A Prepositional Proposition

This piece from National Catholic Reporter on the Jesuits’ General Congregation in Rome, relates a speech by Slovenian Cardinal Franc Rode. Jesuits, says, Rode, are to think with the church, not for the church. One little preposition makes a lot of difference, don’t it? Rode, says NCR: “specifically urged the Jesuits to greater fidelity in […]

This piece from National Catholic Reporter on the Jesuits’ General Congregation in Rome, relates a speech by Slovenian Cardinal Franc Rode.

Jesuits, says, Rode, are to think with the church, not for the church. One little preposition makes a lot of difference, don’t it?

Rode, says NCR: “specifically urged the Jesuits to greater fidelity in theological work as well as in `your magazines and publications,’ both areas of tension between the Jesuits and the Vatican in recent years”


NCR reports: Several theologians censured under both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been Jesuits, including writers on religious pluralism such as the late Belgian Fr. Jacques Dupuis and American Fr. Roger Haight, in addition to the El Salvadoran liberation theologian Fr. Jon Sobrino.

Jesuit-run media have likewise been a source of tension. American Jesuit Fr. Thomas Reese was forced to step down as editor of America magazine in 2005 under pressure from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Vatican has expressed similar concerns about the German Jesuit journal, Stimmen der Zeit.

In effect, Rode‘s homily represents the Vatican’s attempt to help frame the agenda for the Jesuits’ deliberations, says NCR’s John Allen.

And what is that frame?

Noting that the Jesuits exercise wide influence through their seminaries, colleges and universities, Rode said he wanted to share both his “joys and hopes” and his “sorrows and anguishes” as the General Congregation gets underway.

After praising the order for “thousands of religious who generously respond to the Lord’s call,” Rode cited several areas of concern.

First, he warned of a waning sense of sentire cum ecclesia, meaning “to think with the church.” Love for the church, Rode argued, was central to the vision of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits in the 16th century.


“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,” Rode said. “The Church is waiting for a light from you to restore the sensus ecclesiae.”

Rode also bluntly called for greater obedience to the hierarchy.

“With sadness and anxiety, I also see a growing distancing from the hierarchy,” he told the Jesuits. “The Ignatian spirituality of apostolic service ‘under the Roman Pontiff’ does not allow for this separation.”

“The fundamental nucleus of Ignatian spirituality consists in uniting the love for God with love for the hierarchical Church,” Rode said.

Uniquely among Catholic religious orders, Jesuits have traditionally taken a fourth vow alongside poverty, chastity and obedience, promising special obedience to the pope in missionary matters.

Rode also asked the Jesuits to defend church teaching, saying contemporary culture creates the “need to present to the faithful and to the world the authentic truth revealed in Scripture and Tradition.”

Rode appeared to suggest that the wide variety of theological positions espoused by Jesuits can feed what Pope Benedict XVI has called a “dictatorship of relativism.”


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