EWTN Live - The History of the Jesuits - Fr. Mitch Pacwa, SJ w Fr. John Padberg, SJ - 03-30-2011

he's a church historian with his own history of 60 years in the Society of Jesus tonight we'll go in-depth into Saint Ignatius of Loyola and the society that he founded so please stay with us thank you and welcome I'm father Mitch Pacwa and welcome to EWTN live our chance to bring you guests from all over the world tonight's guest is a good friend and a brother Jesuit from the Missouri province of the Society of Jesus he's a church historian and the director of the Institute of judgment resources so please welcome father John Padberg thank you very much welcome glad to be here are you sure you it's an honor and a privilege to be on this program well we're glad to have you here and this is a great topic of we talked about this I got a chance to go to the Institute that you have in st. Louis and see all this material but so little bit is that well known and I thought that this might be a great chance to let your Institute and the books that you make available on spirituality in the history of the Jesuits a little bit better known tell us a little bit about this the history of your Institute the Institute is exactly 50 years old this year by the George Gans founded it and because so many of us in the United States know only one language English our main job is to try to put into English many of the documents from the very early history and spirituality of the Society of Jesus for example when I entered the Society of Jesus way that was that way back in ancient history when the dinosaurs roamed 1944 the only work of saint ignatius loyola the founder of the Jesuits that was in English was his Spiritual Exercises that's very well known of course but not the Constitution's of the society no our own law that regulates our lives not his own autobiography not his spiritual diary none of those were available in other modern language certainly not in English at the time our job is to try first of all to put what they call primary documents works done by the people who are directly important into English secondly serious scholarly studies that we put into English from other languages for example a history of the spirituality of the Society of Jesus over the centuries thirdly serious scholarly studies about the society one of the books you have their history of the Society of Jesus by Bill Bangert and then finally more popular works to be honest the popular works help pay for the scholarly works yeah that's the way it is what scholars it is we've got one book for example about 800 pages all of the decrees and documents from the first thirty general chapters or general congregations of the society in English nobody but a specialist is going to read those and it's not a best-seller I assure you on the other hand we have this wonderful little prayer book hearts on fire with prayers by Jesuits from Ignatius right up to the present day you can stick it in your pocket we've sold better than one hundred and some thousand copies of that right no it's a wonderful little prayer book I have one of my own well I don't use it yes yes I do yes I do especially when it you know there the number of prayers that don't know where to look for otherwise yeah that's right no so it's a it's a great resource to have some of these prayers you know and some of these books you know our great biographies of Jesuit saints as well as like you said translations of their own works that is very important Mother Angelica used to say all the time that most of the biographers of the Saints are going to spend extra time in purgatory because they made the saints look too good and they don't make the saints human enough and one of the great things about reading with the saints wrote is you get their perspective on themselves that's true and the flames in purgatory are going to be fueled by those overly pious books right exactly exactly that's true some of the for example a biography of Ignatius by a Spanish Jesuit named Alma says it talks about him warts and all I mean he is probably the only canonized Saint that still has a notarized police record on file I assure you it was from before he became before he was converted after he was injured at the Battle of Pamplona but it's an a from his native town ASPI Thea he and his brother were accused by night of roughing up another band in the town this is not an edifying story is real but accused of roughing up another man who was trying to steal his brothers mistress that is not an edifying story so so the motive wasn't all that good to begin with who say the leads to say the least but that I think I in fact I know that that record is still on file in Ostia now that's only one obviously one example of something from the very early life of ignatius but so much of his later life so much of his travels so many of the things he did so many of the obstacles he encountered you don't understand unless you get a chance to read his own words about himself first of all that and then secondly serious biographies well a lot of those biographies are in other languages so we put them in English you also don't get to know what you mean by his spirituality or Jesuit spirituality spirituality after all is the organized attempt and we all make such attempts the organized attempt to help us grow in the understanding and the love and the following of Jesus Christ Franciscan spirituality for example has certain characteristics which are different from Jesuit spirituality Christian spirituality in general is how the members of the church through the centuries have lived their lives as well as they could in the circumstances of the time to understand how they themselves living in their time as we live in our own time come to know and appreciate and love and follow Jesus in the community of the church that is basically what you mean by spirituality the study of it is how does the Franciscan spirituality are the dominican or the jesuit spirituality how do they differ among each other they have the basic characteristics obviously of what you mean by following Jesus as presented in the Gospels in the teachings of the church but each of us each of these groups coming out of very different historical circumstances come with a very different attitude toward their spirituality as Pope John the compartment john xxiii said one of the things that he hoped would happen on the council said the same thing was that religious orders would go back to their original carries a nice word I'll get to that in a moment go back to their original charism and adopt and adapt that for the present day the charism basically means the gift of God that was given to the founder and the people around him to understand essentially what they wanted to do to serve God and then adapt that we've been talking about Jesuits let me give you a Jordan airy example there Risen ordered was found in many many centuries ago for the redemption of captives that is Christians who were captured in the Mediterranean by Muslims and made galley slaves what order was that the Trinitarians that the Spanish Trinitarians it's a different one from the American Trinitarians they're two different groups but in any case they even pledged that if they could not raise enough money to redeem the captives they would give themselves up individually to take the place of one of the galley slaves now there aren't such people galley slaves today but they were regarded as among the most abandoned people at the time what did the Trinitarians talk about they want to do now they started many years ago with the onslaught of the AIDS epidemic taking care of some of the people who were most abandoned in that circumstance that's an adaptation of the original care so we don't have galley slaves anymore but we do have people who are suffering from a yes perfectly and a lot of people are afraid of AIDS patients so they go out and they minister to them exactly so exactly so that's that's the kind of adaptation and one of the things about the the Jesuit spirituality is that it already was designed by Ignatius to be very adaptable for kids it's not so specific and say going out to help galley slaves no it's something that was much more death we'll talk a bit about that okay one of the Lehrer whole there are several specific phrases that in some senses sum up much of Jesuit spirituality finding God in all things for example that means that anything in this world anything at all is a way in which we can come to experience God in this world and in our lives so Jesuits for example went into education of the laity as a specific organized apostolate before any other religious order every did that of course other religious are dudes educated their own members but the fact that we opened schools specifically for the laity was something quite new at the time that just to take one example and not only did we open up schools but we invented the idea of a school system yes we did so there was a systematic approach to education in all the Jesuit schools wherever they were let me give you an example of something we take for granted now normally we think when somebody goes to school let it be grade school or high school or college they start at a certain level with a group of it let's take grade school they started at first grade there with other people who were in first grade they have classes courses tests if they pass them they move on to the second grade and so on same thing with high school that was an absolutely extraordinary invention of the Jesuits to get the students together as a coherent group who started off on the same level and then by testing in their classes and their lectures and so on move them regularly and from one grade to another that strikes us is perfectly obvious today it wasn't before we got started with that one of the books that I read here was the spiritual writings of Pierre fafa up or Peter Faber uh and in this book uh you see that he was going to the University of Paris and he would wander from one course to another from one college to another picking up whatever professor he wanted and hoping to get a doctor by the end of the whole thing you know it was very disorganized but that was the way education was in many ways it was by the way Peter or Pierre fothx same name as Brett Favre although we pronounce it Favre you know the the football player right no relationship I assure you but Pierre father Peter Faber was as Ignatius ed probably the man who best knew how to give and help people through the Spiritual Exercises that is good that as a retreat as a retreat yes right and he was also in some ways put it in its own circumstances one of the first ecumenism buddy who is interested in ecumenical affairs dealing with Protestants he was sent to a couple of the meetings in Germany at the time of the Reformation in the 1540s about 20-some years after it had begun and over and over he says you do not argue with your opponents you treat them with respect when pray for them you see what they are trying to do and it's much better to do that than to come out with a whole list of objections which you're immediately going to throw in their face he was most successful as people said he had the sweetest disposition of any of the early Jesuits and you know Jesuits don't have sweepers didn't know that at all not at all we're proud of it oh come on but you see the range of the kind of things we've done from Faber in the 1540s to something like the book the black robe some of you know about father De Smet the great missionary to the Indians the Native Americans in this country in the 19th century he came as a 20 year old to this country from Belgium to Maryland first and then he and nine or ten other pardon me young Jesuits came to st. Louis to Missouri and began working with the Native Americans who were pushed out by the advancing white settlers and finally move basically farther out to what we now call the West De Smet was trusted by the Native Americans by the Indians and also by the federal government to bring the kind of honesty and truths telling that very understandably the Indians didn't believe that most whites ever would bring to them because they moved him out from one place to another he could do the kind of direct talking about what was going on that very few other whites at the time could do that's a very different thing from doing something in the Reformation in the 1500s but it's seeing God in all things and taking advantage of the circumstances in which we live now every one of the people for example here if I may look out every one of them has a particular way of looking at his or her relationship to God and a life that in his or her circumstances is the way in which God wants that person to come to better know and understand God that's what you mean by a personal spirituality one of the things that I also liked when I was reading the spiritual writings of blessed because he's a blessed peer father oh he's not been canonized yet but God willing he will be hope so one one of the things that I enjoyed reading this you know these writings from the 1540s is that you get into this world on its own basis you don't just read about this rule you read the world itself and the kind of devotion to the saints for instance that was so much part of his spiritual life and how everything that the Saints and the angels were so much part of the way he dealt with spirituality this helps to remind us of a component of Catholicism that we could forget if we don't sort of go back out of our own time he used to from going from one city to another and he traveled greatly in Germany in Spain and Portugal Italy he used to command at each city they run to the particular patrons of that city the Saints who were venerated in that city he commended that city to their intercession with God very specific very personal kind of a thing and he would also pray for the the to the angels especially the guardian angels of the Protestants that he was arguing for he you know he wanted help from heaven in dealing with this but to do so charitably by the way another thing about him that too many people are conserved the same thing he had he was a scroop he had terrible scruples in his earlier years that he wasn't serving God that he was committing sin that he was damned that he was not going to go to heaven that God didn't love him and the person who pulled him helped pull him out of that was Ignatius when they and the first group of people who were the founders of the society met in Paris Ignatius and six other young men all of them will ignitions was in his forties one of them was in his 30s the others were in their 20s and then three others joined them the ten founders of the Society of Jesus were all young men Ignatius was in his forties but well he started school when he was in his what ladies no thirds early 30s he went to Grammar School because he hadn't learned Latin before that he'd been soldiering a little too much to say the least but you tried to think of yourself going to first or second grade to start learning a language sitting on the bench and he was a very proud aristocratic Spaniard that was very hard for him to do but he saw what God wanted him to do and interestingly he originally went wanted to go to the Holy Land he did once and he wanted to stay there and preach Christianity to Islam that was not going to work in the circumstances of the time as a matter of fact on one of my trips to Jerusalem I saw the place where the Franciscans put him in jail uh-huh it's part of the house the Franciscans at the Saint Xavier Church Oh curse it oh yeah and and it's down the hallway where the Franciscans now live they had they don't have a so anymore but they had to lock him up because he was they were afraid he was going to cause so much trouble that there could be riots see the Franciscans had custody of the places the Christian places in the Holy Land and the Muslims Islam agreed that they could do that but the last thing that the Franciscans or anybody wanted was somebody to come in who was a hothead and Ignatius was at that time and he would just disturbed the arrangement by which pilgrims could come so they gently pushed him back out of the Holy Land and he realized then again stopping to think what am I going to do and how are my best going to do it he realized that he had to get an education if he were seriously going to serve God the way he wanted so back he goes to school starting with grade school accelerated to say the least and then went to the University of Paris I think the JB's the Jesuits are the only order founded by ten university graduates all of them at the same time yeah I think that's the case that might well be the case and it's all you know one of the other books that you have here that is also a book by a saint the letters and instructions of Francis Xavier right so tell us a little bit about that book okay Xavier as many of you know it was one of the great missionaries in the church as a matter of fact he was also a roommate of Peter father and st. Ignatius Loyola got to see them room together in regular rooms at the University of Paris that's true Francis was the first of the great missionaries to the Far East an ardent impetuous dedicated man by the way also a very good athlete and rather proud of the fact that he was it was a runner yes he was he was the king of Portugal asked the Jesuits who are very very new order just founded officially in 1540 asked for several Jesuits to go off to India to help evangelize Oh Ignatius appointed two of them one of them wasn't there and the other was sick they asked Savior to take the place of one he said Here I am send me off he goes to India and became the patron saint of all Catholic missions and probably well certainly the greatest of the missionaries at the time going into a completely alien different culture Hindu especially in India and then attempting and successfully to baptize people with very little instruction and recognized after a while that at the same time he was trying to impose Western ways on them which just wasn't going to work by the time he learned that and then take out a map sometime and see how he travelled from India all the way around all the way through the what we now know is Indonesia and all the way up to Japan Sri Lanka yeah by the time he got to Japan and was there for some time he realized if a missionary is going to be successful he has to be able to understand the culture in which he is living and working and he has to respect and appreciate that culture of for example one of the people who most wanted to do that was the late General of the Society for the rupee when he went to Japan as a missionary many years before he became the general of the society one of the things he insisted on when he was training the novices the Japanese novices was that they were to be fully Japanese and they were to be fully Christian Catholics at the same time and if the Japanese valued very fair very much the formal tea ceremony part of the training in the novitiate was to be able to engage in that tea ceremony with the same grace and delicacy and finesse that the best of any Japanese person would be able to do but you had to preach also in words that were understood in India or in Japan and one of the things that the church I think took a long time to come to realize is that the Roman Catholic Church is Roman Catholic it belongs to the whole world and is not simply Roman of course it's Roman of course it is we know that we're happy that it is but we have to adapt our understanding of other cultures to that can make that in a way that can make sense what Jesus Christ means to somebody who lives in Sri Lanka or what somebody who lives in Tibet there's another one of your books sir yeah that was one of the other books I really enjoyed um it's a tibet the jesuit century it was nobody even knew where Tibet was and they heard rumors of it and Jesuits were trying to find it they were going through incredible adventures to discover Tibet and finally one of them you know got in there and really began to learn the language and the religion well there were five expeditions of Jesuits between 60 into 16 20s to the 1720s through the edges of Tibet one of them got all the way out into China by the way they didn't have maps and they didn't have GPS is at the time you know they were on their own they didn't have hiking boots or any such thing as that but one of them hipolito desi daddy is his name he was almost five years in Tibet studying the Tibetan scriptures trying to understand them on their own terms and then trying to make clear to them what Christianity was in terms that they could understand too they were among the very earliest people from the West to get to Tibet that's it's a great little book and it's interesting when they went there they found that the people welcomed them they had a good reception you know from both the nobility and from the folks your people took good care of them whereas in late it when the English started coming there in later centuries they didn't find that so much so you didn't they were as a matter of fact there was the sense that the English were interested in Empire the English were coming as conquerors the early the Jesuits were coming hopefully as friends yeah yeah yeah different trying to bring them Jesus and let them know their Savior but they kept going because they saw these people are open up to the possibility of Christianity that the crazy things that the Jesuits have done everywhere in anywhere through the centuries yeah or another year Francis Borgia right another great book that's he was the third general of the Society of Jesus he was one of the highest nobility in in Spain when his wife died he had he had met two pr5 on it one of five ships to Spain he became impressed by this very new order wanted to join the society couldn't do so right away except secretly because he had to take care of the arrangements for the marriages in the inheritance of his ten children right so yeah he was a very good father ordinarily so uh interestingly interest and lessly perhaps not for him but he was the great-grandson of Pope Alexander the sixth Ryan was not you know he was not the best of the Borgias to say the least you know rancis was that's just by the way was also composer of of late Renaissance music right it's true for the church one of the things that's fascinating is how he was you know put in charge of the funeral cortege of the Queen the the wife of the Emperor and Queen Isabel and how that was part of his conversion tell us a little bit about that conversion story it's a striking kind of a thing she was to be buried after a long procession the kind of thing we don't have in this country from city to city to city and at the final place the coffin again was open for verification to make sure it's really her else it was really her and well you can imagine what body might have been like after a good long time that struck him with an extraordinary force about the vanity of all human things right right this beautiful woman that he was very fond of he he was they were good friend here a very good friend and to see her decayed so quickly made him realize how vain his own life was so he began to fast and lose because he was a he was rather rotund do you see some of the pictures of me becomes pretty gaunt in later years but I don't recommend that kind of no no that's too radical too radical diet but but he but he became you know you it was amazing to me how God used his leadership skills not only for running Spain as a grandiy of Spain but also then later on after his becoming a judgment within the judges became the general of the society and did a number of other ministerial yeah he was elected to that position and a lot of things that Ignatius trusted him for in the earlier years the one of the other things that the Jesuits have been involved in very much so and it doesn't get that much play in some of the books because it's a very humble kind of a thing with the poor especially working with the most abandoned in all kinds of places around the world and I'm proud and glad that we've done been able to do that right no no we've got a number of saints who worked very strongly with the poor and became great Saints especially porters a number of our porters you know Saints who man the door or be the ones who would oftentimes be dealing with the poor on a regular basis like Alfonso Rodriguez yeah they were if you want to take God present term for that they were the receptionist's right at each one of one of our big colleges for example in the sixteen seventeen eighteenth century and anybody wanted to see anybody at the place would go through that person and that kind of the porter he got to know the range of the people in the city and been perfectly capable of asking the people well-off to help very much the poor and then going out among them and understanding how they lived where they lived what they needed what would help them for the future to we've got a lot more that we'd like to talk about but we need to take a break and get your questions and comments I just want to give you the website for the Institute of Jesuit sources its WW Jesuit sources com Jesuit sources calm where you can find some of these books including that prayer book as well as these other books on by saints and about saints I make that available to you so we'll break now we'll come back in a couple of minutes and move the questions from you as well as from our studio audience so please stay with us thank you and welcome back we have a couple of really nice big groups with us tonight and we'd love to invite you to come and join us to be part of our audiences if you are interested in coming to be on pilgrimage here at EWTN we invite you to contact our pilgrimage Department you can call them at two zero five two seven one two nine six six that's two zero five two seven one two nine six six or go to our website WWE wtn comm they'll help you find places where you can stay locally the number of hotels and places to go eat as well as coming here to be here for the masses both here and in Hanceville as well as being in the program's getting a tour the network and the great thing is the price it's free so so all that is ready to come and we'd love to have you join us it's a lot of fun you ready for some questions I certainly am let's start off with Steven hello Steven hi where are you from I'm Steven from Maryland great Mound great and what's your question Steven I would like to know how it would be to be again you increased how would it be to be a Jesuit priest now you've been a priest longer than I have and the society a little bit longer than I tell us abou deaath well I've been in the society 60 some years and I've been a priest 53 years are people you normally join the Jesuits nowadays but pardon me when I entered this society people many would join after the age of 18 out of high school the more average age now is in the 20s people who already have finished college and so on you if you want to join the Jesuits you should get in touch with one of the Jesuit vocation Directors in any one of the Jesuit provinces around the United States hello he's in Maryland oh so he would go to their previous quarters in Bolton Baltimore huh and let them know who you are what you're interested in and they would over the over a certain number of months years would help you to learn more about the society to help you in your own prayer life to help you do the kind of things that would prepare you for entering the Jesuits once you enter you have two years of what they call the novitiate that is you get to know what the society is about the society gets to know you you make the Spiritual Exercises the full exercises for 30 days under personal direction of the director of novices you go on pilgrimage some places you work with the poor for some time when you go on pilgrimage you get only a few dollars and a couple phone calls you can call back if there things that are something really bad happens but you go to some particular designated place like your shrine for a couple weeks in which you rely on the goodness of other people and the Providence of God where you learn to trust in God at the end of two years in a visit you take vows in the society poverty and chastity and obedience you commit yourself to God to live poorly to live chase Li and to live under the rule of the society itself then you have several years of studies what they call first studies philosophy for example probably usually two or three years I know this is a long course but it takes us we're pretty dumb it takes a long time we're slow learners low learners after the several years of philosophy then you really rejoice as a young man a young Jesuit to go out with what they call Regency it's a name that came out of the University of Paris experience were the young people who were young men who had just gotten their degrees would teach for a while so you would normally go into one of the judges with high schools around the country and teach young Christian men you know what young Christian men are like teenagers from about the age of 13 to 18 or so you teach a couple years there then you would have three years of theology at one of the Jesuit schools of theology in the United States are abroad at the end of that time you would be ordained a priest Nokes even it takes a long time but it goes by quickly it goes all too quickly I assure you I don't know where the 60 some years I've been a Jesuit has gone for that honor I know as I say 53 years as a priest I'll tell you I don't think I would ever want to do anything other than have done what I've done or be anything other than a Jesuit for these years I know it's going to be 43 years for me this year and you know I I just love it you know it's been a great privilege I'm the times I'm surprised that they let me be a judge but it's a it's been a great honor and I and I love the society very much one of our so there's one of the best things about it is the Brethren yeah people with your associate right but Steven if you're interested in the the Jesuits it also would be good to go to your school library and read some books about Saint Ignatius Loyola and st. Francis Xavier and some of the other early Jesuits and that'll give you some good ideas about what the society is like all right let's get a question for our studio on it sir where are you from I'm from Chicago Illinois oh good for you that's my hometown were you from North Side south side actually I'm from the suburbs but I say Chicago oh okay I'm a city rat so so what's your question I was wondering father what efforts the Jesuit Order made to infiltrate Elizabethan England I think I'm going to hire you as a publicist the reason I say that is I have I've been working now at on the final designs for the cover of a new book we're putting out by one of the Jesuits in the United States the father Scully at LeMoyne college it's entitled into the lion's den Jesuits in Elizabethan England it will answer that question fully but to get to it a little bit here the Jesuits first came into England in 1580 with Edmund Campion two other people one brother and two priests to help try to maintain the faith in Elizabethan England where the church Catholic Church was under great great pressure by what we would now call the Anglican Church Elizabeth we and the people around her regarded Catholics in many instances not always but in many instances as traitors to not only the faith as they understood it but especially to the English government unfortunately in 1572 the then Pope had excommunicated Elizabeth from the Catholic Church because she insisted on continuing to be a member of the Anglican Commission was also the head of the church she was also the head of the church so it was a difficult thing she was head of the Anglican Church she was also head of the Commonwealth the government of England the Jesuits came they were very early accused not they were accused especially of treason that they were attempting to overthrow the government the first thing that they were told before they ever left to go to England you are not to deal with governmental affairs you were loyal Englishman from 1580 up until somewhere in the 1600s Jesuits with some regularity when caught were imprisoned or exiled are executed and they were executed by being as Campion was hanged drawn and quartered you know what that means yes I do you know what I mean hanging the one hanging me yes before you were quite dead they would hang you but they wouldn't they did the way the Rope worked it didn't break your neck right away they'd hang you then they would cut you down cut you open pull out your heart behold the heart of a traitor pull your innards out stick them in a boiling pot of water if you were still alive the ideal was that they'd do some of that while you were still alive then they could pull your intestines out and you can still be alive and they boil them in front of you and they're not your heart yeah and then cut off your arms legs and head and stick them on pikes on the various bridges around London it did discourage a certain number of people to say the least but the Jesuits consistently came there until persecutions really a baited by the 1700s the last Jesuit to be martyred was in the 1600s in England but Edmund Campion was the first of a very long line of debbie's or Jesuits who wanted to bring the faith to England the relationships of course between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church in England are at the best they possibly could be they're warm and friendly and understanding of each other and regretful of the kind of awful things that in some instances both sides did do it really we're all too long but into the Lions Den that's the name of the book and it'll probably be out within about four months or so if I ever finish the design cover now with the the there was a caller who asked a question but we dropped that we lost a phone call but the question was this are there any female Jesuits aha no but there was but there was was tell us about there was one it's a most unusual story and there are people who say it didn't happen apparently it couldn't happen and the only answer you can give to that is it could happen because it did happen she was a princess Juana jua na she was the daughter of the Emperor Charles v of the Holy Roman Empire and king of Spain she was the sister of the man who later became king of Spain Philip the second she got to know Pierre father when he was preaching briefly at a particular point in Spain she had been married to the heir to the throne of Portugal the king he died while she was still pregnant and child it was born later to be named Sebastian the King was born after the father had died now this is unfortunate but on the marriage game at the time was women would be horrendous Peschel ii people who were royal of duke lee they'd be unloved use the word shopped around to help on alliances if i want an alliance between this country in that country I'd send my daughter to marry the heir to the throne or so him back to Spain got to know Pierre father wanted to join the Society of Jesus there aren't any women Jesuits and I'll get to the reason for that in a moment but let me tell the rest of the story sir um she wanted to join the society there was no way in which at the time she could possibly publicly have done so she was a princess of Spain she was the daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor if on the interests of alliance her father had wanted to have her married off to some Prince God helped the Society of Jesus if it had accepted somebody who then by taking the vows of poverty chastity and obedience couldn't inherit anything but she was heiress to half the known world that's poverty chastity she couldn't marry again and obedience she'd have to give up any independence of her own as she could be ruler she could be yeah so but at the same time the Society of Jesus was a very new order and it had plenty of opponents she was very much impressed by the society what were we going to do Ignatius in Rome's and what in God's name are we going to do so he was a quintessentially good bureaucrat in this instance he appointed a committee that's what everybody does reports committee and the committee decided now this gets a little involved but the committee decided yes she could be admitted under particular grade in the society a particular status in this society for example that young man the first question asked what do you do when you enter the society the first two years you're a novice then you're what's known as a scholastic that is a student you take vows in the society you commit yourself to the Jesuits but the Jesuits don't finally completely commit themselves to you until many years after you have finished after you finished your own take your final vows take your final vows well the committee decided boughs at the time if you took rouse in any other order you were committed for life absolutely and the church did not display ooh there were some theologians who said it could not for example Martin Luther after one year of novitiate as an Augustinian took vows in the Augustinians and there was no way he could have been dispensed from him he just left of course but with the Jesuits those first vows you commit yourself but the society can dismiss you if it's necessary or desirable so they put it under that kind of they made her a scholastic but under the conditions that it was so secret that it was as close to the secret of the confessional as possible so she lived for the rest of her life she died at a fairly young age I think about the late 30s or early 40s she lived the rest of her life simply sort of as a princess poverty she lived in a not quite as ostentatious a palace as before chastity she never married again and obedience she would regularly write to Ignatius and Francis Borgia telling them how to run the society but to get back seriously more seriously why didn't the Society of Jesus take women members the most fundamental reason was that the society was meant to be an active order sending people out on their own to do apostolic work preaching and teaching and so on and so on in the sixteenth century there was no way in which any respectable woman could ever have been by the circumstances of the culture of the tithe have ever been allowed to do that absolutely not but not to be able to do that would be fundamentally against what the Jesuits were supposed to be doing right that they go out independently at the commission of the Pope or the head of the society to take on a job do it and then come back no woman would have been allowed to do that women women who join religious life had to live in the convent they had to live in a convent let's go to another question from our studio audience pressed with this gentleman my name is John I'm from Woodstock Georgia I want to know about the Jesuits martyrs of Japan and what was their influence up until like today aha if hanging drawing and quartering was pretty bad there were some martyrdoms in Japan which were much much worse we won't go into the gory details there but as a matter of fact the Jesuits they began coming with Francis Xavier or fairly soon after him they had very good success Japan was not a United Kingdom at the time it did have a ruler technical temp but as a matter of fact there were a whole series of feudal or local lords who controlled the country and depending on whether they were favorable to you or not Christianity could be received favorably we had great success in converting people until most unfortunately to things especially happened I remember trade was going on at the same time the Portuguese were Catholics the Dutch who wanted to get in on the Japanese trade were Protestants they maintained and convinced some of the local rulers in Japan that the Jesuits were the first first phalanx the first troops coming in where the Westerners would conquer Japan and so there was great suspicion and several of the rulers turned completely against the Christians and against the Society of Jesus there were hundreds of martyrs not just Jesuits lay people especially Franciscan Franciscans more Franciscans and there were Jesuits as a matter of fact immensely local devoted people over the next several centuries finally though one of the rulers who established the Tokugawa Shogunate over the pretty much over the all of Japan absolutely for bad the practice of Christianity and basically routed it out almost completely no missionaries were allowed and as a matter of fact you know no Westerners were allowed in Japan for several centuries until American gunboat showed up in the 19th century and opened up Japan but for several centuries nobody could get in when they did though they found people found to the utter amazement small group several maybe 20,000 at the most I think that's probably that's yeah I think was like 10,000 yeah people who had maintained Christianity however attenuated however much they had mixed it up with various other things but they were still Christians secretly living for a couple hundred years without anybody there to sustain and support them other than themselves and their love for Jesus that's one of the most amazing stories in the history of Christianity that was a key to my vocation it was because when the the Jesuits had told them that we'll come back and when the priests did show up I believe it was a Franciscan that they asked him questions like do you get married do you honor the Pope and do you give on in to the Blessed Virgin Mary up that's right those are the questions that the Jesuits had told them to ask and they pass those on for a couple hundred years and and I was very impressed with that kind of work so that was one of these that opened me to the society and here you are Here I am let's take another question from our studio audience man were you from I'm from Pennsylvania originally from Maryland and my question has to do with am I correct in remembering that Archbishop Carroll was a Jesuit and if so would you comment on the early days of the Jesuits in Maryland and the connection was Georgetown Shore City sure thank you in 1630 for the first Jesuits arrived in Maryland they came with the colonizing effort of Lord Calvert Lord Baltimore the Calvert's were Catholics at a time at which the king of England was favorable at least not unfavorable to Catholics and he allowed Calvert to establish a colony here called Maryland Catholic the first colony with religious freedom of yes the first one that deliberately said not for everybody unfortunately they said neither atheists nor Jews could be free to practice all religion but just the very fact that Protestants and Catholics could they several Jesuits came with the first colonists especially a man named Andrew white one of the main buildings a church is named after that man after they had been here the Jesuits had been in Maryland for some time colonists from Virginia basically took over the Maryland government and exiled whatever Jesuits were still left they put him in Chains and sent them back to England they maintained a tenuous quiet presence in the rural counties of Maryland for better than 100 and some better than 100 and some years the Carroll family was one of the old Catholic families that maintained themselves there with several people among them John Carroll of Carrollton one of the fought one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a cousin of Charles Carroll of pardon Charles Carroll undersell yeah I was careless want to sign the charge John was a man who could not get an education in this Catholic education his family after he went to a grade school a quiet hidden grade school called Bohemia Manor in Maryland sent him to England to get further his education he joined the Society of Jesus there and then we get another story that came along the Pope under pressure of the some of the kings in in Europe had to suppress the society Carroll was no longer a Jesuit he was a priest by that time he came back to the United States he continued to minister here we became free at the declaration a pardon me after the Revolutionary War Catholics wanted their own Bishop here the Holy See Rome the Pope allowed the priests in this country to elect the man they wanted his Bishop they chose Carroll as the first bishop of Maryland the first bishop of Baltimore at the time you could not be a bishop and also be a Jesuit at the same time when the Society of Jesus was restored in 1814 those who had lived here under the suppression came many of them came back to the Society well there weren't that many came back to the society John Carroll as Bishop could not but he was the first bishop of the United States and the founder of Georgetown city so you from Maryland you have several reasons to be very grateful to him matter of fact if you go to Maryland there's still some old mansions that have places where the priest would hide from from the government because they were hunted down in those days - just like in England they were called priests holls holls holls well that's you know this is a you have any books on John Carroll no we don't read it okay not at the moment you have to get get one of those to go in there - I want to mention again the website um it's ww Jesuit sources calm and you can find sources calm and all the books are listed there everything everything we've published 100 and some books you can buy you can order them right there from the website is a meta room you can also write to them at the Institute of Jesuit resources 3 601 Lyndell Boulevard and that's in st. Louis Missouri six three one zero eight six three one zero eight the phone number is three one four six three three four two photos to me four six two two three three one four six three three four six two two and you can get some of these books and hopefully grow in your spirituality as well I'm afraid though that we can't grow in our time here because it's time is over it's already goats already gone it's gone by quickly but thank you so much for the information that you've given us and if you would join me in giving a blessing Almighty God bless you and keep you cause his face to shine upon you lead you in all of your ways by his peace the Father Son and Holy Spirit amen amen and again I want to thank all of you for your great support this network is brought to you by you you make it possible we cannot keep this Network going without the help that you send us every month so please keep us in between your gas bill your electric bill and your cable bill and we'll be able to pay all of our bills as well thank you and God bless you very much you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 49,878

Rating: 4.3846154 out of 5

Keywords: EWTN, CATHOLIC, EWTN LIVE, MITCH PACWA, SJ, jOHN PADBERG, JESUITS, SOCIETY OF jesus, IGNATIUS oF LOYOLA, Catholic

Id: QWIR6FeErqY

Length: 56min 31sec (3391 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 31 2011