On (Maybe) Why the Jesuits Cracked

An interesting comment on the Dominicans v. the Jesuits from the Dark Lord Himself:

...when I discovered the liberty of the Catholic faith (and even more so, of the Dominicans where the prevailing ethos is "If you've met one Dominican, you've met one Dominican") I felt as though I'd come home. One of the funniest critiques of the Catholic faith has always been the "The Pope tells you what to think. You beome one with the mnonolithic Borg" thing. Nothing could be further from my experience. The Dominicans are nothing if not celebratory of immense diversity and ordered freedom of the intellect. (I remember one priest making fun of St. Ignatius remark that he would believe black was white if the Pope commanded it. A Dominican has too much common sense for such absurd authoritarianism.)

And right there--right THERE--we may have a reasonable explanation for the current crisis of fidelity within the Jesuit order and its institutions. What happens when a rope or a bridge, drawn incredibly taut by immense pull, suddenly snaps? It flies away from the center point of the breach at immense speed. What happens when an incredibly potent machine gets a bird inside of it when running at high speed? It destroys itself (and does significant damage to the plane). Or apply the metaphor to a boat--the Barque of Peter, perhaps... Thank God (literally) that the survival and running of the Church does not depend upon the Jesuits, or the Dominicans, or any of the Popes, or any human thing. We'd have seen it destroyed long since. But here, in this little remark, I think I can see suddenly clearly the heart of the issue. Simply: Ignatius crafted a hugely potent tool, with massive potential for good or evil. He harnessed that tool to the Papacy with the most stringent vows of obedience possible, hoping to hold the whole together. But vows are vows, and men are men. Anything under such intense pressure--such minds, such skill, in some of the most brilliant and capable men the world has ever seen pulling against the bounds of obedience--runs the risk of breaking out. The formation was too intense. The expectations, too much. The engine got the large stone of modernism in it and tore out fundamental pieces of itself. The effects are still being felt. Things were rusting for some time before. There had been decay, as is only to be expected in human organizations. But Ignatius's work held together...till the mid point of this past century.