Joseph McCabe

“ The Pope had entered upon a war against half of Christendom. Heresy was, like an appalling tide, invading even his southern dominions, and it was inevitable that he should be attracted by the proposal to put at his service a body of men of high culture and heroic purpose, who would be ready, at a word, to fly to a threatened point, to penetrate in disguise into the lands of the heretics, to whisper in the ears and fathom the counsels of kings, or to bear the gospel to the new countries beyond the seas. ”

“ It is an attempt to understand the Jesuits: to understand the enthusiasm and fiery attachment of one half of the Catholic world no less than the disdain or detestation of the other, to employ the white and the black, not blended into a monotonous grey but in their respective places and shades, so as to afford a truthful picture of the dramatic fortunes of the Society during nearly four centuries, and some insight into the character of the men who won for it such ardent devotion and such intense hostility. ”

“ We find every conceivable type of Jesuit rising to prominence at some period in the long chronicle. While a Father François Régis or a Julien Manvir sustains the finest traditions of the Society by a splendid expenditure of a noble character in the service of the squalid peasantry, his colleagues smile indulgently upon the perfumed vices of nobles and princes, enter into the most unscrupulous intrigues for the destruction of their theological opponents, and encourage Louis XIV. in the belief that he may do penance for his sins on the backs of the Jansenists and Protestants. ”

“ Few, of course, would be so naïve as not to understand that the Jesuit writers carefully select from their "unpublished documents" the occasional letters which some really religious Jesuit writes to his fellows or his superiors. None but an entirely prejudiced opponent of the Jesuits would imagine that all the members of any province of the Society were lacking in moral delicacy and deep religious feeling. In every age and clime there were Jesuits of lofty purpose, great sincerity, and unselfish activity for what they regarded as the good of man. ”

“ The mission to Scotland was not less adventurous. It was the year 1562, when Mary Queen of Scots had returned from France, full of sad foreboding, to the land of John Knox. Nicholas Gouda was sent from Louvain, in the secret character of Nuncio, to console and assist her, and two Scottish students, Hay and Crichton, accompanied him. They were dressed as gentlemen of quality, who would see the world. Unfortunately, Crichton betrayed the secret to an acquaintance at Leith, and the fiery cross passed from pulpit to pulpit in the city of Edinburgh. ”

“ The Society, as a body, was committed to the pursuit of wealth and power, and in this pursuit it acted invariably as if the end justified the means. The germs planted in it by Ignatius had ripened. His followers had sought the wealthy and the powerful, had veiled their actions in secrecy, and had trampled on their own rules and the rules of the Church when the end required it. ”

“ From this account of the influences which shaped the character of the Society of Jesus before and during its birth we may derive our first clue to the singular history of the Jesuits. They might not implausibly make a proud boast of the fact that they have always borne the intense hostility of heretics and unbelievers, but the very reason they assign for this—their effective service to the Church—prevents them from explaining why they have, from their foundation, incurred an almost equal enmity on the part of a very large proportion of the monks, priests, and laymen of their own Church. ”

“ For two hundred years the Jesuits have strained every nerve, and every canon of controversial decency, in an attack on heresy and schism, yet they secretly ask Frederick of Prussia to declare himself the "protector of the Society," and they shelter from Catholic hostility in the court of Catherine of Russia! ”

“ For nearly eighty years we shall find the Jesuits straining every device of craft and learning to ensure that every man in France shall agree that the Pope (who had never read Jansen's book) was right in declaring the five propositions to be contained in the Augustinus; and the controversy they sustain will draw on themselves the appalling scourge of Pascal's Provincial Letters and on the papacy the defiant declaration of the Gallican Church. We are compelled to recognise a lamentable corporate ambition and perversion of character in their conduct. ”

“ So the Jesuits were released and the documents sent to Rome, in 1588. We, of course, hear no more of the wicked confessor from that time, but Acquaviva had not counted on this scrutiny of the documents of the Society by the keen eye of Sixtus V., and he dreaded the outcome. "Company of Jesus!" Sixtus used to mutter, as he meditatively stroked his long white beard; "Who are these men whom we must not name without bowing our heads?" ”

“ It was a time for infinite patience and restrained diplomacy, and, so far as we can ascertain, the Vatican itself, and Cardinal Howard who advised the Papacy at Rome, fully realised the need. But the Jesuits were in command, and they gave the most flagrant exhibition in their annals of the unwisdom and mischief of their distinctive methods. Although a Protestant prince grimly smiled on their blunders in Holland, and his agents in England eagerly magnified every indiscretion, they proceeded with the most imprudent defiance of Protestant feeling. ”

“ Probably no religious body ever had so romantic a history as the Jesuits, or inspired such deadly hatred. On the other hand, histories of the famous society are almost always too prejudiced, either for or against, to be reliable. Mr. McCabe, whose striking book "The Decay of the Church of Rome" attracted such widespread and well-merited attention, has attempted, in his new book, to give the facts impartially, and to enable the inquirer to form an intelligent idea of the history and character of the Jesuits from their foundation by Loyola to the present day. ”

“ Every variety of man was found in their ranks: the austere flagellant and the genial courtier, the man who served the poor because they were poor, and the man who served them in order to edify the rich; the man who flung himself with a smile into the arms of death, and the man who loved disguises and the adventurous evasion of death, the saint and the sinner, the peasant, the noble, and the scholar. ”

“ This remarkable conflict, within the Society and with the Pope, which I take chiefly from the Jesuit Jouvency, the continuer of the official "Historia Societatis," well illustrates how dim the apostolic fire had become in one of the largest provinces of the Society; how its flame was choked and corrupted by material prosperity. When we turn to France and to England we have an equally valuable illustration of the way in which the command to seek power, for the glory of God, evolves what is known as the political Jesuit. ”

“ What is a Jesuit? The question is asked still in every civilised land, and the answer is a confusing mass of contradictions. The most learned historians read the facts of their career so differently, that one comes to a verdict expressing deep and criminal guilt, and another acquits them with honour. Since the foundation of the Society these drastically opposed views of its action have been taken, and the praise and homage of admirers have been balanced by the intense hatred of an equal number of Catholic opponents. ”

“ The King's confessor was not a Jesuit, but a worthless Dominican, and there were spirited struggles between the rival orders. However, the Jesuits still guided the consciences of most of the nobles and wealthy people, and were generously patronised by the King. They prospered richly in the decaying kingdom, were indifferent to the periodical national disasters, and claim only that they produced such brilliant casuists as Escobar. At the end of this long and dreary reign the chronicle of the Society becomes more interesting. ”

“ He perceived, as every non-Catholic historian perceives to-day, that their rule was as mischievous to the State as it was profitable to their own Society, and, as Foreign Minister and lay man of business, he recognised that their commercial activity in the colonies was injurious to the laity and inconsistent with their professions. To say that he was influenced by the works of the French philosophers is absurd—he had no sympathy with their ideas—nor is it less unjust to say that he wished to protestantise the Portuguese Church. ”

“ There is, however, little need for proof of the wealth and political influence of the Jesuits in Spain. In the struggle which is proceeding between the reformers, of all parties, and the supporters of the deeply corrupt political system, the Jesuits use their whole strength as educators, and intrigue far beyond their schools, in the interest of corruption; and, true to their maxim of educating and capturing the sons of the wealthier classes, they have permitted the mass of the people to remain at an appalling level of illiteracy. ”

“ We need not stay to analyse the possible motives of Sunderland, who assuredly had no sincere wish to see England return to its old creed. Like Louis XIV., Pedro I., and Charles II., who then ruled in France, Portugal, and Spain, James II. was surrounded by a junta of Jesuits, and he was even more docile than his fellow-monarchs to their suggestions. Those who find it possible may believe that these Jesuits were so reluctant to interfere in politics that they silently permitted an unscrupulous minister to blast the prospects of their Society and Church. ”

“ If we attempt to sum up in few words the story of the Jesuits during the first few decades after their suppression, we must say that there was little change in their spirit, and that they were wholly bent on returning to their former position. In actual conduct there is a material change. The industrial and commercial system, which had formed one of the most irregular roots of their power in the earlier centuries, has disappeared; they no longer haunt the courts of kings as they had done; they, as a rule, show less arrogance to the non-Jesuit clergy and the bishops ”

“ Yet there is another [Pg 310] aspect which we perceive just as clearly: another quality which we find in the silken courts of China or Siam or Persia, the blaze of Indian or Brazilian villages, on the plains of Paraguay or Mexico, and amid the snows of Canada. It is everywhere, it is identical, and it is palpable. These men have fallen from their ideals. In virtue of a vast and hypocritical system of commerce they amass wealth and power, defend it with mean intrigue and violent assault, blunt their moral sense in pursuit of more, relax into sensuality and are lifted to arrogance. ”

“ It is possible that the Jesuits flourished because the nation was decaying, not that the nation decayed because they prospered. The problem requires careful analysis and exact proof. We have seen, however, in the case of Spain and Portugal that, in point of fact, the prosperity of the Society was both economically and politically injurious to those States—that the Jesuits really diverted into their own organisation the wealth and power which should have contributed to the well-being of the State—and we shall find the same situation in Poland and Austria. ”

“ THE EXPULSION FROM PORTUGAL AND SPAIN
In the Iberian Peninsula we have the same romantic story of the Jesuits being cast down from a splendid prosperity and expelled with every token of ignominy from countries in which they had almost attained a spiritual dictatorship. Here again, moreover, our chronicle will deal almost exclusively with the actions of a junta of court-Jesuits who bring the calamity upon their Society. ”

“ Yet a keen observer like Lainez must have perceived that this prosperity was less solid than it appeared, and his last years were saddened by announcements of hostility and defeat. In France and Belgium the gain was wholly disproportionate to the exacting struggle they had maintained; in Portugal the material success and political action were lowering the ideal of the Society; in Spain the Catholic monarch, the Inquisition, and the higher clergy were hostile; and England kept its doors sternly closed against the Jesuits. ”

“ In the long and heated conflict of affirming bishops and denying bishops, and bishops who thought a declaration inexpedient, the Jesuits were very active, scorning the idea that it could be imprudent to enhance the power of the Pope. Then came the Franco-German War, the withdrawal of the one Catholic force which could save Rome from Victor Emmanuel, and the clouds gathered more thickly than ever. The Jesuits had declared their opinion of the "usurper" too freely to have any illusion as to the issue. ”