In order to shed some light on the complementarity between Ignatian and Carmelite Spirituality that is being discussed at present, I would like to say a few words to avoid confusion.
The Black Death or the Plague (1348-1350) was so horrific, so widespread and so destructive that people began to ask how God could allow such a thing to happen. Where was he when the collective prayers of Christendom rose up to plead with him to stop it? Where was he in those apocalyptical times, and why was his Church on earth so impotent to prevent almost half the population of Europe from dying terrible gruesome deaths? Instead of looking to God and his Church then, many started to look elsewhere for spiritual guidance, for principles on which to base their lives.
When the Renaissance (circa 1350-1620) conveniently unearthed the ancient philosophical religions like Stoicism that the early Church had condemned, many began to turn to them. The influence of these doctrines can still be seen in the Exercises of St Ignatius that were composed at the height of the Renaissance
The Credo of Humanism
The Credo of the humanism that was born at the Renaissance was, “I believe in man, what man can do, what man can achieve with his unaided human endeavour”. The Credo of Christianity that was born on the first Pentecost is, “I believe in God, in what he can do, in what he can achieve with his divine endeavour, working in those who open themselves to receive him”. The new religious congregations founded after the rise of humanism then, like the Jesuits, were deeply influenced by what man can achieve, working by his own endeavour. Those founded before the rise of humanism are more influenced by what God can achieve working through those who firstly turn to him, and continually turn to him in mystical prayer. For it is here that they are purified to receive his love and all the infused virtues contained within that love. It is this that enables God to do through those who receive him what is impossible without him.
Now, in order to avoid any misunderstanding both these trends are orthodox, as long as the grace of God that comes to us through the sacraments is sufficiently emphasised. However, if the mystical prayer that prepares and purifies a person to receive this grace is not sufficiently taught and practised, then the reception of God’s grace will of necessity be impaired.
No Mystical Theology, No True Discernment
The discernment process that you find in the Exercises of St Ignatius is a good example of these two different approaches if you read them as they were originally written in the Exercises. For the older orders, it is in mystical contemplation that the Holy Spirit gives the wisdom and the other infused virtues that enable a person to see the truth about oneself, about God, and what he wants of you and of his Church. Their whole emphasis is theocentric, not anthropocentric. As the Jesuits have no mystical tradition, they have devised the process of what is called ‘discernment’ to do for them what the Holy Spirit does in mystical contemplation, because mystical contemplation plays no part in their spirituality.
The only effective way that a person can discern God’s will for themselves, or for others is in the light of the Holy Spirit, not in the light of man-made rules or instructions. Even if they were divinely inspired they will be misunderstood and misapplied by those who have not been sufficiently purified in the mystical purification to receive ‘the infused gift of Wisdom.’ Let us see how what is being called ‘discernment’ today was achieved in the early Church
How the Catholic Church makes Decisions
When in about AD 48, fifteen or more years after the Crucifixion, several serious questions that were dividing the early Christians had to be resolved. A gathering of the faithful was called together to settle the matters. St Peter presided but other apostles were there too, including St Paul. This conclave that came to be called the Council of Jerusalem was seen as the prototype and forerunner of the later ecumenical councils. Please notice that those involved had come, not to take part in some sort of discernment process devised by human beings, but in serious debate and discussion that was successful because deep and prolonged prayer had sufficiently purified their minds and hearts, making them porous to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit who guided and inspired them.
This had already taken place over many years in the lives of the apostles in ‘retreat’ at Jerusalem and in St Paul’s ‘noviciate’ for ten years in the Arabian desert and in Tarsus, where they had been radically purified in such a way that they were open and docile to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, their experience had led them to insist on at least two years of prayerful preparation for all those who were preparing for baptism, after which this preparation would become part of their daily lives, as described by the fathers of the Church.
The fruitfulness and effectiveness of all later Councils, Conclaves and Synods depended on prolonged and serious arguments and debates of the participants who for many years had their minds, their reasons and their hearts purified in profound contemplative prayer. It was the quality of the collective prayerfulness of the participants that preceded these conclaves that determined the quality of the presence and the power, the influence and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Their conclusions therefore would always be attributed to the Holy Spirit working through those who, through their prayerfulness were at all times open to receive his wisdom. That is why when announcing the results of their deliberations at the Council of Jerusalem, St Peter uttered those famous words. “It has been decided by the Holy Spirit and ourselves” (Acts 15:28).
In Catholic Councils, Conclaves and Synods it is primarily the Holy Spirt who is at work, but his work depends on the collective quality of the prayerfulness of those who are sufficiently open to receive him. This is how God’s will is sought in the Catholic Church. The same means of seeking his will was copied by the monks and nuns in their monasteries and the mendicants in their priories and friaries through their chapters. It was only when later congregations like the Jesuits rejected contemplative prayer and the purification that would make the working of their minds and heart both sensitive and open to the Holy Spirit, that they had to devise man-made methods and techniques to discover, or in their words ‘discern the truth’ to which only the Holy Spirit can lead people. True God-given Wisdom is only fully open to those who have become poor in spirit and humble and pure of heart, in the purification that only comes through encountering He who is mighty, in profound contemplative prayer.
The Demise of Mystical Theology.
After the Renaissance the theocentric and the anthropocentric spiritualities began to travel side by side, one emphasising human endeavour the other divine endeavour. These two trends or pathways continued to journey on side by side in the seventeenth century until at the end of that century a counterfeit form of protestant-inspired mysticism called Quietism was condemned by the Church. It unleashed a powerful anti-mystical lobby that threw out the baby with the bathwater, permanently undermining the classical Catholic teaching on mystical theology. Henceforth the two different pathways would disappear as the spirituality that maximised the action of man’s endeavour became the major highway along which the vast majority who wanted to deepen their spirituality travelled. This anthropocentric or man-centred emphasis that originated at the Renaissance (1350-1620) was reinforced at the Enlightenment (circa 1700) when mystical theology receive a further knockout blow from the rationalism that became the arbiter of everything. If there is no mystical theology, no teaching on how to prepare oneself to receive God’s grace in sufficient measure then we are condemned to making do on a diet that is hardly sufficient to keep us from spiritual starvation, never mind receive into us the fullness of God’s grace in Christ’s mystical body. The spirituality that emerged and continues to prevail down to the present day was called ‘Devout Humanism’ by the renowned spiritual theologian Louis Cognet.
All the great saints who helped bring about renewal into the Church in the past were great mystics, every one of them. They became such because they radically gave themselves up to the prayer in which they were prepared through purification to receive the Holy Spirit as did our first forebears in the early Church. What was once done to transform a pagan Roman Empire into a Catholic Empire before can be done again today. However, this can only be done through learning the profound mystical prayer that was taught by the two great mystical doctors of the Church St John of the Cross and St Teresa of Avila, not by turning to man-made techniques and methods to do what only God can do through those brave enough to give themselves to him.
Mercurian and St Teresa of Avila
When the Jesuit General, Mercurian heard that one of his priests was supporting St Teresa of Avila in her mystical prayer, he was told to stop and lead her back to the Exercises of their founder. What was done then has been done by many Jesuits ever since. The Ignatian Exercises were ratified by a Papal Bull but not as the ultimate pathway to union with God, but as a beginner’s guide, and only a beginner’s guide because it completely excludes the mystical theology that is needed to guide a person onwards when spiritual adolescence comes to an end.
If the Ignatian Exercises are seen as the introduction to the mystic way as detailed by the great Carmelite saints, then that would be fine, but they are not, and those who teach Ignatian spirituality positively exclude it, or at least they never show any knowledge of it, nor therefore ever teach it. Instead, they keep trying to do what Mercurians did over four hundred years ago. It is no good protesting that the Exercises both describe and encourage ‘contemplation,’ because in the Exercises the word ‘contemplation’ is used to describe what mainline mystical writers have called meditation or Lectio Divina for centuries. In other words the prayer of beginners who have not yet been led into the Mystic Way.
Despite their renown for intellectual brilliance that dazzles their devotees, Jesuits are by training no more than spiritual adolescents. They are therefore unable to lead and guide others into the contemplative prayer that is totally alien to their tradition. When approached for help by those clearly called by the Holy Spirit to contemplative prayer, bona fide spiritual travellers are regularly dismissed out of hand. They are dismissed as being misinformed, deceived, or suffering from some mental aberration or sinfulness that has to be addressed before they can be considered worthy enough to be introduced to the Exercises. In this way, they manage to ‘gaslight’ those who are on the right path making them feel spiritually inferior because they have chosen to follow the spiritual way that leads to humility, not one that leads to the arrogance of self-made spiritual masters. So for more than four hundred years, they have been preventing the Holy Spirit from raising up the great saints and mystics through whom he can bring about the renewal that is several hundred years overdue. Rather than by actively trying to generate the sort of contemplative prayer through which the infused gifts of understanding, prudence, and wisdom are given, they have spent their time trying to do the impossible. They have been trying to harness their own unpurified mental and emotional powers to misunderstand and misapply whatever the current secular ‘wisdom of the world’ happens to be for the benefit of the Church, and often therefore with disastrous consequences, as we can see today.
Please do not try to do the impossible. Ignatian Spirituality is all but totally different from the Carmelite Mystical Spirituality that is needed more today than at any time before. For the classical Carmelite tradition, mystical prayer is their very lifeblood, but for the classical Jesuit tradition mystical theology simply does not exist, or if it does, it plays no serious part in their mainline spirituality.
To say that you can fuse Carmelite Mystical Spirituality, that reflects the Catholic mystical tradition from the beginning with the Ignatian moral spirituality that reflects the stoical philosophical tradition that began to seep into Catholic Spirituality at the Renaissance, is simply impossible. In short and in the words of Christ himself. First seek God and his Kingdom of Love and everything else will be given to you. And this means above all else, the God-given wisdom without which we will be no more than blind leaders of the blind.
David Torkington’s blogs, books, lectures and podcasts can be found at https://www.davidtorkington.com/
9 thoughts on “Ignatian and Carmelite Spirituality – Complementary or Contradictory?”
Thank you for those who have responded and have encouraged the following afterthoughts.
In order to question the assumption that Jesuit and Carmelite spiritualities are mutually compatible, I have précised six long chapters from my book, ‘The Primacy of Loving’ that will be published in the new year. Although I have listed in this book many great Jesuits, two of whom I have been proud to call my personal friends, the wellbeing of the Church impels me to point out certain glaring anomalies in their spirituality. Although these anomalies are well known to older Orders, what I feel is a misguided charity has prevented them from pointing out the truth, so the laity remain confused, most particularly about the true nature of the authentic Catholic mystical prayer that is rejected.
This profound and life-changing prayer that was, and still should be the life blood of the Church, has been undermined in the name of a false Modernism conceived at the Renaissance. The word mystical has been for too long derided. It merely comes from the Greek word meaning hidden, secret or invisible. It is the prayer made in Christ’s mystical body where, in, with, and through him, we share in his mystical contemplation of the father. Mystical theology, that has been shunned by main-line Jesuit spirituality for almost five hundred years, teaches how to practise and persevere in the self-sacrificial loving in prayer that gradually changes a person through purification. This is the only prayer that gradually enables us to be united with Christ, not just with his person, but with his personal mystical contemplation of our common Father which is our final destiny. It is not an extraordinary way for a few extraordinary souls, but for all, so that, as St Thomas Aquinas puts it, we can first contemplate and then share the fruits of contemplation with others.
I can no longer stand by and remain silent when I see ignorance of this, our profound heritage replaced by superficial manmade so-called spiritualities. I am referring to fads like the enneagram, Jesuit versions of depth psychology and homemade socio-psychological methods of doing what only the Holy Spirit can do. I am tired of seeing intelligent men so misled themselves and then misleading others by replacing orthodoxy with the latest pseudo-mystical practices culled from India such as Ignatian yoga, Jainism, and other ‘isms’ to replace the genuine mystical theology that they reject. If their use of the discernment process over the last four hundred years or more has still not enabled them to discern genuine mystical prayer from its counterfeit, and then to replace this prayer with the latest fads and fashions, then its purpose must be questioned. This is particularly true when after over four hundred years their discernment process has still not enabled them to see and understand what is detailed by St John of the Cross at the very outset of his mystical theology, namely, how to ‘discern’ when the Holy Spirit is leading a person from the prayer of first beginnings into the contemplative prayer where they will be prepared for union with God. This, the most important moment in a person’s spiritual life is never mentioned in Jesuit spirituality to their own personal spiritual detriment and advancement, and to the detriment and personal advancement of vast numbers of Catholic laity who still look to them as to the great spiritual leaders in the Church.
Enough is enough. I am stating what others can see but refrain from saying, because of a Catholic political correctness that prevents them from stating the truth loud and clear. No wonder the laity do not know where to turn, for they are sheep without shepherds. I have summarised authentic Catholic mystical prayer in podcasts that can be found on my website and that may help to complement my books on the traditional orthodox Catholic teaching on prayer from its first beginnings, in the God-given spirituality that Christ introduced into the early Church to the present day.
Thank you David for your erudition. I am soon to be 71 years young and a convert to the Roman Catholic church. I am called to ‘mystical’ prayer and recently came across a complete presentation of the work of the ‘church’s mystical doctor!’ A gift from heaven found in the thrift section of a shop I frequent here north of Toronto. As I contemplate the ‘final things’, life, death, heaven, hell I look forward to spending even more time seeking Christ’s ‘breast…why wait for heaven? It’s all present in the Eucharist! Time collapses making the past, present and future all present. With the heavenly host as witnesses. I look forward to a good read this winter…
Thank you George for your profound reply. As you say so succinctly…. Why wait for heaven!
Bless you,
David
It is true that currently many Jesuit prodigies have never fully understood the Spiritual Exercises nor were they taught these exercises from Jesuits as these exercises were handed down for centuries through Jesuit spiritual directors rather than from lay persons. Modern scholarship is ignorant of both mystical theologies of the Jesuits and the Reform Carmelite movements founded AFTER St. Ignatius lived by St. Theresa of Avila. St. Ignatius visited the monasteries of Europe and gleamed from them the various spiritual theologies and practices perfected for 15 centuries before he wrote his masterpiece, The Spiritual Exercises. He lifted the 360 exercises including the examen, and discernment of spirits from all the monastic traditions including Benedictines, Cistercians, Franciscans, Dominicans, and the 13th century classic, “The Imitations of Christs.” His work is a synthesis of classical monastic prayer practices. The “Mystical Readings of the Life of Christ” found in the second week of the exercises and is a method of contemplating the life of Christ so that one in infused with the love of Christ for others on the premise that if people were given the love of Christ, they would convert to Christianity, and that love can only be acquired through prayer, fasting, and surrender. The prayer practice was using scripture to transform the soul by the graces of God. Jesuit priests became the spiritual directors of Theresa of Avila and greatly influenced her writings. She in turn was a spiritual director for St. John of the Cross and his writing were influenced by hers. The reform Carmelite movement these two mystics who founded didn’t exist at the time of St. Ignatius, but his spirituality greatly affected these two saints through Jesuit confessors and spiritual directors from the two Spanish neighboring towns of Loyola and Avila. Let’s not forget that St. Ignatius was influence by the spiritual practices of other monastic traditions and saints which are included in the “exercises.” Jesuits at the time of these two saints were missionaries, and wanted “contemplation put into action.” Ignatius clearly taught that without the contemplative methods, the “action” is not a work of the Holy Spirit, and thus the need for discernment of spirits. Carmelites focus on contemplation and less on action as a monastic order, rather than an apostolic order. Many modern lay persons who have sought to discover the riches of the Catholic mystical tradition or claim to be spiritual directors often have never been given good teachers in either tradition if this is the objection of the this author. These poorly taught spiritual directors fail to understand either tradition correctly. Unfortunately modern spiritual direction programs have nothing in common with the Ignatius tradition and wandered into the weeds of New Age spiritualism. Both traditions the Holy Spirit is the teacher and spiritual director be it Ignatius Spirituality or Carmelite spirituality based upon the writings of Theresa of Avila who was directed by Jesuits, or St. John of the Cross. Discernment of Spirits never grows old.
This article is very helpful to me. Thank you.
Mr. Torkington,
Thank you for this thought provoking article. I’ve been reading a lot on mystical prayer and as my region is heavily influenced by Jesuit spirituality, I find few people who are versed in mystical prayer . Your article puts into words what I have experienced but not understood. So much of our preaching and teaching focuses on world rebuilding, instead of the last 4 things. Maybe this focus is also a result of the change of spirituality. I have a lot to research and chew on. Thank you for that.
Mat I think that there are many like you who can see, but not express in theological language and so nothing is ever said or done. We have lost the theological expression to contradict the downward spiral in spirituality. Please just persist in your own prayer. Nothing could be more valuable.
God bless,
David
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I find it hard to believe that humans can thwart the purpose of the Holy Spirit. The corporeal and spiritual works of mercy alone all hearken to man made endeavors that rely on ‘devout humanism’ and these virtues have been abundantly evident since Vatican 2. Of course, the
prayers of monastic communities affect the world in ways unseen and we could not subside
without them.