THE JESUITS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 9, 20 June 1884, Page 13

THE JESUITS.

(From the New York Tribune.) In the annals of the Roman Catholic Church it is recorded that Father Isaac Jogues, a Jesuit, found hia way to New Amsterdam in 1641, while Kleft was Governor, holding services for the only two Catholics found in the colony. It is further written that forty years after three Jesuit Fathers established the first Catholic mission in New York, building their oratory near Bowling Green. They were, however, driven away under penal statutes. Smh was the imperilled beginning of a Church that now claims the spiritual care of "600,000 souls on Manhattan-Island. Another Jesuit, Father Kohlman, was the first administrator of the new diocese of New York, laid the corner stone of old St. Patrick's Cathedral, and established an institution of learning on the site of the new Cathedral. In 1845 the Jesuits were invited by Bishop Hughes to the charge of St. John's College, Fordham, and one of their number, Father Larkin, was commissioned the following year to build a.churcti and found a college for the Jesuit 9of this city. He started from Fordham with fifty cents in his pocket, his sole capital for the undertaking, and this dwindled to five cents before he reached his lodgings in New York. It is impossible even to glance at the stages of deyelopment, romantic and eventful as they were until we reach the year 1850, when Father Ryan is found at the head of a flourishing college, the present site purchased, and the corner-stone of the first church laid. A stretch of about thirty years more and the wort has so far out-grown its boundaries that* a new and magnificent church arises, adjoining the first. This new edifice was dedicated last year. There is a strong temptation to dwell at this point and consider somewhat particularly the unique and admirable structure, which is unqualifiedly Roman-Basilican in its architecture— and Jesuit predilections lean strongly in this aesthetic direction— while it frankly challenges the claims and pretensions of Gothic art as an expression of religious reverence and symbolism. But its commanding facade in native blue granite must be passod by, with its sumptuous and exhilarating interior, its clustered polished columns, its rare and admirable frescoes by Lamprecht, in the finest spirit and execution of Munich work as to composition, drawing, and color treatment, constituting as they do a -very gallery of impressive religious art ; the long perspective of statued saints ; the costly altars with their costly sculptures and adornments, showing that here, better than elswhereon this side of the Atlantic, can the student consider the fascinations and genius of the school of structured art this church so finely represents. In fact there are two churches— the lower, or crypt church, and upper or church proper. They have about the same arei. In these large churches Masses succeed in alternation on Sundays, beginning at five a.m., and closing with the grand High Mass at eleven. During that time ten Masses are said, and, commonly, 12,000 worshippers have come and gone. Sodalities, societies, compline, Vespers, conferences, lectures and other duties crowd the remainder of the day until late evening. Every week-day six .Masses are said at the high altar in the lower church, and every one of the twentyfive Jesuit Fathers, who constitute the society, says Mass each day either in the college chapel or at some one of the seventeen altars of the two churches. ' The pastoral work of the church is under the care of six of the Fathers, who are reinforced by sermons, lectures, and conferences from others who fill the various professorships in the college under the direction of the rector. These Fathers have besides the missionary work and chaplaincies for the Catholics in all the city institutions and charities on Blackwell's, Hart's and Randall's island.'. Yet another ministers at the Tombs, and stands by the gibbet of every condemned Catholic. The college is regularly incorporated, gives the Bachelor's and Master's degrees, and between three and four hundred pupils are in tbe various classes. The rector has absolute control of both college and church, and indeed of every thing, person and interest within the jurisdiction of the society. Every office of service and labor is filled by a lay brother — janitors, sextons, attendants, mechanics — for there is a tailor, a shoemaker and a gas fitter in residence — cooks, domestics, are all lay brothers. There is no pretence or affectation of reserve or secretiveness or furtiveness about the establishment. Among the twenty-five Fathers, not one person in a hundred could point out the rector, a retiring, half shy gentleman, who seems to observe nothing and to be lost mostly in hw own reflections. One would not suspect that quiet, determined manipulator of slides, object-glasses, and other apparatus for the illustration of scientific lectures to be the sole central will and personality. Yet no one seems bound or constrained, and no one is seen governing or directing, There is something strangely automatic and impersonal in the general movement. There is cheerfulness and frankness in disclosure. There is no hint of asceticism, gruesome or repulsive. There is clearly a time to laugh, and refreshment is not an empty word. But the pace and spirit of work is wonderful, and the place fairly hums under its multiplied and inceaßant activites. Anomalies and paradoxes bewilder the observer. These men are strong, positive characters. All are completely and deliberately educated. Most of them clearly have known conditions of independence, leisure, culture and refinement. There are no soured visages, no misanthropes, nor social eccentricities here. Many have brought generous fortunes and incomes, free gifts to the society. All have brought absolute self abnegation, and laid aside all will, choice, and self-seeking. Not one of them has proprietary right in anything, even his wardrobe. One asks and receives permission to go to the barber. Nothing is fixed or rooted. The society holds every soul of them ready to start anywhere and do any lawful bidding at the motion of the Provincial. No man dreams of the probability or possibility of personal gain or advancement. There are bare floors and spareness everywhere. The furnishings and appointments of a Father's room, aside from a handful of books, would hardly bring ten dollars at auction. Yet there is no friction or visible weariness. They seem like a " forlorn hope " of an army who, having burned the bridges and left their impedimenta at the rear, push on cbewrily to the close with the foe at the front;

Yet private relations discover the fine individualities, rare tastes, exquisite accomplishments, kind wisdom, gentle humor, kindly charity among them. These men have lost everything, as men put it yet insist on seeming to have everything. They seem, to the common observer, riveted in hopeless bondage, yet there is the buoyancy and freedom of the upper air in their speech and behavior. There is no cringing nor sheer servility. They walk, talk and act like men who have entered into a transcendant freedom. It seems not impertinent to consider as well as to observe these twenty-five men who appear to have got rid of all will. Yet might it not be that each man's will in the surrender was enriched and augmented to the twenty-fifth power, as the mathematician would put it ; and that a body or corpus with twenty-five vigorous, enlightened wills stranded and annealed as one, grew into greater potency ; so that each man in casting hit own will into the treasury found himself enriched in a joint proprietorship of twenty-five other wills ? At any rate these Fathers believe and act as if they had found the golden secret of life in this absolute devotion to an ideal which offends and repels every predisposition of mtn and society. Poverty, chastity, obedience, are galling, insufferable shackles to the average life. Yet these men gather about them lovingly and proudly the insignia of their bonds as if they were better than coronation robes. It may be there is some hint here concerning the mystery of the « society " as a social force, when only 10,000 men, under these bonds, find themselves pitted against the world. Neophytes and candidates are received as early as seventeen. Two years are passed in the novitiate— a period Of searching, chastening and meditation; and at this door every candidate must kneck, high or low, rich or poor; and successful priests, bishops or cardinals even, have forsaken powers and dignities and passed through the novitiate into the "society." These past novices then become scholastics, and wear the habit of the Order. They give two years to rhetoric, three more to philosophy or metaphysics, logic, etc.. and then five years must be given to teaching. After this four more years are devoted to theology, and then, and not till then, is the brother presented for priest's order — fourteen years after he is admitted to the novitiate. These conditions of course change when men enter the novitiate from the secular priesthood. But tbe Jesuit is as yet but a fledging After having ministered a proper time in holy orders, he must serve what is called his " Tertianship," which means that he descends to the novitiate again and passes a year in its humiliations and sharp discipline. After this remelting in the crucible the brother becomes wholy affiliated with the Bociety, and is known as a professed brother. The practical policy of the society seems to be spiritualised common sense. The society chooses, winnows, makes its men, and then takes care that each one is set to do that which he canbestdo.