DECLARATIONS OF A JESUIT 'WAR'

THE JESUITS The Society of Jesus And the Betrayal of The Roman Catholic Church By Malachi Martin Linden/Simon and Schuster. 525 pp. $19.95

I've had some rigorous Lents, like the youthful one when I gave up candy and ice cream. This current Lent may be my toughest of all -- the nearly unbearable penance of reading a screed that's fit only for those longing for a mental hair shirt. The itching and raw rubbing of Malachi Martin's "The Jesuits" is unlike the usual Lenten sacrifices because no symbolic resurrection occurs at the end. All that's there is another Ash Wednesday, which is where he begins, in the first line, with this dark claim: "A state of war exists between the papacy and the Religious Order of the Jesuits."

Martin, an ex-Jesuit, is bitter that his former order -- a global fraternity with 26,000 members -- has taken turns that to him are damnably for the worse. Martin argues: "In place of the otherworldly purpose of the traditional Church, the Society of Jesus has substituted the here-and-now struggle for the liberation of one class of men and women in our society today: those millions who suffer from social, economic, and political injustice. The way of speaking about that class struggle is an important and delicate matter for the Jesuits. The new mission of the Society -- for it is nothing less than that -- suddenly places them in actual and, in some instances, willing alliance with Marxists in their class struggle."

In Martin's thinking, that's the smoke wafting high from the raging battle between the pope and the Jesuits. Some battle. If Martin had bothered to look at the recent pastoral letter of the U.S. Catholic bishops, "Economic Justice for All," he would have seen these words of Pope John Paul II: "The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of workers over the maximization of profit; the preservation of the environment over uncontrolled industrial expansion; production to meet social needs over production for military purposes."

Sounds like Pope Vladimir Ilich, successor to Pope Karl. Martin writes that "in every practical sense the Society of Jesus is committed corporately to this class struggle." It should be hoped so. Jesuits will then be in line with the pope in the core-Christian way that their leading members and saints have been since the order was founded by Ignatius of Loyola in 1540. The bile in Martin's prose is that of a sore loser. No war is occurring between the Jesuits and the pope; there is only church politics, and Martin's side is losing. Instead of calling for a timeout, he calls names: "The brute fact is that many Jesuits wish to see a radical change in the democratic capitalism of the West, in favor of a socialism that seems inevitably to come up smelling just like totalitarian Communism."

In the past two decades, I've interviewed at least 20 Jesuits and spent time with about that many others. They ranged from Horace McKenna, who worked among the poor of southern Maryland and in the streets of Washington, to Daniel Berrigan, the plowshare hammerer. I don't recall one Jesuit who fits the bizarre antipope image that Martin concocts. They had opinions and bents, but none that were close to disobeying the Ignatian oath of loyalty to the pope. I have kept up with America magazine, the literate Jesuit weekly, and I have seen no editorials or articles from the war zone that Martin keeps insisting is out there.

The only war in Martin's book is the one he wages on facts. America magazine recently listed a number of errors. Several others are obvious. Martin says that in 1977, Ernesto Cardenal, the Nicaraguan priest, came to Washington to speak at a program organized "under the direction of Orlando Letelier, who, researchers have concluded, was a Cuban agent." No reliable news organization ever reported Letelier's being a Cuban agent. If the Chilean diplomat directed the 1977 program, it was an event worthy of miraculous status because he was murdered in 1976.

In the offices of Linden Press, Martin was apparently as powerful a caster of spells as Rasputin. The first line of the book jacket claims that the author "has established a record of accuracy so unique that it has been called 'uncanny.' "

Antireligious tirades are often traceable to an incident in the author's life. Knuckle-rapping nuns in parochial schools have long been inspirers of books and plays that let authors settle unholy scores against the church. Martin appears to have no nuns in his psyche, only Jesuits, though he keeps his torments private. His ventings against revered priests like Teilhard de Chardin -- there was "an arrogance in his attitude" -- and laymen like Jacques Maritain -- his "theology of history" was "built on Marxist philosophy" -- put Martin over the edge. He isn't expressing opinions but is mounting a crusade that few take seriously. It is known that a small minority of Jesuits are grumbling about their order's leanings. What 26,000-member organization doesn't have its reactionaries?

Martin's delusion is that, because a few progressive Jesuits think the current pope has as many strengths and weaknesses as other mortals, this is "war." Most Jesuits, in fact, stay well clear of papal politics. They are too busy with the rare and necessary work of keeping the faith and sharing the peace. They are everywhere, from their work in schools to prisons -- where many are being held because of their faith. One or two have a new, though blessedly temporary, ministry: defending the order's honor from addled cranks like Martin. The reviewer is a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group.

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