Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000382A
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00:25 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:27 This is your program bringing you up-to-date news, views, 00:30 discussion, and insights on religious liberty events 00:34 in the U.S. certainly, but around the world. 00:36 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine. 00:40 And my guest on this program is Ed Cook, Dr. Ed Cook, 00:44 author, sometimes for Liberty Magazine, 00:47 minister of religion, but your doctorate is in 00:49 church-state studies. 00:51 So you're on the right program here, because that's our thing. 00:57 In a previous program we had spoken about 01:02 the Jesuit Order within Roman Catholicism 01:04 and its origins and connection to the, 01:06 not so much to the Reformation, but to the Counter-Reformation. 01:11 But I think while there are one billion Roman Catholics, right, 01:15 in the world today, give or take... 01:17 Although, a bit like Islam, you're born a Roman Catholic. 01:22 You may not go to confession or anything... 01:25 In fact, they don't have confession in the old sense 01:28 in most places. 01:29 You may not go to mass very often, 01:31 but you are a Catholic, born a Catholic. 01:33 So I'm not sure that one billion, when you really 01:38 get down to the nub, how many are actively involved. 01:41 But there's an adherence normally of a billion. 01:46 They would know who Jesuits are, right? 01:48 ~ Sure. 01:49 But I think in recent years with the explosion of global news 01:52 and so on, and the telegenic Pope Francis, 01:57 a Jesuit, I think the people sort of pricked up their ears, 02:00 "Who are the Jesuits?" 02:02 ~ Well actually, there were a number of articles 02:03 that came out; one by Huffington Post, 02:05 another by The Daily Beast, another one by TIME, 02:09 that dealt with that specific issue that he was the first 02:12 Jesuit to be elected as the pope. 02:13 And that's got to be significant, 02:15 because Jesuits were the foot soldiers of the papacy. 02:19 But at different times they've even been 02:20 looked upon with suspicion. 02:23 ~ And even banned at one point. - Right. 02:25 And in the 70's, Pope John Paul II had a big run in 02:28 with them and was ready to dissolve the Order. 02:32 But they've been brought to heal, and I think with 02:35 a Jesuit pope I think their influence is very high. 02:39 It must be. 02:41 Now you and I are Seventh-day Adventists. 02:43 In our Adventist community there are some people that 02:47 are buzzing around with all sorts of conspiracies 02:49 and all the rest, and I'm constantly coming across 02:52 people claiming that Islam was begun by the Jesuits. 02:56 And what else would they say? 03:01 Oh, that the Illuminati and the whole Masonic Order 03:06 was begun by the Jesuits. 03:08 Could this be true? 03:10 From what you know of history. 03:12 From what, you know, everything, all of the historical documents 03:15 by the Jesuit Order itself and the Catholic Church, 03:18 as well as other non-Catholics that are historians that have, 03:22 and from a broad perspective of educational backgrounds, 03:25 I would say the definitive answer is, no. 03:28 ~ Right, I wanted you to say it. 03:29 Jesuits have not started any of these. 03:31 And if I had a Muslim Imam, he'd be babbling 03:34 in horror at the idea. 03:36 There's no historical evidence. 03:38 In fact, there isn't any evidence. 03:40 There's evidence to the contrary. 03:41 ~ Correct. 03:42 But perhaps it says something for the perceived power 03:45 and influence of the Jesuit Order through the ages 03:48 that this claim can even be made. 03:50 ~ In fact, one thing, just commenting on that 03:52 I would mention from a historical perspective. 03:55 You know, the Jesuits, as we mentioned in a previous segment, 03:58 they started in 1534, were officially recognized in 1540, 04:02 and had grown up to a thousand members by 1556. 04:05 By 1615, they had reached 13,000 male priests 04:10 that were part of the Order. 04:11 Now one of the things that, during that period of the 04:14 17th century from roughly 1600 to 1685 or 1690, they were 04:21 very instrumental in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. 04:25 And many of the countries that had become Protestant, 04:27 formerly Catholic that had become Protestant, 04:29 now they converted back again to Catholicism. 04:32 But the thing I was going to mention about that 04:34 is that the term, "Jesuit," is something that 04:37 in the hearts of Protestants during that era, it did strike 04:41 a note of fear because they recognized that 04:44 Jesuits were a part of the extension of the church, 04:47 part of the inquisitorial process, 04:49 and also very learned and astute men. 04:52 And also, I don't have a copy of it here, but there... 05:00 How can I characterize it? 05:01 Basically what they swore to, you know, their... 05:04 ~ Oath of allegiance. - Oath of allegiance. 05:06 It's rather blood curdling, and it's taking what Paul said 05:10 and enlarging it in ways that I don't think 05:12 most Christians would imagine. 05:14 You know Paul says, "I determine to be all things to all people." 05:17 I don't think Paul meant anything beyond not 05:20 challenging people, but suiting Christ to the occasions 05:25 and capitalizing on everything. 05:26 But you know, the Jesuits at different times have masqueraded 05:30 as other...to get into other belief systems 05:34 and get them from the inside out. 05:38 And I think that's perhaps why it's plausible to certain people 05:42 that they might have begun Islam, that they might have 05:45 been within the Knights Templar Orders, or whatever. 05:52 It's part of the fact, the history, that the 05:54 Roman Catholic Church has persecuted Masonry. 05:58 It has seen it correctly as a competitor. 06:02 So the idea that the Jesuits would have 06:04 started it is just nonsense to me. 06:05 In the late 1700's it was Pope Leo that actually wrote 06:09 several dogmatic statements, declarations of the church, 06:14 denouncing any kind of secret societies, 06:16 as they were referred to back then. 06:18 But I know on one occasion at least, a Jesuit 06:22 made huge inroads into Protestant thinking, 06:24 and something that we're bearing with in the U.S. now. 06:28 Does the name Ribera mean anything to you? 06:30 ~ Yes. - Tell me. 06:32 Well, you know, he's an individual that 06:36 had been a Catholic Priest and ended up converting out 06:42 and wrote quite a lot about the Order itself 06:45 and the inroads that the Catholic Church, 06:48 through the Society of Jesus, has attempted to do in trying to 06:51 penetrate Protestantism. 06:53 Well no, I think you're thinking of another name. 06:56 But it was a Jesuit priest, I'm trying to remember 06:58 his first name, Ribera, that came up with a method of 07:04 interpreting apocalyptic prophecies. 07:07 That conveniently re-wrote things to the extent so that 07:13 as the Protestants under Martin Luther were identifying 07:16 Rome as antichrist and so on, that all of that disappeared. 07:19 Because you're looking back, 07:21 and it's dispensationalism, and so on. 07:24 And there's no question that a Jesuit attempt to denature 07:29 the apocalyptic aspects of Protestantism 07:32 has led directly to what we have in the United States today 07:36 where evangelical Christianity... 07:38 ~ Dispensationalism. - Yeah. 07:39 ...are looking for something quite literal to take place 07:43 in the Middle East rather than perhaps spiritual developments 07:48 within, as Ellen White an Adventist writer 07:52 use to say, Christendom. 07:53 There's actually two positions that those priests, 07:57 those Jesuit priests, had developed regarding prophecy. 08:00 One is almost a purely futuristic perspective 08:03 where they move all of the prophecies to future events. 08:07 And then the other one is dealing with, 08:08 it's all relegated to the past. 08:10 It's happened in past history. 08:12 ~ Problematic principle, as they would say. 08:14 So yeah, but the whole point of it was diversion. 08:17 To take away from... 08:18 You know, people have forgotten Martin Luther, 08:21 I think, to a large degree. 08:23 They think that it was all justification by faith, 08:27 and Rome sort of squashed him because of that. 08:30 I read, re-read, the 95 Theses the other day. 08:33 And it was quite illuminating. 08:34 I'd read them years ago, but I hadn't looked at them 08:37 sort of this dispassionately. 08:39 And they're not really 95 discrete points. 08:42 They're 95 variations on a theme. 08:44 And the theme is the pope and the church, 08:48 medieval church that he represented, 08:50 Martin Luther felt had no authority and had usurped 08:54 any limited authority and carried forward 08:57 its edicts and doctrines, and so on. 08:59 So it was all a matter of authority. 09:02 Dealing with papal primacy, in essence that's the 09:06 term that Catholics would use in recognition of 09:09 the role of what they call the primacy of Peter, 09:14 from Peter down to whatever current pope is ruling. 09:17 And so in line with that, he saw biblical prophecies... 09:23 ...you know, they're in code, but they suggest that a 09:27 religious power at the end of time will seek to change 09:30 times and seasons, and speak haughtily, and so on. 09:34 ~ You know, something that I think is interesting 09:35 and a very important point is that, you're correct in stating, 09:39 that Luther in his study of Scripture reached a point, 09:42 after the Protestant Reformation had begun in 1517, 09:46 he reached a point in his study of Scripture 09:48 where he identified the pope as the, in essence, 09:52 this beast power; in essence referring to 09:55 the pope as the antichrist. 09:56 But the idea of the papal institution being the antichrist 10:01 was not actually original to Luther. 10:03 ~ No, no. Certainly not. 10:05 Because since the 1300's there were some of the other 10:07 Orders within the Catholic Church, the Franciscans, 10:10 had questioned that and they actually applied the term, 10:12 the antichrist, to the papal positions. 10:16 ~ Absolutely. Oh no. 10:17 - No, but I simply mention that because from a Catholic 10:19 perspective, that's within Catholicism. 10:21 - King Solomon says there's nothing new under the sun. 10:23 But Martin Luther made it almost to a fault the feature of his 10:31 resistance in some of the cartoons and even 10:34 pamphlets he wrote to make you cringe today. 10:37 Not so much that they were theologically wrong, but 10:39 they are very ill advised graphics, in my view. 10:44 But that was very much what Luther was about. 10:48 And so the Jesuits, I think, were doing a very necessary job, 10:52 and they did it very well, to turn this apocalyptic 10:56 interest in the Bible in two directions away. 10:59 ~ Correct. 11:01 And they've been very successful. 11:02 And as you mentioned, those viewpoints 11:05 have led in later centuries to the development of a 11:08 particular line of theological interpretation 11:11 of prophesy, part of that being the aspect of dispensationalism. 11:16 So where do you think the Jesuit Order is heading today? 11:20 From your analysis. 11:22 Because you're... I mean, I read a lot of it. 11:23 But I imagine you read even more of the internal documents 11:26 of the Roman Catholic Church. 11:28 Well for the Jesuits of today, they recognize that even though 11:33 part of their, I would say their primary focus 11:36 is on educational effort. 11:37 You know, that's always been an earmark of their Order. 11:40 And they've been very successful at it. 11:42 You know, just for example, a couple of institutions... 11:45 ~ And it's not a bad thing. 11:46 I mean, when Jesuitism began, educational levels 11:53 were not very high in Europe. 11:55 And in a way, they had the beast by the tail, 12:01 because increased education created agitation against 12:05 the control of Rome. 12:06 It was really education that directly led to the Reformation. 12:11 So you could have thought that they would just be against 12:14 education and control it all. 12:16 But they respected knowledge. 12:18 But they wanted to direct it to the ends of the papacy. 12:21 - There's no question. ~ Correct. 12:22 One could say that, in essence, rather than entering into 12:26 conflict with the educational efforts, they actually 12:30 utilized it to achieve the ends that they had in mind. 12:33 So coming back to mention that here in America, 12:37 just for example, there's Fordham University in New York, 12:39 there's Georgetown University in the D.C. area 12:42 that are Jesuit institutions. 12:45 And they're designed not only to train priests, Jesuit priests, 12:49 but also non-Catholics can go there and get an education. 12:51 So it is one of their ways of educating people, 12:54 and at minimum introducing them to some of the elements 12:57 of the Catholic faith. 12:59 Then in later years those individuals may have 13:01 some kind of an experience that would lead them 13:03 into the Catholic faith. 13:04 That's a model that all Christian groups follow. 13:10 And indeed, all religions. 13:12 That's the reason to have an educational institution 13:16 and invite others in. 13:17 You want to influence them to your viewpoint. 13:19 ~ Sure. - It's not illegitimate at all. 13:21 In fact, I think it's been inordinately successful 13:24 in the United States. 13:27 I personally, as a matter of history, find a lot of the 13:29 anti-Catholicism of the United States 13:32 embarrassing, to say the least. 13:33 It was bigoted, and at times even violent. 13:37 So we can't defend that. 13:39 But when you're looking at 13:41 Protestantism verses Catholicism, 13:44 there's a great split with deep doctrinal reasons for it. 13:48 It's amazing that in this once Protestant society, 13:52 through many vehicles, but most particularly, I think, 13:55 these educational institutions run by the Jesuits, 13:57 they have been inordinately successful 14:00 in just churning out acolytes who in perhaps even 14:07 subtle ways are very sympathetic to the aims 14:10 of the Roman Catholic structure. 14:12 That would have been unimaginable 200 years ago. 14:15 ~ That is true. 14:17 In fact, it was back in roughly the 1820's through the 1860's 14:21 that there was a lot of debate in America regarding 14:23 public education. 14:24 Because at one time, being that this country was 14:28 predominately settled through Protestants, 14:31 the Bible was used in classrooms... 14:33 ~ Well, churches and communities ran the schools, 14:36 not the government. 14:37 ~ Yes, and from that influence, Protestantism... 14:41 The issue that became a church state issue in ensuing years 14:45 was that if you had Catholic pupils in those schools, 14:48 and they weren't simply going to acknowledge the Protestant Bible 14:52 or Protestant viewpoints, then that's where a lot of 14:54 controversy came about, so that eventually 14:57 by the 1880's with Dewey and his educational reform system, 15:01 he proposed the idea of making it a secular 15:04 educational environment. 15:05 Which by the next century in the 1900's the Supreme Court 15:09 hammered out specific decisions establishing that; 15:12 no prayer, no Bible reading in schools. 15:14 ~ The whole discussion of education... 15:17 You could end the prayer and Bible study; 15:19 that's a separation of church and state issue. 15:21 But the whole question of education is an interesting one. 15:24 As I say, religion was really the arbiter of education 15:30 for a long, long time, and then in the early society in 15:34 in the U.S. different communities would band together 15:36 and basically group fund. 15:39 But the idea of the state running education 15:41 is relatively new, and it coincides directly with the 15:44 industrialization of society and the need of the state to train 15:49 citizens for its own purposes. 15:51 That's basically what it boils down to. 15:53 And so we've then built a contradiction between 15:56 the original aims of education and goals 15:58 and the continuing goals of religionists. 16:01 Roman Catholics are only one of the groups. 16:02 Adventists run schools. 16:04 But there is a conflict between the state aims and those aims. 16:09 And they perhaps can co-exist. 16:11 But when you fund them together, you've built in 16:16 a conflict that I don't think is easily reconcilable. 16:19 And that's why, you know, going back to that debate, 16:22 kind of that time period in the 1820's through the 1860's, 16:25 one of the thrusts that the Catholics were putting forth, 16:29 they wanted to have their own schools to educate their 16:31 children as Catholics, but they wanted state support for that. 16:34 ~ Yes, and that's a big issue. 16:36 We'll take a short break. 16:37 We'll be back to continue this discussion of, 16:40 not just the Jesuits, but religious education, 16:42 and what are the deeper implications of that. 16:45 Stay with us. |
Revised 2018-03-15