The Institutum, which contains the governing laws of the
society, is a complex document consisting of papal bulls and decrees, a
list of the privileges which have been granted to the order, ten
chapters of rules, decrees of the general congregations, the plan of
studies (ratio studiorum), and three ascetic writings, of which
the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius constitute the chief part.
The society is distributed into six grades: novices, scholastics,
temporal coadjutors, spiritual coadjutors, professed of the three vows,
and professed of the four vows.
The professed form only a small percentage of the entire body, and
constitute a sort of religious aristocracy, from which the officers of
the society are selected. Only the professed of the fourth vow, who add
to the three vows a pledge of unconditional obedience to the pope,
possess the full rights of membership. This final grade cannot be
reached until the age of forty-five, so that if the candidate enters
the order at the earliest age permissible, fourteen, he has been on
probation thirty-one years when he reaches the final grade.
The society is ruled by a general, to whom unconditional obedience
is required. The provinces, into which the order is divided, are
governed by provincials, who must report monthly to the general. The
heads of all houses and colleges must report weekly to their
provincials. An elaborate system of checks and espionage is employed to
ensure the perfect working of this complex ecclesiastical machinery.
Fraud or evasion is carefully guarded against, and every possible means
is employed to enable the general to keep himself fully informed
concerning the minutest details of the society's affairs.
The Vow of Obedience
That which has imparted a peculiar character to the Jesuit and
contributed more than any other force to his success, is the insistence
upon unquestioning submission to the will of the superior. This
emphasis on the vow of obedience deserves, therefore, special
consideration. Loyola, in his “Spiritual Exercises,” commanded the
novice to preserve his freedom of mind, but it is difficult for the
fairest critic to conceive of such a possibility in the light of
Loyola's rule of obedience, which reads: “I ought not to be my own, but
His who created me, and his too by whose means God governs me, yielding
myself to be moulded in his hands like so much wax.... I ought to be
like a corpse, which has neither will nor understanding, or like a
small crucifix, which is turned about at the will of him who holds it,
or like a staff in the hands of an old man, who uses it as may best
assist or please him.”
As an example of the kind of obedience demanded of the Jesuit,
Loyola cited the obedience of Abraham, who, when he believed that
Jehovah commanded him to commit the crime of infanticide, was ready to
obey. The thirteenth of the rules appended to the Spiritual Exercises
says: “If the Church shall have defined that to be black which to our
eyes appears white, we ought to pronounce the thing in question black.”
Loyola is reported as having said to his secretary that “in those
who offer themselves he looked less to purely natural goodness than to
firmness of character and ability for business.” But that he did not
mean independent firmness of character is clearly seen in the
obvious attempt of the order to destroy that noble and true
independence which is the crowning glory of a lofty character. The
discipline is marvelously contrived to “scoop the will” out of the
individual. Count Paul von Hoensbroech, who recently seceded from the
society, has set forth his reasons for so doing in two articles which
appeared in the “Preussische Jahrbuecher.” A most interesting
discussion of these articles, in the “New World,” for December, 1894,
places the opinions of the Count at our disposal. It is quite evident
that he is no passionate, blind foe of the society. His tone is
temperate and his praises cordially given. While recognizing the genius
shown in the machinery of the society and the nobility of the real aims
of the Jesuitical discipline, and while protesting against the
unfounded charges of impurity, and other gross calumnies against the
order, Count Paul nevertheless maintains that it “rests on so unworthy
a depreciation of individuality, and so exaggerated an apprehension of
the virtue of obedience, as to render it unfit for its higher ends.”
The uniform of the Jesuit is not an external garb, but such freedom is
insignificant in the light of the “veritable strait-jacket,” which is
placed upon the inward man. The unformed and pliable novice, usually
between the ages of sixteen and twenty, is subjected to “a skillful,
energetic and unremitting assault upon personal independence.” Every
device that a shrewd and powerful intellect could conceive of is
employed to break up the personal will. “The Jesuit scheme prescribes
the gait, the way to hold the hands, to incline the head, to direct the
eyes, to hold and move the person.”
Every novice must go through the “Spiritual Exercises” in complete
solitude, twice in his life. They occupy thirty days. The “Account of
the Conscience” is of the very essence of Jesuitism. The ordinary
confession, familiar to every Catholic, is as nothing compared with
this marvelous inquiry into the secrets of the human heart and mind.
Every fault, sin, virtue, wish, design, act and thought,—good, bad or
indifferent,—must be disclosed, and this revelation of the inner life
may be used against him who makes it, “for the good of the order.”
Thus, after fifteen years of such ingenious and detailed discipline,
the young man's intellectual and moral faculties are moulded into
Jesuitical forms. He is no longer his own. He is a pliable and
obedient, even though it may be a virtuous and brilliant, tool of a
spiritual master-mechanic who will use him according to his own
purposes, in the interest of the society.
The Jesuits have signally failed to convince the world that the type
of character produced by their system is worthy of admiration. The
“sacrifice of the intellect”—a familiar watchword of the Jesuit—is
far too high a price to pay for whatever benefits the discipline may
confer. It is contrary to human nature, and hence to the divine
intention, to keep a human soul in a state of subordination to another
human will. As Von Hoensbroech says of the society: “Who gave it a
right to break down that most precious possession of the individual
being, which God gave, and which man has no authority to take away?”
It is true that no human organization has so magnificently brought
to perfection a unity of purpose and oneness of will. It is also true
that a spirit of defiance toward human authority is often accompanied
by a disobedience of divine law. But the remedy for the abuses of human
freedom is neither in the annihilation of the will itself, nor in its
mere subjection to some other will irrespective of its moral character.
Carlyle may have been too vehement in some of his censures of
Jesuitism, but he certainly exposed the fallaciousness of Loyola's
views concerning the value of mere obedience, at the same time justly
rebuking the too ardent admirers of the perverted principle: “I hear
much also of 'obedience,' how that and kindred virtues are prescribed
and exemplified by Jesuitism; the truth of which, and the merit of
which, far be it from me to deny.... Obedience is good and
indispensable: but if it be obedience to what is wrong and false, good
heavens, there is no name for such a depth of human cowardice and
calamity, spurned everlastingly by the gods. Loyalty? Will you be loyal
to Beelzebub? Will you 'make a covenant with Death and Hell'? I will
not be loyal to Beelzebub; I will become a nomadic Choctaw rather, ...
anything and everything is venial to that.”