Swiss prepare to reaccept Jesuits

FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
AFTER being officially '2banned in Switzerland for well over a century, it seems likely that the Society of Jesus will once again be afforded full legal status. The Council of States has voted without a dissenting voice to abolish Switzerland's constitutional restrictions on the Jesuits.
The other House of Parliament, the National Council, is expected to vote on the proposal in the autlimn. The decision is not likely to be unanimous, but will probably have the same substantial effect.
Much less certain is the outcome of the third and final stage of the Jesuits' journey to legality — a national referendum expected next year, in the summer or autumn.
Though a two-year-old public opinion survey indicates that about half of the nation's Protestants and two-thirds of the Catholics favour cancelling the constitutional restrictions on Jesuits, political observers are cautious about the outcome. About 43 per cent. of the Swiss are Catholic and 51 per cent. Protestant.
The influential newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung cornmented : "Anyone who wants
to consider the unanimity of the Council of States as representative of public opinion and hence conclude that this once red-hot poker can be grasped, is poorly advised."
The newspaper observed that an unforeseen crisis "could release high feelings or revive them" and imperil the attempt to liberalise the Constitution. But so far there has been little public opposition to legalising the activities of Jesuits.
There was some protest about infringement of personal liberty this spring when a German Dominican professor at the University of Fribourg, which is staffed by Dominicans, was put on leave of absence after he said premarital sex was admissible in some cases. But the fuss died down.
Public discussion of the constitutional question hes been moderate and good-tempered. None of the libels hurled by both sides a century and more ago at the time of the prohibitions have been given new currency. The mood is one of forgive and forget.
The first prohibition came in
1848 after Switzerland's religious-civil war of the Sonnerhund (named after a league of Cath she cantons). Jesuits were prohibited on the grounds
that they wielded powerful political influence and thus were a menace to public peace.
The second and more severe form of the prohibition came at the height of the Kuluirkampl, and anti-Church
campaign originating in Germany but spreading throughout German-speaking Europe. This is the prohibition that remains today.
Article 51 of the Constitution says: "The order of Jesuits and affiliated associations are not allowed in Switzerland, and their members are forbidden any activity in Church and school.
"This prohibition can by decision of the Federal Government be extended also to other religious orders if their activity is dangerous for the state or disturbs the peace of the religious denominations.".
That and the following article — prohibiting the foundation of new monasteries or the restoration of abolished orders — has been very broadly interpreted by the Swiss Government, especially since the last war.
Jesuits neither run schools nor parishes in Switzerland. They edit two influential intellectual magazines, °Hentierung in German and Choisir in French, and engage in chaplaincy work among university students in Zurich, Beren and Basle. Their one high school is just across the border in the Austrian town of Feldkirch.
There are about 100 Jesuits in Switzerland, and some 50 Swiss Jesuits man missions in India and Indonesia.