Catholic vs Jesuit: Jesuits Are Catholics — Here Is the Actual Difference

Summary

Jesuits are Catholics, because the Society of Jesus is a religious order within the Catholic Church, not a separate branch of Christianity.
Ignatius of Loyola, a Basque soldier whose leg was shattered at Pamplona in 1521, wrote the Spiritual Exercises during his convalescence, and Paul III approved the order in 1540.
Three practical things set them apart: they have no common choir office, because it would tie them to a building; they take a fourth vow of obedience to the pope concerning missions; and their formation lasts ten to fifteen years.
Clement XIV suppressed the order outright in 1773, and Pius VII restored it in 1814. In between it survived largely in Russia, where Catherine the Great declined to publish the brief.
“Jesuitical” entered English as an insult and is still in the dictionaries. Francis, elected in 2013, is the only Jesuit pope.

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Jesuits are Catholics, so the question imagines a difference in kind that isn’t there. The Society of Jesus is a religious order inside the Catholic Church, not a separate branch of Christianity. Asking how Catholics differ from Jesuits is like asking how Britons differ from doctors.

Our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations, sets any two of 23 churches side by side on 55 questions.

What a religious order is

The Catholic Church contains hundreds of religious orders, among them the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Jesuits. Their members take vows, live under a rule and belong to a community with its own leadership, and all the while they remain entirely Catholic.

Orders exist because different work needs different structures. A Benedictine monastery is built for stability, and its monks vow to stay, while the Jesuits were built for the opposite.

Where the Jesuits came from

Ignatius of Loyola was a Basque soldier whose leg was shattered by a cannonball at Pamplona in 1521. During his long convalescence the only books to hand were a life of Christ and a collection of saints’ lives, and he read them because there was nothing else. Out of that recovery came the Spiritual Exercises, a structured four-week retreat that is still the order’s central tool.

He and six companions, Francis Xavier among them, formed the Society of Jesus, and Paul III approved it in 1540.

What makes them different from other orders

Three things set the Jesuits apart, and they are mostly practical.

No choir office in common. Most orders gather to chant the hours together, but the Jesuits do not, because it would tie them to a building. The founding idea was mobility, men who could be sent anywhere at short notice.

A fourth vow. Beyond poverty, chastity and obedience, the fully professed take a vow of obedience to the pope concerning missions, promising to go wherever they are sent.

Long formation. Training commonly runs ten to fifteen years, and it typically includes a period of teaching or working in an ordinary job before ordination.

The schools

The Jesuits did not set out to be educators. They founded their first colleges to train their own members, but people outside the order wanted those schools too, and within a generation the Jesuits were running schools across Europe. Their network is now the largest of its kind in the world.

Their way of teaching has its own vocabulary, such as cura personalis, care for the whole person, and it aims at forming what the order calls men and women for others.

The suppression

By the eighteenth century the Society had made enough political enemies across Catholic Europe that pressure fell on Rome. In 1773 Clement XIV suppressed the order outright, and it was dissolved. Thousands of men lost their institutions, colleges closed, and the order survived mainly in Russia, where Catherine the Great declined to publish the brief.

Pius VII restored it in 1814, after forty-one years. An order that one pope suppressed and another brought back fits neither the admiring story about the Jesuits nor the suspicious one.

Their reputation

Jesuits have long drawn a particular kind of accusation: that they are too clever, too political, too willing to find an accommodation. The word “jesuitical,” meaning casuistical or equivocating, entered English as an insult and is still in the dictionaries.

Some of that comes from real controversies, among them the seventeenth-century arguments about moral reasoning and the Chinese Rites dispute over how far local custom could be accommodated in mission. Some of it is simply what a mobile, well-educated order committed to the pope attracts from people who dislike any one of those things.

Notable Jesuits

Francis Xavier reached India and Japan, and Matteo Ricci spent decades in China and is buried in Beijing. The order also counted among its members the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose theological writing was restricted in his lifetime.

And in 2013 Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first Jesuit pope, taking the name Francis, though he came from an order whose members traditionally decline ecclesiastical honours.

Frequently asked

Are Jesuits Catholic?

Yes, the Society of Jesus is a religious order within the Catholic Church, not a separate denomination.

What makes Jesuits different from other orders?

They have no common choir office, they take a fourth vow of obedience to the pope concerning missions, and their formation is unusually long, ten to fifteen years.

Who founded the Jesuits?

Ignatius of Loyola, a Basque soldier wounded at Pamplona in 1521, founded them with six companions, and Paul III approved the order in 1540.

Were the Jesuits ever banned?

Yes, Clement XIV suppressed the order in 1773 and Pius VII restored it in 1814, and in between it survived largely in Russia, where the brief was not published.

Has there been a Jesuit pope?

There has been one, Francis, elected in 2013.