The Jesuit order is a fascinating topic. The pedagogical tradition of the order always pursued the conquest of the elites, reach the people that were more prepared, to then impact the popular classes. Is kind of a trickle down evangelization. They looked for the elites to prepared them culturally, intellectually, and from there reach the popular classes. In other words, this was not a bottom-up structure, but rather, an up-down approach. These elites are the ones who run the countries, is easier to influence in this way than from below. In my opinion, this is the reason why, since Vatican II, the Roman Church is failing on the five continents, is because it has refused to form intellectual elites, and that’s why there are so few Catholic intellectuals today. Very, very, very few.
During the empire in Hispanic America, the children of the indigenous royal families, all of them were sent to Jesuit schools; to receive a very thorough education, and thus, be able to have transcendence in the professional and political world, contributing to the cultural advancement of those peoples. What is the logical consequence? Most of the vocations that the Jesuit Order has, most of the young people they recruit to become future Jesuits, are recruited from their colleges and from the upper classes. Whether from the chiefs of those tribes, or from the upper bourgeoisie in Europe.
The Jesuit formation was fourteen years ladies and gentlemen. Fourteen-years if you entered with eighteen years of age, if you were fourteen it lasted more. A lot of them entered at eighteen, and completed their training process at thirty-two, or thirty-three years of age. After a fourteen-year training process, you could send a Jesuit to any corner of the planet for any apostolic ministry, from a leprosarium to a university chair. They were the elite of the Roman Church for a reason. A fourteen-year preparation process does not make you invincible, but intellectually, religiously, and even psychologically, it makes you very strong, very strong. Also since they came mostly from the upper classes, think about what that means psychologically. These were kids who came from upper classes, nobles, aristocrats, the upper bourgeoisie. They were sent to a Jesuit school, where they received an extraordinary education in arithmetic, humanities, Latin, Greek, history, geography, mathematics, language, etc; then decides to become a Jesuit - and the Jesuits live a very harsh life, a very austere life - the kid who lived like a prince in his house, now as a Jesuit, lives almost like a beggar and that also psychologically prepares him for anything. He knows how to be with upper-class people, and he learns to be with lower-class people very easily, because he has lived a very harsh life during his fourteen years of formation.
This is one of the reasons the Jesuit order was destroyed and this had horrible consequences. Because no one stood up to the Enlightenment and the Hispanophobic Black Legend. There was no one on the Catholic side, to dismantle and argue against these Protestant-based ideas. How Rock & Roll Jesus going for you guys? I heard is not doing well. When the Jesuit order was expelled and quiet literally destroyed, one of the ways the Roman Church tried to fill that hole was with the Franciscan order. They tried to follow the Jesuit methods but the Franciscan order was not capable of obtaining the same results. You cannot compare minor and major league teams. The Franciscans didn’t have the formation or the pedagogical tradition of the Jesuits.
Now… to the point of the video. The Jesuit order had an extraordinary musical tradition, part of their formation was very musical and baroque. The musical culture cultivated by the Jesuits was a magnificent vehicle for evangelization. There, people will find all that Baroque polyphony cultivated by the Jesuits in Spain and in a very particular way in Hispanic America. If anyone has seen the movie, The Mission with Robert De Niro; one of the ways the Jesuits made contact with the natives was through music. They made their own instruments and share that tradition with them in their missions. It was a civilizational project that was being carried out by the Jesuits. There is also baroque architecture made by the Indians in South America.
