Reform

Karen Hall at Some
Have Hats has started a
cleverly titled new blog covering Jesuits called Some
Wear Clerics.  As fans of Karen know she often posts
on Jesuit subjects and has many friends and acquaintances within the
Society of Jesus. Her co-blogger Joe Garcia   The purpose of
the new blog is in part.

This blog, or at least my posts
thereto,
will require something of the reader if he is to remain sane: two-fold
courage. Courage to admit there are things deeply wrong with the
current Society of Jesus and many of its members, and courage to
believe these problems, with God’s grace, will one day find relief. …

The election of the new Jesuit Father
General seems like business as usual, but as I commented over at
Karen’s blog I doubt if the reform of the Jesuits was going to be a
top-down affair anyway.  More than likely it  could
be bottom-up with the the infusion of younger Jesuits who are much more
inclined to be faithful to the Magisterium of the Church who will in
part help to reform it.

I do wonder if historically if there have
ever been a major reform of a large order that had become worldly
without a split.  Off hand I can think of the Discalced
Carmelites and the Capuchins of examples of splits from the parent
order that resulted when the parent order was losing their charism.
 Historically often these splits helped to also reform the
parent order as a result.  There is often a great animosity
towards those working to reform an order as in the case of St. John of
the Cross that ended up getting locked up for almost a year until he
escaped.  Fr. Groeschel who was once a
Capuchin labored for years for reform within his order before
making what he calls a very difficult decision to leave and co-found
the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.

So it will be interesting to see if reform
does occur what model it follows and I do hope that it can be one
without a split.  As easy as Jesuit bashing is I would love to
see the order as a whole make the contribution to the Church they once
did instead of keeping the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
busy.