Discerning God's Will the Jesuit Way

Summary: Introduction to Jesuit discenrment.

I picked up two audio courses by Joseph Tetlow on discenment during a recent audible sale. Tetlow is now 95 years old. He mentions in this audio course, that he was 79 when it was recorded, so this course it about 16 years old. (Audible release date is 2017, so that isn't accurate.) I read one book on discerment and spiritual direction by Tetlow in my spiritual direction training and it was Tetlow's edition of Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises that was used in our program.

One of the useful parts of this course is that Tetlow distiguishes between conscious and discernment. He thinks we should work to develop a consious and that a conscious shaped by the Holy Spirit is part of discernment. But he also thinks that without reflection on our actions and our conscious, in conversation with the Holy Spirit, we are not doing discernment. For him, all three parts are required. I think that is helpful corrective to what I have been thinking of as two seperate parts.

In my conception of discernment up until this point, I have thought about the preconscious discernment that is shaped by becoming more Christlike. And then the conscious discerment which is ore shaped by a process of reflection and practices of decision making and prayer. When I starting paying attntion to the preconscious aspects, I was reacting against the movement that thought of discenrment simply as a set of decision making tools. I didn't want to remove all aspects of decision making and seeking after God's will from discerment, but I wanted reemphasize the ascpets of character that I think are essential to good discernment. I think post-Tetlow, I am going to be more balanced and I think his three parts is one good method of discussing that balance.

This audio course is attempting to introduce Jesuit thinking on discenrment but I am not sure it really was a good introduction. There were lots of examples and stories, but few practical tools. Most of the tools were introduced in the final session. The prayer of examen was not clearly introduced and Ignatius' Rules of Discernment were mentioned but not clearly taught. I think this was not a bad introduction, but it did not live up to the title. It was about discenrment, but the Jesuit part was largely in the background.

As much as there was value here, I think there was signficant weakness. The weaknesses were in three areas. First, in trying to avoid some of the more technical aspects (Rules of Discenrment, Examen, etc) that may put off some lay people, I think he didn't do enough to equip people for discenmernment. Second, I think that Tetlow's approach is spiritual and pastoral, which is important, but it did not have enough attention to cultural influences. That isn't to say there was no discussion. At one point he discusses growing up in a racist society and using the N word (he says it) without reflection because it was part of culture.

Part of the problem with his cultural approach is that I think he needed to be more clear about how we engage culture to understand how culture influences our view of what choices are viable. Charles Taylor and others decribe this as the Social Imaginary. Our social imaginary influences what we think are choices that can be made. There is always a limit by culture and we cannot fully remove ourselves from all cultural influences.

In another place, he talks favorably about how Bernard of Clarvoux discerned about whether he should preach to encourage people to support the third crusade. The main tools of discernment that Tetlow cited was the number of people who joined to support the crusade and the political support of the crusade. What he did not present as part of the evaluation is the antisemitism that was riled up by Bernard's sermons encouraging the crusades or the problems and abuses of the crusades.

In part this is related to Tetlow making a very Catholic presentation. As someone trained in a catholic spiritual direction program, I became comfortable translating in my head some thing that seemed wrong theologically but was more about langauge than about content. But there are other areas where there are differences.

One of those differences is the realtionship of the state to faith. In the last section, Tetlow raises a lot of concerns about the secularization of culture and how that influences our choices and discenrment. I think he is right to raise that question, but I was very uncomfortable with his answer. This must have been recorded around 2008-9 and he was concerned more about the new Athiests and the anti-religious bias of culture than he was reforming how Christians interact with the state. He proceeds to call for making culture Christian again in a way that today sounds very Christian Nationalist. Three seperate times he quote Thomas Jefferson (and he only cites Thomas Jefferson on this point) saying that the american experiment is rooted in Christianity. Jefferson wasn't a Christian by any orthodox standard. And if we want to consider Jefferson part of the Christian heritage, then that definition of Christian is so broad as to make me wonder about what it really means.

He conflates American and Christian in an unhelpful way. There are other places where he talks about obesity and laziness and what I would call trauma in ways that I also think are problematic because he seems to reject trauma as a category and equaites productivity and thinness with holiness in a way that I don't think he really believes.

This is a good example of yet another book on discenrment that I find somewhat helpful, but I am also concenred bout how the evidence of discenrment seems to be lacking in how it is lived out in practice. The steps here are largely helpful. The illustrations are mostly helpful. The final advice section I think is pretty much awful.

I originally posted this on my blog at https://bookwi.se/discerning-gods-will/