AMDG
October 30, 2009, 5:20 pm
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
Congratulations to America‘s editor and Commonweal‘s friend Jim Martin, SJ–who’s about to take his final vows–after spending about the same amount of time in the Jesuits that a married couple would beginning planning their silver anniversary! How can that be? In this account, he explains how it all works.
Maybe Diocesean priests should look at this system and have 21 years before making a final commitment. It could that up until that time a priest could be laicized without any hard feelings, and remain in good standing. I think Andrew Greely once proposed a similiar idea.
The vows say:
“I further promise a special obedience to the Sovereign Pontiff in regard to the missions according to the same apostolic letters and the Constitutions.”
A lovely sentiment…would that it were widely held both in letter & spirit.
“in regard to the missions”. . .. Any Jesuit out there want to explain the “fourth vow” to Mr. Dibdale and the rest of us?
Yes, I will. After praying and thinking and reading about it for the last 21 years, here is my understanding of the vow.
The famous “fourth vow,” often misunderstood and sometimes misinterpreted by those who may not have read the Jesuit Constitutions, is “in regard to the missions.” While many mistakenly believe it is a kind of vow of “blind obedience” to the pope, it is instead a vow to go anywhere, to go “to the ends of the earth,” as the Gospel says, in service to the church. St. Ignatius Loyola rightly understood that the pope had a better idea of the specific places around the globe where the Jesuits were needed, and so Ignatius asked his Jesuits to commit themselves specifically to this worldwide mobility. This is the meaning of “with regard to the missions.” In the past, this typically meant Jesuits being sent to “the missions,” by the various popes, that is, to evangelize in distant lands.
And the fourth vow is observed both in letter and in spirit today as well. Many of my Jesuit friends are in far-flung places at the behest of the Society of Jesus and the universal church. Several work in Rome at the pontifical universities there; one is in Siberia (yes, Siberia); one is in Ghana; and so on. These men have made themselves available, or, as Ignatius would say, “disponible” to go wherever the Church needs them. This is the meaning of the fourth vow.