Father Nickel, in turn, is set down as "rude, discourteous, and repulsive; to such an extent that he was deposed from his office by the general congregation, which explicitly declared that he had forfeited all authority."
It would be hard to crowd into a whole chapter as many false statements as this much and perhaps over-praised historian contrives to condense in a single sentence. For apart from the inherent impossibility of anyone who was "rude, repulsive and discourteous" arriving at the dignity of General of the Society, it is absolutely false that Father Nickel "was deposed from his office and was explicitly told that he had forfeited his authority." Far from this being the case, it was he who had summoned the congregation in order to lay before it the urgent necessity of his being relieved from the heavy burden of his office. On its assembling, the first thing he did was to ask for a Vicar because his infirmities and his age — he was then seventy-nine years old — made it impossible for him to fulfill the duties of his office, or even to take part in the proceedings of the congregation. Moreover, it is absolutely calumnious to say that the congregation explicitly declared that he had forfeited all his authority. Even Ranke, who makes the charge, declares that he was guilty of no transgression; nor was the action of the congregation in defining the Vicar's position as "not being in conjunction with that of the retiring General," anything else than a desire to avoid having the Society governed by two heads. Nor did this denote "a change in the Society's methods;" for there had been a provision in the constitution from the very beginning for even the deposition of a general. Again, far from being repulsive in his manners, the congregation proclaimed him to have been the very opposite. Indeed, all his brethren sympathized with him, especially at that moment, because, besides the usual burden of his office and his age, he was afflicted by the sad news which had just reached him that three of the Fathers who were delegates to the congregation — the Vice-Provincial of Sardinia and his two associates — had been shipwrecked at the mouth of the Tiber. The words of the congregation's acceptance of his withdrawal denote nothing but the deepest reverence and affection. They are: Congregatio obsequendum duxit voluntati charissimi optimeque meriti Parentis, that is, "The congregation deemed it proper to comply with the desire of the most beloved and most deserving Father."
Böhmer-Monod, likewise, in spite of their joint claim to sincerity and lack of bias, are especially denunciatory of the character of the Society at this juncture. "It is no longer," they say, "an autocracy, but a many-headed oligarchy, which defends its rights against the General as jealously as did the Venetian nobles against the doges. The military and monastic spirit has relaxed and a spirit of luxurious idleness and greed of worldly possessions has taken its place. Not only the writings of the enemies of the Jesuits, but the letters of their own Generals go to prove it. Thus, Vitelleschi wrote, in 1617, that the reproach of money-seeking was a universal one against the Society. Nickel also sent a grand circular letter to recall the Order to the observance of Apostolic poverty. Indeed, John Sobieski, a devoted friend of the Order, could not refrain from writing to Oliva: 'I remark with great grief that the good name of the Society has much to suffer from your eagerness to increase its fortune without troubling yourselves about the rights of others. I feel bound, therefore, to warn the Jesuits here against their passion for wealth and domination, which are only too evident in the Jesuits of other countries. Rectors seek to enrich their colleges in every way. It is their only thought.' But these reproaches made no impression on Oliva who was a sybarite leading an indolent life at the Gesù or in his beautiful villa of Albano. Even if he were the proper kind of man, he would have been powerless, for, in 1661 Goswin Nickel was deposed solely because of his rigidity towards the most influential members of the Order. The Constitution of the Order was changed, for Oliva was made General because he had humored the nepotism of the Pope."
The answer to this formidable arraignment is: — First, the General of the Society cannot be an autocrat. He must rule according to the Constitutions; failing in this, he may be deposed by the general congregation. Secondly, the society can never be ruled by an oligarchy, especially by "an oligarchy with many heads" which is a contradiction in terms. The only oligarchy possible would be the little group around the General known as the assistants, representing the different national or racial sections of the Society. But they are invested with no authority whatever. They are merely counsellors, are elected by the Congregation, and ipso facto lose their office at the death of the General, though of course they hold over until the election of his successor. The metaphor of the Venetian nobles and the doges has no application in the Society of Jesus.
Nor is it true that after Vitelleschi's death, "it lost its monastic spirit" for the simple reason that it never had that spirit. The Jesuits are not monks and their official designation in ecclesiastical documents is Clerici Regulares Societatis Jesu (Clerks, or Clerics, Regular of the Society of Jesus). It is precisely because they broke away from old monastic traditions and methods that they were so long regarded with suspicion by the secular and regular or monastic clergy, especially as the innovation was made at the very time that Martin Luther was furiously assailing monastic orders. If, however, by "the monastic spirit" is meant the religious spirit, and that is possibly the meaning of the writers, it will not be difficult to show that piety and holiness of life had not departed from the Society. For instance, some of the greatest modern ascetic writers appeared just at that time in the Society. Thus, Suárez died in 1617, and Lessius in 1623, both of whom may some day be canonized saints. To the latter, St. Francis de Sales wrote to acknowledge his spiritual indebtedness to the Society. Living at that time also were Bellarmine, Petavius, Nieremberg, Layman, Castro Palao, Surin, Nouet, de la Colombiére, and others equally spiritual. Álvarez de Paz died in 1620, Le Gaudier in 1622, Drexellius in 1630, Louis Lallemant in 1635, Lancisius in 1636, de Ponte in 1644, Saint-Jure in 1657. Meantime, the famous work on "Christian Perfection" by Rodríguez, who died in 1616, had been making its way to every religious house in Christendom. There was also a great number of holy men in the Society at that moment. Had that not been the case, Cardinal Orsini, who died in 1627, would not have asked for admission; nor Charles de Lorraine, Prince Bishop and Count of Verdun, who had entered a few years before; nor would the Pope have made the great Hungarian Pazmany a cardinal in 1616, and Pallavicini in 1659. Blessed Bernardino Realini was not yet dead; St. John Berchmans was living in 1621; and St. Peter Claver died in 1654, before his adviser St. Alphonsus Rodríguez; St. John Francis Regis made his first vows in 1633, and Vitelleschi himself is admitted to have been a man of extraordinary sanctity. A religious order with such members is the reverse of decadent.
The "military spirit" which the Society was reproached with having lost was no doubt the daring "missionary spirit" which won her so much glory in the early days. But it was by no means lost. Andrada made his famous journey to Tibet in 1624; de Rhodes started about 1630 on his famous overland trip from India to Paris, and then set off for Persia where he died; the missionaries of North America were exploring Hudson Bay and the Great Lakes and searching for the Mississippi; those of South America were following the wonderful Vieira through thousands of miles of forests and along endless rivers in Brazil; others were searching the Congo or Gold Coast or Abyssinia for souls; Jerónimo Xavier and de Nobili were in India; others again in Persia and the Isles of Greece; and Ricci and Schall and their companions were converting China. There were martyrdoms all over the world, like those of Brébeuf and his companions in Canada; Jesuits were laying down their lives in Mexico, Paraguay, the Caribbean Islands, the Philippines, Russia, England, Hungary, and above all in Japan, where every member of the Society was either butchered or exiled; while thousands of their brethren in Europe were clamoring to take their places in the pit or at the stake. That condition of things would not seem to connote degeneracy or decadence.
As for the "grand circular letter," which Father Nickel sent out to the whole Society, that document was nothing but an academic disquisition on the relative importance of poverty as against the two other vows. It was not a censure of the Society for its non-observance of poverty. With regard to Sobieski, it is impossible to imagine that he ever uttered such a calumny against his most devoted friends. They had trained him intellectually and spiritually; just before the great battle with the Tatars, he spent the whole night in prayer with his Jesuit confessor, Przeborowski, and in the morning he and all his soldiers knelt to receive the priest's blessing. Finally, when the bloody battle was won, they knelt before the altar, at the feet of the same priest, and intoned a hymn of thanksgiving to God for the glorious victory. When Przeborowski died, Father Vota took his place, and it was he who induced the hero to join the League of Augsburg, thus helping him to win the glory of being regarded as the saviour of Europe, when on September 12, 1683, he drove back the Turks from the gates of Vienna. As Sobieski died in Vota's arms, it is not very likely that he ever regarded his affectionate friends as "greedy and rapacious."
What Böhmer-Monod says regarding Vitelleschi's encyclical to the Society on the occasion of his election is equally unjustifiable. Not only does the General not denounce the Society for its degeneracy, but he explicitly says, "Although I am fully aware that there is still in the body of the Society the same spirit that animated it at the beginning, and moreover, that this spirit not only actually persists, but is conspicuously robust and full of life and vigor; nevertheless, as each one desires to see what he loves absolutely and in every respect perfect, we should all, from the highest to the lowest, strive to the utmost to have it free from the slightest stain or wrinkle. To urge this is the sole purpose of this epistle." Later on he says, "There are three things which help us to conserve this spirit: prayer, persecution and obedience." The second, at least, has never failed the Society.
That there was no such decadence or degeneracy later is placed beyond all possibility of doubt by a man whose integrity cannot for a single moment be questioned: Father John Roothaan, General of the Society, who wrote to all his brethren throughout the world concerning the third century in the life of the Order. Had he made any misstatement, he would have been immediately contradicted. As for his competency in the premises it goes without saying that no one had better means than he for becoming acquainted with the condition of the Society at that period. He testifies as follows:
"When the Society began its third centenary, it was flourishing and vigorous as it always has been in literature, theology, and eloquence; it engaged in the education of youth with distinguished success, in some countries without rivals; in others it was second almost to no other religious order; its zeal for souls was exercised in behalf of men of every condition of life not only in the countries of Europe, Catholic and Protestant alike, but among the savages of the remotest part of the world, nor was the commendation awarded them less than the fruit they had gathered; and what is most important, amid the applause they won and the favors they were granted, their pursuit of genuine piety and holiness was such, that although in the vast number of more than twenty thousand then in the Society there may have been a few, a very few, who in their life and conduct were not altogether what they should have been, and who in consequence brought sorrow on that best of mothers, the Society, nevertheless there were very many in every province who were conspicuous for sanctity and who diffused far and wide the good odor of Jesus Christ. It waged a bitter war against error and vice; it fought strenuously in defence of Holy Church and the authority of the See of Peter; it displayed a ceaseless vigilance in detecting the new errors which then began to show themselves, and whose object was to overturn the thrones of kings and princes and to revolutionize the world; and it bent every one of its energies of voice, pen, counsel and teaching to refute and as far as possible to destroy those pernicious doctrines. Hence it was sustained and favored by the Sovereign Pontiffs and by the hierarchy of the Church and its authority was held in the highest esteem by princes and people alike. It seemed like a splendid abiding-place of science and piety and virtue; an august temple extending over the earth, consecrated to the glory of God and the salvation of souls."