by Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ
Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, who became a cardinal in 2001, earned a doctorate in theology from the Gregorian University in Rome. Cardinal Dulles has been the Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University in the Bronx since 1988. This article was excerpted froma lecture he gave at Fordham
What is a charism? A charism is a gift of grace not for one’s personal sanctification but for the benefit of others. St. Paul has a list of charisms in the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians, including the gifts of prophecy, speech, miracle-working, and the interpretation of tongues. What if any are charisms given to St. Ignatius of Loyola?
Although the Society, when established in 1540, had only ten members, all of them recognized that the founder of the Society of Jesus, under God, was none other than Ignatius. He was endowed with an extraordinary gift—a charism—of leadership. His primary achievement was the founding of a religious order in many ways unlike any order that had existed, an order of men vowed to live in the world with their eyes focused on God, on Jesus Christ, and on the needs of the Church.
These facets of the Ignatian vision are expressed in the bull of Pope Paul III in 1540 and confirmed by a similar bull of Julius III in 1550. Both these documents quoted in full the “Formula of the Institute” composed by Ignatius, which begins with these lapidary words: “Whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the cross in our Society, which we desire to be designated by the name of Jesus, and to serve the Lord alone and the Church his Spouse, under the Roman pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth, should, after a vow of perpetual chastity, poverty, and obedience, keep the following in mind.”
The Jesuit is to be a soldier of God. He must “first of all keep before his eyes God and then the nature of this Institute which he has embraced and which is, so to speak, a pathway to God.” The end for which the Jesuit order exists is the greater glory of God. Because God is God, he deserves all the praise and service we can give him.
Second, the Institute specifies that the Society is to be designated by the name of Jesus, as the life of the Jesuit is centered on Jesus Christ.
Third, the prospective Jesuit must be resolved to serve “the Lord alone and the Church his spouse.” “I must be convinced,” Ignatius wrote, “that in Christ our Lord, the bridegroom, and in His spouse the Church, only one Spirit holds sway, which governs and rules for the salvation of souls.”
Ignatius’s allegiance is not to some abstract idea of the Church but to the Church as it concretely exists on Earth, with the Roman pontiff at its summit. The popes of Ignatius’s day may not have been the holiest or the wisest of men, but he looked upon them with the eyes of faith and saw in each of them the Vicar of Christ for the teaching and government of the universal Church.
I have stated the goals of the Society of Jesus in the most general terms: the glory of God, the service of Christ, and availability to the pope. More specifically, the Society was founded, in the words of St. Ignatius, “to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine.” As means for achieving these goals he then lists: “public preaching, other ministries of the word of God, spiritual exercises, education in Christianity, hearing confessions, and administering other sacraments.” And then in the next sentence the formula speaks of certain works of charity: reconciling the estranged, ministering to persons in prisons and hospitals, and similar services.
The challenges of our day, though different from those of the sixteenth century, are analogous, and the Society is well positioned to deal with them. The Ignatian charism is by no means outdated.
The sixteenth century, like our own, was a time of rapid and radical cultural change. There are stellar examples of Jesuit scholars who equipped themselves to enter into these new fields and show the coherence between the new learning and the Catholic heritage of faith. In our own day some Jesuits are venturing into questions concerning cosmic and human origins and into complex problems of biochemistry and genetic engineering, all of which are so vital for the future of faith and morals.
The sixteenth century, the great age of discovery, had early experiences of globalization. Jesuits, eager to evangelize the world, were leaders in the missionary apostolate to the Americas, to parts of Africa, to India and the Far East. They not only became missionaries but also trained themselves to present the gospel in a manner suited to the cultures of various peoples. Francis Xavier, the most famous, was by no means alone. Matteo Ricci and Roberto de Nobili are only two of dozens of outstanding missionaries who preached the gospel in an inculturated form, inspired by the principles of Ignatius.
The age of Ignatius was no stranger to the clash of civilizations. The Muslim world and the Christian world were engaged in incessant warfare. Jews were being mistreated and persecuted in many countries. Jesuit missionaries, though encountering fierce opposition from religious leaders in practically every country they evangelized, became leaders in interreligious dialogue. Missionaries learned to respect the good things in native cultures while sifting out the chaff. That is still a task of great urgency today. Jesuits have in their tradition rich resources for learning how and how not to deal with non-Christian religions. Bloody conflict and useless provocation must be avoided, while, on the other hand, Christians must frankly oppose elements in every religion and every culture that promote superstition or injustice.
Europe in the sixteenth century saw the division of Christianity between the Protestant north and the Catholic south. The Jesuits, though few in number, accomplished great things by their energy and heroism. One wonders what the Jesuits of those days would have done if they were alive today to see the defection of so many Latino Catholics from the Church in the United States and in Central and South America. The need is evident, the principles are clear, but there are all too few talented candidates to take up the task.
Centralization of the Church was imperative in Ignatius’s day. He clearly perceived the need for the papacy as the headquarters of the universal Church. He saw that Catholicism must be universal; nationalism and ethnocentrism could have no place in it. He founded a Society made up of Spaniards, Frenchmen, Germans, and many others who worked together in an undivided apostolate under the direction of a single general superior. One of the great blessings of the Society of Jesus, today as in the past, is its worldwide horizon. Jesuits are “friends in the Lord” undivided by distinctions of nationality, ethnic origin, or social class.
A great weakness of the Church in the Europe in Ignatius’s day was ignorance of the faith. Many priests were barely literate, and the laity in some countries did not know the basic elements of the creed. Rather than complain and denounce, Ignatius preferred to build. Popular education, he perceived, was on the rise. Taking advantage of the new desire for learning, Ignatius quickly set about founding schools, colleges, and seminaries. These educational institutions, I believe, are still among the major blessings that the Society of Jesus offers to the Church and to the culture at large. Religious illiteracy is growing and needs to be overcome.
In the sixteenth century, the Society of Jesus was at the vanguard of the Church in dealing with the problems posed by the Protestant Reformation, by the new science, and by access to new continents that had been beyond the awareness of Europeans. Today the Church is confronted with mounting secularism, with new advances in technology and growing globalization and an attending clash of cultures. If anyone should ask whether these developments render the Ignatian charisms obsolete, I would reply with an emphatic No.
The Society can be abreast of the times if it adheres to its original purpose and ideals. The term “Jesuit” is often misunderstood. Not to mention enemies for whom Jesuit is a term of opprobrium, friends of the Society sometimes identify the term with independence of judgment and corporate pride, both of which Ignatius deplored. Others reduce the Jesuit trademark to a matter of educational techniques, such as the personal care of students, concern for the whole person, rigor in thought, and eloquence in expression. These qualities are estimable and have a basis in Ignatius’s teaching, but they omit any consideration of the fact that the Society of Jesus is an order of vowed religious in the Catholic Church. They are bound by special allegiance to the bishop of Rome. And above all, the Society of Jesus is primarily about a person: Jesus, the Redeemer of the world. If the Society were to lose its special devotion to the Lord (which, I firmly trust, will never happen) it would indeed be obsolete. It would be like salt that had lost its savor.
In directing Jesuits to engage in the new evangelization, Pope John Paul II identified a focus that perfectly matches the founding idea of the Society. The Spiritual Exercises are centered on the Gospels. Evangelization is exactly what the first Jesuits did as they conducted missions in the towns of Italy. Evangelization was the sum and substance of what Francis Xavier accomplished in his arduous missionary journeys. And evangelization is at the heart of all Jesuit apostolates in teaching, in research, in spirituality, and in the social apostolate. Evangelization, moreover, is what the world most sorely needs today. The figure of Jesus Christ in the Gospels has not lost its attraction. Ignatius was adamant in insisting that the Society be named for Jesus, its true head. Who should be better qualified to present that figure today than members of the Society that bears his name? 