Three Words of St Ignatius

The saint of the month in the July issue is St Ignatius of Loyola and, with some personal experience of his legacy, I’d like to explore three words that he has contributed to our Catholic vocabulary: Jesuit, Jesuitical and Ignatian.

The Jesuits are, of course, the order of priests and some Brothers which he founded (though he never used that term). Their correct name translated from Ignatius’ own Spanish is the “Company of Jesus”. Ignatius felt that he and the men who gathered around him at the University of Paris in the 1530s were like the first Apostles, with their “hearts on fire” to follow Jesus. “Company” — or better still, “Companions” — has an air of friendliness and approachability.

That is less true of the name by which they came to be known in English, the Society of Jesus, a mistranslation from the Latin Societatis Jesus (That is why the postnominal letters for a Jesuit are SJ). The notion of the “society” came to create an aura for the Jesuits as a finely honed, rigid, religious force. To this was added the military language which Ignatius himself used — after all, he was a soldier, effectively a mercenary, when he had his conversion experience.

The highly disciplined approach of the first companions, and the rules that they set themselves, meant that Jesuits got a reputation for being “the Marines of the Catholic Church”. Sometimes that has been warranted — in good and bad ways — but sometimes it is just a mistake.

For example, the worldwide leader of the Jesuits has the title “General” (one of the few positions, at least until recently, to be a life appointment). This sounds very militaristic, but in fact it is just that he is the “superior-general”, as opposed to being the superior of a province or a local community. (I am not sure how well Fr Hugh O’Connor, who is secretary-general of the SACBC would take to being addressed as “The General”.)

Jesuits emerged in the Church within a few years of the start of Luther’s Reformation in 1517 and Henry VIII’s break with Rome in 1534, and soon they saw themselves as the vanguard of the Counter-Reformation. While this can be interpreted as a desire to resist all change, the historical record suggests that the Jesuits were also reformers: but they decided to stay and reform from within.

Making enemies

They shared many of Luther’s concerns — the need for personal spirituality, better education of priests, bishops who are engaged, controls against financial corruption, zeal for mission — and in the 16th century (and still today), these remain focuses of their work. That meant that they were a force to be reckoned with by the Reformers — and in Elizabethan/Jacobean England they became public enemy number one, even being blamed for the Gunpowder Plot.

They also became a force to be reckoned with by Catholics who resisted reform. The Jesuits had many enemies — political and episcopal — within the Church and were expelled by Catholic monarchs from 1759 onwards. Under pressure from the rulers of France, Spain and Portugal, the Society of Jesus was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, before being restored four decades later, in 1814, by Pius VII.

With so many detractors, inside and outside the Church, the term Jesuit started to take on negative connotations, culminating in the emergence of the term “Jesuitical” to mean (as one dictionary puts it) “excessively subtle, deceitful, intended to mislead”. The “Cunning Jesuit” became a stock character in English (Protestant) literature, but, like many stereotypes, it was founded in some truth and in something positive.

The Jesuits’ commitment to education meant that they were incredibly well-read and able to apply their knowledge to difficult situations. Thus, they promoted the idea that we should look at moral problems not as black-and-white cases which can be decided by applying a blunt rule, but instead see them more subtly as specific cases that required an understanding of context and intention to determine if they were right or wrong.

While this seems very modern, it is also in keeping with the earliest practice of the Church Fathers. But it was also a threat to those who wanted to have clear moral lines, presumably ones in which they were on the “right side” and their enemies on the “wrong side”.

I came across an example of this approach when, as a teenager, I read a book by a Jesuit in the 1930s which answered the pressing moral concerns of Catholic readers. Its intention was good: to go beyond simple rules and think instead about the true meaning of morality; the more subtle rules it suggested, are open to mockery. The learned Father, in answering whether chewing on gum before the Mass breaks the fast, opines that it does so only “if there is still flavour left in the gum”.

Asked what a good Catholic should do if a newborn baby is in danger of dying and there is no water present for a baptism, he concludes that “soup can be used, but only if it is a thin soup” (presumably because it resembles water). He does not explain the likelihood of a situation in which soups of any sort — consommé or potage — are available and water is not!

The Spiritual Exercises

A third term which has emerged from this saint of Loyola, and which may prove his most enduring legacy, is “Ignatian”. In seeking to prepare his zealous but religiously underformed companions, Ignatius created a model of spiritual development which has had a huge influence.

First of all, he promoted the idea of a spiritual director, someone who is trained to help the pilgrim on their journey towards God. And then he wrote (for the director, not the pilgrim) a handbook called The Spiritual Exercises. In the centuries of a rigid and clerical Society of Jesus, this treasure of the Church was reserved mostly for Jesuits themselves and approached almost as if it was a box-ticking exercise with “points” to be marked on a tally. The rediscovery of the charism of Ignatius since Vatican II means that the richness of his approach is now presented in a much more approachable way and accessible to a much wider audience, including the laity.

When I was a Jesuit, as I was for six years, I spent one summer offering Ignatian reflections at the very traditional Marian shrine of Knock in Ireland. I remember one pilgrim emerging from the session looking rejuvenated (“hearts on fire”, as Ignatius would say) and completely surprised that such an approach to spirituality was actually Catholic. Part of the impact of Ignatian spirituality is that it is attractive to those who are not Catholics.

When the great Jesuit writer Gerard Hughes (God of Surprises) set up a centre in the 1970s for non-Jesuits to do a 30-day retreat, he joked that he would score his directors on the diversity of the people they attracted: five points for a priest, ten for a lay person, 15 for a Protestant, minus-five points for a Catholic nun — and 20 points for a Catholic bishop or a communist. He told me that after five years they had had more communists than bishops!

The work of Ignatian spirituality thrives today and I encourage you to look at the excellent on-line resources (especially from the UK, Ireland and USA). In South Africa, we have the Jesuit Institute which organises spiritual courses at all levels and retreats around the country, as well as providing a daily Ignatian insight into current issues. These are available for everyone, including bishops and communists!

My own life, and my own writing, has been hugely influenced by St Ignatius — when I was a Jesuit, when I am in danger of being Jesuitical, and now in the broader Ignatian sense. And I hope that as you read these pieces each month you share my desire, and the desire of St Ignatius, to find “God in all things”.

Published in the July 2023 issue of The Southern Cross magazine