CHAPTER XIII. The Jesuit in the Confessional—The Flogging Mania of the Middle Ages.

THERE is no subject of such importance as that of which we are about to treat. In the Roman Catholic Church every one, from the trembling child to the aged and feeble man and woman, is obliged to confess if he hopes for eternal salvation. What a terrible bondage, what an awful crime. And all this must be done and suffered at the dictates of a church which, after all, has confessed herself very doubtful if her priests really possess the “orders,” without which they cannot absolve. Enough has been said on that subject, but it is of such grave importance that we would ask the reader again to glance at the pages in which the question is discussed. If all this pain, if all this shame, if all this agony has to be endured for nothing, what shall be said of those who inflict it? And they know, as few of their penitents know, that the probabilities are against them.

Why History and Biography ave Falsified.

It is no wonder that Rome discourages investigation, and silences thought as a deadly crime. No wonder that she falsifies history, that she dreads honest biography, that she dares not be true. Truth would be her deathblow. But for us, shall we submit to her commands, and bow before her dicta? Shall we do all that in us lies, as so many are doing at the present day, to support such a system, or shall we do all that in us lies to defeat it?

The moral, or rather the immoral teaching, of the confessional has been a subject of much discussion, and perhaps has had more exposure than any other subject connected with the Church of Rome. This system is necessary for Rome, and it is one of the notes against her that it should be so.

Perhaps only those who have had a large experience of the system can understand all its evils. It is obviously true that there must be a serious moral contamination to both the priest and the penitent, but this is by no means the only evil. One important point has been somewhat overlooked by those who have treated of it, that point is the question of direction. This touches every affair of life, and is the real source of the power of the Church of Rome. We commence, however, with the question of confession as far as it is merely the confession of sin.

And first, in order to understand the power of Rome, in this and all else, we must try to realise the fact that Roman Catholics believe in the power of the priest to forgive sin, as truly and absolutely as we believe in the power of Christ. We must remember that from the very dawn of reason the Roman Catholic child is taught to look on the priest practically as a god, whose word is absolute, whose power is Divine. The confessional is repulsive to every Catholic, not because it is always a source of evil of a certain kind, but because human nature shrinks from exposing its faults and foibles to any human creature. Hence it has been necessary to make the confessional a source of absolute obligation under the most terrible penal ties. Better, cries the priest, to be ashamed here than to be ashamed for all eternity. Hence it is that the priest insists on the child going to confession at the very earliest age possible. No child, they say, is too young to be damned (and horrible stories are told to children to frighten them on this subject), so no child is too young to go to confession. The chain is wound round the soul at such an early age that its power is not realised, and, in some cases, at least, the chain is never broken.

“Hell Opened to Christians.”

A book called “Hell Opened to Christians,” was published in Ireland some years ago, but was withdrawn from circulation for a time at least, in consequence of the exposure of its horrible teaching by Protestants. The tortures which even children of seven years of age endured in hell because they would not go to confession, were described with all the realism of a Dante.

In the “Examination of Conscience, etc.” by Liguori, we read: “Tell me, my sister, if in punishment of not confessing a certain sin, you were to be burnt alive in a cauldron of boiling pitch, and if, after that, your sin was to be revealed to all your relatives and neighbours, would you conceal it? You certainly would not conceal it, if you knew that by confessing it your sin should remain secret, and that you should escape being burnt alive. Now, it is more than certain that, unless you confess that sin, you shall have to burn in hell for all eternity, and that on the day of judgment it shall be made known to the whole human race.”

How far all this man-made religion is from the pure Gospel of Christ we need not say, the Eternal God cannot be unjust, and it would be a ghastly injustice when the penalty of sin has been once for all paid in blood to exact it again. This is one of the many things which makes the system of Rome so derogatory to the Majesty of Heaven.

But the power which the confessional places in the hands of the Church is almost inconceivable. Rome claims the right to decide on every question of family relationship, on every event in life, on every change of state, on every political and social matter. Rome rules with a vengeance terrible to its subjects, and beyond compare dangerous to every human being who can be reached by her influence. She forbids all intercourse with heretics where and when she dare, she regulates all intercourse with heretics where she cannot forbid it. Which is the more dangerous to the public peace it would be difficult to say. Intercourse, even at the present day, and in this free country, is absolutely and sternly forbidden with those who have left the Church. A word of explanation might be said, a question might be asked, that would arouse a doubt, hence there must be no possibility of such a danger. How weak the Church of Rome is with all her boasted strength. The weakest saint can face all the world with Christ, but Rome is afraid of the poorest child, if that child has been taught a pure religion, and can read the Bible.

The Jesuits make Confession Easy.

So far reaching is the influence and power of Rome today even in England, that we have known Protestants who have declined any social intercourse with those who have left the Church of Rome, because it might offend their Roman Catholic friends. Thus Rome obtains added strength from those who, if they were asked solemnly, do they desire to see the fires of Smithfield re-lit, would declare they could not imagine such an event possible. Yet Rome has declared openly and plainly that she does desire such a consummation.

There is one of many points to be noted about the confessional, and that is that it is a system of deliberate deceit. Apart from the consideration of a certain class of moral evil, on which we do not propose to touch here more than briefly, there is the question of deliberate deceit, and in this matter the Jesuits are the chief offenders.

The object of the Jesuits has been to attract to the confessional by making confession easy, and this has been done in two ways. First, confession has been made easy by giving the lightest possible penances for even grievous sins, and by having a “moral” code which make the most grievous sin appear as a mere bagatelle. The Jesuit books published with authority for the use of confessors, prove this beyond question, and it is indeed lamentable that English gentlemen, who once prided them, selves on being honourable men, should stoop so low as to make such works the guide of their consciences, and of the consciences of others. It is a sad day for old England that even one English clergyman should have learned from an apostate church to teach falsehood and practise treachery.

But it is worthy of especial note that while the Jesuit makes it easy for a servant to rob his master, or for a youth to commit sin, he has a very different code of morals and truth where the Church is concerned.

It is a deadly crime to deceive the Church. It is a deadly crime to conceal a sin, or even a failing, from the priest. Who authorised this double code of morals? Certainly not Scripture. Even the natural law of the heathen revolts against such double dealing.

Cardinal Manning afraid of the Jesuits.

When writing of the suppression of the Jesuits by the many nations who have revolted against their code of morals, we shall enter more fully into this subject. For the present we must limit ourselves to giving some extracts from the books which they have published. We have already shown that they teach disloyalty. The only loyalty which they allow to be practised is loyalty to the Pope, and even that is subjected to the will of the General of the Order. With all other authority they are openly or secretly at war. And this is what makes the Jesuit so dangerous to the state or country where he lives, and this is the reason why he has been expelled from so many Roman Catholic countries. In the remarkable life of Cardinal Manning, amongst so much that is noteworthy, there is nothing more so than the determined hand with which he kept down the Jesuits, and the fear which his otherwise outspoken biographer had of giving them the least offence. They rule by fear, but a day comes when men rise up against their excessive tyranny, and cast them out. History repeats itself. What the continental bishops of the 16th and 17th centuries did for the protection of the Church and their people, must be done in the 19th century.

In 1614, the French Parliament examined the treatise of the famous Jesuit Frances Suarez, published at Coimbra, in 1613, permissu Superiorum. The Arrét du Parlement described it as “tending to the subversion of States,” and to “induce the subjects of kings and sovereign princes to make attempts on their sacred persons,” and ordered it to be burnt by the public executioner. It contains such propositions as these: —“ That the Pope has power to depose heretical and obstinate kings is one of the dogmas of the faith which has to be retained and believed.” “An excommunicated king may with impunity be killed by anyone.” Servin, in one of his addresses to the Parliament, enumerates, as holding the same opinions on these subjects with Suarez, the names of Bellarmine, Gretzer, Becan, Azorius, Bonarscius, Richeome, Keller, Lessius, Vasquez,—all of them Jesuits of note, to whom may be added Emmanuel Sa and Alphonsus Sa, Delrius, and Tanner. So highly, however, did Pope Paul V. approve of the work, that in September, 1614, he communicated to Suarez his approbation of its contents. The volume was reissued in 1619, and again in 1655, thus demonstrating that the brief, alleged to have been issued by Acquaviva, prohibiting all discussion by members of the company on the two objectionable propositions noticed above, was written, as the Jesuit historian Jouvencius intimates, solely to allay the unpleasant controversy awakened in France, and was not intended to be a general instruction. It was simply a deception and a snare, and is, as is remarked by Mr. Cartwright, who brought it to light, “an illustration of the equivocation practised by the Order in its corporate capacity.”

In 1652 the Jesuit Santarel taught “that the Pope can depose kings, not only for heresy, schism, and the like . . . but also for personal iniquity and uselessness, that he can depose the emperor and give his empire to another, if he does not defend the Church …. that, as St. Peter was given the power of punishing with temporal punishments and even with death, certain persons, for the correction and example of others, so to the Church and Chief Pastor is given the power of punishing with temporal punishments. princes, transgressors of divine and human laws, especially if the crime was heresy.”

Immoral Propositions of Jesuit Writers.

In 1665 and 1666 Alexander VII., in 1679 Innocent XL., and in 1690 Alexander VIII., successively condemned a large number of immoral propositions advanced by Jesuit writers, but they left altogether uncensured the maxims inculcating sedition, treason, and assassination, also contained in the works of the same authors.

On the 1st of January, 1631, the Archbishop of © Paris published his condemnations of “some propositions from Ireland, and of two English books, the one by Edward Knott, whose real name is Matthias Wilson, Vice Provincial of the Jesuits in England, and the other by John Floyde, Jesuit, under the false name of Daniel a Jesu.”,

On the 10th of February, 1631, a circular subscribed by the Archbishop of Paris and thirty four bishops then in Paris, was sent to all the archbishops and bishops of France, declaring their condemnation . of the same books, as maintaining “many schismatical and blasphemous maxims, which are most injurious to the sacrament of confirmation, and violate the . authority of the Sovereign Pontiff.”

On the 1st of April, 1641, the University of Paris condemned “La Somme des Pechés,” written by Etienne Bauni, professor of moral theology, at Clermont, the Jesuit College, and published by him at Paris in 1639, with the approbation of the provincial of the company. This sentence was soon after endorsed, on the 12th of April, 1642, by an assembly of clergy held at Mante, by the Archbishop of Toulouse, in which it was “resolved with one common voice, that the books of Father Bauni led souls to profligacy, corrupt good morals, violate natural equity and the law of nations, and excuse as light sins blasphemies, usuries, simonies, and several other sins more enormous.”

On the 18th of February, 1655, the Archbishop of Malines published an order forbidding the faithful of his diocese to read the books of the Jesuit Caramuel, afterwards immortalised by Pascal, in “The Provincial Letters.”

The parish priests of Rouen, about this time, found it necessary, for the sake of Christianity, to attempt to stem the increasing tide of Jesuit immoral teaching. On the 28th of August, and on the 26th of October, in the year 1656, they addressed a memorial to the Archbishop of Rouen, signed by twenty eight of their number, complaining of the immoral doctrines taught publicly by the Jesuit fathers, Bauni, Hereau, Caussin, Brisacier, des Bois, Berard, and La Briere.

Roman Catholic horror of Jesuits.

On the r4th of November, in the same year, the parish priests of Paris presented seventy one propositions extracted from the published writings of Caramuel, Mascarenhas, and Escobar, and on the 24th of November they laid before the General Assembly of the Clergy of France a remonstrance, from which we extract the following: “Will not the Church, Messeigneurs, disavow these rash men? Will she not testify publicly her heartfelt horror of them? Shall it be said that to be a Catholic a man must approve domestic robbery with Bauni, simony with Valentia, homicide to avoid a blow with Lessius, assassination for slander with Father Lamy, imposture and false accusations with Caramuel, that he must receive all the pernicious or extravagant decisions of Escobar as mysteries revealed by Jesus Christ, and that one is not to complain of them without being treated as a heretic?”

In 1665, the faculty of theology at Paris reported of a book published under the name of Amadeus Guimenzus by Matthew Moya, a Spanish Jesuit, Confessor to the Queen Mother of Spain, that respect for decency prevented them from. noticing, the abominations which it contained on the subject of chastity.”

Nor can it be said that these heavy charges against the Jesuits are mere “Protestant calumnies,” they are simply Roman Catholic facts.

It is noteworthy, also, that English priests have again and again protested against the interference of the Jesuits in political affairs, have declared in plain and emphatic language that they would have enjoyed perfect religious freedom in England if the Jesuits had not tried persistently to stir up strife.

The great Roman Catholic historian, De Thou, has given the substance of a very important document, which appears to have been suppressed not long after its publication. It is a memorial presented to the reigning Pontiff, Clement VIII., by English Roman Catholic priests, remonstrating against the conduct of the Jesuits in England. In it they represented :— “That before the arrival of the Jesuits in England there had been profound peace and harmony among the Catholics … That up to that time charges of treason were unheard of, that capital laws against the Anglican priests, and those. who harboured them, were not yet published, that the . Jesuits, when they joined them as associates, though few in number, had swooped upon the labours of many years, and without toil had reaped what others had sown. That afterwards, when they perceived the danger to which the Catholics were exposed by their own conduct, they had quickly made off, and deserting the warfare of God, had betaken them selves to countries beyond the seas, away from the heat and dust of the conflict, and there, instead of being men devoted to religion, had become the vendors of kingdoms, had assailed chief magistrates in the bitterest terms, had disseminated letters about invading the kingdom with a foreign army, though it was forbidden by capital laws, had written and published volumes about the controverted succession to the throne. That the result was that Catholics, when dragged before the judgment seat, rarely were questioned about religion, always about the state, and almost everything said and done by the Jesuit fathers about the civil government was turned to the ruin of the accused. That in their seminaries their sole object was to entice into the Society any youth endowed with particular talent, that hence arose complaints and rivalries, since the pupils ever became divested of the old patriotic spirit, or were harassed by the Jesuits in divers ways, for refusing to join them. That Cardinal Borromeo, of holy memory, had perceived their mode of angling, and, disliking their ambition, had deprived them of the care of seminaries in the diocese of Milan, and committed it to the secular priests. That while they held sway in the Anglican Church, a wretched dole was grudgingly distributed among the needy and the prisoners, while the Jesuits themselves lived profusely, so that it became a proverb, that the Jesuits were distinguished by the vow of poverty, but the Catholic priests by poverty itself… That Catholics had suffered much in England from the time of Henry. VIII, but never had they been beset by a heavier. calamity than by this last conflict.”

The Jesuits worse than Henry VIII.

One William Watson, educated at Rheims, ordained a priest, and sent on the mission to England in 1586, and executed in 1603 for sharing in Raleigh’s mysterious plot, into which, according to the report mentioned by Dodd, the Jesuits had inveigled him in order to get rid of a troublesome enemy, in his “Important Considerations,” by the secular priests, printed a.p. 1601, says: “Whilst the said invasion (Spaniards invasion, planned by Parsons) was thus talked of, and in preparation in Spain, a shorter course was thought of if it might have had success. Mr. Hesket was set on by the Jesuits, in 1592 or thereabouts, with Father Parsons consent or knowledge, to have stirred up the Earl of Derby to rebellion against Her Highness. Not long after, good Father Holt, and others with him, persuaded an Irishman, one Patrick Collen (as he himself confessed) to attempt the laying of his violent and villainous hands upon Her Majesty. Shortly after, in the year 1593, that notable stratagem was plotted (the whole state knoweth by whom) for Doctor Lopez, the Queens physician, to have poisoned her, for the which he was executed the year after… But we must turn again to Father Parsons, whose turnings and doublings are such as would trouble a right good hound to trace him. ….

Cause of Irish Outrages.

Thirdly, we desire you, by the mercies of God, to take heed of Novelties and Jesuitism, for it is nothing but treachery, ambition, and a very vizard (mark for disguise or protection) of most deep hypocrisy. When other kingdoms begin to loath them, why should you so far debase yourselves as to admire them?”

At the end of the pamphlet, after enumerating the designments of the Popes Pius V., Gregory XIII, and Sixtus V., of the King of Spain, of the Jesuits, especially Cardinal Alan and Parsons, against the Crown and person of Elizabeth, he makes this memorable admission: —

“If we at home, all of us, both priests and people, had possessed our souls in meekness and humility, honoured Her Majesty, born with the infirmities of the state, suffered all things, and dealt as true Catholic priests, if all us (we say) had thus done, most assuredly the state would have loved us, or at least borne with us. Where there is one Catholic there would have been ten. There had been no speeches amongst us of racks and tortures, nor any cause to have used them, for none were ever vexed that way, for simply that he was either priest or Catholic, but because they were suspected to have had their hands in some of the said most traitorous designments.”

How many of the murders, and how many of the agrarian outrages which have disgraced Ireland, and reflected on the government of England, which has never dared to put them down with a stern hand, may be traced to the influence of Jesuit theology. When it is taught that it is not murder, in fact, that it is not sin to “remove tyrants,” what is to prevent men who have been worked up to crime from committing it? And it is remarkable that no pope has ever denounced crime in Ireland, though many popes have specifically and openly encouraged it.”

“The exposure of the teaching of the Jesuits in the confessional by Pascal, in his famous “Provincial Letters,” is well known to the historian. Pascal lived and died a Romanist, and devoted to his church, which he wished to save from a system which struck at the roots of all morality. But the public read of such incidents in the history of the past with a cold indifference, which contrasts strangely with the burning eagerness with which the controversy was pursued in the beginning.

We have already related an incident in which a Jesuit father was caught in his own trap. Another example of this retribution is given by Paseal as having happened in his time. Nor could this be an invention of an enemy, for the names, dates, and places are all given, and any discrepancy of statement would have been at once detected.

Too great an Exposure.

“A certain John d’Alba was servant in the Jesuit college. of Clermont. Not being satisfied with the wages which he received, he stole some articles belonging to the fathers. He had learned from their theology that this was quite justifiable, but it was one thing to steal from “seculars,” and quite another to steal from “fathers.” The fathers in a moment of forgetfulness prosecuted him. When the culprit was brought before the judge he pleaded the teaching of the Jesuit father and casuist, Bauny.

But he pleaded in vain. The judge, M. de Moitronge, declared that the doctrine was contrary to all law, human and divine, that the unhappy man should be flogged before the gates of the college, by the common hangman, and that the writings of the Jesuits should be burned publicly at the same time.

Such an arrangement, however, would have been too great an exposure for the fathers, so they contrived to stop the prosecution, and the servant escaped. There is evidence, however, that this affair, which was made public property, was one of several reasons which caused the expulsion of the Jesuits.

Even a cursory examination of the doctrines taught by the Jesuits will prove that their system is destructive of all law, human or divine. The continued existence of such a class of men is an amazing and inexplicable fact. But all the reproaches which have been heaped, and justly heaped, on the Church of Rome, pales before the accusation which must be brought against her, of supporting and encouraging a system which has been denounced again and again by the best and highest prelates in her own communion, by Catholic princes, and by Catholic people. Nay, even an infallible pope has denounced the Jesuit, and the system of the Jesuit as an unendurable evil.

The historian Mosheim says: — “There is scarcely any part of the Catholic world which does not offer for our inspection some conflict of the Jesuits with the magistrates, with other orders of monks, or with the bishops and other religious teachers.”

It is impossible in these pages to give any detail of their conduct in carrying out their missions, but a sufficient estimate of it may be formed from the remarkable letter addressed to Innocent X., by Bishop Palafox, of Mexico, on the 8th of January, 1649. His character was so high that he was selected to occupy the post of Viceroy in Mexico, and eventually he was promoted to be Bishop of Osma, in Spain. He is described by Cretineau-Joli, the warm advocate of the Jesuits, as “A man full of apostolical gifts, possessing a bright intellect, and a heart overflowing with charity.” But the Jesuits hated him because he would not allow them to rule his diocese.

Cowardly and Effeminate.

In self-defense, he was obliged to forward to the. Pope a formal remonstrance, in which he expressed himself very plainly regarding Jesuit proceedings, not only in his own case, but also in other instances of which he was cognizant. It is from this letter to Pope Innocent X., dated 8th of January, 1649, that the following passages are cited —

“What advantages can Ministers of State, great Lords and Princes, derive from the Jesuits sometimes serving them usefully in their Court, … when they see monks, under the pretext of the internal government of consciences, enter with so much pliability into the secrets of houses, which they thus govern as well as the souls, and thus pass scandalously and perniciously from things spiritual to things political, and from profane things to the most criminal? What other order, after having fallen from its first fervour, has by the writings and examples of some of its professors, carried so much laxity into the purity of the ancient morals of the church touching usury, the ecclesiastical. precepts, those of the Decalogue, and generally, all the rules of the Christian life? Thus young men who have them as masters, being all filled with these maxims, these opinions, this doctrine, and these examples, become not only cowardly and effeminate, removed from all spirituality, and borne on to all the carnal pleasures, but there is even reason to fear that they have all their life an aversion, disgust, and horror, for all that is a little painful in the Church, and which leads to penitence and the mortification of the Cross. What order, most holy father, since the first foundation of monks and mendicants, has, like the Jesuits, practised banking in the Church of God, given out money at a profit, and held publicly, in their own houses, butchers stalls and other shops for traffic, scandalous and unworthy of a religious order? What other has ever become bankrupt, and to the astonishment and scandal of seculars, filled almost all the world with their commercial dealings contracts on this by sea and land, and with their subject? The whole Church of China groans and publicly complains that it has not been instructed but seduced by the instructions given by the Jesuits touching the purity of our belief, that they have deprived it of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, that they have concealed the Cross of the Saviour, and authorised all heathen customs! That they have rather corrupted than introduced those which are veritably Christian, that in making idolaters become Christians, they lave made Christians become idolaters, that they have united God and Belial at the dame table, in the same temple, at the same altars, and same sacrifices, and in fine, this nation beholds with inconceivable grief that under the mask of Chtistianity, they revere idols, or to speak better, that under the mask of Paganism they soil the purity of our holy religion.

Jesuits sanction Pagans Idolatry.

The bishops and ecclesiastics who, in the primitive Church, shed their blood in instructing. peoples overall the earth, did they practise the methods which the Jesuits use to instruct these Neophytes? . . . Have all the holy order ever instructed the infidels in this way? . . . Have they ever exempted their Neophytes from the precepts of mortification, of fasting, and of the reception of the Holy Eucharist at least once a year? Have they ever permitted these same Neophytes not only to go into the temples where idols are worshipped, to assist at the abominable sacrifices offered to them, even to sacrifice to them, and thus to soil their souls by so horrible a crime? . .I am much deceived if the angel of darkness does not rejoice when he beholds, in temples raised to his honour, not only his old adorers, but also the baptized, the Neophytes, and sometimes those who profess to preach our holy faith, offering with these idolaters sacrifices at his altars, kneeling down, prostrating themselves, and giving him incense, thus communicating with them by external acts . . . which, since the Apostles time, has never been suffered in the Catholic Church, with whatever pretext they try to cover this idolatry, by which, in directing internally their intention towards a cross which they carry secretly, they offer an external service to the idol of the demon.”

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