A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

This last interview with Catesby occurred in the latter half of July, more than two months before the proposed opening of Parliament (3rd October). By that time, therefore, Garnet was quite aware, without the least reference to the seal of confession, that the Catholic laity contemplated some deed which directly aimed at taking life on so large a scale that the innocent would suffer with the guilty, and it would need very little reflection to foresee that this deed was directed at the court or the Parliament, or both. Further, in order not to be obliged formally to condemn it, he refused, contrary to his plainest duty, to learn the details of it. The clue to his frame of mind seems to be given in his letter to Parsons in May. The laymen were "offended with the Jesuits" because they would not consent to "forcible enterprises"; he would therefore not interfere with their plot. He could, without violation of any sacramental confidence, because Catesby's admission to Father Greenway comes later, have prevented the plot from going any further, but he allowed this vague horror to proceed, and defied the emphatic command of the Pope and his General, in order that the Jesuits might not lose favour with the leading Catholic laymen. It is probable that he also trusted that the outrage would be justified by the result. Whatever his motives, his conduct was shifty, cowardly, and treacherous, and he fitly died the death of a traitor. He admits later in his "Declaration" that he "might have hindered all" by speaking to Catesby. He claims that he pressed the Roman authorities, through Parsons, to send a stronger condemnation of plots; but we have a letter of his to Parsons, dated 4th September, in which he assures Rome that the English Catholics are now quiet and submissive.

It is therefore unnecessary to decide whether he afterwards learned all the details of the plot under the seal of confession, and whether it was morally impossible for him to disclose such a communication. The guilt of Henry Garnet is clear enough, however we decide the further issue. Yet it is of interest, and the further development may be briefly recounted.

A few days after he had seen Catesby, in the latter half of July, Father Greenway came to consult him. He was troubled about a "devise" that Catesby had submitted to him, and he proposed to submit it to his superior "by way of confession." Garnet then learned the details of the plot; he had forbidden Catesby to tell him, but was willing to learn them without Catesby's knowledge. He pronounced the plot "horrible," and said that Greenway must return to Catesby and condemn it. The Pope, he said, would send him to the galleys if such a plot came off. He urged Greenway to dissuade Catesby, and adds: "so we parted, yet with this compact, that if ever I should be called in question for being accessory unto such a horrible action, either by the Pope, or by my superiors beyond, or by the State here, I would have liberty to utter all that passed in this conference." He expected to see Catesby in October—he could undoubtedly have seen him before then—and says: "I assuredly had [if they met] entered into the matter with Mr. Catesby, and perhaps might have hindered all." He undoubtedly could have "hindered all" at any moment by an explicit declaration that the plot was a mortal sin, and by a threat of the Pope's penalties.

An attempt has been made to relieve Garnet of the heavy responsibility which this declaration lays on him by pleading that the Church binds a priest, under the gravest moral obligation, not to communicate anything learned "by way of confession." In the first place, Garnet does not say that Greenway learned the plot in confession. He says that he asked Greenway this, and he does not give his reply. It is, in fact, quite certain from Garnet's own words and conduct, that the communication was not made under the seal of confession at all. If it were, Garnet had no power whatever to speak to Catesby about it, as he says he intended to do: Greenway had no power whatever to permit Garnet to "utter all that passed in this conference" if he were brought to task: and Garnet committed a mortal sin and cowardly sacrilege in eventually revealing that he had heard of the plot from Greenway. There are obscure points about the theological doctrine of the "seal," but these things are not obscure or disputed. Catesby told Greenway in ordinary confidence, as he offered to tell Garnet. Even if it had been otherwise, Garnet's plain duty was to see that his colleague approached Catesby and made it a matter of conscience to abstain from such a design.

It is, in the next place, even clearer that the communication made by Greenway to Garnet did not come under the seal of confession. Garnet plainly intimates that there was no confession at all, and merely hints that it might be regarded as forming part of some future confession. The teaching of moral theologians is clear that a consultation for the sake of direction does not, unless it be intended as "a preparation for confession," come under the seal. [17] Greenway was not a penitent at all, and even a sinner cannot put a confessor under the seal when he chooses; he must confess his sins. In any case, the above considerations apply here also. Garnet would have no right whatever to approach Catesby if he learned the plot in confession; Greenway had no right whatever to name Catesby in a confession; Garnet would have no right to say, in confession, whether he would or would not listen to this "penitent"; and Garnet would most decidedly have no right to claim permission to break the seal if his neck were endangered. To introduce "the seal of confession" is to make Garnet's conduct worse than ever.

It is plain that Garnet and Greenway feared to offend the laity by thwarting them, and it is probable that they thought the slaughter might help their cause. They locked the secret in their hearts, and nervously went about their work. In August Garnet went to the north, and in December, when the conspirators were slain and Greenway and Gerard had fled to the Continent, he sought refuge at Hinlip Castle, near Worcester, with Father Oldcorne. They were betrayed by a Catholic and discovered, after a full week's search of the castle. An astute jailer then tricked Garnet into a conversation with his colleague, and learned that there was one man who could connect him with the plot. In the presence of the rack he then declared that he was permitted to speak in such an emergency, and he related the "conference" with Greenway. He remained shifty and mendacious to the end, using the doctrine of mental reservation with an appalling flippancy. When charged with writing a letter to Greenway, he swore "on his priesthood," and without reservation, that he had not written it; and the Council then showed him the letter, which they had intercepted. He was justly, if barbarously, executed on 3rd May, on the ground of the general knowledge he had of the plot from Catesby himself. Equivocal to the end, he declared to the authorities that he had sinned against God and the king in not revealing the plot; while to the Catholic Anne Vaux he pleaded that "it was not his part to disclose it." He did not represent it as matter heard in confession.

As the innocent and estimable Oldcorne had been executed on 7th April, the Jesuit mission was over for a time, and the hopes of Catholicism blasted. Crétineau-Joly gives an inaccurate list of seven Jesuits who "perished" under Elizabeth, and airily adds "a hundred others." The truth is that from 1580 to 1606 there had only been a score of Jesuits in England, even including the secular priests who were permitted to take the vows in prison in order that their martyrdoms might illumine the chronicle of the Society; that only seven of these, including the seculars I have mentioned, were put to death; and that of the five regularly admitted Jesuits who were put to death, two obtained a remission of punishment by giving information. Yet their story is, on the whole, a story of heroism thwarted by political intrigue.

Two other Jesuits, Hunt and Worthington, had arrived before the plot, and in 1607 others began again to penetrate the defences of the country. The houses of wealthy Catholics were no longer available as they had been, and the life of the missionary was harder than ever; but the colleges on the Continent continued to send their ardent apostles into the field, and by 1615, when Acquaviva died, there are said to have been sixty-eight Jesuits in England. The prestige of Parsons had fallen low, but he remained, intriguing, on the Continent. For some years students had been passing from the Jesuits to the Benedictines, and in 1602, in spite of the opposition of Parsons, the Benedictines obtained from the Pope the right to work in England. Clement VIII. had received so many complaints that he threatened to expel Parsons from Rome, and Parsons, at a hint given him by Acquaviva, went to Naples for the advantage of his health, and remained there until the death of Clement. He returned with the accession of Paul V. in 1605, and continued to fight the secular clergy in regard to the archpriest. The extraordinary course of deception and intrigue which he maintained until his death in 1610 must be read in the spirited narrative of Father Taunton. His death closes the chief interest of the English mission under Acquaviva, and we will return to the struggling apostles at a later stage.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] E.L. Taunton, History of the Jesuits in England (1901): an admirable critical study of Parsons and of the quarrels of the Jesuits with the secular clergy, though not quite a balanced and comprehensive history. R. Simpson's Edmund Campion (1867) is a very fine biography of that high-minded Jesuit; and T. Law has written a learned and exact Historical Sketch of the Conflicts between the Jesuits and Secular Priests (1889). More sympathetic and detailed accounts of the religious work of the English Jesuits are given in Dr. Jessopp's One Generation of a Norfolk House (1879), and Father Morris's Life of Father Gerard (1881). A complete and impartial history of the Jesuits in England, telling with equal candour their heroism and their defects, is desirable. The writings of recent Jesuits are not "history," but very Jesuitical polemic.