know that the sentiments of these great men are always probable of
themselves. It deserves to be noticed, however, that Father Le Moine has
qualified this general permission; for he will on no account allow it to
be extended to _the old ladies_. ‘Youth,’ he observes, ‘is naturally
entitled to adorn itself, nor can the use of ornament be condemned at an
age which is the flower and verdure of life. But there it should be
allowed to remain: it would be strangely out of season to seek for roses
on the snow. The stars alone have a right to be always dancing, for they
have the gift of perpetual youth. The wisest course in this matter,
therefore, for old women, would be to consult good sense and a good
mirror, to yield to decency and necessity, and to retire at the first
approach of the shades of night.’”[200]
“A most judicious advice,” I observed.
“But,” continued the monk, “just to show you how careful our fathers are
about everything you can think of, I may mention that, after granting
the ladies permission to gamble, and foreseeing that, in many cases,
this license would be of little avail unless they had something to
gamble with, they have established another maxim in their favor, which
will be found in Escobar’s chapter on larceny, n. 13: ‘A wife,’ says he,
‘may gamble, and for this purpose may pilfer money from her husband.’”
“Well, father, that is capital!”
“There are many other good things besides that,” said the father; “but
we must waive them, and say a little about those more important maxims,
which facilitate the practice of holy things—the manner of attending
mass, for example. On this subject our great divines, Gaspard Hurtado,
and Coninck, have taught ‘that it is quite sufficient to be present at
mass in body, though we may be absent in spirit, provided we maintain an
outwardly respectful deportment.’ Vasquez goes a step further,
maintaining ‘that one fulfils the precept of hearing mass, even though
one should go with no such intention at all.’ All this is repeatedly
laid down by Escobar, who, in one passage, illustrates the point by the
example of those who are dragged to mass by force, and who put on a
fixed resolution not to listen to it.”
“Truly, sir,” said I, “had any other person told me that, I would not
have believed it.”
“In good sooth,” he replied, “it requires all the support which the
authority of these great names can lend it; and so does the following
maxim by the same Escobar, ‘that even a wicked intention, such as that
of ogling the women joined to that of hearing mass rightly, does not
hinder a man from fulfilling the service.’[201] But another very
convenient device, suggested by our learned brother Turrian,[202] is,
that ‘one may hear the half of a mass from one priest, and the other
half from another; and that it makes no difference though he should hear
first the conclusion of the one, and then the commencement of the
other.’ I might also mention that it has been decided by several of our
doctors, to be lawful ‘to hear the two halves of a mass at the same
time, from the lips of two different priests, one of whom is commencing
the mass, while the other is at the elevation; it being quite possible
to attend to both parties at once, and two halves of a mass making a
whole—_duœ medietates unam missam constituunt_.’[203] ‘From all which,’
says Escobar, ‘I conclude, that you may hear mass in a very short period
of time; if, for example, you should happen to hear four masses going on
at the same time, so arranged that when the first is at the
commencement, the second is at the gospel, the third at the
consecration, and the last at the communion.’”
“Certainly, father, according to that plan, one may hear mass any day at
Notre Dame in a twinkling.”
“Well,” replied he, “that just shows how admirably we have succeeded in
facilitating the hearing of mass. But I am anxious now to show you how
we have softened the use of the sacraments, and particularly that of
penance. It is here that the benignity of our fathers shines in its
truest splendor; and you will be really astonished to find that
devotion, a thing which the world is so much afraid of, should have been
treated by our doctors with such consummate skill, that, to use the
words of Father Le Moine, in his Devotion made Easy, ‘demolishing the
bugbear which the devil had placed at its threshold, they have rendered
it easier than vice, and more agreeable than pleasure; so that, in fact,
simply to live is incomparably more irksome than to live well.’ Is that
not a marvellous change, now?”
“Indeed, father, I cannot help telling you a bit of my mind: I am sadly
afraid that you have overshot the mark, and that this indulgence of
yours will shock more people than it will attract. The mass, for
example, is a thing so grand and so holy, that, in the eyes of a great
many, it would be enough to blast the credit of your doctors forever, to
show them how you have spoken of it.”
“With a certain class,” replied the monk, “I allow that may be the case;
but do you not know that we accommodate ourselves to all sorts of
persons? You seem to have lost all recollection of what I have
repeatedly told you on this point. The first time you are at leisure,
therefore, I propose that we make this the theme of our conversation,
deferring till then the lenitives we have introduced into the
confessional. I promise to make you understand it so well that you will
never forget it.”
With these words we parted, so that our next conversation, I presume,
will, turn on the policy of the Society.—I am, &c.
* * * * *
_P. S._—Since writing the above, I have seen “Paradise Opened by a
Hundred Devotions easily Practised,” by Father Barry; and also the “Mark
of Predestination,” by Father Binet; both of them pieces well worth the
seeing.
-----
Footnote 184:
“Towards the conclusion of the tenth century, new accessions were made
to the worship of the Virgin. In this age, (the tenth century) there
are to be found manifest indications of the institution of the
_rosary_ and _crown_ (or chaplet) of the Virgin, by which her
worshippers were to reckon the number of prayers they were to offer to
this new divinity. The rosary consists of fifteen repetitions of the
Lords Prayer, and a hundred and fifty salutations of the blessed
Virgin; while the crown consists in six or seven repetitions of the
Lord’s Prayer, and seven times ten salutations, or _Ave Marias_.”
(Mosheim. cent. x.)
Footnote 185:
These are the devotions presented at pp. 33, 59, 145, 156, 172, 258,
420 of the first edition.
Footnote 186:
See the devotions, at pp. 14, 326, 447.
Footnote 187:
The Jesuits raised a great outcry against Pascal for having, in this
letter, as they alleged, turned the worship of the Virgin into
ridicule. Nicole seriously undertakes his defence, and draws several
distinctions between true and false devotion to the Virgin. The
Mariolatry or Mary-worship, of Pascal and the Port-Royalists, was
certainly a different sort of thing from that practised in the Church
of Rome; but it is sad to see the straits to which these sincere
devotees were reduced, in their attempts to reconcile this practice
with the honor due to God and his Son.
Footnote 188:
Father Daniel makes an ingenious attempt to take off the force of this
statement, by representing it as no more than what is done by other
societies, universities, &c. (Entretiens, p. 32.) But while these
bodies acted in good faith on this rule, the Jesuits (as Pascal
afterwards shows, Letter xiii.) made it subservient to their double
policy. Pascal’s point was gained by establishing the fact, that the
books published by the Jesuits had the imprimatur of the Society; and,
in answer to all that Daniel has said on the point, it may be
sufficient to ask, Why not try the simple plan of denouncing the error
and censuring the author? (See Letter v., p. 117.)
Footnote 189:
There is an allusion here to the phrase which is perpetually occurring
in the _Constitutions_ of the Jesuits, “_Ad majorem Dei gloriam_—To
the greater glory of God,” which is the reason ostentatiously paraded
for almost all their laws and customs.
Footnote 190:
If Rome be in the right, Pascal’s notion is correct. The religion of
the monastery is the only sort of piety or seriousness known to, or
sanctioned by, the Romish Church.
Footnote 191:
The Romish distinction of sins into _venial_ and _mortal_, afforded
too fair a pretext for such sophistical conclusions to be overlooked
by Jesuitical casuists.
Footnote 192:
Francois Garasse was a Jesuit of Angouleme; he died in 1631. He was
much followed as a preacher, his sermons being copiously interlarded
with buffoonery. His controversial works are full of fire and fury;
and his theological Summary, to which Pascal here refers, abounds with
eccentricities. It deserves to be mentioned, as some offset to the
folly of this writer, that Father Garasse lost his life in consequence
of his attentions to his countrymen who were infected with the plague.
Footnote 193:
See before, Letter vii., p. 159.
Footnote 194:
“_An comedere et libere usque ad satietatem absque necessitate ob
solam voluptatem, sit peccatum? Cum Sanctio negative respondeo, modo
non obsit valetudini, quia licite potest appetitus naturalis suis
actibus frui._” (N. 102.)
Footnote 195:
“_Si quis se usque ad vomitum ingurgitet._” (Esc., n. 56.)
Footnote 196:
Op. mor., p. 2, l. 3, c. 6, n. 13.
Footnote 197:
Tr. 25, chap. 11, n. 331, 328.
Footnote 198:
The method by which Father Daniel evades this charge is truly
Jesuitical. First, he attempts to involve the question in a cloud of
difficulties, by supposing extreme cases, in which equivocation may be
allowed to preserve life, &c. He has then the assurance to quote
Scripture in defence of the practice, referring to the equivocations
of Abraham which he vindicates; to those of Tobit and the angel
Raphael, which he applauds; and even to the sayings of our blessed
Lord, which he charges with equivocation! (Entretiens, pp. 378, 382.)
Even Bossuet was ashamed of this abominable maxim. “I know nothing” he
says speaking of Sanchez, “more pernicious in morality, than the
opinion of that Jesuit in regard to an oath; he maintains that the
intention is necessary to an oath, without which in giving a false
answer to a judge, when questioned at the bar, one is not capable of
perjury.” (Journal de l’Abbé le Dieu, apud Dissertation sur la foi qui
es due au temoignage de Pascal, &c., p. 50.)
Footnote 199:
Esc. tr. 1, ex. 8; Summary of Sins, c. 46, p. 1094.
Footnote 200:
“They had their Father Le Moine,” said Cleandre, “and I am surprised
they did not oppose him to Pascal. That father had a lively
imagination and a _florid, brilliant_ style; he stood high among
polished society, and his Apology written against the book entitled
‘The Moral Theology of the Jesuits,’ was hardly less popular than his
_Currycomb for the Jansenist Pegasus_.” “The Society thought,
perhaps,” replied Eudoxus, “that he could not easily catch the
delicate and at the same time easy style of Pascal. It was Father Le
Moine’s failing, to embellish all he said, to be always aiming at
something witty, and never to speak simply. Perhaps, too, he did not
feel himself equal for the combat, and did not like to commit
himself.” (Entretiens de Cleandre et d’Eudoxe, p. 78.)
Footnote 201:
“_Nec obest alia prava intentio, ut aspiciendi libidinose fœminas._”
(Esc. tr. 1, ex. 11, n. 31.)
Footnote 202:
Select., p. 2, d. 16, Sub. 7.
Footnote 203:
Bauny, Hurtado, Azor, &c. Escobar, “Practice for Hearing Mass
according to our Society,” Lyons edition.
LETTER X.
PALLIATIVES APPLIED BY THE JESUITS TO THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE, IN THEIR
MAXIMS REGARDING CONFESSION, SATISFACTION, ABSOLUTION, PROXIMATE
OCCASIONS OF SIN, CONTRITION, AND THE LOVE OF GOD.
PARIS, _August 2, 1656_.
SIR,—I have not come yet to the policy of the Society, but shall first
introduce you to one of its leading principles. I refer to the
palliatives which they have applied to confession, and which are
unquestionably the best of all the schemes they have fallen upon to
“attract all and repel none.” It is absolutely necessary to know
something of this before going any further; and, accordingly, the monk
judged it expedient to give me some instructions on the point, nearly as
follows:—
“From what I have already stated,” he observed, “you may judge of the
success with which our doctors have labored to discover, in their
wisdom, that a great many things, formerly regarded as forbidden, are
innocent and allowable; but as there are some sins for which one can
find no excuse, and for which there is no remedy but confession, it
became necessary to alleviate, by the methods I am now going to mention,
the difficulties attending that practice. Thus, having shown you, in our
previous conversations, how we relieve people from troublesome scruples
of conscience, by showing them that what they believed to be sinful was
indeed quite innocent, I proceed now to illustrate our convenient plan
for expiating what is really sinful, which is effected by making
confession as easy a process as it was formerly a painful one.”
“And how do you manage that, father?”
“Why,” said he, “it is by those admirable subtleties which are peculiar
to our Company, and have been styled by our fathers in Flanders, in “The
Image of the First Century,”[204] ‘the pious finesse, the holy artifice
of devotion—_piam et religiosam calliditatem, et pietatis
solertiam_.’[205] By the aid of these inventions, as they remark in the
same place, ‘crimes may be expiated now-a-days _alacrius_—with more zeal
and alacrity than they were committed in former days, and a great many
people may be washed from their stains almost as cleverly as they
contracted them—_plurimi vix citius maculas contrahunt quam eluunt_.’”
“Pray, then, father, do teach me some of these most salutary lessons of
_finesse_.”
“We have a good number of them,” answered the monk; “for there are a
great many irksome things about confession, and for each of these we
have devised a palliative. The chief difficulties connected with this
ordinance are the shame of confessing certain sins, the trouble of
specifying the circumstances of others, the penance exacted for them,
the resolution against relapsing into them, the avoidance of the
proximate occasions of sins, and the regret for having committed them. I
hope to convince you to-day, that it is now possible to get over all
this with hardly any trouble at all; such is the care we have taken to
allay the bitterness and nauseousness of this very necessary medicine.
For, to begin with the difficulty of confessing certain sins, you are
aware it is of importance often to keep in the good graces of one’s
confessor; now, must it not be extremely convenient to be permitted, as
you are by our doctors, particularly Escobar and Suarez, ‘to have two
confessors, one for the mortal sins and another for the venial, in order
to maintain a fair character with your ordinary confessor—_uti bonam
famam apud ordinarium tueatur_—provided you do not take occasion from
thence to indulge in mortal sin?’ This is followed by another ingenious
contrivance for confessing a sin, even to the ordinary confessor,
without his perceiving that it was committed since the last confession,
which is, ‘to make a general confession, and huddle this last sin in a
lump among the rest which we confess.’[206] And I am sure you will own
that the following decision of Father Bauny goes far to alleviate the
shame which one must feel in confessing his relapses, namely, ‘that,
except in certain cases, which rarely occur, the confessor is not
entitled to ask his penitent if the sin of which he accuses himself is
an habitual one, nor is the latter obliged to answer such a question;
because the confessor has no right to subject his penitent to the shame
of disclosing his frequent relapses.’”
“Indeed, father! I might as well say that a physician has no right to
ask his patient if it is long since he had the fever. Do not sins assume
quite a different aspect according to circumstances? and should it not
be the object of a genuine penitent to discover the whole state of his
conscience to his confessor, with the same sincerity and openheartedness
as if he were speaking to Jesus Christ himself, whose place the priest
occupies? If so, how far is he from realizing such a disposition, who,
by concealing the frequency of his relapses, conceals the aggravations
of his offence!”[207]
I saw that this puzzled the worthy monk, for he attempted to elude
rather than resolve the difficulty, by turning my attention to another
of their rules, which only goes to establish a fresh abuse, instead of
justifying in the least the decision of Father Bauny; a decision which,
in my opinion, is one of the most pernicious of their maxims, and
calculated to encourage profligate men to continue in their evil habits.
“I grant you,” replied the father, “that habit aggravates the malignity
of a sin, but it does not alter its nature; and that is the reason why
we do not insist on people confessing it, according to the rule laid
down by our fathers, and quoted by Escobar, ‘that one is only obliged to
confess the circumstances that alter the species of the sin, and not
those that aggravate it.’ Proceeding on this rule, Father Granados says,
‘that if one has eaten flesh in Lent, all he needs to do is to confess
that he has broken the fast, without specifying whether it was by eating
flesh, or by taking two fish meals.’ And, according to Reginald, ‘a
sorcerer who has employed the diabolical art is not obliged to reveal
that circumstance; it is enough to say that he has dealt in magic,
without expressing whether it was by palmistry or by a paction with the
devil.’ Fagundez, again, has decided that ‘rape is not a circumstance
which one is bound to reveal, if the woman give her consent.’ All this
is quoted by Escobar,[208] with many other very curious decisions as to
these circumstances, which you may consult at your leisure.”
“These ‘artifices of devotion’ are vastly convenient in their way,” I
observed.
“And yet,” said the father, “notwithstanding all that, they would go for
nothing, sir, unless we had proceeded to mollify penance, which, more
than anything else, deters people from confession. Now, however, the
most squeamish have nothing to dread from it, after what we have
advanced in our theses of the College of Clermont, where we hold that
‘if the confessor imposes a suitable penance, and the penitent be
unwilling to submit himself to it, the latter may go home, waiving both
the penance and the absolution.’ Or, as Escobar says, in giving the
Practice of our Society, ‘if the penitent declare his willingness to
have his penance remitted to the next world, and to suffer in purgatory
all the pains due to him, the confessor may, for the honor of the
sacrament, impose a very light penance on him, particularly if he has
reason to believe that his penitent would object to a heavier one.’”
“I really think,” said I, “that, if that is the case, we ought no longer
to call confession the sacrament of penance.”
“You are wrong,” he replied; “for we always administer something in the
way of penance, for the form’s sake.”
“But, father, do you suppose that a man is worthy of receiving
absolution, when he will submit to nothing painful to expiate his
offences? And, in these circumstances, ought you not to retain rather
than remit their sins? Are you not aware of the extent of your ministry,
and that you have the power of binding and loosing? Do you imagine that
you are at liberty to give absolution indifferently to all who ask it,
and without ascertaining beforehand if Jesus Christ looses in heaven
those whom you loose on earth?”[209]
“What!” cried the father, “do you suppose that we do not know that ‘the
confessor (as one remarks) ought to sit in judgment on the disposition
of his penitent, both because he is bound not to dispense the sacraments
to the unworthy, Jesus Christ having enjoined him to be a faithful
steward, and not give that which is holy unto dogs; and because he is a
judge, and it is the duty of a judge to give righteous judgment, by
loosing the worthy and binding the unworthy, and he ought not to absolve
those whom Jesus Christ condemns.’”
“Whose words are these, father?”
“They are the words of our father Filiutius,” he replied.
“You astonish me,” said I; “I took them to be a quotation from one of
the fathers of the Church. At all events, sir, that passage ought to
make an impression on the confessors, and render them very circumspect
in the dispensation of this sacrament, to ascertain whether the regret
of their penitents is sufficient, and whether their promises of future
amendment are worthy of credit.”
“That is not such a difficult matter,” replied the father; “Filiutius
had more sense than to leave confessors in that dilemma, and accordingly
he suggests an easy way of getting out of it, in the words immediately
following: ‘The confessor may easily set his mind at rest as to the
disposition of his penitent; for, if he fail to give sufficient evidence
of sorrow, the confessor has only to ask him if he does not detest the
sin in his heart, and if he answers that he does, he is bound to believe
it. The same thing may be said of resolutions as to the future, unless
the case involves an obligation to restitution, or to avoid some
proximate occasion of sin.’”
“As to that passage, father, I can easily believe that it is Filiutius’
own.”
“You are mistaken though,” said the father, “for he has extracted it,
word for word, from Suarez.”[210]
“But, father, that last passage from Filiutius overturns what he had
laid down in the former. For confessors can no longer be said to sit as
judges on the disposition of their penitents, if they are bound to take
it simply upon their word, in the absence of all satisfying signs of
contrition. Are the professions made on such occasions so infallible,
that no other sign is needed? I question much if experience has taught
your fathers, that all who make fair promises are remarkable for keeping
them; I am mistaken if they have not often found the reverse.”
“No matter,” replied the monk; “confessors are bound to believe them for
all that; for Father Bauny, who has probed this question to the bottom,
has concluded ‘that at whatever time those who have fallen into frequent
relapses, without giving evidence of amendment, present themselves
before a confessor, expressing their regret for the past, and a good
purpose for the future, he is bound to believe them on their simple
averment, although there may be reason to presume that such resolution
only came from the teeth outwards. Nay,’ says he, ‘though they should
indulge subsequently to greater excess than ever in the same
delinquencies, still, in my opinion, they may receive absolution.’[211]
There now! that, I am sure, should silence you.”
“But, father,” said I, “you impose a great hardship, I think, on the
confessors, by thus obliging them to believe the very reverse of what
they see.”
“You don’t understand it,” returned he; “all that is meant is, that they
are obliged to act and absolve _as if_ they believed that their
penitents would be true to their engagements, though, in point of fact,
they believe no such thing. This is explained, immediately afterwards,
by Suarez and Filiutius. After having said that ‘the priest is bound to
believe the penitent on his word,’ they add, ‘It is not necessary that
the confessor should be convinced that the good resolution of his
penitent will be carried into effect, nor even that he should judge it
probable; it is enough that he thinks the person has at the time the
design in general, though he may very shortly after relapse. Such is the
doctrine of all our authors—_ita docent omnes autores_.’ Will you
presume to doubt what has been taught by our authors?”
“But, sir, what then becomes of what Father Petau[212] himself is
obliged to own, in the preface to his Public Penance, ‘that the holy
fathers, doctors, and councils of the Church agree in holding it as a
settled point, that the penance preparatory to the eucharist must be
genuine, constant, resolute, and not languid and sluggish, or subject to
after-thoughts and relapses?’”