Richard W. Thompson - The Footprints of the Jesuits

The human mind is not fertile enough in invention to discover a lower depth of humiliation than this—a more complete surrender of all the ennobling qualities and instincts of manhood. If these have ever been possessed, the remembrance of them is required to be obliterated, so that there may be no room in the mind for a single generous emotion. When Shakespeare conceived the idea of a "mindless slave," he must have had before his mind the portrait of a Jesuit, after he had been disciplined and fashioned under the master-hand of Loyola, who left his followers no personal sense of truth or right or justice, having made their abnegation so thorough that, even with the knowledge of right and wrong, truth and falsehood, they were trained to incline indifferently to either as commanded by their superiors. He allowed no hesitation, heard no reasons, accepted neither apology nor excuse. Their whole duty consisted in blind and uninquiring obedience to him in thought, word, and deed, no matter what consequences might follow, or what harm be inflicted. What of consciences they had left, were required to become so callous as to be insensible to either honor or shame, all conscientious sense being extinguished as if it had never existed—like the light of a candle blown out. Nowhere else in the world, within the confines of civilization, has such a point of the absolute annihilation of individuality been reached. Nowhere else is a man required to acknowledge himself a "corpse," a "dead body," a "little crucifix," a "staff" in the hands of another, with no will, or thought, or sensibility, or emotion, except such as shall be dictated by those to whose mastery he has ignominiously submitted. It is the very perfection of tyranny, such as the most heartless despots known to history would have rejoiced to discover.

Far too little consideration is generally given, even by careful students of history, to this assumption of equality with Christ—this vain pretense of a state of divine perfection which recognizes a single human being as possessing upon earth the authority of God. Undoubtedly it is true that multitudes of individuals, of good intentions, have been misled by it into the false belief that the most prominent feature in the plan of Christ's atonement was the substitution for himself of a mere man, to whom alone, of all mankind, he assigned his own divine attributes. The original suggestion of such a proposition must have startled the Christian mind; and its establishment as an article of faith may be intelligently accounted for by the fact that the superstition and ignorance of the Middle Ages enabled monarchism in Church and State to perpetuate itself by requiring this dogma to be accepted as revealed by Christ himself. In evidence of its repugnance to the common sense of mankind, it is proper to observe that the Christian world has ever since labored hard to get rid of the delusion, and would in all probability long since have done so, but for the society of Jesuits, which has ceaselessly maintained it as an essential part of its machinery. That it is condemned and repudiated by reason, it requires no argument to prove in this enlightened age. If the Creator had designed that he should have such a representative upon earth after the ascension of Christ, he would have imparted his divine attributes to him by such manifestations of his own power as the world could not misunderstand—either by such simple and peaceful incidents as attested the birth and divinity of the Savior, or by such convulsions of nature as accompanied the delivery of the tables of the law to Moses. In the entire absence of any visible and intelligent evidences whatsoever of this divine purpose, the pretension of it, as the mere means of acquiring authority over others and exacting obedience from them, is nothing less than presumptuous and vainglorious impiety. It seeks to dethrone God by abolishing the bar of judgment, where he has announced that all mankind shall appear; for what is it less than this to say that conformity to the commands of the Jesuit general assures, beyond any peradventure, admission to the kingdom of heaven? God manifestly reserved to himself this great prerogative; and he who claims it as pertaining to an earthly office of man's creation, arraigns the divine authority, and insults the Majesty of heaven by requiring that the Creator shall abdicate his throne. If, moreover, God had intended to confer divine attributes upon any individual man, it is contrary to a just estimate of his character, as well as to all human experience, to suppose he would have chosen the general of a society which has from its origin been a byword of reproach among the nations, upon which such a heavy weight of odium has rested that it has been ignominiously driven out of every nation in Europe; whose enormities compelled a good and virtuous pope to suppress and abolish it in order to assure the peace and welfare of the Church; and whose members are still skulking through these same nations, silently and secretly, as ghostly apparitions are supposed to move about in the night-time under the cover of darkness.

But the Jesuit constitution goes to even a greater extent of impiety. After a novitiate has, by the foregoing methods, been converted into an unthinking and unresisting piece of machinery, like a block of wood or marble carved by the hand of an artist, his course of future servility is so opened before him that he may fully understand how he shall give proof of fidelity to his vows, by doing whatsoever the general shall command, or by omitting to do whatsoever he shall forbid. Here the thoughtful reader to whom these revelations are new, no matter what form of religious faith he may profess, will be likely to pause in astonishment at the deliberately-avowed purpose to disregard the laws of States, of social morality, and even of God, when the general shall command either of these things to be done. The following are the words of the constitution, as given by Nicolini:

"No constitution, declaration, or any order of living, can involve an obligation to commit sin, mortal or venial, unless the superior command it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in virtue of holy obedience, which shall be done in those cases or persons wherein it shall be judged that it will greatly conduce to the particular good of each, or to the general advantage; and, instead of the fear of offense, let the love and desire of all perfection proceed, that the greater glory and praise of Christ, our Creator and Lord, may follow."24

This language should be re-read and carefully scanned; for, at a single glance, it seems to have been written so as to furnish ground for equivocation, a practice in which the Jesuits, by long use, have acquired consummate skill. It may be easily interpreted, however, in the light of what Bartoli says. According to him, the novice is required to place himself "entirely in the hands of God, and of him who holds the place of God by his authority," which, of course, is the general or superior. After setting forth that the novitiate is required to take this vow, "In everything which is not sinful, I must do the will of my superior and not my own," he enlarges upon the obligations of the same vow with the following particularity: "If it seems to me that the superior has ordered me to do something against my conscience, or in which there appears to be something sinful, if he is of a contrary opinion, and I have no certainty, I should rely upon him. If my trouble continues, I should lay aside my own judgment, and confide my doubts to one, two, or three persons, and rely upon their decision. If all this shall not satisfy me, I am far from the perfection which my religious state requires. I must no longer belong to myself, but to my Creator, and to those who govern in his name, and in whose hands I should be as soft wax, whatsoever he chooses to require of me."25 Another vow, also given by Bartoli, shows that this same obedience is due as well to a vicious and immoral as to a virtuous superior; that is, that by the religion which the Jesuits profess, it makes no difference, in so far as the obligation of obedience to his interpretation of the laws of God and morality is concerned, whether he be wise or unwise, saint or sinner. It says: "To believe that a thing ought to be because the superior orders it, is the last and most perfect degree. We can not arrive at this degree without recognizing in the person of our superior, be he wise or imprudent, holy or imperfect, the authority of Jesus Christ himself, whom he represents."26 And another vow, illustrating the character of this obedience, is thus given: "With regard to property, I must depend upon the superior alone, consider nothing as my personal property, and myself, in all that I am, as a statue, which allows itself to be stripped, no matter what the occasion may be, and offers no resistance."27