Apology for the Doctrine of the Jesuits

APOLOGY
FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE JESUITS
SENT TO HIS LORDSHIP THE BISHOP OF ARRAS ON THE OCCASION OF HIS CENSURE OF THE BOOK OF A GERMAN CASUIST

The alleged lax moral teaching of the Jesuits is the most plausible means that the Innovators and their other enemies have employed to discredit them and to estrange upright persons from them. This means has often succeeded for them. Many persons, judging the sincerity of others by their own, cannot persuade themselves that anyone would wish to defame an entire Society by reproaches which, if supposed false, would be atrocious and horrible calumnies.

With this prepossession, they enter blindly into the sentiments of those who speak ill of the Jesuits, and even join themselves to them, believing that they earn merit before God by assisting a zeal whose sole aim, it seems, is to arrest the course of a pernicious doctrine, by discrediting everywhere those who pass for its authors. It is thus that the prejudgment forms and imperceptibly increases, until it passes into the minds of many as a constant truth against which the accused can no longer be admitted to justify themselves.

But if these persons, either a little better instructed or a little more attentive, wished, before pronouncing so decided a judgment in a matter of this importance, to consult the rules of prudence and charity more than they do, I believe that the scruple of a rash judgment might arise in their conscience. I am persuaded that they would at least suspend for some time the sentence which they pronounce without hesitation against an entire Society, which has perhaps rendered some services to them themselves, and which, constantly for more than a century, has served the Church in every part of the world with some success and with some advantage to Religion.

Would it then be possible, say these persons, whose intentions are often very upright, would it be possible that so many people of every rank, of every condition, and of the holiest professions should all be calumniators; or that, without knowledge of the cause, they should every day carry themselves away, in public and in private, into cruel invectives against a body that was innocent of the frightful excesses with which they reproach it? But let them permit me to ask them in turn whether they can easily persuade themselves that a Society such as that of the Jesuits is only a collection of villains and abominable persons. For there is no middle ground here; and if they are such as they are depicted in the libels published against them, they must be regarded as monsters within Christianity.

In vain do their most declared enemies, through an affected moderation, sometimes contrast the regularity of this Society with the detestable doctrine they attribute to it. They live well, says one of their most venomous adversaries, but they teach badly. This contrast is a chimera. To live well and to undertake to ruin the doctrine of the Gospel throughout the earth by a detestable Moral Theology are two things that cannot be reconciled. It has indeed been seen at various times that certain leaders of a heretical party constantly maintained, in order to gain followers, the appearance of a severe virtue. But a Society as extensive as that of the Jesuits, which preserved the integrity of morals for more than a century while applying itself to corrupting them among Christians throughout the earth, would be a prodigy without example and beyond probability.

It is in no way natural to reserve severity for oneself while teaching laxity to others. The contrary happens every day to several of those who appear most animated against this alleged corrupted Moral Theology of the Jesuits. The world is witness to it. Worldly though it is, it is scandalized by it and makes sport of it. Many upright persons groan over it. But after all, judging things by the lights of good sense, it will always be less surprising to see Rigorism preached by those who live in laxity than it would be to see laxity preached by those who practice Rigorism. It is easy to do the first, and it is very much the fashion in the time in which we live. There is no attraction in the second. One gains nothing thereby either on God’s side or on the world’s. It would be to damn oneself at great cost, without being able to reimburse oneself for anything; it would be to enter hell by the narrow gate. Such a project was never in accordance with the ideas of self-love, and, to have conceived it, the Jesuits would all have to be different from the rest of mankind.

This presumption alone appears decisive to many persons in the subject at issue; but I do not wish to avail myself of it to the point of making it the sole proof of the Jesuits’ innocence in defending them against the execrable undertaking imputed to them, of undertaking to ruin everywhere the Moral Teaching of Jesus Christ. What I intend solely is thereby to put all equitable persons who might be prejudiced in a better state to judge soundly of so important a fact, to engage them to suspend for a moment their judgment between the two parties, and to dispose them to receive, with a spirit of charity and equity, the declaration I shall make in the name of the Society of Jesus on the point of Moral Theology. It is for the same end that I am going to add some reflections on the occasion and the origin of the accusations made against it in this matter, and on the means that have been used to support them and to render them plausible to an infinity of persons to whom their atrocity alone had at first rendered them incredible.

Until the time of Baius and Jansenius, the Jesuits were in possession of the reputation of persons perfectly orthodox in matters of Faith and Moral Theology. They could produce on this subject the praises which the Sovereign Pontiffs have so many times bestowed upon their Society, and in particular upon several of their principal Doctors. The heretics of France, England, and Germany could further serve them as witnesses in this regard. According to these Protestant Doctors, to attack the doctrine of the Jesuits was to attack that of the Roman Church. At that time the reproaches of laxity and semipelagianism were common to the Society of Jesus and to the congregation of the faithful. It was a very great honor to this Society to see itself, together with the Church, the object of the calumnies and persecutions of heretics; and nothing contributed more to increasing the esteem and affection that true Catholics had for the Jesuits.

But as soon as the Theologians of this Society had risen up against the innovations of Baius, had denounced them to the Sovereign Pontiffs, and had obtained their condemnation - and much more still when the errors of Jansenius had been anathematized by the Church - then the supporters of this heresy and all the partisans of Jansenius suddenly turned against the Jesuits and began, more than ever, to take them to task.

This was a stratagem to cause the public to mistake the issue. These Innovators were continually pressed hard concerning the fact of Jansenius, over which they persisted in their revolt against the Church and against the Ordinances of the King. To be ceaselessly on the defensive was for them a disadvantageous and very inconvenient course. This, therefore, is again what determined them to attack the Jesuits and to bring suit against them concerning their alleged corrupted Moral Theology.

Then appeared that fine System of the policy of the Jesuits, who have among themselves, it was said, two sorts of Directors: severe Directors and accommodating Directors; the one sort to attract persons of virtue, the other so as not to repel sinners - an infallible means of making themselves masters of every conscience, a secret of the Society which no one until then had penetrated, and whose use turned upon the doctrine of probable opinions.

Since this was a pure counteraccusation to which all the Author’s wit, whatever efforts he might make, could give no plausibility, this idea at first amused many more persons than it persuaded. It even scandalized several who believed that raillery could not be permitted in a subject of this nature. Nevertheless they continued; and, by making various extracts from the books of the Society - some faithful, some unfaithful, some capable of shocking the ordinary run of people who do not examine matters deeply, although there was nothing in them but what was orthodox - they succeeded in giving some color to what had at first appeared a pure chimera.

They did not stop there; and those whom the condemnation of the doctrine of Jansenius had consternated, profiting from the impression that these first attempts had made against the Jesuits, took courage again. They stirred up on every side, especially in Flanders and in France, in every Town and even in the countryside, persons who began, in rivalry with one another, to cry out against the corrupted Moral Theology of the Jesuits. Nothing was seen but libels scattered everywhere, but persons who, dispersed throughout all assemblies and private companies, let themselves loose against the Jesuits. The pulpits of truth, destined to preach charity to the peoples, became in several places theaters of the most venomous calumny. Mechanisms were set in motion to bring into this plot entire bodies of Ecclesiastics from the most considerable cities of the Kingdom. The diversity and multiplicity of the Jesuits’ employments, and the blessings God bestows upon them therein, having at all times raised up many jealous rivals against them, they saw new adversaries rise against them in the Universities and in several religious orders.

One individual of their Society was perhaps the person who caused them the greatest harm in this persecution. In defiance of his Provincial, he caused a Book entitled Apology for the Casuists to appear, in which, taking his position very imprudently upon several particular cases, he drew upon himself the just censure of several Prelates. They did not fail to make all the Jesuits answerable for a work which the wisest and most learned among them were themselves the very first to detest and which was authentically disavowed. Everywhere this book and these censures were used to confirm the idea of the Jesuits’ Moral Theology which the partisans of Jansenius were spreading everywhere. The libels most filled with falsehoods and the grossest calumnies were received with applause and found credence everywhere. The Apologies of these Fathers, however solid they were, were scarcely regarded and produced hardly any other effect than to give occasion for replies even more insulting and calumnious than the first works written against them. All the censures of Rome which branded most of these libels were mocked, and no more account was made of the Decrees of the King’s Council which condemned them to the fire.

But at last the storm was calmed with time. Composure returned after this violent and impetuous fire. Wise persons for the most part soon perceived that passion and cabal had more part in this persecution than true zeal. Those who knew the Jesuits, or who until then had entrusted to them the direction of their conscience, bore witness to themselves that the Moral Theology of these Fathers was not such as it was depicted in the satires published against them. The Parish Priests of Paris and Rouen, who had made the greatest noise, came back for the most part and were sorry to have seconded, contrary to their intention, the passion of a party whose evil designs they recognized.

The greater part of the Prelates of France and Flanders have shown since that time, by the conduct they have maintained toward the Jesuits, that they did not have of their doctrine the ideas which people had endeavored to give them; and they have often borne witness that they had no persons in their Dioceses who labored for the spiritual good of the peoples with more usefulness, more edification, more disinterestedness, and more submission to their Orders.

The most distinguished persons in the Kingdom did not recognize them in the frightful portraits made of them: the intercourse they had had with them; the education that several had received from them; the conduct of those among these Fathers whom their employment obliged sometimes to appear at Court, where, whatever care one takes to dissemble, one is soon known for what one is; their constant application in their most arduous functions; their zeal for the most dangerous Missions - all these ideas, which calumny had not yet been able to efface, rendered the most violent efforts of their Adversaries almost useless.

The Lords of the Court, the Magistrates, and the Nobility of all the Provinces were seen to entrust their children, as before, to these Fathers, to raise them in Letters and in the fear of God, and to render them the honorable testimony that nowhere were the two better united. Their College of Paris, despite all contrary intrigues, did not cease to be as it were the Seminary of all the most distinguished children in the Kingdom. Several of those who were the least attached to them followed the example of the others in this regard, themselves contributing, as if in spite of themselves, to justify them by their own conduct; and everyone agreed that this was the most solid Apology that could be made in their favor against the continual and horrible satires of their enemies.

Notwithstanding all this, the agitations have recommenced for some time past more vigorously than ever; and the Jesuits were often warned that a new storm was forming against them. In fact, severe blows have been dealt them during the last few years. They have tried to parry some of them. They have done so with equal force and modesty; and they have had the consolation of seeing that equitable and well-informed persons have always rendered them justice against Adversaries who do not become discouraged, and who are as constant in the persecution they have stirred up against them as in their revolt against the Church.

Nevertheless, neither do I wish to draw advantage for the defense of this Society from this new presumption furnished me by the character of most of those who for fifty years have made so harsh a war upon it, while they secretly prepare other devices against the Church itself. The sole use I intend to make of it, as also of the first, is to prevent people from relying too readily upon witnesses who must be so suspect, and upon certain others whom they have prejudiced by their artifices and by the clamor they have deliberately raised on every side; and to obtain from those who will read this defense some attention to what I am going to say in what follows.