Asa H. Craig, (Asa Hollister), 1847-1934
THE world in general knows nothing, absolutely nothing, of the Society, or Company of Jesus. They hear the name Jesuit, they understand that it is Catholic, they are suspicious of some Masonic mystery, a secret organization of religious power, a menace to future liberty, and a something that ought not to be. This is about as far as the world goes in its knowledge of the origin, the purpose, the faith, the life, and the mission of this Order.
The world has never studied the inner nature and motives of the Jesuit. It has never cared to fathom the depths of piety, the self-sacrifice, the devotion, the truth of character, the uncomplaining poverty, and the resistance of hatred against those who slander and vilify. This same world cares nothing for the noble acts of benevolence and of forbearance, nor does it care for the religious zeal and the exemplification of Christian virtues. But whisper a suspicion of evil, and it rises in alarm, and as the blaze of the incendiary is fanned into a mighty conflagration, so do the words of slander become a tempest of power which engulfs the good and strands the bark of virtue.
Good deeds are known only when the world delights to honor, while evil report spreads as a contagion, a plague of devastation, and the seeds of unbelief.
Few people who are not directly interested in the mission of the Jesuits read and remember their virtues, but the ear catches the first sound of distrust and the tongue of calumny carries this morsel of news, and as it is handed down from neighbor to neighbor, and from gossip to gossip, it at last becomes the tumbleweed of inconsistency, which flies with the wind of slander, scattering the seeds of prejudice, intoleration, and persecution.
No organization, society, order, or institution was ever so villifier and misunderstood as the Company of Jesus. Many people believe that the Jesuits are a sworn body of Catholic priests who have been and are seeking to undermine society, law, and government. Not one Protestant in one thousand has ever read of its pious founder, or of his wonderful teachings of love and forbearance. They haven’t even the remotest idea of how or when this Order was founded. The name Jesuit is a bugbear of plotting, of hidden disloyalty, and of terror, to those poor, ignorant beings who never investigate for themselves, but accept the assertions of others, and the wilder the assertions, and the more inconsistent they are represented, the more they believe.
“We shall not fight with the sword, but with the word; we shall preach to men and instruct children; we shall make Christians by preaching and teaching.
“We shall accept money from no one for praying, celebrating, preaching, or teaching, and we shall be reproached for this, for we shall have other enemies than the enemies of the Church.
“Despite the absence of any stipend, our poverty shall erect immense dwellings and shall scatter large alms.
“This will be astonishing, and we shall be accused for it We shall march on, with lowered heads, regardless of insults, and those who outrage us we shall love as ourselves for the love of God.
“My friends and my children, it is hard to do this, and it is especially hard to believe in it. The law commanding us to turn the other cheek is unnatural and so repugnant to the heart of man that when man sees it obeyed, he will insist upon seeing nothing but hypocrisy in the impossible sacrifice, or cowardice in the heroism that he cannot understand.
“No man will admit that without God’s help it needs a thousand times more valor to drink the bitterness of insult than it is to strike down the man who insults you.
“Amongst men we shall be considered swindlers for our miracle of poverty; hypocrites, for our miracle of charity; cowards, for our miracle of humility.
“Glory to God!
“Even our death will not disarm ridicule or insult; it shall be said of us as was said of our Divine Master, Jesus, that we have played our parts to the end, and that our last sigh is our last falsehood.’ Glory, glory to God alone!”
Who uttered these words? It was Ignatius de Loyola, the founder of the Company of Jesus, who on August 15, 1534, at the crypt of Notre Dame, Paris, called together six selected and loyal followers, and in his plea for humanity and the spread of the gospel of Christ, he uttered these ever-to-be-re membered words.
Now, dear reader, mark the contrast between; these words of Loyola and the words of Gioberti, who, because he was rebuked by the Jesuits for eulogizing them to an extreme, turned in his madness and in the spirit of revenge wrote “Modern Jesuits,” where he declares: “The Jesuits are souls without pity, souls of iron; they are impenetrable to sentiments the most sacred, to affections the most noble; they are ever ready for fraud, imposture, and calumny; they are men without heart, apostles of hell, ministers of perdition; in fine, they form the most terrible and fatal enemy of humanity and Christianity which modern times have known. — They teach a ribald morality which has only the semblance of being Christian, and they inculcate things of which an honest Gentile would be ashamed; their idea of justice is contradictory to public law, and can have the sanction of none but assassins.”
Which of these utterances is remembered and quoted in the writings of the Protestant world? It is needless to answer. We all know that the evil of man is prone to keep alive the slanders and calumnies of others. By the prejudice of those who are raised in ignorance will there be a remembrance of every charge made against the victims of misrepresentation.
It mattered not how Gioberti came to utter those words of vilification. They were publicly declared, and no passion, malice, hatred, or any of the vile attributes of man would be considered in the great scales of human justice. Slander will outweigh the blackest character that ever uttered it. The vilest criminal in existence may traduce and vilify the hand that seeks to lift him up, and the world will scatter the slander and applaud the villain for it.
The Jesuit is that victim, and the words of Gioberti have ever been proclaimed by Protestants as the proof of iniquity, of hypocrisy, of impurity, of perjury, of hatred, of falsity, and of murder. This writer has ever been held as competent authority for the right to charge all forms of evil to them.
But before we proceed further, let us return to the beginning of this Society, view the character of the founder, the spirit of the times, and the great work to accomplish.
Ignatius de Loyola was born in Spain in 1491, and on arriving at manhood became a brilliant captain in the army, and won the approbation of his superiors for his unconquerable valor. In outward appearance he was haughty, stern, and uncompromising in his demands for justice, but when the light of God fell upon him, as it did like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, his heart was turned from the fever of war to that of the deepest tenderness, love, and adoration. His eyes, as they shone through the beauties of his soul, showed the strong determination of his mind, the grandeur of thoughts and purposes, and the purity of a consecrated life.
This brilliant captain was wounded at the bloody siege of Pampeluna. His power to lead in the strife of battle was gone forever. His body was maimed, and though the spirit of chivalry raged with unceasing passion, yet Ignatius could never again fight with the sword of mortal combat. His wild spirit bounded against the caged bars of his infirmities. He was raised a soldier, and his life had been one fierce conflict, and now to be bound down with the cruel pains of affliction was a blow that was hard to bear. To soothe his pillow of distress, he would ask his attendants to read to him the glowing accounts of the achievements of knighthood, the brilliancy of victory, and the triumphs of his cause. In his imagination he could hear the din of war, the trumpet call for action, and the thundering charge.
Among the knightly romances which were brought to his bedside was a narration of the suffering of the Christian Martyrs, and the story of their wonderful faith, their endurance against mortal pain, their devotion to God, and their willingness to lay down their lives for the cause of Christ. These recitals awoke in him a new thought of existence, a new power of love and affection for the word of God, and when the history of the greatest of all martyrs was again read to him, when he saw Christ persecuted, reviled, denied, and crucified, he felt that a new revelation had entered his soul. No longer did the spirit of chivalry seek to break the bars of affliction, but with a new light of destiny before him, a new conversion, and a new purpose, he tore from his heart the honor of warfare, the knighthood of chivalry, and the love of comfort. He read again the Passion of our Lord according to the Apostle St. John, and as he thought of this wonderful sacrifice, he prayed to God for mental strength, for the divine light of truth, and for the inspiration of thought and action. In spirit he clasped the Mother of Jesus to his heart, and there dedicated his soul to the service of faith, his mind to the promotion of the Church, and his body to the chastity of the crucified Savior, saying: “I shall be a knight of the real love and a soldier of the only glory.”
The six followers, like the apostles of old, who met Loyola on the morn of the 15th of August, 1534, were Peter Lefevre, Francis Xavier, James Laynez, Anthony Salmeron. Nicholas Alonzo de Babadilla, and Simon Rodriguez d’Azevedo.
For fourteen years Loyola had studied the inspirations which now bound together these seven earnests, pious, Christian men. He had carefully outlined every phase of its character. He had planned its future power and influence, and in its organization, there could be none admitted who would not consecrate his life to the work of teaching the gospel of salvation. There was -a great work to do. The Church was being assailed by its powerful enemies, and no decisive effort was being made to stay the tide of revolt. The old orders of Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights, had outgrown their usefulness. While they sought to plant the standard of Christ, yet their power was not so much the wisdom of thought as it was the execution of force. These orders could not fill the necessity of the new conditions which now faced Loyola.
It is true, there were other religious organizations, but they, too, were not competent to occupy the field of want. The old established orders of Benedictines, Dominicans, and Franciscans, were also unable to meet the rising duties. While for centuries they had been employed in teaching others, not in the public school rooms, but in their home abodes, their chapels, and their monasteries, yet their mission in life was one of study, of consecration of self, to withdraw from the world as far as possible, to seek spiritual perfection in a retired life of contemplation and prayer, to induce the most devout and fervent Christians to forsake the life of worldly pleasure and profit, and to devote the mind and soul to the great preparation for eternal life.
In the formation of the Company of Jesus there was a broader foundation for the advancement of humanity. It sought to withdraw religious men from retirement and to go into all the countries of earth and teach the gospel of repentance. It was to be the vanguard of Christianity, the pilot of information, the watch tower of Zion, and the instrument of labor wherein idolatry held men from the worship of God.
This Company came into existence just as the Reformation had set its foot upon the continent of Europe. Loyola saw the magnitude of the revolt and sought to stay the tide of Protestantism that was sweeping Germany, Switzerland, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands. He saw that even Spain was being threatened with disunion. He saw that the Catholic Church was being defied in England by the arrogant and tyrannical power of Henry VIII. He felt that his beloved Church was everywhere being made the scapegoat of every crime, of every form of villainy, and of every form of intoleration. His soul burned with indignation, and he sought to plan assistance by which, not only would his religion be preserved at home, but at the same time be preached to the outside world of ignorance.
In the organization of the Society of Jesus the greatest number that could be enrolled was sixty, but the demand for services was so great that within a few months the Sovereign Pontiff was obliged to undo this limitation and give to the Company the full power of its mission.
History informs us that “the first ten Jesuits were, all of them, eloquent orators, unequaled professors, accomplished theologians, remarkable writers, zealous apostles of charity and doughty defenders of truth.” In James Laynez we find a man of such powerful mind that wherever he went he was received with a wonderful confidence. His first mission was to go to Venice, “where the struggle that he opened against heresy so aroused the popular enthusiasm that crowds slept at the doors of the churches so as not to miss his preaching/’ It is but proper to mention that the ambition of Laynez was nor to climb the ladder of fame, but to preach the gospel of Christ. So interested did he become in the work laid out for him to do that he refused to accept the Cardinal’s hat, believing that he could render greater service to his Church and to the Company of Jesus by continuing in his mission labors.
The same can be said of Francis Xavier. He was one of the most brilliant lights in all the history of the Catholic Church. So great was his power of conversion that he was sent to India, where his march was one continuous victory for the advancement of Christian faith. His first efforts in his new field of labor were to convert the Portuguese and Spanish traders to an honest and conscientious purpose. The oppression practiced by the Portuguese merchants in India was caried to a hideous excess, and so avaricious and corrupt had become these traders that to the native’s mind the name of Christian was joined to greedy, cruel, dissolute, vicious, and even criminal traffickers. To correct this evil and to prove to the natives that Christianity was not a corruption, these unprincipled merchants must be converted, an attempt which was considered far more difficult than, to conquer all barbarous India for the faith.
But Xavier accomplished his purpose. His earnest pleading aroused them from their vicious dissolution, and they became a powerful influence in spreading the gospel of Christ.
He said: “In the name of God, do you wish me to ask those people, who have no other fault than their blindness, to become like you, who are full of iniquity?” With this conversion Xavier felt that the hardest work of his mission was ended. “His heart swam in torrents of joy and the song of his gladness broke from his lips; he underwent cold, heat, hunger, disease; his naked feet were tom by the thorns and briers on his way, but he complained of nothing, or rather he enjoyed everything; he kept on his tireless way invulnerable; on earth he walked as if already in heaven.”
“In the meantime, his whole mission grew with marvelous rapidity. At the end of two years the crop of auxiliaries that he had planted was almost ripe. At Goa, which was his headquarters, he founded a seminary; his first priests are now ready; to-day he can attempt what seemed impossible yesterday, and now he penetrates still further and further, for he is no longer alone. In the Trevancor, in a few weeks, he baptized ten thousand with his own hand.”
It is not necessary to follow this wonderful apostle in his missions. Whole cities and countries fall prostrate at his feet. The world was astonished at his brilliant successes. India now belongs to him. It is now nine years since he left Europe, and he had not rested a day, but his ardent zeal is just as strong and his desire to extend his teachings is more earnest than when he first started on his journey. He now visits Japan and redoubles his efforts. In two years of suffering, which cost him his life, Xavier is master of these islands. He returns to Goa, where he finds that India numbers half a million of Christians. “Glory to God! this is a fine harvest; let us sow other fields.”
He turns his eyes towards that great unknown — China. He will not stop, but will enter upon this gigantic campaign. He has conquered India and Japan, and now he must scale the barbarous walls of China; but alas! his strength is wasted, and before he reaches the end of his voyage, he dies a martyr to his untiring zeal in the spread of Christianity.
I ask you to read again the slanderous words of Giocerti and then say that such men as Francis Xavier are guilty of treason, infidelity, or crime. What I have said of Xavier is true of the hundreds of missionaries who have braved the wilds of every country on earth, and all because of their love for Christ and the spreading of his gospel of salvation. In our own country do we find their line of progress. We can trace their footsteps through Canada, up the great chain of lakes, down the Mississippi River, through the wilds of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and the entire Northwest. We find them in Louisiana, Missouri, and can follow them through Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, and California. No State in the Union can say that the Jesuits have not been the vanguard of exploration and the apostles of peace and good will. To them, more than to any other people, do we owe a debt of gratitude for their unceasing labors in seeking to conciliate the Indians in their anger, for being the instrument for exploration, for establishing trading for others, for paving the way for settlements, for opening schools, building churches, and advancing national progress.
“When a Jesuit engages in trade, the Order puts him under interdict, cashiers him, expels him, and ruins itself to pay a debt it has not contracted.”
“The Jesuits do not trade. They give, but do not sell. They have neither warehouses nor fleets. They let people act and talk.”
So great is their modesty that in their own books you will find no record or testimony which will in any way exalt their zeal, their courage, or their self-sacrificing charity. Rarely do they deny the most dangerous accusations, and because of this meekness are they libeled and defamed.
Few Protestants have ever written a word of commendation, although we find in Robertson’s “History of America,” Vol. X, p. 27, the following:
“It is a remarkable thing that those authors who have the most severely blamed the licentious manners of the regular Spanish monks, all agree in honoring the conduct of the Jesuits. Governed by a more perfect discipline than prevailed among other orders, or restrained by the need of preserving the Society’s honor, so dear to each of its members, the Jesuits, whether in Mexico or Peru, have ever maintained an irreproachable regularity of manners/’
If we read Voltaire, we will find that this brilliant infidel would not slander even the Jesuits. He says: “My brothers, I have not spared the Jesuits, but I should raise up posterity in their favor were I to accuse them of a crime from which Europe and Damiens have exonerated them. I should be only a vile echo of the Jansenists.” This was written when the charge of a crime was made against them and no proof was produced. The King of France had been assailed, but by whom no one knew. The cry rang forth, The Jesuits! The Jesuits are the guilty parties! and even to this day the charge of attempted assassination rests against them.
Again, Voltaire says, in discussing the sincerity of their acts and their fidelity to manhood: ‘The Jesuits had the merit of making their disciples love literature and virtue.”
But Protestants will say, if the Jesuits were innocent and God-fearing men, if they sought only to advance Christianity, why were they expelled from Spain, Portugal, the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Parma, the empire of Austria, and from France? Carefully follow the history of these expulsions, and you will find that in these Catholic states there arose a jealousy because of their earnest and persistent labors. They were largely instrumental in staying the tide of Reformation, and as such had produced enmity among the people of their own Church. John Calvin said: “There is the obstacle, remove it.” Catholic conspirators followed these words of this most inconsistent of all reformers. The Jesuits were in. the way for a sordid and greedy ambition. But be it said to the credit of an after decision of the governments of these countries, the Jesuits were recalled, which stands as an evidence of their innocence and their benefit to the Church and to mankind.
To note something of their extraordinary efforts in battling against Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Huguenots, and the entire Reformation, we will quote from the eminent historian, Macaulay: “Protestantism was checked in its victorious march and driven back with a giddy rapidity from the foot of the Alps to the shores of the Baltic. Before the Order had a century of existence, it had filled the whole world with monuments of its martyrs and of its great struggles for the faith.”
Who can express a greater eulogy to the wonderful achievements of this Order than is expressed by Macaulay! Read it again, and you will then hardly comprehend the vastness of the work accomplished. In less than a century “it had filled the whole world with monuments of its martyrs and of its great struggles for the faith.”