It is sad that a few Jesuits had been tagged as part of the present problems of the Church. But with so many priests and even Bishops becoming part of the problem, this is really a small matter. I have been with the Jesuits for more than 10 years. I took my Clinical Psychology with them. And always had high regards for them.
The rule in the spiritual life is that holiness or salvation must be worked out within the context of a community. That’s why Christ stayed with the Holy family for 30 hidden years; that’s why the apostles lived in community; that’s why the Catholic Church is a family; that’s why the monasteries are referred to as monastic families. In fact, every religious congregation was established with community life in mind. It is no secret that the Diocesan priesthood had always been reformed by attempts to make them live with other priests in community, like the efforts of St. Phillip Neri.
St. Ignatius of Loyola did not see the need for this because of the Company’s role at it’s founding. There was a need for an order where community or family life may be dispensed with. But in Catholicism, nobody gets dispensed. He must have a substitute. And the substitute for community life was their zeal to do battle for the Church and defend the Pope. We may say that their zeal could have been the substitute for community life.
But these days, their task of fighting for the Church and being the army of the Pope seems to have been forgotten by some. And so we see the necessary substitute for community or family life had disappeared. Some found themselves lacking an essential element in seeking holiness. This made some vulnerable to experimentations that had caused them to be “notified.”
St. Ignatius, when he was on retreat in Manresa, learned from the spiritual exercises of Abbot Cisneros, the Benedictine Abbot of Montserrat, Spain. It might help the Jesuits to harken to the call of Pope Benedict XVI to go back to St. Benedict of Nursia to rediscover the foundation of their spirituality.