Spiritual Coadjutors, whose office is to assist the professed in spiritual things; such as preaching, hearing confessions, superintending Colleges, &c. These, likewise, must all be priests.
Secular Coadjutors. These are all laymen, and their office is to fill such secular offices as may be required, in order to promote the objects of the Society. They act as servants and inferior officers in the Colleges and other houses; but they are employed, when qualified, for higher and more important duties. [11a] They are expected also to influence their neighbours by conversation and other means. [11b] They are drawn from all ranks, some being unable to read, and others educated men. [11c] It is clear that this class must supply the Society with one of the most effective of its agencies. The lay coadjutor may act in any capacity, as a merchant, statesman, mechanic, or anything else which his Superior may deem expedient, and may thus secure a powerful influence without any person having the least idea that a Jesuit is in his neighbourhood.
Approved scholars, or those youths who have been selected as likely to prove suitable for the future purposes of the Society, and are being trained in Jesuit Colleges. Although their education is not yet complete, these scholars have been required to take the three vows, and moreover to add the promise that they will be ready, when required, to devote themselves to the service of the Society.
Those whose future rank is not yet decided, but who are admitted upon the condition that they shall be employed in whatever way the Society shall deem most suited to their talents.
To this list Mr. Duller adds another class, which he terms affiliated members, or adjuncts, which he states includes even ladies. [12a] From his account they appear to be bound to the Order by a compact that on their part they will act as spies and agents in all their intercourse with those amongst whom they dwell, while the Society undertakes in return to guarantee to them a share in all those spiritual privileges which, as it vainly pretends, it is the Jesuits’ prerogative to bestow. [12b] The effect of these affiliated members and lay coadjutors is, of course, enormous. They are like the thin fibres to the root, through whose power the whole plant is nourished. They impart to the Order an ever-penetrating power. They enable it to act without awakening the least suspicion of its presence, to worm its way into the very heart of Protestantism, and to secure the unsuspecting confidence of those whom they desire to betray and ruin.
These different classes are all subject to the absolute and uncontrolled authority of the General. This important officer is elected for life by a general assembly of the professed members. He resides at Rome, and is assisted by a small council, consisting of a certain number of assistants, and elected representatives from the different provinces. The whole world is divided into districts, over each of which one assistant is appointed to preside; these districts are again subdivided into “Provinces,” with a Provincial at the head of each, appointed by the General for a given time, and these provinces contain their houses for the professed, with a Provost at the head of each, their novice-houses, colleges, seminaries, and, in Protestant-lands, mission-houses, where their agents live unnoticed as secular clergy. There is therefore, throughout, the most complete system of graduated authority. Every Jesuit has over him a certain officer, to whose authority he is absolutely subject; and the connexion is so perfect, that the command of the General strikes without fail, like an electric shock, to the most distant individual in the Order. The Provincial or the Provost is just as much under authority as the priest or the novice; and there is the same law of unquestioning submission in all the ranks and complex ramifications of the Society; the result of which is, that the General has at his command a devoted and well-compacted army, quartered discreetly in every nation of the known world, and ready at any moment to execute his designs. The same arrangements are equally effective in supplying the General with information. The Provincials and other officers are all required to send full reports of their several districts to head-quarters. The characters, acquirements, dispositions, successes, failures, and, in certain cases, even the confessions of the members are registered and reported. Nothing of importance can occur in the most distant outpost, without the report of it being forwarded to Rome; and if it tends to throw light on the qualifications of any member of the Order, it is recorded against his name, so as to supply the General with a bird’s-eye view of the leading points in the character of every individual under his command.
CHAPTER II.
PLAN OF ACTION.
With such an organization at his command, it is clear that the General can rarely be at a loss for agency. Whatever be the required service, it is an easy thing to select the best adapted instrument, and to despatch him without delay.
But to describe their mode of action is almost impossible, for it varies with every circumstance, and is different in every locality.
When they are permitted to locate themselves in any country, their two chief means for the attainment of their object appear to be, education and the confessional. They will then go boldly forth, generally two and two, in the long black cloak, with which I grieve to say our English eye is becoming too familiar. They will publicly found their seminaries and colleges, supplying them with first-rate professors, so securing to themselves the early education of the great majority of the rising generation. It is stated, that in France the colleges and educational establishments have been all turned over to them by the Government of Louis Napoleon. [15]