By Rev. John MacLeod M.A., Stornoway
The hollowness of the Church of Rome’s claim to unity and uniformity in doctrine and practice both now and in the past may easily be demonstrated by drawing attention, even in a superficial way, to the infamous teaching and conduct of the Jesuits within her pale and her own attitude towards them. The term “Jesuistry” is of common usage and has come in our language to be synonymous with “subtle duplicity” and “equivocation.” It embraces within its definition practices to which no true Christian accepting Biblical moral standards could possibly subscribe but rather recoil from with horror. Yet for centuries the Church of Rome openly condoned practices which were immoral and evil in the extreme. It connived at monstrous crimes perpetrated by Jesuits ostensibly in the name of religion but in reality with a view to advancing the Society’s own ends and the pretensions of the Papacy.
The Bull officially confirming the “Society of Jesus” is dated 27th September, 1540, and was issued by Pope John Paul II’s predecessor of the time, Pope Paul III. At the time, Protestantism was making rapid progress throughout Europe and the influence of the Papacy was very much on the wane. Luther was still in the Church militant and continuing by preaching and writing to inflict tremendous damage on the Kingdom of Antichrist. Calvin’s “Institutes” had been in circulation for four years and who can estimate the number of souls that had been turned from darkness to light as a result? In far-away Scotland, St Andrews had witnessed the martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart and the “reek” of the former had “infected as many as it did blow upon.” The arrival of Loyola and his companions in Rome with their offer of help was thus in Papal eyes most opportune, and all the more so since members of this new Order were to swear unconditional obedience to the Pope and, in the church, devote all their energy to the strengthening of his power and the worship of the Virgin. After being formally constituted, members were in due course obliged, above all, to render absolute, blind obedience to their Superior-General or “Black Pope” as he is sometimes called. This epithet is given him on account of his dress and not because there is any distinction as to moral condition between himself and the real or “White Pope.” Once constituted the Jesuits’ success was phenomenal and can only be ascribed to the craft and power of Satan. It was certainly “with all deceivableness of unrighteousness” that they set about accomplishing their objectives. “There is no disguise which the Jesuit will not wear,” Wylie writes in his ‘History of Protestantism’, “no art he will not employ, no motive he will not feign, no creed he will not profess, provided only he can acquit himself as a true soldier in the Jesuit army, and accomplish the work on which he has been sent forth . . . The key-note of their ethical code is the famous maxim that the end justifies the means. Before that maxim the eternal distinction of right and wrong vanishes. Not only do the stringency and sanctions of human law dissolve and disappear, but the authority and majesty of the Decalogue are overthrown. There is no conceivable crime, villainy, and atrocity which this maxim will not justify. Nay, such become dutiful and holy, provided they be done for “the greater glory of God,” by which the Jesuit means the honour, interest and advancement of his society. In short, the Jesuit may do whatever he has a mind to do, all human and divine laws notwithstanding. This is a very grave charge, but the evidence of its truth is, unhappily, too abundant, and the difficulty lies in making a selection.”
It is said that the whole honour of the Counter-Reformation belongs to the Jesuits singly. Within a generation or two they had captured all the key positions in the Roman church and had even infiltrated Protestant denominations. The Jesuit did not scruple, Wylie tells us, to execrate the Pope with the Lutheran and to subscribe the Solemn League and Covenant with the Covenanter. In many nations they were soon to gain so great an influence over political institutions and thrones that they came to be virtually in control of them. By the middle of the Eighteenth Century we find certain Popish kingdoms finding it necessary to expel them from their territories and demands made for the suppression of the Order.
Yielding to these demands Clement XIII appointed a secret conclave but the night before it was due to meet he died suddenly. His successor, Clement XIV, goes down in history as the one who issued, on the 21st of July, 1773, the famous Bull by which he “dissolved and for ever annihilated the order as a corporate body.” On laying down his pen he told those around him that he had signed his death-warrant. On September 22nd, 1774, he was dead.
The dissolution of the Jesuits was an event sufficiently important to merit the striking of a commemorative medal. The reverse shows a figure purporting to represent the Saviour (for which reason we thought it not proper to reproduce it here) followed by figures representing Peter and the Pope driving out three Jesuit priests, with the words: “I never knew you: depart from me ye all.” They are taken from Matthew VII, 23, in the Vulgate, with the addition of “all” from Luke XIII, 27. Beneath is the Latin: “Exaug. Soc. Iesu. memor. MDCCLXXIII. Ps. CXVIII, 23,” which reads: “This is the Lord’s doing: and it is marvellous to our eyes.”
The document we are told sets forth as serious an indictment of the Jesuit order as ever proceeded from Protestant pen. After drawing up a long and formidable list of charges against them the Pope declares that his “dearly beloved sons in Christ, the Kings of France, Portugal and Sicily, found themselves reduced to the necessity of expelling and driving from their states, kingdoms and provinces these very companions of Jesus, persuaded that there remained no other remedy to so great evils; and that this step was necessary in order to prevent the Christians from rising one against another, and from massacring each other in the very bosom of our common mother, the Holy Church.”
“The present ordinance,” said the Bull in conclusion, “shall remain in full force and operation from henceforth and for ever.” Another Papal bull, dated August 7th, 1814, and issued by Pope Pius VII, restored the Order of Jesus! If Rome claims infallability for her Popes how are the actions of Clement XIV in abolishing the Jesuits to be harmonised with the contrary decree of Pius VII restoring them?
Without enlarging further on the Jesuit history, we might now well ask how the Roman Catholic Church can be regarded as Christian when she tolerates within her pale men adhering to standards of behaviour which are patently diabolical. Is it because the “Black Pope” is too strong for the “White Pope?” Or is it the case that the two of them find it expedient to co-operate with one another in order to present an outward united front in the conflict waged against the true Church of Christ in the world? At present the “Black Pope” is “Father” Pedro Arrupe and a recent book on the Papacy by Roman Catholic authors clearly hints that in the recent past there has been some conflict between the Society and Paul VI and John-Paul I. The former, the book tells us, “had uttered dire warnings in his time,” and the latter had prepared “a similar address which death alone had prevented him from delivering.” (Italics ours). The present Pope has indicated that he is to assert his authority and as a consequence we find a Jesuit priest, who for ten years served as a Representative in the US Congress, being forced to resign. His General’s disagreement with the Vatican was indicated by his offering the priest concerned his “deep respect and personal support in this difficult hour.” As often in history as we find instances of a clash of interests between contemporary “Black Popes” and “White” so are we able to see that the unity boasted of was, and is, but a facade; behind it there has always been an on-going power struggle between opposing factions and this is clearly as true in 1981 as in the past.
We believe whatever difficulties the present Pope may be experiencing as far as curbing liberal-minded Jesuits is concerned, the Order is as useful to him in the political sphere as it ever was to his predecessors. Present day attempts to bring Britain back under Papal sway stem, we believe, from Jesuit-inspired political activity and intrigue as surely as that was the case when the Spanish Armada endeavoured to do it. Our Foreign Office has long been regarded as infiltrated by them and if a Papal Nuncio does come to be appointed to the Court of St James then this, we believe, will be one more Jesuit objective realised. The mass-media seem to be firmly in their grasp. In a recent issue of a national News magazine a Roman Catholic writer described the Jesuits as the “most carefully selected and exhaustively trained of all Catholic clergy . . . the Brigade of Guards of the Roman Catholic Church”. “O our God, wilt thou not judge them? for we have no might against this great company that cometh against us; neither know we what to do: but our eyes are upon Thee” II Chron. XX, 12.