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Ignatian Discernment: A Critical Contemporary Reading for Christian Decision Making

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2013

Ma. Christina A. Astorga
Ma. Christina A. Astorga
Affiliation:
Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University
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Abstract

Commentaries on Ignatian Discernment are sharply divided on fundamentals, especially the interpretation of the three Ignatian modes of discernment. This essay negotiates a balance between preserving the inner logic of Ignatian discernment and proposing a new interpretation. Beyond the exegesis of the Ignatian texts, the essay attempts to make Ignatian discernment accessible for Christian decision making in a contemporary context, through the matrix of theological language that translates technical discourse into one that can be generally understood and appropriated for Christian moral and spiritual life.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , Spring 2005 , pp. 72 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 2005

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References

1 Jules J. Toner, S.J., writes: “The term used in the Spiritual Exercises is election. The Spanish term elección in the Spiritual Exercises and the term hacer elección are usually translated into English as ‘election’ and ‘to make an election.’ Some object to this translation. The correct translation, they say, is simply ‘choice’ and ‘to make a choice’ or to ‘choose.’ He says that the latter translations may sound more idiomatic and more consonant with a popular version of the Spiritual Exercises, in which precision may be sacrificed for readability. He explains that the total, complex experience to which Ignatius refers by the word in the Spiritual Exercises consists of the following main factors: “(1) the process by which a person seeks to find God's will; (2) the judgment or decision to which the process leads, in which it terminates, and which informs the act of choice; (3) the act of choice itself.” He states that “in the first two factors, the term ‘election’ coincides with what Ignatius speaks of as ‘seeking and finding God's will,’ and with ‘discernment of God's will,’ in current common but not universal usage.” (Discerning God's Will: Ignatius of Loyola's Teaching on Christian Decision Making [St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1991], 103–04. Thomas Greene, S.J., gives the term “discernment” an extremely narrow meaning. “It is the feelings we discern and not thoughts,” he says; “without feelings, the whole process of discernment has no content.” Consequently, he holds that finding God's will in the first or third mode of Ignatian election does not involve discernment in the proper sense. The first mode is a “revelation time” where there is nothing to discern; the third mode is a “reasoning time” in which there are no affective or spiritual movements to discern. Only the second mode involves discernment as Ignatius calls it, for only in this time do we find feelings to be discerned (see Weeds Among the Wheat [Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1984], 83–84, 91, 98, 100). I use the term discernment in this article in its current common usage which coincides with the term “election.”

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27 SpEx, [316] Rule 1:3. The English translation used is “The Text of St. Ignatius' Rules for the Discernment of Spirits,” in Toner, Jules J. S.J., A Commentary on Saint Ignatius' Rules for the Discernment of Spirits (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1982), 21–44Google Scholar, at 24–25. Hereafter referred to as Text.

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31 “An Interview with Dorothy Day, “National Jesuit News (May 1972), 10.

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35 SpEx, [335] Rule 2:7 (Text, 29).

36 Buckley, , “The Structure of the Rules for Discernment of Spirits,” 35–36.Google Scholar

37 SpEx, [314] Rule 1:1; [315] Rule 1:2 (Text, 23).

38 Toner, , A Commentary on Saint Ignatius' Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, 26.Google Scholar

39 Wagner, Walter H., “The Demonization of Women,” Religion in Life 42 (Spring 1973): 56–74, at 56.Google Scholar “It is difficult to convey the shock women felt when confronted by the misogyny that informs the theological tradition of Christianity. Women were blamed for the incursion of evil into the world, taught that we were created by God subordinate in the order of authority because inferior in the order of creation, shaped by rituals and regulations that held the most natural functions of our bodies to be unclean and defiling” (O'Neill, Mary Aquin R.S.M., “The Nature of Women and the Method of Theology,” Theological Studies 56 [1995]: 730–42, at 731CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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45 SpEx, [333] Rule 2:5; [335] Rule 2:6 (Text, 28–29).

46 Buckley, , “The Structure of the Rules for Discernment of Spirits,” 32–33.Google Scholar

47 SpEx, [336] Rule 2:8 (Text, 29).

48 SpEx, [177] (English translation in Toner, , Discerning God's Will, 161–62Google Scholar).

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53 Ibid., 167.

54 Ibid., 180.

55 Ibid., 173.

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57 Ibid., 177–78.

58 Ibid., 178.

59 Ibid., 235.

60 Rahner, , “The Logic of Concrete Individual Knowledge in Ignatius Loyola,” 105.Google Scholar

61 Ibid., 130–31, 158, 160, 164.

62 Ibid., 127–28, note 25.

63 Ibid., 103–06.

64 Ibid., 102–03.

65 Ibid., 160–62.

66 Ibid., 158.

67 Egan, , Mystical Horizon, 152–54.Google Scholar

68 Ibid.

69 Toner, , Discerning God's Will, 237.Google Scholar

70 Ibid., 152–55.

71 Ibid., 320–22.

72 Ibid., 52–53. Kyne, Michael points out the need for constant purification of our choices and that we should not invest them with pseudo-infallibility. “Difficulties in Discernment,” The Way 14 (1974): 103–09, at 109.Google Scholar See also Murphy, Lawrence J., “Psychological Problems of Christian Choice,” The Way Supplement 24 (Spring 1975): 26–35.Google Scholar

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74 Ibid., 62–64.

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78 Orsy, Ladislas S.J., “Toward a Theological Evaluation of Communal Discernment,” Studies in the Spirituality of the Jesuits 5 (October 1973): 139–89, at 171–72.Google Scholar