The Jesuits and Ecumenism

Pope Francis meets Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback church.

This is chapter 11 of The Effect of the Jesuit Eschatologies on America Today – by Dr. Ronald Cooke.

Malachi Martin believed that the Jesuits in promoting their wars of liberation, were also involved in promoting the ecumenical church for all humanity, not just for Roman Catholics. He believed that the ecumenism of the Jesuits was a betrayal of their Order’s original purpose: defending the papacy from all comers, particularly those intransigent Protestants. I think history has proven Martin wrong. He wrote his book on the Jesuits almost thirty years ago. Since then, the Jesuits, although pursuing their ecumenical church, have not betrayed their original goals. They have merely used the contemporary blindness in non-catholic churches to further the cause of the papacy, linking it to a worldwide ecumenical “church” embracing all humanity. This church will be under the dominion of the papacy, even though some window-dressing may hide that fact from millions. The final apostate conglomerate is centered in Rome, that fact is not going to change, no matter how much rhetoric and semantics may attempt to hide that truth from unsuspecting non- Catholics.

For more than one hundred years the Jesuits have been pushing hard to bring about a universal-catholic church. At first, they met with serious opposition and some were excommunicated. However, they did not quit. They kept up their struggle to bring about the “church” of all humanity. The fact that the Jesuits were welcomed early on into the liberal Protestant ecumenical movement was a big help. Soon they would become leaders in the Charismatic Movement after Vatican II, and then they would be welcomed into modern evangelicalism by Bill Bright of Campus Crusade, and other leading evangelicals, to help draw up ECT I, (Evangelicals and Catholics Together).

What Malachi Martin called “MODERNISM” began to creep into the Roman Catholic church at the turn of the 20th century. For years many Roman Catholics had questioned the authenticity of the Scriptures. None, however, had been willing to challenge the authority of the Pope and the church until George Tyrell the Jesuit did.

George Tyrell was born in Ireland in 1861. He converted from Anglicanism to Romanism in 1879, probably as a result of the Tractarian Movement which was going strong at that time. Like Scott Hahn today, Tyrell became an outspoken advocate for Romanism for he became a Jesuit. However, he was infected with MODERNISM, according to Martin. Tyrell wrote,

Faith in the world becomes more fundamental than faith in the Church, for the world-humanity-is by revised definition the fuller and all-inclusive, revelation of God.

The Spirit of God is in us all. The human spirit awakens to self-consciousness and recognizes its kinship with the Spirit which is trying to express itself in the historical process of science, morality, and religion.¹

He liked to say that,

What makes a Catholic is not this or that abstract theory, but a belief in the historical (Roman) Catholic community.²

(This is where the modem emphasis upon “community” and “unity” comes from in modern non-catholic books and ministries: from the Jesuits.)

Tyrell made no secret of his teaching of universalism and the community of humanity. He was dismissed from the Jesuit Order in 1960. Like so many others in history, Tyrell still pined for the Roman Catholic Church, even though he was put out of it.

Tyrell was dismissed from the Jesuits, Malachi Martin claims because the Jesuits were afraid of the conservative nature of the papacy at that time (1960). They were afraid that the whole Order might once again be crushed by the pope and his Curia. Tyrell taught doctrines that were contrary to the official position of Rome at that time. He was told to retract what he had taught. He refused. He was then dismissed from the Jesuit Order and left the Roman Catholic Church.

Tyrell, with Emesto Buonauti and Pierre Teilhard Du Chardin, were all under suspicion because of what they were teaching. Buonauti was excommunicated. Tyrell was dismissed from the Order of the Jesuits and left the church apparently realizing that if he did not, he would be excommunicated anyway. Du Chardin survived, and according to Martin, he was the worst of the three and by far the most influential writer and teacher of the three.

Malachi Martin claims that many modern Roman Catholic scholars followed Tyrell and Du Chardin. Men, he says, like Karl Rahner, Leonardo Boff, Hans Kung, and Charles Curran. These men looked upon Tyrell as their “exemplar.” Martin wrote,

Without a doubt, if Tyrell was alive today, he would be flourishing in a professor’s chair at a Jesuit university or seminary.³

Tyrell still believed in the Roman Catholic church even after he was dismissed by the Jesuits, and left it.

He said the true catholic believes in humanity, he believes in the world, he wrote, “to feel the relation of fraternity between the various members of the religious family is to be a catholic.”⁴ He also said,

The Church of Rome has on the whole preserved the message of Christ more faithfully than any other… and in it you can find the germ of that future universal religion for which we all look.⁵

He regarded every other church as “the work of the Devil, a snare, an imposture, a spurious evolution, “ and, ”whatever Jesus was, he was not a Protestant.”⁶ So, although he was advocating some changes within the System of Romanism, he certainly was no Protestant. If you visit his grave today you will see the headstone just as he himself sketched it before he died: the Host and Chalice at the top; beneath his dates and the words “A priest of the Catholic Church.”⁷

Few people seem to realize today that modem Christian Academia is far more influenced by Jesuit teachings than it is by Reformed Protestant teachings. Witness the influence of Jesuit teachings in places like Calvin College, Wheaton College, Westminister Theological Seminary, Fuller Seminary, Gordon Conwell, and Biola. In these and other colleges and seminaries the teachings of the Reformers have been supplanted by the teaching of the Jesuits. It can safely be said that there is scarcely ONE academic institution in America today that teaches the Protestant position in eschatology, that the Man of Sin is the papal dominion in the world today.

Martin claims that the NEW UNIVERSAL CHURCH of the Jesuits has been promoted by myriads of groups both Roman Catholic and non-catholic. They all champion the new idea that the church is the “PEOPLE OF GOD.”⁸ However, he claims it was the Jesuits who “blazed the trail,”⁹ and set the most consistent examples in helping to establish such churches. Certainly what is now called the “Emergent” church in North America today, follows the Jesuit teachings.

Martin believed that Karl Rahner spent his life in an effort to change the Roman Catholic landscape. And Martin believed that to a certain extent he was successful and that his success,

marked him out as the leader in what can aptly be described as the wolf-pack of Catholic theologians, who since 1965 have lacerated and shredded… the very substance of Catholicism.¹⁰

The truth is that their influence also lacerated and shredded what is now called “non-catholicism” as well. The NEW Unity of the Jesuits invaded the whole Charismatic Movement in North America as well as the evangelical establishment.

Rahner traveled all over Europe and North America, clad in a business suit, not in the clerical garb of the Roman priest, “untiring, Martin claims,” in “his biting and sarcastic criticism of the papacy and papal authority.”¹¹

It is true that Jesuits like Du Chardin, Tyrell, and Buonauti, taught contrary to what the “church” wanted taught in some areas, but in other areas, all these men, with others like them, still championed the Catholic Church. They wanted the “church” to appeal to a broader constituency. Much like the modem mega-church men in non-Catholicism, they claim to hold to the Bible but want to appeal to a broader constituency. This is seen in the so-called Christian RIGHT movement. When it was foundering a few years ago, the leader said that it “needed to avoid Christianese” to appeal to a broader constituency.

This broader appeal by the church in both Romanism. and Protestantism was then extended to include ALL humanity. If we are going to appeal io a broader constituency why not make that constituency everybody? This was Karl Barth’s message. In fact, he emphasized that the message to be preached was that everyone was the elect of God.

Du Chardin also emphasized the “Christification” of ALL humanity, not just an elite group. So both the Jesuits and the non-Catholics, using different terminology, were actually preaching and teaching the same thing. They both rejected the elect of God and promoted all humanity as the true people of God.

Who will be the head of this joint ecumenical church of all humanity? Well, for several years now various “non-catholic” spokesmen have been promoting the Pope of Rome (whom they consider to be one of the world’s leading Christians) to be the “logical” head of the new universal church. The Anglican bishop of Guildford, in his statement about the inauguration of Pope Francis, referred to him as the “universal Primate, whom some Anglicans and many other Christians were beginning to recognize.” * ¹²

* The pushing of the Pope of Rome as the universal Primate of the church of all humanity, is now increasingly common among those determined to bring what is left of Protestantism to the feet of the Roman Pontiff. Perhaps the effort is increasing as we move toward 2017 AD and the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Protestantism. Will REFO 500 the movement now in motion to help celebrate the start of the Protestant Reformation, also celebrate the END of the division that Protestantism brought about, by declaring the healing of the wound and the ushering in of the NEW UNIVERSAL Church.? IS REFO 500 out to celebrate the start of Protestantism in 1517, or out to celebrate the end of Protestantism in 2017? We will have to wait and see!

Malachi Martin, that loyal son of Rome, claimed in his book on the Jesuits, that they had departed from their historical mission to bring the world to the feet of the Roman Pontiff. However, surely time has shown that Martin misunderstood what the Jesuits were all about. They had merely dropped some of their more antagonistic ways that they have used for centuries against the Protestant heretics, and replaced them with an irenic dialogue. They sought then, to work WITH the evangelicals, Charismatics, and Reformed, and Baptist men, to bring about an “ecumenical church.” The Jesuits may have called this church various names, The People of God; the church of ALL Humanity; the NEW Ecumenical church, but what they were promoting was a church STILL headed up by the Pope of Rome. The name may have been different, the end result was the Same.

What Malachi Martin viewed as a betrayal of their historic mission, was merely another ploy in the long history of the Jesuits’ Counter-Reformation. They had changed their tactics, but not their goal. They would cease their opposition to Protestantism and replace it with a spirit of cooperation. They would criticize certain aspects of Roman Catholicism creating confusion and mystery.

The Bible teaches that the same old Harlot religion continues until God casts her down in judgment. All the Present ecumenical window-dressing cannot hide the Great Prostitute’s true nature. She is still the reservoir of evil in the world, the habitation of demons; the prison of every foul spirit; and the cage of every unclean and hateful bird headed up on earth by the Papal Man of Sin.

To get everyone’s attention, and to call everyone to the gathering, the Jesuits merely spoke of the NEW church of all humanity; the NEW Unity; the NEW Community; the NEW theology; and even, as one Jesuit put it, Humanity’s NEW God.

God’s word infallibly declares that the “god” of this world has blinded the minds of those that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them (II Corinthians 4:4). The great ecumenical church of all humanity does indeed worship its NEW “god” and the Bible clearly shows who that NEW god is-the god of this age-Satan himself, is the head of the great “anti-church” of all humanity.