The Jesuits
Martin, Malachi
Malachi Martin's fourteenth book since he left the Jesuit Order in 1964 is just about as gamy as hinted by the subtitle, a condition that makes it much less careful than its readers have the right...
...Nope...
...Shaped by a conversion from worldly ambitions and by several years of fiercely ascetic spiritual molding, Ignatius was nonetheless a man of action, a Basque nobleman and former soldier who had little taste for monastic formalism...
...but, properly speaking or otherwise, the acknowledged father of liberation theology is the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutierrez, whom Martin astonishingly misidentifies (four times in four different parts of the book) as a Jesuit...
...reflects the point of view of an author who has tried in good faith to analyze the turbulence, the causes and the effects of a dramatic period in the history of Eastern Europe...
...x.hrer G' I • MI pow wilt" ow-a THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1987 43 and Pedro Arrupe . . . well, there goes the plausibility...
...Sixtus, whom Martin calls "one of the most arrogant Popes ever to succeed St...
...One of the followers he had attracted during a stint at the Sorbonne remarked that the "Company" saw themselves as "contemplatives in action...
...For printed T-shirts, hats, sweats, jackets, etc., call: 113LIUNE IIDIRAIPI-111CS 125 Liberty Street, Allentown...
...Nor is there any hint in The Jesuits that liberation theology is already a passing fad, if not quite as moribund as yesteryear's claques of Teilhardian groupies with whom Martin shadowboxes in one chapter...
...Granted, a few liberation theorists are Jesuits (notably Juan Segundo, whose five-volume Theology for Artisans of a New Humanity may find good use someday as therapy for insomniacs...
...Arrupe, Martin tells us, steered the 31st (1965/66) and the 32nd (1974/75) General Congregations of the Society of Jesus onto paths of New Age sociopolitical enthusiasm, with an attendant "tide of fatuities and stupidities": of disenchantment, defection, dissension, trendy experimentation, and, worst of all, a treacherous "war against the papacy...
...Just the sort of fluff which should give Martin's readers an uncomfortable feeling about his book...
...And he can't seem to restrain himself even in the presumptively documentary sections: "There was an uncomfortable feeling among all five Jesuits as they left the papal presence...
...There is no doubt that the Jesuits suffered something of an identity crisis for about ten years following Vatican II...
...His chapters "Feminism and Sex" and "Feminism and Politics" are bound to stir controversy as he looks beyond the Feminist Era to the future of gender in America...
...Another odd remark: "Properly speaking, Liberation Theology was a Jesuit creation...
...Fairly or not, Martin's truncated evidence, disentangled from his brash declamations, calls up an image of Arrupe as more of a diplomat than a leader—conspicuously lacking both the cunning and the iron will of a Claudio Acquaviva, and rather more permissive than scheming, as he zigzagged between the disgruntled left and right wings of the Jesuits, trying to inspire in his divided ranks the "primitive charism" of the Order...
...1-800 -422-6067 in PA 215-776-5033 .,,,n.n.4.-na=na=nn=nn=na.na.rzs.maz.nn.tisrminatnti,nm-n, ANOTHER SATISFIED CUSTOMER: F; "The oppressed workers in your 0 capitalist sweat shop print some very c' fine T-shirts...
...Given such character there was certain to be trouble between the Church and the Company...
...When Sixtus demanded, in 1590, that Jesuit theologians retract their views "on certain points of doctrine," Acquaviva responded in the manner to which he was temperamentally suited: he threatened the Pope with a deluge of Jesuit protest against the proposed decree...
...400 pages Cloth $24.95 Prometheus Books 700 E. Amherst St., Buffalo, NY 14215 To order call toll free 800-421-0351...
...Elected in 1581, Acquaviva was the Society's fifth Superior General and by all accounts among the three or four (of twenty-eight) strongest leaders in the Order's history...
...PA 18102 CALL [TOLL FREE OUTSIDE PA...
...He was not a biddable man...
...Plausible enough...
...Voice of America — — Order Form — — — Bartleby Press 11141 Georgia Avenue, Suite AS Silver Spring, MD 20902 Please send @ price of $18.95 each copy(s) of: Transylvania History and Reality Name (please print) Address City State zip ^ Check Enclosed* ^ Please bill ^ P.O...
...Perhaps Martin finds diplomacy in a Jesuit Superior General distasteful—but that hardly accounts for his outlandish juxtaposition of contention and contrary evidence...
...And it's true that some Jesuits today talk about themselves and their Order in a manner warranted neither by prudence nor by modesty—drifting now and then into a patois redolent of the sixties: "The issues are war, poverty, racial hatred, excessive nationalism, a technology of production and consumption which tramples on basic human needs...
...But Martin tells us nothing about the "certain points of doctrine"—which involved complex clerical in-fighting and bitter accusations by Dominican theologians of Jesuit "laxism" on matters of sexual morality...
...Part of that feeling wells up with theimpression that Martin doesn't really make a case for the "duplicity" and "cocksureness" of Pedro Arrupe...
...The issue raised by that kind of claptrap is the old Jesuit inclination to lapse into those "worldly standards" which Ignatius told his men to transform by the Gospel .. . Enough...
...Barileby Press...
...The simple fact is that the Society of Jesus, like any other human organization, has its inevitable contingent of exhibitionists—of illuminist cranks apparently motivated less by the intent of the organization than by their own vanity or contempt for human frailty...
...The goofiest sections of this book, though, are Martin's purely fictive entries...
...By hook or crook, Arrupe led his Jesuits down the gilded path of secularization, in effect reducing the Society to a social service club in total accommodation to the "winsome doctrine" of Modernism...
...In his sketch of early Jesuit history, you will find no shadows in the brilliant glare—nothing, for example, about the Galileo affair, which had Jesuits on both sides of the dispute, nor even a nod to the Jesuit adventure in Paraguay, which, according to historical analysts less romantic than the British playwright Robert Bolt or the Jesuit liturgist C. J. McNaspy, began as a noble experiment and gradually degenerated into a paternalistic exercise in social engineering...
...Transylvania History and Reality Milton G. Lehrer Edited by David Martin Clothbound, 320 pages $18.95 ISBN 0-910155-04-6 Transylvania History and Rea* Now available for the first time, the author, born in New York City completed the manuscript before the close of World War II in the aftermath of the Vienna Diktat of 1940...
...Martin's hostility towards Rahner—whose thought had great influence on John Paul II and who tried in 1970 to inject some sense into his less thoughtful colleagues—is mystifying...
...Prominent chatterbox, yes—but Martin's Jesuit training was in Semitic linguistics and Biblical archaeology, a background that served him well in his King of Kings, a lush novelization of the story of David...
...attached Checks payable to Bartleby Press *Pre-payment will save postage and handling charges...
...But afterwards Arrupe is said by Martin to have acquired a "wide-angle social optic" that reduced specifically Catholic doctrines and pieties to "the status of symbols or memorials...
...In that mode, Martin joins, for example, an engaging sketch of warmth and energetic devotion in Pedro Arrupe, the man, to an impressionistic image of duplicity and cocksureness in Pedro Arrupe, the Jesuit Superior General...
...While this book presents the Romanian point of view, the multitude of facts in the work are vital to an intelligent and balanced understanding of the problem...
...But when Martin records every word, gesture, blink, cheek-tic, elevated eyebrow, and raised voice in a closed meeting between John Paul II and his leading cardinals or in a private show-down between Paul VI THE JESUITS: THE SOCIETY OF JESUS AND THE BETRAYAL OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Malachi Martin/Simon and Schuster/$19.95 John R. Dunlap An important contribution to the understanding of a complex and fascinating historical situation...
...But the great majority of Jesuits still go about their work with quiet endurance, stumbling along as teachers, NICHOLAS DAVIDSON The FAILURE of FEMINISM Written for and about men and women...
...The appellation "eminent theologian" acquires some plausibility only in Martin's nasty sniping, by which he does Hans Kung one better in referring to the late and truly eminent Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner as "subtly vicious...
...K. Marx p ,Wa.n....naTolgt==na.ra.man.vinaa=na.r...
...Davidson explains why he believes feminism has failed...
...Indeed, Martin seems all too eager to contrast an unambiguous Jesuit greatness in the glory days of their "first 150 years" with the sad state of the Order over the past generation...
...Lehrer tells of heroic uprisings and bloody repression which in the last two centuries developed into a struggle for human rights in such areas as education, freedom of the press and equality of suffrage...
...We are treated, for example, to a run-in between Pope Sixtus V and Claudio Acquaviva...
...Malachi Martin's fourteenth book since he left the Jesuit Order in 1964 is just about as gamy as hinted by the subtitle, a condition that makes it much less careful than its readers have the right to expect...
...Instead, The Jesuits succeeds only in demonstrating the familiar perils of kneejerk activism—not least by the febrile example of the man behind the book's copyright notice: Malachi Martin Enterprises, Ltd...
...When Ignatius Loyola founded the Society of Jesus in 1540, he had in mind something different from the mission of any other religious order in the Catholic Church up to that time...
...Although he allows the possibility of Jesuit "reform" (presumably of the kind which is already occurring, as the Order has lately been shaking a number of recalcitrant feathers off its left wing), Martin anticipates the eventual dissolution of the Society, either bypapal interdict (which he grants is unlikely) or by "gradual decay and ossification...
...It is the work of a rogue scholar, broadly sympathetic in its portraits of major figures but wildly expressive in its treatment of big events...
...Martin says in passing that Arrupe was a "compromise candidate" when he was elected Superior General on the third ballot at the Jesuits' 31st General Congregation in 1965: he was neither a radical "renewalist" nor a hidebound "traditionalist...
...Perhaps to anticipate the objections that, from its beginnings, the Society's relationship with Rome has been intermittently rough-edged, Martin draws a few sketches of early Jesuit squabbles John R. Dunlap teaches English at Santa Clara University...
...gossip is a staple of the religious life, and ex-Jesuit Martin doubtless has contacts...
...CUSTO PRINTED T-SHIRTS EASE DEIN ER ON ORDERS OF a OK MORE DOZEN HIGH QUALITY • LOW PRICES FAST SERVICE Whether you need a simple one color or a complex multicolor custom printed garment, we have the experience to meet your needs...
...44...
...But if Martin had made better use of his material, of his pliant metaphors, and of his shrewd eye for gesture and human character—if he had written a disciplined novel instead of a dazzling congeries of factoids—perhaps he would have found himself drawn to more hopeful conclusions about the Society of Jesus...
...What Martin does say is that Acquaviva's blatant opposition to the Pope somehow differed in substance from more recent Jesuit wrangling with the Holy See regarding, among other things, "basic Roman Catholic rules of morality," which Martin doesn't define...
...The distortions are so compulsive that he makes it difficult to concede that the Jesuits have had any trouble at all.thinkers, pastors, writers, missionaries, scientists, administrators, chaplains, social workers, counselors, laborers—disciplined by that peculiar Ignatian detachment from the world, with all its grubby particularity and strange enticements, and mildly indifferent to the enthusiasms of their few brother Jesuits who really are political louts of the sort Martin rails against...
...Call for a FREE CATALOG of our own designs: 1-800-422-6067 But they have, of course...
...Wanna see some funny T—airts...
...In NYS call 716-837-2475...
...Their new religious order—approved by Pope Paul III amid the turmoil of sixteenth-century Europe and a Church rife with corruption—would be mobile and adaptable, bound by a military-like rule more absolute than that of other religious orders but unencumbered by medieval practices and monkish habits...
...nothing compared to the weird untruths that crop up in this book, beginning with the dustcover, which refers to Martin as an "eminent theologian...
...Peter in Rome," backed down...
...In a note at the back (among precious few notes, citing even fewer exact sources for the hundreds of quotes rippling through the text), Martin tells us: "Certain confidential sources of materials within the Society and the Roman Curia provided both information and commentary throughout...
...ut the convenient omissions are 1...
...with the Holy See...
...But the contentions are unsupported even by the material Martin does adduce in 150 tedious pages...
Vol. 20 • November 1987 • No. 11
