Customer Reviews

The Jesuits: A Story of Power

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The spiritual authority does not attend solely to things spiritual. The spiritual authority has always been a political force to be reckoned with. The strict separation of the things pertaining to the world yonder and the matters of the world hither is a Lutheran fancy. The Vatican was, and always will be, a den of political intrigue. It is against this political backdrop that one must approach the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits. The founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, had reached spiritual heights attainable by but few. That being said, he was also a political genius. He understood better than most, that even the acquisition of spiritual ends requires the utilisation of this-worldly means. His political astuteness made him see that his young order would be leading a precarious existence if it did not have the Pope and his sycophants on its side. He also realised that for an undertaking to succeed, the investment of capital was necessary. Consequently, he sought the protection of the Pope as well as access to the coffers of the fabulously rich, and on both accounts he succeeded magnificently. However, once these ancillary aims had been attained, the Society of Jesus assumed an existence of its own, marked by a spirit of a staunch and even recalcitrant independence. The spirit of independence, the willingness to live dangerously, and the ability to see things in a new light are all hallmarks of the Society of Jesus. True to these ideals, the Jesuits heralded a revolution during the twentieth century which shook the very foundations of Vatican and made every conservative-minded Catholic shriek in terror. The Jesuits made a preferential option for the poor. In going from being an order in cahoots with the rich to championing the cause of the poor, the Jesuits invoked the wrath of the reactionaries both inside and outside the Roman Church. This book recounts all the power-struggles of the Jesuits, and it succeeds in its task better than any book that has thus far been written on the Jesuit will to power.