The return of the Jesuits

07 August 2014

Everyone knows that we Jesuits have had a rocky history. We were fabulously successful in educating the European elite for quite some time. Things went off the rails badly in the eighteenth century.

We lost out to the Vatican Curia over the dispute about accommodating some Confucian and Hindu traditional rites in prayer and liturgy on the missions in China and India. We fell out of favour with the imperial court in Portugal, then in France, and then in 1767 in Spain.

By then many Jesuits were on the run throughout Europe. The Portuguese were particularly upset with our defence of the locals living on the Reductions in South America. We had some sort of notion that the locals owned the place, not their colonisers. Ultimately the courts of Europe prevailed on Pope Clement XIV who published the brief Dominus ac Redemptor on 21 July 1773. Having listed the many shortcomings of the Society of Jesus, he decreed:

From sure knowledge and fullness of apostolic power, we abolish and suppress the oft-mentioned Society. We take away and abrogate each and every one of its offices, ministries, administrations, houses, schools, colleges, retreats, farms, and any properties in whatsoever province, realm, and jurisdiction and in whatever way pertaining to the Society. We do away with the statutes, customs, usages, decrees, Constitutions, even those confirmed by oath, by apostolic approval, or by other means.

In much the same way that recent popes have decreed that we can never again talk about women’s ordination and that it would never be possible anyway, Clement purported to wipe out the Jesuits not just for the present, but forever. In his mind, there could never be a restoration of the Jesuits. He decreed:

The letter is not to be subjected to terms of the law nor are remedies to be sought in law, fact, favour, or justice. No one is to seek concessions or favours whether in court or outside the court. But we want the same present letter to be always and for ever valid, firm, and efficacious, and that it be allotted and maintain its full and entire effects and that it be inviolably observed by each and every person to whom it pertains or will in some way pertain in the future.

Bishop Bill Morris had it good, compared with us back in those days. No such thing as due process back then. There was one huge loophole.

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The return of the Jesuits

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