Meditation on God’s word now seems so central to Christianity that we can easily forget how much that practice depends on an invention of early modernity: the printing press. Ignatius and the classical Reformers lived in the first generation for whom the printed word was an everyday reality. Perhaps it is no coincidence that they both now appear as harbingers of a new form of religious consciousness. Both discovered in the printed text a divine Word, confronting their guilt and ambiguities with an experience of grace as wholly other, as undeserved, as beyond our control. Ignatius called this kind of experience of the sheer grace of God ‘consolation’, and contrasted it with the ‘desolation’ that results from self-obsession and self-absorption. Perhaps a spirituality centred on the experience of the wholly other God is in the end a spirituality specific to modernity. But perhaps the spirituality for a postmodern world will not set aside what we have inherited both from Ignatius and (in their way) from the great Reformers. Perhaps, rather, it will set religious modernity’s sense of the spirits’ movements within richer, more inclusive contexts.
José A. Garcia, ‘The Office of Consoling’, 7–18
For Ignatius, the risen Christ 'consoles' his friends. José García explores the links between Ignatian consolation and the Easter experience of the first disciples.
Jesús Corella, ‘Spiritual Desolation in Today’s World’, 19–34
An overview of what Ignatius says about desolation, followed by some reflections on how desolation's influence in our contemporary culture.
Antonio Guillén, ‘What We Learn from Desolation’, 35–48
A commentary on the ninth of Ignatius' First Week Discernment Rules, explaining the different forms of fruit that spriritual desolation can bring about.
Jerónimo Nadal, ‘On Consolation’, 49–55
One of Ignatius's closest confidants on consolation, on ministry and on discernment.
Ignacio Iglesias, ‘Spiritual Consolation and Envy’, 57–69
Consolation can easily be disrupted in good people, and one frequent manifestation is envy, a besetting sin of religious establishments. Ignacio Iglesias charts this process, and also the possibilities for new regeneration.
Ignatius Jesudasan, ‘Angels of Light and Darkness’, 71–79
Ignatius' rhetoric of light and darkness is dualist, and as such problematic. Angels as the 'voice of God' may be nothing more than the internalised voice of the prevailing social order.
Anthony Carroll, ‘Religious Symbols in State Institutions’, 80–93
Is it right that crucfixes may be displayed in schools funded by the State? Is it appropriate for Muslim women who are civil empoyees to wear the headscarf on duty? Such issues have recently led to conflict in a number of countries. Tony Carroll here explores how the balance can be struck between tolerance and social cohesion.
Eamonn Maher, ‘Reducing Yourself to Zero: Jean Sulivan’s Anticipate Every Goodbye’, 95–105
As France became a fully secular society, the discovery of God becme a marginal, fragmentary affair. Eamon Maher explores how these changes are reflected in the work of Jean Sulivan (1913-1980), the French priest and writer.
Iain Taylor, ‘Without Justification? The Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration and its Protestant Critics’, 106–118
In 1999, the Catholic and Lutheran Churches published a Joint Declaration proclaiming considerable convergence on the doctrine of justification, commonly thought to be the central point of dispute at the Reformation. But many Lutheran theologians have felt that the Declaration failed to do justice to Protestant concerns.