Jesuit clause
The Jesuit clause was a provision in the Constitution of Norway, paragraph 2, in force from 1814 to 1956, that denied Jesuits entry into the country. Until 1897, this provision was combined with a ban on monastic orders, and until 1851 a ban on Jews, the so-called Jew clause.
The second paragraph of the Constitution originally reads:
Historian Bernt T. Oftestad has often interpreted the ban as an expression of Norwegian anti-Catholicism. Catholicism was banned in Norway until 1845, when the Dissenter Act was passed and Catholic worship was allowed in Norway, although monks continued to be banned from entering the country. As early as 1624, Norway had prohibited Catholic priests from staying in the country, under threat of the death penalty.
Restrictions on Catholic worship were gradually reduced from 1845, but the ban on Jesuits was not lifted until Norway ratified the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights in 1956. In both 1897 and 1925, proposals to lift the ban on Jesuits were discussed and voted on, but failed to gain a supermajority in 1897, and only gained the support of a minority in 1925. Thus, this provision became the last important express legal restriction on religious presence and practice in Norway.
Background
Jesuits
The Jesuit order was founded during the Reformation in Europe with the aim of reforming the Catholic Church from within. The order does not have monasteries in the usual sense, although monks who are in the same place must live together. The monks do not wear their own habit and are not bound to a place, unlike for example the Benedictine order, but are sent out by the order. The Jesuit order played a decisive role during the Counter-Reformation and in Catholic missions. For a time, it was a powerful organization within the Catholic Church. The Jesuits have fostered both missions and the establishment of educational institutions, and established a number of universities in Europe. Their missionary activity and sometimes elitist and offensive style has led to strong backlash and criticism over time, as well as the emergence of both suspicion and a number of myths associated with the order and their activities. Within Catholic circles as well, such as Jansenism and philosopher Blaise Pascal, attacks have been made on the Jesuits.Views on the Jesuits
During the 1956 parliamentary debate on the repeal of the clause, the order was accused of being behind the Spanish Civil War and of inspiring Communists and Marxists by the then-president of the Odelsting, C. J. Hambro:Critics of Jesuitism often sustained that the members of the order followed the Pope blindly and that the order followed a moral theology which justified both lying and deceit as long as the ends were good, and were for that reason given the motto "The end justifies the means". Similar ideas about the Jesuits were also common in Norway in the 20th century.
Before 1814
As the Jesuit schools and universities grew in reputation, it also became common for wealthy Norwegian official families to send their children there for the best education: in Rome, but also later in Belgium, Poland and elsewhere. For Norwegian students, the school in Braniewo on the Baltic Sea was particularly attractive. The students went to Jesuit schools, and many received tuition free. They had to attend Catholic masses, confessions and Catholic Eucharist. Many of the students converted to Catholicism, the best known being Laurentius Nicolai. The schools also gained a good reputation, with good teaching staff and pedagogically recognized methods. The education was practical and results-oriented. The schools provided education in various disciplines, such as literature, music, drama and mathematics. Several of these began missionary work in the Nordic countries, starting in Poland and Belgium. There were also some Catholics in Norway who more or less hid their faith, among them who was bishop of Stavanger and Christoffer Hjort who was headmaster at Oslo Cathedral School. In 1602, the Catholics in Norway had their own clergy for a period.In 1604, the situation for Catholics worsened. It was then forbidden to employ anyone who had attended Jesuit schools in positions in schools and churches. In practice, students from Norway ended up no longer attending Jesuit schools, and much of the contact with Catholic countries disappeared. In 1623–1624 the Jesuits made a new missions attempt. As a result, in 1624, Catholic priests were banned from Denmark–Norway under threat of the death penalty.
But around the mid-1600s, the Catholic Church largely abandoned its missionary activities in Norway, and most active attempts to re-Catholicize Denmark–Norway ceased.
Work on the Constitution
The first drafts of the Constitution did not mention Jesuits, but the ban on Jews was there from the beginning. A draft from 16 April reads:Around 20 drafts of a new constitution were prepared, in 15 of which religious practice was regulated and only one had full freedom of religion. The tendency of the proposal was to allow non-Lutheran Christian denominations, but forbid their public practice. Eleven of the 15 proposals stated that the Evangelical Lutheran faith should be the public religion, seven stated that the king should profess this faith, one stated that the government should profess this faith, and one applied the requirement to all officials. Pope Clement XIV disbanded the Jesuit order in 1773 and the order was not active while work on the Constitution was ongoing.
On 4 May, a total of 20 paragraphs were adopted, but on the same day there was a new debate on paragraph 2, on freedom of religion. Wilhelm Frimann Koren Christie had promoted the draft, and thought that the exclusion of Jesuits and "monastic orders" should also be added to paragraph 2, something that had not been included in the drafts until then. Christie's proposal was divided into four parts:
- Jews and Jesuits were to be excluded from the kingdom
- Monastic orders should not be tolerated
- The inhabitants of the country should profess the religion of the state
- The inhabitants should be obliged to educate their children in the public religion
"Disgustingly intolerant. Jews are human beings. If other nations acted as we do, the Jews would have no place to live, and yet they should be allowed to live somewhere on God's green earth."
Provost Hans Christian Ulrik Midelfart also spoke against the proposal which he called a manifestation of unchristian intolerance. Christie, however, said that Jesuits could pose a threat to the country and that other "sects" could also be harmful.
It turned out as Christie wanted, and 94 of 110 representatives at the Constituent Assembly in Eidsvoll voted for the proposal, but it then had a provision that there should in principle be free exercise of religion, a point that fell out in the editorial committee, consisting of Christian Adolph Diriks, Lauritz Weidemann and Georg Sverdrup while Nicolai Wergeland stood for full religious freedom in this case. But the battle was not over religious tolerance, even in paragraph 15, which stipulated that the regent should "always" profess the Evangelical Lutheran religion. This wording was important because Charles III Johan had been a confessing Catholic until 1810. The was thus given the opportunity to make a strict confession to the Lutheran religion in an attempt to exclude the Swedish heir to the throne as future Norwegian king.
Debate on repeal
In the debates on the repeal of the Jesuit clause, the counter-arguments went along two lines: one was that Jesuits being allowed entry could represent a threat to the country, and a constitutionally conservative line that the constitution should not be changed unless there was a need for change, and that this provision was in effect a dormant provision, since no Jesuits had been stopped at the border.The arguments for repeal were primarily based on principles of religious and spiritual freedom, and that the provisions were not worthy of a modern democracy.
The weight of these different arguments was, however, somewhat different on the three occasions, the fear of the alleged harmful effect of the Jesuits on the country being greatest in the discussion of 1925.
1897
At the request of Norwegian Catholics, a final amendment to the Constitution was delivered in 1892 to repeal the Jesuit clause, and they called on Viggo Ullmann of the Liberal Party to promote it. The proposal came up for debate on 10 May 1897, along with two other proposals.Ullmann's proposal struck down the ban on Jesuits and monastic orders, but the Jesuit ban was added when the proposal was supported by Ullmann's party colleagues Thomas Georg Münster and Hans Jacob Horst. Another proposal was promoted by Hans Andersen from the Conservative Party, where the Jesuit and monastic order ban was removed and full religious practice was allowed "within the boundaries of law and virtuousness". A third proposal was promoted by Liberals Ole Olsen Five and which would retain the ban on Jesuits and monastic orders, and add a ban on Freemasons.
The debate was dominated by the practical meaning of these prohibitions. At that time, it was only the Jesuit ban that had criminal law, where a Jesuit who was discovered in Norway could be sentenced to lifelong forced labor. This was therefore interpreted to mean that there was actually no prohibition on other members of monastic orders staying in Norway, but only a prohibition on establishing orders in the country. It was further discussed whether there was a need for the amendment according to the requirements in paragraph 112. As there had been no unfortunate experiences with the Jesuit ban, it was argued that there was no reason to remove it. It was also pointed out in the debate that other countries had had similar bans on Jesuits, but had removed them.
The result of the debate was that the ban on monastic orders was removed as there was still no possibility of sanction or leverage, while the Jesuit ban was maintained. However, the proposal to remove the Jesuit ban received a majority, 63 in favor and 43 against, but not the supermajority of 2/3.