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Sharing the Experience of the Congregation The Election Fr. Don Doll, S.J. took the
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Dave Schultenover, S.J. is a delegate to the Congregation from the Wisconsin Province, in the US Assistancy. He is a Consultor to the Provincial of the Wisconsin Province and a professor of historical theology at Marquette University. He is the editor in chief of THEOLOGICAL STUDIES, A Jesuit Sponsored Journal of Theology. |
The election of the general of the Society of Jesus is preceded by four days of “murmuring,” a process of one-on-one conversation about potential candidates for the office. Those who have never been involved in such a process can be expected to think it completely arcane. It is as low-tech as can be. But it’s the process that has been used for electing a general from the beginning. The process is described by Ignatius in the Constitutions: During the murmuratio, the electors “will seek to be informed by those capable of supplying good information, but make no decision until they have entered and been locked into the place of the election. . . . After all together have recited the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, they should be locked inside the place of the congregation . . . in such a manner that they may not leave nor be given any food except bread and water until they have elected a general” (nos. 694, 698). The two or three of us who had experienced previous elections of generals exhorted us to trust in the Holy Spirit and to trust the process. They insisted on that: trust the process! The rest of us went into it blind, trying blindly to trust—like going on one of those 1960s trust walks where you’re blindfolded and someone leads you around by the hand. “It works,” they said. All of us 217 electors spent four days of this—within an edifying atmosphere of prayer and recollection, making appointments with as many men as we could stand in a given day, trying to see those who would best know possible candidates and learn why this or that one would make a good general, or not. I suspect that most of us went through periods of light and shadows, clarity and confusion, until gradually we had settled peacefully individually and collectively on a small number of candidates, so that when the first ballots were counted, it became quite clear where the Holy Spirit was leading us in our choice.
David G. Schultenover, S.J. |
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