Continued from XXXIX. The Four Great Founders of Monkish Institutions.

Never in the annals of the world has there been a body of men so small and yet so much dreaded. No warriors, no sect, no organized body of similar proportions has been credited with such numerous and, vast undertakings, or greeted with such continued showers of curses and bitter dislikes. We confess to a sort of admiration for the Jesuits; not for their principles, nor for their master, nor for their practices, but for their towering intellects, their audacious effrontery, their unbounded self-denial, and their unparalleled supremacy in the enunciation of atrocious maxims under godly names, As Attila, Alexander, or Napoleon stand forth, with few equals, in the triumphs of butchery, master spirits impressing men with awe, so the Jesuits appear in the records of mental and other kinds of warfare, Alexanders, Attilas, Napoleons, conquerors of sciences, of kings, of nations, of popes; for a time the master spirits of the world; then hurled from power, suppressed, scattered, sheltered in heretical countries from the wrath of the pontiff, and finally restored, and seizing supreme power in that Church which confiscated their possessions, and branded them with its heavy condemnation.

Ignatius Loyola was the eighth son, and thirteenth child of Bertram, Lord of Ognez and Loyola in Spain. He was born A.D. 1491. He served as a page in the court of Ferdinand and Isabella for a short period. He was fond of a life of activity; his crowning desire was to reach an excellence in something above that to which others attained. In his twenty-ninth year he was an officer in the Spanish army, and a war was raging between his country and France; he was besieged in Pampeluna, and wounded in both legs, he fell in the breach made in the wall of the citadel.

The French treated him with the greatest courtesy and humanity. He was carefully sent to the home of his childhood, where loving attentions might soothe pain, and heal wounds.

The broken leg was badly set; and as Ignatius had an excellent opinion of his handsome appearance, and a princess whose love he prized, he had it re-broken twice, and each time well set, as was supposed; and on one occasion he had a piece of protruding bone sawed off, that he might be himself again a splendid cavalier.

He wanted novels to entertain his lonely spirit during his long sufferings, but he found no books except “The Life of Christ,” and “The Flowers of Sanctity.” Ignatius reads and is converted; he sacrifices everything to his new hopes, and with all the unbending will of a resolute soldier he gives himself up to the claims of a new ambition. When he is able he goes to the altar of Our Lady of Montserrat, and there yields himself up to God as his only master in the future, and Mary as his only mistress. He hangs up his sword on the wall of the chapel; and from that hour, as he viewed his course, he was entering upon a heavenly warfare where carnal weapons would be useless.

He retired for some time to a secluded cave and gave himself up to penances, prayers and meditations. Here he had extraordinary revelations of the overflowing love of God; and though he had been very ignorant of all religious things, in this cave he was “inspired with the most sublime science, so that he discoursed upon the great, the unspeakable mysteries of the faith, in terms, and with a zeal that captivated and astounded the most learned theologians.” And as the same Catholic writer says: “It was in this retreat that the faithful servant of Jesus and Mary composed under inspiration (?) the ‘Spiritual Exercises,’ a work which Francis de Sales said had converted more sinners than there were letters in it.”

At thirty-three years of age he went to a Grammar School with children at Barcelona; afterwards he studied at Alcala, Salamanca and Paris. He never reached a respectable grade of scholarship, and the “Spiritual Exercises” was his only literary production.

Probably about this part of his life he was denounced to the Inquisition of Valladolid as one of the heretical Illuminati; and had he not fled to France he might have shared the cruel fate of many wiser and infinitely better men. It does strike us as a little absurd that saint Ignatius Loyola should be making quick steps and long paces with the familiars of the inquisition after him.

But realizing its great advantages, he was ever after an enthusiastic admirer of that kind instrument of St. Dominic, designed to advance the service of the God of Love.

This order was solemnly confirmed on the 27th of September, 1540, by Paul III. The society at first contained only ten persons, and was limited in the bull of confirmation to sixty. The principal motive which led to their establishment by the pontiff was the vow of “obedience to the Holy See, with the express obligation of going, without remuneration, to whatsoever part of the world it should please the pope to send them.” They are under the law at this day.

After three days spent in prayer, Loyola received every vote but his own for the generalship; but pretended that he was too modest for such vast responsibilities, and he declined it. After other days of prayer, he was elected again. Ignatius still protested against the choice. He at last, however, agreed to leave the decision to his confessor, Father Theodosius, of the Minor Brethren, by whose opinion the most cunning Spaniard of his day had an honor forced upon him, the conferring of which upon any one else would have broken his aspiring heart.

Three ladies insisted on being placed under the oversight of Loyola as nuns. One of them had been a benefactress of the general in other days; but the gallant ex-soldier declared: That the direction of those three women gave him more trouble than the government of a society which now spread itself over the surface of Europe. He fasted and prayed to be delivered from this burden, and then appealed to the Holy Father, who generously authorized Ignatius to dismiss the Lady Rosella and her two companions. And from that time no nuns have been directly connected with the Jesuits. But another order, the nuns of the Sacred Heart, sprung up afterwards, with rules like the Jesuits. These ladies, according to Nicolini, are now under the absolute direction of the sons of Loyola.

“Ad majorem Gloriam Dei:” for the greater glory of God. These words were inscribed by the first Jesuit on everything belonging to his community, and they occupy the same place in that order still. Surely, if ever the saying of the celebrated Frenchman, that language was but a cloak to conceal the thoughts of men, was fully verified, it was in the use of such a motto by the Jesuits.

The candidate for membership in the order must have a “comely presence, youth, health, strength, facility of speech, and steadiness of purpose. Lukewarm devotion, want of learning, and of ability to acquire it, a dull memory, bodily defects, disease, and advanced age, render the postulant less acceptable.”

The noviciate lasts two years, but it may be shortened or extended at the general’s pleasure. The novice must spend one month in spiritual exercises, another in one of the hospitals ministering to the sick, and another in wandering around, without money, and in begging from door to door. Novices must discharge the most servile duties of the house into which they have entered; they are required to impart instruction in Christian learning to boys or ignorant adults; and when they have made some progress in these labors, they may preach and hear confessions. Before they are received into the order, they have to take its vows.

Learning has ever been the highest ambition of the Jesuit. To reach this end, the order has schools wherever it exists. In these institutions the scholars are trained for the service of the society. The scholars in them are the APPROVED, who have passed their noviciate, and the RECEIVED, who are still on trial to test their ability to acquire learning.

This class has two sections, the temporal and the spiritual coadjutors. The temporal coadjutors are never admitted to holy orders. They are the porters, cooks, stewards, and agents of the society. The spiritual coadjutors are priests. The rectors of colleges and the superiors of religious houses are chosen from this class. The coadjutors may assist in the deliberations of a general congregation, but they have no voice in the election of general.

The coadjutors have to take a solemn obligation on assuming their place in the society, in which occur the words: “Before you, most reverend father, General of the Society of Jesus, holding the place of God, and your successors.” The idea being that his voice is to command the obedience of the coadjutor, as if Jehovah addressed him.

The professed are properly the Society of Jesus. These men must be priests, above twenty-five years of age, and persons of eminence in learning. Their admission is the immediate act of the general. They have to take a solemn obligation before the general and vice-general “holding the place of God.” To this class alone the more important affairs of the order are communicated.

This officer is elected for life by the general congregation. He must receive a majority of votes. The election is conducted in many respects like the formalities attending the choice of a pope. When the new general is proclaimed, the brethren fall down on both knees before him, and kiss his hand.

Four assistants under him, but appointed by the general congregation, preside over the four divisions of the Jesuit world. An admonitor, elected by the same body, watches the general continually; and if he sees him swerving from duty, it is his business, after devout prayer, with great humility, to give him wholesome advice. The general is the most absolute master of his subjects on earth. There never was a ruler out of the throne of God invested with such despotical authority.

The superior appoints a confessor for every Jesuit, to whom, at stated times, he must reveal the secrets of his heart. And while compulsory confession is always a crime, in ordinary cases in the Catholic Church, it is strictly confidential, under the heaviest penalties; but, among the Jesuits, the confessor must report to his superior whatever may touch the reputation of an individual, or afford an index to his secret disposition, or feelings. For sins thus confessed there is no absolution till the superior has decided the question; or, if it is of sufficient importance, the general himself. In this way the devout penitent is kept in suspense and terror about his absolution; by the same means, the most perfect system of discovering the secrets of the whole order is in constant operation. For through the supposed wickedness of making a defective confession, the conscientious Catholic must tell everything. And the presumption is that this confessor is appointed from a knowledge of his special fitness to extract coveted information.

Every Jesuit is bound to report whatever he may know or suspect relative to the conduct, the secret habits, or the concealed dispositions of his brothers. From the highest to the lowest, each Jesuit is watched by his neighbor, and a report of his observations and surmises is duly forwarded to his superior. The order is but a brotherhood of sacred DETECTIVES, with, perhaps, a well-grounded suspicion that each member needs watching; and the society is busy, in this way, destroying confidence, breaking up peace, and filling every heart in its horrible fraternity with apprehension, grief, or terror.

In A.D. 1553, Ignatius addressed a letter on obedience to the Portuguese Jesuits, which is still an authoritative document in the society. “Obedience,” says he in this epistle, “is to be rendered to a superior, not on account of his wisdom, goodness, or any other such qualities with which he may be endowed, but solely because he is in God’s place, and wields the authority of him who says: ‘They that hear you, etc.’” How apt the words of the poet:

What damned error, but some sober brow
Will bless it and approve it with a text!

Again: “Take care that you never attempt to bend the will of your superior, which you should esteem as the will of God, to your own will.”

Again: “Among the heavenly bodies the lesser yield themselves to the influence of the greater with perfect order and harmony; and thus among men (Jesuits), should the inferiors allow themselves to be carried forward by the will of the superior, so that the virtue of the upper may permeate the lower spheres.”

Again: “You should not see in the person of the superior a man, liable to errors and to miseries, but Christ himself, who is wisdom in perfection.”

This spirit of obedience, as if demanded by God himself, in the main, has governed the Jesuits. When Lainez was offered a cardinal’s hat, by Paul IV., a distinction which he richly deserved, for he was the ablest man in his day in the whole Catholic Church, in obedience to the rules of his order, he refused the greatest honor in the Roman communion, except the popedom.

Several purposes which the founders of the society cherished are named in its official documents, but its grand business was TO FIGHT PROTESTANTISM. Whatever good will or hatred exists in Romanists towards Protestants, and we have seen both, the Society of Jesus is the only department in the papal Church existing avowedly to extirpate heresy.

When Paul V. wanted the Jesuits to undertake some choral service, from which their constitution relieved them, they strongly protested against such duties, and informed him that “Their society had been established to repel the injurious efforts of the heretics, to oppose the infernal stratagems which had been employed to extinguish the light of Catholic truth; and to resist the barbarous enemies of Christ, who were besieging the holy edifice of the Church, undermining it insensibly.” The Jesuit is a papal detective and warrior, born to fight the hosts of Protestantism. No system of religion under heaven has a body of ecclesiastical soldiers expressly intended to fight the enemies of its institutions except the papacy. But we do not blame it for its military priests; what other religious communities do not require, the popedom may need.

Schools from the beginning were prime instrumentalities with the Jesuits. No American citizen regarding education as one of the chief bulwarks of his country’s liberties, could take a livelier interest in the instruction of the young than the Jesuits. Only that with the disciples of Loyola, the question was not the extension of knowledge by proper agencies, but BY JESUITS. For education imparted by others they cared not a jot; but for instruction imparted in their colleges they had the highest regard. It placed at their disposal abundant material out of which to select talented sons for Loyola; this was the primary cause of their enthusiasm as teachers. It gave them immense influence over the whole future of the young nobles and princes, whose culture they sought and imparted. And in their splendid schools they did, for a long time, train up a large number of the future rulers of Europe, who cherished a profound regard for their teachers.

Then, in their colleges an education was given, surpassing any Protestant institution accessible to large numbers of that faith; and many parents who detested Romanism, on the assurance of the unctuous fathers that the faith of their sons would receive no interference, were confiding enough to entrust their dear ones to the training of men who were Jesuits, that they might fight Protestantism.

They were confessors, and the most popular that ever dealt in the foul secrets of their neighbors. Nearly every Catholic prince and princess in Europe, at one time, had one of these polished ecclesiastics to hear the record of his or her iniquities. The royal profligate and his mistress, the highhanded criminal of noble birth, the walking embodiment of all vices, had the popular confessor from the college of Loyola. His master had received in the cave at the commencement of his holy life the power of healing troubled consciences, and every follower of Ignatius inherited the remedy. This balm was nothing else than treating enormous sins as if they were trifles, and granting absolution for them on condition that a slight penance should be performed.

“Henriquez and others of our fathers, quoted by Escobar, say that: It is perfectly right to kill a person who has given us a box on the ear, although he should run away, provided it is not done through hatred or revenge. . . . . . . And the reason is, that it is as lawful to pursue the thief who has stolen your honor, as the man that has carried off your property.” Dueling was common when this doctrine was invented.

“Peter Navarre declares that, by the universal consent of the casuists, it is lawful to kill the calumniator if there be no other way of averting the affront.”

“Father Baldelle, as quoted by Escobar, says: You may lawfully take the life of another for saying: You have told a lie; if there is no other way of shutting his mouth.”

“Father Lamy says: An ecclesiastic or a monk may warrantably kill a monk or a defamer, who threatens to publish the scandalous crimes of his community, or his own crimes, when there is no other way of stopping him.”

“Father Bauny says: A person asks a soldier to beat his neighbor, or to set fire to the barn of a man who has injured him. In the absence of the soldier is the man who employed him bound to make good the damage? My opinion is that he is not. For none can be bound to make restitution where there has been no violation of justice; and is justice violated by asking another to do us a favor?”

“Escobar says: Promises are not binding when the person in making them did not intend to bind himself.”

“Father Bauny says: Absolution may be given even to him who candidly avows, that the hope of being absolved induced him to sin with more freedom than he would otherwise have done.”

Many other queer opinions about sin have been expressed by Jesuits; the whole body seem necessarily involved in every publication of one member, though we cannot believe that all Jesuits hold such sentiments. But it is certain that the men from whom Pascal quotes uttered the statements he presents as theirs. And it is easily seen that confessors who take away guilt from murder and falsehood, from lying, and iniquity, from sin in general, would be extremely welcome to sinners of all grades.

At one period they were the spiritual directors of nearly all Catholic monarchs, and as a result had boundless influence over governments and nations. They were very gentle with converts. In India, Francis Nobili put on the dress and submitted to the penances endured by a Brahmin, and claimed to be a priest of that order sent to restore the “Fourth road to truth,” long since lost. Heathen children were often baptized under pretense of giving them medicine, and their names registered as converts. In other baptisms they disguised the name of the cross, and the objects of the Catholic religion; they allowed the women to wear the image of the god Taly around their necks, and share in other acts of idolatry. And so outrageously impious and heathenish did they become, that Clement XI. had to send the Patriarch of Antioch to examine into their proceedings; who severely condemned their practices.

The true Jesuit is a man of devout aspect. Not gloomy, not scornful, but presenting the appearance of holy and loving simplicity. The pictures of Loyola, Lainez, Xavier, Aquaviva, Ricci, La Chaise, and Francis Borgia, are before us. They look like saints of unusual spirituality of mind, men living above all selfish passions and earthly considerations. Their faces insinuate an idea of their sanctity and kindness.

Then, when they met sin, their rebukes were gentle; they spoke kindly to the erring one; seemed to be deeply interested in his welfare; and if he offered any excuses for his sins they were instantly accepted. A secular priest or an ordinary monk would denounce the sinner, foretell the divine wrath, and perhaps show a little of their own; but the sons of Loyola had only meek and loving words and looks for the worst of men, unless they were heretics.

The Protestant idea of a Jesuit is just the reverse of the impression he leaves on the masses of his Catholic acquaintances. To us he is full of ambition, treachery, and hatred; to some Catholics he looks no better; but to the masses of them he is a celestial lamb, more Christ-like than any other Roman priest.

A minister well known to the writer, was once in conversation with a half intoxicated Catholic whom he knew, and he was trying to persuade him to give up liquor. He spoke to him kindly. “Why,” said the man, “you are a regular Jesuit, you treat me as if I were a man, as if you did not want to insult me. The secular clergy would tell me I was going to the pit, and would readily turn away from me, but the Jesuit always respects my feelings even though I am not what I ought to be.” This was the course marked out for the sons of Loyola from the beginning.

When the pope sent the Jesuits, Salmeron and Brouet, as his nuncios into Ireland, Ignatius, then living, gave them this counsel: “After having studied the character and manners of each person, endeavor to conform yourself to them as much as duty will permit. When the Enemy attacks a just man, he does not let him see his snares, he hides them and assails him indirectly; he entices him by degrees, and surprises him in his snares. Thus it is proper to follow a similar track to extricate men out of sin.”

How well the sons of Loyola have taken their father’s advice and imitated the cunning of the Wicked One is so thoroughly known, that it needs no comment. This pliability of disposition, this mightiest human development of the power of insinuation, has ever been a marvelous weapon with the Jesuits.

Under the tyrannical reign of Louis XIV., the Jesuits moved the king like a puppet, by appearing to yield, by executing a number of hypocritical performances.

They subscribed the articles of the Gallican Church to please the king, though they did not believe them. They refused to publish the bull of excommunication against the firstborn son of the Roman Church. They persuaded him that he would always remain a good Catholic, while they confessed and absolved him, And for their consummate double dealing they had a full license to persecute the Jansenists and Protestants.

The spies are a kind of fifth order, known only to the general and a few friends. They are men of all ranks, and ladies in all positions of society. Though bound by no vows, they belong to the order. They are rewarded by good positions where the Jesuits have influence, by great liberality in pardoning their sins, or by money if it is needed. This class, mixing with all conditions of men, report the affairs of the world to the followers of Ignatius.

The Jesuit is a man of several characters. The brethren have been very extensive merchants; and some of them probably are still engaged in business.

Possevin, a celebrated Jesuit, thinking that a blow could be successfully inflicted upon Protestantism in Sweden through the popish tendencies of John III., son of the great Gustavus Vasa, instead of a papal legate, which he really was, entered Sweden under an assumed name and as the ambassador of the widow of the Emperor Maximilian.

Christina, the daughter of the renowned Gustavus Adolphus King of Sweden, was visited in her palace by two handsome young Italian nobleman, who stated that they were traveling for their improvement. These aristocratic young men were Jesuits, who led the apostate and unmarried daughter of a glorious father into the embraces of Rome.

At the siege of Rome, when Pius IX. fled from his loving children, (obvious sarcasm!) one day a fine-looking man with beard and mustache was observed going from place to place, “praising the soldiers for their valor, encouraging the citizens not to desert their walls, and cursing the French, the Pope, and especially the Jesuits. One day some national guards perceived a kind of telegraph in a house, almost over the wall of the city, belonging to the Jesuits. They burst in and found three men making signals to the enemy. They were Jesuits, and one of them was the unknown man.”

So full of apparent patriotism when in the company of the brave men defending old Rome against the pope and Oudinot. A Jesuit might be a leading Protestant, a prominent politician, the wife of a cabinet officer, a servant in a family, as Hogan found one, —anything, anywhere. They are everywhere, in every guise, judging from the past.

On the first of September, 1759, the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal, and sent to Italy on government and other vessels, to the number of fifteen hundred, to the Holy Father.

On the sixth of August, 1762, the expulsion of the Jesuits from France was commanded, and the decree was executed two years later.

On the second of April, 1767, the Jesuits were exiled from Spain, the home of the inquisition, and the birthplace of Loyola; and six thousand of these holy fathers were soon on the mighty deep, sent by ungrateful Spain to the pope.

The King of Naples, in November, 1767, drove them out of his territories.

The Duke of Parma, in 1768, sent them from his country.

On the thirteenth of March, 1820, they were driven out of Russia by the Emperor Alexander.

In 1835, the order was again suppressed in Spain; the Cortez and the sovereign uniting in the work.

They were again banished from Portugal by Don Pedro, A.D. 1834.

Except Russia, the countries casting forth the Jesuits were all intensely Catholic, and yet they could not bear to live on the same soil with these “holy brethren.” Perhaps it was on account of their exceeding piety that their fellow-worshipers of the papal Church preferred their exile. Perhaps their sufferings and disgrace were but another illustration of the truth that the righteous are always persecuted. Possibly it might be only a proof that the wicked sometimes receive their due, or at any rate a part of it.

If ever a pope acted infallibly right, the above named pontiff exhibited unerring judgment when on the 21st of July, 1773, he issued a bull, in which he declared: “After mature deliberation, out of our certain knowledge, and plenitude of power, we do extinguish and suppress the often mentioned society.”

He had several times been threatened with death if he performed this daring act; he stated when he signed the bull that, “This suppression would be his death;” and sometime after a slow and unusually deadly poison discovered its malignant effects in his system, and after lingering torments he expired, poisoned, as he supposed, by a wafer, and as was generally believed, by a Jesuit.

How many of the order were involved in this crime it is impossible to tell; for the honor of human nature we trust the number was not large. But upon the Society of Jesus that crime rests with a withering curse and an indelible infamy.

Immediately after death, the body of Clement turned black; the muscles of the spine were detached and decomposed; the removal of the pontifical robes from the dead body brought away a great portion of the skin; the hair of his head remained on the pillow where he rested, and, with trifling friction the nails fell off. Ganganelli was in perfect health before the suppression of the Jesuits.

When the Jesuits fell by the pen of Clement, they had 22,782 members, scattered over the world.

On the 7th of August, 1814, Pius VII. reestablished the Society of Jesus according to its ancient rules. It exists today all over the nations. And while its power outside the Catholic Church is not so visible as in former times, inside of that great sect Jesuitism is triumphant. At no period since Loyola started his order have his wily children enjoyed such imperial dominion in the Roman Church. They guide the aged pontiff; they regulate the public movements of his entire followers; they ruled the late council so numerously attended in the Eternal City. Their enemies in the Catholic Church are numerous, talented, learned, and, in some cases, truly pious. But they have the priest king, the mastery, and any amount of audacity, energy, and unscrupulous ambition. They were never so favored with papal benedictions at any former period,

But God is mighty. He sits upon the foam-crested billow in its mighty upheavals; he drives and bends the whirlwind, whose gigantic arms hug the mountain-sides; from the falling of a sparrow to the jar that shivers a world, nothing escapes his eye, or lives outside the circle of his government. The death-plotting little spider, surrounded by his intricate and cunning web-trap, is insignificant enough to us. The Jesuit, in his schemes of craft, and in his heartlessness and lust of empire, is just as contemptible in the sight of God.

Protestants are sometimes in an ocean of terror, pursued, as they suppose, by the fierce Egyptian warriors of stout old Loyola. They should always remember at such a time that this is a Red Sea, through which, for them, Jehovah has made a safe road, and in which, for the enemies of their faith, he has prepared a sure grave. They should remember that beyond these angry waters and fierce warriors of St. Ignatius, there is a Canaan of rest and triumph, wide as the world, and populous as the human race, where their banner of salvation, by grace alone, shall float in serene majesty over every hill and valley, over every continent and ocean, and over every priest once proud and superstitious, and every heart once lost; and where the hallelujahs of a whole earth redeemed shall mingle with the jubilant songs of all heaven triumphant in celebrating the death of paganism, Christian and heathen, and the victory of Jesus as the Saviour and Lord of Adam’s whole family!

Continued in The Papal System – XLI. Conclusion.

All chapters of The Papal System by William Cathcart

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