Image: Gary Wayne Gilbert. Click image to enlarge.

Editor’s note: In May 2017, the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, which was founded three years earlier to support scholarship related to the Society of Jesus, launched the Portal to Jesuit Studies. A database developed in partnership with the University Libraries, the Portal offers searchable access to thousands of books, as well as archival materials and journals, dating from the early 16th century to the present day. Access to the Portal is free at jesuitportal.bc.edu.

Ignatius’s letter to Nicholas Floris, SJ, from the superior general’s letterbook. Image: (left) Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu / Mauro Brunello. Click image to enlarge.

I. The Jesuit who couldn’t cry

A letter from Ignatius (1553)

St. Ignatius wrote some 7,000 letters during his lifetime, according to surviving records, correspondence that began with a 1518 appeal to the Spanish king by the 27-year-old Iñigo López de Loyola asking to be allowed to carry arms to protect himself from the murderous intentions of one Francisco de Oya (sadly, de Oya’s grievance is unknown). His final letter was dated July 30, 1556, the day before he died. As the Society grew, Ignatius increasingly dictated responses, or directions for a response, to his secretary, Juan Alfonso de Polanco, who on November 22, 1553, sent a letter to Nicholas Floris, a Jesuit in Germany. Floris had written to Ignatius a month earlier to lament that he lacked the ability to weep. Within the Society of Jesus, Ignatius was known for his “gift of tears,” particularly during prayer and Mass. The letter, which follows, is drawn from Ignatius of Loyola: Letters and Instructions, edited by Martin E. Palmer, SJ, John W. Padberg, SJ, and John L. McCarthy, SJ (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2006).

“. . . A heart like your own, full of longing to help souls and serve God, cannot be called hard. When someone feels compassion for the miseries of the neighbor in the will and the higher part of his soul, desires to do what he can to relieve them, and performs the offices of a person who has this active will for taking the necessary means, he needs no further tears or sensible feelings in the heart. While some people may have tears because their nature is such that the affections in the higher parts of their souls easily overflow into the lower, or because God our Lord, seeing that it would be good for them, grants them to melt into tears, this still does not mean that they have greater charity or accomplish more than other persons who are without tears but have no less strong affections in the higher part of the soul, that is, a strong and efficacious willing (which is the proper act of charity) of God’s service and the good of souls, just like that of persons who have abundant tears. Moreover, I would tell Your Reverence something of which I am convinced: There are persons to whom I would not give the gift of tears even if it were in my power to do so, because it does not help their charity and damages their heads and bodies, and consequently hinders any practice of charity. So Your Reverence ought not to be distressed over the lack of external tears; keep your will strong and good and show it in your actions, and that will suffice for your own perfection, the help of others, and the service of God.”

Related links

• The full letter
• Order the book
• Bibliographic records on Ignatius
• Other letters by Ignatius

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Title page from an early-17th-century English version of Loarte’s book. Image: © British Library Board 4409.c.26. Click image to enlarge.

II. The gluttony cure

From a Jesuit Guide to Life (1557)

Gaspar Loarte, SJ (circa 1498–1578), published Esercitio della vita christiana, The Exercise of the Christian Life, in 1557, while the rector of a Jesuit college in Genoa. An early expression of the Jesuit commitment to popular ministry—manifest today in writings by Jesuits such as James Martin, Th.M.’99, and William Barry, STL’63—Loarte’s book offered advice on prayer, meditation, devotional readings, and good conduct. Highly popular, the book was translated into Spanish, French, German, and English and reprinted in whole or in part many times during the 16th and 17th centuries. A significant portion of the Esercitio is given over to instructions for combatting the seven deadly sins. This excerpt from The Exercise of the Christian Life (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2017) was translated from the original Italian by Charles Keenan, who is assistant director in the Core Curriculum office at Boston College.

“First, consider how much more the trouble and heaviness that remain in your stomach after eating too much bothers you than the many and delicate foods can delight you, whose taste and delight does not last longer than the food passes from the mouth to the throat. This delight, as soon as it has passed, does not remain anything more than a trace or memory, as if it had never existed. And this you can better understand, noting that nothing remains of everything you have eaten and drank in all your life, and that nothing remains of all the meals, all the flavors, and the delectable food that you have tasted. See how everything has vanished, as if it never existed. . . .

Second, consider the dangers and ugly disorders that are born from this sin. First, the strain and toil necessary to satisfy the gluttony; second, the many bodily illnesses that follow from disordered eating; third, that it clouds the mind, such that a person is unable to make spiritual exercises; fourth, the eternal hunger and thirst that happen later, to which not even a drop of water will be granted, as one sees in the story of the rich glutton. Remember, too, what will remain of a delicately nourished body after death.

The third remedy is to remember the abstinence of Christ and his disciples, who plucked corn on account of hunger, and how the Lord fasted for 40 days in the desert, and the gall that was given to him to drink in his thirst when he was on the cross, which you ought to remember every time you are at the table to eat.

The fourth remedy is that you often remember that eternal, heavenly dinner to which our God, the redeemer, signified to us in one of his parables, to which we are invited, and think that—wishing to enjoy such a happy and regal dinner—it is necessary to abstain from lunch in this life, so that you can be better able to fill yourself later, just as on earth someone who is invited to a magnificent and splendid dinner often wants to eat with moderation at lunch in order not to lose their appetite for dinner.

The last remedy, and a very sure one, is to shun (as much as it is possible for you) occasions for gluttony, such as meals and feasts, where one sees such abundance and a variety of dishes, and so much food and wine and delicate and delectable fruits, among which it is very difficult to remain sober. . . .”

Related links

• The full passage on gluttony
• Order the book
• Historiographical essay on devotional literature
• Bibliographic records on devotional literature

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Expulsion of Jesuits from Antwerp, Belgium, in 1773. Image: © DeA Picture Library / Art Resource, New York. Click image to enlarge.

III. Papal instructions for eradicating the Society of Jesus

A brief issued by Clement XIV (1773)

The papal suppression of the Jesuits on July 21, 1773, was not unexpected. In the preceding decades, the Jesuits had suffered expulsions from the Catholic empires of Portugal (1759), France (1764), and Spain (1767), where they had become handy scapegoats for kings or princes under civic pressure. In Portugal, for example, charges against the Society included creating a state within the state, inciting revolutions among indigenous populations in South America, and failing to adequately condemn regicide. Cardinals in the papal conclave of 1769 elected Giovanni Vincenzo Antonio Ganganelli in part because he had assured the Bourbons that he would suppress the Jesuits. As a result of the suppression, hundreds of schools around the globe were closed or transferred to other religious orders or the state; missions closed around the world; and virtually all Jesuits became ex-Jesuits, whether they continued on as priests or as laymen. The Society would not be restored until 1814, by Pius VII. The following is drawn from the suppression order, a near-8,000-word document titled Dominus ac Redemptor. It is excerpted here from “Promising Hope”: Essays on the Suppression and Restoration of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2003), translated by John Murphy, SJ.

“[W]e abolish and suppress the oft-mentioned Society. We take away and abrogate each and every one of its offices, ministries, administrations, houses, schools, colleges, retreats, farms, and any properties in whatsoever province, realm, and jurisdiction and in whatever way pertaining to the Society. We do away with the statutes, customs, usages, decrees, Constitutions, even those confirmed by oath, by apostolic approval, or by other means. We wish that the present document, as if corresponding word for word to all the Society’s privileges and indults, both general and special, fully and sufficiently does away with them even if the privileges were formulated with legal safeguards.

Therefore we declare that all authority in both spiritual and temporal matters of the Father General, the provincials, the visitors, and of any other superiors of the said Society is permanently discontinued and completely abolished. We transfer their jurisdiction and authority to the local ordinaries. . . .

The following may remain in the houses and colleges of the Society: those who are afraid of a substandard living due to the paucity or complete lack of funds or those who have no place to establish a domicile because of advanced age, poor health, or other just and grave reasons, and thus are not at all in a position to leave the houses and colleges of the Society. A condition of their remaining is that they have nothing to do with the administration of said house or college. They are to wear only the garb of secular clergy. They are to live fully subject to the ordinary of the place. . . . The houses which they do vacate can be converted to pious uses as will seem right and proper according to the sacred canons, the will of founders, the increase of divine cult, the salvation of souls, and public usefulness for each place and time. In the mean while, some member of the secular clergy who is endowed with prudence and an upright character will be designated as superior of said houses. The name of the Society is to be completely removed and suppressed.”

Related links

• The full brief
• Bibliographic records on Ignatius
• Historiographical essay on the Jesuits’ suppression and restoration

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St. Mary’s Church on Endicott Street in the North End, in the mid-19th century. Image: From Sketches of Boston, by Isaac Smith Homans, 1851. Click image to enlarge.

IV. The life of a Jesuit brother

An obituary from Woodstock Letters (1895)

A native of Ireland, John McElroy entered the Society of Jesus in Maryland as a religious brother in 1840, at the age of 38. It was rumored among American Jesuits that McElroy was a relative of John McElroy, the prominent Jesuit priest who founded Boston College in 1863. But although the two men did serve together for a time in St. Mary’s Church in Boston’s North End, where Fr. McElroy was appointed pastor in 1847, there is no evidence they were related. Br. McElroy worked variously as a janitor and cook at St. Mary’s from 1848 until his death in 1894. Fr. McElroy left St. Mary’s for the unfinished Jesuit residence at Boston College in 1859. The American journal Woodstock Letters, named for the Jesuits’ seminary in Maryland, was published from 1872 to 1969 and distributed only to Jesuits. (“Printed for private circulation only” read the stern directive on its title page.) A vital source for historians of American Catholic life, it published reports on activities at the various colleges and missions, and was known for its long, detailed, and frank obituaries. Fr. McElroy’s, which appeared in an 1878 issue, ran to 3,403 words (including footnotes). The remembrance of his doppelganger, which appeared in an 1895 issue, totaled 322 words.

“Brother John McElroy. Brother McElroy, who is said to have been a relative of the well known Father McElroy, was born in the town of Clogher, County Tyrone, Ireland, on May 1, 1812. He entered the novitiate, which was then under the charge of Father Dzierozynski, on October 1, 1840. On the completion of his noviceship, Br. McElroy was sent to Georgetown to be assistant cook. There he remained till 1848, when he was sent to St. Mary’s Church, Boston. Here he remained for forty-five years, as cook and janitor, till his health gave way in 1887, and for the rest of the time janitor. As cook he was noted for his remarkable neatness. He devoted his free time to making beads, and this occupation of more than 40 years brought in quite a little revenue for the house. When acting as janitor, about 1850, the fathers were much annoyed by a poor demented man coming continually to be exorcised, for he said he had a devil in him. Br. McElroy, in order to rid the fathers of the annoyance, said he would drive the devil out. So one afternoon, when he had his kitchen cleaned up, he called the man down and placed him on a chair in the middle of the room, then he walked round him three times and patting him on the head, stamped hard on the floor. There followed a loud report with smoke, and the man was raised off his seat, while Br. McElroy cried out: ‘Begone evil spirit.’ The poor man went away cured of his hallucinations; the means used [to create the explosion] was a large torpedo. Br. McElroy was noted for his industry; and when in his last years he was unable to do active work, he still occupied himself with his beads. At last worn out with old age, he met his end peacefully and full of hope on Jan. 15, 1894. —R. I. P.”

Related links

• Woodstock Letters obituary of Rev. John McElroy, SJ
• Historiographical article about the American colonies and the US

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Fr. Arrupe in Japan, circa 1938. Image: Jesuits.org

V. ‘A sea of fire’

A recollection of August 6, 1945, at Hiroshima

Pedro Arrupe, a Spanish Jesuit priest who would lead the Society of Jesus from 1965 to 1983, was assigned to the missions in Japan in 1938. At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when the first atomic bomb to be used in hostile action was released above the city of Hiroshima, Arrupe was the rector of an eight-member Jesuit community in Nagatsuka, less than four and a half miles from the epicenter. He later wrote of “a magnesium explosion . . . similar to the roar of a terrible hurricane, which took doors, windows, glasses, unstable walls . . . that broke to pieces and fell over our heads.” The recollection that follows, from Justice with Faith Today: Selected Letters and Address—II, edited by Jerome Aixala (Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980), was transcribed from an interview Arrupe gave on the 30th anniversary of the bombing. Arrupe remained at the mission in Japan until he was named superior general.

“It was at 8.10 [sic] on the morning of 6 August, the feast of Our Lord’s Transfiguration. There was an explosion. We saw a blinding light, and after 30 seconds we heard an explosion that shattered everything. The glass panes, windows and doors of the house were all destroyed. We did not know what had occurred and supposed it was a very powerful bomb, but of the conventional explosive type, some of which had fallen in our garden. But soon we noticed that there was nobody in the street, and as our house is on top of a hill, we saw that the entire city was a sea of fire and everything burning. Very soon we found ourselves assisting hundreds and even thousands of wounded and ailing victims. At first the most evident symptoms were the traumatic wounds suffered as a result of the destruction of the houses and the fall of entire buildings—these were mostly fractures. But after some time the most puzzling and mysterious thing was the appearance on the skin of a dark pigmentation, like of sunburn, which after some days increased, suppurated and penetrated to the very bones, though there had been no direct contact with the flame. We did not know what it might be, nor did anybody else. It was this fact that threw us off. And for some days no light could be thrown on the subject, as then there were no transistors, and the radio set was silent as there was no electric current. We were thus completely cut off from the outside world. And they told us that it had been an atomic bomb . . . . [T]he new name conveyed very little to us as we did not know what an atomic bomb might be. We therefore organized in the house an improvised hospital. [Editor’s Note: Arrupe had attended medical school before he joined the Jesuits.] We treated thousands of victims with means and methods totally primitive, as naturally we had nothing else at hand and in those days sulfonamides were unknown. . . . It was a human tragedy of immense proportions. I had to perform surgical operations without anesthesia, cutting human flesh with plain household scissors. Those were unforgettable experiences, and I can say that in the first days of that holocaust I never heard a single complaint, a single groan. People bit their lips, clenched their fists and asked for help. . . .”

Related links

• The full interview with Arrupe

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Charles Donovan, SJ, circa 1960. Image: Courtesy of John J. Burns Library Archive

VI. Jesuits must welcome lay faculty

A plea from a Boston College dean (1969)

A 1933 graduate of Boston College who earned his doctorate at Yale University, Charles Donovan was the founding dean of Boston College’s School of Education and a member of the postwar generation of American Jesuits who saw a need to recast their liberal arts colleges to include research initiatives or face second-tier status. Donovan was senior vice president and dean of faculties when he published the 1969 essay that follows in excerpt, and he went on to hire some 400 faculty to the University over the course of his career, the vast majority of them lay Catholics, non-Catholics, and non-Christians. He and Boston College were not alone. While Jesuits made up nearly a third of faculty at Jesuit colleges in 1948, by 1968, when Jesuit efforts at developing serious research programs were beginning to be manifest, members of the Society comprised only 16.3 percent of faculty. In “The Liberal Aims of Jesuit Higher Education,” published in the October 1969 Jesuit Education Quarterly (which, akin to Woodstock Letters, was “For Private Circulation”), Donovan poignantly urged his Jesuit brothers to broaden their view of who is entitled to membership in a Jesuit educational community.

“We are in a new era of Jesuit higher education, the era of lay-Jesuit partnership. In our personal lives [fellow] Jesuits may have special places of affection and respect. But in our colleges and universities Jesuits and lay faculty members are all equal colleagues. And so we must now set about building with laymen and Jesuits the faculty communities we failed to develop among Jesuits alone. Superficially the task would now seem harder. It would seem easier to create a community out of a group of men sharing common traditions and aspirations and a common life-commitment. But the fact that we failed to do so might indicate that Jesuit tradition rested too heavily or was unquestioned where Jesuits only were concerned. Perhaps the advent of laymen with differing perspectives and a healthy skepticism will help shake us out of routine thinking or indeed out of the unthinking acceptance of what has become routine. At any rate Jesuits and laymen with similar concerns for Christian liberal learning or even for liberal learning with religious perspectives should now unite to talk and argue and enthuse and labor together trying to incarnate their vision of liberal education. The first order of business in Jesuit colleges is to encourage and facilitate faculty communities.

We have an opportunity to create something distinctive and deserving of national note, namely, groups of faculty members on our campuses who first of all really care about broad-gauged, non-specialized education—Jesuits and non-Jesuits, Catholics and non-Catholics, Christians and non-Christians, who are deeply concerned about comprehensive human learning and the insights religion and theology can contribute to education; groups that not only care but work, through committee meetings, study, conferences, and retreats, to translate their beliefs into courses, programs and institutional atmosphere. So unique is this opportunity and so basic is this need that I would say there is neither future nor salvation for Jesuit higher education except through the committed, generous, and imaginative cooperation of Jesuit and lay faculty members in groups of believers—believers in liberal education, believers in Christian education—who together form creative and leavening faculty communities.”

Related links

• ​Donovan’s full letter
• Historiographical essay on Jesuit pedagogy

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Collaborators on the Portal to Jesuit Studies include the Boston College Libraries; Brill Publishers; Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States; Jesuit Sources; Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus; the former Oregon Province; and the Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality.

Ben Birnbaum and Seth Meehan, Ph.D.’14, are co-authors of The Heights: An Illustrated History of Boston College, 1863–2013. In addition to being a contributing editor to this magazine, Meehan is an associate director at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, where he directed the development of the Portal to Jesuit Studies.