Ignatius of Loyola on Spiritual warfare
No position located on this map
Searched in the sources read for this figure and not found. A limit of the reading rather than a claim about the figure — a source not yet read could settle it.
by insisting more on prayer, meditation, on much examination, and by giving ourselves more scope in some suitable way of doing penance
THE POSITION
No position found on casting out spirits, though much on the fight itself. The Rules for the discernment of spirits are a manual for it, written for people on retreat. Against desolation he prescribes more prayer, meditation, examination and penance; the "enemy of human nature" loses heart when the person "opposes a bold front" to his temptations, and loses his hold when his suggestions are revealed to a good confessor or another spiritual person. In the Autobiography he comes to judge a recurring luminous apparition "the work of the devil". Nothing read speaks of commanding, rebuking or casting out a spirit. That is a silence in two texts about one's own soul, not a rejection, and the Church of his day used exorcism in its rites, so the cell is left without a stance rather than read as ordinary means only.
WHAT OTHERS HOLD HERE
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Basque soldier turned pilgrim, founder of the Society of Jesus (1540) and its first superior general. His Spiritual Exercises, begun at Manresa in 1522–23 after his conversion at Loyola in 1521 and approved by Paul III in 1548, are still widely used for retreats; their closing rules for thinking with the Church are his nearest approach to doctrinal statement. This entry rests on the Exercises in Elder Mullan's 1914 translation and the Autobiography in the 1900 English edition by J. F. X. O'Conor.
Cite this page
"Ignatius of Loyola on Spiritual warfare", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/ignatius-loyola/spiritual-warfare (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/ignatius-loyola/spiritual-warfare).