What Is the Jesuit Mission?: Faith/Justice and Later Reformulations of the Mission of the Society of Jesus

Arguably the most disputed question in recent Jesuit history concerns how the Society of Jesus understands its mission today. This essay considers three different understandings of that mission, as follows:

In 1975, the 32nd General Congregation officially decreed that “the mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement.”^[1]

Twenty years later, GC 34 (1995) decreed the mission as “to serve faith and promote the justice of God’s Kingdom” and affirmed its support for faith/justice as only one of many Jesuit apostolates.^[2]

In a talk that he delivered in Rome in 1981, Fr. General Pedro Arrupe (1907–1991) offered an unofficial statement of the mission as the service of faith through the promotion of a life of justice and love.^[3]

In what follows, I will examine each understanding in turn.

I. GC 32’s Understanding of the Jesuit Mission

In 1975, the Society published the decrees of GC 32. We focus here on the congregation’s two most celebrated and controversial decrees regarding the nature of the Jesuit mission: decree 4, “Our Mission Today: The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice,” and its allied document, decree 2, “Jesuits Today.”^[4]

The superior general at the time, Fr. Arrupe, saw the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) as making an urgent call for the Society to return to the spirit of its founding father, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and to direct the apostolic activities of the Society to address the social and economic injustices and marginalization felt acutely in many parts of the world. In doing so, he hoped also to revitalize the spirit of the Society, who had lost membership at a rapid pace since its apogee in the mid-1960s.

GC 32’s primary affirmation appears in decree 4, which states the nature of the Jesuit mission in a new and comprehensive way: “The mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement.”^[5]

The document conveys its tone by emphasizing justice over faith, though it certainly discusses faith as well. Furthermore, the document attends primarily to the understanding of “justice” rather than “faith,” as here:

For us, the promotion of justice is not [to be understood as] one apostolic area among others, the “social apostolate”; rather, it should be the concern of our whole life and a dimension of all our apostolic endeavors.^[6]

Note the extraordinary prominence that the congregation affords the promotion of justice, placing promotion of justice on a par in the Jesuit apostolate with the proclamation of “the faith” and with leading others to a “personal encounter with Christ.”^[7]

A. Depth and Breadth of Decree 4

And so, what does decree 4 mean by declaring that the promotion of justice “should be the concern of our whole life”? Decree 2 clarifies the depth and breadth of the concern:

Moreover, the service of faith and the promotion of justice cannot be for us simply one ministry among others. It must be the integrating factor of all our ministries; and not only of our ministries but of our inner life as individuals, as communities, and as a worldwide brotherhood. This is what our Congregation means by a decisive choice. It is the choice that underlies and determines all the other choices embodied in its declarations and directives.^[8]

Note here that, while the congregation focused its attention on the role of “justice,” it did not provide definitions of the terms “faith” and “justice”—nor, in fact, has a definition of either term appeared in any subsequent congregational document. Nevertheless, the document seems to imply an understanding of faith as primarily Catholic or Christian while indicating that the congregation aims at promoting social—as opposed, for example, to distributive or restorative—justice. This bears out, for example, in decree 1 of GC 33 (1983), which, when speaking of “our service of faith and promotion of justice,” states that “we have not always recognized that the social justice we are called to is part of that justice of the Gospel which is the embodiment of God’s love and saving mercy.”^[9]

Note too that, by insisting that the service of faith and the promotion of justice “must” reach into the “inner life” of Jesuits, decree 2 seems to indicate that the meaning of the expression “the concern of our whole life” should go beyond a Jesuit’s apostolic activity to include his deepest thoughts and values. As such, the decree implies that the faith/justice principle should touch if not transform a Jesuit’s very existence.

B. Problems Following from Decree 4

With this context, I turn now to argue, in this section, that two significant problems follow from decree 4.

1. The Limitation of Apostolates

GC 32’s decree that the promotion of justice constitutes “an absolute requirement” of the service of faith implies that no Jesuit may undertake any mission that does not involve the promotion of justice in some way.^[10] This leads us to an examination of the neuralgic issue regarding the decree—to wit, should we think of the promotion of justice as “an absolute requirement” of the service of faith, or would another formulation better suit the congregation’s understanding? Jesuit and non-Jesuit circles alike for years have contested the “absolute requirement” clause, and I discuss the issue at length in the revised edition of Faith Beyond Justice.^[11] For example, I there present Jesuit theologian Avery Cardinal Dulles (1918–2008) as one of the first to argue for understanding the promotion of justice as “an integral part” of the service of faith when we understand the Christian faith in its totality, but not as “essential to [its] existence.”^[12]

With these considerations in mind, one can understand how, already by the time of GC 33, adherence to decree 4’s formula began to break down. And so, while GC 33 does continue to confirm decree 4’s formula in its conclusion to decree 1, it never uses the formula in the development of any of its argumentation.^[13] Rather, the decree speaks of the “commitment to faith and to justice,” “our service of faith and promotion of justice,” or “the promotion of justice” as “a matter of growing urgency” in the church, but not as an “absolute requirement.”^[14] Finally, GC 33 notably rephrases decree 4’s formula as “the integration of the service of faith and the promotion of justice in one single mission,” replacing “absolute requirement” of the promotion of justice with “integration.”^[15]

Calling the promotion of justice “integral” to the service of faith rather than “an absolute requirement” plays a crucial role in defining the Jesuit mission, because if justice functions as an “absolute requirement,” then every Jesuit undertaking must include efforts to promote it; but if justice functions as “integral,” then such efforts need not appear in every case. For this reason, defining the promotion of justice as “integral” to the service of faith seems to alter fundamentally the understanding of the Jesuit mission in GC 32. Furthermore, this formulation seems to undercut the validity of the teaching of decree 4 altogether by allowing other elements of the Jesuit mission to take priority over the promotion of justice and perhaps even permit a service of faith that would not necessarily include the promotion of justice at all.^[16]

2. The Repeal of the Formula of the Institute

St. Ignatius and the first companions drafted the Formula of the Institute as the foundational statement of the nature of the Jesuit mission, and Pope Julius III incorporated the Formula in its definitive form in the bull Exposcit debitum (July 21, 1550).^[17] By this bull, the pope in effect made conformity with the Formula the standard for judging the legitimacy of every mission in the Society of Jesus.^[18]

The Formula states that, for one who wants to serve God in the Society of Jesus,

let him take it to heart that he belongs to a Society instituted especially to aim chiefly at the defense of the faith and its propagation, and at the progress of souls in Christian life and learning, by means of public preaching, lectures, and any other ministry whatsoever of the Word of God, and by means of spiritual exercises, the education of young and those uneducated in the Christian way of life, and the spiritual consolation of Christ’s faithful in the hearing of confessions and in administering the other sacraments; and no less should he show himself to be useful (for no charge and taking no stipend at all for his own effort in all these works) in reconciling adversaries, in kind assistance and ministry to those in prisons or hospices, and in carrying out the other works of charity, just as seems to be more conducive to the glory of God and the common good.^[19]

A problem here arises, then, in that the GC 32 decree that the promotion of justice constitutes an “absolute requirement” of the service of faith seems incompatible with the definitive statement of the Formula. To put this bluntly, how can the Jesuits posit the promotion of justice understood as social justice as an “absolute requirement” of the service of faith, when the Formula understands the Society “to aim chiefly at the defense of the faith and its propagation, and at the progress of souls in Christian life and learning” and makes no mention whatsoever of the promotion of justice?

Furthermore, the promotion of justice—understood as social justice—fits the Formula only insofar as one interprets it as part of the final expression of the Jesuit mission—namely, “in carrying out the other works of charity.” But if the “justice” edict appears only in the final statement of the Jesuit mission, then one hardly can regard it, as decree 4 asserts, as “a dimension of all our [Jesuit] apostolic endeavors” or, as decree 2 asserts, as “the integrating factor of all our [Jesuit] ministries.”^[20] Of course, apologists for the promotion of justice sometimes attempt to broaden the understanding of “justice” to include every ministry from the Formula, thereby hoping to make justice promotion an all-encompassing apostolate. However, understanding “justice” in this way stretches the term beyond GC 32’s understanding of justice specifically as social justice.^[21]

II. Two Reformulations of the Nature of the Jesuit Mission

A. GC 34’s Reformulation

The documents of GC 34, which examine the teaching of decree 4 at length, never declare the decree wrong or unacceptable. In fact, the congregation says, “We reaffirm what is said in Decree 4 of GC 32.”^[22] In spite of this reaffirmation, however, the congregation expresses reservations, clarifying that decree 4 only “drew attention” to “integral dimensions of our mission” pertinent for understanding the Jesuit mission at the time but “now reaching maturity” in a new “experience” of our “ministries.”^[23]

As a result, while GC 32’s decree 4 asserts that “the mission of the Society of Jesus today is the service of faith, of which the promotion of justice is an absolute requirement,” where the congregation understood “justice” as social justice, GC 34’s mature experience expressed in its decree 2 involves an entirely different understanding of “justice” as “the justice of the Kingdom”—a view that the congregation affirms as appropriate for the contemporary understanding of the Jesuit mission:

The aim of our mission received from Christ, as presented in the Formula of the Institute, is the service of faith. The integrating principle of our mission is the inseparable link between faith and the promotion of the justice of the Kingdom.^[24]

In other words: “our vocation [is] to serve faith and promote the justice of God’s Kingdom” toward which our service of faith is “directed.”^[25]

The newness of GC 34’s insight consists in that, while GC 32’s decree 4 “drew attention” to “integral dimensions of our mission,” GC 34’s decree 2 “deepen[s] and extend[s], in a more explicit way, the Society’s awareness” of its mission.^[26] In this new awareness, the justice dimension of decree 4 of GC 32 “must be broadened to include, as integral dimensions, proclamation of the Gospel, [ecumenical] dialogue, and the evangelization of culture.”^[27] The need to enlarge the meaning of justice arises today “out of an obedient attentiveness to what the Risen Christ is doing as he leads the world to the fullness of God’s Kingdom.”^[28]

What does GC 34 mean here? Rather than rejecting as erroneous GC 32’s decree 4 concept of social justice as the integrating principle of all Jesuit ministries, GC 34 seems to consider decree 4’s formulation as dated. In other words, while acceptable in its time, decree 4 aimed largely at rectifying inner-worldly disorders, such as socio-economic injustice and political marginalization. In contrast, the new, deeper, more adequate understanding of justice available today casts the justice of God’s Kingdom as the integrating principle of all Jesuit ministries. This makes for a much richer, more inclusive, more satisfying Christian understanding of Jesuit ministries, the purpose of which involves leading humankind to its ultimate goal—to wit, entrance into eternal life with God in his Kingdom. Thus, the integrating principle of all Jesuit missions now appears not as the promotion of justice understood as social justice but justice understood as the justice of God’s Kingdom, both in this world and in the next.

B. Address by Peter-Hans Kolvenbach

In a similar vein, we consider here an address that Peter Hans Kolvenbach (1928–2016), superior general of the Society of Jesus from 1983 to 2008, delivered at Santa Clara University in October of 2000.^[29]

Earlier we noted that GC 32 never defined the words faith and justice used in decree 4’s formulation of the nature of the Jesuit mission, and that the term justice there implies “social justice.”^[30] In his talk, Fr. Kolvenbach attested that his fellow delegates at GC 32 deliberately left the meanings of these two terms “ambiguous” and, for that reason, chose not to define them.^[31] Furthermore, he indicated that they did this precisely to emphasize “the radical change in our [Jesuit] mission.”^[32] According to Fr. Kolvenbach, the congregation, in its use of the Greek expression “diakonia fidei,” meant to refer “to Christ the suffering Servant carrying out his ‘diakonia’ in total service of his Father by laying down his life for the salvation of all,” and that the delegates intended the “promotion of justice” to include both “socio-economic justice” and “the justice of the Gospel.”^[33] Fr. Kolvenbach admits, however, that leaving the meanings of the terms “ambiguous” led to “misunderstandings” and “distortions” of what GC 32 was saying, for which he expressed “the whole Society’s remorse.”^[34]

If true, all of this may indicate that the delegates at GC 32 nearly affirmed the new, integrating mission statement as GC 34 understood it, but that they still had not come to an understanding of the fullness of the mission, which they implicitly left for GC 34 to do. In any case, we should emphasize here that GC 34 continued to support “social ministries” in its more comprehensive understanding of the Jesuit mission.^[35] In fact, GC 34 expresses in many ways the Jesuit obligation to work to destroy the structures of sin in the world in their various manifestations and that the Jesuits themselves must ground themselves “in religious charity, the charity of the Suffering Servant, the self-sacrificing love shown by the Savior.”^[36]

C. Fr. Arrupe’s Reformulation

Finally, we end with an address that Fr. Arrupe delivered in Rome on February 6, 1981, parts of which seem to undermine the central role that GC 32, which had concluded five years earlier, accorded to justice rather than to love.^[37] In this address, one can hear the echo of Pope St. John Paul II’s second encyclical, Dives in Misericordia (1980), as here:

The entire life of a Jesuit should be inspired by charity and love. [. . .] Well, then, what is the precise relationship between charity and justice? [. . .] Obviously, the promotion of justice is indispensable, because it is the first step to charity. To claim justice sometimes seems revolutionary, a subversive claim. And yet, it is so small a request: we really ought to ask for more, we should go beyond justice, to crown it with charity. Justice is necessary, but it is not enough. Charity adds its transcendent, inner dimension to justice, and, when it has reached the limit of the realm of justice, can keep going even further. Because justice has its limits, and stops where rights terminate; but love has no boundaries because it reproduces, on our human scale, the infiniteness of the divine essence and gives to each of our human brothers a claim to our unlimited service.

That is why anyone who has assimilated Christ’s teaching and lives it radically cannot be satisfied with resisting injustice and promoting justice on an immanent human plane, but must of necessity be moved to do this out of love.^[38]

Fr. Arrupe adds very pointedly and succinctly: “Yes, justice is not enough. The world needs a stronger cure, a more effective witness and more effective deeds: those of love.”^[39]

If Fr. Arrupe had lived long enough, he may have reformulated the nature of the Jesuit mission as “the service of faith through the promotion of a life of justice and love.” Doing so may have cast the power of love—the power of the Holy Spirit—as the transcendent principle motivating all Jesuit apostolates, both temporal—including social justice—and spiritual—including the sacraments. From this perspective, perhaps no words would have better expressed the goal of Jesuit life than those of St. Paul in the Letter to the Galatians: “For in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love” (Ga 5:6).

Notes:

^[1]  GC 32, d. 4, no. 2; Jesuit Life and Mission Today: The Decrees and Accompanying Documents of the 31st–35th General Congregations of the Society of Jesus, ed. John W. Padberg, SJ (St. Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources [IJS], 2009), 298.

^[2]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 11; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 526. In this essay, I follow the usage common among Jesuits of the form faith/justice to refer to decree 4 of GC 32.

^[3]  Pedro Arrupe, “Rooted and Grounded in Love,” in The Spiritual Legacy of Pedro Arrupe, SJ (Rome: Jesuit Committee on Province Planning, 1985), 145–95.

^[4]  GC 32, d. 2, 4; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 291–316.

^[5]  GC 32, d. 4, no. 2; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 298.

^[6]  GC 32, d. 4, no. 47; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 309.

^[7]  GC 32, d. 4, no. 51; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 310.

^[8]  GC 32, d. 2, no. 9; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 292. I interpret “integrating” here to mean the encompassing or unifying factor.

^[9]  GC 33, d. 1, nos. 31–32; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 448.

^[10]  GC 32, d. 4, no. 2; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 298. Before writing my first edition of Faith Beyond Justice, I raised this issue by asking some members of the Jesuit curia, in Rome, if, given the faith/justice mandate, a Jesuit’s superiors may allow him to teach mathematics and, if so, how to understand that assignment as the service of faith through the promotion of justice. One Jesuit responded that, as provincial, he would not assign such an undertaking to a Jesuit. See Martin R. Tripole, SJ, Faith Beyond Justice: Widening the Perspective, rev. ed. (Boston College, MA: IJS, 2024), 31.

^[11]  Tripole, Faith Beyond Justice, 53–61. For a discussion of “all the problems” that decree 4 caused in the years immediately following the Congregation, see Jean-Yves Calvez, “Lingering Unrest from 1980 to 1982,” in Faith and Justice: The Social Dimension of Evangelization, trans. John E. Blewett, SJ (St. Louis, MO: IJS, 1991), 65–70 at 66. In this vein, GC 33 states that, “in all honesty, we must also acknowledge that this new understanding of our mission [decree 4] can lead to tensions both in the Society and outside it” (GC 33, d. 1, no. 33; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 449).

^[12]  Tripole, Faith Beyond Justice, 61.

^[13]  GC 33, d. 1, no. 50; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 455.

^[14]  GC 33, d. 1, nos. 10, 31, 34; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 441, 448, 449; my italics.

^[15]  GC 33, d. 1, no. 38; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 451.

^[16]  GC 33 apparently attempts to obviate this last possibility by arguing for an “integration” of the promotion of justice with the service of faith “in one single mission” (GC 33, d. 1, no. 38; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 451).

^[17]  Formula of the Institute 1550; Barton T. Geger, SJ, ed., Constitutions of the Society of Jesus: A Critical Edition with the Complementary Norms (Chestnut Hill, MA: IJS, 2024), 59–71.

^[18]  We cannot overstate the importance of the Formula of the Institute to the Society. GC 34 states that the “aim of our mission” has been “received from Christ,” and is “presented in the Formula of the Institute” as “the service of faith” (d. 2, no. 14; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 527). In addition, GC 32 says of the Formula that “this primordial statement remains for us a normative one” (d. 4, no. 17; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 301). Furthermore, because a papal bull incorporates the Formula, the Formula “cannot be altered by any authority within the Society” (George E. Ganss, SJ, “Technical Introduction on the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus,” in Saint Ignatius of Loyola, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, trans. and ed. George E. Ganss, SJ (St. Louis, MO: IJS, 1970), 35–59 at 45.

^[19]  Formula 1550, no. 1; ed. Geger, 59–60.

^[20]  GC 32, d. 2, no. 9; d. 4, no. 47; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 292, 309.

^[21]  For example, GC 33 “confirm[s]” that “the Society’s mission” is expressed in GC 32’s “Decrees 2 and 4, which are the application today of the Formula of the Institute and of our Ignatian charism,” such that the “universality” of the Society’s mission appears “in the various ministries in which we engage” (d. 1, no. 38; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 450–51). However, the document does not explain how decrees 2 and 4 apply the Formula or how the ministries in the Formula include the promotion of justice understood as social justice.

^[22]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 14; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 527. Note, however, that the footnote cites GC 32’s decree 2 rather than decree 4 to illustrate the congregation’s reaffirmation of decree 4; decree 2 does not contain the “absolute requirement” clause (GC 32, d. 2, no. 9; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 292).

^[23]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 14; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 527.

^[24]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 14; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 527.

^[25]  GC 34, d. 2, nos. 11, 15; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 526, 528.

^[26]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 14; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 527.

^[27]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 20; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 529.

^[28]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 20; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 529.

^[29]  Peter Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education,” address delivered at Santa Clara University, October 6, 2000, Santa Clara Lectures 23, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 1–17; https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/sc_lectures/23. Note that he delivered this talk about five years after the end of GC 34.

^[30]  GC 33, d. 1, no. 32; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 448.

^[31]  Kolvenbach, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice,” 5.

^[32]  Kolvenbach, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice,” 6.

^[33]  Kolvenbach, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice,” 4–5.

^[34]  Kolvenbach, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice,” 4–6.

^[35]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 7; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 524–25.

^[36]  GC 34, d. 2, no. 13; Jesuit Life and Mission Today, ed. Padberg, 527.

^[37]  Arrupe, “Rooted and Grounded in Love.”

^[38]  Arrupe, “Rooted and Grounded in Love,” 158, 178–79; John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia (November 30, 1980), ch. 6: “Mercy . . . From Generation to Generation,” § 12: “Is Justice Enough?”, ¶ 3; https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30111980_dives-in-misericordia.html.

^[39]  Arrupe, “Rooted and Grounded in Love,” 185.

APA

Tripole, M. R., S.J. (2025). What is the Jesuit mission?: Faith/justice and later reformulations of the mission of the Society of Jesus. Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 57(2), 33–43. https://doi.org/10.6017/ssj.v57i2.20615

CMOS

Tripole, Martin R., S.J. “What Is the Jesuit Mission?: Faith/Justice and Later Reformulations of the Mission of the Society of Jesus.” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 57, no. 2 (2025): 33–43. https://doi.org/10.6017/ssj.v57i2.20615.

MLA

Tripole, Martin R., S.J. “What Is the Jesuit Mission?: Faith/Justice and Later Reformulations of the Mission of the Society of Jesus.” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, vol. 57, no. 2, 2025, pp. 33–43. https://doi.org/10.6017/ssj.v57i2.20615.

Turabian

Tripole, Martin R., S.J. “What Is the Jesuit Mission?: Faith/Justice and Later Reformulations of the Mission of the Society of Jesus.” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 57, no. 2 (2025): 33–43.