{"id":19078,"date":"2020-07-15T09:09:36","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T13:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19078"},"modified":"2020-07-15T09:09:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T13:09:36","slug":"contemplative-activists-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19078","title":{"rendered":"Contemplative Activists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Defender\nof Liberation Theology<\/strong><br>\nWednesday, \u202fJuly 15, 2020<\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FBuIBaDSOa4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Jesuit priest Pedro Arrupe\n(1907\u20131991) was a deeply spiritual man who was entirely committed to serving\nothers, particularly the poor in whom he saw Christ. Authors Kerry Walters and\nRobin Jarrell describe some of the pivotal events of his life:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He was three years into medical school in Madrid when a\nmiraculous healing he witnessed at Lourdes sparked Pedro Arrupe\u2019s call to the\nSociety of Jesus. He entered the order at the age of nineteen and was ordained\nseventeen years later after studying in Holland and Belgium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following doctoral studies in the United States, Arrupe\nwas sent as a missionary to Japan. He was serving in a Hiroshima suburb on the\nday the atomic bomb fell and later described the horror as \u201ca permanent\nexperience outside of history, engraved on my memory.\u201d Calling on the skills he\nhad acquired years earlier as a medical student, he quickly converted a damaged\nchapel into a makeshift hospital for the bomb blast\u2019s victims. Arrupe remained\nin Japan after the war years and was named Jesuit provincial there in 1958.\nSeven years later, fellow Jesuits elected him Father General of the entire\norder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During his leadership of the Jesuits, Arrupe was\nparticularly supportive of his brethren who worked with the poor in Central and\nSouth America. These Jesuits combined spiritual ministry with social activism,\nconvinced as they were that the poor were oppressed by wealthy landowners who\nacted with the tacit approval of the Church. The Roman hierarchy condemned this\npolitical involvement as well as the liberation theology, or gospel-based\nprivileging of the poor, that justified it. . . . Arrupe disagreed, and he\nvigorously defended his priests, even after the Congregation for the Doctrine\nof the Faith officially condemned liberation theology. He also refused to\nwithdraw Jesuits serving in El Salvador, despite persistent death threats\nagainst them, insisting that the people of that war-torn and oppressed nation\nneeded them. Six Jesuits who remained, including noted theologian Ignacio\nEllacur\u00eda, were murdered [along with their housekeeper and her daughter] in\n1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Described by one of his friends as \u201ca second Ignatius\u201d\nwho \u201crefounded\u201d the Jesuit Order \u201cin the light of Vatican II,\u201d Arrupe focused\nthe Jesuits during his term as Father General on both renewed spirituality\u2014as a\nresult of his years in Japan, Arrupe himself practiced Zen meditation daily\u2014and\nsocial justice advocacy. Along with other proponents of liberation theology, he\nidentified the suffering endured by the victims of war and poverty with Christ\u2019s\nPassion and taught that alleviating the one through justice was honoring the\nother in faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Arrupe\u2019s\nleadership of the Jesuits and his quiet but persistent defense of their\ninvolvement in liberation theology came to an end in 1981 when a massive stroke\nleft him paralyzed and mute. In resigning as Father General, he offered this\nprayer: \u201cMore than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I\nwanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative\nis entirely with God. It is indeed a profound experience to know and feel\nmyself so totally in God\u2019s hands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defender of Liberation Theology Wednesday, \u202fJuly 15, 2020 Jesuit priest Pedro Arrupe (1907\u20131991) was a deeply spiritual man who was entirely committed to serving others, particularly the poor in whom he saw Christ. Authors Kerry Walters and Robin Jarrell describe some of the pivotal events of his life: He was three years into medical school [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19078"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19079,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19078\/revisions\/19079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}