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By Agence France-Presse
ROME: Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday urged
Jesuits to avoid “sowing confusion” on sensitive issues for the
Roman Catholic Church such as the nature of Jesus Christ, sexual
morality or the family.
Meeting with a delegation from the centuries-old
Society of Jesus, the pope reminded the order of their commitment to
“protect and defend Catholic doctrine, in particular regarding
sensitive subjects that are today under heavy attack by secular
culture.”
He said issues of “the salvation of all men in
Jesus Christ, sexual morality, marriage and the family should be ...
clarified in the context of contemporary reality while staying in
tune with the Magisterium (papal authority) to avoid sowing
confusion and disarray among the people of God.”
The Vatican has sanctioned a number of Jesuits
over the past few decades for straying from official doctrine,
including for their views on non-Christian religions, the human
Christ and the defence of society’s dispossessed— the focus of
the liberation theology movement that swept Latin America in the
1970s.
The Congregation of the Doctrine of the
Faith—which Benedict headed as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before
his election as pope in 2005—sanctioned Spanish Jesuit Jon Sobrino,
who lives in El Salvador, in late 2006 for his books on the nature
of Jesus Christ.
The pope said Thursday that the Church
“needs” the Jesuits and relies on them “to reach physical and
spiritual places that others cannot or have trouble reaching.”
In reply the intellectual order’s new superior
general Adolfo Nicolas, a 71-year-old Spaniard elected in January,
assured the pope of the order’s “sense of responsibility.”
Nicolas lamented that “the inevitable failings
and superficial character of some of us (can be used) to dramatise
or present as conflicts ... what is often just the manifestation of
human limitations and imperfections or inevitable tensions of daily
life.”
On the eve of Nicolas’s election, Benedict
asked the Jesuits for their “full adhesion” to Church doctrine.
Throughout their history, the Jesuits have
attached great importance to intellectual development as well as a
commitment to the geographical and spiritual “frontiers” of
Christianity.
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