Synopsis
Jesuits are often much amused at the strange notions entertained of them by intelligent and otherwise well informed men and women in this land of general education. The non-Catholic world, as a rule, does not know what to make of them. Some however among the bitterest opponents of the Catholic Church claim to understand all about the Jesuits, and exert themselves to the utmost to denounce them as constituting a secret society plotting in every land, and in the United States in particular, for the destruction of liberty, and the establishment of an absolute dominion in Church and State. When such misrepresentations ate widely circulated, the amusement of the Jesuits is of course changed to sadness, on seeing that Their pure intentions for the greater glory of God and the eternal welfare of souls are so strangely misunderstood. Such was the case, for instance, when years ago a pamphlet was circulated in one of our western cities, of which 50,000 copies, it is said, were distributed gratis containing, amid scores of false charges, the following lines:- "To-day the Church and the Order of Jesuits arc working as a unit to make America Catholic by methods which, if successful, must inevitably destroy our American Government, root and branch." (Life and Action, Vol. 2, n. 2, p. 123.) The writer of the pamphlet quotes with full approbation, from an anti-Jesuit work, as follows :-"The General (of the Jesuits) is placed above all governments, constitutions, and laws, and even above God himself. There are no laws of a State, no rules of morality established by society, no principles of religious faith established by any Church-including even the Roman Catholic Church itself-that the Jesuit is not bound to resist, when commanded by his General to do so, no matter if it shall lead to war, revolution, or bloodshed, or to the upheaval of Society from its very foundation." Such charges may not be believed to the letter by persons of even average common sense, but yet they help to spread and deepen a common impression that the Jesuits are a very wicked and dangerous body of men. What makes the matter still worse is that anyone who would wish to examine for himself. and for this purpose look for information at the public library of his town or city, is very likely to find there no works on the subj ect but such as are written by bitter enemies of the Jesuits, for instance, "The History of the Jesuits," by Nicolini. These reasons have induced the present writer to compose a plain, clear and exact statement of the truth, which, though very brief, may give the honest enquirer satisfactory and reliable information.
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