Fact-Check: Dominus ac Redemptor

Dominus ac Redemptor (Lord and Redeemer) is the papal brief (a document emanating from the Pope regarding a particular act of importance to the Petrine ministry motu proprio) promulgated on July 21, 1773 in which Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus. The Society was later on restored by the action of Pope Pius VII in 1814 as a result of the Concert of Europe, a general agreement among the great powers to maintain European balance of power. At the first General Congregation after the Restoration, the Jesuits agreed to keep the organization and its charism unchanged before it was dissolved by pontifical action. 

Prior to the issuance of the document, the Jesuits have already been expelled from Brazil (1754), Portugal (1759), France (1764), Spain and its colonies (1767), and Parma (1768). Though he had to face strong pressure on the part of the ambassadors of the Bourbon courts, his predecessor, Pope Clement XIII always refused to yield to their demands to have the Society of Jesus formally suppressed.

The issue had reached a crisis point, however, that the question seems to have been the main issue in determining the outcome of the papal conclave of 1769 that was called to elect a new pope. While in France, Spain, and Portugal the suppression had taken place de facto, the accession to the Chair of St Peter by a new supreme pontiff has made the occasion an informal venue for insisting on the abolition of the religious order, root and branch, de facto and de jure, in Europe and all over the world. Giovanni Cardinal Ganganelli, a Conventual Franciscan friar, was one of the five papabile. His position on the "Jesuit question" was somewhat ambiguous. When asked on the matter, he told the anti-Jesuit Cardinals of the court that "he recognized in the sovereign pontiff the right to extinguish, with good conscience, the Society of Jesus, provided he observed the canon law; and that it was desirable that the pope should do everything in his power to satisfy the wishes of the Crowns." At the same time, the other papabile, the pro-Jesuit Cardinal Zelanti was believed to be indifferent or even favorable to the Society. Cardinal Ganganelli was eventually elected by the conclave and took the name of Pope Clement XIV.

The official document is fifty-five paragraphs long.

In the introductory paragraph, Pope Clement XIV gives the overall tone of the papal brief:

Our Lord has come on Earth as "Prince of Peace." This mission of peace, transmitted to the apostles, is a duty of the successors of St Peter, a responsibility the pope fulfills by encouraging institutions fostering peace and removing, if need be, others that impede peace. Not just if guilty; even on the broader ground of harmony and tranquility in the Church that it may be found justifiable to suppress a religious order. He mentions as credible precedence, Pope Pius V's suppression of the Humiliati in 1571, Pope Urban VIII's elimination of the Regular Order of Ss. Ambrose and Barnabas at the Grove, and Pope Innocent X's suppression of the Order of St Basil of Armenia.

What followed is a long section in which Pope Clement XIV reviews the reasons which, in his spiritual judgment, are calling for the extinction of the Society of Jesus:

1. A long list of charges against the Jesuits is enumerated (most of them pertaining to the Society's accumulation of massive wealth from its schools, its independent stand in avoiding influence from the Crowns, and its main role in instigating fear of indoctrinating the subjects of the State through its rigid access to the process of thought in the offering of curricular instruction, widely seen as a way of attaining political power); 
2. He recalls that, in history, the Society has consistently encountered severe criticism;
3. The distress occasioned to earlier popes by clashes among the Catholic faithful with regards to the Society's charism is bitterly evoked.

In a final, more technical section, Pope Clement XIV pronounces the actual sentence of the suppression of the Society of Jesus. Some provisions are supplied for the implementation of the immediate effect of the instrument.

A second brief titled, Gravissimis ex causis (For the most serious reasons), was subsequently issued to establish a commission of five Cardinals entrusted with the task of informing the Jesuits and handling the many practical problems caused by the suppression. Two days after its constitution, a letter of the Cardinal president of the commission ordered all bishops of the universal Church to proclaim and publish the brief in every Jesuit house, residence, or school in the presence of the assembled members of the Society. That unusual approach created a good number of problems since, at that time, there were 22,589 Jesuits, 49 Provinces, 669 Colleges, and over 3,000 missionaries deployed worldwide. Hundreds of schools were closed or transferred to other religious orders or moved to the jurisdiction of another state.

Non-Catholic countries such as Prussia and Russia forbade the bishops to promulgate the brief and ordered the Jesuits to carry on their academic activities as if nothing had happen.

x------------x

The fact-check is sponsored by Puma.