Shortly after publishing an essay lamenting the Jesuits’ Magazine America‘s embrace of Wokeism, I read a prominent Jesuit’s article lamenting the fact that the entire Jesuit order is in “profound decline.” Many Catholic readers will no doubt find his article even more disturbing than mine. As it that were not enough, there are even wider problems in the Catholic Church that have contributed to the Jesuits downward slide. I’ll begin with the Jesuit’s article and then address the wider problems.
The Jesuit is Father Julio Fernández Techera of the University of Uruguay, and his essay noted that a priest who had been expelled in 2018 for having “committed serious sexual, spiritual, and psychological abuse against at least 20 women in [Slovenia], “continues to appear as a Jesuit and Vatican Consultant in the 2024 Pontifical Yearbook.” He then cites a similar case in which another Jesuit sexually abused over 80 juveniles in three South American countries and kept a diary of his offenses. Not only were these cases not addressed responsibly by the Jesuit hierarchy; in some areas, the death of older Jesuits is not matched by new novices and the order “wants vocations for the priesthood in the society, but [doesn’t] want to talk about being priests,” and tends to behave like a secular order [rather] than a religious one.”
Father Techera concludes that, “The reason why we do not have vocations is not because of the secularized society, the changing times, and a thousand other excuses. The reason is that these conditions of our time have cowed us, they overwhelm us, and we do not know how to respond to today’s challenges with the drive and creativity of yesterday.”
Techera’s conclusion is no doubt true in part, but there are other reasons, equally harmful, but more complex, that need to be recognized. The most important are the following: Social Justice, Liberation Theology, and Humanistic Psychology, all three of which the Catholic Church over time has embraced and thus (at least tacitly) encouraged the laity to accept. Here is a brief examination of each. (For a full examination, see the links provided.)
Social Justice was conceived in the 1850s by an Italian Jesuit, Luigi D’Azeglio out of concern for the poor. His contemporary, Pope Leo XIII shared that concern but focused on enabling people to become property owners and warned against government redistribution of property and wealth. Pope Pius XI agreed. Later, in the 1960s, Pope John XXIII, rather than disapproving of government expansion, instead implied that the state is responsible for citizens’ welfare. Pope John Paul II later warned that when the “social assistance state” expands its role, “it leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies . . . [as well as] an enormous increase in spending.” However, the U.S. Bishops, have for several decades adopted a view of social justice that ignores the insights of Popes Leo and John Paul. As a result, they tend to approve of governmental expansion and the Wokeism embraced by politicians and journals such as America Magazine.
Liberation Theology was founded by Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Dominican priest, in the 1960s from his experiences in dealing with poverty in Latin America. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger commented, “The Catholic church, like other Christian denominations, found itself with a difficult choice: embrace the Marxist view and be considered a friend of the poor and a comrade in their struggle against the rich, or reject the Marxist view and be denounced as an enemy, and by extension an oppressor, of the poor. . . .What makes LT complicated and, in Ratzinger’s view, dangerous is that it transforms Christian theology into an instrument for “progressive” political action. It therefore represents a “radical . . . reinterpretation” of the Christian faith. In brief, liberation theology denies each individual’s potential for evil and the historical reality that “liberators” often turn out to be as exploitive and tyrannical as the people they replaced. This denial helps to explain why Catholic prelates and journalists seem untroubled by illegal migration.
Humanistic Psychology is not a theological or religious concept at all, but a secular one. Carl Rogers, a leader of HP, wrote, “I can trust my experience. . . when an activity feels as though it is valuable or worth doing, it is worth doing. Put another way, I have learned that my total organismic sensing of a situation is more trustworthy than my intellect.” Also, “the only question which matters is, ‘Am I living in a way which is deeply satisfying to me, and which truly expresses me?” And, a person “can trust his own feelings and reactions—that his own deep impulses are not destructive or catastrophic, and that he himself need not be guarded . . .”Those ideas—putting feelings over reason, impulse over restraint, and personal satisfaction above all else—were glamorized in the media, taught in classrooms, and preached from many church pulpits as trustworthy guides to success, happiness, and spirituality! Abraham Maslow, another HP leader, taught that Self-Esteem must be established before achievement is possible. As a result, building students’ Self-Esteem became a major focus in schools and colleges and was preached from many pulpits. Most of these ideas are the opposite of biblical teaching, yet many Catholic and other Christian leaders considered them a guide for deepening biblical teachings.
Many Catholic religious orders, notably the Jesuits, enthusiastically embraced Humanistic Psychology and doing so dramatically changed their perspective on religion, education, politics, and life. In The Re-Formed Jesuits, Jesuit historian Joseph M. Becker, S.J. writes as follows: “The influence exerted on lifestyles by psychology was perhaps the most potent of all: Humanistic Psychology was teaching that ‘the traditional religious lifestyle’ left one in danger of being ‘psychologically deprived’ . . . Novice directors began attending psycho-religious institutes, sensitivity sessions, and similar activities of humanistic psychology. Also, the novice library began to include some of the popular works in the field.” Spiritual exercises included affirming: “I am worthwhile.” “Self-acceptance.” “Healing of negative self-image.” “Creation is for me.” “Experience of oneself as competent, able . . . In 1969 a new approach to the study of theology was introduced for Jesuits: “The approach . . . was marked by a strong subjective, psychological quality. ‘To be in touch with myself’ was a phrase frequently employed to describe an essential goal . . . The truth of theology was to be found in its meaning to the self. There was much stress on the necessity to be free.” Becker noted of “one influential leader” that “in his actual dealings with students, he found more guidance in the new humanistic psychology than he did in the traditional methods by which he had been formed.
In The Jesuits, Former Jesuit Malachi Martin wrote of the Jesuit’s “betrayal of the Catholic Church. He states that the leader of the order, Pedro Arrupe, rejected St. Ignatius (its founder) and instead embraced modern psychology. Also that in certain councils of the order, “there was no mention of human fallibility and weakness because of original sin, nor of struggling with Satan,” Also,”nowhere will you find a religious and supernatural analysis of any aspect of the human condition.”
William Coulson was a leading associate of Carl Rogers and director of his seminars and workshops in Humanistic Psychology for priests and nuns. Coulson’s comments on those efforts includes these: “Humanistic psychotherapy, the kind that has virtually taken over the Church in America, and dominates so many aberrant education [ideas] like sex education, and drug education, holds that the most important source of authority is within you, that you must listen to yourself. . . When we implied to people that they could trust their evil impulses, they also understood us to mean that they could trust their evil impulses, that they really weren’t evil. . . . When humanistic psychology moved into the Catholic religious orders [the result] was that priests and nuns became bachelors and bachelorettes. They started thinking about conquest . . .They see themselves now as ‘whole persons,’ and they justify their sexualized behavior on the basis of that theory. It was better when we were more repressed.”
It is important to understand that all three causes of the Jesuits’ decline—Social Justice, Liberation Theology, and Humanistic Psychology—have had a similar impact on the Catholic hierarchy, the priests and religious orders they oversee, and the laity they serve. A perfect example of this impact, in my view, is this statement by Pope Francis: “You have seen that in the United States the situation is not easy: there is a very strong reactionary attitude. It is organized and shapes the way people belong, even emotionally. I would like to remind those people that being backward-looking is useless and we need to understand that there is an appropriate evolution in the understanding of matters of faith and morals.”
Pope Francis’ statement is dripping with irony! No other organization in human history has been more protective of its past beliefs, or more opposed to “evolution” of them, than the Catholic Church. And yet here its highest authority is implying that such protectiveness of the past (aka conservativism) is useless! If there is any reasonable explanation of this contradiction, it lies in Pope Francis’ training: He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1958, was ordained a Jesuit in 1960, studied theology from 1967-69, then became a master of novices and a professor of theology. In other words, he learned and then taught Catholic beliefs precisely at the time when Social Justice, Liberation Theology, and Humanistic Psychology were changing the shape of religion. That a Catholic pope could still be profoundly affected by those flawed ideas is testimony to their immeasurable influence on Western culture.
Copyright © 2024 by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero. All rights reserved.
