How the Jesuits Charted the World

I think it's too bad this article got posted on a day when I'm assuming relatively few people are on HN, since it's an interesting story.

One doesn't have to approve of the history European colonialism, religious imperialism, etc., to find this adventuring academic religious order interesting and significant.

(Disclosure: attended a Jesuit parish school, and am not religious, but picked up some intellectual and humanist values from there.)

It’s important not to lump Jesuits in with other groups, or discount all Jesuits in history because of the actions of some. Things I heard growing up in Protestant circles may have biased me towards writing off the Jesuits, but a few years ago I read the 21st century book Heroic Leadership which was written by a Jesuit seminarian who took a surprising turn into investment banking and worked his way up to managing director before retiring to work on several charity endeavors. The book tries to help people in the business world learn from Jesuit principles since he felt the annual 360 interviews and other corporate programs were so hollow in comparison to the routine personal reflection and deeper annual self-examination he learned from the Jesuits.

Anyway, along the way he told numerous stories from over the centuries as Jesuits were trailblazers into building connections in China, India, Japan and the Americas. They would learn the local languages and culture, believing understanding and respect was vital when crossing into other lands. Their founder didn’t want them cloistered and spending the bulk of every day in prayer, believing instead that Jesus’ final commandment was to be taken seriously and they needed to get out and about. Nearly 5 centuries ago, he wanted all Jesuits to be so free of ties that with only 48 hours’ notice they could board a ship to sail around to the other side of the world.

There are many stories of them defending the rights of local people in colonized lands. The Spanish colonists had only dirt streets and wooden buildings in Asunción when Jesuit towns among nearby native Americans had cobblestone streets and stone buildings and were teaching Native American children in schools. The Jesuits pleaded with the Pope via letters that the Native Americans were fully human and Portuguese raiders should be stopped, but by the time the Pope’s cease and desist could reach the Portuguese those towns were destroyed. Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro acted in a movie about these tragedies. For all the faults of some Jesuits, many others gave their all for peoples around the world when it was a foreign concept to many other people to be genuinely loving instead of condescending to other ethnicities.

The suppression of the Jesuits occurred without a theological explanation from the Vatican. I would say that whatever the Jesuits did seemed to contradict the requirements of colonialism and religious imperialism.

And then converting them