THEIR MORAL CODE; OR, THE PRINCIPLES OF THE GREAT SECRET SOCIETY.
THE moral maxims of the Jesuits are, without exception, monstrous. Their theology is so unspeakably repulsive that without their own testimony the ordinary reader will find it hard of belief. Throughout this chapter we shall let the Jesuits speak for themselves.
Cut off from their own country, friends, and possessions, as individuals; separated from the State, and even from the Pope, as a society, the Jesuits stand apart from all other communities and interests―a Papacy within the Papacy. The overthrow of every power, the extinction of every interest, save their own, the bringing of every man, woman, and child into abject moral slavery to their Order, is the ambition of the Jesuits.
The keynote of their code is the famous maxim, “THE END SANCTIFIES THE MEANS.” Before this watchword the distinction between right and wrong vanishes, and a crime becomes holy if committed “for the greater glory of God.”
The two great commandments of the law are made void by Jesuit casuistry. Men are easily set free from the first― “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” Escobar, a famous Jesuit theologian, collected the opinions of his brethren on the question―When is a man obliged actually to have an affection for God? “Once every year,” says Hurtado de Mendoza. “Once in five years,” cries Henriquez. In his “Defence of Virtue,” Father Sirmond relates that “St. Thomas says ‘we are obliged to love God as soon as we come to the use of reason.’ That is rather too soon! Scotus says, ‘Every Sunday.’ Pray, for what reason? Others say, ‘When we are sorely tempted.’ Yes, if there be no other way of escaping the temptation. Others say, ‘At death’ ―rather late! As little do I think it binding at the reception of any sacrament; attrition, in such a case, is quite enough, along with confession if convenient. Suarez says that it is binding at some time or other; but at what time? He does not know; and what that doctor does not know, I know not who should know.”
The second great commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” is likewise rendered of none effect, the doctrine of Probability in this case being used to deprive man of the duty. For, according to this doctrine, a man who wishes to do an act, and doubts whether it is right or wrong, provided he can find any Jesuit teacher who has held that the act is harmless, may consider it probable that the act is harmless, and therefore may do it. “A person may do what he considers allowable according to a probable opinion, although the contrary may be the more probable one.” “The opinion of a single grave doctor is all that is requisite,” says Emmanuel Sa.
Command of God after command is thus rejected. Ferdinand de Castro Palao illustrates the doctrine of Probability in reference to stealing by this example. “I think it probable,” says he, “that the cloak which I possess is my own; yet I think it more probable that it belongs to you. I am not bound to give it up to you, but I may safely retain it.” Louis de Scildere tells us: “If a subject thinks that probably a tax has been unjustly imposed, he is not bound to pay it.”
Let us keep an eye on our Roman Catholic neighbors and their taxes! But fortunately Jesuits at present do not form the majority of taxpayers.
Poignant thus deals with righteousness in a court of law. He declares that, “When the opinions upon a point of law are on either side probable, a judge may deprive which party he pleases of the suit. He may follow the less probable opinion, rejecting that which is more probable.” He is well seconded by Gregory of Valentia, who says: “If the judge should think each opinion equally probable, for the sake of his friend he may lawfully pronounce sentence according to the opinion which is more favorable to the interests of that friend.
“He may, moreover, with the intent to serve his friend, at one time judge according to one opinion, and at another time according to the contrary opinion, provided only that no scandal result from the decision.” Where would England be if her judges were Jesuits!
On acts of crime Simon de Lessan affirms: “A confessor may absolve penitents according to the probable opinion of the penitent in opposition to his own, and is even bound to do so.” Imagine the Jesuit penitent in the confessional box who, when wishing to do evil, not only believes that the priest’s absolution relieves from all crime, but knows that he can oblige his confessor to absolve him according to his own wishes!
The duty of speaking the truth is set aside by the doctrine of the Direction of the Intention, or Mental Reservation, or, in plain language, Equivocation. According to Sanchez, “A man may swear that he hath not done a thing, though he really have, by understanding within himself that he did it not on such and such a day, or before he was born, or by reflecting on any other such circumstances, while the words which he employs have no such sense as would discover his meaning.” Filiutius asks, “With what precaution is equivocation to be used? When we begin, for instance, to say ‘I swear’ we must insert in a subdued tone the mental restriction ‘that today,’ and then continue aloud, ‘I have not eaten such a thing’; or, ‘I swear’―then insert ‘I say’―then conclude in the same loud voice, ‘that I have not done this or that thing’; for thus the whole speech is most true.” How admirably the Jesuit fathers give lessons in the art of speaking the truth to oneself, and lying to everyone else!
This principle of theirs should suffice to prevent our believing any statement whatever made by a Jesuit. No Jesuit can be trusted, or should be introduced into English society. Will there be found anyone willing to give credence, or, indeed, a hearing, to a Cowley Father who affixes the mystic “degree” S. J. to his name?
We cannot refer in our pages to the effects of the confessional at the hands of the Jesuits.
The translator of Griesinger’s “Complete History of the Jesuits” was compelled to omit the whole of one chapter, which dealt with one phase of their immorality; but we will repeat Dr. Wylie’s word of solemn warning: “Let all who value the sweetness of a pure imagination, and the joy of a conscience undefiled, shun the confessional as they would the chamber where the plague is shut up. The teaching of the Jesuits―everywhere deadly―is here a poison that consumes flesh and bones and soul.”
We now adduce some Jesuit teaching in reference to murder. “Wherever there is no knowledge of wickedness there is also no sin.” George de Rhodes states: “A man does not sin unless he reflects upon the wickedness of it.” What a masterpiece of Satanic reasoning! If a man can deaden his conscience so as never to reflect when he is committing a crime, it is no sin! After this we need not be astonished to learn that murder and regicide are not only excused and enjoined, but considered meritorious acts. “Parents who seek to turn their children from the (R. C.) faith,” says Fagundez, “may justly be killed by them.” But he goes even further when he asserts, “It is lawful for a son to rejoice at the murder of his parent, committed by himself in a state of drunkenness, on account of the great riches thence acquired by inheritance.”
The following, in its reference to the Protestant succession in England, will be of interest.
The Jesuit writers have been at great pains to show that it is more than lawful to kill excommunicated―that is, Protestant―kings. Peter Alagona declares: “As soon as he (a sovereign) is declared excommunicate on account of his apostasy from the (Roman Catholic) faith, his subjects are absolved from the oath of allegiance.” Suarez adds that, when a king is deposed, he is no longer to be regarded as a king but as a tyrant: “he, therefore, loses his authority, and from that moment may be lawfully killed.” Mariana instils the method he appears to deprecate thus: “There is doubt whether it is lawful to kill a tyrant with poison and deadly herbs; for we know that it is frequently done . . . In my own opinion deleterious drugs should not be given to an enemy, neither should a deadly poison be mixed with his food or in his cup with which to cause his death . . . Yet it will indeed be lawful to use this method with the case in question—not to constrain the person who is to be killed to take of himself the poison, which, inwardly received, would deprive him of life, but to cause it to be outwardly applied by another without his intervention, as when there is so much strength in the poison that, if spread upon a seat or on the clothes, it would be sufficiently powerful to cause death.”
God is made the author of sin by Jesuit teaching. Peter Alagona says: “By the command of God, it is lawful to kill an innocent person, to steal or to commit fornication, because He is the Lord of life and death and all things, and it is due to Him thus to fulfil His commands.” In order to understand the depth of this blasphemous statement, we must remember that to the Jesuits the voice of their Superior is the voice of God. The healing of troubled consciences comes in very fitly after the perpetration of enormities. To bolster up their system, the Jesuit father confessors claim that the miraculous gift of healing troubled consciences, alleged to be bestowed on St. Ignatius at the time of his Montserrat experiences, has been transmitted to them. “With the aid of pious finesse and holy artifice of devotion, crimes may be expiated now-a-days alacrius, with more joy and alacrity than in former days; and a great many people may be washed from their stains almost as cleverly as they contracted them.”
It would be easy to fill pages with extracts such as the above from the writings of Jesuit “Doctors of Divinity,” giving sanction to every crime in the catalogue of human sins.
Our task would be incomplete without some reference to Jesuit methods, a good example of which is found in the “Secreta Monita,” or “The Secret Instructions.” This notorious book closes thus: “Let the Superior keep these secret advices with great care, and let them not be communicated but to a very few discreet persons, and that only by parts.... But if they should happen to fall into the hands of strangers who should give them an ill sense or construction, let them be assured the Society owns them not in that sense, which shall be confirmed by instancing those of our Order who assuredly know them not.”
It was some time before this secret volume was dragged into the light. The Duke of Brunswick first discovered it in the library of the Jesuit College at Paderborn in Westphalia; since then copies of it have been found in other Jesuit academies, at Prague and elsewhere. The authenticity of the “Secreta Monita” has been denied, as might be expected; and, on oath, Gretza, a well-known member, insisted that the “Secret Instructions” was a forgery by a Polish Jesuit expelled for misconduct from the Society. But the discovery in the British Museum of a work printed in 1596, twenty years before the alleged forgery, in which the “Secreta Monita” is copied, refuted Gretza. The overwhelming evidence of numerous editions in many languages, all of which agree in the reading, together with the correspondence between these secret advices and the known methods of Jesuits in all lands, are evidences of their source.
Should anyone ask on what errand the Jesuit fathers have come into a neighborhood, the answer is to be that their “sole object is the salvation of souls.” They are to make a great show of charity, and as they have nothing of their own to give to the poor, they are “to go far and near” to receive even the “smallest atoms.” Thus the “newcomers” will receive “the respect and reverence of the best and most eminent in the neighborhood.”
They are to find out who own the estates surrounding them and to secure them by gift if possible; if not, by purchase. If they can “get anything that is considerable, let the purchase be made under a strange name, by some of our friends, that our poverty may seem the greater. And let our Provincial assign such revenues to some other colleges, more remote, that neither prince nor people may discover anything of our profits.” Special prominence is given to the instruction of children. “Whisper it sweetly in their [the people’s] ears, that they are come to teach the children gratis.” Wherever the Jesuits have come, they have opened schools, but the diffusion of knowledge will hardly be claimed as the end in view.
The second chapter of the “Instructions” is a full and precise answer to their own question, “What must be done to get the ear and intimacy of great men?” Monarchs are to be surrounded with confessors chosen from the Society, who must moreover treat the consciences of their royal penitents “sweetly and pleasantly.” When a vacancy occurs near the throne the opportunity must be seized to place there tried friends of the Society, a list of whom it is enjoined shall always be at hand.
It may be well, in order to advance the interest of the Society at the Courts of Europe, to undertake embassies. “We must endeavor to breed dissension among great men, and raise seditions, or anything a prince would have us do to please him.” How faithfully the Jesuits have carried out these “Instructions,” while steadily advancing to the control of kings and governments, the people of Europe know only too well.
The wide, yet minute, scope of the Jesuits’ field of action is seen in the chapter of elaborate instructions which treats “of the means to acquire the friendship of rich widows.” A father confessor must be chosen of the so-called best age, not too young and certainly not too old, of a cheerful lively temperament, strong and stately and with the gift of eloquence, which will most ingratiate him with the lady. To him she will confide her secrets, and of him take counsel in her worldly affairs. It will be his duty to see that the wicked idea of marrying again does not enter her mind, and to promise freedom from purgatory should the holy estate of widowhood be persevered in. A few more skillful tactics, with the continual aid of the confessional, will either bring the “rich widow” within the convent, where she may enjoy quietude and the sanctity of the cloister, or at least induce her to enter some religious order, such as that of Paulina, “so that, being caught in the vow of chastity, all danger of her marrying again may be over.” It is easy to see where the income and property of the rich widow will eventually be garnered.
The quotations already given will make the following titles of some of the sections of this extraordinary handbook of the Jesuits sufficiently suggestive of their contents: “Means of keeping in our hands the disposition of the estates of widows,” “The sons and daughters of devout widows,” “Of the means to augment the revenues of our colleges.” Two clauses we cannot forbear giving at length before concluding our reference to these hideous “Secret Instructions.”
“If a wealthy family have daughters only, they are to be drawn by caresses to become nuns, in which case a small portion of their estate may be assigned for their use, and the rest will be ours.” “The last heir of a family is by all means to be induced to enter the Society. And the better to relieve his mind from all fear of his parents, he is to be taught that it is more pleasing to God that he take phis step without their knowledge or consent.”
When in 1762 the Parliament of Paris became possessed of the “Corpus Institutorium,” and passed sentence of condemnation on it, the Jesuit Society was the topic of conversation among all right-minded circles in France. A number of prominent Jesuitical writings were forthwith officially investigated, and it was unanimously resolved by the Government that the so-called moral writings of some twenty-two Jesuit authors should be burnt by the public executioner at the foot of the great staircase of the Palace of Parliament on account of their highly pernicious tendency and their horrible contents
In our next chapter we shall find more emphatic testimony as to the true nature of Jesuit principles by tracing the acts by which the “poor companions of Jesus,” as they impiously loved to call themselves, carried out the maxims of their moral code.