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Morris Plunges
Ahead, Overriding the Spirit’s Powerful
Warnings
Notice
how the Spirit was warning Morris about the
course he was taking, but he plunged ahead,
insisting that the Lord was leading Him. What
lord was this, leading him into Jesuit Spiritual
Formation and Jesuit Spiritual Direction?
High Level of
Resistance From Conscience
Morris tells how he was
“experiencing a high level of resistance. I
was to learn later that such resistance is
common…” (p.8). The resistance is
the voice of conscience warning you not to do
this. Therefore, Morris just overrode the
resistance. He tells of how he had “twenty
days of resistance” but then he ‘called
Louise Young. I shared with her my spiritual
journey and my desire to explore the process of spiritual
direction.” (p. 8).
Jesuit Experts
Explain How to Overcome “Resistance”
Morris tells of how Barry
and Connolly, two Jesuits, in their book, The
Practice of Spiritual Direction, spend an entire
chapter dealing with the phenomenon of
‘resistance.” (Morris, p. 8).
Therefore, Morris would have us go to the Jesuits
to find out how to overcome the Holy
Spirit’s voice of warning us about Jesuit
Spiritual Directio
Jesuits: “The
Practice of Spiritual direction;”
“Finding God in All things: A Companion to
the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
William A. Berry, S.J.,
one of the Jesuit authors of the Practice of
Spiritual Direction, has also written a
Companion to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius
Loyola, called Finding God in All Things: A
Companion to the Spiritual Exercises of St.
Ignatius (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria, 1991)
Foster Recommends
Jesuit Barry
From the titles of the
books by those Jesuits, it is clear that they are
in the vanguard of the Jesuit order in producing
materials for the implementation of Spiritual
Formation and Spiritual Directorship. Foster
comments on the Companion to the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius: “This book of
reflections on spiritual teachings of Ignatius
Loyola is an excellent treatment by a noted
Jesuit spiritual director and retreat
leader.” Foster and Griffin, p.
299. (emphasis mine)
Finally, after much
“resistance” and fear, Barry Young
became Morris’ Spiritual Director. Morris
describes the ‘tremendous freedom” once
he took the plunge to reveal his hidden self.
Spiritual
Director, Father Confessor
Basically, the Spiritual
Director functions as a kind of Father confessor.
Morris quotes Elizabeth O’Conner describing
the process: “It is an open relationship
where your fear, feelings of rebellion, critical
attitudes, misgivings, etc., are confessed…
Your Spiritual director is one to whom you want
to reveal your hidden self.” (Elizabeth
O’Conner, Call to Commitment (New York:
Harper and Row, 1963), p. 201. (emphasis mine)
Whereas traditionally in
Roman Catholicism, in the confessional the priest
is supposedly not supposed to see the person
confessing, in the new confessional of Jesuit
Spiritual Formation and Jesuit Spiritual
direction, there is a face-to-face contact on a
regular basis at regular times (p.11) a la
Jesuit Spiritual Directorship.
Morris Receives
Article by Jesuit On Spiritual Direction, Written
For Roman Catholic Orders
In this first session
with Barry, his Spiritual Director, Morris says,
“I shared very openly about my personal
history and my family relationships…Barry
also shared with me an article by William J.
Connolly, entitles ‘Noticing Key Interior
Facts in the early Stages of Spiritual
Direction.’ [William J. Connolly,
‘Noticing Key Facts in the Early Stages of
Spiritual Direction,’ Review for Religious
35 (1976): 112-121.]
William J. Connolly is a
Jesuit. This article was published in Review
for Religious. “Religious” is a
Roman Catholic Term for its adherents who belong
to a Roman Catholic Order or congregation, or who
are a monk, friar, or nun.
In other words, the
education material generated by the Jesuit
Connolly for other Jesuits Franciscans,
Benedictines, Dominicans, monks, friars, and nuns
regarding the practice of “spiritual
direction” is now eagerly devoured by Morris
and, by his example and advocacy, recommended to
his hearers.
70% of
Morris’ Spiritual Director’s Directees
are Involved in Ministry
In another note Morris
states, “Barry Young generally meets with
directees on a monthly basis. It is interesting
to note that approximately 70% of his
directees are involved in some form of
ministry.” Thus, Spiritual
Directors are first targeting the ministries of
the Protestant Churches, training them in Jesuit
practice, forming them in the image of the
Roman hierarchy. Even the Mennonites are
deeply into spiritual formation. Their
syllabus has the Jesuits William A. Berry &
William J. Connolly’s The Practice of
Spiritual Direction in their NC School for
Christian Spiritual Formation as one of its
readings.
Spiritual
Directors International
“Ignatius
was, in modern parlance, a good listener.”
–Joseph A. Munitiz, S.J. and Philip Endean,
S.J. preface and introductory notes to Saint
Ignatius of Loyola, Personal Writings (London:
Penguin, 1996), cited in McDonough and Bianchi,
111.
Spiritual
Directors International – A Global Network
of Confesso
Spiritual Directors
international is spanning the globe with an
organized network of confession-hearing Spiritual
Directors. “Spiritual directors
International began in 1989, in a gathering of
spiritual directors of the Christian faith at
Mercy Center in Burlingame, California,
USA.” –Spiritual Directors
International website, “Purpose and History
of Spiritual Directors International.”
Mercy Center, run by
nuns, not only hosted the founding of Spiritual
directors International, but hosts conferences
such as a conference March 4-7, 2005, attended by
the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, the San
Francisco Zen Center, and the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), led by
Friar Thomas Hand, and celebrated its 20th
anniversary at the Sisters of Mercy of
Burlingame. (Project MUSE website.)
Secretary of
Spiritual Directors International is a Jesuit
A Jesuit, James Keegan,
S.J., Mdiv ’06, serves as the secretary of
the group out of Gloucester, MA. Cathleen Murtha,
DW, is the President. Spiritual Directors
international is all organized, from world
regions down to state levels.
Dominican, Benedictine,
Franciscan Nuns Coordinate the Spiritual Director
Just the first few pages
of listings (out of many, many pages) for just
the states of Illinois, Indiana, South Dakota,
and Michigan reveals that the coordinators on the
state level are Dominican and Franciscan,
Benedictine and other orders of nuns, with OSF
(Order of Saint Francis), OP (Order of
Preachers-Dominicans), I.H.M. (Immaculate Heart
of Mary). And OSB (Order of St. Benedict-the
Benedictines) appended to the coordinator’s
name. Some of the designations of the Sisters are
not even listed in the Catholic Encyclopedia,
such as PHJC, and MPS, SNJM, and DASD.
Thus, nuns, Jesuits, and
others are directing the global work of Spiritual
Directors.
Rome’s
Intelligence System
The confessional is the
greatest information-gathering system in the
world. This is why Rome’s intelligence is
the best that there is on the face of the planet.
This is why, during the Reagan administration,
the United States exchanged an ambassador with
the Vatican, and the Vatican sent a Papal nuncio
to the United States. Now this papal intelligence
is flooded with the inner sanctum from the heart
of what once was Protestantism.
Spiritual
Directors International is a global
organization, organizing the global work
according to world fields, of the global
confessional network of Spiritual directors.
Thus, the Jesuits now have a global network of
confessionals in all denominations from the
Mennonites to the Adventists, from the
Presbyterians to the Buddhists.
Spiritual Directors
International was founded at the Sisters of Mercy
in Burlingame, California. Sisters of Mercy was
founded when Mary Baptist Russell and her group
of eight women landed in San Francisco in 1854.
Their organization, Sisters of Mercy of the
Americas, is the organization that has fostered
Spiritual Directors International, which has
broken down the world into regions and state
organizations to organize the global network of
nuns coordinating Spiritual Directors
confessionals.
Thus, Rome has
access now to inside information in all churches
and religions through the confessional of
Spiritual Directors.
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