Chapter VII.
The Educational Work of the Jesuits in the Nineteenth Century.
It cannot be denied that the Jesuits have not had the same brilliant success as educators in the nineteenth century, as during the centuries preceding the suppression of the Order. How is this to be explained? The opponents of the Order are ready with an answer: 'It 1s because the Jesuits have not kept up with the progress of the age. Their whole system is not suited to modern times." Even such as are not hostile to the Society, have said that the Old Society took with it into its grave the secret of its educational success. However, a short reflection will give us the true explanation.
The time of the suppression, a period of forty years, forms a gap in the educational history of the Society. These blank pages, as Father Hughes says, signify the total loss of property and position, with a severance in many places of the educational traditions for almost sixty years, and the entire destruction of them in many other parts.[1] Restored, the Society had to struggle into existence under altered and unfavorable conditions. The schools in about seven hundred cities and towns, which the Order had possessed before its suppression, were now largely in the hands of State authorities. And besides, the nineteenth century was not a time of undisturbed peace
- ↑ Hughes, Loyola, p. 266.
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