provinces have celebrated the 400th anniversary of the death of Peter Canisius with a year of publications, conferences, tours, and art exhibits. To appreciate the place of Peter Canisius in religious dialogue, we excerpted this article from the Dutch Jesuit journal Cardoner.

After the Diet of Augsburg (1530) and especially the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the religious division in Central Europe was set in the parallel structures of the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches. As competitors and rivals, the two churches had well-defined identities with their own confessions of faith, sometimes set in law, whether the Lutherans' Augsburg creed or the Catholics' decrees of Trent. Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed were all intolerant of people of differing beliefs.

Historians of the religious conflicts of the mid 1500s have accorded Peter Canisius several nicknames: the Hammer of the Heretics, the Watchdog of Orthodoxy, and-to Protestants, playing on the sounds of his name-a dogged Cynic. His work coincided with the process of restoring Catholicism in the south of Germany, especially in Bavaria, Austria, and part of Switzerland. Through his ministry these regions remained Catholic or reconverted to Catholicism.

Canisius and with him the Society of Jesus appeared at a time when the religious division was achieving fixed forms. He played a leading role at the Conference of Worms (1557), the last effort to restore religious unity, but all he could do was watch as the conference failed. Canisius worked in a variety of ways to rebuild the Catholic Church by what he said and wrote and did. The Catholic Church, no longer the only church, had to defend itself, to educate its people, to form and protect them by providing a unique definition with clear borderlines against the others, the enemies, the infectious ones.

The renewal of the Catholic Church went hand in hand with efforts to bring the Protestants back to the true Roman flock. It supposed a counteroffensive, a counterreformation. Now and then Canisius would carry his offensive before princes and governors, asking them to take legal and administrative steps and to use the judicial apparatus to protect the Catholic religion.

But his outlook was always strongly inspired by pastoral care. In a memorandum of 1583, Canisius explained the Jesuits' procedure in Germany to Claudio Acquaviva, the superior general in Rome. He first spoke about how to deal with people in general and then how to deal with the "heretics" in Germany.

Associating his work explicitly with that of Ignatius Loyola and Peter Favre, one of Ignatius's first companions and the man who brought Canisius into the Jesuit order, he saw the uniqueness in the process of "conversation," dialogue and interaction with others directed totally toward their edification and salvation, and in the many forms of preaching and teaching. Every Jesuit, Canisius went on, should have that attitude that enables him to join a special Christian love with an ardent zeal for souls, which he expresses toward his neighbor when he has the opportunity.

"We have the specific task," he wrote, "to be concerned not only for our own salvation but also for the salvation and perfection of others."

This task consists in dialogue with another; Christ, the Apostles, and the first Jesuits, especially Ignatius, were excellent examples of this. The memorandum describes all the conditions of this apostolate of dialogue and of the testimonies of those "who are fishers of men" and do the work of Christ. "How miserable and sad is the fate of those who are called to have the task of doing Christ's work but are instead stupid fish rather than good fishermen."

Canisius unequivocally rejected heresy, which allowed no attempts at mediation at that time. He also showed an unshakable determination and fidelity to the Catholic faith and to the pope. In the spirit of his mentor, Peter Favre, Canisius insisted that any activities against the Protestants be inspired by modesty, love, and humanity.

In a letter to a Spanish Jesuit in 1546, Favre had explained how to deal with heretics; this letter became a directive for many Jesuits of the first generation. It reads in part: "If we will help the heretics of this time, we have to be attentive to look at them with love, to love them in truth, and to banish out of our hearts any thought that could lessen our reverence for them. Pastoral care, dialogue, benevolence, and confidence will help; controversy, which would only bring the partner into discredit, would not help."

This is just how Canisius worked. To Willem Lindanus, a young, enthusiastic professor at Dillingen with a pugnacious pen, Canisius wrote, admonishing him to moderation: "The truth has to be defended sensibly, in the right time, and sedately. Good people also are disgusted by a bitter taste. Everyone is looking for and praising modesty, which is linked to seriousness and solid arguments."

We cannot by some unhistorical magic transform the citizen of Nijmegen into an ecumenist. He was a man of the counterreformation who consciously promoted the cause of Catholic restoration. It is important to acknowledge that in that entangled time, in which partition and sharp choices were high values, honestly inspired people irreconcilably opposed each other on all sides. They labored and fought for their convictions and for the truthfulness of the Church. The first concern for Canisius was building people up, pastoral care, and ministry, concern for the faith of the people and for the unity of the church. For that purpose the Society of Jesus was an apt instrument with its own way of proceeding: talking and dealing with people in a patient, benevolent, loving, convincing, and convinced way. It accomplished this only by living from out of a deep commitment to Christ, not as stupid fish but as fishermen, as apostolic fishermen and ministers to his people.

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Fr. Jos Vercruysse, a Belgian Jesuit, teaches at the Jesuits' Gregorian University in Rome. Reproductions of Fr. McNichols's icons are available in several formats from St. Andrei Rublev Icons, PO Box 5352, Albuquerque, NM 87185.

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PETER CANISIUS was born in 1521 in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, the Low Countries, near where the Rhine breaks into lesser rivers as it nears the sea. The hatred and violence that began to saturate Germany-born of religion and disputed faith-flowed down from the heart of the country and swept up scholars and clerics in their flood.

Peter Canisius went to study in nearby Cologne, where he was quickly immersed in the struggles between the traditional Catholics and the Reformers. In 1543 he set off for Mainz, further up the Rhine, to meet Peter Favre, one of the first Jesuit companions. They became fast friends, and Canisius entered the Jesuit order.

During the next 37 years he covered the roads of Europe from Messina to Warsaw, writing and preaching at the courts of emperors and princes, popes and cardinals. Mostly he crossed and recrossed the German heartland, a tireless messenger of faith.

Canisius's last assignment was to Fribourg, high in the Alps, where great rivers begin in small streams. Worn out by decades on the move, he settled down in this serene Catholic enclave in Protestant Switzerland to write and teach and attend the pastoral needs of the grateful citizens. Their faith was his testament. He was their saint.

In Buffalo, New York, Canisius College and Canisius High School honor the saint. And to mark the 400th anniversary of Peter Canisius's death, Fr. Paul Begheyn, SJ, of the Netherlands Jesuit Province, commissioned an icon (above), the work of William Hart McNichols, SJ; it is in a Jesuit chapel in Amsterdam. Wisdom inspires the saint in his study. Thus the saint's work comes ultimately from the Lord. Our work too, whatever it is, if it is good, is the Lord's.