In the aftermath of the Reformation in the 16th century, Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit Order as an army of defence against the attack on the One True Church. The Jesuits saw that the reformers had learning and intelligence on their side; they were translating the Bible into vernacular tongues, and encouraging lay people to read it, and when laymen did so they could see that the doctrines and practices of the Roman church were a mountain of rubbish. The Jesuits aimed to be an army of very smart casuists and propagandists, skilful in rhetoric and argument, trained to counter the reformers' charges, not interested in truth but in Catholicism's tendentious version of it.
Since this very weblog was once accused of being tendentious by Grayling (in response to some comments in which I mocked some claims he had made in a Guardian article), someone might perhaps hope that I'm overinclined to think that he has a mistaken notion that 'tendentious' means 'suggesting conclusions not in conformity with the views of A. C. Grayling'. Anyone who has read Grayling knows that it's one of his favorite derogatory terms; he calls all sorts of things tendentious. But apparently he really does have no sense of the irony of raising the term in a context in which he describes the Society of Jesus as an "army of very smart casuists and propagandists" who, not being interested in truth "but in Catholicism's tendentious version of it," were trained to counter the views of those who "had learning and intelligence on their side" and were making it possible for anyone to "see that the doctrines and practices of the Roman church were a mountain of rubbish".
In any case, Thony C., who is hardly an adherent of Catholicism's tendentious version of the truth (and, contrary to Grayling's suggested description just prior to this of everyone who disagrees with his interpretation of history, is not "deaf, dumb, blind and illiterate...or...one of the creatures of faith"), has a good post on why the Jesuits are probably not the best choice of example for Grayling's purposes in the essay. And as he notes, he's only touching on highlights. (UPDATE: He has a follow-up here.)
