Part 11 (1/2)
Ignatius was elected as the general of the order and entered upon his duties, April 17, 1541. He soon prepared a const.i.tution which was not adopted until after his death, and then in an amended form. Loyola ended his remarkable and stormy career, July 31, 1556.
_Const.i.tution and Polity of the Order_
The _Inst.i.tutum_, which contains the governing laws of the society, is a complex doc.u.ment 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 const.i.tute 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 const.i.tute 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 members.h.i.+p. 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sist 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 n.o.ble 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 Jahrbucher.” 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 pa.s.sionate, 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 n.o.bility 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 a.s.sault 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.ds. Loyalty? Will you be loyal to Beelzebub? Will you 'make a covenant with Death and h.e.l.l'? I will not be loyal to Beelzebub; I will become a nomadic Choctaw rather, ... anything and everything is venial to that.”
_The Casuistry of the Jesuits_
It is often a.s.serted, even by authoritative writers, that a Jesuit is bound by his vows to commit either venial or mortal sin at the command of his superior; and that the maxim, ”The end justifies the means,” has not only been the principle upon which the society has prosecuted its work but is also explicitly taught in the rules of the order. There is nothing in the const.i.tution of the society to justify these two serious charges, which are not to be regarded as malicious calumnies, however, because the slovenly Latin in one of the rules on obedience has misled such competent scholars as John Addington Symonds and the historian Ranke. Furthermore, judging from the doctrines of the society as set forth by many of their theologians and the political conduct of its representatives, the conclusion seems inevitable that while the society may not teach in its rules that its members are bound to obedience even to the point of sin, yet practically many of its leaders have so held and its emissaries have rendered that kind of obedience.
Bishop Keane admits that one of the causes for the decline and overthrow of the society was its marked tendency toward lax moral teaching. There can be but little doubt that the Jesuits have ever been indulgent toward many forms of sin and even crime, when committed under certain circ.u.mstances and for the good of the order or ”the greater glory of G.o.d.”
To enable the reader to form some sort of an independent judgment on this question, it is necessary to say a few words on the subject of casuistry and the doctrine of probabilism.
Casuistry is the application of general moral rules to given cases, especially to doubtful ones. The medieval churchmen were much given to inventing fanciful moral distinctions and to prescribing rules to govern supposable problems of conscience. They were not willing to trust the individual conscience or to encourage personal responsibility. The individual was taught to lean his whole weight on his spiritual adviser, in other words, to make the conscience of the church his own. As a result there grew up a confused ma.s.s of precepts to guide the perplexed conscience. The Jesuits carried this system to its farthest extreme. As Charles C. Starbuck says: ”They have heaped possibility upon possibility in their endeavors to make out how far there can be subjective innocence in objective error, until they have, in more than one fundamental point, hopelessly confused their own perceptions of both[H].”
[Footnote H: Appendix, Note H.]
The doctrine of probabilism is founded upon the distinctions between opinions that are sure, less sure, or more sure. There are several schools of probabilists, but the doctrine itself practically amounts to this: Since uncertainty attaches to many of our decisions in moral affairs, one must follow the more probable rule, but not always, cases often arising when it is permissible to follow a rule contrary to the more probable one. Furthermore, as the Jesuits made war upon individual authority, which was the key-note of the Reformation, and contended for the authority of the church, the teaching naturally followed, that the opinion of ”a grave doctor” may be looked upon ”as possessing a fair amount of probability, and may, therefore, be safely followed, even though one's conscience insist upon the opposite course.” It is easy to see that this opens a convenient door to those who are seeking justification for conduct which their consciences condemn. No doubt one can find plausible excuses for the basest crimes, if he stills the voice of conscience and trusts himself to confusing sophistry. The glory of G.o.d, the gravity of circ.u.mstances, necessity, the good of the church or of the order, and numerous other practical reasons can be urged to remove scruples and make a bad act seem to be a good one. But crime, even ”for the glory of G.o.d,” is crime still.
This disagreeable subject will not be pursued further. To say less than has been said would be to ignore one of the most prominent causes of the Jesuits' ruin. To say more than this, even though the facts might warrant it, would incur the liability of being cla.s.sed among those malicious fomentors of religious strife, for whom the writer has mingled feelings of pity and contempt. The Society of Jesus is not the Roman Catholic Church, which has suffered much from the burden of Jesuitism--wounds that are scarcely atoned for by the meritorious and self-sacrificing services on her behalf in other directions. The Protestant foes have never equaled the Catholic opponents of Jesuitism, either in their fierce hatred of the system or in their ability to expose its essential weakness. A writer in the ”Quarterly Review,”
September, 1848, says: ”Admiration and detestation of the Jesuits divide, as far as feeling is concerned, the Roman Catholic world, with a schism deeper and more implacable than any which arrays Protestant against Protestant.”