Jesuits Being the New Templars
Knight Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay, 1300
The Jesuits and the CFR
Jesuit-Ruled CFRThe first of two Co-Chairmen of the CFR is Carla A. Hills, who served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Gerald Ford (Knight of Malta, 33rd Degree Freemason, Vatican-controlled Bohemian Club) and as Trade Representative under George H. W. Bush (Knight of Malta, 33rd Degree Freemason, Vatican-controlled Bohemian Club, Vatican-controlled Skull & Bones, aka Papal Knights of Eulogia, CFR). She was an assistant to Attorney General Elliot Richardson, whose son, Henry S. Richardson, is a professor of philosophy at Jesuit Georgetown University. She is part of the Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission, and one of the three chairmen of the Trilateral Commission (Peter Sutherland) was Jesuit-trained at Gonzaga College. She is an advisory board member of the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA), which is chaired by brother CFR members Warren B. Rudman and Lee H. Hamilton. Rudman was Jesuit-trained at Boston College Law School and Lee Hamilton has close ties to the Jesuit Order’s Knight of Malta-directed Central Intelligence Agency. Hills is also on the board of American International Group (AIG), which CFR corporate member is run by Edward Liddy (its CEO), who was trained at the Catholic University of America. Since 1993, Hills has been on the board of Chevron, along with brother CFR member Donald S. Rice, who was trained at the Roman Catholic University of Notre Dame, its President Emeritus being long time CFR member, Roman Priest Theodore Hesburgh, one of the Vatican’s foremost leaders of Pope Benedict XVI’s 14th Amendment American Empire.
The other Co-Chairman of the CFR is Jewish Freemason Robert E. Rubin, who served under President Bill Clinton as Treasury Secretary and headed Clinton’s National Economic Council. He was a Clinton crony. Rubin’s ties to Clinton are interesting, since Bill Clinton was Jesuit-trained at Georgetown University, where he was close to the Jesuit faculty (became Class President in his junior year). Rubin has served on the board of the Center for National Policy (CNP), which is led by it’s President, Roman Catholic Tim Roemer (another graduate of the Roman Catholic University of Notre Dame as is CFR member and past Secretary of State, the mulatto Condolezza Rice).
The Vice Chairman of the CFR is anothe r Jewish Freemason, Richard E. Salomon, a senior adviser to the Jesuit cohort Knight of Malta David Rockefeller. He is Chairman of the Advisory Board of Blackstone Group. Blackstone Group is run by brother CFR members Peter G. Peterson (a former head of the Pope’s Federal Reserve Bank in New York City) and Stephen A. Schwarzman. Peterson is married to Joan Cooney, who has received honorary degrees from two Jesuit institutions (Boston College and Georgetown University) and whose mother was Roman Catholic. Peterson, holding an honorary degree from Jesuit Georgetown University, co-founded the Concord Coalition along with Warren Rudman, who was Jesuit-trained at Boston College. Jesuit-trained Peterson was also a crony of Jesuit-trained Bill Clinton. As for Stephen Schwarzman, he was a member of Skull & Bones (which is really the Vatican’s Papal Knights of Eulogia) and he celebrated his 60th birthday on February 13, 2007. One of his friends who attended the party was Knight of Malta Edward Cardinal Egan. So, we can see that both of the men running the Blackstone Group, which Saloman had close ties to, are Jesuit coadjutors.
The President of the CFR is another Freemasonic papal court Jew, Richard Haass, a member of the Jesuit/Knight of Malta-controlled Bilderberg Group (Founded by Jesuit priest Joseph Retinger, and Knight of Malta Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands). During his time in the U.S. State Department, Haass was a close adviser to CFR-member and mulatto Colin Powell, a 33rd Degree Freemason (admitted on Masonic websites) who addressed the Roman Catholic Marymount University in 2006. Haass was also the U.S. Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, which is 40% Roman Catholic as a country. Haass also served as a special assistant to George H. W. Bush, the Knight of Malta, member of the Vatican-controlled Bohemian Club, High-level Freemason, and Skull & Bones Papal Knight of Eulogia. Haass is also a Rhodes Scholar (Rhodes Scholarships have been given out to Jesuit grads, in many cases). As is the typical Jesuit modus operandi: the Freemasonic Jews are placed in the foreground, while the White Gentile Jesuits and Papal Knights direct all policies from the background!
The New York Jesuit of supreme power overseeing Timothy Cardinal Dolan’s Council on Foreign Relations is Jesuit Priest Joseph A. O’Hare. A past president of Jesuit Fordham University in the Bronx, Jesuit O’Hare is a PRESIDER of the CFR as is Knight of Malta David Rockefeller—the Black Pope’s most influential White Gentile American Cartel Capitalist and Central Banker. O’Hare was also responsible for putting papal “Court Jew” and CFR-member Michael R. Bloomberg into the mayor’s office of New York City. Yes, Freemasonic Jew Bloomberg is a “made man,” made by the Jesuit Power ruling New York. That is why Bloomberg fawned and groveled at the feet of sodomite Pope Benedict XVI when that man of sin arrived in America to converse with “Skull and Bonesman” President George W. Bush, the Caesar/Commander-in-Chief of Rome’s “Holy Roman” 14th Amendment, Cartel-Corporate Fascist, Socialist-Communist, Masonic American Empire.
Other members connected to the Jesuit Papacy are as follows:
CFR Director Peter Ackerman is Chairman of the Board of Trustees at
Freedom House, which is run by William H. Taft IV, a crony of Gerald
Ford, a SMOM Papal Knight and 33rd Degree Freemason. Taft went to
school with John Kerry, a Jesuit-trained 33rd Degree Freemason and
Skull & Bones Papal Knight of Eulogia.
CFR Director Fouad Ajami is a member of the Jesuit-controlled
Bilderberg Group (Founded by Jesuit priest Joseph Retinger, S.J. and
SMOM Papal Knight Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands) and a former
adviser to Condoleezza Rice, who graduated from the Roman Catholic
University of Notre Dame (as well as the CIA/MI6-controlled University
of Denver). Ajami is also a friend of Masonic Zionist Paul Wolfowitz.
CFR Director Madeline Albright is a professor at the Jesuit Georgetown
University and another papal court Jew.
CFR Director Charlene Barshefsky was trained at the Catholic
University of America. She was nominated by Jesuit-trained Bill
Clinton to serve as a Deputy US Trade Representative, along with
Richard W. Fisher, the head of the Jesuit Federal Reserve Bank of
Dallas. Fisher joined a bank run by the Harriman Brothers (Both
Skull&Bones Papal Knights of Eulogia) and worked under Robert Roosa,
who had links to the Jesuit cohorts Rockefeller family and worked for
the Jesuit Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
CFR Director Henry Bienen is the President of Northwestern University,
which has ties to the Ford Motor Company. The Ford Motor Company is
run by the Ford family (Jesuit cohorts who supported the
Vatican-controlled Nazi Party). The President and CEO of the Ford
Motor Company is Alan Mulally, who is Roman Catholic.
CFR Director Alan Blinder was a crony of Jesuit-trained Freemason Bill
Clinton and an advisor to Jesuit-trained John Kerry (33rd Degree
Freemason, Skull & Bones Papal Knight of Eulogia). Blinder was Vice
Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Jesuit Federal Reserve under
Chairman Alan Greenspan (SMOM).
CFR Director Stephen W. Bosworth was given the post of special
representative by Hillary Clinton, the wife of Jesuit-trained Bill
Clinton, and a part of the Jesuit-controlled Bilderberg Group (Joseph
Retinger, SJ, Prince Bernhard SMOM). Bosworth is an adviser of the
Jesuit-trained President of the Philippines (Gloria Arroyo) and is a
member of the board of International Textile Group, which is run by
Wilbur Ross, who was Jesuit-trained at Xavier High School, had ties to
the Rothschild Family (Guardians of the Papal Treasury).
CFR Director Tom Brokaw has honorary degrees from the Jesuit Boston
College, the Jesuit Fairfield University, and the Jesuit Fordham
University. He was a longtime friend of Tim Russert, the
Jesuit-trained Freemason who was part of a Jesuit frat club at John
Carroll University and had a son who was Jesuit-trained at Boston
College.
CFR Director Sylvia Burwell was a crony of Bill Clinton (his deputy
Chief of Staff 1997-1998), who was Jesuit-trained at Georgetown
University, where he served once as class president and was close to
the Jesuit faculty.
CFR Director Frank Caufield co-founded Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers along with Brooks Byers, a member of the Vatican-controlled
Bohemian Club. He is on the board of Caremark, which is run by Thomas
M. Ryan, who is a director of the Bank of America, which was founded
by a Knight of Malta and is 51% owned by the Jesuits, as reported by
Der Spiegel in 1958.
CFR Director Kenneth Duberstein was a crony of Ronald Reagan, the
Knight of Malta and happy member of the Vatican-controlled Bohemian
Club. Duberstein was the Vice President of Timmons & Company, which
was founded and run by William Timmons, a Jesuit-trained (Georgetown
University) 33rd Degree Freemason who was influenced by Jesuit-trained
(Georgetown University) Thomas Boggs. One of the clients of
Duberstein’s lobbying firm is American Council of Life Insurers
(ACLI), which is run by Frank Keating, a Jesuit-trained Knight of
Malta. Duberstein is a director of Conoco Phillips, which is run by
James J. Mulva, who is funding a library that’s being built at the
Roman Catholic St. Norbert College in Wisconsin.
CFR Director Richard N. Foster is a director of the TCW group, which
is owned by a Rothschild-linked company in France. The Rothschilds are
Jesuit cohorts and “guardians of the Papal treasury”.
CFR Director Stephen Friedman worked for Goldman Sachs, which is run
by Lloyd Blankfein, an associate of the Rockefeller family (Jesuit
cohorts). From 1998-2002, he served as a senior principal of Marsh &
McLennan, which is run by Jeffrey Greenberg, who was Jesuit-trained at
Georgetown University.
CFR Director Ann Fudge has close ties to General Electric, which is
run by Jeffrey R. Immelt, who has addressed the Roman Catholic
University of Notre Dame.
CFR Director Maurice Greenberg, a friend of Henry Kissinger (Jesuit
coadjutor) who served on the Jesuit Georgetown University’s Center for
Strategic and International Studies. Greenberg’s son, Jeffrey, was
Jesuit-trained at Georgetown University. Greenberg was also a crony of
Ronald Reagan, the Knight of Malta and happy member of the
Vatican-controlled Bohemian Club. For one year, Greenberg was an
adviser of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, who is a Jesuit-trained
Roman Catholic named Donald Tsang (educated at an all-male Jesuit
school called Wah Yan College). Greenberg is an associate of the
Rockefeller family (Jesuit cohorts) and is a past Chairman, Deputy
Chairman, and Director of the Jesuits’ Federal Reserve Bank of New
York.
CFR Director J. Tomilson Hill is the Vice Chairman of the Blackstone
Group, which we already saw is controlled by two Jesuit coadjutors.
CFR Director Richard Holbrooke is a member of the Jesuit-controlled
Bilderberg Group (Joseph Retinger, SJ, Prince Bernhard SMOM). He was
an advisor to Jesuit-trained 33rd Degree Freemason and Skull & Bones
Papal Knight of Eulogia John Kerry. He was an advisor to Hillary
Clinton, a member of the Jesuit/Knight of Malta-controlled Bilderberg
Group and the wife of Jesuit-trained Bill Clinton.
CFR Director Alberto Ibarguen is on the board of Pepsico, which is run
by Indra K. Nooyi, a member of the Jesuit-controlled Bilderberg Group
and a board member of the Jesuits’ Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
CFR Director Shirley Jackson is a trustee of the Jesuit Georgetown
University.
CFR Director Henry Kravis is the son of Raymond Kravis, who had been a
close business partner of Joseph Kennedy, a most devout Roman Catholic
Knight of Malta.
CFR Director Jami Miscik was Deputy Director of the Vatican-controlled
CIA. She served as an Executive Assistant to Jesuit-trained Knight of
Malta and CFR member George J. Tenet.
CFR Director Joseph Nye was a crony of Bill Clinton, who was
Jesuit-trained at Georgetown University, where he had close ties to
the Jesuit faculty and was once class president. Nye served on the
board of the Jesuit Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and
International Studies.
CFR Director Ronald Olson clerked for Chief Judge David L. Bazelon,
who had a close friendship with William J. Brennan, a Georgetown
University professor.
CFR Director James Owens is a director of the Peter G. Peterson
Institute, which is run by Peter G. Peterson, who is married to a
woman who has honorary degrees from several Jesuit universities.
Peterson also co-founded the Concord Coalition with Warren Rudman, who
was Jesuit-trained at Boston College.
CFR Director Colin Powell is a 33rd Degree Freemason who addressed the
Roman Catholic Marymount University in 2006.
CFR Director David Rubenstein is a co-founder of the Carlyle Group,
which has been controlled by Knights of Malta such as Frank Carlucci
and George H.W Bush.
CFR Director George E. Rupp is the dean of Harvard Divinity School
a favorite non-Catholic University for Jesuit Coadjutors.
CFR Director Anne-Marie Slaughter is a crony of Hillary Clinton, who
is a member of the Jesuit-controlled Bilderberg Group and the wife of
Jesuit puppet Bill Clinton (Jesuit-trained at Georgetown University).
CFR Director Joan E. Spero is a crony of Bill Clinton, the Jesuit
coadjutor who was trained at Georgetown University, where he was class
President and very tight with the Jesuit faculty. (A lot of these CFR
spooks have ties to the Jesuit coadjutor Clinton family, huh?)
CFR Director Vin Weber co-chaired a task force with Madeline Albright,
a professor at the Jesuit Georgetown University. Weber is part of
PNAC, which is controlled by Jewish Jesuit Coadjutor William Kristol,
the former roommate of 4th Degree Knight of Columbus Alan Keyes.
CFR Director Christine Todd Whitman is an associate of the Rockefeller
Family (Jesuit cohorts).
CFR Director Fareed Zakaria is an editor of Newsweek, which is owned
by the Washington Post Company, which is run by Donald Graham, a
member of the Jesuit-controlled Bilderberg Group.The Jesuit Oath Exposed
The Jesuit Oath Exposed
"Go ye, then, into all the world and take possession of all lands in the name of the Pope. He who will not accept him as the Vicar of Jesus and his Vice-Regent on earth, let him be accursed and exterminated." Professor Arthur Noble
[The following is the text of the Jesuit Extreme Oath of Induction
as recorded in the Journals of the 62nd Congress, 3rd Session, of the
United States Congressional Record (House Calendar No. 397, Report No.
1523, 15 February, 1913, pp. 3215-3216), from which it was subsequently
torn out. The Oath is also quoted by Charles Didier in his book Subterranean Rome
(New York, 1843), translated from the French original. Dr. Alberto
Rivera, who escaped from the Jesuit Order in 1967, confirms that the
induction ceremony and the text of the Jesuit Oath which he took were
identical to what we have cited below. – A. N.]
When a Jesuit of the minor rank is to be elevated to
command, he is conducted into the Chapel of the Convent of the Order,
where there are only three others present, the principal or Superior
standing in front of the altar. On either side stands a monk, one of
whom holds a banner of yellow and white, which are the Papal colours,
and the other a black banner with a dagger and red cross above a skull
and crossbones, with the word INRI, and below them the words IUSTUM NECAR REGES IMPIUS. The meaning of which is: It is just to exterminate or annihilate impious or heretical Kings, Governments, or Rulers.
Upon the floor is a red cross at which the postulant
or candidate kneels. The Superior hands him a small black crucifix,
which he takes in his left hand and presses to his heart, and the
Superior at the same time presents to him a dagger, which he grasps by
the blade and holds the point against his heart, the Superior still
holding it by the hilt, and thus addresses the postulant:
(The Superior speaks:)
My son, heretofore you have been taught to act the
dissembler: among Roman Catholics to be a Roman Catholic, and to be a
spy even among your own brethren; to believe no man, to trust no man.
Among the Reformers, to be a Reformer; among the Huguenots, to be a
Huguenot; among the Calvinists, to be a Calvinist; among other
Protestants, generally to be a Protestant; and obtaining their
confidence, to seek even to preach from their pulpits, and to denounce
with all the vehemence in your nature our Holy Religion and the Pope;
and even to descend so low as to become a Jew among Jews, that you might
be enabled to gather together all information for the benefit of your
Order as a faithful soldier of the Pope. You have been taught to plant
insidiously the seeds of jealousy and hatred between communities,
provinces, states that were at peace, and to incite them to deeds of
blood, involving them in war with each other, and to create revolutions
and civil wars in countries that were independent and prosperous,
cultivating the arts and the sciences and enjoying the blessings of
peace; to take sides with the combatants and to act secretly with your
brother Jesuit, who might be engaged on the other side, but openly
opposed to that with which you might be connected, only that the Church
might be the gainer in the end, in the conditions fixed in the treaties
for peace and that the end justifies the means. You have been taught
your duty as a spy, to gather all statistics, facts and information in
your power from every source; to ingratiate yourself into the confidence
of the family circle of Protestants and heretics of every class and
character, as well as that of the merchant, the banker, the lawyer,
among the schools and universities, in parliaments and legislatures, and
the judiciaries and councils of state, and to be all things to all men,
for the Pope's sake, whose servants we are unto death.
You have
received all your instructions heretofore as a novice, a neophyte, and
have served as co-adjurer, confessor and priest, but you have not yet
been invested with all that is necessary to command in the Army of
Loyola in the service of the Pope. You must serve the proper time as the
instrument and executioner as directed by your superiors; for none can
command here who has not consecrated his labours with the blood of the
heretic; for "without the shedding of blood no man can be saved".
Therefore, to fit yourself for your work and make your own salvation
sure, you will, in addition to your former oath of obedience to your
order and allegiance to the Pope, repeat after me:
(Text of the Oath:)
I_______________ , now in the presence of Almighty
God, the blessed Virgin Mary, the blessed St. John the Baptist, the
Holy Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, and all the saints, sacred host
of Heaven, and to you, my Ghostly Father, the superior general of the
Society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, in the pontification
of Paul the Third, and continued to the present, do by the womb of the
Virgin, the matrix of God, and the rod of Jesus Christ, declare and
swear that His Holiness, the Pope, is Christ's Vice-Regent and is the
true and only head of the Catholic or Universal Church throughout the
earth; and that by the virtue of the keys of binding and loosing given
to His Holiness by my Saviour, Jesus Christ, he hath power to depose
heretical Kings, Princes, States, Commonwealths, and Governments, and
they may be safely destroyed. Therefore to the utmost of my power I will
defend this doctrine and His Holiness's right and custom against all
usurpers of the heretical or Protestant authority whatever, especially
the Lutheran Church of Germany, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and
the now pretended authority and Churches of England and Scotland, and
the branches of same now established in Ireland and on the continent of
America and elsewhere and all adherents in regard that they may be
usurped and heretical, opposing the sacred Mother Church of Rome. I do
now denounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king,
prince or State, named Protestant or Liberal, or obedience to any of
their laws, magistrates or officers. I do further declare the doctrine
of the Churches of England and Scotland of the Calvinists, Huguenots,
and others of the name of Protestants or Masons to be damnable, and they
themselves to be damned who will not forsake the same. I do further
declare that I will help, assist, and advise all or any of His
Holiness's agents, in any place where I should be, in Switzerland,
Germany, Holland, Ireland or America, or in any other kingdom or
territory I shall come to, and do my utmost to extirpate the heretical
Protestant or Masonic doctrines and to destroy all their pretended
powers, legal or otherwise. I do further promise and declare that,
notwithstanding, I am dispensed with to assume any religion heretical
for the propagation of the Mother Church's interest; to keep secret and
private all her agents' counsels from time to time, as they entrust me,
and not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by word, writing or
circumstances whatever; but to execute all that should be proposed,
given in charge, or discovered unto me by you, my Ghostly Father, or any
of this sacred order. I do further promise and declare that I will have
no opinion or will of my own or any mental reservation whatever, even
as a corpse or cadaver (perinde ac cadaver), but will
unhesitatingly obey each and every command that I may receive from my
superiors in the militia of the Pope and of Jesus Christ. That I will go
to any part of the world whithersoever I may be sent, to the frozen
regions north, jungles of India, to the centres of civilisation of
Europe, or to the wild haunts of the barbarous savages of America
without murmuring or repining, and will be submissive in all things,
whatsoever is communicated to me. I do further promise and declare that I
will, when opportunity presents, make and wage relentless war, secretly
and openly, against all heretics, Protestants and Masons, as I am
directed to do, to extirpate them from the face of the whole earth; and
that I will spare neither age, sex nor condition, and that will hang,
burn, waste, boil, flay, strangle, and bury alive these infamous
heretics; rip up the stomachs and wombs of their women, and crush their
infants' heads against the walls in order to annihilate their execrable
race. That when the same cannot be done openly I will secretly use the
poisonous cup, the strangulation cord, the steel of the poniard, or the
leaden bullet, regardless of the honour, rank, dignity or authority of
the persons, whatever may be their condition in life, either public or
private, as I at any time may be directed so to do by any agents of the
Pope or Superior of the Brotherhood of the Holy Father of the Society of
Jesus. In confirmation of which I hereby dedicate my life, soul, and
all corporal powers, and with the dagger which I now receive I will
subscribe my name written in my blood in testimony thereof; and should I
prove false, or weaken in my determination, may my brethren and fellow
soldiers of the militia of the Pope cut off my hands and feet and my
throat from ear to ear, my belly be opened and sulphur burned therein
with all the punishment that can be inflicted upon me on earth, and my
soul shall be tortured by demons in eternal hell forever. That I will in
voting always vote for a Knight of Columbus in preference to a
Protestant, especially a Mason, and that I will leave my party so to do;
that if two Catholics are on the ticket I will satisfy myself which is
the better supporter of Mother Church and vote accordingly. That I will
not deal with or employ a Protestant if in my power to deal with or
employ a Catholic. That I will place Catholic girls in Protestant
families that a weekly report may be made of the inner movements of the
heretics. That I will provide myself with arms and ammunition that I may
be in readiness when the word is passed, or I am commanded to defend
the Church either as an individual or with the militia of the Pope. All
of which I,_______________, do swear by the blessed Trinity and blessed
sacrament which I am now to receive to perform and on part to keep this
my oath. In testimony hereof, I take this most holy and blessed
sacrament of the Eucharist and witness the same further with my name
written with the point of this dagger dipped in my own blood and seal in
the face of this holy sacrament.
(He receives the wafer from the Superior and writes
his name with the point of his dagger dipped in his own blood taken from
over his heart.)
(Superior speaks:)
You will now rise to your feet and I will instruct
you in the Catechism necessary to make yourself known to any member of
the Society of Jesus belonging to this rank. In the first place, you, as
a Brother Jesuit, will with another mutually make the ordinary sign of
the cross as any ordinary Roman Catholic would; then one crosses his
wrists, the palms of his hands open, and the other in answer crosses his
feet, one above the other; the first points with forefinger of the
right hand to the centre of the palm of the left, the other with the
forefinger of the left hand points to the centre of the palm of the
right; the first then with his right hand makes a circle around his
head, touching it; the other then with the forefinger of his left hand
touches the left side of his body just below his heart; the first then
with his right hand draws it across the throat of the other, and the
latter then with a dagger down the stomach and abdomen of the first. The
first then says Iustum; and the other answers Necar; the first Reges;
the other answers Impious. The first will then present a small piece of
paper folded in a peculiar manner, four times, which the other will cut
longitudinally and on opening the name Jesu will be found written upon
the head and arms of a cross three times. You will then give and receive
with him the following questions and answers:
From whither do you come? Answer: The Holy faith.
Whom do you serve? Answer: The Holy Father at Rome, the Pope, and the Roman Catholic Church Universal throughout the world.
Who commands you? Answer: The Successor of St.
Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus or the Soldiers of
Jesus Christ.
Who received you? Answer: A venerable man in white hair.
How? Answer: With a naked dagger, I kneeling upon the cross beneath the banners of the Pope and of our sacred order.
Did you take an oath? Answer: I did, to destroy
heretics and their governments and rulers, and to spare neither age, nor
sex, nor condition; to be as a corpse without any opinion or will of my
own, but to implicitly obey my Superiors in all things without
hesitation or murmuring.
Will you do that? Answer: I will.
How do you travel? Answer: In the bark of Peter the fisherman.
Whither do you travel? Answer: To the four quarters of the globe.
For what purpose? Answer: To obey the orders of my
General and Superiors and execute the will of the Pope and faithfully
fulfil the conditions of my oaths.
Go ye, then, into all the world and take possession
of all lands in the name of the Pope. He who will not accept him as the
Vicar of Jesus and his Vice-Regent on earth, let him be accursed and
exterminated.
JESUITS
The Jesuits became the predominant group supplying confessors to (meaning, hearers of the confessions of) kings and princes and those in authority. As the New Catholic Encyclopedia says, "they acted as royal confessor to all French kings for 2 centuries, from Henry III to Louis XV; to all German emperors after the early 17th century; to all Dukes of Bavaria after 1579; to most rulers of Poland and Portugal; to the Spanish kings in the 18th century; to James II of England; and to many ruling or princely families throughout Europe."
Thus, they were faced with the problem of how strict to be in their moral advice to kings, knowing that if they did not cut a royal penitent some slack, he might simply find himself another confessor who understood the complexities of his situation, and did not expect the impossible from him. Since retaining the confidence of a king meant opportunities to save not only his soul but the souls of many of his subjects, the pressure to be lenient was often overwhelming. The problem is, of course, not restricted to Jesuits, but is faced by anyone who is giving moral advice and does not want the advisee to become discouraged and call the whole thing off, but at the same time does not want to give the impression that God's demands are negotiable. The Jesuits were doing this under a brighter spotlight than most, and under more pressure to be accommodating than most.
As advisors to kings, they influenced political policy. A royal confessor was not slow to tell a king that he had a duty to make the kind of political alliances that would promote the temporal interests of the Church. It was Le Tellier, Jesuit confessor to Louis XIV, who in the 1680's persuaded that monarch to revoke the Edict of Nantes, which granted religious liberty to Protestants.
One of their political involvements, in particular, proved disastrous. In October 1894, Captain Dreyfus, the only Jew on the General Staff of the French Army, was arrested for treason and spying on behalf of Germany. He was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island, just off the northern coast of South America. Since he was in fact innocent, his arrest was a minor misdeed, which turned into a major misdeed when the French establishment showed itself ready to condemn an innocent man rather than admit a mistake. The dispute over Dreyfus divided French society, and threw it into a turmoil for the next several years. (The repercussions have still not completely died out.) Most of the officers on the General Staff were Roman Catholics, and the Chief of the General Staff had a Jesuit confessor, who was widely viewed as orchestrating the whole anti-Dreyfus campaign. The chief spokesman for the pro-Dreyfus faction was the anti-religious novelist Emile Zola. There were some devout Roman Catholics who were publicly pro-Dreyfus (Charles Peguy, for example, declared that as long as Dreyfus was denied justice, France was in mortal sin), and Pope Leo III spoke out for Dreyfus, but the public perception was that the anti-Dreyfus side was the clerical side, and when that side was finally completely discredited and Dreyfus himself was triumphantly recalled from Devil's Island to France, the Roman Catholic Church in general, and the Jesuits in particular, suffered the brunt of public disapprobation.
The Suppression of the Jesuits
By the middle of the 1700's (to go back more than a century), the Jesuits had made many powerful enemies, both inside and outside the Roman Catholic Church. There were those who wished them ill because they wished the Rcc ill. But there were also those who honestly believed that their accommodatist tactics were imperilling the soul of the Church. Governments turned against them because it was thought that the political advice they gave was bad advice. And so they were banned in one country after another: Portugal in 1759, France in 1764, Spain and her territories in 1767, followed by the Sicilies and Parma. Next the Pope was pressured to suppress the order altogether. Clement XIII refused. When he died in 1769, anti-Jesuit forces backed a candidate who won and became Clement IV. Four years later, in 1773, he disbanded the order. The superior general was imprisoned in Rome until he died in 1775. Members of the order continued to function as secular priests, and in some places were allowed to continue to teach and to run schools, though not as Jesuits. Ironically, the order survived as an organization in Russia, where the East Orthodox Empress Catherine valued them as schoolmasters, and refused to allow their dissolution. In 1814, after the fall of Napoleon, in the newly conservative political climate, the Pope restored the order.
Jesuits and Accommodationism
The principal complaint leveled against the Jesuits (not counting charges of criminal conspiracy) has been that they are politicians. Now, politics, it is said, is the art of the possible, and a good politician knows that to insist on a perfect program is often to end up with no program. Thus, the Jesuits did not expect too much of the kings they were trying to keep from slipping the leash altogether, did not expect too much of the newly converted Asian, and so on.
Example: some of their early missionaries to China dressed as mandarins, and held that the ANALECTS--the ethical maxims of Confucius--were full of sound moral wisdom, and should be regarded not as un-Christian but as pre-Christian, "a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ" (Galatians 3:24). This seems to place it in the same category as, say, the Proverbs of Solomon. Now the Jesuits were careful not to say in so many words that the Analects were inspired or had the same authority as the Proverbs, but they were prepared to quote them in their sermons, and to read aloud from them in church services. Again, there was the question of "ancestor worship." Chinese kept lists of their ancestors inscribed on wooden tablets, and these tablets held a place of honor in the home, and family members regularly bowed or knelt to them. This appeared to some Westerners as blatant idolatry, and something that must be stamped out. However, as a present-day Chinese Christian (Lin Yu-Tang, in his From Pagan To Christian) has observed, Chinese backs and knees are in general more flexible than Western ones. Chinese children regularly bow or kneel to their parents as a gesture of respect. It would not occur to them that they were treating their parents as deities. The Jesuits were prepared to tolerate the retention of the ancestral tablets by Christian converts. Before you decide whether they were right, consider the following question:
Suppose that you are a missionary in China. A man has heard your preaching, and is about to be baptized, together with his family. They arrive at the church for the ceremony, and you see that the man has brought with him his ancestral tablets. He says: "I wish my ancestors to witness this important step in our lives." Do you invite him to place the tablets on a chair or table near the baptismal font, or do you tell him that the tablets are idols and must be destroyed at once before the ceremony can proceed?
The Emperor of China had agreed to become a Christian, and was about to be baptized. But rivals of the Jesuits denounced them to Rome for compromises on questions like ancestral tablets. The Pope forbade any further honoring of the ancestors or the tablets, and the Emperor decided not to become a Christian after all. As one angry historian put it, "So the Franciscans were happy, and the Pope was happy, and nothing was lost but Asia!"
A debate:
Brown says: If the Emperor would not give up his tablets in order to become a Christian, then his conversion pretty superficial in the first place, and he would never have become a thorough Christian even if he had been accommodated on the matter."
Green says: "How do you know what he would have become if he had been baptized and had started attending Christian worship. He might have spontaneously given up the tablets. Do you really believe that no one grows in the faith after his initial conversion? Besides, you are ignoring the millions of Chinese who would have heard the Gospel if the Emperor had been baptized. Constantine may not have been in all respects an ideal Christian. But his support for Christianity, even if we suppose it to have been totally hypocritical, made possible the preaching of the Gospel to those who would not otherwise have heard it."
Brown says: "But how do you expect the Emperor, or any other Chinese convert, to see that tablets are wrong if their preachers have told them that tablets are all right?"
My comment: Both positions are such as might be taken by a reasonable Christian, and the one thing that it would really distress me to hear from either Brown or Green is the assertion that the other is shown by his position to be not a true Christian at all.
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