The sisters of our congregation live an apostolic life, our spirituality is not monastic, but missionary. We follow Jesus in the footsteps of Mary Ward.
The ‘religious landscape’ and – within it – the role and place of the Church, its self-image, has always been subject to change, but since around the middle of the 20th century it seems to have been undergoing a particularly profound transformation.
A look at our history and its significance for our spirituality today, by Sr Hilmtrud Wendorff CJ
The idea of Christian ‘mission’ is affected by this in a way that is only beginning to become clear. Religious communities face this challenge in two different ways.
If they committed themselves to a specific, defined cause when they were founded, it may be that If, at the time of their foundation, they committed themselves to a specific, defined cause, it may be that this cause has now been ‘accomplished’ or that new circumstances require new approaches, e.g. when post-colonial perspectives force the African mission to reinvent itself. The less ‘fixed’ the goal of a missionary community is, the less it is simply a matter of new circumstances. Instead, the challenge lies in redefining the core of the mission, in tune with the much-cited ‘signs of the times’.
The second type of community includes the Congregatio Jesu, according to its completely flexible ‘codification’ in the constitutions. Its missionary orientation has been in flux since the first day of its existence. For more than three centuries, the Congregatio Jesu, under various names, was primarily known as a school order, in accordance with its actual activity. And education, especially the education of girls, remains one of the most important tasks to which we as a congregation are committed.
However, a look at our history reveals the struggle for our missionary identity. Because the special nature of this search is so crucial and ultimately the only ‘fixed’ element, the first search – that of Mary Ward, the foundress – remains the guiding principle.
Mary Ward grew up in England at a time of severe persecution of Catholics. In her parents’ home and among relatives, she experienced an underground church that was significantly influenced by Jesuits. When she became aware of her calling to religious life, she wanted to join the strictest order she could find, because she wanted to do well what she was allowed to do as a nun, namely to sanctify her own life. “I loved the religious life in general, but I felt no preference for any particular congregation. Only had I decided inwardly to choose the strictest and most secluded one, because I thought and said repeatedly that I wanted to do what I had planned out of a sense of obligation, since women could only do good for themselves; I felt this restriction very strongly at the time.”
At the age of 21, she left England against her family’s wishes, where there were no convents at that time, and joined the Poor Clares in St. Omer, now in Belgium. A wise visitor recognised that the young woman was in the wrong place as a mendicant nun. Mary left the order after a year and founded a convent of Poor Clares for English women. A wise visitor recognised that the young woman was in the wrong place here as a mendicant nun.
After a year, Mary left the convent and founded a Convent of Poor Clares for English women, where she could have lived the life of a true choir sister and believed she had reached her goal. But in 1608, she experienced a vision in which she learned that she was called to ‘something else’.
What this was remained hidden from her at first. She left the convent again and returned “to England to work there for others for a few months”.
There she supported the pastoral work of Catholic priests underground. Another vision (1609) showed her the next step. She writes: “… I recognised clearly and with unspeakable certainty that I was not destined to be a Carmelite, but for something else that would serve the glory of God far more than my entry into that order.” Here, the Ignatian ‘more’ (magis) and “for the greater glory of God” (ad maiorem Dei
gloriam) are heard for the first time.
At the end of 1609, she crossed the English Channel again to the already familiar bishopric of St. Omer, this time accompanied by five like-minded companions, with two more following a few months later. The young women belonged – like Mary herself – to the well-connected Catholic landed gentry of England.
They founded a school, initially for the daughters of English emigrants, but soon also for the girls from the town. They lived together, supported by the bishop, in a community similar to a convent – continuing their search for the way of life God wanted for them.
Irrefutable clarity, albeit in highly tense wording, was given to Mary Ward in a third vision in 1611, in which she heard the words: “Take the same ofcthe Society. Father General will never allow it. Go to him.” This meant nothing less than adopting the constitutions and way of life of the Society of Jesus in a way that was possible for women.
Mary Ward realised that her place, the place of her institute, was not in a convent, but in the open world.
In a letter she later explained how she had understood God’s mission: “Take the same of the society. Understood in such a way that we should take the same in terms of content and manner, except for that which God had forbidden through the difference of gender. These few words shed so much light on this institute, they gave comfort and strength and transformed the soul in such a way that I could not possibly doubt that they came from the one whose words are deeds.”
Very soon after this challenging vision, the first plans for the institute emerged. Three of them have been preserved. The first two reveal the influence of her rather cautious and diplomatic confessor and advisor, Fr Roger Lee SJ, who did not recommend too much that was new at once; the third is no longer marked by
this caution.
In the first plan, drawn up in 1611/12, which was presumably submitted to the Bishop of St. Omer for approval, the stated goal was the perfection of one’s own life in devotion to God and, at the same time, the pursuit of the salvation of others – especially the persecuted Church in England – through Christian education. The characteristic features of an Ignatian foundation are still not very recognisable. The Ratio Instituti of 1615, the second plan, no longer mentions the education of girls exclusively as the missionary activities of the congregation to be founded, but opens up the spectrum to “any other way in which we, as determined or judged at the appropriate time, can contribute through our efforts to the greater service of, through our efforts, we can contribute to the greater service of God and to the spread of our holy Mother, the Catholic Church, wherever that may be”.
To make this possible, the exemption from the jurisdiction of the local ordinary or a religious and from enclosure – both of which were mandatory for women’s orders at that time. This plan was sent to Rome together with a letter of recommendation from the Bishop of St. Omer, requesting confirmation of the
institute. This was promised, but never came.
The missionary dimension of the order to be founded becomes even clearer in the third Plan Institutum of 1621. In it, Mary Ward’s foundation was given its very specific orientation by concretising ‘the same thing’ that she had recognised as God’s will in the vision of 1611. The text largely reproduces the Formulae Instituti, which Ignatius of Loyola submitted as the first rule for papal confirmation before he drew up the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus.
The third plan prescribes that the foundation “should prove useful for the defence and spread of the faith and for the progress of souls in life and in Christian doctrine,” and – here the text goes even further than the Formula Instituti under the influence of the situation in England – “by helping them to be led away from heresy and bad conduct faith and piety and to special obedience to the Apostolic See, by gathering the people for public sermons, lectures, other services of the Word of God and spiritual exercises, by teaching girls and the common people about Christianity and preparing them for it, by teaching the catechism and the reverent use of holy and providing education in schools and boarding schools to those who seem most suitable for the general good of the Church and for their individual, personal good, […] by furthermore providing spiritual comfort to Christian believers, guiding them to confession and other sacraments and reparing them for these, and ensuring that preachers and spiritual fathers are sent to villages and remote locations, then seeking out women whose lives have been corrupted and preparing them to receive grace through the sacraments […] and no less in the reconciliation of those who have strayed from the Church, and in the pious support and service of prisoners or the sick, and in other works of charity, as may seem convenient for the glory of God and the common good.”
In order to realise her far-reaching vision of female pastoral work, Mary Ward wanted, just like the Jesuits, establish a central leadership through a Superior General and make her community dependent solely on the Pope, to whom the members should also commit themselves through a special vow in relation to the missions: “… And his wise love will judge what is beneficial, whether he thinks it best to send us to the Turks or to any other infidels, even to the regions called India, whether to any heretics, schismatics, or even to believers.”
Mary Ward went to Rome twice in 1621 and 1629 to Rome herself to submit her plan personally to the Pope for approval. Paul V died before she arrived in Rome. Urban VIII initially remained ambiguous, but with the very sharply worded bull Pastoralis Romani Pontificis of 13 January 1631, he prohibited the institute she had applied to found.
The deepest reason for the ban was the unimaginability at that time of precisely that
missionary activity by religious women, for the sake of which Mary Ward refused to include the cloister, which had just been made more strictly binding for women’s orders at the Council of Trent, in her rule of life.
It is therefore understandable that the Roman authorities complained that the ‘so-called Jesuits’ had become accustomed to “wandering around at will, unbound by any cloister laws, and under the pretext of promoting the salvation of souls, to undertake and perform many tasks […], tasks that are not in the least appropriate to their sex and intellectual weakness, feminine modesty and, in particular, virginal modesty.
At that time, the community already had branches in Liège, Cologne and Trier, in Rome, Naples and Perugia, at the request of Elector Maximilian I of Bavaria in Munich, with the cooperation of Emperor Ferdinand I in Vienna, and in Pressburg. The bull brought the flourishing work to an abrupt end. But Mary Ward did not give up – despite several weeks of imprisonment by the Inquisition, illness, the closure of most of the houses, and the departure of many sisters. From prison, she wrote on 20 February 1631: “Let us let God do what he will; … God knows how his will will be accomplished.”
In 1632, Mary Ward was acquitted of the charge of heresy. Under the protection of the Pope, she initially lived in Rome with a group of companions who had remained there after the closure of the local school before returning to England with a few women in 1639, where they continued their apostolic work, in secular clothing, with private vows.
On the morning of her death, Mary Ward advised her companions in England: “Hold fast to your vocation, that it may be lasting, effective and loving.” On her gravestone, her companions recorded her legacy: “To love the poor – to remain with them, to live, die and rise again with them – was the whole aim of Mary Ward […].”
Perseverance in flexibility, if one can put it so paradoxically, was not without consequences for the community. The history of survival, growth and ecclesiastical recognition of Mary Ward’s founding vision is long and complicated. The community first existed as a loose group, then as a secular institute. Educational work remained permitted and was carried out, but several attempts to have the constitutions and thus the institute ecclesiastically confirmed failed. Finally, in 1703, the 81 rules, an extract from Jesuit writings, were approved. The rules limited the apostolate to “teaching and educating young women.”
In 1749, a decree by Benedict XIV specified that no further constitutions would be approved. It also prohibited naming Mary Ward as the founder. Many of her letters and other historical material were
destroyed at that time, but the memory of what she had wanted lived on. An important step in the geographical and thematic expansion of the organisation’s activities took place in the 19th century when, at the invitation of the then Bishop of Patna, Anastasius Hartmann, sisters from the ‘English Ladies’, as they were usually called, set out to do missionary work in India. A second step in the same direction, which at the same time strengthened charitable work alongside education, came during the Nazi era, when all the congregation’s schools in Germany were closed. Some sisters worked temporarily in parishes and military hospitals, while others went to India, Brazil, Chile and Romania – missionaries in the spirit of Mary Ward.
The growing appreciation for church history did not stop at the community: since 1909, Mary Ward was once again allowed to be named as the founder. Individual researchers took an interest in her, and the members of the congregation rediscovered her for themselves. Encouraged by the Second Vatican Council, the General Congregation of the now worldwide institute decided in 1968 to adopt the Ignatian Constitutions again. This was initially done in a selection approved in 1978. The complete text, except for that concerning the priesthood, was published together with Mary Ward’s Plan of 1621 (Institutum) and the Supplementary Norms – a collection of norms concretising the Constitutions for the respective period – in
2003. At the same time, the name was changed to ‘Congregatio Jesu’. This fulfilled a wish of Mary Ward, who had expressly desired that her community be ‘named after Jesus’.
Today, the Congregatio Jesu is an Ignatian community of women with around 1,800 members in more than 40 countries on four continents. The name says it all: the Congregatio Jesu – the assembly of Jesus – participates in Jesus’ mission in the world. A universal readiness for mission, as expressed in a special fourth vow, is an essential feature of the Congregatio Jesu. The mission takes the sisters to places such as the steppes of Russia, to people affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa, to indigenous peoples in north-east India and the Amazon, to Cuba, but also to cities in Korea, China, Latin America and Europe.
The Supplementary Norms state: “In view of the great need and poverty of many peoples, the love of Christ urges us to turn more than ever to the abandoned, to bring the message of salvation to the poor and to proclaim liberation to the prisoners” (Lk 4:18). […] Without a commitment to justice, the message of the Gospel is not credible in many countries today.”
Taking seriously the inscription on Mary Ward’s gravestone, “To love the poor […]”, means not only the option FOR the poor, but the option OF the poor as an important criterion for choosing activities, available for the needs of the time, for the glorification of God and for the “greater good of souls”. The realisation prevailed that this requires more than social work “the courageous and creative commitment to justice and the fight against the structures that drive people into poverty”.
Today, the focus of activities lies in pastoral care (retreats, spiritual guidance, parish pastoral care, youth work, hospital and prison chaplaincy) and in the field of education and training, from kindergarten to university. Growing importance is being attached to work with and for disadvantaged women, women who are forced into prostitution, advocacy for people without rights, work in the media and collaboration in national and international networks. But this can also change quickly. Because ultimately, what is ‘set in stone’’ is not a programme, a continent, or a specific field of activity. What is enshrined is the willingness to continually seek together to ‘help souls’ as women in the Church.
Find out mor about our mission and ministries worldwide.
