It's almost ten years since I wrote to the NY Times, trying (in vain

to correct novelist Mary Gordon's mellow fantasies about the Great Mustachioed Basque 

--nowadays he might be an ETA terrorist. Here's the letter (slightly altered):

                                                                                              October 18, 1999

To the Editor,

   Mary Gordon offers a tender-minded eulogy of the virtues of St. Ignatius Loyola

in her contribution to "It Takes All Kinds" (10/17/99). As someone who spent

four years in a Jesuit high school (Regis, in Manhattan) and seven years (1959-66)

in various Jesuit seminaries, I'd like to offer a counter-appreciation.

   1) Ignatius was, intellectually speaking, a monomaniac: Consider the "Principle

and Foundation" of his Spiritual Exercises*: "All other things [i.e., except humans]

on the face of the earth are created for man to help him fulfill the end for which

he was created. From this it follows that man is to use these things to the extent that

they will help him to attain his end. Likewise, he must rid himself of them in so

far as they prevent him from attaining it." "The modern executive" Gordon

speaks of might well be forgiven for considering such cold-blooded instrumentalism

a business cliche. Liberals, on the other hand, might find it reminiscent of classic

capitalism's destructive scorn for "externalities" (i.e., the natural world). In any case,

it's a dismal attitude.

2. Ignatius was a moral fanatic: in his meditation on hell from the Exercises he asks

us to reflect on "the particular sin of any person who went to hell because of one

mortal sin." That is to say, one false step and you're consigned (with perfect

justice) to an eternity of agony. Who could accept such idiocy nowadays?

3. Ignatius was a purveyor of a familiar, but repellent kind of theological masochism:

"Let me see myself," he cries, "as a sore and an abscess from whence have come

forth so many sins, so many evils, and the most vile poison." Ignatius' fanatical

fasting and other assaults on the flesh made him ill and shortened his life. The 

fact that this Catholic hatred of the body is time-honored doesn't make it any less foolish. 

4. As all readers of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist know, Ignatius was a vehement

celebrator of Hell: "First point: To see in imagination the great fires, and the souls

enveloped, as it were, in bodies of fire.

   "Second point: To hear the wailing, the screaming, cries, and blasphemies ...

   "Third point, to smell the smoke, the brimstone, the corruption, and rottenness ..."

 It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at this sick nonsense.

5. Ignatius was a macho imperialist. Having argued that every red-blooded Christian

male would rush to sign up for an earthly crusade (kill those Jews, kill those Greeks,

kill those Turks), he offers a self-evident (to him) a fortiori: "If we heed such a

call of an earthly king to his subjects, how much more worthy of consideration is

it to see Christ our Lord, the Eternal King. and before Him, all of mankind, to

whom and to each man in particular He calls and says: 'It is my will to conquer

the whole world ....'" Haven't we had enough of the metaphor of conquest?

    Those whose blood still isn't stirred might try "The Two Standards,"

with its campy Baroque evocation of His Satanic Majesty: "Imagine

how the evil chieftain of all the enemy is seated in the center of the vast

plain of Babylon, on a great throne of fire and smoke--a horrible

and terrible sight to behold ... He calls together countless demons,

he scatters them some to one city, some to another ..." 

  I think we'd better go looking for a better model.

                                       Peter Heinegg

* All quotations taken from Anthony Mottola's translation of The Spiritual Exercises.