The Footprints of the Jesuits

by Richard W. Thompson

The election of Leo XIII caused general satisfaction outside the circle of Church influence. He was regarded as a representative of the highest enlightenment, and this gave rise to the hope that he would become reconciled to the existing condition of affairs in Italy, in order to pacify those members of the Church who had wrenched from his immediate predecessor the scepter of temporal sovereignty. A more favorable opportunity for pacification could not have existed; and if it had been accepted in a conciliatory spirit, the rejoicing would not have been confined to the Italians alone, but would have been well-nigh universal. But little time elapsed, however, before there were signs indicating that, instead of throwing oil upon the troubled waters, he preferred that they should remain in agitation. Two facts now conspire to account for this: First, the agreement made by the College of Cardinals to adopt the principles and adhere to the policy of Pius IX; and, second, his Jesuit education and training. Both of these facts are stated by his biographer, and the last with such particularity as to show that when he was only eight years of age he was separated from his family and placed under Jesuit care, and that his education was obtained at the colleges of that society at Viterbo and at Rome.[193] If the world had known, at the beginning of his pontificate, how solemnly he had pledged himself to his brother cardinals before his election, and how his youthful mind had been trained and fashioned by the Jesuits, it is not probable that anything would have been anticipated, or even hoped for, beyond what has transpired; for the skill of the Jesuits is displayed in nothing more effectually than in the indelible impressions they understand so well how to make upon young and undeveloped minds. Although the question to be decided seemed simple enough to the general public, both in the United States and in Europe, yet to the Jesuits it was of supreme importance; for with Church and State separated in Italy, and with Rome as the permanent capital of a kingdom independent of the pope and submissive to the popular will, their society would be crushed by the weight of public odium resting upon them. During the progress of the controversy and before the abolition of the temporal power, Pius IX had been compelled to expel them from the States of the Church on account of this odium existing in Italy; but they rallied again, with their unabated energy, after his successor had been chosen, doubtless realizing how readily a mind trained and disciplined under their system of education would yield to their demands. For a time Leo XIII seemed to be hesitating, as if in the issue between liberalism and retrogression there was some middle ground. But the Church and the world did not have long to wait before the issuance of his first official encyclical letter, which put an end to all hopes of reconciliation or compromise. In this celebrated document the war upon liberalism and progress, as recognized by the modern nations, was continued with increased and Jesuitical violence—"war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt." There was no longer any hesitation or faltering, but the distinct avowal of the purpose to revive the papacy, by the restoration of the temporal power, and to carry on the conflict until the world shall be turned away from all modern civilization and back towards the Middle Ages. His biographer takes special pains to make this plain, so that the encyclical may be interpreted according to the pope's intention. After stating that there were those who expected Leo XIII "to devise a modus vivendi with the masters of Rome and Italy," and reconcile the Church and the papacy to "modern society and its exigencies," he boastingly proclaims that the encyclical "woefully disappointed all who fancied or hoped that a pope could reconcile the revealed truth of which he is the divinely-appointed guardian, the righteousness, justice, and divine morality which flow from the revealed law of life, with the awful errors, the unbridled licentiousness of thought and word and deed, the iniquity and the immorality which are cloaked over by their pretended civilization."[194]

This learned biographer does not intend that the pope's encyclical shall be misunderstood; and when he thus indicates the "awful errors," the "unbridled licentiousness," "the iniquity and the immorality," which have been scattered over the world by modern progress and civilization—which he characterizes as "pretended" and not real—he manifestly understood the mind and motives of the pope, as he also did the issue which the papacy has made with all the most enlightened peoples of the world, and, more especially, with the prevailing popular sentiment in the United States. We must consequently accept this arraignment of our form of civilization as intentionally and deliberately made. And that he understood this issue as not confined to Italy alone, but as universal in its character, he proceeds immediately to show that the pope "speaks with authority to all mankind, the light imparted by his teaching illuminates both hemispheres."

But this encyclical itself leaves no room to doubt with regard to the universality of jurisdiction and authority claimed by the pope. Almost at the beginning it announces that he considers himself called upon, by virtue of his spiritual sovereignty, to decide matters of general import, and not merely such as are understood to pertain to the Church of Rome or to the people of Italy. Regarding himself as possessing this unlimited jurisdiction because he occupies "the place of the Prince of Pastors, Jesus Christ," he asserts pontifical authority over the whole world, in these words: "From the very beginning of our pontificate we have had before our eyes the sad spectacle of the evils which assail mankind from every side." And, accordingly, he makes his purposes known by drawing a sad picture of modern society, "impatient of all lawful power," and threatened, in consequence, with anarchy and dissolution, on account of its "contempt of the laws of morality and justice." All this, to his mind, has arisen out of the lawless spirit of revolution which modern peoples have invoked to free themselves from the crushing weight of imperial and absolute monarchism, which he proposes to revive in Italy by the re-establishment of the temporal power which the people of that country wrested from the hands of his immediate predecessor by revolution. What we, somewhat triumphantly, call patriotism, liberty, and natural right, he denounces as "a pestilential virus which creeps into the vital organs and members of human society, which allows them no rest, and which forebodes for the social order new revolutions ending in calamitous results."

Against these threatened calamities he felt himself constrained, by virtue of the universality of his spiritual dominion, to warn the world, especially that part of it which has voluntarily brought what he considers affliction upon itself, by separating Church and State and establishing freedom of religious belief, free speech, a free press, and free popular government. He seems to have allowed his mind to become disturbed and agitated by this gloomy condition of affairs, because it has been produced by the rejection of the pope's divine right to regulate whatsoever sentiments and opinions he may deem to be within the circle of his spiritual jurisdiction. "The cause of all these evils," he says, "lies principally in this: that men have despised and rejected the holy and august authority of the Church, which, in the name of God, is placed over the human race, and is the avenger and protector of all legitimate authority;" that is, that no authority whatsoever, whether of governments, peoples, or individuals, can be set up against it as rightful or legitimate. Then, looking down from this high pinnacle upon the disturbed and raging elements below, and sorrowing because his temporal dominion has been lost, he enumerates some of the principal causes which, in his opinion, threaten to wreck the happiness and welfare of society. Among these, he makes conspicuously prominent the following: Overturning the constitution of the Church by laws in force "in most countries;" obstacles to the "free exercise of the ecclesiastical ministry," which those laws have created; "the unbridled liberty of teaching and publishing all manner of evil;" depriving the Church of "the right," which he considers irrefragable, to "train and educate the young;" and, far from being least in magnitude or importance, the sacrilegious violation of the Divine law by the abolition of the pope's temporal power and imperial sovereignty over the Italian people. This enumeration was manifestly made, as may be implied from the language of his biographer, to enable him to point out more clearly to "the Catholic hierarchy" in all parts of the world, "toward what purpose their common zeal must be chiefly directed;" that is, what he expects them to contribute toward turning the world away from these modern innovations upon the papal policy, so that it may be carried back to its condition during the Middle Ages, when the papal supremacy was maintained by the terrible tribunal of the Inquisition. That he prefers that period, with its ignorance and superstition, to the present, with its advanced enlightenment and prosperity, is plainly and emphatically avowed in these words: "If any sensible man in our day will compare the age in which we live, so bitterly hostile to the religion and Church of Christ, to those blessed ages when the Church was honored as a mother of the nations, he will surely find that the society of our day, so convulsed by revolutions and destructive upheavals, is moving straightway and rapidly toward its ruin; while the society of the former ages, when most docile to the rule of the Church and most obedient to her laws, was adorned with the noblest institutions, and enjoyed tranquillity, riches, and prosperity."[195]

This is strange infatuation to be indulged in during the nineteenth century, when human energy is taxed to the utmost to give increased velocity to the car of progress, and to outstrip all previous ages in placing checks and guards upon the ambition of temporal monarchs. It requires but little research to learn that the "blessed ages" to which Leo XIII refers, and gives such marked preference over the present period, were especially distinguished by the ignorance and superstition of the multitude. History is crowded with evidences of this. Maitland—who is highly appreciated and often quoted by papal writers on account of his criticisms of Robertson, the historian—says that "the ecclesiastics were the reading men and the writing men;"[196] but does not pretend that such was the case with the peasants or common people, as the bulk of the populations were called. There is nothing better established than that no facilities for learning were afforded them, and that they were kept down at a common level of ignorance, so as to reconcile them more easily to submission and obedience. This is shown by the picture of society drawn by all the early chroniclers, especially by Froissart and Monstrelet, as well as by the more modern historians, Hallam, Robertson, and Berington. The men of learning and letters belonged to the "upper classes," for whom alone colleges and schools were provided. The people, as such, were left uninstructed, in order to make them passively obedient to the authority of Church and State, which were united by ties they were powerless to break. They were forced—with but little less severity than was shown to the captives of the Pharaohs who built the pyramids, the temple of Karnak, and other Egyptian monuments—to serve taskmasters in erecting magnificent palaces, cathedrals, and churches, designed for display by those whose vanity and pride made them oblivious to the fact that they were the product of unrewarded labor, and did not contain a stone or marble block not stained by the tears and sweat and blood of numberless humiliated victims. But all these unrequited victims were ignorant, and therefore obedient—obedient, and therefore happy! But Leo XIII, exulting at this reflection, instructs the modern nations that the curse of God is resting upon their progressive advancement, and that he, in Christ's name and place, is divinely empowered to turn them back to those "blessed ages," because, if they do not, "they must, by corrupting both minds and hearts, drag down by their very weight, nations into every crime, ruin all order, and at length bring the condition and peace of a commonwealth to extreme and certain destruction."

To escape these dreadful consequences, and save modern society from keeping open the gaping wounds it has inflicted upon itself, he makes known his pontifical purpose in these words: "We declare that we shall never cease to contend for the full obedience to our authority, for the removal of all obstacles put in the way of our full and free exercise of our ministry and power, and for our restoration to that condition of things in which the provident design of the Divine Wisdom had formerly placed the Roman pontiff." Having thus instructed all the faithful that whatsoever prohibits him from acquiring all the power and authority "formerly" possessed by the popes, must be resisted and put out of the way, whether it be constitutions, laws, or customs, he declares to them, by way of encouragement, that the world shall have no rest until this is accomplished; "not only because the civil sovereignty is necessary for the protecting and preserving of the full liberty of the spiritual power, but because, moreover—a thing in itself evident—whenever there is a question of the temporal principality of the Holy See, then the interests of the public good and the salvation of the whole of human society are involved." His enthusiasm is always heightened, and his eloquence of style becomes captivating, when his mind displays its power at the contemplation of that "temporal sovereignty" by which he hopes that he and his successors shall bring all mankind within the bounds of the pontifical jurisdiction, so that they shall have no care for this or a higher life but what is involved in the duty of passive and uninquiring obedience. It is when this enthusiasm fully possesses him that he seizes upon the occasion to give the word of command to his ecclesiastical army in all parts of the world; as when he tells them they must display their "priestly zeal and pastoral vigilance in kindling in the souls of your [their] people the love of our holy religion, in order that they may thereby become more closely and heartily attached to this chair of truth and justice, accept all its teachings with the deepest assent of mind and will, and unhesitatingly reject all opinions, even the most widespread, which they know to be in opposition to the doctrines of the Church."

This instruction is comprehensive enough to include all, both priests and laymen. It has the merit of simplicity, requiring only obedience to the pope, the full "assent of mind and will" to all the doctrines he shall announce, and the rejection of "all opinions" in opposition to them; no matter if their submission shall involve disobedience to the constitutions and laws under which they may live. He descends also to particulars, and prescribes a course of conduct for all his subordinates—like a commanding general laying down the plan of a military campaign. They must obtain the control of education, so as to "scatter the seeds of heavenly doctrines broadcast," in order to save "the young especially" from the deadly influences of State and public schools, where, according to his teaching, the method of education "clouds their intellect and corrupts their morals." They are required to instruct their pupils "in conformity with the Catholic faith, especially as regards mental philosophy," as taught by Thomas Aquinas and "the other teachers of Christian wisdom." They are to make exterminating war upon the "impious laws" which allow civil marriages, because those thus united, "desecrating the holy dignity of marriage, have lived in legal concubinage instead of Christian matrimony." And lastly, and no less imperatively, all are to be instructed in the indispensable obligation "to obey their superiors."[197]

But Leo XIII has not been content with these distinct avowals of his pontifical opinions and purposes. He has chosen to give emphasis to them in other official methods. After the death of Cardinal Franchi, his secretary of state, he appointed Cardinal Nina to that place. Whether he considered the latter not sufficiently instructed with regard to his opinions, or availed himself of the occasion to express anew and more explicitly the principles of his pontifical policy, there is no means of deciding; but whether the one or the other, he addressed to him an official communication, wherein these principles were made known with perfect distinctness. Still contemplating "the very serious peril of society from the ever-increasing disorders which confront us on every side," and "the intellectual and moral decay which sickens society," in consequence of its having thrown off allegiance to the temporal power of the pope, he arraigns as prominent among the existing evils the separation of Church and State—precisely that condition of things which exists in the United States more distinctively than anywhere in the civilized world. Upon this subject—which involves so much that is absolutely fundamental in free popular government—he says: "The chief reason of this great moral ruin was the openly proclaimed separation and the attempted apostasy of the society of our day from Christ and his Church, which alone has all the power to repair all the evils of society." And referring to the manner in which the pope had been "despoiled" of his temporal power, he admonished him "to consider that the Catholics in the different States can never feel at rest till their supreme pontiff, the superior teacher of their faith, the moderator of their consciences, is in the full enjoyment of a true liberty and a real independence;" that is, that Roman Catholics everywhere are expected to contribute immediate and active aid in bringing about the restoration of the temporal power, so that "the progress made by heresy" may be arrested, and "heterodox temples and schools" shall be destroyed.[198]

There is nothing in all this, or in anything officially done by Leo XIII—howsoever earnestly it may be rejected by liberal minds—that should detract in the least degree from the estimate in which he deserves to be held by all who appreciate upright conduct and the consistent observance of Christian virtue. For these his life has been eminently distinguished, and when its end shall have been reached—fears of which are expressed at the time these words are written—he will well deserve a lofty niche in the papal mausoleum among the greatest and best of the pontiffs. If his opinions and utterances were to be estimated alone by his personal integrity and private virtues, the force of any criticism of them would be materially lessened. But they belong to and are an essential part of the papal system which he represents and is bound by the necessities of his position to maintain against everything in conflict with it. What he has said, and so frequently repeated, is echoed back from the tombs of those of his predecessors who fought their battles with liberalism and progress when the forces which defended them were weak and the papacy was strong. He could not break a single thread in the net which encompasses him, howsoever anxiously he might desire it, and is consequently constrained to carry on the battle waged by his predecessors until final victory is won or the flag of the temporal power is sunk out of sight forever. His task grows harder and harder every day; for now the progressive forces are growing stronger while the powers of the papacy, lessened by the loss of temporal sovereignty, are steadily waning away. He is struggling against the patriotic sentiments of mankind, like a strong man battling with the waves of a tempestuous sea. Although the light of modern progress is not permitted to penetrate the walls of the Vatican, and he is shut in behind impenetrable screens especially to keep it out, he ought, nevertheless, to know that those to whose prosperity and advancement it has contributed are unwilling to acquiesce in its extinction, or to sit silently by when it is attempted. Whilst his arraignment of civil institutions which have grown up within the circle of this light may be well attributed to the papal system he officially represents, he has expressed his desire for their overthrow in such terms of censure and rebuke as to excite the suspicion that he is moved by an uncompromising and unconciliatory spirit. Whatsoever he has shown of this may rightfully be assigned to his Jesuit training and education. Having been placed under the care of that scheming and insinuating society before his opinions were matured and whilst his youthful mind was unable to detect their sophistry or their cunning, they were enabled to mold him to their purposes, as the softened wax is impressed by any seal. Any intelligent investigation of his pontifical policy, in so far as it involves the relations of the papacy to existing civil governments, will demonstrate this to all whose faculties have not been dwarfed by the same system of education and guardianship. We see every day, in the natural world, conclusive proof that "as the twig is bent so the tree is inclined."

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