Ours: the making and unmaking of a Jesuit

by F.E. Peters

The Jesuits-that group of clerics so deeply imbedded in the dreams and nightmares of the Catholic Church and in the history of the world. Sometimes saints and sometimes energetic and devious schemers, the Jesuits have educated and trained most of the Catholic intellectuals of America and Europe for the last four hundred years. F. E. Peters throws open the doors of the Jesuit citadel in this story of a young man's coming of age. This is a personal story told without romance and without rancor, and if the Jesuit life is one of bondage to an almost impossible ideal of perfect obedience and self-denial, it is also, as Ours makes clear without the slightest trace of jesuitical equivocation, a life of intelligence, of intense camaraderie, and of high good humor.

215 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Charles Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author succeeded in creating a wonderful voice, mood, and tone for his memoir of ten years as a Jesuit-in-training [He left when he was 3 years from ordination as priest and 5 years from final vows: Jesuits trained for 15 years!]. Peters focused his memoirs on the novitiate, the first two years of his training, which he entered right out of high school, with nine other boys from New York City who had attended Jesuit prep schools. They all met up at Grand Central Station and experienced their last hours of secular life together as they rode the New York Central up the Hudson Valley to Poughkeepsie. Two of them left the novitiate before the two years were up.
Peters personalized the trials and difficulties he experienced being molded into a spiritual person with charming anecdotes and commentaries about such topics as “custody of the eyes,” the avoidance of “particular friendships,” and the trials he experienced with the required silence, meditation, and regimentation of the novitiate. Sometimes his commentaries made me laugh out loud in the most unexpected ways.

There was a timeless quality to his narrative. Indeed, the novices at St. Andrew-on-Hudson were not allowed watches or clocks; their lives were regulated by the ringing of bells. We know not what year he entered the Jesuits or what year he left. The author’s photo on the book jacket from 1981 suggested to me that he might have felt his vocation after World War II. This was a period in the United States when vocations to the priesthood and religious life was at a peak. Indeed, the American Assistancy was the largest national block of the worldwide Society of Jesus, with eight provinces from New England to California.

Even though Peters left the Jesuits in his late twenties, his memoir was still an insider’s look at Jesuit training and regimentation. I believe the topic of Jesuits must be foremost in the mind of any readers of this memoir.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is about the 4th time I've read this book. I read it again thinking my new knowledge of the Catholic Church might provide a different perspective. I'm still amazed that anyone would consciously select such a lifestyle, or that the church would accept young, unformed 18 year old minds that don't know themselves yet. Seems more appropriate that that kind of life choice would be made in middle age. It does seem to me, however, that prisons could successfully emulate the novitiate environment. A lot of self reflection, meditation, and regular order might rehabilitate some dysfunctional lives.