If there were any such amongst us would it not be somewhat curious to find that those who prosecute us on this account are amongst the most influential patrons of secret societies? However this may be, there is no accusation more utterly false than this. The institute and rules of the society are today—more than ever—open to all the world in every public library. It is true that since 1901 the society has assumed a kind of pseudo character in the eyes of the public and the law. But this was imposed upon us by statesmen who, though at the head of a Catholic government, did not dare to grant to a religious order approved by the Holy See that liberty given us even in Protestant countries which have a true notion of freedom.
We had therefore to assume the pseudonym of "Association for Faith and Fatherland" ("Associao Fe e Patria"). I must acknowledge that, threatened as we were with dispersion and banishment, we were but too glad to obtain this simulacrum of liberty, and to avail ourselves of any title under which we might devote ourselves to the utmost for the benefit of religion and of Portugal. But, I repeat, it was unwillingly that we adopted this incognito, which moreover hoodwinked nobody.
The actual Republican Government took possession of our own official catalogues, in which were recorded all our names and occupations. They may thus see that we never thought there was any reason to make a mystery of our existence or to shrink from letting it be known to the full that we bear a title which esteem next to that of Christian, namely of religious of the Society of Jesus.
5. POLITICAL AND ANTI-REPUBLICAN ACTIVITY.
Opinions expressed in certain articles of the Mensageiro whispers of later years concerning our share in the polemics of the newspaper named Portugal, and innumerable fictions about the Jesuits, on occasions of the late elections; such were the causes of the accusation that we meddled with politics.
As for the Mensageiro, its articles are open to all who choose to read them, and the doctrines there expressed as to the responsibility of the electorate in regard of legislation and its execution, as to the solidarity of the members of our party, its traditions, programme and political life, are after all only those which are common amongst every people with whom the principles of civic culture and the social obligations of Catholics have not been so lamentably forgotten as with us. Only those who realize how utterly all is ignored which has been ventilated in these subjects outside Portugal, by episcopal pastorals, ecclesiastical instructions, and the zealous propaganda of the press, can explain the astonishment of many Portuguese, to whom conclusions concerning morals and conduct which elsewhere were familiar to all seemed altogether novel.
But however we may differ in regard of such matters, what kind of liberty would a country enjoy in which a theologian or moralist was not permitted to express the doctrines in which he believed or to write in periodicals on subjects of his special study?
As to the journal Portugal, a letter from its editor-in-chief published a few days ago may take the place of a reply. In it he declares that during the latest phase of the paper, precisely that in which it was most fiercely attacked for its polemical attitude, the society had no share whatever.
In saying this I have no desire to shirk responsibility, or to express disapproval of the energy displayed by the Catholic press. Far from it. Truth must be vigorously championed, and the more so in proportion as the enemies of religion claim for themselves unrestrained license of language and calumny. They cannot indeed be fought with their own weapons, which honor and Christian charity forbid us to use, but at least they must be encountered with unflinching courage and resolute independence.
A revolutionary journal lately published a letter of mine in which I asked a correspondent to interest himself in obtaining support for those responsible for the "Portugal." I say nothing of the surreptitious publication of a private letter, nor of the insidious comments by which it was accompanied. I would only observe that the interest which I exhibited in this undertaking shows no more than that its general drift was in accord with my own views. Is there any offense in this?—even were it a fact that the articles written during the last stage of this newspaper were in reality ours.