Society of Jesus

[Nicholas]

Commonly known as the Jesuits, this Catholic order was founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola. Always controversial, often hated or feared, this powerful order tries to control nations, even the Church itself. One Pope banned it for about forty years, yet a later one restored it.

One of the many critics of that order was the Scot Thomas Carlyle. Here is a little from his 50 page pamphlet "Jesuitism", written in 1850:

To please the supreme Fountain of
Truth your readiest method, now and then, was
to persist in believing what your whole soul found to be
doubtful or incredible. That poor human symbols were
higher than the God Almighty’s facts they symbolised; that
formulas, with or without the facts symbolised by them, were
sacred and salutary; that formulas, well persisted in, could
still save us when the facts were all fled ! A new revelation
to mankind; not heard of in human experience, till Ignatius
revealed it to us. That, in substance, was the contribution
of Ignatius to the wellbeing of mankind. Under that
thrice-stygian gospel we have all of us, Papist and at length
Protestant too, this long while sat. A "doctrine of devils," I
do think, if there ever was one.

[Nicholas]

This classic best seller from 1987, The Jesuits , by Malachi Martin tells their corrupting influence.

A state of war exists between the papacy and the Religious
Order of the Jesuits-the Society of Jesus, to give the
Order its official name. That war signals the most lethal
change to take place within the ranks of the professional Roman
clergy over the last thousand years . And, as with all important
events in the Roman Catholic Church, it involves the interests,
the lives, and the destinies of ordinary men and women in the millions.

As with so many wars in our time, however, the Jesuits did not
declare theirs against the papacy. Indeed, though the first open
skirmishes began in the 1960s, it took time for the effects of the
war-even very profound effects-to become widely apparent. Because
the leaders in the war were the Superiors of the Order, it was
a simple matter to place men of like mind in charge of the organs
of power and authority and communication throughout the organization.
With that much accomplished, the vast bulk of Jesuits
had precious little to say in the extraordinary decisions that followed.

Malachi Martin, eminent theologian, expert on the Catholic
Church, former Jesuit and professor at the Vatican's Pontifical Biblical
Institute, is author of the national best-sellers Vatican, The
Final Conclave, and Hostage to the Devil. He was trained in theology
at Louvain. There he received his doctorates in Semitic Languages,
Archeology and Oriental History. He subsequently studied
at Oxford and at the Hebrew University. From 1958 to 1964 he
served in Rome, where he was a close associate of the renowned
Jesuit Cardinal, Augustin Bea, and Pope John XXIII.

He lived in NY City for many years and died there in 1999.