Jesuits (eBook)

Chapter 1 PAPAL OBJECTIONS Every Pope worth his salt sets a dominant strategy for his papacy. He formulates many policies, pursues various particular aims: but all policies and each single aim are framed within the scope of that strategy. The Society of Jesus was established by the papacy in 1540 as a very special 'fighting unit' at the total and exclusive disposal of the Roman Pope -- whoever he might be. From their beginnings, the Jesuits were conceived in a military mode. Soldiers of Christ, they were given only two purposes: to propagate the religious doctrine and the moral law of the Roman Catholic Church as proposed and taught by the Roman Pope, and to defend the rights and prerogatives of that same Roman Pope. Purely spiritual and supernatural purposes. And specifically Roman Catholic. Surprisingly enough, given this mandate of the Society, papal strategy itself has become the wedge of separation between Jesuits and papacy -- indeed, the very arena where the lethal battle between the two is being fought. Plus XII, Pope from 1939 to 1958, had found himself in a new world dominated by two rival superpowers, one of which -- the USSR -- he held in anathema. His postwar policy was one of intractable opposition to Soviet Marxism, and of support for 'Western' civilization, centered in Europe and protected by the United States. John XXIII, Pope from 1958 to 1963, was convinced that an 'open windows, open fields' policy would induce others -- including the Soviets -- to refashion their own attitudes and policies. Pope John lowered as many barriers between the Church and the world -- including the Soviet Union -- as he could in his short, action-packed pontificate. He even went so far as to guarantee the USSR immunity from attacks by the Church, a stunning reversal of papal attitudes. It was a huge gamble. And it could only work if an adequate amount of goodwill reigned among his opposite numbers. The gamble failed. The great poignancy was that when he died, Pope John, peasant-realist that he was, knew that his openness had been seen as weakness, and had been taken advantage of by men of much smaller spirit. Pope Paul VI, 1963-1978, blind to the deficiencies of John's policy, further refined it. The Holy See became nothing less than a plaintiff at the bar of Soviet power, pleading on diplomatic grounds for a hearing, instituting cautious conversations, practicing the week-kneed art of concessionary approaches -- and even stooping to mean-spirited deception and betrayal of the admittedly difficult Primate of Hungary, Cardinal Mindszenty, in order to please the Soviets and their castrated Hungarian surrogate, Janos Kadar. In all of this, Paul VI, personally the gentlest of all modern Popes, unwittingly compromised his papal authority. His grand strategy for his Church was taken over and prostituted by others, reducing him to an impotence that scarred his last disease-ridden years until his death on August 6, 1978. Still, it was Paul VI who, very late in the day...