Posted on 01/04/2022 7:44:32 PM PST by marshmallow
COMMENTARY: Forty years later, the papal correction Pope St. John Paul II directed at the Society of Jesus still hasn’t taken hold.
Forty years ago on New Year’s Eve there was heightened anticipation in Rome, even tension, for the singing of the Te Deum — the Church’s traditional hymn of thanksgiving to God — at the conclusion of the civil year.
What would St. John Paul II say at the end of 1981? Would he comment upon the assassination attempt in May, or the declaration of martial law in Poland in December?
Those tragic topics were not the source of tension. The issue that had everyone on tenterhooks was the turmoil in the deeply troubled Society of Jesus.
John Paul kept the custom of traveling to the mother church of the Jesuits in Rome for the year-end Te Deum. The church, conceived by St. Ignatius himself, is known commonly as Il Gesù, but its complete title is The Holy Name of Jesus. Before the reform of the calendar, Jan. 1 was the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus (it’s now Jan. 3), so Il Gesù was fitting place to keep vigil for the end of the Christmas Octave and the beginning of a new civil year. (Pope Benedict XVI moved the year-end Te Deum to St. Peter’s Basilica, and Pope Francis has kept it there. He visits Il Gesù for the feast of St. Ignatius in July.)
By 1980, the superior general of the Jesuits, Father Pedro Arrupe, was contemplating retirement and the calling of a general congregation of the Society of Jesus. John Paul was deeply concerned about the direction of the society, its high number of priestly defections, internal divisions, doctrinal confusion, liturgical abuses and moral turpitude. The Holy Father did not want a congregation called until some.......
(Excerpt) Read more at ncregister.com ...
It was JP II, himself, who elevated the apostate jesuit, Jorge Bergoglio, to the College of Cardinals.
They also halved the number of practicing Catholics. A dying community led by a dying Jesuit.
If the Church aggressively purged homosexuals from the clergy, abandoned mandatory celibacy for priests and disbanded the Jesuit order, things would improve greatly.
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