A FRENCH STATESMAN ON THE JESUITS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 322, 20 June 1879, Page 11

A FRENCH STATESMAN ON THE JESUITS.

M. Ollivier speaks of the Jesuits as follows :—lt: — It is a sovereign iniquity to invoke against the existence of the Jesuits the decrees of the Parliament of 1762, 1764, and 1767, and the edicts of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. The Revolution abrogated those acts, and since 1789 the Jesuits have been placed on a general legal footing like other religious orders. No exceptional law governs them any longer. Hatred pushed to a degree beyond the power of evidence, or the unhealthy craving for popularity, has alone obsured this juridical truth in the minds of some serious men. The feeling which actuated M. Thiers in his celebrated speech delivered in 1845 was a desire for popularity, and not haired. That speech, applauded at the time, was full of errors, and did not display the perspicacity of which its author loved so much, to boast. M. Thiers in attacking the Jesuits attacked at that time the representatives of the very same freedom of secondary education which a few years later, in a reactionary mood, he assisted the friends of the Jesuits to re-establish ; and, above all, in the interests of the Jesuits. So much for the law. in fact, whatever may be thought of the theories of the Jesuits, nothing in their present conduct would justify the use of coercive measures which t"he law places I in the hands of the Government against religions communities. Peaceful, regular, absorbed by their colleges and their spiritual works, the Jesuits trouble neither our dioceses nor our cities ; and if they can always be turned into victims, they cannot, without abdicating all idea of justice, be transformed into criminals. It may be considered that they occupy too much space in society, and that they have a tendency to take the largest share of what they can get ; but neither laws nor decrees of proscription can remedy those points. The importance of an opinion ov doctrine can only be upset by a reaction in the public mind. The State has nothing to do with. it. Moreover, most of the attacks on them are not seriou3. Many persons who, either out of calculation, weakness, or human respect, dare not pronounce openly against Catholicism, and who nevertheless desire to follow the fashion and to pass for Freethinkers, get out of the matter cheaply by raising the Jesuit cry. The majority of those whose attacks are serious detest the Jesuits less as a private institution than as the militant vanguard of Catholicism. Hence, wherever they have been suppressed, the other orders have been attacked, and the priests themselves threatened. The curious part of the affair is that many who reproach them with compromisi ing religion would be embarrassed if called on to recite their i Credo.