The Power and Secret of the Jesuits

Description

WRITINGS concerning the Society of Jesus may be numbered by thousands; from the foundation of the order to the present day, every epoch, and almost every people and every tongue, has produced an extensive literature relating to the Jesuits. Of all these works, few indeed attempt to treat the subject objectively, while the remainder are all concerned either with reviling and accusing or with praising and defending. Nevertheless, anyone who in our days seeks the truth about Jesuitism will find more valuable help in these partisan, controversial writings than in the guaranteed information of the historians. For, however important in many respects verified data and documents may be, such dry compilations never reveal to us the whole, or, indeed, the most essential part, of the truth. Incomparably deeper insight into the being and the meaning of Jesuitism is afforded by all the hate-filled pamphlets, the highly coloured apologies, distorted representations, doctored reports, the slanderings and glorifications of the order’s history. They show us the attitude of living men to the Jesuit idea, disclose how deeply this idea has influenced emotions, thoughts and actions at every period, to what a passionate degree of rage and enthusiasm it has driven the mind of man. In these writings, we see the combatants in the midst of the conflict, accusing or conciliatory, arrogant or humble, entreating or triumphing, cunning or open-hearted; we hear the cadence of their speech, see their actions and their plottings. In consequence, the judgment to which such controversial literature leads us is not derived from colourless, historical material, reduced to dry data, but grows from the evidence of living witnesses and from direct observation. The author, therefore, could scarcely have wished for more valuable or suggestive material relating to his subject than that which is to hand. It introduces us to the salons of Paris society, the observatories of great astronomers, the primeval forests of South America, the ceremonial halls of China, the palace of the Sacrum Officium, the lodges of the Freemasons, into churches, conspirators’ conventicles and hermits’ cells; we pass through every town and country of the inhabited earth, through every epoch of recent times. We find ourselves involved in theological, philosophical, scientific, political, sociological and literary controversies until we at last realize that the four hundred years we have explored are the most significant in the development and culture of modern humanity and are filled with its most decisive problems. The present volume, therefore, does not profess to be the contribution of a professional historian to the history of the Jesuit order, so much as a picture of those human passions and dreams, achievements and failures, which have decided our modern culture, and a picture no less of those factors of cunning, infamy, heroism, intrigue, power of persuasion, despotism, sagacity and deception which have played their part in shaping the present. PREFACE CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS I THE SPIRIT OF JESUITISM Mystical Ecstasy and the Natural Way MYSTICAL ECSTASY AND THE NATURAL WAY 5 The “Application of the Senses99 The Militant Saviour of the Jesuits Examination of Conscience by the Schedule System The “Living Art” of the Exercises The “Corpse-Like Obedience99 The Pyramid to God II IGNATIUS LOYOLA “Given up to the Vanities of the World” His Visions on the Rack The Travels and Adventures of a Fool Salvation and Perplexity The Work of Conversion in the Students9 Room The Founding of the Society of Jesus Up Against Modern Problems The Way to World Domination Physical Asceticism and Discipline of the Will 1Death and the Post for Spain III THE BATTLE OVER FREE WILL Grace and Salvation Through Good Works Perplexities from Stagira to Trent The Pope's Comma The Uproar Among the Theologians Grace in the Salons “Novelists and Dramatists are Poisonmongers” The Fateful Five Propositions Signs and Wonders Doubt, the Source of Knowledge Descartes and the Jesuits Leibniz, The Friend of the Jesuits Free Will in the Light of the Newer Philosophy The Dispute Between the Jesuits and the Experimental Psychologists Behaviourism, Plant-Lice and Pavlov's Dog IV THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE JESUITS Free Will and Responsibility “The End Justifies the Means” Aristotle, the Progenitor of Jesuit Moral Philosophy The Atomization of Morality Problems of Confessional Practice The Moral Philosophy of the Talmud and of the Stoics Probabilism The “Certain” and the “Uncertain” Conscience “Austere and Morbid Pascal” V BEHIND A THOUSAND MASKS Merchant Among Merchants and Soldier Among Soldiers With the Pearl-Fishers and Rajahs The Dream of Chinquinquo “Deus” Against “Dainichi” Jesuits as Brahmins and Yogis At the Court of the Great Mogul From the Tea Ceremonial to Martyrdom Father Ricci—Doctor Li Conversion through Clock and Calendar Teachers and Diplomats at the Peking Court The Order of Gardeners and “Lightning Artists” The Triumph of the Fountain and the Mechanical Lion Profanation or Toleration? The Fish-Hook Mission Father Marquette, The Explorer of the Mississippi Friends of the Red Men The Jesuits' Musical Kingdom A Benevolent Dictatorship The Armed Forces of the Jesuit Republic VI THE END AND THE MEANS The “Sovereignty of the People” and Tyrannicide The Theologian on the Royal Throne VII THE STRUGGLE WITH PROGRESS The Catholicization of Thought The Jesuits and Galileo Scholars Among Scholars The Educational Work of the Fathers The Jesuit Theatre The audiences consisted of distinguished members ol the court and Jesuit Opera and Jesuit Ballet The Stage Management of the Jesuits The Society of Jesus and the Arts The Revolt of the Scholars Jesuitism and Psychoanalysis experts, “that if an extensive knowledge of the soul and of the laws The Conflict over Modern Political Ideals VIII THE FOUR HUNDRED YEARS’ TRIAL Jesuit Methods in the Light of Modern Times True to the Earth The Service of the Order to Civilization The Way of Knowledge and the Way of Faith BIBLIOGRAPHY