Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

My boss showed me this CWN article today which showed the Spanish Jesuits’ official newspaper has come out to lambaste Pope John Paul the Great for his unfair treatment of the Jesuit order, for trying to stifle the order’s attempted reforms under Father Pedro Arrupe, the former Father General of the Order, and for being more show than substance when it came to the effectiveness of JPTG’s ministry. They also appear to attribute the decline of their order to the late Holy Father’s casting suspicion upon them as well as to the “consumerist and satiated” societies of the northern hemisphere.

I don’t suppose that it ever occurred to them that their decline in numbers had most to do with the widespread disobedient juridicism of the Society, which they euphemistically call “creative fidelity.” This term they appropriate from their star juridicist in ecclesiology, formerly on the faculty of the Gregorian in Rome, Francis Sullivan S.J. Fr. Sullivan devoted an entire book to the idea of trying to show how one may weasel out of just about every Church teaching with which he might disagree. To be fair, his book Creative Fidelity, does have some useful information in it and one who recognizes his fundamental erroneous presuppositions would not be mislead.

However, the way these Jesuits use this term to suggest that one can consider himself faithful while still dissenting is ridiculous. Sullivan tries to achieve this by dividing Church teaching into reformable and non-reformable teaching. Then, as a good minimalist, he reduces the latter to a handful of Trinitarian and Christological statements. Finally, since the vast amount of Church teaching could be wrong (after all it is reformable), one may for good reason (read any reason), choose to follow whatever his lil’ ole heart tells him. This is the height of Phariseeism.

They take the soteriological mistake of the Reformers and commit it again ecclesiologically. I mean, as Luther and Calvin saw Christ’s judgment solely in terms of a courtroom, the Sullivan Jesuits drag the same Protestant lawyer into the family home–the Church. Dare I suggest, Sullivan’s book reminds me of someone trying to change the definition of simple copulative verbs, if you know what I mean. If one recognizes the Church as the family of God and the Pope and bishops as Christ’s vicars, then we have a more realistic understanding of the Church. Trust in Christ and His Church, and therefore, the Magisterium, replaces the need for each person having to be their own pope. Historically and personally one can easily see that this is much more logical and reasonable then the so called “adult” faith (meaning I will decide on each and every issue based upon how I feel about it) that many dissenters try to push. A family is dysfunctional in which the children will not listen to the parents until the parents have repeated themselves over and over again, and finally have to threaten to ground the kids.

If the Jesuits survive, it will only be through the intercession of the Saints who seem, in some provinces, to be bringing young, faithful priests back into the order. This development is much to the chagrin of those Jesuits who considered themselves enthusiastic supporters of Vatican II. Unfortunately these older Jesuits turn out to be supporters of a so called “spirit” of the Council which was anything but holy. St. Ignatius, ora pro nobis.