250 years after the Suppression of the Jesuits, is it time they were suppressed again?

Suppressed by the Pope 250 years ago: the Jesuits loyal to the Pope

After a rapid rise, the Jesuits were subjected to particular hostility for centuries - in the middle of the 18th century, the benevolence of the kings toppled - Since 2013, the community has provided the head of the Catholic world church, the Pope, for the first time in its almost 500-year history

Their success was often also their undoing. Ever since they were founded in the 16th century, the Jesuits have been subject to many prejudices, some of which have persisted to this day. They were said to be scheming and to put the advantage of the order above everything else: In this way, political opponents and enviers were able to discredit the successful Jesuit order again and again over the centuries.

In Latin America, for example, the Jesuits were so missionarily and economically efficient that they aroused envy. The "New World" attracted adventurers and soldiers of fortune whose conquests the Spanish crown glorified as the spread of Christianity; in the process, indigenous people were forced into forced labour. The Jesuits' so-called reductions, in which indigenous people lived and worked together to protect them against enslavement and exploitation by the secular conquerors, were the main remedy.

From 1610, the order set up self-governing reductions in what is now Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia to protect them from slave traders. They were organised in villages of around 400 to 7,000 inhabitants.

In the 1730s, around 140,000 people lived in the 30 reductions of the Guarani people alone. More than 700,000 Indians are said to have been baptised there by 1768 - and baptised Indians were no longer allowed to be enslaved according to a royal decree. The Jesuits were pastors, doctors, economists and engineers, teachers and trainers, mayors and judges of their territories. In addition to products for their own needs, export and luxury goods were soon produced: Cotton, indigo, tobacco and mate. Taxes were paid to the Spanish crown on the proceeds.

The extraordinary success of the reductions - with a well-balanced mix of private and communal ownership - called forth enviers of various stripes. The military, merchants and traders, landowners and even bishops constantly complained about the Order - and did not shy away from unfair means. In the 1630s, entire Indio villages were burnt down and the inhabitants murdered or enslaved.

Envy in Lisbon and Madrid

In vain, the Jesuits asked the monarchs for protection. But they were also a thorn in the side of the court in Lisbon and Madrid. The kings increasingly listened to slander and whispers and ordered several investigations - the results of which always proved the accusers wrong. Finally, Portugal's First Minister, Sebastiao Marques de Pombal (1699-1782), opened Pandora's box in 1759. Other countries gratefully took up the ball.

Within a few years, the Jesuits were expelled from the empires of Portugal, France and Spain. In 1767, the Order was expelled from all Spanish colonies, including the Reductions in Paraguay and Latin America. And finally, on 21 July 1773, 250 years ago, Pope Clement XIV - under pressure from the colonial powers of France, Spain and Portugal - banned the Order completely and decreed its dissolution.

Many governments protested; they feared above all for the effective role the Jesuits played in school and university education. But in the end, only Tsarina Catherine II permanently refused to implement the ban. Russia became the retreat and Saint Petersburg the seat of the order's general.

The poet Novalis wrote in 1799: "Now it sleeps, this terrible order, in poor shape on the borders of Europe, perhaps that from there, like the people who protect it, it will one day spread with new violence over its old homeland, perhaps under a different name." And Novalis was to be proved right.

Turning point at the Congress of Vienna

Pope Pius VII (1800-1823) and the princely houses, battered by the aftermath of the French Revolution, recognised the mistake their predecessors had made in suppressing what was then a stabilising factor against liberalism. In August 1814, Pius VII seized the opportunity offered by the Congress of Vienna and officially lifted the ban. A new German-speaking province was founded in Switzerland.

The new beginnings were by no means easy, as the regional distribution of the "new Jesuits" was very uneven and their origins heterogeneous. There were still veterans from before 1773; furthermore, new entrants in Russia and later in Sicily or Parma, as well as secular priests who newly joined the Order. According to the Order's historian Klaus Schatz, the focus of the reconstruction years was clearly on Italy.  From around 600 members at the beginning, the Order grew to over 2,000 in 1830 and to a peak in this era of 4,757 in 1847, the eve of new revolutions in Europe.

Bans in Germany and Switzerland

The re-admission did not, of course, mean permanent carte blanche: as early as 1820, the Jesuits were expelled from Russia under Tsar Alexander I - from the country that had enabled the order to survive for over 40 years. Only in 1992, after the end of communism, did Jesuits return there. In 1848/74, the Order was banned from operating in Switzerland, nominally until 1973. In Germany, too, the order was banned in 1872 in the course of the Prussian Kulturkampf (until 1917).

Again and again, the Jesuits had to survive dramatic phases. In some, even the much-vaunted unity of the "Society of Jesus", which after all consisted of so many highly gifted individualists, developed cracks. There were differences within the Order, for example, in the disputes over "modernism" and "integralism" at the beginning of the 20th century or in the years of reorientation after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). At that time, the Order was also caught up in the controversy over the mainly Latin American theology of liberation and went through one of its most serious crises.

Today it is as international again as it was in the times of the China and Japan missions or the Jesuit reductions in Paraguay. The "Society of Jesus" has about 15,000 members. And with Francis, for the first time in its almost 500-year history, it has provided the head of the universal Catholic Church, the Pope, since 2013.

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Cathcon:  Over the years, I have documented on this blog that the Jesuits were easily the most decadent of the religious orders.  It is therefore shocking that the Pope has given his fellow Jesuits such a major role as the enforcers of the Synodal process.  I therefore have a modest proposal that once this era of devastation for the Church is over, they should all have to apply for readmission to a reformed order.    The present situation grieves me to the heart with 6 Jesuits in the family over the centuries who endured the times of persecution.  Now we hear from the Pope that any form of Christianity is as good as Catholicism.   It is an insult to their great heritage.  They were last suppressed on 21st July 1773.