Status Updates From Edmund Campion: A Life

the priest that their fathers had known; the simple, unambitious figure who had pottered about the parish… whose occasional lapses from virtue were expected and condoned… he had been stolen from them, and in his place the Holy Father was sending them, in their dark hour, men of new light, equipped in every Continental art, armed against every frailry, bringing a new kind of intellect, new knowledge, new holiness.

“The Jesuits sought to present everything as having an immediate significance and intrinsic interest; they fostered competition and argument with the result that the driest grammatical questions became the subjects of hot debate.”

16th century Jesuits= the original Mr Keating

Got my juices going a little

“The teaching was counter-reformatory; in theology and exegesis they concentrated almost entirely upon controversial texts; in their spiritual exercises they were prepared for sacri-fice; they were being trained not as scholars and gentlemen, but as missionaries and martyrs.“