This tendency became very marked
among the friars, who traveled from place to place, and occupied
important university positions, and it reaches its culmination in the
Society of Jesus. Retirement among the Jesuits is employed merely as a
preparation for active life. Constant intercourse with society was
provided for in the constitution of the order. Bishop John J. Keane, a
Roman Catholic authority, says: "The clerks regular, instituted
principally since the sixteenth century, were neither monks nor friars,
but priests living in common and busied with the work of the ministry.
The Society of Jesus is one of the orders of clerks regular."
Other differences between the monastic communities and the Jesuits are
to be observed. The Jesuit discards the monastic gown, and is decidedly
averse to the old monastic asceticism, with its rigorous and painful
treatment of the body. While the older religious societies were
essentially democratic in spirit and government, the monks sharing in
the control of the monastic property and participating in the election
of superiors, the Jesuitical system is intensely monarchical, a
despotism pure and simple. In the older orders, the welfare of the
individual was jealously guarded and his sanctification was sought.
Among the Jesuits the individual is nothing, the corporate body
everything. Admission to the monastic orders was encouraged and easily
obtained. The novitiate of the Jesuits is long and difficult.
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