A Candid History of the Jesuits

by Joseph McCabe

In the meantime the ex-Jesuits who had remained in England bore their disgrace very impatiently. One of their number, Father Thorpe, wrote in 1785 so scurrilous a Sketch of the Life and Government of Pope Clement XIV. that his colleagues had to withdraw it from publication at the demand of their own admirers. In the following year the English ex-Jesuits opened a correspondence with their rebellious colleagues in Russia, and, although they could devise no pretext whatever for disobeying the Pope in England, they offered to unite with the Russians. Their proposal was declined or postponed, and they waited until the Pope officially recognised the Russian Society in 1801. By that time the Abbé de Broglie had led his little colony of Fathers of the Faith from Austria to London and opened a college at Kensington. Some of the ex-Jesuits and many emigrant French priests were attracted to this authorised Congregation, but Paccanari was now an object of suspicion to most of them, and, on the other hand, there was increasing hope of a restoration of the Society.

The proposal to enlist under the Russian General was now revived, and both ex-Jesuits and Fathers of the Faith made their way, secretly and individually, to Russia and renewed their vows. By the year 1804 there were between eighty and ninety Jesuits in England. The general and violent hatred of the French had led to much sympathy with the clerical victims of the Revolution, but England was not yet prepared for this substantial resurrection of the Jesuits. Stonyhurst was growing into a large and busy colony, owing to the continued bounty of Weld and the return of surviving members of the old province, and in 1804, and more peremptorily in 1807, the Government ordered the dissolution of their communities.

Such an order was a feeble check on their growth, and they took advantage of the successive movements which aided the restoration of Catholicism. The stream of French emigrants, the Act of Toleration of 1791, the beginning of Irish immigration, and the advocacy of Catholic Emancipation by Pitt enabled the Catholics to enter the nineteenth century in increased numbers. The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 so inflated them that they then estimated their numbers in London alone as 146,000, or nearly a tenth of the population; to-day they number about one-fiftieth of the population of London. The Jesuits shared the growth with the rest of the clergy. Between 1826 and 1835 they built eleven new churches, and in 1830 the Roman authorities made a formal province of the English group. The Irish fathers had been detached from the English in 1829, and formed a vice-province. Ten years later began the Catholic movement within the Church of England, to the considerable profit of Rome.

The early history of the Jesuits in the United States is one of the most interesting chapters in their modern story. When the Society was abolished and its members momentarily discouraged, John Carroll, a member of the suppressed English Province, led a small group of fathers to the North American Colony. He became friendly with Washington and other leaders of the insurrection, and is said to have had some influence in shaping the Liberal clauses of the new Constitution. In 1789 he became Bishop of Baltimore, and another ex-Jesuit, Father Neale, was afterwards made his coadjutor. This transferred the American mission from the control of the English Vicar Apostolic, and made Carroll head of the Church in the United States. In 1803 we find Carroll writing to General Gruber that there are a dozen aged ex-Jesuits in Maryland and Pennsylvania, with sufficient property (of the older Maryland mission) to support thirty; they wish to join Gruber's authorised Society and receive an accession of strength. The Russian Jesuits had justified their rebellion on the ground that the secular monarch had forbidden them to lay aside their habits; the Americans said it was enough that there was in America no secular monarch to forbid them to wear it. The Papacy counted for little with any of them.

Gruber complied, and the foundations were laid of the prosperity of the Jesuits in the United States. In the early years little progress was made. The newcomers were young foreigners, and the population was scattered and generally hostile. One of the German fathers was actually arrested and tried for not betraying the confession of a thief, but the controversy which followed rather promoted their interest. They shrewdly established their chief college and centre at Georgetown, near Washington, and gradually won the regard of American statesmen, who visited and granted privileges to the college. By the year 1818 there were 86 Jesuits in the United States, and recruits were arriving from Europe. A novitiate had been opened at White Marsh in 1815, but few novices could be secured in America. In fact, as they followed their usual custom of making no charge for education, they had a severe struggle with poverty everywhere. In 1822 the authorities at Rome ordered them to close the school at Washington, as it could no longer maintain itself without charging. The rector, Father Kelly, defied his superiors for a time, and maintained the school on the fees of pupils; but Americanism was not yet sufficiently developed to sustain this, and Father Kelly was expelled from the Society.

Memories of the "black robes" lingered among the Indians, and it was suggested, time after time, that the fathers should return to their work among them, and amongst the blacks of the south and the islands. Their historian makes a lengthy and very earnest apology for their refusal, during ten or twenty years, to listen to this suggestion. They remembered how their work amongst the Indians had been "misinterpreted"; they were too few in number to spare men for distant fields; in time, they foresaw the greatness of the United States and "preferred the certain to the uncertain." The truth seems to be that commerce in blankets and beaver-skins was not possible in the nineteenth century. After 1840, however, they sent missionaries among the Indians, and won a great affection among them. By that time the Missouri Province alone had 148 Jesuits, and the Maryland Province 103.

It is clear that the early Jesuits laboured devotedly to arrest the enormous lapse from the Church of Rome in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century. We need pay little attention to their boasts of conversions. Catholic immigrants were now arriving in millions, and were passing out into the lonely districts and small towns, where their faith was quickly forgotten. In 1636 the Bishop of Charlestown estimated the loss at nearly four millions in his diocese alone. Many of the Jesuits went out among the struggling pioneers and led lives of great self-sacrifice. Their energies were, however, mainly concentrated on the aggrandisement of their schools and conciliation of politicians in cities like Washington. They made sure of power in the great Republic they foresaw. It may be added that the Society was at the same time spreading in Mexico. Restored under Ferdinand, they undertook, as in Spain, to check or destroy the Liberal principles which had taken root in Mexico. For this they were banished in 1821, when the news came of the Liberal triumph in Spain, and did not return to open activity until 1843.

In the Germanic lands, except Belgium, the restored Jesuits had a severe struggle throughout the nineteenth century. Austria and Bavaria refused to publish the bull of restoration or comply with it, to the great mortification of the Jesuits. Metternich, at least, retained the spirit of Joseph II., and Ferdinand II. was not yet disposed to tempt his subjects by readmitting them. Prussia was, of course, still closed against the Jesuits as Jesuits. The first serious attempt to gain a footing in Germany was made in 1820, when the fathers who had been driven from Russia appeared on the Austrian frontier and humbly asked permission to cross the Emperor's territory. They might "cross," he drily answered; and when they secured the customary intervention of noble dames, he permitted them to go and teach loyalty among his poor subjects in Galicia and his restless subjects in Hungary. He granted funds for this purpose, and they soon had a flourishing Province in Galicia, and a general control of education. Even here they were subject to the bishops, and the imperial decrees intimate that there was much suspicion and hostility. In 1829, Styria and other provinces were opened to them, though the opposition was so violent that at Gratz we find them complaining of having to lodge in some kind of inn, with an actress for neighbour.

Ferdinand II. died in 1836, but his successor could do little for them in face of the prevailing hostility. Father Beckx, the future General, was in Vienna at the time. A Jesuit had at last brought a ray of hope into the German camp by converting the Duke and Duchess of Anhalt-Köthen, and Father Beckx was confessor to the Duchess at Vienna—and secret agent of the Society. He writes in 1837 that their enemies are very powerful, and Josephite principles triumphant; the Jesuits have only one public institution in Austria, and are forbidden to teach. Ferdinand, however, was not indisposed to enlist their aid in fighting Liberalism, and they quietly spread in the outlying provinces. The Tyrol was opened to them in 1838, and from their old college at Innspruck they proceeded to capture its schools. We shall see presently how the revolutionary storm of 1848 drove them from their new acquisitions.

In Switzerland the fortunes of the Jesuits were more romantic. During the suppression they continued to live in communities, and carefully concealed the offensive title from the eyes of Protestant citizens. After 1814 they began to induce their lay followers to petition the authorities to sanction their return to life, and the long and bitter struggle over the Society began. The canton of Solothurn was then more than eighty per cent. Catholic, and in 1816 the Grand Council was urged to restore the Society. It refused, and they then made cautious efforts in Valais and Freiburg. I am aware that in all these cases the Jesuits do not appear in connection with the petition; a few influential Catholics appeal for the return, and the Jesuits are depicted as serenely aloof from the negotiations. We are accustomed to pretences of this character. In 1818 the Grand Council of Freiburg (which also was nearly ninety per cent. Catholic) decided by sixty-nine votes to forty-two to readmit the Jesuits and entrust its schools to them. At the same time they recovered their old house at Brigue, and began to spread in Catholic Valais.