The Secret Power Of The Jesuits By J. J. Murphy

This article is from The Converted Catholic Magazine and was made available online by The Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry, LutheranLibrary.org.

There are plenty of articles about the Jesuit Order on this website, but this is one of the best-written and the most succinct in my opinion. It contains details I never read before.

J.J. Murphy was apparently a former Catholic priest. He’s the author of many articles in the Converted Catholic Magazine.

[The facts in the following article are fully substantiated and are not intended to scare anyone beyond their factual import.]

JESUITISM is the offspring of the peculiar Catholicism of Spain, which was shaped by centuries of Moorish rule and entirely cut off from the beneficial effects of the Protestant Reformation. Unless one understands this proud, intransigent Catholicism with its blind belief, fanatic intolerance, and contempt for Christian morals, he will never understand the Jesuit order to which it gave birth. As for Spain’s religious intolerance, one has only to think of the Spanish Inquisition that continued into the last century. As to its moral corruption, sufficient insight is given by a single fact recorded by the historian, Gerald Brenan, in his book, The Spanish Labyrinth (P. 49).

“It was an established custom, permitted by the bishops, for Spanish priests to have concubines. They wore a special dress and had special rights and were called barraganas. When the Council of Trent forbade this practice to continue, the Spanish clergy protested. And in fact they never paid much attention to the prohibition, for they continue to have ‘housekeepers’ and ‘nieces’ to this day. Their parishioners, far from being shocked, prefer them to live in concubinage, as otherwise they would not always care to let their womenfolk confess to them.”

Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, was a Spaniard to the marrow of his soul. Terrorized during an illness with fear of death, he suddenly felt himself inspired to become the armed defender of the church who would bludgeon its enemies into submission by fair means or foul. He demanded the most servile obedience from his followers; they must obey sícut cadaver, ‘with the passivity of a corpse.’ Blind submission to the church even to a point where it becomes irrational and immoral was likewise demanded. “Ignatius gives it as a rule of orthodoxy to be ready to say that black is white, if the Church says so.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, XV, 340.)

Speaking of Ignatius Loyola, Dr. John A. Mackay, of Princeton declares: “His ideal as stated by himself, was to ‘rule in a cemetery.’ When the world became transformed into a moral graveyard, the Kingdom of God would have arrived. Towards that sepulchral goal, the whole world policy of the Jesuit Order was directed.”¹

In even stronger language the great thinker and historian Carlyle says of Loyola: “There was in this Jesuit Ignatius an apotheosis of falsity, a kind of subtle quintessence and deadly virus of lying, the like of which has never been seen before. Measure it if you can. Men had served the devil, and men had imperfectly served God, but to think that God could be served more perfectly by taking the devil into partnership, this was the novelty of St. Ignatius.”²

If anyone thinks Carlyle was exaggerating he only needs to read the present-day writings of the Jesuits, who keep repeating that ‘it is allowed to do evil to prevent a greater evil.’

On these grounds of safeguarding the interests of their church, they justify, for instance, the Vatican concordats with Mussolini and Hitler. Their former pupil, Pope Pius XI, openly stated that he “would make, a deal with the Devil himself” to attain certain goals. The Jesuit practice that “the end justifies the means” has become the accepted policy of the whole Roman Catholic church.

The Jesuit System

The ruthless, militant organization that ex-soldier Ignatius founded for the purpose of destroying Protestantism and reestablishing the political Catholicism of the Middle Ages was essentially a dictatorship. It is not surprising that Hitler openly admired it, especially its daring intolerance, and based his Nazi system directly on it. The leader of this so-called Society of Jesus is given the military title of General. The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge says of him; “He holds in his hands the whole administration, jurisdiction, and government. He appoints the Provincials and all other officials. He can give dispensation from the rules just as he sees fit. His power is absolute. He is to the Order what the Pope is to the Church, the representative of God.”³

In the Jesuit Order, the will of the General is supreme. The members under him must strip themselves of all personal conviction and the slightest trace of individualism. He appoints the local superior of every house of the Order and gives him direct orders. This crushing out of individuality and conscience is and is meant to be a spiritual emasculation. The Schaff-Herzog quotation, partly given in the preceding paragraph, puts it this way:

“Indeed the cement which holds the whole fabric of the Jesuit Order together is implicit obedience.” To the inferior, the superior is Christ, before whose commands he must cancel his own will, his own natural mode of feeling. Every trace of individuality must be obliterated, unless the superior chooses to develop and use it, for purposes of the Order.”

The same point is made by the Encyclopaedia Britannica (XV, 341) in demonstrating that the Jesuits are so many “cultured mediocrities” or robots. It speaks of “the destructive process of scooping out the will of the Jesuit novice to replace it with that of the superior, as a watchmaker might fit a new movement in a case, and thereby tending in most instances to annihilate those subtle qualities of individuality and originality that are essential to genius. Men of the higher stamp will either refuse to submit to the process and leave the Society, or run the danger of coming forth from the mill with their finest qualities pulverized and useless.”

This immoral annihilation of one’s personality and the slavish obedience that follows become even more vicious in view of the fact that this submission has no limits or standards except the will of the superior. If an individual Jesuit remonstrates with a superior who commands him to do something sinful, he is reminded that he has vowed blind obedience and that it is not for him to decide whether a thing is right or wrong when he does not know the full circumstances or even why the order is given. This perverting of the subject’s conscience becomes all the easier since he has sworn obedience to the will of the superior who acts under secret rules that have never been disclosed to the average Jesuit.

This subtle means of forcing Jesuit inferiors to do evil to advance the power of the church was condemned by the famous Bishop of Angelopolis, Mexico, in his well-known letter to Pope Innocent X:⁴

“But among the Jesuits there are even some of the professed members, i.e., those who have taken vows, who do not know the statutes, privileges, and even the rules of the Society, although they are pledged to observe them. Therefore they are not governed by their Superiors according to the rules of the Church, but according to certain concealed statutes known by the Superiors alone…”

The Jesuit system, however, is much too cynical to trust itself to the mere obedience of its subjects. It functions principally through an intricate system of ‘informers’ who spy on one another and report their findings to the superior. In this way fear motivates those who might otherwise relax at times from the rigid code of corpse-like obedience. All Jesuits are made aware from the beginning of their novitiate of this system of mutual spying. Repulsive as it is, it is no more repulsive than slavish obedience. It is sold to new members as a means of attaining humility and ‘Christian self-annihilation’ for Christ’s sake. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (XV, 340) refers to this system when it says: “By a minute and frequent system of official and private reports the General is informed of the doings and progress of every member of the Society and everything that concerns it throughout the world.”

The Inner Circle Of Jesuitism

It is not to be expected that within Jesuitism, the most secret organization in the world, the average member would share its esoteric doctrines. And the fact is that he doesn’t. After years of probation, the Jesuit takes his three final vows. Years later, of the many who make these three vows, a small and highly select minority are allowed to take a fourth vow. This inner circle is initiated into secrets of which the others know nothing. A still more select circle is made up of ‘Provincials’ appointed by the General. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica (XV, 339) makes mention of the two types of professed Jesuits:

“The highest class, who constitute the real core of the Society, whence all its chief officers are taken, are the professed of four vows. This grade… involves a probation of 31 years in the case of those who have entered this novitiate at the earliest legal age. The number of these select members is small in comparison to the whole Society.”

Provincials of the Jesuits make a point of not appearing in the public eye. Best known of the four-vow Jesuits in the United States are Fathers Daniel Lord, Robert I. Gannon, Coleman Nevils, F. X. Talbot, M. J. Ahem, and last but not least the ace political intriguer, Boston-born Edmund A. Walsh.

Throughout Europe, the existence of “lay Jesuits” is a matter of common knowledge among the better-educated classes. The membership of such laymen in the Jesuit Order is kept in the deepest secrecy. They are frequently prominent members of the political, legal, or financial world, but no one has the slightest suspicion that they belong to the Jesuits or that such a thing is even possible in this country. They are usually known, however, as prominent Catholics, and, oftener than not, very articulate ones.

While forced to admit that there were lay Jesuits in the earlier days, of their Order and that there could be some today, if the Society so wished, the Jesuits deny that there are any. A so-called lay Jesuit or Jesuit in voto is not necessarily unmarried, for his one vow is obedience to the dictates of the Society; out of deference to the Jesuits’ distrust of women, many lay Jesuits do not marry, however. Nor is the “lay Jesuit” necessarily a layman. He may be a secular priest, like Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen, and still be a Jesuit in voto or a “lay Jesuit” because he has sworn obedience to the Society and obliges himself to confess regularly to a Jesuit appointed for that purpose. Two essentials of a lay Jesuit are that he occupies a key position in his profession, whatever it may, and that he adheres strictly to the reactionary ideology of the Jesuits. Thus, for example, Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy, though a devout Catholic and a celibate like Senator David I. (for Ignatius) Walsh, could not be a lay Jesuit because he is a liberal who frequently has opposed Jesuit policies.

It can be said with the greatest likelihood that in the United States the following are lay Jesuits: Father Charles E. Coughlin; Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen; Senator David I. Walsh, head of the U. S. Senate Naval Committee; William T. Walsh, author; Robert Murphy, ambassador of the U. S. Department of State in Germany; Francis X. Woodlock, recently deceased financier and leading investment broker for Jesuit interests in Wall Street. It is more than probable that Louis F. Budenz, recently resigned editor of the Daily Worker, is a lay Jesuit who was “planted” in the Communist party. This is an old Jesuit stratagem.⁵

Regarding lay Jesuits, the Encyclopaedia Brittanica (XV, 339) says, “There are clauses in the Jesuits’ constitutions which make the creation of such a class perfectly feasible if thought expedient.” In fact, the first General Congregation of the Jesuits readily admitted that laymen “may be admitted into our Order, although not making their profession in our Society.”

The distinguished scholar, Saint Simon, in his Memoirs (XII, 164) authoritatively stated:

“The Jesuits always have lay members in all the professions. This is a positive fact. Doubtless Noyers, King Louis XIII’s secretary, belonged to them, also many others. These ‘affiliates’ take the same vows as the Jesuits so far as their position allows, i.e., the vow of absolute obedience to the General and the superiors of the Order. They are to substitute for the vows of poverty and chastity the service rendered and protection afforded the Society and especially unlimited submission to the superiors and their Jesuit confessor. Politics thus come within the Jesuits’ scope through the certain help of these secret allies.”

Secret Instructions Of The Jesuits

Chief among the Jesuit secrets are the policies, rules and other doctrines that are known only to the highest of the initiates. What the Jesuits have printed as “our constitutions and rules” are naturally only what they want to be known. No one but top Jesuits has ever had access to the original documents or the first drafts and editions of their constitutions. Nor have these ever said, “These are our complete constitutions.” Even to their members, they give only a “Summary of the Constitutions” and “Common Rules” which adhere together so loosely that copious omissions are more than evident. It should also be noted that, although the Order has published countless volumes on its history, it has never published even for its members the complete minutes of even one of the 25 or more General Congregations that it has held.

In fact, in the Institutes of the Jesuit Order (II, 86) mention is made of the secret statutes of the Order which exist only in manuscript form. Among the duties of the Socius of the Provincial it is stated. “He must take care of the separate archives of the Province of the Order, inasmuch as they contain manuscripts that are especially important for the direction of the Province… the book which contains the unprinted regulations by the Generals of the Order binding on the whole Society, and the book which contains another kind of unprinted circulars of the Generals.”

Roman Catholic Bishop de Palafox, in the letter to Pope Innocent X quoted above, says:

“What other Order has constitutions which are not allowed to be seen, privileges which it conceals, and secret rules, and everything else relating to the arrangement of the Order behind a curtain?”

A copy of the Monita Secreta or Secret Instructions of the Jesuits was first published in 1612, in all probability by the Polish ex-Jesuit Zahorowski. Since then, on the suppression of Jesuit houses in mid-Europe, various copies have been found hidden in the rooms of Jesuit superiors. The Jesuits naturally deny that the Monita Secreta are authentic, as is to be expected, and say that the copies found hidden in their houses prove nothing since they are only copies of Zahorowski’s work. They build up their case on the grounds that these were not discovered until some time after that work was published.

But there was one copy of the Monita Secreta found hidden in a Jesuit superior’s room in Prague that in all probability was there before Zahorowski gave his copy to the world. The evidence is so convincing that the German historian Friedrich (Beitrage, p. 8) accepts it without question. But other authorities in general are naively impressed by the denial of the Jesuits and refuse to accept the Monita Secreta as genuine until someone can invincibly prove that a copy existed previous to 1612.

The whole controversy is much ado about nothing. Actually, the Secret Instructions of the Jesuits are not at all startling. They merely direct the Jesuits to do what everyone knows they have always done: play up to the rich and powerful to get all they can from them in money or influence. Everyone knows, for instance, how the Jesuits played up to the widow of Catholic multi-millionaire Nicholas Brady. She gave them two million dollars outright for their seminary in Maryland and, in spite of her second marriage, she willed them her sumptuous Long Island estate. It seems to matter little whether they do this through natural avariciousness or because they have been directed by their secret rules.

History is so filled with the hypocrisies and treacheries of the Jesuits that there is scarcely need of other proof of the existence of such secret and immoral rules. The ex-Jesuit Count Paul von Hoensbroech in his book, Fourteen Years a Jesuit, (II, 8), is willing to admit that possibly the actual form of these rules is the work of Zarohowski, but he goes on to say: “Of the genuineness of the contents, that is, that the Monita Secreta contain regulations in harmony with the spirit of the Order… I am as positive as of the existence of secret instructions of the Order.”

Of the supreme secrecy of the Jesuit Order in general there can be no question, Equally certain is the fact that there would be no need for such secrecy unless there was something that needed to be hid. Just how secret the inner workings of the Order are cannot be more tellingly expressed than in the words of the Spanish Jesuit Miranda, a Provincial of the Order, who was made assistant to the General in Rome. In a letter written to a friend and later published by Jesuit Father Ibanez in his report on the Jesuit government in Paraguay, he says:

“Until I came to Rome, where I first obtained accurate information about everything, I did not comprehend what our Society is. Its government is a special study which not even the Provincials understand. Only one who fills the office which I now occupy can even begin to understand it.”

The Goal Of Jesuitism

Such is the secrecy of the Jesuit Order. It makes clear how and why its members can be deceived into doing evil for the welfare of their church. Just how evil the Order was can be seen in the bull of Pope Clement XIV, Domimus ac Redemptor Noster, which decreed the abolishment of the Order on July 21, 1773. It tells of their defiance of their printed constitution and rules, of their political intrigues, of their stooping to pagan practices, and of their ruination of souls.

The dire fact is that the suppressed Jesuit Order has turned the tables on the Catholic church. Pope Clement XIV was apparently poisoned. The Jesuits refused to dissolve the organization, and within a generation forced the papacy to officially reestablish it. Since then, especially since the pontificate of Pope Pius IX, the Jesuits have become absolute masters of the Vatican and through it of the worldwide Roman Catholic church, which they have now centralized in Rome to an extent that was never before dreamed of. (cf. Encyclopaedia Brittanica, XV, 347, eleventh edition.)

Now that the whole Catholic church has become a tool in the hands of its Jesuit masters, what do they propose to do? They intend to continue their struggle for world power with the Catholic religion as a front for their ambitions. Their purpose as expressed by the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia (II, 1167) is “the rehabilitation of medieval Catholicism and the establishment of the reign of the Church over the State.” This means death to democracy.

Pierre van Paassen succinctly analyzes the aim of the Jesuit Counter-Reformation, when he says in his book, Days of Our Years, p. 539: “It sees decay and error and pestilence in everything that has been gained since the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution, including the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the Bills of Rights, equal suffrage, the nonsectarian school — in fact all democratic institutions.”

This fanatical hatred of the Jesuits for democracy is best expressed in their own words. In the May 17, 1941, issue of their policy-setting magazine America, they said:

“How we Catholics have loathed and despised this Lucifer civilization… This civilization is now called democracy… Today American Catholics are being asked to shed their blood for that particular kind of secularist civilization which they have been heroically repudiating for four centuries.”

It would be difficult to find a more appropriate ending than the words of one of the founders of this country, the great and scholarly John Adams, former President of the United States. In the Official Monticello edition of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (XV, 64) there is a letter of Adams to Jefferson in which he said:

“My history of the Jesuits is not eloquently written, but it is supported by unquestionable authorities, is very particular and very horrible. Their restoration is indeed a step toward darkness, cruelty, perfidy, despotism, and death. I wish we were out of ‘danger of bigotry and Jesuitism.’”

1. The Other Spanish Christ, by John A. Mackay, president of the Princeton University School of Theology, page 56.↩
2. Quoted from The Jesuits, by Rev. F. A. Lillingston, former vicar of St. James, London, page 10.↩
3. Vol. 11 p. 1166. This celebrated and authoritative work was edited by Dr. Philip Schaff of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The quotations in this article are taken from the revised edition of 1891, published by Funk and Wagnalls Co. The article on the Jesuits was written by the German scholar, Dr. George El. Steitz, Konsistorialrath at Frankfort-am-Main, Germany. This English encyclopedia is based on the Real-Encyclopadie of Herzog, Plitt and Hauck.↩
4. Bishop Don Juan de Palafox’s Letters to Pope Innocent X, page 116.↩
5. In France, lay Jesuits are called “Jesuits of the Shorter Robe.” Women at times also have been used as lay Jesuits, especially those susceptible to psychic influence.↩