Jesuits in the United States
In North America their vigilance was no less marked. “In 1611 Jesuit missionaries came over and labored with remarkable zeal and success in converting the Indians.”[149] In Maryland, a Catholic colony from the first, they held unbounded sway. Speaking of the time of Lord Baltimore, Thompson says: “At that time, in England, the papists were chiefly under the influence of the Jesuits, whose vigilance was too sleepless to permit the opportunity of planting their society in the New World to escape them.”[150] Their work has been quietly done from the very first, and some think that because of the papal decree of 1773, suppressing the order, they have ceased their work. This, however, is a mistake; for “Gregory XVI, whose pontificate commenced in 1831, was the first pope who seemed encouraged by the idea that the papacy would ultimately establish itself in the United States. His chief reliance, as the means of realizing this hope, was upon the Jesuits, upon whose entire devotion to the principles of absolutism he could confidently rely.”[151] But the Jesuits always accomplish their work largely by means of education, hence we may look for them to use the same tactics in our country that had proved so eminently successful to their cause in England and Germany.
Object of Jesuit schools in America
“The chief thing with the Jesuits,” as Gressinger writes, “was to obtain the sole direction of education, so that by getting the young into their hands, they could fashion them after their own pattern.” It has been the avowed aim of the Jesuits to stamp out Protestantism, and with this, republicanism. In this country, where these two principles were pre-eminently conspicuous, and so closely associated that whatever kills one kills the other, it is doubly true that by gaining control of the educational system the order could work for the papacy the utter ruin of America, both from a religious and a civil standpoint. From the dawn of our history there has been within our borders, mingling with our loyal citizens, a class of educators who carry out this principle described by Thompson. “The Roman Catholic youth are forbidden by the papal system from accepting as true the principles of the Declaration of Independence or of the Constitution of the United States.”[152] Leo XIII, who was educated a Jesuit [Thompson], remains true to his principles. His biographer says “that the ‘false education’ and ‘antichristian training’ of the young which prevail in the United States and among the liberal and progressive peoples of the world must be done away with, abandoned, and ‘Thomas Aquinnas [153]
Progress of papal principles
It is unnecessary to state the number of schools established by Catholics in the United States, which have been placed under the control of the Jesuits; neither is it necessary to trace the attempts which have been made by the papacy, at irregular periods in our history, to obtain the control of our public school system. The affairs at Stillwater, Minn., and at Farabault, in the same State, while unsuccessful, were weather vanes showing the direction of the wind,—were posers to test the public pulse, and just so surely show the policy of the papacy in educational matters. Of far greater importance to us as Protestants is the fact that Jesuitical principles may and do prevail in our popular system of education, and these principles, whether carried out by Jesuits, or by the ordinary teacher who is unconscious of her situation, and unmindful of the result of her methods, bring about the fall of Protestantism and republicanism. Our nation has repudiated her foundation principles; are our Protestant churches doing likewise? The history of the educational institutions of the United States, which are discussed in the next chapters, will show how the plan of work now followed in our universities, colleges, and schools of lower grades, are patterning after Sturm, and how they go farther back, connecting the twentieth century with the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. It is without the slightest feelings of animosity toward the Jesuits or the papacy that these facts are traced. These both do for their cause what will best serve to upbuild it. Their methods, in so far as they accomplish their desired end, are to be commended, and their zeal is ever to be admired.
An educational question for Protestants
The one problem for Protestants to solve is whether to accept Jesuitical, papal education, and thus become papal, forming “an image to the Beast,”—to use the language of the Apocalypse,—or whether they will follow the principles of Christian education, and remain true to the name Protestant. Let the reader forget the names; but let him remember that there are but two principles in the world, when the standard of eternal truth is recognized; one exalts Christ, and gives life everlasting; the other exalts man, and its life is for this world alone. Education according to the second does, in its methods, dwarf, enfeeble, and belittle. It puts stress upon the unimportant, and passes by truth without a glance. It prepares the mind for absolutism both in government and religion. Education according to the first will be based upon methods which develop, in every particular, the human being. It is a mental, moral, and physical education, and its object is so to educate that eventually each of these three natures will assume the right relation to the other two, and again, as on the Mount of Transfiguration with the Son of God, “divinity within will flash forth to meet divinity without.”