The Mission of the Jesuits

     
     
      The Society of Jesus has been described as “a naked sword, whose hilt is at Rome, and whose point is everywhere.” It is an undisputed historical fact that Loyola's consuming passion was to accomplish the ruin of Protestantism, which had twenty years the start of him and was threatening the very existence of the Roman hierarchy. It has already been shown that the destruction of heresy was the chief aim of the Dominicans. What the friars failed to attain, Loyola attempted. The principal object of the Jesuits was the maintenance of papal authority. Even to-day the Jesuit does not hesitate to declare that his mission is to overthrow Protestantism. The Reformation was inspired by a new conception of individual freedom. The authority of tradition and of the church was set at naught. Loyola planted his system upon the doctrine of absolute submission to authority. The partial success of the Jesuits, for they did beat back the Reformation, is no doubt attributable to their fidelity, virtue and learning. Their devotion to the cause they loved, their willingness to sacrifice life itself, their marvelous and instantaneous obedience to the slightest command of their leaders, made them a compact and powerful papal army. Their methods, in many particulars, were not beyond question, and, whatever their character, the order certainly incurred the fiercest hostility of every nation in Europe, and even of the church itself.
      Professor Anton Gindely, in his “History of the Thirty Years' War,” shows that Maximilian, of Bavaria, and Ferdinand, of Austria, the leaders on the Catholic side, were educated by Jesuits. He also fixes the responsibility for that war partly upon them in the plainest terms: “In a word, they had the consciences of Roman Catholic sovereigns and their ministers in their hands as educators, and in their keeping as confessors. They led them in the direction of war, so that it was at the time, and has since been called the Jesuits' War.”
      The strictures of Carlyle, Macaulay, Thackeray, and Lytton have been repeatedly denounced by the Jesuits, but even their shrewd, sophistical defences of their order afford ample justification for the attitude of their foes. For example, in a masterful oration, previously quoted from, in which the virtues of the Jesuits are extolled and defended, Father Sherman says: “We are expelled and driven from pillar to post because we teach men to love God.” He describes Loyola as “the knightly, the loyal, the true, the father of heroes, and the maker of saints, the lover of the all-good and the all-beautiful, crowned with the honor of sainthood, the best-loved and the best-hated man in all the world, save only his Master and ours.” “'Twas he that conceived the daring plan of forging the weapon to beat back the Reformation.” No one but a Jesuit could reconcile the aim of “preaching the love of God" with “beating back the Reformation,” especially in view of the methods employed.
      Numerous gross calumnies have been circulated against the Society of Jesus. The dread of a return to that deplorable intellectual and moral slavery of the pre-Reformation days is so intense, that a calm, dispassionate consideration of Jesuit history is almost impossible. But after all just concessions have been made, two indisputable facts confront the student: first, the universal antagonism to the order, of the church that gave birth to it, as well as of the states that have suffered from its meddling in political affairs; and second, the complete failure of the order's most cherished schemes. France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Great Britain and other nations, have been compelled in sheer self-defence to expel it from their territories. Such a significant fact needs some other explanation than that the Jesuit has incurred the enmity of the world merely for preaching the love of God.
      Clement XIV., when solemnly pronouncing the dissolution of the order, at the time his celebrated bull, entitled “Dominus ac Redemptor Noster” which was signed July 21, 1773, was made public, justified his action in the following terms: “Recognizing that the members of this society have not a little troubled the Christian commonwealth, and that for the welfare of Christendom it were better that the order should disappear,” etc. When Rome thus delivers her ex cathedra opinion concerning her own order, an institution which she knows better than any one else, one cannot fairly be charged with prejudice and sectarianism in speaking evil of it.
      But while there is much to be detested in the methods of the order, history does not furnish another example of such self-abnegation and intense zeal as the Jesuits have shown in the prosecution of their aims. They planted missions in Japan, China, Africa, Ceylon, Madagascar, North and South America.
      In Europe the Mendicant friars by their coarseness had disgusted the upper classes; the affable and cultured Jesuit won their hearts. The Jesuits became chaplains in noble families, learned the secrets of every government in Europe, and became the best schoolmasters in the age. They were to be found in various disguises in every castle of note and in every palace. “There was no region of the globe,” says Macaulay, “no walk of speculative or active life in which Jesuits were not to be found.” That they were devoted to their cause no one can deny. They were careless of life and, as one facetiously adds, of truth also. They educated, heard confessions, plotted crimes and revolutions, and published whole libraries. Worn out by fatigue, the Jesuits still toiled on with marvelous zeal. Though hated and opposed, they wore serene and cheerful countenances. In a word, they had learned to control every faculty and every passion, and to merge every human aspiration and personal ambition into the one supreme purpose of conquering an opposing faith and exalting the power of priestly authority. They hold up before the subjects of the King of Heaven a wonderful example of loving and untiring service, which should be emulated by every servant of Christ who too often yields an indifferent obedience to Him whom he professes to love and to serve.
      Francis Parkman, in his brilliant narrative of “The Jesuits in North America,” presents the following interesting contrast between the Puritan and the Jesuit: “To the mind of the Puritan, heaven was God's throne; but no less was the earth His footstool; and each in its degree and its kind had its demands on man. He held it a duty to labor and to multiply; and, building on the Old Testament quite as much as on the New, thought that a reward on earth as well as in heaven awaited those who were faithful to the law. Doubtless, such a belief is widely open to abuse, and it would be folly to pretend that it escaped abuse in New England; but there was in it an element manly, healthful and invigorating. On the other hand, those who shaped the character, and in a great measure the destiny, of New France had always on their lips the nothingness and the vanity of life. For them, time was nothing but a preparation for eternity, and the highest virtue consisted in a renunciation of all the cares, toils and interests of earth. That such a doctrine has often been joined to an intense worldliness, all history proclaims; but with this we have at present nothing to do. If all mankind acted on it in good faith, the world would sink into decrepitude. It is the monastic idea carried into the wide field of active life, and is like the error of those who, in their zeal to cultivate their higher nature, suffer the neglected body to dwindle and pine, till body and mind alike lapse into feebleness and disease.”
      Notwithstanding the success of the Jesuits in stopping the progress of the Reformation, it may be truthfully said that they have failed. The principles of the Reformation dominate the world and are slowly modifying the Roman church in America. “In truth,” says Macaulay, “if society continued to hold together, if life and property enjoyed any security, it was because common sense and common humanity restrained men from doing what the order of Jesus assured them they might with a safe conscience do.” Our hope for the future progress of society lies in the guiding power of this same common sense and common humanity.
      The restoration of the order by Pius VII., August 7th, 1814, while it renewed the papal favor, did not allay the hostility of the civil powers. Various states have expelled them since that time, and wherever they labor, they are still the objects of open attack or ill-disguised suspicion. Although the order still shows “some quivering in fingers and toes,” as Carlyle expresses it, the principles of the Reformation are too widely believed, and its benefits too deeply appreciated, to justify any hope or fear of the ultimate triumph of Jesuitism.