Home
Issued: 9-21-2023 Perforation: 14 x 13.25 Value: € 1.25 The stamp commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Pontifical Lateran University, shown above, depicts a University building with Christ the Supreme Teacher on top of the building. The stamp was designed by Patrizio Daniele. The Pontifical Lateran University was founded in 1773. The reason for its establishment was because of the suppression of the Jesuit order. Prior to 1773 theology and philosophy were taught to seminarians by the Jesuits at the Roman College. The suppression was an abolition of the order. Clergy were not excommunicated, but they were no longer permitted to keep their colleges and schools open and do missionary work. The Jesuits had been a leader in modernizing the Church and in being involved in the Counter-Revolution in the 16th and 17th century. During their 41 years of suppression, they did operate in the shadow especially in China, Russia, Prussia and the United States. Officially, the suppression of the Jesuits by the papacy was from 1773 until 1814. De facto expulsion of the Jesuits by European monarchies took place earlier. They were expelled from Brazil in 1754, Portugal in 1759, France and the Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma in 1764, Spain and its colonies in 1767, Austria and Hungary in 1782. The suppression of an order results from a multitude of factors. A few religious orders had been suppressed prior to the Jesuits, thus suppression of a religious order was not new. For the Jesuits, the main reason was that the monarch and aristocratic classes felt that the Jesuits were undermining the status quo in terms of economic, political and social power. There was also concern about Jesuit missionaries conforming to the mores of indigenous people, and demanding individual dignity in colonized territories. One controversy, the Chinese Rite Controversy, was whether ceremonies honoring Confucius and family ancestors were compatible with Catholic doctrine. The Jesuits had no problem with the issue while those in Rome disagreed. Also, the monarchs felt that the Jesuits were too intertwined with the papacy in Rome. The success of the Jesuits in establishing colleges and schools opened up to the faithful new ideas of individual dignity and basic human rights. The Jesuits were too autonomous as far as the monarchs and some in the church hierarchy were concerned. It was acting as a supranational. The Jesuits also accumulated a certain amount of wealth. According to historians James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, the Jesuits’ “independence, power, wealth, control of education and ties to Rome were seen as a threat”. In July 21, 1773 Clement XIV caved in under intense pressure from inside and outside the Church. He issued the brief “Dominus ac Redemptor” which formally suppressed the Jesuits. Historian Eamon Duffy stated that this was “the papacy’s most shameful hour”. Pope Pius VII re-established the Jesuits on August 7, 1814. In total the Jesuits were suppressed for forty-one years. In hindsight the ties of the monarchy to the Papacy’s hierarchy were truly in need of change for the church to survive. The Enlightenment and the establishment of the United States were indications of this fact. The Jesuits might not have been always right, but they were ahead of times in the need for change during a rapidly changing world. Today the Pontifical Lateran University is divided into four faculties: Philosophy, Theology, Canon Law, and Civil Law. Pope John XXIII established it as a university and gave it the name “Pontifical Lateran University”. In 1981 Pope John Paul II established the Pontifical Theological Institute for Marriage and Family Science, and in 2015 The Lateran University aligned itself with Villanova University School for Church Management and Business Ethics. In 2021 Pope Francis established an interdisciplinary study cycle on “Ecology and the Environment”. References: Suppression of Jesuits Wikipedia The unlikely story of how the Jesuits were suppressed America Magazine Pontifical Lateran University Website Pontifical Lateran University Wikipedia |
