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INSIDE the JESUITS
How Pope Francis is Changing the Church and the World
by Robert Blair Kaiser
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Pub Date May 16 2014 | Archive Date May 16 2014
Description
Inside the Jesuits takes readers inside the Jesuits’ head-and-heart take on faith. The author tells the story of his own Jesuit training before leaving to become a journalist and highlights how the key elements of the Jesuit formation have made Pope Francis the pope he is -- like Jesus in his simplicity, launching bold administrative moves to update the Church, and daring to say and do things no other pope has said or done. He washes the feet of those in prison, including a Muslim woman. He says of homosexuals, "Who am I to judge?" To further illustrate the Jesuit DNA in action, Kaiser produces some fascinating profiles of other Jesuits and former Jesuits working the Jesuit motto, "for the greater glory of God" -- which Kaiser gives a more worldly spin: "for the greater good of the people of God."
Inside the Jesuits is a powerful exploration of how the Jesuit training, to be more like Jesus -- hasshaped Pope Francis, a self-confessed sinner who encourages us to love our supposedly-less-worthy selves and help make a better world.
Introduces readers to the basics of Jesuit spirituality and training
Shows how the “Jesuit DNA” shapes the work of Pope Francis
Includes profiles of contemporary Jesuits and former Jesuits, showing the “Jesuit DNA” at work to make a better world
Illuminates how Francis’ papacy illustrates the words of a Jesus who inspires us to serve others selflessly and with joy
Robert Blair Kaiser was a Jesuit-in-training for ten years before leaving to pursue a career in journalism. He served as an award-winning religion reporter for The New York Times, CBS News, Newsweek, and Time. He is the author of sixteen other books, including A Church in Search of Itself and he is an internationally recognized commentator on Vatican II.
A Note From the Publisher
1: A Jesuit Pope
2: What To Expect of a Jesuit Pope
3: A New Vision
4: The Jesuit DNA
5: The Interview(s)
6: Vatican II
7: Other Religions
8: Liberation Theology
9: Pioneers
10: Not Just About Stray Dogs
11: Still Jesuits
12: The Man in the White Suit
Advance Praise
Robert
Blair Kaiser provides a poignant and informed account of the notably
wide appeal of Pope Francis. Kaiser opens up the mystery.
— James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History
Kaiser
writes with the enthusiasm and insight of one Jesuit for another
Jesuit, Pope Francis. A brilliant journalist with immense experience, he
explores Jesuit DNA to predict change in the papacy and Church. It
excites with surprising revelations and perceptions. This is a must read
for changing times.
— Jane Anderson, University of Western Australia; author of Priests in Love
I
have known Robert Kaiser since we both covered Vatican Two back in the
sixties. He had an inside track, having been ten years a Jesuit, and he
has now made an eloquent case for the hope that Pope Francis will
transform the sclerotic Catholic Church. I hope that he is right.
— Ted Morgan, biographer of Winston Churchill and Somerset Maugham; Pulitzer prizewinner
Kaiser,
like Pope Francis, is 'a Jesuit at heart' and he knows what makes
Jesuits tick. He is remarkably well-informed and connected, and is thus
very well placed to tell us why Francis is turning the modern papacy
upside-down. It is because of the pope's Jesuit DNA: the daring to think
and act outside the box, to be free to innovate, to remain flexible, to
adapt constantly, to set ambitious goals, to think globally, to move
quickly, to take risks, to make mistakes—all to find the presence of God
in the world.
— Simon Bryden-Brook, Catholics for a Changing Church UK
Not
for the first time, Robert Kaiser has got it absolutely right. Things
really are different under this new Pope, and Kaiser's gift is to
explain why, in terms of the 'Jesuit DNA' that are in the very fiber of
Pope Francis' being. This is a remarkable insight into a Papacy that is
strikingly new and that bids fair to bring to fulfillment the unfinished
business of the Second Vatican Council (and here, of course, Kaiser's
'inside track' is enormously illuminating). There is a rollicking ride
through the centuries of Jesuit history, at times inspiring, and at
times uncomfortable reading for contemporary Jesuits. Kaiser shows how
we are today living in an irreversibly new world: God is at work.
— Nicholas King, S.J., Oxford University
Opening Inside the Jesuits
is like tearing the wrappings off a gift you thought lost in the
snowdrifts of the stern winters that settled on the Church during the
long papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Once opened, Robert
Blair Kaiser's book brims with the rising light and warmth of spring in
his seamlessly interwoven stories of Pope Francis and the Jesuit
tradition he fulfills as, with the humility of Saint Francis and the
spiritual depth of Saint Ignatius, he sets the table of the Church and
invites the world to take the first places at the feast that Vatican II
prepared for it. Nobody does this with the insight or art of Robert
Blair Kaiser who was prepared for this challenge by his own interwoven
years as a Jesuit seminarian and as a journalist who covered Vatican II
for TIME magazine. Kaiser finds the Jesuit tradition with its deep
discipline and its commitment ever to seek out the little explored
margins of human knowledge and experience exemplified in Pope Francis
who, because he is not defensive makes the world comfortable enough to
lower its own defenses toward the Church. This is an engrossing and,
yes, a thrilling book to read by anyone drawn toward this deeply
spiritual and yet profoundly human Pope. In short, Kaiser tells us, just
what you would expect from a Jesuit Pope.
— Eugene Cullen Kennedy, emeritus professor of psychology, Loyola University of Chicago
Among
the few living journalists to have reported the Second Vatican Council,
Robert Kaiser offers a unique and rich perspective as he connects the
Catholic story over five decades. So anchored, his Jesuit credentials
add yet another special vantage. The Pope Francis story remains larger
than most can yet imagine. This book helps explain why.
— Tom Fox, editor, National Catholic Reporter
It
is rare that you can get to know a pope from the ‘inside’. Yet that is
precisely what Robert Kaiser has done. He has got ‘inside’ Pope Francis
by highlighting how the pope’s spirituality and training has made being a
Jesuit part of his DNA. Francis is a Jesuit to the core of his being
and Kaiser spells out with lucidity and style what this will mean for
his papacy. With an insider’s eye for detail, Kaiser introduces us to
the spirituality and creativity that characterizes the best men in the
Jesuit tradition, men who are always out ‘on the edge’. He sees Francis
as being the first pope for centuries who will challenge the church to
move outside its comfort zone, as well as being precisely the style of
church leader that Vatican Council II wanted. Inside the Jesuits
is both provocative and reassuring: ‘provocative’ when Kaiser outlines
just how challenging Francis’ approach to being bishop of Rome will be.
And ‘reassuring’ in that Francis is the most Christ-like pope
Catholicism has had for centuries.
— Paul Collins, author of The Birth of the West
A
compelling read if only to hear Robert Kaiser wax rhapsodic about a
pope! But there's more, for Kaiser writes from that peculiar 21st
century space where a "former" Jesuit can yet profess his enduring
affection for the order and the church.
— Tom Roberts, editor at large, National Catholic Reporter
Only Robert Blair Kaiser could have pulled this off. Inside the Jesuits,
an admiring analysis of what makes the Jesuits such extraordinary
achievers in the life of the Post-Reformation Church, is woven
seamlessly into a penetrating, astute, and thoroughly engaging
reflection on the promise of the first Jesuit Pope. An extraordinary
achievement!
— Donald Cozzens, John Carroll University, author of Notes from the Underground: The Spiritual Journal of a Secular Priest
At
once chatty, insightful, and profound, this part-memoir, part study of
Pope Francis as a Jesuit by the doyen of American Catholic religious
journalists will delight and inform a wide audience. Written in an
engaging style, it is deeply informative of how and why Cardinal
Bergoglio was elected, and what we may and may not expect from his
papacy. Robert Kaiser places Pope Francis wisely and well amid his
Jesuit peers and the Order’s history and charism, puts both Kaiser
himself and the pope into conversation with major events and movements
in the last fifty years of the Catholic Church’s history, and conveys so
well the sense of constructive excitement that Francis’s election has
brought to the Church.
— Paul Lakeland, Aloysius P. Kelley, S.J., Professor of Catholic Studies, Fairfield University
Robert
Kaiser has written a spirited defense of the social gospel, with
special attention to Pope Francis and his "Jesuit DNA." As an ex-Jesuit I
found this enlightening and indeed persuasive at important points. His
hopes for a curing of the papal curia and his stories of Jesuit
theologians' trail-blazing in matters of faith were of special interest.
— Jim Bowman, author of Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968
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Available Editions
EDITION | Other Format |
ISBN | 9781442229013 |
PRICE | $32.00 (USD) |