In Carlyle’s Latter Day Pamphlets, he writes
Ok it’s not just Carlyle but other writers that make constant remarks to Jesuitism, viewing it as the depths of deceit and evil.
Ok I understand the concept of Anglican/Catholic rivalry, but I just view the Jesuits as part of the Catholic mission, and not particularly special besides. Why was Ignatius so marked for criticism by our Anglican friends? Was he that bad?
I don’t know much about these things, but I’ve also heard Catholics of the Marianist order grumbling about Jesuits.
The Jesuits are and were, as you probably know, a teaching and missionary order, and were usually on the “front lines” of the Counter Reformation. It was the Jesuit Edward Campion, for instance, who was the leader of the priests sent to England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth to minister to Catholics in secret.
It was Father Canesius, a Jesuit, who lead the Counter Reformation in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire. In the 16th century, it was the Jesuits who evangelized Japan. It was a Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, who led the Catholic mission in China. It was French Jesuits who preached among the Native Americans.
Basically, the Jesuit’s militant Catholic stance, their willingness to go pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything and their really strict code of obedience (The Superior General of the Jesuits was nicknamed “The Black Pope” because he was generally considered to be the second most powerful member of the Catholic hierarchy, because the Jesuits were loyal to just him and the Pope) led to them being feared and hated by Protestants, who accused them of all sorts of diabolical schemes.
They were special, all right, they were the militant order formed for the specific purpose of spearheading the Counter Reformation and fighting back the Protestant tide. (Now they’re mostly just academics – most intellectual Catholic order ever, the Jesuits. I went to Georgetown U. myself.)
I think that’s mostly because they get upset because Xavier keeps beating Dayton.
The term I’d always heard was “the Pope’s shock troops”. It’s kind of surprising how many Jesuits were martyred, when you consider that the order is less than 500 years old.
Also, the Superior General was called the “Black Pope” because he was the 2nd most powerful person in the Church, and because he wore black clothing, unlike the Pope himself.
Speaking from experience, I think it has changed a lot now by now, but around the 80’s the Jesuits were renown in El Salvador for speaking out against the oppressive socioeconomic structure of Salvadoran society and the unjust arrest and murder of many people.
Several paid with their lives for daring to do so.
The Maristas OTOH made virtually no waves about the unjust state of affairs then , and unwillingly (?), they comforted the souls the oppressors.
I think it’s mainly the Jesuit Oath that gets people upset, here’s an article written to debunk the oath, but presents it in its entirety to show what the issue was. A lot of people strongly believe that the Jesuit order is just the Templar Knights labeled differently. As you surely know, the CC began to fear the growing power of the Templars and had them disbanded, but many people say that they just went into hiding and started changing their name, then finally the order worked its way back into the CC. However, one can only speculate, there seems to be a problem with tracking the movements of an order that doesn’t want to be tracked :D, they tend to want to cover up their movements.
There’s also that famous “Jesuitical Casuistry” that became a byword for “sophistry” . . . the Jesuits having been trained to preach and convert through logical argument or something resembling it from a distance.
Certainly both fall under the Knight Templar trope. (Actually, the Jesuits fit it better.)
As an ex-Catholic, it seems to basically boil down to the Jesuits, as originally constituted, being perceived as the vehicle through which some of the Catholic Church’s worst excesses in the name of missionary work were perpetrated. There’s a lot of a sense that they’re barely-contained soldier-fanatics among people who particularly dislike them.
No one expects the Jesuitical Mission!
From what I understand, there was a lot of fear of the Jesuits historically, probably because they were relentless and willing to sacrifice themselves for the faith. Add to that a long tradition of intellectualism and a focus on teaching, and they could very easily have been (and still could be) perceived as a threat to churches and institutions whose views and teachings run counter to those of the Church.
I personally suspect it’s the teaching focus that makes them so threatening- if they run the best school in the area, do you send your kids there, or to the lesser school that won’t have a Catholic/Jesuit slant to the education? Pretty awful choice, if you ask me.
Today’s Jesuits are extremely serious about their teaching mission and about social justice- this makes them an irritant in places where social justice isn’t a priority.
It’s probably better to say the King of France wanted their money, and leaned on the pope until he disbanded the Templars and let the King seize their wealth.
Weren’t they in charge of the Inquisition? That’d leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth.
Those were the Dominicans, for the most part.
Please, that was all a long time ago. Let’s just think of them now as . . . good at baseball.
No, that was mostly the Dominicans (aka, the Dogs of God, a nice Latin pun.)
Should have previewed; knew somebody would beat me to it.
The Jesuits also created the Jesuit Reductions of South America, “variously described as jungle utopias or as theocratic regimes of terror.” (But a good weight-loss plan either way! :))Inspired The Mission, which plays it the utopian way.