St Peter Canisius Essay Research Paper St

St. Peter Canisius Essay, Research Paper

St. Peter Canisius

Peter Canisius was born in Nijmegen, Holland to a wealthy

family in 1521. His father was Jakob Kanijis, an instructor of the

princes court in the court of Duke Lorraine. He was a respected

man, being appointed nine times as mayor of his native town.

(McGraw-Hill) Although Peter’s mother died at an early age, he had

a loving step-mother who stressed education and raised him to fear

God. Although Peter accused himself of wasting his youth, by the

time he was 19, he had already earned a master of arts degree at

Cologne University. As a teenager, Canisius began to find himself.

Though giving in at first, he resisted his father’s pushing him to

become a lawyer and instead followed a path of studying theology.

(Thurston and Attwater)

At Cologne, Peter first started writing seriously, something

that would mark the uniqueness of his entire career. Also, he made

acquaintances in a circle of devout priests who worked to gain

reforms within the Catholic Church. Soon, after attending a

retreat headed by Peter Faber, one of the first six companions of

Ignatius Loyola, he joined the Society of Jesus. By becoming a

Jesuit, he began the significant part of his life. He quickly rose

the ranks of the Jesuit hierarchy. Within years, he became

renowned for his knowledge of the Bible and his ability to get to

the hearts of people. Over his career, he was shuttled from

location to location, mostly in Germany, counteracting the

Protestant movement which had virtually destroyed the Catholic

Church in many areas. He is often referred to as the Second

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Apostle of Germany. From 1549 to 1580, he established twenty

Jesuit colleges all over Europe, all of them marked by excellence

and all of them producing strong Catholic political and spiritual

leaders. (Eliade) At the core, though, the qualities that made him

great were his writing, his knowledge of the Bible, his passive

arguing style and his work ethic.

Peter Canisius was among the members of the elite when it came

to comprehension of spiritual matters or anything pertaining to

God. He could “duke it out” with any of the Protestant theologians

who were in general far more knowledgeable than the theologians of

the Catholic church. He could base his arguments for doctrine on

scripture just as well as any Protestant. (Bentley) It was not

this alone, though, that caused others to follow him into

Catholicism. It was the style in which his arguments were

effected. Canisius was stern towards the leaders and propagators

of Protestantism but he was gentle in his arguments. When arguing

for Catholic doctrine, he thought it was important to not stress

things the Protestants were leery of such as confession, purgatory

and indulgences. Instead, “their need, as that of children, is for

milk, and they should be led gently and gradually to those dogmas

about which there is a dispute.” He didn’t scorn or scold those

who had been born into or drifted towards Protestantism. He felt

that they were headed in the wrong direction, but it wasn’t because

they were malicious or even because they were aware of the

direction they were going. They had merely been misguided.

Therefore he felt it was his job to show them the correct path that

he felt was Catholicism. This was not an excuse to be discourteous

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or to scold. Rather, it was a time to be gentle and polite.

(Thurston and Attwater)

Peter’s gentle style of argumentation led to much success. He

revived the Catholic church and sustained it in many areas

including Ingolstadt, Vienna, Augsburg, Innsbruck, and Munich. In

all of these places he taught and preached, but was never overly

forceful. This is not to mention the other work he did while on

location. He anointed the sick. He visited prisoners and

attended to those who had been struck with the plague. It is

estimated that he covered 6,000 miles in three years on horseback

and foot. Peter Canisius was an indefatigable man. He had a work

ethic that wouldn’t quit. He said, “If you have too much to do,

with God’s help you will find time to do it all.”

Despite all these achievements, the work that Canisius is best

known for is his writing. He was the first Jesuit writer. Despite

having written from a fairly early point in his life, Peter was not

the greatest writer in the world. He didn’t write anything that

was really new and he didn’t have any literary ambition but his

writing was still ingenious. What makes his works intriguing is

the

unheard of level of understanding that he acquired. His most

famous writings were three catechisms, each with their own special

purpose. The first catechism was entitled the Summa Doctrinae