Does this clerical collar make me look fat?

The Spanish company of everyone's favorite off-Broadway musical (masquerading as a religious order) has its pearls in knot: It seems that John Paul II simply didn't understand the Jesuits' need to dance, or as they put it, their "creative fidelity":

The editorial accused “the spin which the papacy of John Paul II introduced into the Church” of stifling the reforms being led by Father Pedro Arrupe (Father General of the Society during the post-conciliar period). “The Jesuits went from being the defenders of the Roman Pontiff, to the object of suspicion because of progressivism, sympathy for Communism, and excessive concern for human justice, thus downplaying eternal salvation,” the editorial complains.

The authors claim Pope John Paul’s immensely successful papal voyages “may have led some to believe in the effectiveness of this ministry which was more spectacular than profound.” The Pope’s ministry was a failure, they claim, because it did not “close the gap between a technologically advanced society that is global in nature—and that continues to marginalize the poor— and the
dictates of Christian faith and morals, as they are officially proclaimed.”

“The Jesuits have observed a ‘time of silence’ during these years,” the editorial continues. The “creative fidelity” of the Jesuits toward the Church “has not always been well understood and accepted.”

Look at that last paragraph: I have never seen a more lapidary distillation of the Jesuits' rationale for decades of defiance of the instruments of the teaching Church, nor have I encountered a better illustration of what the Church's recent instruction means by "affective maturity." Anyone who has spoken at length with various members of the Society comes across this same line of argument, albeit in more or less mincing diction. "We are loyal to the institution of the papacy, but that doesn't mean we have to follow every deatail that [insert Pope's name here]'s reactionary mind dreams up." Or how about this, "I understand my oath of obedience to apply to what the papacy stand's for, not to an individual." Or, perhaps if you go to the right bars, "The institutional Church's understanding of this obedience thing is just too butch for me!"