{"id":439,"date":"2008-02-21T10:15:34","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T10:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/pope-to-jesuits.html"},"modified":"2008-02-21T10:15:34","modified_gmt":"2008-02-21T10:15:34","slug":"pope-to-jesuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/02\/pope-to-jesuits.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope to Jesuits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past weeks, Jesuits have met in Rome for the order’s 35th General Congregation. <\/a>\u00a0They’ve elected their new Superior General, discussed lots of issues, heard from the Pope and other Vatican officials, etc.
\nThis morning, as the GC draws to a close, the Jesuits met with the Pope.
\nThe Father General’s remarks (a Word document. Lord.)<\/a>
\nHere’s the text on Zenit. <\/a><\/p>\n

What inspires and impels us is the Gospel and the Spirit of Christ: if the Lord Jesus was not at the centre of our life we would have no sense of our apostolic activity, we would have no reason for our existence. It is from the Lord Jesus we learn to be near to the poor and suffering, to those who are excluded in this world.
\nThe spirituality of the Society of Jesus has as its source the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. And it is in the light of the Spiritual Exercises \u2013 which in their turn inspired the Constitutions of the Society \u2013 that the General Congregation is in these days tackling the subjects of our identity and of our mission. The Spiritual Exercises, before becoming a precious tool for the apostolate, are for the Jesuit the touchstone by which to judge our own spiritual maturity.
\nIn communion with the Church and guided by the Magisterium, we seek to dedicate ourselves to profound service, to discernment, to research. The generosity with which so many Jesuits work for the Kingdom of God, even to giving their very lives for the Church, does not mitigate the sense of responsibility that the Society feels it has in the Church. Responsibility that Your Holiness confirms in Your Letter, when You affirm: \u201cThe evangelizing work of the Church therefore relies a lot on the formative responsibility that the Society has in the fields of theology, spirituality and mission\u201d.
\n\u00a0Alongside the sense of responsibility, must go humility, recognizing that the mystery of God and of man is much greater than our capacity for understanding.
\nIt saddens us, Holy Father, when the inevitable deficiencies and superficialities of some among us are at times used to dramatize and represent as conflicts and clashes what are often only manifestations of limits and human imperfections, or inevitable tensions of everyday life. But all this does not discourage us, nor quell our passion, not only to serve the Church, but also, with a deeper sense of our roots, according to the spirit of the Ignatian tradition, to love the hierarchical Church and the Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ.
\n\u201cEn todo amar y servir\u201d. This represents a portrait of who Ignatius is. This is the identity card of a true Jesuit.
\nAnd so we consider it a happy and significant circumstance that our meeting with You occurs on this particular day, the vigil of the Feast of the Chair of St Peter, a day of prayer and of union with the Pope and His highest service of universal teaching authority. For this we offer You our good wishes. And now, Holy Father, we are ready and willing, to listen and attend to what You have to say to us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what was it that Benedict had to say?
\nHis address to them, iln Italian, is here<\/a>.
\n\u00a0Zadok has read it and characterizes it as “fairly strong” and excerpts a paragraph:<\/a><\/p>\n

I know and I understand well that this [the call to defend Catholic doctrine in difficult areas] is a particularly sensitive and demanding point for you and for some of your confreres, above all those charged with theological research, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with contemporary culture. Precisely because of this I have invited and again I invite you today to reflection in order to rediscover the fullest sense of your characteristic “fourth vow” of obedience to the Successor of Peter, which does not only involve readiness to be sent on mission to far-off lands, but also in the most genuine Ignatian sense of “thinking with the Church and within the Church”, to “love and serve” the Vicar of Christ on earth and with that “effective and affective” devotion which should make you his most precious and irreplaceable collaborators in his service for the universal Church.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0More from Vatican Radio:<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking to them the Pope underlined that the Congregation takes place in a period of great social economic and political change:” a time of accentuated ethical, cultural and environmental problems, when we see every nature of conflict take place. And yet he remarked, it is also a time of intense communication between peoples, of new possibilities in awareness and dialogue, of deep rooted aspirations for peace”.
\nThese, said the Pope, “are situations which call to the very heart of the Church and its capacity to announce words of hope and salvation to our contemporaries. A mission which over four and a half centuries ago gave birth through the Holy Spirit to the Society of Jesus”. Pope Benedict told the Jesuit priests gathered before him Thursday: \u201cthe Church needs you, it counts on you and continues to trust in you to reach those physical and spiritual places where others fail to or have difficulty in reaching\u201d.
\nThe Holy Father said that on the one hand there is a world that is a \u201ctheatre where the battle between good and evil is waged\u201d. An evil that hides behind the individualism of ideas which relativise the sacred, an evil that is propagated through a \u201cconfusion of messages\u201d, which make it increasingly difficult to hear Christ\u2019s Message, an evil which lies within \u201cthose situations of injustice\u201d and conflict of which the poorest are the victims.
\nOn the other hand there is “a religious order which in the course of its five hundred year history has been capable of challenging cultural historical adversities to bring the truly bring the Gospel to all corners of the world”.
\nToday, noted the Pope, \u201cthe obstacles challenging those who announce the Gospel are no longer seas and vast distances, rather they are the boundaries of a superficial vision of God and of man, which place obstacles in the way of faith and human knowledge, faith and science, faith and the commitment to justice\u201d. Faced with these boundaries, continued Pope Benedict, Jesuits must \u201cwitness and help create the understanding that there is instead true harmony between faith and reason\u201d, a harmony that must be translated into the defence of those \u201ccentral issues which today are increasingly under attack from secular culture\u201d. In short marriage and the family, sexual morality and the question of mankind\u2019s salvation in Christ:
\nHere the Pope invited the Jesuits to renewed reflection on the meaning of their characteristic \u201cfourth vow\u201d of obedience to the St Peter\u2019s Successor, which he said \u201cdoes not only imply readiness to be sent on mission to far off lands, but also in true Ignation spirit \u2013 to feel themselves \u201cwith the Church and in the Church\u201d \u2013 to love and serve the Christ\u2019s Vicar as precious and irreplaceable collaborators at the service of the Universal Church\u201d.
\nPope Benedict XVI also expressed his deep gratitude for the Jesuits emphasis of aid to refugees. \u201cOur choice to serve the poor is not an ideological one, but it comes from the Gospel. There are numerous dramatic situations of injustice and poverty in the world today, and if there is a need to fight against the structural causes of such situations, then there is also the need to fight the very roots of such evil found in the hearts of man, that sin which separates him from God, without forgetting to come to the aid of those who are in urgent need of help in the spirit of Christ\u2019s Charity\u201d.
\nThe Holy Father concluded with praise and encouragement of the \u201cprecious and effective\u201d instrument of Ignatian spiritual exercises\u201d, and invited the gathered group to recite together with him the prayer composed by the Order\u2019s founder, a prayer so great said the Pope, that I almost do not dare recite it: \u201cTake, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0my understanding, and my entire will. All I have and call my own. Whatever I have or hold, you have given me. I return it all to you and surrender it wholly,\u00a0\u00a0to be governed by your will. Give me only your love and your grace,\u00a0and I am rich enough and ask for nothing more\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For the record:
\nPope Benedict’s letter to the Congregation at its opening<\/a>
\nThe homily of Cardinal Rod\u00e9, Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life<\/a>\u00a0at the meeting’s opening Mass
\nThe new Superior General’s homily at the Mass of Thanksgiving<\/a>
\n(All of these are pdf files)
\nAlso note that Fr. Frederico Lombardi, S.J. head of the Vatican Press Office, was elected one of four Assistants ad providentiam <\/em>to the Society’s Superior General. <\/a>
\nPhotos of today’s meeting are here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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