Over the last year, I’ve become more familiar with the Society of Jesus, otherwise known as The Jesuits.  Through the Jesuit Catholic Weekly, America, I’ve only been increasingly impressed with the goals and accomplishments presented and followed by members of this order.  Intellectual pursuits (especially in the sciences), deep spirituality, profound commitment, and progression seem to be their hallmarks in a time where the opposite seems to be greatly valued.  Following is an excerpt from an intriguing article about Fr. Jack Morris, a Jesuit, printed in this week’s Catholic Sentinel:

“It is the age of the laity,” Father Morris says. “We are realizing together that the key sacrament is not the ordination of men to the priesthood, but our baptism. We are all ordained to bring about the kingdom of God.”

Father Morris simultaneously led a move to start ordaining native Alaskan men as deacons, telling fellow Jesuits that they needed to “hand the church over.”

By the 1970s, he held posts leading Jesuit social ministries and was serving at parishes in Seattle. With other clergy, he protested nuclear buildup and was twice arrested at a Puget Sound submarine base.

His social justice masterpiece came out of the blue. In the early 1980s, a period with its own high tensions in the Middle East, the idea simply came to him —Walk to Bethlehem for peace. And he did it, along with two other priests, a Jesuit brother and a dozen laypeople.

For more than 7,000 miles across the United States and Europe, the band of peacemakers spoke out in churches and campgrounds — places where they also slept and received gushes of hospitality.

The walkers started in Seattle on Good Friday 1982, trekked on average 17 miles per day, and made it to Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, 1983. All who started finished. The media, including the New York Times, paid heed to the group and its amiable priest-leader.