ID DATA
Society of Jesus
The Jesuits
Founded by Ignatius Loyola
Sections:Structure |
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Structure:
Established:
Founded in 1540 by St. Ignatius Loyola.
The order is characterized by a highly disciplined organization, especially devoted to the pope and ruled by its general, who lives in Rome. Jesuits have no choral office; like the secular clergy they are under obligation to individually recite the divine office each day. They have no distinctive habit. In principle they may accept no ecclesiastical office or honor.
Jesuit training is famous and may last for more than 15 years. The novice spends two years in spiritual training, after which he takes the simple vows of the regulars—chastity, poverty, and obedience. Then as a scholastic he spends 13 years and sometimes longer in study and teaching, completed by an additional year of spiritual training. Toward the end of this period he is ordained and becomes a coadjutor. He may then take a fourth vow of special obedience to the pope and become professed.
The order was founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1540 as a "company" and was organized in loosely military terms, thus the leader is called the superior general. There are more than 22,000 Jesuits today, serving in 112 nations on six continents.
Background:
Largest religious order in the Catholic Church. Among the great organizers and theologians of the order are St. Francis Borgia, Claudio Aquaviva, Saint Robert Bellarmine, Luis Molina, and Francisco Suárez.
The Jesuits are known for their work in education, spirituality centers, social ministries and for helping people who have been marginalized socially. The order has a tradition of learning and science; e.g., the Bollandists are Jesuits, and Jesuits have made a specialty of the study of earthquakes. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is the most famous Jesuit scientist of this century. The society is also noted for its foreign missionary work.
Leaders:
Secretary General:
Count Peter-Hans Kovenbach, S.J., also called Father General
General Counselor:
Francis E. Case, from Oregon, until 14 Nov 2005, when Fr James E. Grummer, who served as Provincial of Wisconsin since 2001, will replace him.
Secretary:
Gabriel Codina, from Bolivian province, who previously served 5 years as Secrtary of Education.
American Jesuit Francis E. Case, originally from Oregon, will take office 14 Nov 2005. Currently, Case is Regional Assistant for the United States, which office carries with it also the role of General Counsellor.
Membership:
The Curia General Secretariat has compiled the statistics of the Society for 2004. As of 1 January 2005, the number of Jesuits was 19850 (13966 priests, 3051 scholastics, 1921 brothers and 909 novices). As compared with the previous year there is a decrease of 320. For the first time in years the number of Jesuits worldwide fell down to less than 20,000.
During the past year 512 entered, 414 died and 418 left the Society. The average age of all the Jesuits at the beginning of this year was 53.18: for priests 59.83, scholastics 24.84 and brothers 62.37. Among the Assistancies, South Asia continued to have the largest membership (4003 or 20.2% of all the Jesuits), followed by the United States of America (3217 or 16.7%). The Central Europe Assistancy is at the other end: 773 Jesuits or 3.9%. The number of Jesuits in all the European Assistancies is 6639 (33.4%).
Source: Jesuits in Europe - News Service
The Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola:
Three centuries later, Saint Ignatius, during his recovery from serious injury in his house at Loyola, read in The Golden Legend about the life of the Poverello of Assisi. Much later, in a text called 'Principle and Foundation' which seems more philosophical than spiritual, he dealt with the three-fold relationship of the person to other persons, to the environment (the world) and to God. He did not give it a poetic expression as St. Francis did in his Canticle, but presented it as a guide to life, necessary for any human being to act properly, make choices appropriately, and, indeed, to understand himself fully. These three relationships are, for Ignatius, so closely united that a person cannot find God unless he finds him through the environment and, conversely, that his relationship to the environment will be out of balance unless he also relates to God. When Pierre Teilhard de Chardin reflected on this text, he briefly expressed its content in this way: 'The creature is not a means only but an occasion for saving communion.'
This understanding leads Ignatius to a moral demand: 'From this it follows that we ought to use these things to the extent that they help us toward our end, and free ourselves from them to the extent that they hinder us from it.' Ignatius indicates, in abstract but logical terms, the necessary path to the attainment of human freedom. This is not a canticle, but wisdom drawn from the mystery of creation and its relationship to the Creator, putting forth the concrete conditions for freedom intimately linked to all three sides of the relational triangle. Francis touches our heart with his canticle. 'Praise be my Lord for our mother the earth, which sustains us and keeps us, and yields diverse fruits and flowers of many =colours, and grass.' Ignatius, on his part, expresses the same truths in theological form coming out of his philosophical reflection. Therein lies the effectiveness of his 'Principle and Foundation.' He avoids exclusive attention to any one line of thought: an anthropocentrism independent of God and the environment, a theocentrism that pretends to ignore creatures and all created things, a biocentrism that would ignore the Creator and the call to collaborate with him in relationship with the environment.
Ignatius understands clearly that if God and the human person are not in a proper relationship this will have serious consequences in the biosphere. He invites the retreatant to '...an exclamation of wonder and surging emotion, uttered as I reflect on all creatures - the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the elements, the fruits, the birds, fishes and animals - on how they have allowed me to live and have preserved me in life.' (Spiritual Exercises, 60) In the time of Francis and even of Ignatius, humanity was not in possession of the powerful means which today threaten the environment. From Ignatius' 'cry of wonder' we move today to a 'cry of horror'. In the words of John Paul II, 'Instead of fulfilling his role of collaborator with God in the work of creation, man acts independently of God and ends up by provoking the revolt of nature, more dominated than governed by him (Centesimus Annus, 37).
Additional Info:
VIth World Congress of Jesuit Alumni/ae threatened with violence
17 Jan 2003 - Brussels
The VIth World Congress of Jesuit Alumni/ae in the Indian city of Kolkata, 21-24 January, has been the target of violent attacks on the part of a fundamentalist Hindu organization (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, RSS) which has advised the President of the country, H.E. Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, a former student of St. Joseph’s College, not to accept the invitation to open the Congress because his presence would legitimize the Society of Jesus, an organization known for her violent, aggressive and exclusive religious beliefs. RSS accuses the Jesuits of taking an oath of induction by which they commit themselves to use violent and barbaric means to decimate all those who don’t follow the Roman Catholic religion. RSS has provided the long text of a fabricated oath, a “detailed” description of the ceremony of the oath taking, and the testimony of a certain Alberto Rivera who escaped from the Jesuit order in 1967 after having taken the oath.
The Provincial of India, Father Lisbert D’Souza, has released a press statement on behalf of the Jesuits in India denying the existence of such an oath, and adding that a research in the Indian and Roman archives of the Society has failed to produce any reference to a Jesuit by the name of Alberto Rivera who left the Society in the 1960s
Source: Jesuits in Europe - News Service
