Lux Lucet

The seal of the Jesuit Order

The pas few years have seen the Jesuit Order on something of a roll.  With the election of Jorge Bergoglio to the Seat of Antichrist in 2013, the Jesuits at long last have one of their own in power.

But it doesn’t stop with having a Jesuit pope. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) recently celebrated the election Jesuit educated Tom Perez as the party’s new head. According to an article in the Jesuits’ own publication America Magazine, Perez “has deep Jesuit connections.” To wit:

• Perez graduated from Jesuit Canisius High School in Buffalo, New York.
  
• He met his wife Ann Marie Staudenmaier “when she was part of the Jesuit Volunteer Corp in Buffalo in the 1980s.”
  
• Her uncle is Jesuit priest, John M. Staudenmaier who works at University of Detroit Mercy, a Jesuit school.
  

Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate, was Jesuit educated, attending Jesuit Rockhurst High School in Kansas City. Said Kaine of his high school experience,

That high school experience with the Jesuits was a key part of my transition into an adult life where instead of just accepting the answers of my parents or others, I’ve been a person who wants to go out and find the answers on my own, and the Jesuits get credit for that (America, July 22 2016).

Kaine also spent a nine month stint teaching at a Jesuit mission in Honduras.  So solicitous were the Jesuits of defending their man that one Jesuit high school in Phoenix banned an Alumnus from criticizing Kaine on the school’s Facebook page. 

So why should people care about the rise of the Jesuit order? Perhaps a few short quotes will drive home the point better than anything.

• “My history of the Jesuits is not eloquently written, but it is supported by unquestionable authorities, [and] is very particular and very horrible. Their [the Jesuit Order’s] restoration [in 1814 by Pope Pius VII] is indeed a step toward darkness, cruelty, despotism, [and] death. …I do not like the appearance of the Jesuits. If ever there was a body of men who merited eternal damnation on earth and in hell, it is this Society of [Ignatius de] Loyola.” – John Adams, 2nd President of the United States
  
• “Like you [John Adams], I disapprove of the restoration of the Jesuits, for it means a step backwards from light into darkness…” – Thomas Jefferson
  
• It is my opinion that if the liberties of this country – the United States of America – are destroyed, it will be by the subtlety of the Roman Catholic Jesuit priests, for they are the most crafty, dangerous enemies to civil and religious liberty. They have instigated most of the wars of Europe.” – Marquis de LaFayette, French statesman and general
  
•  “This American Civil war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits.” – Abraham Lincoln
  
• “The Jesuits…are simply the Romish army for the earthly sovereignty of the world in the future, with the Pontiff of Rome for emperor. that’s their ideal.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  
• “They are, for the most part Jesuits, an ecclesiastical order, proverbial through the world for cunning, duplicity, and total want of moral principle.” – Samuel F. B. Morse, Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States, 60.
  

But lest you think I’m cherry picking quotes on the Jesuits to show them in as bad a light as possible, I freely admit that some people are quite impressed with them. Here’s a quote by a prominent gentleman who thought very highly of the Order.

“I learned above all from the Jesuits. So did Lenin, for that matter, if I remember rightly. There has been nothing more impressive in the world than the hierarchical organisation of the Catholic Church.

– Adolph Hitler, Chancellor of Germany as recorded by Hermann Rauschning in Hitler Speaks, 236.

Pope Francis’ Coat of Arms.  Note well the presence of the Jesuit seal.

But as bad as all those quotes are, trust me, there are plenty more where they came from. 

Suffice it to say that the Jesuits are no ordinary Catholics. Some have called the Jesuits the CIA of the Catholic Church. The Jesuit reputation for scheming has at times earned the order a bad reputation even within the corridors of power of the Roman Church-State. Pope Clement XIV suppressed the order in 1773, but it was brought back in 1814 by Pope Pius VII.

Such is the reputation of the Jesuits among the Romanists that the International Business Daily ran a headline at the time of the election of Pope Francis that read “Pope Francis I: First Jesuit Pope Shatters Centuries of Mistrust.”

With all this in mind, as Protestants we really need to ask ourselves, if the Romanists themselves don’t trust the Jesuits, why should we?