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.