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Rh monks are now rarely met with, and of the later orders, the Regular Clerks, only one has left a deep impression on the Latin Church and obtained a place in history – the Society of Jesus. This Society owes its still vigorous life to its wider scope and more efficient administration." Although this writer assigns an exceptional position to the Society, others include also this Order in the general doom. "We can do without the Jesuits," was a saying of Dr. Döllinger, and his opinion is shared by some so-called Liberal Catholics.

That the present Pope Leo XIII. has other sentiments about religious orders in general is evident from his numerous letters. In his letter to the Archbishop of Paris, December 23, 1900, he enumerates all the benefits religion and society receive from their hands. He says that "the religious are the necessary auxiliaries of the bishops and the secular clergy." "In the past their doctors shed renown on the universities by the depth and breadth of their learning, and their houses became the refuge of divine and human knowledge, and in the shipwreck of civilization saved from certain destruction the masterpieces of ancient wisdom. Nor is their activity, their zeal, their love of their fellow-men, diminished in our own day. Some, devoted to teaching, instruct the young in secular knowledge and the principles of religious virtue and duty, on which public peace and the welfare of states absolutely depend. Others are seen settling amongst savage tribes in order to civilize them. Nor is it an uncommon thing for them to make important contributions to science by the help they give to the researches which are being made in such different domains as the study of the differences of race and tongue, of history, the