REBELLION AND DISORDER.

Joseph M. Becker, S.J., The Re-formed Jesuits, Ignatius Press, 2 vols., 1992, 1997, pages 422, 153, vol. 2 $11.95 (US)

This work is a frank, well-documented study of the life of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in the United States from 1965 to 1975, with some reference also to the years just before 1965. It deals mostly with Jesuits in the formation program. Though the author, a sociologist, claims not to make evaluations, his book makes it easy for the reader to make them on his own.

Many people wonder how the Church of the 1950s could have become such a different Church in the year 2000. Part of the answer, especially some of its negative aspects, may be found in this work which shows what happened to American Jesuits. Their experience is a microcosm of what happened to the religious and diocesan clergy of the Western World. Religious Sisters also were greatly influenced by the clergy.

The number of Jesuit novices in the United States fell off by 75% between 1964 and 1969. The number of scholastics (men with vows but not yet ordained) was 11,118 in 1958, and 3,770 in 1975. In the period from 1958 to 1965, 45 Jesuits priests left their Community; in the same length of time, from 1968 to 1975, 535 left. (In 1967 there were 176,341 religious sisters in the United States; in 1995 there were 92,107.)

Jesuit applicants entered mostly after high school. First they spent two years in the novitiate; then two years in the juniorate (in which they studied English, Latin, and Greek); then three years in philosophy (for mathematics and the sciences). Having completed their B.A., they spent three years in "regency" (usually teaching in a Jesuit high school), followed by four years in theology and a year in "tertianship" (a year of spirituality with emphasis on prayer, penance, and spiritual ministry). This was a very long course, fifteen years in all, during which time young men had plenty of time to discuss, organize, and talk themselves out their vocation.

An overview of the Jesuits for the first four centuries of their existence, dating from the mid-sixteenth century, shows relatively little change in their formation or in many other aspects of their lives, and even less rapid change. However, beginning about 1955 rapid changes were the order of the day, particularly in the formation program, and they began with the youngest members.

Why? The chief reason was the nature of the youths entering the Society who had been formed by changes in American culture. This "new breed" was characterized by individualism, including a suspicion of institutions and a conviction that the individual has to decide everything for himself without deference to authority. It included also a sense of the inevitability of change; an aversion to the traditional notion of penance; an emphasis on activism as opposed to the former Catholic stress on holiness, with the idea that one can find God in dealing with others better than in prayer; and emotional immaturity.

A contributing cause was the impact of the Second Vatican Council with its call for renewal covering a study and updating of religious life, a recommendation followed by the Jesuits' 31st General Congregation in 1965-66. That in turn led to the formation of Jesuit committees which called for change seemingly for the sake of change, leading to innumerable meetings, ad hoc changes, and the gradual breakdown of authority, with groups in one house phoning their colleagues in other houses of formation in order to find out what changes had been made there so that they could ask for the same changes for themselves. All of this led to a steady exodus of young men seeking their salvation in an ever more open and prosperous society where TV created a global village.

Of course there were features of formation which were in need of change. The problem was to keep the essentials and also to have changes come in a proper manner. On both of these points grave mistakes were made. Many in formation resented having to do things which other people prescribed for them; they stopped coming to group prayer, or even to daily Mass; they objected to Benediction and didn't visit the Blessed Sacrament; they wanted modern philosophy, not Thomism, and theology courses taught by non-Catholics; they wanted frequent contact with "the world" in order to keep abreast with it, and even with women in order to correct "heterosexual immaturity"; they wanted to change the liturgy on their own; they were frequently disobedient about leaves of absence, keeping times of silence, or coming in very late at night; and many were on tranquilizers or visited psychiatrists.

In nearly every group there were radical leaders and, even if most of a particular group were not greatly in favor of what was decided, and a few were in outright opposition, the radicals had their way. Experiments were allowed without a time frame or a statement of criteria for judging their value.

Comments

Fr. Becker is silent on modern dissent, which began in 1968 with the encyclical Humanae vitae. But he certainly shows how the stage was set for wholesale dissent when the occasion arose. And it is dissent in the Jesuit Community which has prevented it from dealing adequately with its problems ever since. Certainly the religious communities of men today which are thriving are strict communities which accept the teaching of the Church's Magisterium. This is not the case with many Jesuit houses today. For example, throughout the nineteen-nineties the Jesuit universities in the United States opposed the Vatican's attempt to restore the Catholic character of their universities. And there are many other examples of allowing doctrinal dissent without efforts to correct it.

This work hardly ever mentions a Jesuit in formation being asked to leave the Community. It seems that the Community panicked at the wholesale withdrawal from its format on program and caved in indiscriminately to the demands of members. Most of them left eventually anyway, quite a few after ordination.

The well-known Jesuit writer Francis Canavan, in reviewing Becker's work, says that, in order to "attract younger Jesuits to teach" in their schools and "induce young laymen to join the Society, there arose "a policy of separating the Jesuits who are actively engaged in the work of a high school or college from those who have retired, relegating the retirees to a separate community." He comments: "Neither prediction, so far as I know, has been fulfilled to any notable extent." This policy has been adopted by other religious communities, too, including m own, the Basilian Fathers.