France, Centre Sèvres Facultés jésuites de Paris

When one casts one’s eye over the range of writings on the history of the Jesuits and their relationship with Protestants, one is immediately struck by a vivid contrast. On the one hand, the Society of Jesus has often been seen over the centuries as a religious order engaging specifically in the defence of the Catholic faith against Protestant doctrines. On the other, for the last several decades, it has been resolutely involved in ecumenical dialogues. We can cite the ideas of particular theologians such as Karl Rahner, Avery Dulles or Bernard Sesboüé(among many others who could equally well be mentioned). We can point to Jesuits participating in ecumenical commissions or dialogue groups, or formal statements by one or other of its General Congregations. We have, then, the impression that there has been a fundamental transition. As regards Protestants, we have passed from the situation of conflict and controversy predominant in the sixteenth century to one marked primarily by the quest for reconciliation, and by all means possible.

: Reformate reformationem

I will not try here to describe this quite complex history, nor to list the different forms taken by the Society of Jesus’s ecumenical engagement. My aim is far more limited. I shall confine myself to the period of the Society’s foundation and try to describe the attitudes of the first Jesuits with regard to Luther and his sympathizers.1) There is an obvious ground for this choice given the Lutheran Reformation’s jubilee in 2017. But there is another reason too. A focus on the first decades of the Jesuits’ history enables us to answer several important questions. How are we to understand the opposition that the first Jesuits showed towards the Lutherans? Might we nuance that first impression, or even contradict it, given that some Jesuit attitudes suggest a greater openness? Obviously the way Jesuit history turned out involved conflicts with the Lutheran Reformation. But perhaps the impulse that led to their foundation contains elements of a spirituality that might, in itself, have led them down other paths. And perhaps it is just this spirituality, given how the Church has evolved a more ecumenical approach in recent decades, that can best ground contemporary Jesuit engagement in dialogue with Lutheransand indeed, more broadly, with other Churches and Christian denominations.

For the first Jesuits there was no doubt that the Protestant Reformation was beyond the pale of orthodoxy. The point was already implicit in Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, with their “Rules for Thinking with the Church”. Thus the first few of these rules invite us to praise individual confession of sins, saints’ relics, pilgrimages, indulgences, jubilees, church decoration, images for veneration, the tradition both of the ‘positive teachers’ and the “scholastic

1) See The Jesuits and Ecumenism, (Roma: Centrum Ignatianum Spiritualitatis, 1989), with articles of P. H. Kolvenbach, J. E. Vercruysse, B. Sesboüé and M. J. Buckley.

teachers”.2) The same applies to rules 14-17, that Ignatius added later, in Venice or at the beginning of his years in Rome, as perhaps he was becoming aware of the increasing spread of Reformation doctrine. One should speak of predestination only with prudent caution, so as not to give the impression of undermining free will. An insistence on faith must not be such as to give rise to neglect of good works; nor must an insistence on grace weaken a feeling for freedom.3)

These rules do not mention the Reformers by name. But in other writings of Ignatius, from the Constitutions onwards, and in the Society of Jesus generally, the conviction that the Reformers are beyond the frontiers of orthodoxy became quite explicit. Admittedly, the great majority of the early Jesuits could not read German and could not know what the Reformers had written in this language; but there were also texts of Protestants in latin. Anyway the Society did have a ‘privilege’ from the Holy See permitting the reading of such writings, and Jesuits like Favre, Canisius, Laínez, Salmerón and Nadal must have read them. We know too that Laínez and Polanco met with the Protestants Théodore de Beza and Peter Martyr Vermigli at the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561.

It was chiefly through Nadal that most Jesuits must have been informed about Protestant doctrines. Nadal’s presentation was unnuanced. He stressed that Lutherans denied any co operation of the human will with grace in justification’ that they considered justification as simply imputed, with sins remaining in the souls of the just; and that they were simply ignorant of good works.4) It was on this basis that in 1555 Nadal asked Ignatius to send Laínez to Germany to write books against the Lutherans. Around the same time, a chair in ‘controversy’ was created at the Roman College.5) Thus the

2) See particularly rules 2, 6, 8, 11; Exx 354, 358, 360, 363.3) Exx 366-369.4) See John W. O’Malley, The First Jesuits, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 279-282.

Jesuits became public opponents of the Reformation at the level of doctrine. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, the theologian Robert Bellarmine became a particularly well known representative of such an approach.

But the opposition to the Protestant Reformation took on other forms besides properly theological controversy. Ignatius himself bears witness to this, particularly in a letter to Peter Canisius written on the 13th of August, 1554. Canisius was at this point Dean of the theology faculty at the University of Vienna. He had consulted Ignatius regarding the advice he should give King Ferdinand on the religious situation in the Holy Roman Empire. Ignatius encourages Canisius to present himself in public as a resolute enemy of ‘heresy’. Those who have fallen into this ‘heresy’ should be stripped of all responsibility or public recognition. They should forfeit their rights to any honours or wealth. Ignatius goes as far as to argue that say that an example should be made of some of them: “it might be wiser that such persons to be exiled, imprisoned, or on occasion even punished with death”.6)

It was in these years, moreover, that the idea grew up of the Society of Jesus as founded to counter the Reformation. Clearly, this idea was far from the actual reality it was a retrospective reading of the Society’s origins. But Nadal began nevertheless to spread it, and it became increasingly common following Ignatius’s death in 1556. The impulse to present Ignatius and Luther in antithesis proved irresistible for some. Nadal had no hesitation in proclaiming Ignatius as the new David facing Luther as the new Goliath. Stretching historical reality somewhat, Nadal also proclaimed that in the same year Luther had heard the devil’s call while Ignatius had heard that of God. Polanco for his part noted that the very year that Luther had appeared before Charles V at Worms, Ignatius had been converted. In his biography of

5) Ibid., 282.6) Ignatius of Loyola, Letters and Instructions, ed. and trans., Martin E. Palmer John L. McCarthy

John W. Padberg, (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2006), 499-504.

Ignatius, Ribadeneira developed a parallel between, on the one hand, Luther and his successors, enemies of the faith, and, on the other, Ignatius and his followers, raised up by God to defend that faith.7) By 1560, many Jesuits were openly denigrating Luther. Though Ignatius had held off directly attacking Luther, people like Nadal had no hesitation in crossing that line.8) Admittedly, outside the Society of Jesus, other Catholics were even more virulent, for example Cochlaeus, whose work on Luther, published in 1549, paints a particularly harsh picture of Luther and his allegedly immoral behaviour.9) It is only fair to acknowledge that Nadal forbade the reading of this work in Jesuit refectories and classrooms in Leuven.10)

Nevertheless, the attitudes I have just been evoking are disconcerting. Clearly the early Jesuits were committed in conscience to defending what seemed to the Catholic Church the only true doctrine. But it is hard to explain the polemical excesses, even granted the errors on the other side and the pressures coming from the ecclesial context in these middle decades of the sixteenth century. Such excesses continued to mark modernity as it unfolded, particularly in the case of France during the Wars of Religion in the seventeenth century.

Fortunately, what appears to us today such a bleak picture is only part of the story regarding the early Jesuits’ attitude towards Luther and his sympathizers. Alongside what I have just been evoking, there are other, quite

7) See O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 278-279.8) See the examples given on The First Jesuits, 279.9) Cochaeus, Commentarium de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri.10) O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 280.

striking, indications of the stances they took in the sixteenth century. We might begin by recalling that some of them, in the context of particular Colloquies, took part in actual discussions with the Reformers. Pierre Favre, who spent several years in Germany before his death in 1546, was invited to the Colloquies planned for Worms(1540) and Regensburg(1541). He did not know German, and hence could not participate directly. But his stay in Germany and the Low Countries was very significant. It was not just that Favre could inform the Society of Jesus about the religious situation in these countries. More importantly a point I am about to develop he discovered a way of imagining relations with Protestants that was entirely pastoral. Moreover, it was Favre who in 1543 admitted into the Society the Dutchman, Peter Canisius, who would later exert a major influence in Germany. We must also remember that Ignatius Loyola, responding to a request from Paul III, designated two Jesuits, Diego Laínez and Alfonso Salmerón, to contribute as theologians to the first session of the Council of Trent(1545-1547). Another Jesuit, Claude le Jay also took part. Laínez and Salmerón took part also in the subsequent sessions of the Council, which were not content simply to promulgate doctrinal decrees condemning the Reformers’ positions, but also produced pastoral decrees, aimed at the reform of the Catholic Church, and particularly its clergy.

But, quite apart from these participations in Colloquies and at the Council of Trent, it is especially important to recognise the spiritual attitude towards Protestants shown by some Jesuits at this period.

Right at the beginning, in 1541, Favre wrote that he was praying for Luther by name and showing his love for the ‘heretics’; in 1554 Laínez too was saying that it was praiseworthy to pray for them.11) Above all, the first Jesuits were not content simply to denounce Reformation positions. They

11) See O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 279.

believed that the Reformation’s development was stimulated by Catholics’ sins and hence that the first step in any remedy consisted in Christians changing their lives and offering credible witness. Ignatius’s letter to Canisius that I mentioned earlier did more than indicate a few punitive measures to be taken with regard to the Protestants. In its second part, it gives recommendations about what the Catholics themselves need to be doing: nominating ‘good bishops’; inviting high quality preachers and priests full of zeal; publishing good catechism; opening seminaries of various kind that would enable the formation of good clergy for the future.12) Even thirteen years earlier, in a letter of 1541, Pierre Favre had written the following:

May it please our Lord that in each city round here there should be two or three priests, without concubines or in other public sins, and with zeal for souls. I have no doubt that this mass of simple people would return quite quickly, with the aid of the Lord. I am talking here about cities where the rules of the Roman Church have not yet been completely wiped out. That’s how you can see that the peoples have been deceived not so much by the light of what is good in the Lutherans, but rather by the bad in those who should be converting those who have never been Christian. Indeed, if our clergy were what it should be, we would see clearly that these others are not the sort of people who should be able to stir up such tragedies among Christians.13)

The underlying idea is clear. Catholics need to reform themselves first. The same conviction is very well illustrated in a talk given by Laínez in Rome in 1557. Laínez mentions that seven or eight German soldiers, seemingly Lutherans, were stranded in Rome. Laínez appealed for alms for them, and continued:

12) Ignatius, Letters and Instructions, 502-504. 13) Pierre Favre, “Letter 10 January 1541”, quoted by Dominique Bertrand, in Pierre Favre. Un

portrait, (Bruxelles: Lessius, 2007), 149.

I am not a Lutheran, but I believe that we have given occasion for this trouble by our pomp, sensuality, avarice, simony, and by usurping for ourselves the goods of the church. And now what? We can now restore what we have ruined and scandalized, but how do we do it? In my opinion we cannot do it with beautiful words alone or with conferences and similar things without accompanying them with deeds, because it was with the deeds of a bad life that we did evil. All right, now we want to do better? Contraries are cured by contraries. We must therefore lead good lives. We can provide good example and begin by giving alms to these soldiers, so that they can leave Rome consoled, praising God for the edification they have received.14)

This declaration, like the texts cited earlier, illustrate one of the first Jesuits’ central convictions. The first remedy for the division among Christians is for the Catholics themselves to be converted to a holier way of life. In that way, they will remove the basis for the Reformers’ criticisms. This conviction spread gradually in the 16th century, and it left its mark on the work of the Council of Trent, which, as I mentioned earlier, included pastoral decrees aimed at the reform of the Catholic Church.

To this we can add the exemplary witness of a Jesuit already mentioned, Pierre Favre, regarding ways of dealing with Lutherans. He deals with this topic in a striking letter written from Madrid on 7 March 1546 addressed to Laínez. Of course, he calls people who are not Catholics ‘heretics’. But the important point is that, granted the language and context of the time, he formulates eight rules, the first two of which are deeply ‘ecumenical’ avant la lettre. They rightly remain inspirational for ourselves even today.

The first of these rules runs as follows. If you want to ‘help’ the Reformers, “you must be careful to have great charity for them and to love

14) Lainez, “Talk on Prayer”, in Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, cod. Opp. NN 73, fol. 203v; quoted in O’Malley, The First Jesuits, 277.

them in truth”, banishing from one’s soul “all considerations which would tend to chill <one’s> esteem for them.”15)

It is charity which should shape our attitude towards Christians who are not Catholic. The second rule immediately draws the consequences for how we proceed in conversation.

We need to gain their goodwill, so that they will love us and accord us a good place in their hearts. This can be done by speaking familiarly with them about matters we both share in common and avoiding any debate in which one side tries to put down the other. We must establish communion in what unites us before doing so in what might evince differences of opinion.”

One cannot but be impressed by these lines. We should work at making ourselves loved, even by those with whom we disagree. We should communicate ‘familiarly’ with them, and resist the temptation to want to put pressure on the other with argument. We give pride of place to themes where there is agreement. This last recommendation anticipates quite strikingly what Pope John XXIII(the twenty-third) would later say:

It is better to talk about what unites people than what divides them”. It anticipates also what is said in From Conflict to Communion, the preparatory document for the 2017 commemorations. “The first imperative: Catholics and Lutherans should always begin from the perspective of unity and not from the point of view of division in order to strengthen what is held in common even though the differences are more easily seen and experienced.16)

There is no time here to dwell on all the other rules. But we should at least stress that Pierre Favre, through these, demonstrates his particular

15) Text in The Spiritual Writings of Pierre Favre: Memoriale and Selected Instructions, ed. and trans., Martin E. Palmer et al., (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996), 379-381, quotations from 379.

16) From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017(Report of the Lutheran Roman Catholic Commission on Unity), n. 239.

concern for personal conversion, for morality, and for the witness that must be given by a quality and way of life that is truly Christian. So it is that Favre invites us to work among the Reformers by proceeding ‘from what helps toward the true attitude of heart to what helps toward true faith’. He explains that if someone is living a bad life, we need to set about rescuing him from this ‘before speaking to him about his errors of belief’. He goes on to say that if you are dealing with people criticizing the precepts of the Church regarding good works, you should not start with a doctrinal discussion about faith. Rather, you should talk about “what will lead them to love good works”. He also invites us to acknowledge that the Protestant criticism of precepts defined by the Church is rooted in a sense of human weakness. It follows that the right approach consists in ‘spiritual exhortation that will strengthen and encourage them’ so that they can rediscover the hope of being able to accomplish good works with God’s grace. Favre adds, regarding topics for discussion with the Reformers:

A man who can speak with them on how to live well, on the virtues and on prayer, on death, judgment, hell and the like matters that lead even a pagan to amendment of lifewill do them more good than another who is filled with theological authorities for confounding them.

The last rule stresses that ‘these people need admonitions, exhortations, and the like, on morals, fear and love of God, and good works’. This will help them overcome their difficulties, which, says Favre, ‘are not mainly or even originally a matter of the mind, but of the hands and feet of the soul and body’.17)

Reading these lines, one senses that Pierre Favre had recognised that at least some of the purely doctrinal controversies were missing the point. Of

17) The Spiritual Writings of Pierre Favre, 380-381.

course he was well aware of the need for theologians to be aware of the differences between Catholics and Protestants, and to be able to express them verbally whenever it was necessary. But his pastoral practice had led him to recognise two other realities. Firstly, the need to begin by stressing what unites rather than what divides. Secondly, and more importantly, the primary importance of a way of life that was truly Christian. This point applies to everyone: not just the Protestants with whom Catholics might happen to be in contact, but also the Catholics themselves, who can deal credibly with Protestants only if they witness to a way of life in keeping with the Gospel.

The various ideas I have been developing reveal a veritable paradox. In one sense, Jesuits in the sixteenth century were extremely closed minded regarding those who were called the ‘heretics’ to the point of a hostility what would only harden later in the so called “literature of controversy”. On the other hand, they showed an acute sensitivity to what had made the Reformers criticize the sins of Catholics themselves. They were well aware of the need for conversion within the Church itself. Indeed they desired reconciliation with Protestants. As we have seen with Pierre Favre, they recognised the need to begin pastorally, with good ways of dealing with the Protestants a recognition that we can describe as ecumenism avant la lettre.

We must of course acknowledge that in the historical reality of previous centuries, the latter considerations did not have sufficient effect on the former. As things turned out historically, it was the closed mindedness that prevailed, regrettably. The concern for personal reform has come to appear secondary. But perhaps today we can reverse the priorities. There was something quite

fundamental to the Society of Jesus in the spiritual approach of Pierre Favre. In my final section I would like to develop this point by looking at the foundational text of Ignatian spirituality: the book of Ignatius Loyola called Spiritual Exercises.

Near the beginning, there is a paragraph setting out the attitude ideally present in the one giving the Exercises.

In order that both the one who is giving the Spiritual Exercises, and the one who is receiving them, may draw more help and benefit, let it be presupposed that every good Christian is to be more ready to save their neighbor’s proposition than to condemn it. If they cannot save it, let them inquire how the other means it; and if they mean it badly, let the one giving correct them with charity. If that is not enough, let the one giving seek all the suitable means to bring the other to mean it well, and save themselves.18)

This ‘presupposition’ is obviously intended to say something about the attitude of a person giving the Exercises. But it has a wider significance. At any rate, beyond its original context, it offers a striking and very fine definition of an ‘ecumenical’ frame of mind. It is not about a naive ‘being nice’, or glossing over possible disagreement between the conversation partners. It indicates, rather, a fundamental openness to listening, to persevering effort in seeking to understand the other person’s position; it evinces a desire to do everything possible so as to reach agreement. Ultimately this is about more than simple politeness or superficial harmony. There is something here that is itself properly salvific.

Again, the structured programme of prayer in Spiritual Exercises might also be taken beyond its original context, and read as marking out the basic features of a spirituality of ecumenical dialogue. The initial meditation on the ‘Principle and Foundation’ confronts us with our basic vocational commitment. The human person, Catholic or from some other Church, is ‘created to praise,

18) Exx 22.

reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save their soul’.19) We must not seek anything except that which better leads to the end for which we are created. The First Week of the Exercises invites us to meditate about sin, and to open ourselves to the forgiveness of God. In an ecumenical context, this might inspire us to remember the errors committed against the unity of the Church, and above all the violence which Catholics and Protestant have inflicted on each other throughout history. Only if we look at Christ on the Cross will be able to recognise how serious these sins have been. But more importantly, only this looking at Christ will help us see that long ago, long before the trials arising from our divisions, Christ had already offered us his forgiveness by dying for our sins. What is important now is that we accept this pardon, and that we allow ourselves be drawn into the following of the one who has saved us.

And it is precisely to this following of Christ that the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises invites us. It must be admitted that Ignatius here invokes the image of a king wanting to conquer the territory of his enemies, and also of a ‘sovereign captain’ sending his disciples to spread his doctrine among people of every state and condition. In succeeding centuries, people have drawn on these images to justify all kinds of confrontation towards those designated as ‘heretics’. But this is to forget Ignatius’s purpose in putting forward these meditations. The enemies to be combatted are not non Catholics as such, or even non Christians, but the ‘evil spirits’ or Lucifer. Moreover, the struggle is to be pursued in company with Jesus as he reveals himself in the Gospels: the one whom the retreatant is invited to contemplate from the stable in Bethlehem until the days of his Passion; the one who preached ‘in the synagogues, villages and walled towns’20); the one whom Ignatius presents

19) Exx 23.20) Exx 91.

‘in a humble, beautiful and attractive place’21); the one who proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom of God, who healed the sick and forgave sinners, who appeared as the perfect servant and called disciples to share in his own life. It is this contemplation of Jesus poor and humble that is to mark the life of the Christian, including his or her relations with others. Understood in this way, the Ignatian following of Christ can also inspire ecumenical dialogue.

The third and fourth Weeks of the Exercises invite us to contemplate Christ in his paschal mystery. By looking at how Jesus handed himself over for us, we open ourselves up to feel ‘sorrow’ and ‘disorientation’22) Transposing this to the context of ecumenical dialogue, we might say that in contemplating the passion of Christ, we come to recognise how all of us, Catholics and Protestants, have been at fault as regards each other. And these faults have been ways of ‘crucifying again the Son of God’ in the words of Hebrews 6:6. At the same time we can let ourselves be disarmed by the love of Christ that has loved us even when we were so far away. We can recognise in him a paradoxical sign of God’s pardon, and draw strength to walk with Christ along the path where he is calling us.

Finally when we look at how the risen Christ appears to his disciples, we can open ourselves up to receive the joy and the peace which come from him. We have just this kind of experience in Catholic Protestant dialogue when we experience the Risen Lord’s presence with us on the journey, explaining to us the Scriptures, and leading us already towards the inn at Emmaus, towards the day when we can share full communion at the Eucharistic table. This leads us into contemplating how God has loved us and continues to love us, both in our own life stories, but also more broadly,

21) Exx 144.22) Exx 193.

through the gifts he gives us in the whole of creation. Thus in our own turn, we can say: “Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty [ ] Give me only your love and your grace that is enough for me”.23)

Of course the book Spiritual Exercises contains also the ‘Rules for Thinking with the Church’. These serve to remind us that not all doctrinal positions are equally well founded. We must be attentive to sound doctrine, and a Christian must give particular heed to what is taught by ‘our holy Mother the hierarchical Church’.24) We can easily see how, in the context of the 16th century, the Jesuits were led to resist what seemed to them doctrinal errors in Luther and the other Reformers. But it would show a lack of perspective if we linked the first Jesuits’ confrontations too closely with the call of God that generated the Society. The Society of Jesus was not founded simply to counter the Reformation. We need, rather, to insist on the kind of experience to which Ignatius’s Exercises bear witness. Perhaps in a time of dramatic doctrinal controversy, it could not bear all of its fruits. But now it can play its part in establishing an authentic spirituality of dialogue.

It must of course be said that this contemporary dialogue should not fudge the necessary discussions regarding points of doctrine. But the journey travelled for several decades now shows that even in this sphere, contradictions can be overcome and a consensus can emerge. A notable example is the 1999 Augsburg Joint Declaration on justification by faith. We must also note that this progress at the doctrinal level has depended on other things besides strictly theological discussion. It has been nourished by a new climate of listening and mutual dialogue, in the spirit of Ignatius’s presupposition of good will, as formulated at the outset of Spiritual Exercises. We can thus be hopeful that in this new climate, still further progress will be

23) Exx 234.24) Exx 353.

possible on the road to full communion. Be all that as it may, the pastoral experience of Pierre Favre, and indeed the pastoral experience to which St. Ignatius himself invites us, invites us to stress today the possibilities for reconciliation, despite the differences that remain. It is not just that times have changed, not only that the Church is now inviting us to ecumenical dialogue; this stress is also a matter of fidelity to Pierre Favre’s ‘way of proceeding’, and indeed to the fundamental experience of the Spiritual Exercises. Moreover, what is at stake is more than a reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants on the continent of Europe, the birthplace of the Reformation. The reconciliation in question extends to all the countries in the world to which the divisions of the sixteenth century have been exportedSouth Korea among others. Most of all, what is at stake is the quality of witness to Christ proclaimed among all the nations. Jesus prayed to his Father “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (Joh 17:21). Of course Jesuit spirituality has helped ground engagement for full ecclesial communion. But we must never forget that this communion is not just about the unity of Christians of the kind that Christ desired. This unity needs also to be a sign to the world, so that the world can find here a witness speaking to commend the faith: a communion among Christians that as such bears witness to the mysterious communion of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

Bertrand, Dominique, Pierre Favre. Un portrait, Bruxelles: Lessius, 2007.Fleming, David L., The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. A Literal Translation and a

Contemporary Reading, St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1978.From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran Catholic Common Commemoration of the

Reformation in 2017 (Report of the Lutheran Roman Catholic Commission on Unity), Leipzig: Bonifatius, 2013.

Ignatius of Loyola, Letters and Instructions, ed. and trans., Martin E. Palmer John L. McCarthy John W. Padberg, St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2006.

O’Malley, John W., The First Jesuits, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.The Jesuits and Ecumenism, Centrum Ignatianum Spiritualitatis, Roma, 1989.The Spiritual Writings of Pierre Favre: Memoriale and Selected Instructions, ed. and

trans., Martin E. Palmer et al. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996.

Michel Fédou S.J.

Clearly the early Jesuits were committed in conscience to defending what seemed to the Catholic Church the only true doctrine. But fortunately, what appears to us today such a bleak picture is only part of the story regarding the early Jesuits’ attitude towards Luther and his sympathizers. The first Jesuits believed that the Reformation’s development was stimulated by Catholics’ sins, and hence that the first step in any remedy consisted in Christians changing their lives and offering credible witness. To this we can add the exemplary witness of the Jesuit Pierre Favre, regarding ways of dealing with Lutherans. We can easily see how, in the context of the 16th

century, the Jesuits were led to resist what seemed to them doctrinal errors in Luther and the other Reformers. But the Society of Jesus was not founded simply to counter the Reformation. We need, rather, to insist on the kind of experience to which Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises bear witness. It is just this spirituality, given how the Church has evolved a more ecumenical approach in recent decades, that can best ground contemporary Jesuit engagement in dialogue with Lutherans and indeed, more broadly, with other Churches and Christian denominations.

Key Words: Reform, Conversion, Reconciliation, Ignatian Spirituality, Ecumenism

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