A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

It is quite needless here to discuss the literary qualities of Pascal's letters, but in the fourth letter Pascal began his direct and fearful indictment of the Jesuits. The next six letters contain the exposure of Jesuitical moral teaching which is the most serious point in his work, and the remaining letters—from the tenth to the eighteenth, which are addressed to the Jesuits—are mainly concerned with substantiating his indictment. Although one may trust that the majority of readers are familiar with Pascal's famous work, a short analysis of the six letters (the fifth to the tenth) must be premised.

The chief quarrel between the Solitaries and the Jesuits was, as I said, a question of moral, not speculative, theology. They accused the Jesuits of accommodating the principles of Christian morality to an immoral generation. St. Cyran and Arnauld had already quoted many passages of Jesuit works in proof of this, and Pascal and his friends now searched the whole field of Jesuit casuistry for further proofs. In the fifth letter, for instance, Pascal shows how the Jesuits attenuate the obligation of fasting. A man may, on a fast-day, drink any quantity of wine, hippocras, or honey and water. If a man cannot sleep without supper, he is not bound to fast; in a sense that is a just decision, but Father Escobar goes on to say that he need not meet his obligation by deferring to the evening the "collation" which is permitted on fast-days, as no man is bound to alter the order of his meals. Again, a man who has exhausted himself by vice is not bound to fast; and Pascal might have added that the Jesuits excused a wife from fasting if her husband thought it interfered with her attractiveness (Tamburini), a husband if it weakened his sexual faculty (Filliutius), and a maiden if it lessened the charms on which she relied to secure a husband (Tamburini).

After this satirical essay on fasting made easy, Pascal passes, in the sixth letter, to the obligation of almsgiving and cognate matters. Wealthy Christians were bound by the letter of the Gospel to give to the poor out of their superfluous goods, and Pascal quoted the great Jesuit theologian Vasquez learnedly proving that "you will scarcely find such a thing as superfluous goods among seculars, even in the case of kings." That was a comfortable doctrine for the rich, but the Jesuits had a word for the poor. Could a valet who considered himself underpaid help himself to his masters goods to the extent of the deficiency? Yes, said Father Bauny. And since Jesuit confessors had many curious cases submitted to them by valets at that time, their theologians worked out the servant's position with great nicety. If it were very inconvenient to change his master, the valet might even hold the ladder by which his master climbed to an illicit adventure; though in this extreme case, the master must scold much before the valet is justified.

The seventh letter shows how the Jesuits accommodated the fifth commandment to an age of brawling and duelling. It is quite lawful to fight a duel if a man would otherwise incur dishonour (Escobar); it is lawful to pray to God to kill a menacing enemy (Hurtado); it is lawful to kill a culumniator and his false witnesses (Molina); it is lawful to pursue and kill a man who has dealt you a blow—provided you have merely a technical regard for your honour, and do not feel vindictive (Escobar); it is lawful to kill a contumelious man, if that is the only way to arrest the injury (Lessius); it is lawful, if necessary, to kill an intending thief even if he attempt to take only a single gold coin (Molina); and—a very significant doctrine—it is lawful for a monk to kill a man who defames his monastery or his order, if there is no other way to arrest the defamation (Amico). These were fine doctrines for the age of Louis XIV.

The eighth letter quotes distinguished theologians who permit a judge to accept secret and illegal presents, provided they are given out of gratitude, or merely to encourage him in giving honest verdicts (Molina); and others who teach that, while usury (which then meant any interest in money) is forbidden, the lender of money may exact a certain additional sum in the name of gratitude (Escobar, etc.); that a bankrupt may keep back sufficient property to enable himself and his family to live "decently" (Escobar); that money earned by crime or vice has not to be restored (Lessius, etc.); and that "a prostitute, virgin, married woman, or nun" is strictly entitled to the money promised her for vice (Filliutius). The ninth letter shows how gluttony is condoned, and scourges the familiar casuistic doctrine of mental reservation. In the tenth letter we learn that a frail woman may receive into her house her partner in sin if she "cannot decently refuse."

The apologist for the Jesuits attempts to enfeeble this terrible indictment by saying that the devout Chateaubriand called Pascal's work "an immortal lie." The French historian does not add, though he doubtless knew, that Chateaubriand withdrew this expression in more mature years, saying: "I am now forced to acknowledge that he [Pascal] has not exaggerated in the least." Voltaire also is quoted, expressing indignation that Pascal should accuse the Jesuits of setting out to corrupt morals. Voltaire, living under the shadow of the Bastille in early years, had his moments of insincerity; in this case it is enough to say that, in the fifth letter, Pascal expressly says that he does not accuse the Jesuits of setting out to corrupt morals. The only serious criticism one finds among the innumerable replies to Pascal is that his quotations are not always accurate. One must remember that they are not given as verbal quotations, and that Pascal had to rely on the aid of his colleagues. That he deliberately misquoted any theologian can only be suggested by those who are entirely ignorant of his character. It is, however, quite true that qualifying phrases have at times been improperly omitted, a few phrases have been wrongly translated, and the condensing of long passages into short sentences has in a few instances the effect of an injustice. These cases are relatively few and unimportant. The indictment of Jesuit casuistry, as I have summarised it, is perfectly sound, and later research has merely extended the long list of unedifying passages. [26]

Ste. Beuve observed that, owing to Pascal's indictment, the Jesuits "lost the helm of the world." They have assuredly never entirely recovered from the "terrible blow" (as their historian calls it) which Blaise Pascal dealt them. It is not historically true that they were "crushed" and silent under the reiterated lashes. In the course of his letters Pascal refers to their numerous replies, their fierce invectives, their threats of physical persecution. Unfortunately, one of their fathers made matters worse by penning a bold defence of the casuists. His book was condemned by the Sorbonne and the Roman Inquisition, and had to be disavowed. Large numbers of the clergy and monks joined with the Jansenists in denouncing their doctrines, and in the end—if we may anticipate a little, in order to finish this episode—they were officially condemned by the French Church. For a time Louis XIV. prevented their opponents from submitting the matter to the General Assembly of the Clergy, but, when Mme de Montespan succeeded Mlle de la Vallière in his affections, Bossuet and the Archbishop of Paris used her influence to secure the king's consent, and in 1700 their doctrines (and those of other lax theologians) were severely condemned. The only mitigation which the Jesuits could secure was that their theologians were not named.

Meantime, the war of the five propositions dragged its interminable length. The Port Royal nuns, the Solitaries, and many of the clergy and laity refused to sign what they regarded as a plain untruth—the statement that the five propositions were found in Jansen's work—and the Jesuits relentlessly persecuted them. Under court-pressure the Assembly of the Clergy decreed that all teachers and religious were to submit to the Pope's bull, and a kind of inquisition was established for the first time in France. A formulary was devised, and a royal decree enacted that it must be signed. The "grand Turc très Chrétien" was at that time easily led by his confessor and other Jesuits in religious matters, and his light-hearted court, under the presidency of Mlle de la Vallière, was not at all unwilling to see the dour Jansenists beaten by their indulgent confessors. The nuns of Port Royal made an heroic stand against the official untruth. Angélique Arnauld was now dead, but her sister Agnes induced the nuns to resist alike the honeyed persuasion of Bossuet and the angry menaces of the Archbishop of Paris. In 1664 the archbishop returned with the more formidable argument of a band of two hundred archers, and the nuns were scattered over France. The Solitaries also were scattered, though a few of the more distinguished of them found shelter in the hotel of the Duchess de Longueville. So importunate were the Jesuits that the Pope had to remind them that his duty was to keep the Puritans in the Church, not drive them out of it.

Four bishops still favoured the Puritans, and for several years the futile wrangle went on between the French court, the Vatican, and the rebels. One of the four was the Archbishop of Sens, a prelate of the finer type and a stern critic of the Jesuits. In 1653 the Jesuits went to such extremes in their attack on him that he placed all the Jesuits in his archdiocese under an interdict for contumacy, and the sentence was so just that they did not succeed in getting it removed until the death of the prelate in 1675. The Bishop of Pamiers imposed the same heavy punishment on the Jesuits of his diocese. Both king and clergy were now wearying of the endless war, and the accession of a new Pope, Clement IX., in 1667 seemed to the moderate clergy an occasion for compromise. The Archbishop of Sens, the Princess de Conti, the Duchess de Longueville, and other distinguished intermediaries persuaded the papacy to exclude the Jesuits from the negotiations, and Arnauld promised to submit if that were done. The correspondence was, therefore, conducted with great secrecy, and at the beginning of 1669 Louis XIV. struck and issued a gold medal in commemoration of "peace" and "restored concord." The Jesuits were so angry at the wording, since it did not express the extinction of a heresy, that, when the medal became scarce, they denied that it had been issued with the knowledge of the King.

The nuns were now permitted gradually to return to their valley, and the Solitaries renewed the attack upon the morality of the Jesuits. On this side the Jesuits could securely rely upon the sympathy of Louis XIV., and the second brilliant criticism which the Jansenists published, the Practical Morality of the Jesuits, was condemned by Parlement, at the intervention of the royal procurator, to be publicly burned. Jesuit succeeded Jesuit in the care of the King's conscience, in spite of his notorious and continuous immorality during nearly twenty years. Their French apologist ventures to tell us that they "declared war on the King's heart," and quotes Bayle as saying, in regard to the liaison with Mlle de la Vallière, that "Father Annat teased the prince daily about it and gave him no rest." It is one of the most flagrant pieces of "Jesuitry" in M. Crétineau-Joly's work. Bayle (in a note to the article Annat) merely quotes these words from a pamphleteer whom he describes as utterly unworthy of credence; and I may add that the purpose of the pamphleteer is merely to prove that the later confessor, Père la Chaise, was worse than Père Annat. The truth is that Annat remained in his charge during the whole of the eight years when Louis clung to Mlle de la Vallière, and, when the brilliant and unscrupulous Marquise de Montespan succeeded in securing the position of royal mistress in 1670, and Père Annat retired on the ground of age, his colleague Père Ferrier took his place. For four years he remained in charge of the King's remarkable conscience, and it is not irrelevant to observe that he was rewarded with a power that no royal confessor had hitherto had in France. He and his colleagues now had the sole right to nominate bishops, and the character of the French episcopacy in the later years of Louis XIV. is largely attributable to them. Ferrier died in 1674, and the famous Père la Chaise, a man of moderate ability but courtly manners, was appointed royal confessor. He remained at his post during the remaining five years of the liaison with Mme de Montespan, and it was Mme de Maintenon (and advance in years), rather than his confessor, who led the royal sinner into the paths of virtue.