The Catholic World, Vol. 05, April 1867 to September 1867

John A. Gray & Green Printers, 16 & 18 Jacob Street, New-York/


The political changes and weighty events that have occurred since, have almost obliterated from the memory the men and the revolutions or catastrophes of 1848 and 1849. We seem removed from them by centuries, and have lost all recollection of the great questions which then agitated the public mind, and on which seemed suspended the issues of the life and death of society. Then an irreligious liberalism threatened the destruction of all authority, of all belief in revelation, and piety toward God; and a rampant, and apparently victorious, socialism, or more properly, anti-socialism, threatened the destruction of society itself, and to replunge the civilized world into the barbarism from which the church, by long centuries of patient and unremitting toil, had been slowly recovering it.
Among the noble and brave men who then placed themselves on the side of religion and society, of faith and Christian civilization, and attempted to stay the advancing tide Of infidelity and barbarism, few were more conspicuous, or did more to stir up men's minds and hearts to a sense of the danger, than the learned, earnest, and most eloquent Donoso Cortes, Marquis of Valdegamas. He was then in the prime and vigor of his manhood. Born and bred in Catholic Spain at a time when the philosophy of the eighteenth century had not yet ceased to be in vogue, and faith, if not extinct, was obscured and weak, he had grown up without religious fervor, a philosophist rather than a believer--mdash;a liberal in politics, and disposed to be a social reformer. He sustained The Christinos against the Carlists, and rose to high favor with the court of Isabella Segunda. He was created a marquis, was appointed a senator, held various civil and diplomatic appointments, and was in 1848 one of the most prominent and, influential statesmen in Spain, I might almost say, in Europe.
The death of a dearly beloved brother, some time before, had very deeply affected him, and became the occasion of awakening his dormant religious faith, and turning his attention to theological studies. His religious convictions became active and fruitful, and by the aid of divine grace vivified all his thoughts and actions, growing stronger and stronger, and more absorbing every day. He at length lived but for religion, and devoted his whole mind and soul to defend it against its enemies, to diffuse it in society, and to adorn it by his piety and deeds of charity, especially to the poor. He died in the habit of a Jesuit at Paris, in May, 1853.