The American Jesuits: A History

1 The World Scene

1 The World Scene From the Beginning: Church versus State? One Jesuit historian suggests that the decades following the coming of the Jesuits to Mexico “were the most glorious” of the Society’s history. He then enlarges the scope of his judgment to encompass the leadership of the fifth and sixth generals of the order—Claudius Aquaviva (1582–1615) and Mutius Vitellechi, who ruled until 1645. This may be, he writes, the Society’s “golden age.” Tragically—or providentially, depending on one’s point of view— the age began in bloodshed and ended in a multitude of baptisms. Jesuits inspired by their brothers’ martyrdoms rushed to replace them in the front lines—sometimes fulfilling the 3rd-century prophecy of Tertullian that the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians. And sometimes it is not. In July 1570 a group of 70 Portuguese Jesuits sailing on several ships to the mission in Peru was attacked by French Calvinist pirates. On one galleon, all 40 Jesuits onboard, led by Ignatius Azevedo, were slashed, stabbed, and thrown into the sea. But between 1573 and 1579 the number of Jesuits in Japan rose from eight to 29; and between 1581 and 1595 Jesuits reached out from Mexico to the Philippines, where they established a series of missions and two colleges. In 1588 they entered Paraguay and built the famous reductions, planned native agricultural communities, some with populations as large as 10,000, centered around the church, where crafts, industry , and the arts thrived—until the Jesuits were expelled in 1767. Since the mid-20th century, Catholic theology has not assumed that the souls of the unbaptized will never see God. Even in the 1940s Catholic schoolchildren learned about “baptism of desire,” which meant that pagans of goodwill who never heard the gospels actually “desired” baptism, and thus were redeemed by their charitable lives. A few years later, on a more sophisticated level, German Jesuit 15 theologian Karl Rahner developed the term “anonymous Christian,” one who is open to ultimate reality, to God’s grace and love, though he or she may lack the background or vocabulary to make this relationship to God explicit. But in the Age of Exploration, when navies, armies, merchants, and missionaries of the world powers were mutually dependant and often worked as one, the baptism count was the statistical measure of success. Jesuit missionaries were inspired by the meditation in the Spiritual Exercises on the Two Standards, the image of Christ, the “supreme commander” who sends his disciples to the whole world to rescue “people of every state and condition” from the “standard of Satan.” To them Satan was a living, personal force, to be confronted in the jungles of Peru or in the Iroquois villages of North America. In 1583, Rudolph, the nephew of General Aquaviva, and four companions were martyred on an island off India; but within five years 3,800 island natives were baptized. By 1589, 36 years after Xavier ’s death, 11,500 Japanese were at least technically Christian. General Aquaviva’s challenge was to efficiently govern what grew over 24 years from a group of friends to 13,000 men, 372 schools, and 123 residences in 32 provinces, many of whom were working in villages all over the world to adapt the expression of the Catholic faith to cultures as exotic as India and China and other foreign missions. To an extraordinary degree, as the colleges multiplied, the arts and sciences thrived. But with growth came trouble, and some of the trouble was home grown. The Society’s history is not one of uninterrupted harmony. Ignatius’s policy had been to deliberately appoint a Spaniard as a superior in Paris or put a Frenchman in charge of the Roman College. But the larger the Society became, the more its members were inclined to identify with their national, political, theological, or even spirituality subgroups; and in a strategy that has continued into the 21st century, the traditional Jesuit allegiance to the papacy has cut both ways. Jesuit factions have used their access to the papal court to undermine fellow Jesuits. During Aquaviva’s rule, Spanish Jesuits conspired with Rome to restructure the Society so as to limit the general’s powers . The gap between those who wanted a more contemplative order, emphasizing long prayers and penances over apostolic activity, and those committed to Ignatius’s priorities grew. Aquaviva stressed the 16 The World Scene [18.223.21.5] Project MUSE (2024-04-25...