No./ Jesuit-a charmer who can bite

By Hugh Kay
HE is a Basque who has written eight books in Japanese. He was Master of Novices at Hiroshima when the atomic bomb fell in 1945. He is a multi-lingual exmedic who has been in prison as a suspected person.
As Jesuit Number One he has trotted the globe to commit his men to the task of creating a new social order.
He is Fr. Pedro Arrupe, and he is 62'. He became General of the Society of Jesus five years ago, and on Tuesday arrives in London for a four-day visit to Jesuit houses in England and Scotland.
It is not the first time a Jesuit General has been to England, Fr. Roothaan came on 1848 and Fr. Martin in 1892. St. Ignatius himself came to London before his society was born.
To stimulate Jesuit renewal in the spirit of Vatican U, Fr. Aruppe has been already to Africa. the Middle East and India; to Canada, the United States, Latin America and Australia; to France, Belgium and Ireland; to Poland, where he got on well with the Communists, to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
Pedro Arrupe was born. in 1907, His father, a keen, promoter of Jesuit retreats. founded a Bilbao paper, Lu Gaceta del Norte.
After five years studying medicine at Madrid University. Pedro joined the Society at Loyola and, after the Jesuits were ousted from Spain in 1932, went to study theology in Belgium (Mar neffe) and Holland (Valkenburg).
Ordained in 1936, he finished his theology in Kansas, in the United States, and went to Cleveland for his tertianship. Arriving in Japan in 1938, he became parish priest at Yamaguchi two years later.
It was at this time that the Japanese, in a wave of suspicion of all foreigners, kept him in jail for a month until his position was "clarified." He became Master of Novices at Hiroshima in 1942 and was there when. on August 6, 1945, the atomic bomb was dropped on the city.
The novitiate became an emergency hospital. and Fr. Arrupe figures in John Hersey's book, "Hiroshima." In 1945 he was chosen to lead the Society's vice-province, manned by an international team, and when it became a full province in 1958 Fr. Arrupe was named Provincial.
There he remained until, in May 1965. he was elected General. The choice undoubtedly turned in part on his experience as superior of Jesuit volunteers from all over the world. including England, some of whom came to teach at university level.
Nor is it without significance that Japan had become a centre of dialogue between Christians and the non-Christian religions of the Fast, Among Fr. Arrupe's Spanish writings is a study of modern Japan and his own version of the Hiroshima story. His eight books in Japanese include a life (and two volumes of letters) of St. Francis Xavier. Jesuit apostle of the East: a five-volume commentary on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius; a study of Christ and one of Communism; a translation of St. John of the Cross; an account of Christianity; and "Letters to Young People."
The General can be a charmer.' spry and alert, a singer of Basque songs. He can also he tough to the point of ruthlessness. impatient of waverers. One gets the feeling that he would readily see the Society decimated, if what was left was a cadre of men who really knew where they were going.
Young Jesuits. for him, are in the best sense "the voice of the modern world in the Society," and he quickly loses patience with the opponents Of change. the laudator tonporis act!.
Diplomatic niceties tend to be lost on him. But he has an acute and subtle sense of balance, without being petrified by it. He favours "a healthy pluralism" in adapting the Society's mission to various regions, but seeks to affirm at the same time "the essential union which was for St. Ignatius the distinctive mark of the Society."
Moreover, "if, with the contemplativus in (Jeanne, action has to broaden, at the same time contemplation has to deepen."
For Fr. Arrupe the modern technological world is "aweinspiring." and modern man, while glimpsing unlimited prospects for development, "is eager to explore in a more open-minded way his behaviour and conscience."
But the Christian mission is "to infuse a flow of spiritual. young and vigorous forces into the organism of the technological world, so that ho no technicus does nut lose his soul in theology. but recovers it, not debased but renewed and enriched."
Soon after his election, Fr. Arrupe's talk about "war" on atheism gave rise to suspicions of reaction. Later, with a wry grin at his own expense, he explained.
The only way to "combat" atheism was to meet it with a living faith which was there for all to see. Past approaches had been too cerebral. Human contacts with atheists were needed, perhaps by way of a group apostolate.
But atheism was a universal sociological phenomenon which had not been properly analysed, and it called for a full-scale inquiry by sociologists, psychologists, economists, philosophers and theologians.
After the birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Fr. Arrupe said that the Society's obedience to it would be "faithful, loving, firm, open and truly creative." The Jesuits' desire to be loyal would not wipe out the reservations some of them might feel.
However, "to obey is not to stop thinking, nor to parrot the encyclical word, for word in a servile manner."
Arrupe showed his teeth in North and South America where he told the Jesuits to worry less about training the upper classes, to identify themselves more with the under-privileged, and to fight for the poorest man's right to share in decisions affecting his life.
In December 1966, he told the Latin. American Superiors flatly: "The Society is not efficiently oriented to an apostolate which favours social justice." Historical reasons had justified the emphasis on training upper class leaders, but the Jesuit apostolate in the region was not focusing "precisely on the agents of evolution which are today at work for social change . . .
"It is gravely distressing that still today there are those in the Society . who have not understood the urgency and primary importance of the problems of social justice."
Even a society ensuring good wages and living standards was unjust if it did not permit the exercise of personal responsibility and a share in government, "Nor." the General added. "can one believe that today's more powerful classes can be the agents of social transformation " In November 1967, Fr. Arrupe told the Jesuits of the American Assistancy that their record of service to the American Negro had fallen short The Society was to foster Negro vocations to the Society and to run special courses to enable Negroes to qualify for entry into Jesuit colleges of all kinds.
It was to use its parishes and sodalities for breaking down race barriers, to open Jesuit houses in the poorest Negro areas by the end of 1968 Finally, Jesuits were to refuse to buy goods and services from firms practising racial discrimination. and to so-operate with all organisations working for true social justice Thus Fr. Pedro Arrupe. What, one wonders, will he have to suggest to the Jesuits of England and Scotland?