Storia do Mogor 366.5
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 366.5
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- English
366.5.1
Finally, the Lord Bishop, although he knows that Jesus Christ has said that scandals must come, but woe to that man through whom the scandal cometh — ' Necesse est ut veniant scandala ; verumtamen vae homini illi per quem scandalum venit ' — in spite of this, instead of suppressing the scandal that the reverend Jesuit fathers have caused in these regions — by seizing from us such a flourishing mission without why or wherefore ; by non-obedience to the orders of the Sacred Congregation, which commands that we be replaced in possession of our cure under penalty of privation of offices, privileges, and faculties conceded to missionaries ; after we had published those decrees of the said Sacred Congregation with his own (the Bishop's) permission, although such consent was not an absolute necessity; after finding that all [313] the poor Malabar Christians shouted for joy at seeing themselves once more under their first pastor, and that our church was crowded with people, while, on the contrary, that of the reverend Jesuit fathers was deserted — his Lordship created anew a still greater scandal than before by sending forth a Pastoral to the reverend Jesuit fathers, and excommunicating a poor friar who had never done any act in opposition to the said Pastoral. 'Quis audivit unquam tale? et quis vidit huic simile?' (Vulgate, Isa. lxvi. 8). Gentlemen, who has ever heard such a thing? who has ever seen procedure like this? Of a truth, I remain in wonderment;
366.5.2
nor can I conceive how persons so intelligent as you are, who have yourselves perceived more passion, more injustice, more deceit in the reverend Jesuit fathers than I have been able to include in these two manifestoes of mine, could shun the Reverend Father Esprit and leave him in the sad condition to which he has been reduced by passion alone and not by any crime of his. Gentlemen, I know perfectly well that you dread the reverend Jesuit fathers, that you fear them more than you do us humble Capuchins, for you know that Capuchin fathers are not capable of bearing malice, not even to those who try to make them hateful to all the world, while on the contrary the Jesuit fathers intimidate by their menaces all those who endeavour to oppose, either their perfidious injustice or their insatiable ambition. Allowing for all that, gentlemen (although I know this to be the sole reason which drives you to it, if you will permit me to say so), yet our too great goodness of heart ought not to be the cause of our not receiving justice. Your office compels you to enter equally into the interests of the one side as of the other [314]. Because the reverend Jesuit fathers use at every turn such emphatic words as, 'The king shall hear of it,' 'We shall inform the court,' 'What will his Majesty say when he hears of this?' it is not necessary to imagine that they have such complete hold over the minds of princes. Besides, the King of France thinks less of the Jesuits at Pondicherry than you do.
366.5.3
I will say more : even did his Most Christian Majesty prefer them to all his other subjects, his sense of equity equalling his greatness of heart, he could never approve what is unjust or blame what ought to be praised. To believe the contrary, gentlemen, would be an attempt to tarnish the reputation of a prince who is more jealous of doing justice than he is of his own might, who would hold it preferable to lose the title of Louis the Great than that of Louis the Just. Furthermore, religious who seek nothing beyond inspiring terror and making themselves feared ; who have no other answer to give you beyond, ' You will ruin yourselves,' or else, ' We shall destroy you ;' who follow no other rules in their acts than those directly opposed to the maxims of Christianity — these men, I tell you, instead of being feared and dreaded, deserve to be despised and held things of naught. Nor can this last result fail to come to pass, if not now, then at some future time. For, let them take what measures they please to exalt themselves and display themselves before the world, it is absolutely inevitable that the Divine oracles must be fulfilled : ' He who humbles himself shall be exalted, and he who exalts himself shall be brought low' (Matt, xxiii. 12, Lev. xiv. and xv.) — ' Qui se humiliat exaltabitur, et qui [315] se exaltat humiliabitur.'
366.5.4
Gentlemen, I am unwilling to state anything to you that I cannot prove ; at the same time I am anxious to impress on you so acutely all that I tell you that no possibility of doubt may remain. Thus, although I have written more than was required to show that the reverend Jesuit fathers act to the direct contrary of Jesus Christ's ordinances given in the Holy Gospels, the very least I can do is to bring under your consideration two portions of Holy Scripture which in all good faith can be applied to the reverend Jesuit fathers.
366.5.5
Here is the first passage : ' Learn of Me, who am meek and lowly of heart ' — ' Discite à me quia mitis sum et humilis corde' (Matt. xi. 29). This is the second one: 'Behold, I send you like lambs in the midst of wolves : be therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves (Matt. x. 16, Luke x. 3) — 'Ecce ego mitto vos sicut oves in medio luporum. Estote ergo prudentes sicut serpentes et simplices sicut columbæ.' Gentlemen, where is the tenderness of the reverend Jesuit fathers? Oh ! had I only the spirit of prophecy to divine what they are thinking in their minds, and the eyes of Argus to behold their external acts, then, by God, I could tell you a fine story indeed ! All the same, although I possess neither the one nor the other, yet, without alluding to a thousand anecdotes I have heard, I desire to bring forward only what we know by experience — what you know as well as we do — that is, that they have taken from us our cure of the Malabāris, as everyone knows, and they have falsely alleged the orders of his Majesty, as is a most indisputable truth.
366.5.6
The Lord Bishop, after having given an executive order [provision] for the cure in favour of the reverend Jesuit fathers, to the detriment of the Capuchin fathers, writes to us that we may seek our rights wherever seems to us [316] best, that he could in no manner complain. This you have seen already in this manifesto. We brought an appeal before the Holy See and the Sacred Congregation, as you can see in our notice of appeal. His Holiness and the Sacred Congregation have sent out here decrees in our favour ; that of this fact you have no doubt I may take as certain. We presented those decrees to the Lord Bishop, as proved by the words written on the margin of the petition from the Capuchin fathers. We notified them to the Reverend Father Tachard by order of Monsignor in the presence of two of you, gentlemen, and you have attested the fact. The Reverend Father Tachard resisted us by a decision of the Lord Patriarch given without our knowledge, and produced now two years after it had been given in favour of the reverend Jesuit fathers. This you know as absolute fact. Yet that decision was the most unjust in the world, not only from not having been drawn up according to juridical rules, but also from being passed at the very time that our appeal was in the hands of his Holiness and the Sacred Congregation. Still, we obeyed it blindly; that is an asseveration nobody can deny.
366.5.7
Then, hearing from the mouth of the Lord Bishop that all the things done by the Lord Primate of Goa had been approved at the Court of Rome, and, on the contrary, all that the Lord Patriarch had done was disapproved by his Holiness and the Sacred Congregation, we presented a petition to his Lordship for leave to publish our decrees. If you have any doubt, you can see the petition we presented, which has been already inserted in full. His Lordship said to the Reverend Father Michel Ange that he could not grant us that permission in writing, for reasons known to him, but we could [317] publish them in our church at Pondicherry. Then, after having said the contrary to this in his Pastoral, he has now confirmed in writing what he had said only viva voce. This I have pointed out in many places of my first and second manifestoes.
366.5.8
After getting this permission, we published the decrees on All Saints' Day of the year 1706, and all the Christians were frantic with joy, as is seen from many affidavits signed by more than thirty of the best-placed Frenchmen in Pondicherry. The Lord Bishop then accepted a calumny against us originated by the reverend Jesuit fathers, and on this foundation his Lordship issued a Pastoral in favour of the reverend fathers just named. We have done no act opposed to the said Pastoral, which fact will be seen at Rome from the affidavits we have forwarded. All we did was to cite there the reverend Jesuit fathers for having acted contrary to the decrees of the Sacred Congregation.