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Leaked Letters. Behind Villot's December letter—and the Congregation's decision to ignore it—lay a long-smoldering feud. Many conservative Jesuits have protested that during Arrupe's nine-year reign the order has been disintegrating, particularly in discipline and in loyalty to the Pope's teachings. In addition, Cardinal Villot and his aides have passed on to the Pope complaints of conservative bishops throughout the world who were upset by the social radicalism of some of the Jesuits operating in their sees.
To embarrass Arrupe, Curia conservatives leaked several confidential dressing-down letters from the Pope to the Jesuit Superior General. The conflict erupted in public in the fall of 1973, when Villot's office prepared a letter about the forthcoming Congregation that Pope Paul sent to Arrupe. In it, the Pope urged Arrupe to end the permissiveness of recent years. He added: "We express once again our desire, indeed our demand" that the Jesuits remain "a religious, apostolic, priestly order, linked to the Roman Pontiff by a special bond of love and service." Soon Rome was rife with rumors that Arrupe would have to resign under pressure.
But if Arrupe was in trouble within the Society of Jesus, reports TIME'S Erik Amfitheatrof, the Curia maneuvers only served to help him score a major victory. The Congregation not only resented the interference with internal Jesuit issues, but feared a growth in curial influence over the order if Arrupe were weakened. It therefore rallied round the Superior General, who is now strongly entrenched in his post. Arrupe showed great confidence and diplomacy last month in a speech in which he admitted the Pope's anguish over the Jesuits. He becomingly confessed that his failings as an administrator were partly to blame, but added that any faults come from facing "very difficult problems" and "do not mean that the Society is unfaithful in its vocation."
The General Congregation must come to decisions on many other issues, including whether to pare down members' life-styles and draw institutional assets into separate funds so that the order can better reflect the spirit of poverty. But last week's vote alone makes the meeting a turning point for the Society of Jesus, and it presents Pope Paul with a delicate political problem. He has the power to reject any action of the General Congregation, including its decision on the fourth vow. But that would produce dangerous new tension between the Pope and the Jesuits who are sworn to serve him.
* Of the 32 General Congregations over four centuries, it is only the seventh that has been assembled to deal with pressing problems without needing to elect a new Superior General.