Jesuit plots and machinations
Sir: Surely Hadrian VU's imaginary speech to the Jesuit general, quoted by Mr Waugh in the SPECTATOR of 9 February, misses the point. Nobody can get on without a large majority of ordinary people, who should not be called mediocre unless they attempt what is beyond them. There are lots of good Jesuits patiently teaching Catholicism in mission fields, and some even at home (on the quiet). What is new is that nearly all the prominent ones are mediocre.
Father Corbishley need not be, but he has con- demned himself to mediocrity (we hope for the highest motives). It must be hard to preach ex- citingly on the 'agreed syllabus,' now most restricted on the Catholic side. The Resurrection, for example, is probably a safe guess in most Protestant churches, but in the best Catholic circles It Is a slightly reactionary subject, unless you are explain- ing it away or referring to our living in the resurrection' (as I learnt recently), meaning that Vatican H was a sort of Easter Sunday and we've now done with the Cross and Passion and all that rot. What is more serious is to find non-theologians such as Father A. H. T. Levi, SJ, gaily sweeping aside as mere rubbish all the thought and wisdom of the great doctors of the Church (in a paper that once had high intellectual standards), so that an ardent (but more intelligent) fellow-progressive at once spotted that the article was an attack on the orthodox faith of the Church.
Nor should we judge ecumenism by its worst exponents. To restore union among all Christians,' as the (real) council put it, is an unexceptionable, if somewhat vague, aim, and there are good ecumenists like Patriarch Athenagoras and, in England, Father St John or (who was one long before they were organised into pop groups). But the movement is being discredited by people trying to drive a wedge right through the middle of the Catholic Church in their concern for unity, or simply stupid people. I recently heard a highly ecumenical sermon in a Jesuit church, all about Athenagoras and the scandal of disunion among Christians, but outside there was a notice exhort- ing Catholics to join the Lutherans in celebrating the 450th anniversary of the act by which Western Christendom was split in two!
Previous page
