VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Responding to explicit requests from Pope Benedict XVI, leaders of the Jesuits declared their fidelity to the papacy and church doctrine, while stressing their need for “freedom” and “creativity” in carrying out their work.
The statements appear in a set of decrees approved by the 35th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus (popularly known as the Jesuits), which is the largest religious order in the Catholic Church.
The meeting of Jesuit representatives from around the world took place in Rome from Jan. 7 to March 6, though the final versions of its decrees were not published until June 6.
The pope had earlier has asked participants to reaffirm their “total adherence to Catholic doctrine, especially to its key points, under severe attack today by the secular culture, such as, for example, the relationship between Christ and religions, certain aspects of liberation theology,” marriage and homosexuality.
In response, one decree asks each Jesuit priest to “examine his own way of living and working” for harmony with church teaching in most of the areas mentioned by the pope, and to “acknowledge humbly [any] mistakes and faults.”
Jesuits take a unique vow of obedience to the pontiff, which over the centuries has earned them the nickname of the “pope's light cavalry.” But in recent years, the Vatican has censured several Jesuit theologians for deviations from orthodoxy.
Two weeks before the Jesuits adjourned, Benedict personally enjoined them to “rediscover the fullest sense” of their vow of obedience. That vow, the pope said, “does not imply only the readiness to be sent on mission to distant lands, but also … to ‘love and serve' the Vicar of Christ of Earth.”
Yet one decree insists, with a quotation from the order's constitutions, that the “entire purport” of the vow in question “was and is with regard to missions … for having the members dispersed throughout the various parts of the world.”
The decree's authors add, however, that love for the pontiff as Christ's representative inspires Jesuits to go beyond their obligations to “offer the service asked of us by the pope.”
The same decree stipulates that the distinctive Jesuit form of obedience is marked by “discernment, freedom and creativity in seeking the will of God,” and that “obedience in the Society has rightly been described as an exercise in creative fidelity.”