#jesuits — Public Fediverse posts

PH Jesuits admit more could have been done in handling Ateneo tragedy

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://interaksyon.philstar.com/trends-spotlights/2026/06/15/314937/ph-jesuits-admit-more-could-have-been-done-in-handling-ateneo-tragedy/

In all seriousness, hey #fediverse #jesuits #augustinians #catholics, is there a nice PDF of #MagnificaHumanitas so I don’t have to print the web page? I am bad at searching.

Added the Jesuits because they seem the most tech forward. Idk.

“Stercus accidit”*…

As we try to understand the rifts afflicting our nation and world, many turn to Marx and his framework of class. But in a provocative essay, Catherine Nichols suggests that it was David Hume (in an 1752 essay that identified the unfethering of wealth from land) who identified the origin of our political divisions…

Describing the political map in terms of Left and Right is an accepted convention all over the world, almost to the point of cliché. Yet it is surprisingly complicated to explain whose interests lie on each side of this spectrum. For example, if the Left supports the interests of workers over the interests of employers, why are Left-leaning regions of the United States and elsewhere in the world among the richest? When Japan and South Korea sought to become economic powerhouses in the later 20th century, they adopted Leftist policies such as strong public education, universal healthcare and increased gender equality – if countries seeking to compete in capitalist arenas adopt broadly Leftist policies, then how do we explain why Leftists are always talking about overthrowing capitalism? And if the Left is somehow both the party of workers’ rights and the party of material wealth, then whose interests are supported by the Right? Given such contradictions, how did these terms become so central to modern politics?

The terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ come from the seating arrangements in the National Assembly during the French Revolution, where the combatants used the medieval estate groupings to define their battle lines. According to their writings, land-owning aristocrats (the Second Estate) were the party of the Right, while the interests of nearly everyone else (the Third Estate) belonged to the Left. This Third Estate included peasants working for the landowners but also every other kind of business owner and worker. Decades later, Karl Marx offered a different analysis of capitalism: he put owners of both land and businesses together on one side (the bourgeoisie), while grouping workers from fields and factories on the other side (the proletariat) in a single, world-wide class struggle. The trouble with both these ways of parsing Left and Right is that voting patterns never seem to line up with class. Both historic analyses leave us with questions about the contemporary world – and not just the paradox of why so many Left-leaning places are so rich. Why, for example, do working-class conservatives appear to vote against their material interests, year in and year out, across generations?

The 18th-century philosopher and political theorist David Hume had answers to these questions, though he was writing decades before the French Revolution. While his essay ‘Of Public Credit’ (1752) was a warning about the dangers of Britain’s increasing reliance on debt financing, his apocalyptic vision of the future turned out to describe some features of our current political map surprisingly well. Hume was writing because he believed that debt financing had the power to upend Europe’s traditional power structure and culture by creating a new source of money divorced from tradition or responsibility: stocks and bonds. Unlike land, anyone with some cash could buy war bonds and get an immediate passive income in the form of interest. This was the thin end of the wedge caused by the debt financing that Hume believed was destroying every part of society. The governments of antiquity, Hume argued, saved money to use in battle and then waged wars in self-defence, or else to expand their territory. But the British had invented a new form of warfare that Hume saw no precedent for, even in the merchant states of Nicollò Machiavelli’s Italy: war for trade, funded with money borrowed from private stockholders…

[Nichols unpacks Hume’s observations (centrally, that three groups with stakes in the status quo, heretability, and the sanctity of “family and family hierarchy”tradition”– landowners, aging parents, and want to preserve old power structures, including the family– and traces their relevance, from Hume’s time to ours…]

… There are many reasons for people aligning Right or Left, which is why analyses of class and material interests fall short of describing the realities of people’s politics. Hume foresaw that these specific groups would resent the economic sea-change of the 18th century – and he was correct. Many people would rather have land and power than money and liberty.

Still, the power of the Right hasn’t doomed the Left – no more than the Spanish Inquisition doomed the rise of the Left in 18th-century England and France. As long as governments want to keep the value of their currencies from falling, someone in their ranks will be using the methods of the Left and inventiveness that brought us everything from our banking system to gay marriage. We don’t need to resurrect communism or focus narrowly on class, following Marx. The experiments are far from over, and we should remember that the Left is generally where money comes from in modern times. We give away too much power when we forget it…

Rethinking Right and Left: “Landholder vs stockholder,” from @catherinenichols.bsky.social in @aeon.co.

As for how it’s going at the moment (and further to Hume and the quote in this post’s title), see: “MAGA’s Betrayal of Small Business,” from @pkrugman.bsky.social.

* “shit happens”– often attributed to David Hume, reflecting his skeptical view that human understanding, particularly of cause-and-effect, is limited to habitual belief from experience, implying that unforeseen, messy outcomes (“shit”) inevitably occur in life despite our reasoning.

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As we sort the Whigs from the Tories, we might recall that it was on this date 1656 that Blaise Pascal (writing under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte) published the first of his Provential Letters (Lettres provinciales), a series of eighteen polemical letters using humor to attack Jesuits for their use of  casuistry and their moral laxity. Though the Letters were a popular success, they had little immediate effect on politics or the clergy. But they influenced later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and ultimately persuaded Pope Alexander to condemn “laxity” in the church and order a revision of casuistic texts.

source

I've just finished reading Jonathan Spence's "The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci", an inventively organized study of the life of a leading early Jesuit missionary in Ming China.

Now I want to read something substantial on the Rites Controversy.

Suggestions welcome!

#History #ReligiousHistory #ChineseHistory #China #Jesuits #RitesControversy #MatteoRicci #SocietyOfJesus #ChineseChristianity #MingDynasty

Obituary of Pope Francis by The Nation. Focuses on his initiatives such as climate, migrants, the poor and marginalized, apology for indigenous genocide, the appointment of bishops from margins and the Synod of Syndocity process including its report. Francis planted many seeds.
#Francis #Jesuits #papacy #LatinAmerica
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/pope-francis-jorge-bergoglio-dead-obituary/

@RD4Anarchy

The term #tupambae from the #Guarani language kinda means #commons.
It's told that the #Jesuits in the Paraguayan region when they created their "christian reign" had difficulties to get the indigenous people to work on their specific #abambae, the personal family yard the Jesuits invented and tried to impose onto the local tribes.
At the same time the indigenous people joyfully engaged when ever it was time to go to the Tupambae, the region further away from the village to hunt and gather together.

The Jesuits managed to translate the term Tupambae into "tierra de dios", "land of good" to the point that now a days if you ask people in this region for the meaning, you get this translation as an answer. "The everything", the space of everything, of every one, became "the all", "the all embracing", "the one and only".

Actually, to unveil this "wrong translation" it's ultimately quite simple as the only thing you have to do is ask if the Guarani where a monotheistic culture. As the answer is obviously no, Tupambae can't be "the land of the good of all" but "the space of all".

> https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupamba%C3%A9
Toponimia guaraníTupambaé, proviene del vocablo guaraní formado por Tupá = "trueno, Ser Supremo" y mbaé = "perteneciente a", se traduce como “cosa que pertenece a Dios”, "propiedad de Dios" o en un sentido más amplio ”lugar donde habita Dios”.6

> https://www.territoriodigital.com/herencia/indice.asp?herencia3/paginas/cap08
El azote aplicado como castigo a los indígenas, fueran hombres, mujeres o niños, era un método común para sujetar a indio a un régimen de trabajo que muy poco se relacionaba con su cultura. El trabajo en los lotes del abambaé se iniciaba muy temprano, luego de escuchar misa.
..
Luego, con sus herramientas, entonando canciones alegres en guaraní, acompañadas con los sones de cajas, flautas y chirimías, partían rumbo a las labores. El aire festivo continuaba durante el día de trabajo, ya que la música y las canciones eran constantes en los ámbitos de trabajo. Se trabajaba con la convicción de que se lo hacía para Dios y para la comunidad.

@HeavenlyPossum

Band of Brothers: the Jesuits

“Ignatius of Loyola’s movement begins modestly, but winds up having a global impact on education and philosophy.”

#Audio #Podcast #History #Philosophy #Jesuits #EarlyModern #Christianity #RomanCatholic #Education @earlymodern @philosophy

#Image attribution: Orion 8, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Icon_announcer.svg

I was very much disliked throughout my monastery [Monastery of the Incarnation, Avila] because I had wanted to found a more enclosed monastery. They said I was insulting them; that in my own monastery, I could also serve God since there were others in it better than I; that I had no love for the house; that it would be better to procure income for this place than for some other.

Several of them said I should be thrown into the prison cell; others—very few—defended me somewhat. I saw clearly that in many matters my opponents were right, and sometimes I gave them explanations.

Yet since I couldn’t mention the main factor, which was that the Lord had commanded me to do this, I didn’t know how to act; so I remained silent about the other things. God granted me the very great favor that none of all this disturbed me; rather, I gave up the plan with as much ease and contentment as I would have if it hadn’t cost me anything.

One day, while I was greatly troubled with the thought that my confessor didn’t believe me, the Lord told me not to be anxious, that that affliction would soon end. I rejoiced deeply, thinking His words meant I was soon to die; and I became very happy when I thought about it.

Afterward, I saw clearly they referred to the arrival of this rector I mentioned because the occasion for that pain never presented itself again [Gaspar de Salazar, S.J. arrived in April 1562].

The new rector didn’t restrain my confessor but rather told him to console me; that there was no reason for fear, and not to lead me by so confining a path; that he should let the spirit of the Lord work, for at times it seemed with these great spiritual impulses that my soul couldn’t even breathe.

My confessor gave me permission again to dedicate myself entirely to this foundation. I saw clearly the toil it would bring upon me since I was very much alone and had hardly any means.

We agreed to carry on in total secrecy, and so I got one of my sisters [Juana de Ahumada] who lived outside this city [in Alba de Tormes] to buy the house and fix it up, as though it were for herself, with money the Lord provided, in certain ways, for its purchase.

It would take long to recount how the Lord was looking after it, for I took great care not to do anything against obedience. But I knew that if I said anything to my superiors, everything would be lost as happened the previous time, and things would even be worse.

In procuring the money, acquiring the house, signing the contract for it, and fixing it up, I went through so many trials of so many kinds that now I’m amazed I was able to suffer them. In some of them, I was completely alone; although my companion did what she could. But she could do little, and so little that it almost amounted to nothing more than to have everything done in her name and as her gift and all the rest of the trouble was mine.

Sometimes in distress, I said:

“My Lord, how is it You command things that seem impossible? For if I were at least free, even though I am a woman! But bound on so many sides, without money or the means to raise it or to obtain the brief or anything, what can I do, Lord?“

Saint Teresa of Avila

The Book of Her Life, chap. 33, nos. 2, 8, 11

Note: Born in Toledo, and while studying at Alcalá, Gaspar de Salazar (1529-1593) decided to enter the Jesuits, which he did in 1552. Translator and editor Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD notes that Salazar’s chronicler described him as being very devoted to the interior life with God, from whom he received many favors in prayer, and also as very intelligent and competent in business matters. In 1562 he was transferred to Avila to be rector there of the Jesuit college of San Gil. Because of difficulties that arose between the college and the bishop, Don Alvaro de Mendoza, Salazar was removed from that office after only nine months. But in that short time, he came to Teresa’s aid by putting her spiritual director, Baltasar Alvarez, at ease about her, assuring him that he had nothing to fear. And when Teresa spoke to him of her experiences, he consoled her greatly and seemed to her to have a special gift of discerning spirits (cf. Life, 33:8-9).

Teresa of Avila, St. 1985, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, translated from the Spanish by Kavanaugh, K; Rodriguez, O, ICS Publications, Washington DC.

Featured image: This is the cell St. Teresa occupied when she returned to the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila as its prioress (1571-1574). Image credit: Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. / Flickr (Some rights reserved)

https://carmelitequotes.blog/2024/05/01/stj-life33/

#Avila #confessor #construction #familyLife #foundation #Jesuits #MonasteryOfTheIncarnation #monasticLife #realEstate #StJosephMonastery #StTeresaOfAvila #trials

#Jesuits in #US #bolster #outreach #initiative aimed at encouraging #LGBTQ+ #Catholics

The initiative — fittingly called #Outreach — was founded two years ago by the Rev. #JamesMartin, a #Jesuit who is one of the country’s most prominent #advocates for greater #LGBTQ+ #inclusion in the #CatholicChurch.

https://apnews.com/article/lgbtq-catholics-outreach-jesuits-pope-francis-8756a79c5fd0323cd019990f6655b749