This is an extract from Cardinal Rode (Prefect for Religious) at the opening Mass of the 35th General Congregation of the Jesuits at the Church of the Gesù in Rome.It is with sorrow and anxiety that I see that the sentire cum ecclesia of which your founder frequently spoke is diminishing even in some members of religious families. The Church is waiting for a light from you to restore the sensus Ecclesiae.
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With sadness and anxiety I also see a growing distancing from the Hierarchy. The Ignatian spirituality of apostolic service “under the Roman Pontiff” does not allow for this separation. In the Constitutions which he left you, Ignatius wanted to truly shape your mind and in the book of the Exercises (n 353) he wrote” we must always keep our mind prepared and quick to obey the true Spouse of Christ and our Holy Mother, the Hierarchical Church”. Religious obedience can be understood only as obedience in love. The fundamental nucleus of Ignatian spirituality consists in uniting the love for God with love for the hierarchical Church.This a a great antidote against the tendency to contrast the "hierarchical Church" with some other expression of christian community. See the full text of the homily.
Thanks to Rorate Caeli.
Do keep the Society of Jesus in your prayer during the next couple weeks especially during the time the Society elects a new Superior General. Friends in Rome tell me younger Jesuits at the Gregorian University are a really good thing, pray they might be in the ascendancy.
6 comments:
Well i know a fair few Jesuits..say no more!
It would be something if they voted in Fr Fessio or Fr Pacwa!- or does the black pope have to be German?
I do hope and pray that they sort themselves out and return to ideals of St Ignatius.
The Catholics of my home town of Preston owe a great debt of gratitude the to Jesuits, the work they did for most of the 19th and 20th centuries was immense. It has been sad to see their decline in recent times.
fr paul harrison
Someone had to say. Good that it has been said.
Declarations like these are likely to have an opposite effect.
Anon,
Just what will kick-start the Jesuits? Getting In Touch With the Divine Feminine workshops? Sit-ins and demos at Rossyth? Wiccan circle casting? Psychoanalysis?
They've had ca 40 years of this stuff and the effects are clear
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