The American Jesuits: A History

13 Freedom from Fear

13 Freedom from Fear Shaking Off the Suppression In general, novices in the late 1950s knew nothing that was going on in the “outside world,” outside the gates of the country novitiate, until the novice master at the morning conference dropped headlines on them from papers they were not allowed to read and radio reports they were not allowed to hear. But 1958 was a “hot news” year by any standard. On October 9 they learned that Pius XII had died. Those who had been reading the secular press before they came in may have known two things: this pope had been most unsympathetic to the movement of the worker priests, where, in Europe, priests took off their collars and took on factory jobs as a way of reestablishing contact with the working masses alienated from the church. He had also, in 1955, in an exhortation to the Society, said: “Among the superfluous things that a Jesuit could very well do without is the habit of smoking tobacco.” Clearly, this was something which Jesuits who had his ear had asked him to include in his talk, to give teeth to the injunctions Fathers Ledochowski and Maher had proclaimed to deaf ears. Novices who had read Time magazine before entering knew that two Vatican stars named Tardini and Montini, Montini the more “liberal” of the two, were in the wings as a future pope. On October 28, 1958, Cardinal Angelo Roncalli, 77 years old, of whom no one had heard, was chosen. At first, hearts sank. How could this old man give vigorous leadership? Then the letters from home snuck in old photos of Roncalli the diplomat at a reception in Turkey with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other. There was hope. On July 25, 1959, Roncalli, now John XXIII, announced that he was calling an Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, the first since Vatican I, in 1870, which, against resistance from some of the American hierarchy, 199 had proclaimed the doctrine of papal infallibility and set the tone for the defensive, walled-off mentality which was to characterize the church until this moment. Now he famously “opened the windows” and let in the intellectual and cultural history of the last hundred years—the impact of Darwin, Marx, and Freud, and also John Dewey —categorized in philosophy classes as “adversaries” to be refuted rather than as geniuses with insights that must be understood. Within a few years the Society of Jesus the young men had joined would be radically changed. Statistically, the American Society of Jesus was at its apogee. In 1950, there were 6,897 American Jesuits; by 1960 the number rose to 8, 338. It never reached that peak again. In 1970, there were 7, 055. While the number of priests from 1960 to 2000 was well over 4,000, the number of scholastics plummeted precipitously from 3,116 in 1960 to 714 in 1980. Ironically, however, regardless of the dramatic plunge in membership , which can be explained in many ways, the perspective of history marks these years as a “revolution,” “renaissance,” “rebirth,” as in the Greek myth of Anteus, who, every time in combat he was slammed down against his mother earth, gained new strength for the battle. The principal catalytic element, from one point of view, was Vatican II and Jesuit participation in this astonishing event. But the seeds of the flowering had been planted years before. A fundamental step for American Jesuits in joining the silent revolution was shaking off the psychological wounds of the 19th and early 20th centuries that had rendered them timorous and unmanned. Samuel K. Wilson, S.J., a president of Loyola University Chicago who was most instrumental in making Loyola a respectable research institution, wrote in an article, “How Modern Are the Jesuits?” in Manners 1 (December 1936),” that “the Jesuits are not modern at all.” Moreover, it must be remembered that in the eighteenth century the Jesuits were suppressed by no less an authority than the Catholic church. The fact of the suppression had very real and lasting results , even though it was dictated less by principle than by policy, and when expediency ceased, the Society was restored. But no man brought back from the grave ever completely forgets the agony of death, and the corporate body of the Jesuits has never quite forgotten the suppression. It is more cautious and conservative, more safe and 200 Freedom from Fear [18.222.115.120] Project MUSE...