Conduct Observed by the Jesuits in Matters of Moral Doctrine

All Christian Moral Theology can be reduced to two articles. The first comprises what is expressly contained in Scripture, in Tradition, in the Commandments of God and of the Church, in the Councils, and in the Decisions of the Holy See. The second contains an infinity of other cases which are not evidently decided by these first Rules and concerning which, for this reason, there is division among the Doctors in the Schools. One may further include in this number the explanation sometimes given to the Commandments of God or to Scripture, on the occasion of certain particular difficulties which arise in the dealings that men have with one another and which concern the extent of their duties, whether toward God, toward their neighbor, or toward themselves.

I do not believe that the Jesuits need an Apology on the first article; and I think they will not be reproached with ever having taught that adulteries, robberies on the highways, blasphemies, and other similar sins are permitted. It is true that they have been accused of having permitted Idolatry in China; but they have always said that Idolatry was a crime, and the question was reduced to knowing whether what they permitted was actually Idolatry.

It is therefore only the second article that is at issue, that is, things which are not evidently contained in the rules of our Faith, concerning which it is claimed that they always fall into laxity. Here are some propositions whose examination will clarify the truth or falsity of this accusation.

The Jesuits, in matters of Moral Theology, have always followed, in conformity with one of their Rules, the common opinions of the Catholic Schools.

If this proposition is true, it alone suffices to place the doctrine of this Society beyond all suspicion. Now it is a fact which the Jesuits boldly advance: that what ought to be regarded as the doctrine of their Society has always been a doctrine common in the Catholic Universities.

Since this proposition is the solid foundation upon which the justification and conduct of the Jesuits in matters of doctrine must be supported, it is appropriate to apprehend it well and explain it well, so that it may not be believed that, in a proposition too general and capable of having various senses, they are preparing evasions for themselves in order to elude the reproaches their adversaries make against them.

First, this does not mean that the Society of Jesus has a determinate opinion on each point of Theology which is also the general opinion of all the Schools and all the Catholic Universities. That could not be, because upon an infinity of questions opinions are divided there. But in this very division the opposed opinions are often equally common, and it is said of both the one and the other that they are a common doctrine in the School, because the affirmative and the negative are maintained indifferently.

When, therefore, the Jesuits say that their Society has always professed to follow the doctrine commonly received in the Schools and in the Catholic Universities, this means that in each question of Theology it has always kept to the opinions which were current in the School, and which were ordinarily followed there by the Catholic Doctors.

Second, when the Jesuits advance that the doctrine of their Society has always been the common doctrine of the Schools and Catholic Universities, they do not mean that no individual member of their body has ever departed from it, nor that none of their Theologians has ever maintained any proposition worthy of being reproved and censured. They are far from either thinking it or saying it. That would be to give themselves a praise which befits only Holy Scripture and the Church inspired by the Holy Spirit. There is within Christianity neither School nor University several of whose Doctors have not been subject to these weaknesses and these wanderings of the human mind. The Body of the holy Fathers itself, the most respectable body in the Church, is not exempt from this stain. Saint Augustine, saint though he is, has propositions of lax Moral Theology; some could be shown in Saint Jerome and in several other Fathers. And the Jesuits have no difficulty in making such an admission with regard to some of their Theologians. But what they advance without fear, and of which they are ready to furnish the proof, is that the doctrine received and authorized in their Society, that which is commonly followed there, is the same as that which they found was taught in the other Catholic Schools and Universities when they entered them, and that they can no more than the others be reproached for having departed from it.

Here, then, is a means altogether suited to the purpose and a very just rule for determining the truth or falsity of the reproach of lax Moral Theology made against the Jesuits. Has anything been commonly taught in their Society other than what has been commonly taught in the Catholic Schools and Universities? If a difference can be shown in this respect between their School and the other Catholic Schools, condemnation must be pronounced against them; if it cannot be shown, from that moment they are justified.

Some particular cases may be produced in which some of their Theologians have been mistaken; the same will be produced from the other Societies, and I dare advance that a greater number will be produced. Since these mistakes of certain individuals do not take from the other bodies the quality of being orthodox in the matter of Moral Theology, what injustice would it be if they caused the Society of Jesus alone to lose it? Here, then, once again, is the fixed point upon which everything must turn in this matter.

Let the adversaries of the Jesuits attack them on this point and press them as vigorously as they can. They must necessarily make an opening in them at this point; otherwise, it will always be the most manifest injustice to wish to distinguish them from all the other Societies by the shameful character of laxity in Moral Theology.

I add some other propositions which will serve to develop further the general proposition I have just made.

When a Jesuit Theologian has adopted some particular opinion rejected as bad in the Catholic Schools, the greater part of the Theologians of the Society have been against it; and, generally speaking, this Theologian has been neither the only nor the first of the Theologians to have departed on that point. I shall later descend into some detail which may serve as proof of this proposition. The Jesuits again boldly expose it to the criticism of their most vigorous adversaries: let them only take care to apprehend it correctly. But if this fact is true, if, when it is advanced by the Jesuits, it is left without its falsity being shown, calumny is disarmed, and the truth of the fundamental proposition I made at the outset is perfectly established: that the doctrine of the Society, that is, the doctrine authorized by the common sentiment of the Jesuits, is the same as that of the other Catholic Schools; and that, consequently, it is wrong to affect to establish a kind of opposition between the doctrine of the Jesuits and that of the other Catholic Doctors.

When some opinion has been condemned by the Church or by the Holy See, by whatever authority it had previously found itself supported, there is no Society whose superiors have taken greater care than the superiors of the Jesuits have done to ensure that it was not taught in their Schools; and it has scarcely happened that any individual has done so, and has done so with impunity.

This proposition is likewise submitted to the examination of those who will be willing to take the trouble to make it, provided that, as has sometimes happened, they do not go and make the Popes say things they have not said, and that they keep precisely to their censure, without extending it according to their caprice and following their own fixed notions.

To these three points in justification of the conduct of the Jesuits in matters of doctrine, upon which they consent to be put to the severest test, I do not see very well what could be opposed, unless perhaps that, for them, it is not a sufficient means of justification to have followed the common doctrine received in the Catholic Schools, because this very doctrine, common though it is, is a lax doctrine.

It will no doubt not be for the Jesuits to reply to such an answer, all the more because in this very proposition they win their cause on the capital point. For the essential part of the injustice done to them, and that which must be most keenly felt by them, is that people affect to distinguish them from all the others and to regard their Theology as the sole source of corrupted Moral Theology. Now, this answer being supposed, they are merged into the crowd. Here are the School of Saint Thomas, that of Scotus, that of the Sorbonne, and all the other Catholic Universities placed in the same rank. It will no longer be said that lax Moral Theology and the Moral Theology of the Jesuits are the same thing. They will no longer be made solely answerable for the laxity of Christians. They came after the others, and it is a misfortune for them to have drawn from sources already poisoned; and they will no longer need anything but a reform which will be common to them with all the Doctors who until now have passed for Catholics. But these are among those paradoxes in which the character of the Innovating spirit appears too visibly for them to need to be refuted.

The Jesuits do not intend to stop here with these general justifications, however solid they may be. They wish to make an authentic declaration of the sentiments of their Society upon certain particular points concerning which calumny has most cruelly outraged them. They wish to make known to the whole Church that they take, as one of the rules of their doctrine, the condemnation of that great number of propositions in matters of cases of conscience pronounced by Popes Alexander VII, Innocent XI, and Alexander VIII. Moreover, they maintain that none of these condemned propositions has ever been the doctrine of their Society; that most have never been taught by any of their authors; that those which have been taught by some, as it has happened that several other non-Jesuit Theologians maintained them, they disavow; that since the Briefs of the Popes they have always watched to ensure that they were no longer taught in their Schools; and that they are resolved to do in this regard what they have always constantly done since their Society was established, namely, to yield to no Ecclesiastical body in the submission they owe to the Orders of the Church and of him who is its visible head upon earth.

Since in these latter times the Calumniators of the Jesuits have principally insisted against them upon three points which have great extent in Moral Theology - upon the precept of the love of God, upon philosophical sin, and upon probable opinions - it is upon these matters that these Fathers have judged that they ought more particularly to inform the public of their true sentiments, as will be done in the continuation of this writing; and that they could do so upon all the other points by the same rules and with equal solidity.