St. Peter Canisius, pray for the Jesuits!

peter_canisius_smToday is the Feast of St. Peter Canisius (+1597), a Jesuit priest and Doctor of the Church.  There is a good write up about this great son of Ignatius HERE.

Peter was a great counter-Reformation saint who worked tirelessly in German speaking lands for the Faith.  This is exemplary:

From his earliest youth, God had specially protected him, and had markedly endowed him with a tender fervency in prayer and a predilection for heavenly things. He also had the advantage during his years of study, of a most excellent director, who guided him onwards in the path of holiness, and to whom he on his part daily confided with a generous humility his actions, words, and even his most secret thoughts. Eventually it was God’s will that he should become acquainted at Mayence, with Father Peter Favre, and by his means led to join the Society of Jesus. He had already, as a young priest at Cologne, given proofs of extraordinary zeal, which had won public recognition. Herman von Wied, the misguided Archbishop of Cologne, had at that time invited some of the innovators into the city, thus bringing ravening wolves into Christ’s fold. The firmness with which Canisius opposed the heresies of the new teachers, and the high esteem in which he was already held, caused him to be sent by the clergy and people to the Emperor, to ask help against their false pastor; and he fulfilled his mission so well, that shortly afterwards the hireling, for he was no longer a shepherd, was deservedly deposed and excommunicated.

Ravening wolves.

When shall we see Jesuits like him again?

I would rather see the company repressed again than foster the likes of THIS and the article and doings behind it at a Jesuit-run school.

NB:

Clement_XVI_Mug_01 Clement_XVI_Mug_02

For all the selections click

>HERE<<

UPDATE:

Meanwhile Jesuits at the Jesuit-run Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley they’ve invited a woman to speak who claims that she has been ordained.  HERE

Jesuits.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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11 Comments

  1. Atra Dicenda, Rubra Agenda says:

    Broderick’s biography of this (one of my favorite) saints is lengthy but very readable.

  2. Mike says:

    An award, to be made annually in perpetuity, should be endowed in memory of Herman von Wied. Perhaps the award committee could be made up of a subset of clerical readers of this blog; else we might never stop thrashing over the list of nominees.

  3. JonathanTX says:

    Sounds like it’s time to start demanding that current false pastors be deposed. How is that done nowadays?

  4. Alanmac says:

    Father Martin is a very good writer who espouses his opinions obliquely. He is for homosexual marriage (a cause close to his heart) and female ordination. However, he will not come right out and say it as he knows his jig will be up. He is in the closet on these issues.

  5. Akita says:

    I’ve had devotion to this lovely saint for years. He gave us the second part of the Hail Mary: “pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death”.

  6. joekstl says:

    Thank you, Fr. Z, for calling attention to today’s feast day. St. Peter Canisius is the patron saint of the Collegium Canisianum, the Jesuit International School of Theology in Innsbruck, Austria where I completed my S.T.L. degree in the 60s. We had the privilege of attending lectures by Karl Rahner for Dogmatic Theology, and his brother Hugo on Mariology and Patristics. An alumnus of the Canisianum was Fr. Flanagan, founder of Boys Town. [Whom I mentioned today, by coincidence, under another entry.] This year our Canisianum American Alumni will hold our annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska and we will visit the Boys Town site.

    I know there is antipathy on this site to most things Jesuit. But I do recommend two books by Fr. James Martin. I have used with my small men’s prayer group his “The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything”. [Those poor men.] It is an excellent introduction to Jesuit spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. For anyone contemplating a trip to the Holy Land, or for those who have already taken a pilgrimage there, his book “Jesus: A Pilgrimage” is a prayerful way to experience the presence of Jesus in the Holy Land.

  7. albinus1 says:

    The past two years I have taken part in a spoken-Latin weekend workshop reun by the Paideia Institute (founded by fellow former students of Fr. Reggie Foster) held at Fordham’s law school on Fordham’s Midtown campus at Lincoln Center. Right next to the campus is a church, St. Paul’s, where I went to Mass. St. Paul’s is staffed by the Paulist Fathers, a missionary order. I remember thinking that it was appropriate that the Paulist parish was next to Fordham because if anyone is in dire need of the attentions of Catholic missionaries, it’s the Jesuits.

  8. Sonshine135 says:

    Q: Why is it difficult to do construction with a Jesuit?
    A: They make the concrete all muddy.

  9. Brian2 says:

    Jesuits are so frustrating. Everybody knows about the crackpot Jesuits, doing weird things. But there are also Jesuits doing the right thing and holding the line which much less publicity. So, when I was at Fordham years ago, I met a lot of “good” Jesuits that seems to me to be on the ball; full on Thomists. And I met some scholastics that were on fire, chomping at the bit to finish their studies (devouring the encyclicals of JP II) and work in the vineyard. And…there was one that went clubbing every weekend.

    I honestly don’t know what to make of them. Can Jesuit weirdness be defended via something like the free will theodicy… so Jesuits are given freedom to do what they feel called to do. This can lead to some very bad things, but also some very good things and somehow this justifies the freedom.

    Part of me wonders if the weird Jesuits seek out and get preferment so they can speak out on issues, while the other one’s just put their heads down work in whatever school, parish, soup kitchen or whatever they get sent to. Squeaky wheel gets the grease?

    [I think you are on to something. It is ever so.]

  10. Hidden One says:

    May we have many more such Jesuits as St. Peter Canisius!

    Is there by any chance a suitable prayer (in Latin, at least) for the sanctification of Jesuits, or more specifically for the raising up of true imitators of this Saint?

    [Well… there are certain psalms that come to mind….]

  11. AvantiBev says:

    Thanks to my pastor at St John Cantius, Chicago, I had the chance to hear Fr. John Hardin, S.J. (1914 – 2000) speak several times at various venues. I also had a chance to meet him, a seemingly frail man with surprisingly firm handshake and penetrating eyes. His own order brought him much suffering which he bore for Christ’s sake. I truly believe I shook the hand of a saint who will be raised to the altars someday…some better day.

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