Jesuit Revolutionary: Incense Was Enemy Number 1

When the readings of the Old Testament are replaced by readings of Karl Marx. Jesuit Father Edmund Runggaldier has now brought to light background information about Jesuit Education of the 68-Generation


Munich-Innsbruck (kath.net) The Jesuit priest Edmund Runggaldier has illustrated the 68 Generation, for the benefit of the official news of the Jesuits of the German Province. Edmund Rundggaldier, the current professor at the Theological Faculty of the University of Innsbruck currently, was from 1966 to 1968, a novice in St. Andra in Austria. Then he studied philosophy in Pullach near Munich till 1970. There he experienced, according to his own report, a kind of cultural revolution and the awakening of a "delayed inner-Catholic revolution". He avowed himself that sometimes there were excesses among the Novices and Scholastics and he was fully involved. "I was an active, almost a fanatical participant in that revolution: we have formally destroyed Iconography with Nazarene Style", wrote Runggaldier.

Especially explosive are his thoughts on liturgy. "We were combative and missionary especially in the 'renewal' of the Liturgy, that means in the dumping of things that were in our eyes impeding ballast. Incense was enemy number 1," he openly acknowledged. Then he explained that experiments were undertaken in the Jesuit College in Innsbruck in "authentic" Eucharistic Celebrations in the setting of a mirror. These celebrations were, in any event forbidden by the superior. Although, the readings from the Old Testament and the Letters of Paul were replaced by those of Marx or the philosophy of Existentialism. "I was thrilled as the classical Codices which were then still studied in the Scholastic sense critically degraded." Self-critically Ruggaldier then asked how he had come from "Novice" to "Iconoclast" and why one with such an enthusiasm and with such a fanaticism throw overboard a Philosophy tried over centuries, or to be won over by modern Existentialism and a one sided political philosophy.

The Jesuit professor explained then, that one encouraged the oversimplification and use of a fundamental biblical message. "What counted, was -- completely in the sense of the Reformation -- the origins, the ipsissima vox des Herrn." According to his opinion of what took place then was a philosophic approach between the Catholic students -- and Student Camps (Like Highland or Catholic Youth Camps) and the Marxism. For Runggaldier combined extensively the roots and the driving force. "We were especially convinced by the necessity of protecting persistent renewal i.e., permanent revolution, against untruth and alienation.," he wrote in illustration.

For his enemy image was "true Christendom" which belonged to consumer and capitalist liberalism. Things that were alienating were valued then as "subjective forms" an "internalized spirituality." "It was not the subjective well-being that counted, rather the reality itself, the pure original message of the Gospel, the expression of the motives of political affairs, finally the restructuring of Church and Society. Questions like: How do you feel? were strange to us." Some Jesuits left the order or resigned who were under the "pressure of the high ideals". Finally, explained Runggaldier, that he does not want to distance himself from the fundamental motivations of the movement. "The careful abolition of all that, what was held to be secondary in the Rite, which were in any case mistakes. Man needs sustenance for his senses in liturgical execution. The word and nature alone can be hard for a man to taste. Ignatius knew that we ignored it back then", so concluded the Jesuit Father.


Link to original...kath.net...