Jesuit conspiracies

Up until recently I had not thought to look at the websites, blogs, YouTube videos and whatever that are meant to explain the "truth" about the Jesuits and their worldwide conspiracy. Now I am much better informed. The Society of Jesus, headed by the "Black Pope" who actually dictates to the "White Pope" in Rome, is a Masonic, Jewish, Nazi-linked, Communist militaristic organization dedicated to implementing something called the New World Order. Damn, and all those years I spent as a Jesuit no one thought to tell me. And, oddly enough, no one thought to tell the Masons, Jews, Nazis, and Communists. Now that is a conspiracy to end all conspiracies!

Well, to be honest, I had been told something of the sinister plans of the Society of Jesus even before I became a novice. I had been given a little Catholic pamphlet which recounted something of the portrayal of the Jesuits in literature that included a bit of the plot of one of the sequels to The Three Musketeers. In Twenty Years After Aramis is secretly appointed the new Father General, and in the novel there is this description of the "eleventh-year" Jesuit as "one of those men who had been initiated in all the secrets of the order, one of those for whom science has no more secrets, the society no further barriers to present." Of course, any of the youngsters attending a Jesuit high school might be expected to get a good giggle out of this, since the priests and scholastics they dealt with on a daily basis might be more or less admirable but they hardly came off as superspies with their fingers on the pulse of world events, just waiting for the moment to take over.

Naturally, the Jesuits wanted their students to think them just ordinary human beings with a special dedication to their church, and this was so that more callow youth could be lured into their ranks as part of their process to infiltrate American society. As time went on, those students who did become novices would learn the true mission of the order and eagerly assent to a role in which they would know who they really were but would conceal this from everyone else. Sure, but maybe it was because I had not gone to a Jesuit school that I was kept in the dark, since the Society already knew I would leave somewhere along the line but would use me as long they could.

Now the true conspiracy buff, like some of the bloggers I have read, would respond that I really do know the truth but had been assigned by my Jesuit superiors to be a double agent in ordinary society in order to spread disinformation. I claim to be a former Jesuit who was never let in on this great conspiracy, so it must be that my protestations are themselves part of the insidious plot and, if anything, proof that the conspiracy is as active as ever.

Now I realize where I've gone wrong in my own literary career. Several of my books, such as my study of Sinn Fein and the IRA some years back, do contain autobiographical references since my Jesuit past has shaped my interests in examining why people come to believe what they do. Whether I have been looking at the Irish rebels or at modern-day witches, I have attempted to understand what I have called an atmosphere of faith in the sense of how individuals are socialized to accept one or another interpretation of what is real. My contributions here have been modest with not that much notice and certainly not that much reward. Had I only opted to "tell the truth" like a California version of the supposed ex-Jesuit Alberto Rivera promoted by Jack Chick's comic books, I would have had much more attention and maybe much more opportunity to rake in the dough.

On a more serious note, I do wonder about the danger posed, not by a non-existent Jesuit conspiracy, but by the ease with which bigotry can be promulgated and reinforced. When I look at some of the more hateful blogs, I think of a character invented by mystery writer John D. McDonald, a solitary individual culling newspapers and magazines for the coded messages about a coming catastrophe and feeling himself privileged to be among the elite who saw beneath the surface. The philosopher Herbert Marcuse once commented that the problem with a marketplace of ideas is that the bigot has an edge--something I see whenever a well-meaning friend of mine forwards one of his alerts (most recently that Barack Obama is an agent of an Islamic conspiracy to infiltrate the American political scene). In uncertain times, there is something almost comforting about being able to see oneself as a victim of a deliberate plot.

The tragedy is how such an outlook can be manipulated for political benefit and innocent human beings--the Jews in Nazi Germany just being one example of this--can be destroyed. The isolated individual who indulges in vituperative blogging can be easily ignored, but what happens as a virtual community begins to build and calls for action are made? At what point does a crackpot idea take such hold that a real conspiracy takes form--one that grounds itself in a belief that only through direct action can another perceived conspiracy be thwarted?

These new novices

A year back, while assembling the contributions from former Jesuits that appear in my book Unexpected Company, I was struck by how mixed were our reactions to the two-year period of training we all endured as novices. Those of us who aspired to become Jesuits were effectively isolated from the world--certainly no radio or newspapers, and limited visits from our families--in the religious equivalent of a Marine boot camp. Above all, we learned to conform to the expectations of our superiors to be part of what, sometimes disparagingly, would be called the long black line. For some of us this is a time we look back to with nostalgia while for others it is just a succession of less than pleasant memories.

The Second Vatican Council, which called on religious orders and congregations to revise traditional patterns, made a difference in two ways. One was clearly unintended when the old notion that it was just better in God's eyes to be a priest or a religious was discounted with the result that there was a steep drop in vocations. The second was that in adapting to today's world members of religious communities were no longer to be cut off as they had been in the past.

For the Jesuits the changes were possibly far more striking than they were in other groups. The old houses of study were largely abandoned or converted to other uses, and as the novices now ceased to be teenagers just out of high school it became possible to allow a far greater degree of independence than would have been the case before. At the same time the notion of what has come to be called a preference for the poor shifted the Jesuit emphasis away from education to a social ministry. I spent much of my time as a novice perfecting a skill in reading and even speaking Latin, at the time still the universal language of the church, with only a brief period away from the novitiate to work at one of our two retreat houses in the province. Today's American novices do not study Latin at all, and it is expected that they will spend much of their time away from a novitiate in one or another ministry, often enough out of the country.

Recent blogs and news articles have cued me to just how different things have become around the world. In several provinces novices are sent on pilgrimages, in one case being given a one-way bus ticket and just thirty dollars and no clear directions on what to do next. In others there are definite assignments, as in the note on an Irish Jesuit website about the work placement of two first-year novices in Dublin.

It is obviously far too early to determine how successful this new approach is in training men to be Jesuits who will meet the needs of the church in the twenty-first century. In particular, the sociologist in me longs to see data establishing the retention rate for these new Jesuits (essentially, how many complete the long period of formation leading to final vows for both priests and brothers). For the men of my generation, only a small percentage did not leave the Society at some point, often years after ordination. That alone would suggest that the old way of doing things was not all that successful, especially when we all were aware of the priest or brother who did not leave but perhaps should have. One possibility with these new novices and scholastics is that, even if their rate of retention is not significantly different than was ours, will be less likely to be as alienated from both the church and the Society as many of us have been.