Search Results for: Mann

“This task of direct evangelization by the preaching of Jesus Christ remains essential today and must be continued,” stated Decree 4 from the 32nd General Congregation of the Society of Jesus, “since never before have there been so many people who have never, heard the Word of Christ the Savior.” Four years after that gathering […]

The Conference of Latin American Bishops (CELAM) took place in Puebla, outside of Mexico City, in 1979. Among the participants was Pedro Arrupe, the Superior General of the Society of Jesus. Towards the end of the conference Arrupe answered questions from the previous, a transcript of exchanges appearing below. Arrupe begins with some introductory remarks

The Ignatian Center for Spirituality in Rome closed a five-week conference on Ignatian Spirituality on February 18, 1978, with Pedro Arrupe delivering the following remarks. The Superior General of the Society of Jesus based his remarks on a phrase from the Jesuits’ Formula, approved by Pope Julius III in 1550.  For Arrupe, the phrase “To

Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus on July 21, 1773. In the preceding decades, the Jesuits had suffered expulsions from the Catholic empires of Portugal (1759), France (1764), and Spain (1767), where they had become handy scapegoats for kings or princes under civic pressure. In Portugal, for example, charges against the Society included

The last decree issued by the 35th General Congregation concerned the “dynamism” begun by the previous congregation of Jesuit delegates in 1995. The decree below contains the delegates’ call for renewal by the members of the Society of Jesus of “our commitment to apostolic collaboration and to a profound sharing of labor of the life

The fifth of six decrees promulgated by the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus concerned the order’s “governance structures and ways of proceeding.” The decree, appearing below, is a highly technical and internally focused document. Among its measures, the decree directs the new superior general “to undertake a comprehensive review of the central

On February 2, 2006, Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, having reached an agreement with Pope Benedict XVI to allow for his resignation as the Jesuits’ superior general, dispatched a letter to the Society of Jesus indicating that “it had become more and more clear that the Society has arrived at a situation…which required a General Congregation.” That gathering—the

The final decree promulgated by the 34th General Congregation articulates the delegates’ views on the combination of “certain attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior” that forms the “Jesuit way of proceeding.” Among that way’s components, according to this decree, are a “deep personal love for Christ,” being a “contemplative in action,” being part of the

The delegates of the 34th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus argued that Catholic Church of the 21st century was to be “unmistakably…the ‘Church of the Laity.’” To praise, foster, and guide further collaboration with the laity, the Jesuits at the congregation issued the following the decree. It considers what the Society can offer

“In order to ‘feel’ [sentir] the anxieties and aspirations of the dispossessed in an Ignatian way,” the following decree from the 34th General Congregation declares that Jesuits “need direct personal experience” of poverty.  The decree explains poverty’s “apostolic and prophetic dimension” (it serving as the “unequivocal condition of our credibility”), offers guidelines to “renew our