times immediately preceding the Second Vatican Council of 1962 (itself, an
effort on behalf of the Church to adapt to an
increasingly modern and all-
inclusive cultural milieu.)
Despite the fact that the Jesuits represent the largest single religious order of
priests and clergy within the Catholic church and the continued prominence of
Jesuit colleges, the order itself has been experiencing a steady decline over the
past forty years owing to the increased popularity of liberation theology
(particularly in third world countries), which emphasizes the need for clergy to
maintain an express awareness to the plight of the impoverished and directly
redress social injustice as an adjunct to the mission of the church.
Critics have
referred to this as a form of Marxist Christianity, and even espy an evidence of
Illuminati doctrine in its philosophical underpinnings. But criticism of the
Jesuits isn’t wholly a modern phenomenon owing to the advent of economic
dilemmas of poverty and wealth distribution. Nor does it stem back to the rise of
Protestantism. The criticism of the Jesuit faith is not rooted in their ideology but
in their actions. And it’s been documented as early as the 17th century.
Controversy of the Society of Jesuits
The earliest criticism of the Jesuits was published in 1612 as the
Monita
Secreta Iesutus
or
Secret Instructions of the Jesuits
. Now widely considered a
hoax attributed to a former Brother named Jerome Zahorowski who had been
excommunicated a year earlier, the book purports to be the secret instructions of
the society’s fifth grandmaster
Claudio Acquaviva and alleges, among other
things, that Jesuit clergy must acquire wealth for the Society by any means
imaginable including enticing wealthy men to enter it and will the society their
estates; convincing rich widows to endow their assets to the Society and
dissuading them from remarriage; and the wholesale slander of other monastic
orders. While now discredited both by the church and its detractors, the
criticism does raise a fundamental question; just how was a monastic and
military-styled order sworn to poverty and renunciation able to forge a niche of
such commendable power within the ranks of the church that by the time of the
Counter Reformation (initiated some mere ten years after the Society’s official
founding) they numbered among the most revered, most popular and most
revered orders within the Roman Catholic church?
Intriguingly enough, it wasn’t until the rise of the Enlightenment in the 18th
century—which, as Chapter Three and Chapter Four demonstrated, was in no
small part a result of Masonic and Illuminati influence—that Jesuit conspiracies
began to be more widespread. Conflicts between Catholicism and Freemasonry
had been festering for numerous years prior; and indeed, to this date, there is a
mutual enmity between the Vatican and the vast majority of Masonic lodges.
Accusations of Jesuit support was a popular rebuttal to church-abetted attacks on
the rationalism
of Rousseau and Voltaire; and the term “Jesuit” became an
increasingly derogatory epithet well into the 19th century,
when anti-clericism
became a common facet of French intellectual life, thanks to such writers as
famed French historian and ‘philosopher of pessimism’ Jules Michelet.
Conversely, Jesuit supporters had a ready counter-argument in their own
nemesis of Adam Weishaupt but by then, it was too late; Masonic and Illuminati
ideals had come into their own rarely-waning vogue both in the New World and
the old.
Yet, much like other secret societies—as well as the Catholic church itself—
the Jesuits maintain their own secretive rites of induction. After all, what is a
military order without some sense of pageantry, some sense of formal ritual
decorum, that defies the rational and instead reminds the candidate that he is no
longer invested with mortal indenture but instead serves a higher calling? This
is as true for the Marine as it is for the Freemason; and subsequently, the Jesuit.
One account states that a Jesuit called to the rank of command swears an oath
of fealty not to God or to the betterment of mankind, but to the direct authority
of the Pope, whom is viewed as the mortal representative of the Lord on Earth.
He does so beneath two banners: one being a banner bearing the official papal
colors, the other a black banner emblazoned with the image of a dagger and a
skull and crossbones (a curious image, given Chapter Seven.)
Directly above
this image is the legend INRI, often found on images of the crucifix and
generally held to be shorthand for the Latin
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