The power of prayer is bringing Canterbury and Rome together after 500 years

A new Pope, a new Primate 

and a new life for Christianity

By Charles Moore

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The Exercises resulted. They prescribe, over a 30-day regime (which also has shortened adaptations to normal daily life), a way of reviewing one’s own spiritual health, coming to know and imitate Jesus, and a means of discernment between the good spirit and the evil. They are also strong on what would now be called emotional literacy. One must use the actual and moral imagination, Ignatius teaches, to enter into the life and suffering of Jesus. One must learn to feel intense grief for one’s sins, “with abundant weeping”.

From this Ignatian training, the spiritual crack troops of the Counter-Reformation were let loose upon the world. Several of them, led by Francis Xavier – whose Christian name the new Pope has taken – began the conversion of India and the Far East. Over time, the Jesuits became proverbial, at least in hostile propaganda, for power manipulation. More recently, after the Second Vatican Council, some became power manipulators of a different sort. They declared themselves “liberation theologians”, adopting Marxism and cosying up to revolutionary movements. This heresy was identified and resisted by John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and by the man who has just become Pope. As an organisation, the Jesuits have been troubled for decades.

But the original essence has survived. In the ecumenical culture which has been one of the best consequences of Vatican II, Ignatius’s way has become a key spiritual discipline for Christians of all sorts. It is the basis of countless “retreats” and courses in which people learn to examine themselves and to pray. From these, they re-enter the modern world spiritually refreshed. As with practitioners of Pilates, but of the soul not the body, their core muscles have grown strong.

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What this vast change shows is that the scandalous divisions of Christianity that have existed for 500 years are ending. You might say that Catholics have become more Protestant (in attitudes to the Bible, for instance), and that Protestants have become more Catholic (eg in attitudes to the eucharist). You could certainly say that both have become more Christian in their attitude to the other.

The benefits are only beginning to become apparent. It is hard to exaggerate how much the divisions of Christendom distracted and discredited Christians for so long. For centuries, we measured our virtue by how well we were able to smite the other lot, sometimes with words, sometimes with actual weapons. At last, there is a re-energising of Christian life.

This energy has organisational aspects, but its root is prayer. Prayer is the first, last and strongest language of faith. Once it is shared, and particularly when shared under structured exercises such as those developed by Ignatius, it empowers those who pray. The slogan says “The family that prays together, stays together”. The same applies to the global Christian family.

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