Cross Word

The Jesuit Legacy: From Ignatius to Francis

• Michele McAloon • Season 3 • Episode 134

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Delve into the captivating world of the Jesuits with Dr. Marcus Friedrich, whose monumental work "The Jesuits: A History" illuminates five centuries of one of history's most influential and controversial religious orders. From their unexpected origins in the conversion of a Spanish nobleman to their current global presence under the first Jesuit pope, this conversation unveils the remarkable adaptability that has defined the Society of Jesus.

The Jesuits' story begins with Ignatius of Loyola, who transformed from courtier and soldier to religious leader after a battlefield injury forced an existential reckoning. Friedrich reveals how the order's unique organizational structure—featuring centralized leadership and the absence of common prayer—distinguished them from traditional monastic communities. Their functionally open mission of "helping souls" allowed Jesuits to engage with virtually every aspect of human existence, making them impossible to ignore in any serious study of early modern history.

What makes the Jesuits particularly fascinating is their perpetual ability to reinvent themselves. Whether riding the wave of European cultural advancement in their early centuries, adopting conservative positions in the 19th century, or embracing progressive causes after Vatican II, the Society has never been a monolithic entity. This diversity explains both their extraordinary influence and the animosity they've frequently encountered—culminating in their unprecedented suppression between 1773 and 1814.

Friedrich's historical perspective proves especially valuable for understanding Pope Francis, whose papacy cannot be fully comprehended without recognizing his formation as both a Latin American bishop and a Jesuit. While the Society faces challenges of declining European membership, their growing presence in non-European regions and innovative approaches to contemporary issues suggest continued relevance in the 21st century.

Whether you're fascinated by religious history, European intellectual development, or the cultural forces shaping our modern world, this episode offers invaluable insights into an order that has been, as Friedrich demonstrates, far more complex and consequential than commonly understood. Subscribe now for more conversations that uncover the hidden influences shaping our world.

Michele McAloon:

Hey folks, Michele McAloon of Crossword, you'll forgive me. Today I am re-releasing an interview that I had over a year ago with a man who wrote really an opus about the Jesuit order. Why is the Jesuit order particularly important today? Because Pope Francis was a Jesuit and there's been very little in the press about his Jesuit identity and how that is going to weigh in on his legacy. So I thought it would be a good, informative interview for the events that are happening right now. Please like and subscribe. I've got some great interviews coming up. I've got one about Zelensky. I've got one about what happened to the animals in the zoo during World War II. Where did those animals go? How were they cared for? Got another one called the Illegals about how the KGB or the GRU has planted people into American society. Think about the Americans. A great author for that book. So like and subscribe so you can keep listening and it helps me out. Thank you, god bless.

Michele McAloon:

Welcome to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word. My name is Michele McAloon. You can find my program and other great Catholic radio programming on archangelradiocom. Today we are speaking to Dr Professor Marcus Friedrich, author of an opus of a work the Jesuits, a History published by Princeton University Press. Dr Friedrich is a professor of early modern history at the University of Hamburg. His books include the Birth of the Archive, and he lives in Hamburg, germany. All right, welcome, dr Friedrich.

Marcus Friedrich:

Welcome, Michelle. It's a great pleasure to be here and discuss the book with you.

Michele McAloon:

Great. It's such an honor to have you All right, let's begin this discussion. It's such an honor to have you All right, let's begin this discussion. Since its founding by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540, the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, they've played a very critical role in the events of modern history and of Europe. You cannot separate the Jesuits from European history, and it's from this perspective that you wrote this amazing book, and it's from this perspective that you wrote this amazing book. It is a historical accounting of the birth of the Jesuits, their social interaction with the world and their modern interaction in the 21st century. Why is the writing of the history of this order a serious subject of historical study? Because you know what? There's a lot of Catholic orders, but why the Jesuits?

Marcus Friedrich:

I would say the Jesuits have become enormously influential in many or almost all areas of human life very quickly after their founding. So it's basically impossible to discuss any realm of human existence in the 16th, 17th, 18th century without hitting upon individual Jesuits or the Jesuits as a social body, as an institution. It's basically impossible to understand almost all of early modern history if one were to exclude the society of Jesus. So from my point of view the really interesting question is why have the Jesuits not always been such a mainstay of secular historians? Why have they not always played such a prominent role in our profession? I would think it has to do with a certain reservation of earlier generations of historians towards ecclesiastical players as subjects of history of historiography, as subjects of history of historiography. Only in the last maybe two or three decades since the early 1990s, probably for a wide range of reasons, have religious actors of various kinds really sort of become re-embedded into historical narratives by historians outside the remit of the church properly.

Michele McAloon:

That's interesting because, especially Europe, the religious history of Europe, is so tied in with the social and the secular history of Europe. So that's very interesting. I wonder if that was an outcry or an outgrowth of modernism and anti-modernism, of how that happened and now maybe it's maturing. Especially, we can't have this discussion without Pope Francis, and we'll talk about him later. But he I mean talk about being embedded in the culture and he is very, I think, prototypical of a religious that has been part of the modern culture and will continue to be a part of the modern culture for decades to come, regardless of how long his papacy will last. So very, very interesting. Let's start from the very beginning. Who was St Ignatius of Loyola and how were the Jesuits founded?

Marcus Friedrich:

Ignatius of Loyola was not initially a person his friends would have associated, I believe, with a committed religious life. He was a nobleman from Basque country, that is, northern region of modern day Spain lived a typically noble life, as thousands of other nobles would have led it in what is the late medieval or very early modern period. He was committed to chivalry, to martial arts, sword, fighting, these kind of things. He was deeply steeped in late medieval courtly culture. He clearly shared notions of courtly love, of courtly behavior. He was a courtier in many ways. He lived at the courts of many important, higher ranking Spanish nobles. He was a soldier, banished nobles. He was a soldier. So I would say he lived a typical life of a late medieval nobleman and I think he was for a long time quite happy with it.

Marcus Friedrich:

For all that we know, his change towards a different course of life came actually fairly late in his life, after decades of a secular life. As I just explained, in 1521, he was severely wounded, defending the city of Pamplona for the Spanish king, one of the many wars the Spanish kings fought with the French kings. He was severely wounded and, as the story is told by Ignatius himself, he lay restlessly and bored on his sickbed he wasn't quite finding entertainment around him. He asked for some of the typically gorgeous books that he would have read before his injury, but those weren't available. So he turned to a religious book. He opened that book by random and he found a passage about medieval religious man which suddenly inspired him. That passage this is, of course, a classical trope of Christian literature, so it's extremely difficult to tell how true or how realistic that is. That is the story that he presented of himself.

Marcus Friedrich:

I think what's behind this single moment of illumination is that while being injured, he probably really did undergo a kind of an existential crisis. It became clear to him that, also physically, he could probably not continue living the life he had left before. So there is really a talk about his leg being shattered. So the ideals and the ways of life that he had lived for would probably have become impossible for him. Physically speaking. And probably, you know, he just underwent a moment of existential crisis that is then, in retrospect, narrowed down to this one particular episode.

Marcus Friedrich:

So what happens after he gains strength again? He really changes course of life. He embarks on a long mission to find a new perspective in life for him. He tries all kinds of religious ways that have been popular at the time. He tries to become a Gettic person. He goes on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He really experiments, trying to find the most suitable way forward for him. None of this really works. He does get new insights, but he remains unsatisfied. And in the end he does something quite unusual, I would say, especially for a nobleman. He decides that he needs to step up his learning at an unusually late moment in time. He goes back to school. He starts really from scratch, learns Latin, attends several universities, first in Spain and then in the end in Paris, and really I wouldn't say he becomes an intellectual not at all, actually but does soak in intellectual culture, and this really becomes sort of his way forward.

Michele McAloon:

And he goes from there, though, and starts an order. Well, how does he go from becoming an intellect and being re-schooled to actually saying, okay, I'm going to start an order, and I think he started originally with 10 companions, right? So what was that jump?

Marcus Friedrich:

Absolutely.

Marcus Friedrich:

He starts with a predefined group we might say.

Marcus Friedrich:

It seems to me that during his long years we're talking about many years of schooling just became an influential person for a group of people studying with him, working and living with him that were bound together in friendship, but also increasingly, I would say, by his what we could call maybe a spiritual authority or spiritual experience, charisma, if you want. He starts bringing together groups of people already in Spain and he steps up his socializing, spiritual socializing, in Paris. So eventually, over long years, this band of initial Jesuits really are attracted to him. He lives with some of them in sort of a college dorm room situation there and I think it's just a band of spiritual friendship that ties these people together. In the process, one say that he cultivates and develops and cultivates a sort of well, we could almost call it an art of spiritual conversation, I would say, which ultimately manifests itself in the spiritual exercises, the great book that he writes, and through this process of socializing in spiritual ways, this initial band of people is formed that is then transformed into the Jesuit order Ignatius.

Michele McAloon:

Loyola writes the Constitution and it has four simple vows. It's very different from the Dominicans or from the Cartusians or from whatever other orders that have been firmly established. It is as you say. It is established in a very specific intellectual milieu of Christian humanism, of modern scholasticism. So from the very beginning it has a very different character. How was it unique from the other orders that had been founded in Christianity, in Catholicism?

Marcus Friedrich:

That for all the specific differences of the Jesuits, they are of course deeply embedded in the long tradition of Christian monasticism. Ignatius and his early friends, they knew perfectly well about the many other orders and that they read their constitutions, and St Francis and St Dominicus were sort of particularly inspiring figures for Ignatius. So we should not conceive of the Jesuits as an absolute break with the tradition of monasticism in the Western world. So I think this needs to be said at the beginning. That said, however, of course you're absolutely right. The Jesuits distinguished themselves through a number of features. Most obviously perhaps these features are visible in organizational matters, so that the actual institutional setup of the Jesuit order is remarkably different from other orders. Most obviously, all kind of well, it's a difficult term, but all kind of democratic institutions and other orders are reduced within the Jesuit order. So there is no regular general congregation or no regular general meeting. The order as a whole only comes together by representatives at the death of Father General in extraordinary moments. Father General in extraordinary moments. Whereas in other orders there was an annual or biannual or tri-annual regular meeting of the entire order, the Jesuit Father General is elected for lifetime also a big difference to earlier orders which gives him extraordinary power but also creates a significant amount of continuity and stability within the Jesuit order, because there is no perennial shift of preferences, of interests, of personalities.

Marcus Friedrich:

Ahead of the order. There are many individual organizational features. There is also a lot peculiar in terms of spirituality, as it is set down in the constitution that there is no common prayer, there is no praying of the hours, there is no unique dress code for the Jesuits. All of these were markers of difference. We could say they were also quite obvious already from the first moment onward for the contemporaries of Ignatius, and in fact we should say almost from the beginning. The Jesuits and their peculiarities were embattled. The Jesuits were criticized for trying to be something special. The Jesuits always had to defend these unique features.

Michele McAloon:

Now, very quickly, men started becoming very attracted to this order. So I think you wrote that within the first couple of really within the first decade they had about a thousand men and it just kept growing throughout Europe. What was the initial attraction of these men to this order?

Marcus Friedrich:

I would say it has to do with the special setup of the Jesuit order. I also think it has a lot to do with enormous investment in intellectual life, the schooling that the Jesuits provided for their own members, which made the Jesuit order immediately attractive for a wide range of social groups, seeing that they could get their sons educated there. As the first successes of the Jesuit order became known, I would say sort of a process of self-fulfilling prophecy starts to kick into place. The Jesuits become famous for certain things, things that are on vogue in the time anyway. Talk about missions, so going to non-European parts of the world.

Marcus Friedrich:

This really sparks interest, people who want to do this, who want to lead this kind of life, who want to make these kind of experiences. For those people the Jesuits really become a kind of a go-to institution. The longer the Jesuits are in existence, I think this becomes sort of a virtuous circle. The Jesuits, you know, become more known for certain things. People who are attracted to these kind of dimensions of human or religious life find almost no alternative anymore than looking for the Jesuits. So I think it's really something that requires a complex understanding.

Michele McAloon:

One of the things that you really bring out in your book is that throughout its history, the Jesuits have been a contemporary order, so meaning that they are deeply embedded, not really in the ancient practices of the church, but in the contemporary life and social life and social weaving of modern society, whatever modern society was at that time, but they were also.

Michele McAloon:

Modern society was at that time, but they were also. They also liked to hang on to their traditions too. They went through a period of anti-modernism which is very hard for us to realize in the 21st century of who the Jesuits had become, to look back and see that they were. They were very much rigorous, they were very much holding on to their traditions for a long, long time and I would even say what they're doing today is still in many ways very traditional Jesuits, because they are holding on to the contemporary culture. You quoted St Ignatius saying, I think a man that is not good for the world is not good for society, but a man who is good for the world is good for the society, and that was embraced very early on. I think that's why the Jesuits have had so much attention throughout the world, good and bad.

Marcus Friedrich:

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And just to start with your very final remark, I think this feature of the Jesuits really explains their successes and also why they became such an object of hatred. I think you're absolutely right for the beginning of the Chesed Order, I would say for the first I don't know 100 or 130 years or so, the Cheseds were really riding the wave of currentness and they were sort of the avant-garde of European culture in almost every conceivable way, which might have made them particularly attractive also for enterprising young men who you know were sort of interested in the changing culture of Europe, who were seeking to be cutting edge in a way. Really interesting larger scale questions of Jesuit history which I think nobody has really convincingly answered is how the Jesuits may have lost this momentum sort of towards the second half of the early modern period, after, I don't know, 1680 or 1700 or so.

Marcus Friedrich:

I think it is undeniable that the Jesuits in many ways sort of lost their cutting edge position. They were not driving or representing forward-looking aspects of European culture anymore, leading in the 19th century to the Jesuits being ultra-montane, anti-modernist, sort of skeptical of most of the new directions in which European life was going, although one actually, for fairness needs to say that in many ways the anti-modern Jesuits were yet again as modern as you could be. For instance, if you look at how the Jesuits started to use media technologies from the mid-19th century onward, you could hardly be more modern than the Jesuits. You know they founded journals in the early 20th century. They openly embraced mass media, radio.

Marcus Friedrich:

In many respects, even the anti-modernist Jesuits were particularly modern again, or following modern trends. And yet another really interesting shift is how the Jesuits then managed, after World War II, around Second Vatican Council. Jesuits then managed, after World War II, around Second Vatican Council, yet again to style themselves as the avant-garde, the leftists of modern Catholicism again. And this time they really managed to do this by openly and explicitly linking themselves back to their original charisma, or what they now understand to be their original charisma. So this is really interesting because you could say that the most recent turn to modernism is a kind of a almost a renaissance of their original roots, which they now claim may have been forgotten sometime in between.

Michele McAloon:

Absolutely, and I believe that Pope Francis is the pinnacle of that of contemporary, very, very modern Catholicism, and there's debates over whether that's good or bad. But to understand Pope Francis, I think there's two things you really have to understand about the man. One, he's a Latin American bishop, and the other thing is that he is a Jesuit. And the other thing is that he is a Jesuit and his papacy has been very much in mode with a Jesuit tradition in a weird way. And I mean not in a weird way, not I'm not saying it's bad, but to really understand him, I think you have to understand the history that he came from, how he was formed.

Marcus Friedrich:

I wholeheartedly agree.

Marcus Friedrich:

I would only add maybe one additional dimension to this statement.

Marcus Friedrich:

Of course, the question of what it means to be a modern Jesuit in post-Vatican II, modern Catholicism has been extremely debated as well. Sure, post-vatican II Society of Jesus has, of course, as you know, been riven by internal differences, and we're not talking about, you know, left versus right, but also the forward-looking parts of the order. They had very different opinions about how to move forward and what it actually meant to recover the original charisma of Ignatius. So I would maybe qualify the overall statement by saying well, francis represents one way in which post-Vatican society of Jesus reinvented themselves as a modern, forward-looking part of the church or part of the world at large. And other ways in which the Jesuits other Jesuits tried to, you know, become modern again may now look sort of less popular. Think about liberation theology, which is, of course, something that Pope Francis has a very ambivalent relation to. I would say there were many ways, or many attempts, for the Jesuits to move into modernity, and one of these ways has now really become very popular and widespread through Francis as Pope.

Michele McAloon:

What you're talking about we actually see in the United States in play today, and actually your book brings this out. I think very well that the Jesuits have never been a monolithic, unified mind. In the United States we see figures like Father Joseph Vescio, who founded Ignatius Publishing and he is a, I would say, a very orth Orthodox Catholic priest. We have Father James Martin who is on the complete opposite side. He's promoting LGBTQ and all of that other stuff. We just had the death of Father James Shaw, who was a brilliant intellect and again very much in a very Orthodox order. But from the beginning of the Jesuits there's really never been a monolithic there of mindset. There have been many different Jesuits and a lot of that has been geographically determined, it seems like or society determined or theology determined. But the flexibility of this order to encompass many different walks of life has truly probably been one of its best gifts.

Marcus Friedrich:

I absolutely agree and I would also say we should always keep this in mind because in our standard narratives of what the order is and how the order develops, we usually pick those Jesuits as typical representatives that feed into our overall image. So in the 19th century we usually tend to pick out the ultra-montane, conservative Jesuits as representing the order, while now, in the late 20th or 21st century, we tend to look to Fathers Berrigan or these kind, know these kind of people who embody the forward-looking dimension of Jesuit history. But there are conservatives now and there have been very modern Jesuits in the 19th century and I think, in all fairness, we should maybe try to get a better balance for all eras of Jesuit history as well. But to your larger point as well. But to your larger point, ignatius never had how to say this in English that the Jesuit order was not founded with one particular ministry in mind. So if the Dominicans were the preachers and Benedictines were the contemplatives and others were the ascetic orders, ignatius, the found it from the beginning to be functionally open. They did not have one sort of defining topic or one defining social group they were targeting.

Marcus Friedrich:

They have only a very formal and abstract, if you want, goal helping souls, and helping souls could mean sort of everything, depending on where you were, and therefore it was necessary, because it was just an abstract, an unconcrete mission that the Chesed Order had to have Cheseds of very, very different kinds.

Marcus Friedrich:

You know, you needed social workers and you needed brilliant intellectuals, you needed sort of boring people who wanted to stay home in their nation and you needed, you know, world explorers. Because this formal, abstract goal of helping souls was not specified in any one particular way only, but almost every Jesuit could invent a new way of what it means to help souls and in many cases I would say, fathers General then accepted yes, okay, this is also a way in which we can help souls. We should at least consider doing this as well. And then we maybe need yet another type of Jesuitism is a little technical, but yet another sort of Jesuit with a special skill set and a special character maybe. So this formal openness or lack of specification, we may also say, I think, explains in part why the Jesuits could become influential in so many different eras, but it also explains why so enormously different incarnations of what a Jesuit is came into existence. Does this make sense?

Michele McAloon:

Yes, absolutely. One thing, though, the Jesuits have always been able to incite is animosity. The Jesuits have always been able to incite is animosity. So even today people have strong opinions about the Jesuits, whether you love them or you hate them. So we go to 1740, where the order is suppressed and it is the Jesuits again are painted kind of in this scapegoat, sort of this political, social scapegoat. And again, what happened with the suppression Because that's very unusual in the history of an order for it to be suppressed from 1740 to 1814. And sort of what led up to that suppression and sort of what led up to that suppression and even as late as John Paul II was talking about putting them under his personal protection. I mean, this is a group of men that have never shied away from controversy, ever from the very beginning. So let's talk a little bit about the suppression and how that happened.

Marcus Friedrich:

I think we need to just make a statement that is obviously obvious for you and I who have read and written this book, but which is often overlooked the Jesuits were not particularly close to the papacy. It's sort of just plain wrong to imagine the Jesuits as sort of the minions of papacy in general, and I would actually even say there were only very papacy in general, and I would actually even say there were only very, very few popes who would have used the Jesuit order in a particularly direct way Certainly not Francis, by the way. Okay, I would say that there is no need, simply no need, to be astonished that the papacy would undo the Jesuits. It's not that they had a particularly close relationship anyway. First point. Second point the Jesuits, of course, on the one hand, are by far the most prominent example for orders being suppressed by any pope, but this is not a unique feature. So orders have been suppressed all the time Well, all the time. But many times they're reinstituted again. So, except for the scale of the devastation that happened in 1773, suppressing orders is something popes do occasionally. Actually, if you read the brief that suppresses the Jesuits, pope Clemens XIV cites a very long record of earlier popes doing this. So he basically styles himself as just doing something that is entirely common. How it came about in the mid or late 18th century, I would say this is a combination of various political, cultural and religious crises that turned the Jesuits really into the victim of an international political campaign created and stage managed in particular by the Spanish and partly Portuguese Bourbon monarchies. They wanted the Jesuits gone and the Pope actually two Popes, clemens XIII and XIV. They actually drag their feet pretty long before they eventually feel they have to comply with strong secular monarchs.

Marcus Friedrich:

The longer history, of course, is more complex, I would say. First of all, the Jesuits attracted hatred or conflict almost from the beginning. It doesn't even take 10 years for the first anti-Jesuit writings to appear in public For various reasons. These start with small-scale attacks on some of the peculiarities of the Jesuit order why don't they pray the hours, and so on and so forth. In the late 16th century, there comes a strong political dimension, especially in France, comes a strong political dimension, especially in France, as the Jesuits are completely falsely, I would say associated with political turmoil making. This is, I would say, on a factual basis. This is nonsense, but this is how the Jesuits were perceived in France. France was undergoing, you know, incredibly internal turmoil, civil war, so on and so forth. Scapegoats of all kinds had to be found and were found, and the Jesuits, I think, were just a prominent part of that.

Marcus Friedrich:

In the 17th century, jesuits' cultural and spiritual outlook, their worldview, their mindset, became object of critique and controversy. As I would just simply say, an alternative mode of being Christian or Catholic emerged. In France in particular, this is what we call Jansenism, which starts from a few technical theological questions we don't need to go into here maybe but then evolves really into a broader, I would say, a cultural alternative. It's a different way of feeling and living out Catholic identity, if you want. And the Jesuits fight against Chansanism. There are a couple of victories there, but these are Pyrrhic victories. In the end, chansanism actually gains the upper hand in the 18th century, which also feeds, through various complications, into a general anti-Jesuit climate. And then finally, in the 18th century, the Jesuits, as we discussed earlier, have really a hard time keeping up and relating in positive ways to the new cultural fashion we could say of Enlightenment discourse, of Enlightenment style of doing things.

Marcus Friedrich:

The Jesuits were not per se against the Enlightenment, but it was not their world anymore.

Marcus Friedrich:

For members of the Enlightenment, the Jesuits increasingly represent what needs to be overcome, what is outdated, what is out-fashioned.

Marcus Friedrich:

They really become scapegoats for conservatism and so on and so forth. Finally, in the non-European world, many of the European colonial powers in the 18th century felt strong enough to push back against the traditional strengths of the church in general, upon which they had very heavily relied, to actually get the colonial empires going at all by the late 17th, early 18th century, I would say, at least in some parts, central America, southern America, the European colonial powers, finally, we may almost say, have developed enough state infrastructure, administrative power, so on and so forth, to feel a need to, you know, cut back on ecclesiastical influence in general. And as the missionary church was particularly driven or dominated or supported by the Jesuits, the Jesuits again were on the forefront of this fight, but they were not the only ones again which the secular, enlightened colonial powers pushed back. So out of this you know extremely complex conundrum of reasons, developments, forces, a general anti-Jesuitism emerged which then, over various steps, led to their demise in 1773.

Michele McAloon:

Now the Jesuits have another very interesting twist of history In the interwar years between World War I and World War II, still very traditional, very I hate using the word conservative because I don't think it really applies to religion but they were very Orthodox, because I don't think it really applies to religion, but they were very orthodox, really just embracing the church. After the conventional church, let me put it that way after Vatican II they go through a complete change, a fundamental change that makes those interwar years look almost antiquated and I didn't really understand what was the twist. And I understand, vatican II came and a lot of the experts at Vatican II were Jesuits. But what was that?

Marcus Friedrich:

fundamental change that happened. This I find a very interesting question which, to my knowledge, is not yet probably understood in full. I would personally start by sort of not downplaying but nuancing the difference that you made up between, sort of the pre and the post-World War II periods. I would say, yes, of course there were differences. And the post-World War II periods? I would say, yes, of course there were differences. And the post-World War II Chesed didn't exist earlier.

Marcus Friedrich:

I would actually say, in some ways at least the interwar years already saw the beginning of changes which could be considered a prehistory of later developments. For instance, the Jesuits actually in fact already from the late 19th century onward, but then with increasing speed in the interwar years turned their attention to what's then called the social question and sort of, you know, trying and learning to give Catholicism a social face, engaging in social hotspots, trying to understand and remedy social difficulties, became a very important thing for the Jesuit order long before Vatican II, before Vatican II. This does not diminish the innovations of Vatican II and post-Vatican II developments, especially the new language in which social life was then reconceptualized, but still I think it is worthwhile insisting on the fact that this is really a deep tradition within the Jesuit order of thinking about alternative social models, of new ways in which to engage with working people. Even if we agree that these are not the same things pre and post Vatican II, I'm always inclined to highlight sort of the longer prehistory of that turn to the social question that is allegedly so typical for post-Vatican to Jesuit liberation theology and so on and so forth. One point I also think. Second point, that at least an awareness that educational systems needed to be updated really manifests in the 1930s. They do not come to fruition quickly. So this is a very complex and long-lasting process until sort of a modern kind of Ignatian pedagogy is really formulated. But also, I would say this one can find a longer prehistory than is suggested if we have the narrative of you know, of this absolute break with Vatican.

Marcus Friedrich:

One of the big defining shifts that does occur is, I would say, the Jesuits really as many parts of the world and many parts of Catholicism sort of. They are really shocked by fascism and by World War II, of course, and they turn away, at least in rhetoric, from you know, fascist totalitarian goals and ideals. But this is also something that is not simply the case for the Jesuits. I mean think of, you know, pope Pius XII endorsing democracy in the last years of World War II very gradual and belated shift away from or moving beyond the fascination with totalitarianism and fascism.

Marcus Friedrich:

The Jesuits were part of a broader reorientation of the Catholic Church during World War II and later, also in terms of spirituality, I think, the new, the new language and new style in which the Ignatian tradition was recovered in the 1950s and 60s, which now seems so typical for the socially compatible Jesuit spirituality. I also think this has a prehistory in La Nouvelle Theologie and other movements of the 1920s and 30s. So without denying let me be very clear about that without denying that post-Vatican II, jesuit Catholicism has a very different face, we should really point this out very strongly here. I also think that it is useful and mandatory for historians at least to look for these longer traditions, which may make it easier to understand why in so few years, tremendous change could have happened at all.

Michele McAloon:

Sure, it's almost. I mean, I didn't realize it and that was one thing that you really brought out in your book that that, this monumental shift, I mean this fundamental shift of the Jesuits, Okay, the Jesuits today. I guess I'm going to ask you to maybe look in your crystal ball. Where are the Jesuits today? What do you think the future holds for the Jesuits, especially after this nine-year papacy of Pope Francis, Again a very controversial papacy. It continues today. The 21 cardinals that he just introduced are very controversial, especially here in the United States. So what do you think the future of the Jesuits holds in? Maybe the immediate or in the long term, the short term and long term future.

Marcus Friedrich:

Well, this question, I think, needs an answer on different layers. I think, first of all, we should not try to answer this question by linking it only to Pope Francis I. I think it is an open question which relevance the papacy of Jorge Bergoglio will actually have had for Jesuit history at large? I think this is really open and I know a lot of Jesuits who say well, this is inspiring for us, but nothing else. I think it is quite obvious that there is not much in terms of institutional gains for the Society of Jesus. At best, I think we could say that some of the skepticism was sort of mellowed down and the really rough years under John Paul II and Benedict seemed to be over, for now at least. So maybe the Jesuits got out of their oppositional corner in the Vatican, probably. But whether or not, beyond that sort of very broad development, the papacy of Francis had any defining influence on the Jesuits per se, I'm actually not so sure. I have a hard time in my scattershot impressions about what the Jesuits do now that one finds sort of a particular formative influence of Francis on current Jesuit affairs. So much for the first part of the answer. The second part, I think, is that we need to state that obviously and this is a truism, of course the Jesuits are facing rough times to the degree that the Catholic Church is facing rough times generally in their numbers, which leads to the Jesuit population becoming older and older, which is a big problem. So they have to cut back on certain missions. This, I would say, has also advantages, because it forces the Jesuits and the Jesuits, I think, are very good at that to initiate cooperation with lay people. So just think about the Jesuit Refugee Service and the big American colleges and universities which are in tandem. So I think the downside also has a positive side. On the positive side, I think also, is that finally, now the Jesuits do undergo de-Europeanization, with more and more manpower coming in from non-European parts, coming in from non-European parts. So at least as significant as the fact that a Latin American is on the sea of St Peter Francis is the fact that for the first time really a non-European father general is leading the Society of Jesus, arturo Sosa from South America, which is just the culmination of a long history of Europeans who have been educated outside of Europe leading the Society of Jesus. So for all the difficulties, I think there are also benefits in the Jesuit order.

Marcus Friedrich:

My personal idea is that the Jesuits are probably dealing with the general crisis of Catholicism better than many other institutions, given the fact that they always have been and still are particularly able, you know, to engage with the world. They are sensitive to what's going on in the world and they are just capable of engaging with changing trends. Media-wise, in terms of language, in terms of, you know, public appearance. They are maybe more easily able than other bodies of the church you know to to adopt themselves, to accommodate, um, new directions of societies. I also think that there is a, over the last years there has been a jesuit internal process of kind of well, it's not redefining the spiritual outlook, but re-articulating the spiritual outlook along four major pillars of things that the Jesuits want to stand for and want to do, and three of them, I think, are very much in line with earlier developments.

Marcus Friedrich:

A fourth line concerns ecological questions, which I think is also forward-looking. I'm not sure yet how well this will translate into, you know, particular projects or activities or initiatives. So how much the Jesuits will really achieve here, I think, is open, but these new millennial goals really show that the Jesuits are capable of integrating new problems into their spiritual framework. I don't think this is maybe directly caused by Francis, but of course Francis with Laudato Si' alerted the world to ecological questions being an issue for the Catholic Church. So maybe at least a parallel here.

Marcus Friedrich:

By and large, I would say there is a crisis and of course things have been better, maybe for the Jesuits, but compared to other church institutions I think the Jesuits better. Maybe for the jesuits, but compared to other church institutions I think the jesuits are maybe not the worst of. I also personally think but this is of course different for each location that at least in some cases the jesuits have been sort of quite good and outspoken in managing the abuse crisis at least in germany I would say they have been, even though not everything went perfectly in dealing with the crisis ever since it became public. I think the church at large is sort of much less capable than the Jesuits in simply communicating about these horrible things.

Michele McAloon:

You're right, the Jesuits in Germany have done a particularly better job than the rest of the Catholic church in Germany, and so that is a very good point. I do have to tell you, the men that I have run into personally that are Jesuits are nothing less than amazing. I may not agree with them, but they are all singularly really impressive individuals. So I there's a lot that can be said with Jesuits and there's a lot of history behind them. And I tell you, your book is fantastic. It is a long history, it is an opus of work, but to my listening audience it is very readable. It's very interesting.

Michele McAloon:

In reading it you understand the social and intellectual history of Europe. In many ways you understand the theological history of Europe. So you can read this book in a couple of different ways. It has a beautiful bibliography, one of the best I've ever seen, honestly the most extensive I've ever seen. So I cannot recommend this book to.

Michele McAloon:

Whether you're a fan of the Jesuits, whether you're not a fan of the Jesuits, whether you're a fan of church history, this is the book for you. So, and again, it's the Jesuits, A History by Marcus Friedrich, and it is published by Princeton University and it has great pictures in it. It's just a wonderful, beautiful book. So, Professor Friedrich, I really congratulate you on the book. I hope it is very well read, especially in the United States, where I think Jesuits are not truly understood in the light of the history that they have come from, and that makes it very confusing for a lot of people to understand the Jesuits in modern US society today. So I think this book is extremely beneficial for Americans, and Americans need to read this book. Yeah, thank you very much. Thank you for taking time out of your busy teaching schedule and I'm hoping you write another book very soon.

Marcus Friedrich:

Keep on exploring ideas.

Michele McAloon:

I'm not sure how probably Jesuits will be or not, but they will reappear in one way or another. Okay, very good, anyway, very good, all right, thank you so much, thank you for having me. Oh, thank you, it's been an honor. You've been listening to Crossword, where cultural clues lead to the truth of the word. My name is Michelle Macklin. You can find my program and other great Catholic radio programming on archangelradiocom, and you can find me on Twitter at MichelleMacklin1. God bless, thank you.