(LifeSiteNews) — The late Malachi Martin pulled no punches in his nonfiction masterwork, The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church.
The 1987 book detailed the five-century-old religious order’s “abandonment of basic Roman Catholic teaching, the replacement of it with sociopolitical solutions, and the inevitably consequent abandonment of the prime Jesuit vocation to be ‘Pope’s Men.’”
Martin’s “war between the papacy and the Jesuits” ended with the election of an Argentinian Jesuit as Pope Francis in 2013, making the Society of Jesus the Pope’s Men again – but within a pontificate very different from its predecessors in terms of doctrinal integrity.
While this reality makes the book outdated on one level, the Jesuit focus on politics over Catholicism has never been stronger. The Synod on Synodality is the obvious example. Other evidence is plentiful at Jesuits.org, the website of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.
The conference’s Justice and Ecology webpage highlights issues that don’t normally top the agendas of the Church’s other major religious orders. There are more than 14,000 Jesuit priests, brothers, scholastics and novices worldwide.
The Economic Justice ministry works to protect “funding for crucial economic assistance programs and for the implementation of stronger anti-poverty measures.” The Criminal Legal System ministry pushes reforms such as abolishing capital punishment and eliminating mandatory minimum sentencing.
Care for Creation advocates for “a society that prioritizes integral human development over profit.” The program is based on Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, which “challenges the global church to embark on a journey of renewal … that heals our fractured relationships with Creator, Creation and each other.”
The Ignatian Spirituality and Ecology section of the Care for Creation page invites visitors to pray the Ecological Examen and ask themselves, “How can I repair my relationship with creation and make choices consistent with my desire for reconciliation with creation?”
True believers can also take the Ignatian Carbon Challenge and read Healing Earth, an “interdisciplinary environmental science textbook” of a progressive bent. The link to the Prayer for the Boreal Forest is currently not working.
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Through the Migration ministry, “the Jesuits are committed to building a culture of hospitality and solidarity with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Across borders, our institutions accompany people seeking safety and opportunity in the U.S. and Canada.”
“Through protest and advocacy meetings with elected officials, we call on our governments to respond to ‘the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,’” according to the Take Action webpage.
The page links to an action alert urging the U.S. Senate to pass the Break Free from Plastics Pollution Act. Another action alert includes an online form letter addressed to President Joe Biden, asking him to increase the number of daily appointments with immigration officials available to migrants using the CBP One app at the nation’s southern border.
The Shareholder Advocacy project promotes private-sector behavior “consistent with Catholic social teaching, through dialogues with corporations, shareholder resolutions and proxy voting.” The approach leverages the financial investments of Jesuit provinces “to work toward social and economic justice, a sustainable Earth and for the common good.”
A marquee ministry called Slavery, History, Memory and Reconciliation recounts how the Society of Jesus played an active role in American chattel slavery “from the colonial era until the passage of the 13th Amendment. The involuntary labor of the people the Jesuits owned, rented, and borrowed helped establish, expand, and sustain Jesuit missionary efforts and educational institutions in colonial North America and, over time, across the United States.”
“We, the Jesuits, deeply regret our participation in this evil institution,” the website states. “We are called now to an intentional response: one that foregrounds the lived experiences of enslaved people, acknowledges the legacies of Jesuit slaveholding, and is made in collaboration with descendants and those in our communities who continue to suffer from the consequences of slavery.”
Launched in 2021, the Descendants Truth & Reconciliation Foundation is described as a “first-of-its kind partnership among the Descendants of the enslaved and the present-day successors of the enslavers.” The foundation is “rooted in the events of 1838, when 272 enslaved men, women and children were sold by the Jesuit owners of Georgetown University to plantation owners in Louisiana.”
Jesuit.org does not dwell on the issue of abortion, but there is a link to Protecting the Least Among Us: A Statement of the Society of Jesus on Abortion.
“As we Jesuits survey our culture, we cannot help but see abortion as part of the massive injustices in our society,” according to the 2018 document that suggests a moral equivalence between abortion and poverty. “There are less direct but equally senseless ways we undermine life, through violence, racism, xenophobia, and the growing inequality of wealth and education.”
Confirming Malachi Martin’s appraisal, the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the U.S. consistently pushes sociopolitical solutions to the near exclusion of basic Catholic teaching.
Contemplation and Political Action: An Ignatian Guide to Civic Engagement, a 2020 document from the conference president, highlights a line from a 2013 homily by Pope Francis: “Good Catholics meddle in politics.”
The Ignatian Solidarity Network (ISN) is a prominent Jesuit vehicle for political meddling and implementation of the order’s policy goals.
A lay-led 501(c)3 organization, ISN supports schools and community groups with its Ignatian Advocacy 101 Training Guide. An action alert to Support Meaningful Policing Reforms calls for “immediate action to address the social sin of police violence,” blaming killings of black men and women by police on systemic racism and white supremacy.
The network’s Catholic Ethical Purchasing Alliance (CEPA) assists Catholic communities in using “their talents to build a more just society by actively integrating the principles of Catholic Social Teaching into the purchasing decisions of their church, school, college or university.”
CEPA also sells a “full collection of ethically-sourced resources for justice work year-round” including T-shirts, caps, socks, tote bags, water bottles, mugs, coffee, candles, salad spoons and earrings.
The larger ISN store flogs additional collections of products related to Ecological Justice, Racial Justice and Migration Justice. There are protest rally banners and yard signs (with or without wire frames) to combat climate change, support Black Lives Matter and Defend DACA.
Face masks and other items are printed with Voting Is an Act of Love, the name of a campaign being heavily promoted in the runup to the U.S. presidential election.
Website visitors can “pledge to vote as an act of love on Election Day” based on the “interconnectedness of all humanity and the importance of promoting justice, solidarity, and care for our common home through my civic engagement. My vote matters, and I pledge to use it wisely.”
The motto of Education for Justice (EFJ), another project of the Ignatian Solidarity Network, is “We put the teach in Catholic Social Teaching.”
A paid EFJ membership grants access to “our easily sortable online database of 2,500+ topical prayers, discussion guides, reflections, lesson plans, fact sheets, and more.” That includes social media packs for Juneteenth, LGBTQIA and gun violence.
EFJ is currently offering both a student guide and a parish bulletin insert on Inequality and United States Elections, including “questions that can be asked of candidates for public office regarding the topic of wealth inequality.”
The left-leaning Presidential Debate Bingo activity notes that “as the 2024 election cycle comes to its conclusion, the American people are called more than ever to engage in the political process.”
“As you watch debates between presidential or local candidates before Election Day, use this game to follow along. See how often the candidates raise these issues,” which skew in a clearly progressive direction, “and mark off the corresponding squares with checkmarks.”
Martin’s The Jesuits focuses on the order’s decline and fall, but also readily concedes the past glories of the Society of Jesus as explorers, missionaries, educators, martyrs and—above all—defenders of doctrinal orthodoxy and papal authority.
He writes that for 425 years, from the order’s founding by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1540 until 1965, the Jesuit record of accomplishment “stands unmatched in past or present history—a record both for services to the Roman Church and to human society at large.”
Martin points to Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., the order’s superior general from 1965 to 1983, as “summarily responsible for this complete turnabout of the Society of Jesus.” But under Pope Francis, S.J., Arrupe was declared a “Servant of God” in 2018, and his cause for canonization remains open.
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Robert Jenkins is a pseudonym for a Catholic writer living in Sacramento, California.