Rodriguez was summoned to Rome and might have been pardoned immediately had he avowed his fault, but he demanded a canonical trial. Several grave fathers were, therefore, appointed and their sentence was extremely severe, but Ignatius made them reconsider it again and again, and make it milder. He even modified their final verdict. Rodriguez never went back again to Portugal in an official capacity.
This humiliating episode is somewhat slurred over by Crétineau-Joly, but the Jesuit historians like Jouvancy, Brou, Astrain, Valignano, Pollen make no attempt to conceal or palliate it. The failure of Rodriguez only illustrates the difficulty that St. Ignatius had in making his followers grasp the fundamental idea of the Society.
Paulsen, the German Protestant historian, is shocked to find that in Jesuits, generally, there exists "something of the silent but incessant action of the powers of nature. Without passion, without appeals to war, without agitation, without intemperate zeal, they never cease to advance, and are scarcely ever compelled to take a step backward. Sureness, prudence and forethought characterize each of their movements. As a matter of fact, these are not lovable qualities," he says, "for whoever acts without some human weakness is never amiable." The "step backward" made by Rodriguez, in this instance, ought to satisfy Paulsen's requirements for that amiability which, according to him, is associated with "human weakness." One need not be reminded that it is a curious psychology that can find amiability in a disease or a deformity. The amiability is in the person who puts up with it, not in the offender. Henri Joly in his "Psychologie des Saints," furnishes another example of this disregard of facts which so often affects the vision of a man in pursuit of a theory. To prove the marvellous power which Ignatius exerted over men, he tells us that when Rodriguez was summoned to Rome "the only sentiment in his mind was that of almost delirious joy, at again seeing the companion of his youth, his friend and master." The facts narrated above would imply that there was anything but delirious joy in the mind of Rodriguez before, during or after his trial, and the facts also show that sometimes it takes more than the marvellous power of a St. Ignatius to control even a holy man under the influence of a passion or a delusion.