One of the leading Jesuit authorities--an author upon whom the society relies to make known that part of its history considered favorable--endeavors to maintain the proposition that it was absolutely obligatory for Loyola to have been intrusted with the duty "of reforming the morals of the people of Rome," immediately within the shadow of the Vatican. He represents the task as "most difficult and important, as at that time the people were much demoralized, and indulged in the most frightful excesses," notwithstanding the papal Government, with plenary and absolute powers, had existed there during all the period of the Middle Ages--nearly a thousand years. Not content alone with asserting that the people were demoralized, this same author affirms, in addition, that Loyola "sought to reform the monastic orders, and reanimate the priesthood with a holy fervor,"[5] thus alleging that the monastic orders and the priesthood were demoralized like the people, and needed that a new guardian of their morals, other and better than any the Church had ever furnished, should be empowered to regulate their conduct. In further explanation of the reasons why Loyola desired to establish the society of Jesuits, he represents him as having addressed directly to the pope, Paul III, this argument: "It appears that this society is absolutely necessary for the eradication of those abuses with which the Church is afflicted."[6] And at another place, referring to the condition of the Church in Germany, he says it was "mainly attributable to the ignorance of the people, and, more dangerous still, to the shortcomings of the priesthood, abandoned to the gratification of their own passions. In the entire city of Worms there was but one priest worthy of respect."[7] Neither Luther nor the reformers could have employed apter words to justify themselves; nor can those of the present time, who comment upon the vices which then prevailed among the clergy, express themselves in stronger language. The well-established historical fact is, that the same condition of things existed throughout the leading nations of Europe, beginning at Rome and reaching out in every direction, having the papacy as its common center. When the Jesuits, therefore, bestow their curses upon Luther and other reformers for having proclaimed the necessity for reform in the Church because of the demoralization of the clergy, they show their memories to be short in forgetting that their society was justified by its founder upon the plea of the same necessity.