Napoleonic Wars. This chaos led to the destruction of the Bourbon
monarchies that campaigned against the Jesuits. Happily, after the downfall
of Napoleon and the release of Pius VII from captivity, the Jesuits were
restored by Papal decree on 7th August, 1814.
Numerous other attacks have also been made against the Jesuits over the
centuries. Protestants have repeated claims that the Jesuits taught dubious
and immoral doctrines, including regicide and the saying “the end justifies
the means.” Cries have also been raised about the alleged “Jesuit Oath”
and the “Monita Secreta.”
The charge of regicide is traced to a work published in Spain in 1599 by the
Jesuit, Mariana. He laid down the principle that a king who violates the
rights of his subjects and his coronation oath may lawfully be deposed and
even put to death. General Aquaviva, on being made aware of the contents
of this work, immediately condemned it and ordered the work to be
suppressed until the objectionable parts were purged. The original has only
been preserved by Protestant controversialists seeking to make capital out
of it.
The maxim “the end justifies the means”, rightly understood, is correct. It
means that there is always a right way of achieving a right thing. So, if it is
permissible to eat beef it is right to kill and cook oxen; if it is permissible to
have children, it is right to marry; if it is permissible to kill in self-defense,
it is right to make and bear arms, etc. If it means that one may do evil for a
good intention, or that a good end or purpose justifies any (immoral)
means, then this doctrine is condemned by the Catholic Church, as it was
by St. Paul (Rom. 3:8).
The “Monita Secreta” were said to be secret instructions given to all
Jesuits to pursue every crooked and unprincipled tactic to advance the
interests of the Society, even at the expense of other Catholic religious
orders. In reality, the Monita is an elaborate fraud emanating originally
from Cracow, Poland in 1614. All reasonable Protestant historians hold the
Monita to be simply a spurious lampoon of the Order. Likewise, the “Jesuit
Oath” is nothing more than the hysterical fabrication of one Robert Ware
in his work, Foxes and Firebrands,
produced in the late seventeenth
century. Among other things, the oath swears all Jesuits to assume the
outward form of any religion in order to deceive unwitting Protestants back
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