NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The Œcumenical Council and the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff: A Pastoral Letter to the Clergy, etc. By Henry Edward, Archbishop of Westminster. London: Longmans, Green & Co. Pp. 151.
We have received within the past two months five or six dissertations on the question of the infallibility of the ex cathedrâ judgments of the sovereign pontiffs and other closely connected topics, written by some of the best theologians in Europe. They handle the subject with great learning and ability, and in a manner much more satisfactory and to the point than is usually found in treatises on the same topic in our theological text-books or popular expositions of doctrine. The reason is, that the controversy has been revived and assumed a new importance since the indiction of the council, and that the advocates of what is commonly called ultramontane doctrine have applied themselves intently to seize hold of and minutely analyze and refute the objections of the opposite party, who have themselves endeavored to bring up anew all these objections with as much force as possible. Archbishop Manning has given us one of these learned dissertations in the form of a pastoral letter, which makes a considerable pamphlet, divided into four chapters. The first chapter is on the effect of the council already felt in England and France. The second is on the opportuneness of defining the infallibility of the Roman pontiff, in which he discusses (1) The reasons against the definition; (2) answers to these reasons; (3) reasons for the definition. In the third chapter he makes a concise but very copious exposition of the tradition on the subject, tracing it backward from the Council of Constance to that of Chalcedon, and afterward giving a history of the Gallican controversy since the time of the Council of Constance. The fourth chapter is on the effect which the council is certain to produce on the evidence and proposition of the faith, and on the relations of civil governments to the church. A postscript is added on the recent defence of Gallican doctrine by Mgr. Maret. The most noteworthy and distinctive feature of this very learned and lucidly written document is, the manner in which the reasons why the council should issue a clear and precise definition of the true doctrine held by the church are presented. The illustrious archbishop argues with great force that an omission to make such a definition will be interpreted as a tacit permission to hold and teach the Gallican opinions as sound and safe probable opinions. There can be no doubt that his views and those of prelates in equally eminent positions who have publicly expressed themselves in equivalent terms will receive that grave consideration from the bishops of the Catholic Church in council which they merit. Undoubtedly, also, those who may hold different opinions will have the most ample liberty of arguing their side of the question. The decision of the council must be accepted by all as final and infallible; and if such a decision is rendered, the controversy will be set at rest for ever; a consummation, in our opinion, devoutly to be wished.
We will venture to add a few words of our own to the point of the argument presented by the Archbishop of Westminster. The ultramontane doctrine has been almost universally held and taught in the Catholic Church in the United States. Nevertheless, the manner of handling the Protestant controversy in many English books, some of which are translations from French authors, has been such as to create an impression that the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope in definitions of faith is merely a pious opinion. This is supported by the fact that the opposite opinion has not been formally condemned, and that those who held it have been recognized as in full communion with the Roman Church, and even raised to eminent positions in the hierarchy. This same impression has been created in other countries as well as in our own, and exists to a very great extent in the mind of the Catholic laity as well as to some extent in that of the clergy. The real facts in the case are not fully known. It is not generally known that those who have carried the Gallican opinions so far, and reduced them to practice in so consistent a manner, as to refuse implicit obedience and unreserved interior submission to the pontifical decretals, or who have appealed from papal decisions to an œcumenical council, have been condemned under censure of excommunication, that the whole church has given their assent to this judgment, and that it is a point of the canon law. The truth is, that the holy see has always regarded the Gallican opinions as erroneous, although it has judged it wisest to tolerate them thus far, and to proceed by the way of instruction and inculcation in teaching the opposite doctrine, waiting until the complete discussion of the subject by theologians and the pastoral teaching of the bishops should have brought such a flood of light on the subject that the truth should gain over the intelligence of enlightened Catholics, before pronouncing a formal and definitive judgment. There is a great danger, however, that this cautious and indulgent treatment of those who have held Gallican opinions in good faith and with a practical submission to the supreme authority of the holy see, may give an advantage to bold and indocile spirits to make the toleration of these opinions a point d'appui for a resistance to the teaching of the sovereign pontiffs ex cathedrâ, having in it a schismatical and heretical tendency. The defenders and advocates of sound doctrines are placed at a disadvantage by the lack of a definitive judgment declaring the sense of the church in such a manner as to preclude all dispute or ambiguity of interpretation. There can be no question that the holy see, and the great body of bishops, including those of France with few exceptions, hold the doctrine of the papal infallibility to be a certainly revealed truth contained in Scripture and tradition, and consequently regard the contrary opinion as an error which has only been for a time tolerated. The whole action of the church is regulated by this view, and will always be so regulated. There appears, therefore, to be a very strong reason why the present council should put the whole question at rest for ever by a final decision and a definition de fide. We can answer for the clergy and laity of the United States that they will welcome such a decision with the greatest joy. As for the objection that it will place an obstacle in the way of conversions, it is groundless. Those who are solidly converted from Protestantism in this country are converted to Catholicity pure and simple, and not to Catholicity with a Gallican reservation.
The Woman who Dared. By Epes Sargent. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1870. 18mo, pp. 210.
We have every disposition in the world to treat Mr. Epes Sargent with respect, and to speak well of this his latest poem; for he has a name in the literary world, and his poem is not without some artistic merit; but, unhappily, we can do neither with a good conscience. We cannot tolerate false doctrines, mischievous sophistry, and bad morals, because expressed in chaste language and attractive verse. Mr. Sargent has poetic feeling and talent; but we do not accept the doctrine that art is necessarily moral or religious. It may be used to embellish error as well as truth, vice as well as virtue, to corrupt as well as to purify and ennoble. In the poem before us the poet has used all his art, genius, and talent to seduce his readers to swallow as a wholesome Christian beverage a most poisonous compound of spiritism, free-lovism, woman's-rightsism, rationalism, and all sorts of radicalism.
No doubt we shall be told that the poet is sincere, and that he really believes that he is chanting a great truth, and laboring in downright earnest to develop and confirm a purer and higher civilization than the world has ever yet known. It is not unlikely that Eve thought as much when, seduced by the subtle reasonings and false promises of the serpent, she reached forth her hand, plucked and ate the forbidden fruit, and gave of the same to her husband; but this did not excuse her for violating the command of God, or save her from expulsion from paradise. Men who have no infallible criterion of truth and falsehood, no infallible standard of right and wrong, have no authority from God to teach, and no right to open their mouths on any subject that seriously affects the interests or the conduct of life. No one, on the strength of his own personal conviction alone, has the right to arraign and condemn what the common sense and experience of mankind in all ages and nations have sanctioned. It is no justification, no valid excuse even, for a man who promulgates and does his best to get accepted false and mischievous doctrines—doctrines which weaken the hold of religion on the conscience, pervert the moral sense, render the family impossible, and sap the very foundation of society—to say, "I am sincere; I really believe I am laboring for a true and much needed reform." Do you know it? Do you not know that you do not know it? Do you not know that all the presumptions are against you? Uncertain as you are and must be if you ever think, why attempt to teach at all? Who compels you? Men are accountable for the thoughts and intents of the heart no less than for outward acts, and God will bring every man into judgment for every thought and word as well as for every deed. Every man is bound to conform his thoughts, words, and deeds to the law of God, and to use with all diligence his faculties to ascertain that law and what it enjoins. Invincible ignorance excuses from sin, it is true, one in that whereof one is invincibly ignorant; but an ignorance that may be overcome by due diligence and the proper use of the means within one's reach, is not invincible, but vincible, and therefore no excuse. The man or the woman that can seriously entertain the doctrine and morals of Mr. Sargent's poem cannot plead invincible ignorance; but must be under a delusion never possible in the case of the pure in heart, or to any but those who take pleasure in iniquity.
We have no intention of reopening the discussion of the woman question, or that of spiritists and spiritism; the questions of divorce and free religion have also been amply discussed, at least for the present, in this magazine. We can touch here only on two questions raised by the author—that of free-love and that of the right and propriety of female wooing. The aim of the author has been to defend the woman who dared woo openly and in plain words the man she wished to be her husband and the father of her child. He contends, in the smoothest and most seductive blank-verse he is master of, that this is proper, and woman's right; and that it is only the tyranny of a barbarous custom, created by male predominance, that requires the woman to wait till she is sought. Linda Percival, the bastard daughter of a bigamist, is for him the model woman. She dares break through this custom and proposes to a very respectable young gentleman; but gets at first the mitten, and succeeds finally only by buying him up for a hundred thousand dollars in hard cash, paid down to his swindled and bankrupt father. Yet Linda is a combination of incompatible qualities, an impossible woman, a monster in nature, and her conduct is no precedent for the sex. She is a man-woman, and the last in the world that a real man could love or marry. The woman who does not instinctively shrink from soliciting a man to marry her could appreciate no argument that would prove its impropriety or the gross immorality that would result from the practice, were it once held reputable. Mr. Sargent knows well enough, without our telling him, that nature has made woman strong for defence, but weak when acting on the offensive. When she solicits a man to be her husband and "the father of her child," she steps out from her strong fortress of modesty and reserve, throws off her defensive armor, and places herself at his mercy. Resistance afterward avails nothing. She has surrendered at discretion. No training on either side can protect her virtue, secure her respect, or belief in the purity of her intentions; for no education or training can reverse nature. The practice, if adopted and become general, would degrade woman to the lowest level, put an end to marriage, extinguish the family, and with it society and the race.
Mr. Sargent, whether he intends it or not, advocates free-love as he does free religion. Love, he says, must be free, and bound by no chain but its own silken cords. The least constraint kills it. The marriage is all in the mutual love; and when that leaves, the marriage is dissolved. To compel a couple who do not mutually love to come together, or, after the love is dead, to live together, as husband and wife—we beg pardon, as wife and husband—is downright tyranny, outrageous cruelty. This is the cant of nearly all female and much of male popular literature, which relies for its tragic interest on the obstacles thrown in the way of true love by an imperious mother, a despotic father, a hard-hearted old uncle, barbarous custom, or cruel and tyrannous marriage laws. This literature, the only literature except newspapers this restless, busy age reads, has already corrupted modern society, made away with parental authority, obliterated the love and reverence of children for their parents, and rendered a happy household well-nigh impossible.
This popular doctrine mistakes the love marriage demands as well as the nature and end of marriage itself. The love it extols is at best only a romantic sentiment, which in its own nature, like all sentiments, is capricious and evanescent. It can give no security to marriage, for it can neither control the senses nor be controlled by reason. Suppose it as pure and as lofty as that of the fabled knight of chivalry for his "ladie fair," to whom he devotes his sword and worships as a distant star pure and serene in the heavens above him, it cannot survive possession, and never does and never can exist between husband and wife. The reason why love matches are so seldom happy is, that they are formed with the expectation that the chivalric and romantic love of the lovers will survive in the spouses. But this is never the case, and never should be; for it is incompatible with the duties of life. The love that makes marriage blessed and is its true basis must indeed be free from coercion; but, while unconstrained by power or external force, it must be constrained by duty and subject to laws. It must be a love that it depends on one's own will to give or to withhold.
Marriage requires the free assent of the parties; and when that free assent is refused by either party, there is no marriage, and we are aware of no law of church or state that treats it as a marriage, at least of any professedly Christian state. That the assent, when once given by the parties competent and free to give or withhold it, should be held to be irrevocable, is no hardship. The parties understand and intend—nay, desire—the contract in forming it to be during their natural life, or so long as both continue to live. The nature of the contract, the purposes for which it is entered into, require that it should be indissoluble, save by death only; and this, too, even without taking into the account its sacramental character. In extreme cases the law does not oblige the parties to live together, and grants a divorce a mensa et toro; but the Christian law allows never a divorce a vinculo; for the end of marriage is not primarily nor chiefly the happiness of the husband and wife, but the preservation of purity, the founding of the family, and the rearing and training of children, on which depend the continuance of the race and the existence of society. Even if the sentimental love be wanting, with good-will on each side and a diligent study of each to perform the duties of their state, which it depends on each to have and to do, and which neither is free to neglect, the little repugnances and incompatibilities of temper may be easily got over, a solid friendship spring up, and much genuine happiness after all be enjoyed. There may not be much romance; but romance and romantic love end always with marriage, and never survive, and ought not to be expected to survive, the "honeymoon." But happily, what is better for this work-day world, duty may take its place.
Mr. Sargent is mistaken in saying in his notes that the church does not regard marriage between Protestants as indissoluble. The case he cites is not in point; for the marriage he supposes was dissolved was no valid marriage in Brazil, in consequence of the disparitas cultus, which, where the discipline of the Council of Trent is in force, is an impedimentum dirimens. So also is he mistaken in his assertion that "up to the time of Charlemagne ... concubinage and polygamy were common among Christians, and countenanced by the church." The church has never countenanced either; and if either has ever been practised by Christians, it has been only in violation of her express laws. In point of fact, at no time has either been common; but some of the Merovingian kings wished to continue, after professing to be Christians, the old practice by the pagan German princes and higher nobles of polygamy, and the church, no doubt, had great difficulty in forcing them to conform to the Christian law. But it, as concubinage, was in the eyes of the church always illicit and sinful. On this subject the law or discipline of the church has never changed. The poet is not well qualified to speak of Catholic or Christian subjects.
The Pastor and his People; or, The Word of God and the Flock of Christ. By Rev. Thomas J. Potter. Dublin: James Duffy. New-York: Catholic Publication Society. 1869. Pp. 337.
Father Potter has written this volume to give pastors some practical hints in regard to the instruction of their people. The book is really the second volume of a work published some years since, under the title of Sacred Eloquence; or, The Theory and Practice of Preaching. That work set forth the great theoretical principles of pulpit oratory; this volume reduces those principles to practice.
The contents of the volume are arranged under three general heads: Holiday Preaching, Familiar Instruction, and Delivery. In the first of these divisions we find minute instruction concerning the material that should be used in what is known as the "set sermon." Not merely for sermons that are preached on holidays though, but for every occasion on which a formal discourse is suitable. A chapter in this portion of the work is well devoted to a defence of these elaborate sermons. Not that such preaching will be the most useful or the most expedient, as a general rule; but simply this, that there are occasions on which the faithful have a right to expect a carefully prepared sermon. These are called set sermons, because they are composed in conformity with the fixed rules of oratory. They suppose a chaste and elevated style; and, more than this, they suppose even that the subject should be treated grandly. At such a time the preacher, by the dignity of his manner, forces us to recognize him as truly the "ambassador of Christ." We feel that the divine word is treated, as it deserves to be, with the same respect as the body of Christ. But it is true that sermons such as these can only be preached on rare occasions, because they are expected to accomplish extraordinary results. Their frequent repetition would destroy the very effect that they are intended to produce. The people, habituated to these stirring appeals, would cease to be moved by them, until at length it would be impossible to rouse them even by the most fervent and skilfully planned discourse.
Father Potter does not give too prominent a place to this elevated and polished form of preaching. By far the largest portion of his work is taken up with the most valuable hints regarding the familiar instruction of our people. He tells us that it has been "his unvarying purpose to throw out substantial ideas, to suggest leading thoughts, and to indicate lines of study." Nowhere is this object accomplished more completely than in the section of the work which explains the nature and excellence of "Familiar Instruction." No part of the book has pleased us more than this. Simple, clear, suggestive, and practical in its suggestions, the zealous pastor will scarcely rise from reading the chapters on the Homily, on the Commandments, on the Sacrament, and on Prayer, without feeling a renewed desire to teach these elementary though essential truths which the Catholic people of a missionary country do not know, or at least only know in an extremely vague and indefinite way.
The Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac for the United States for the Year of Our Lord 1870. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau St. 1869.
An almanac for the family has long been an imperious American necessity. Judging from the success of the Catholic Publication Society's Almanac for the year now drawing to an end, a Catholic almanac was much needed and greatly desired by our Catholic population throughout the United States, and that it should have met with a large sale was not surprising when we remember that, in addition to all the useful information furnished by all well-prepared almanacs, The Catholic Family Almanac provided agreeable, edifying, and instructive literary matter profusely and admirably illustrated with superior engravings.
In size, amount of matter, illustrations, and literary merit, the Catholic Almanac for 1870, just published, is a decided improvement upon its predecessor, and must receive universal approbation.
The Life of Christopher Columbus. From authentic Spanish and Italian Documents. Compiled from the French of Rosselly de Lorgnes. By I. I. Barry, M.D. Boston: P. Donahoe. 1869.
The translator or compiler of this work states in his preface that he has had to condense the matter of some pages into almost as many lines. We feel compelled to add that neither history nor literature would have suffered if he had gone on condensing indefinitely, even if, in the process, the book had been compressed to the vanishing point. Rosselly de Lorgnes, a veteran writer, the author of Le Christ devant le Siècle, and other works well known in Europe, is entitled to all respect and honor for his sincere and enthusiastic vindication of the memory of Columbus, and of his claims to veneration as a man of saintly character, over and above all his other well-known merits; but his work, in two volumes of nearly six hundred pages each, independently of other objections to it, sadly wants brevity and method.
The truth is that, notwithstanding the praiseworthy efforts of M. De Lorgnes, and of various authors who have preceded and followed him in this field, the life of Columbus is yet to be written. More than that, it can only be well written in Spain and with Spanish materials. When that country has a historian who is not afraid of telling the truth about the king of Spain who was the husband of the noble Isabella of Castile, and will use without fear or favor the writings of Columbus himself—for, after all, such a great soul is his own best interpreter—we shall have a life of Columbus, and not until then.
The Improvisatore. The Two Baronesses. Romances by Hans Christian Andersen. New York: Hurd & Houghton.
These two volumes, from the fascinating pen of the great Danish novelist, we recognize as old friends in new garments, and hasten to bid them welcome.
Andersen, who charms the little ones with the beauty and naturalness of his fairy tales, is equally a favorite with children of a larger growth.
His powers of description are surpassed by few writers in any language, and the places he has visited, Rome, Naples, Vesuvius, Venice, Copenhagen, with the islands nestling about Denmark, stand before the reader in living colors, glowing with light and truth. One feels that these graphic representations are not drawn from a highly-wrought imagination, but that they are living realities. The narratives of the ascent of Vesuvius, the Infiorata, the first impressions of Venice, are wonderful samples of this power of delineation.
High-toned morals and an utter freedom from maudlin sentimentality mark both these volumes; the tales are told with vigor, and the interest sustained to the end.
The Improvisatore, who is born and passes most of his years in Italy, tells his own story, and claims, as do most of the characters introduced, to belong to the Catholic Church; but we think a true Catholic would detect the fact that the kind-hearted, genial man who wrote the tale had not the happiness of being in the faith: though there is nothing harsh or unkind, or perhaps no intentional injustice, toward the church, yet there is here and there the slight touch of sarcasm concerning what the writer supposes to be a dogma of the faith, or a hit at some local Catholic custom, which would not have come from the pen of a loyal son of our holy Mother.
The scene of The Two Baronesses is laid in Denmark, and though not so captivating as the Improvisatore, the tale is well told, and hangs on the lovely motto "that there is an invisible thread in every person's life which shows that it belongs to God."
The binding of these volumes is in excellent taste, and the print clear, doing credit to the Riverside press.
The Stories and Parables of Pere Bonaventure. New York: P. O'Shea. 1869.
These stories and parables commend themselves to the reader by their quaintness and brevity. The excellent moral which forms the essential part of many of them could hardly be presented in a more pleasing manner. The explanations given by the author are, in general, satisfactory. This book should be in in every Catholic household in the country.
Through Night to Light: A Novel. By Friedrich Spielhagen. New York: Leypoldt & Holt.
Were one of our first American novelists to put forth such a story as the above, it would be hissed by the voice of public opinion; but it seems we may receive from the German, and call poetic, ideal, and spirituelle, what would be considered coarse and immoral even in a penny journal.
We will give a specimen of the author's philosophy. Speaking of a married woman who had been in more cases than one unfaithful to her marriage relations, the author says,
"Have you not paid the penalty of the wrong, if wrong it was to follow the impulse of a free heart? Is it reasonable to sacrifice the wife to a rigorous moral law which the husband does not consider binding? Who has made that unwise law? Not I, not you." (He might have added only Almighty God.) "Why, then, should you obey it? I tell you the day of freedom which is now dawning will blow all such self-imposed laws to the winds, and with them all the ordinances devised by a dark, monkish disposition to fetter nature and torment hearts."
To the corrupting influence of this style of literature we owe such scenes as the one which recently in this city shocked the public mind. The title of this book is a misnomer. It should be, not Through Night to Light, but Through Light to Night.
The Two Cottages. Showing how many more families may be comfortable and happy than are so. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. 1870.
Of this simple story of humble life we cannot speak too highly. It is as valuable for its suggestions as it is truthful in its delineations.
Mary and Mi-ka: A Tale of the Holy Childhood. With an account of the Institution. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1870.
This little volume, dedicated to the members of the Holy Childhood in the United States, will, no doubt, give increased publicity to that most admirable institution, and hence increase materially its sphere of usefulness. Full details of its aim, origin, and progress are given in the appendix, to which we would particularly direct attention.
The Lost Rosary; or, Our Irish Girls: Their Trials, Temptations, and Triumphs. By Con O'Leary. Boston: Patrick Donahoe. 1870.
The title of this volume is somewhat suggestive of its contents. In it the author graphically describes the various dangers and temptations to which the recently-arrived female emigrant is exposed, and also pays a well-merited tribute to the many virtues that distinguish the vast majority of Irish girls in America; virtues to which, in the face of many troubles and vexations, they have so heroically adhered.
The Life of Blessed Margaret Mary, (Alacoque.) With some Account of the Devotion to the Sacred Heart. By the Rev. George Tickell, S.J. London: Burns & Co. (For sale by the Catholic Publication Society.)
This life of a remarkable person, the chief instrument of establishing that devotion to the Sacred Heart so dear to all devout Catholics, which was one of the most efficacious weapons against the odious heresy of Jansenism, is much superior to any heretofore published. We are glad to see certain extravagant statements concerning the treatment of the saint in the convents of her order, which were discreditable to them and likely to give scandal, entirely discredited by the author of the present life. He is not only a copious and devout biographer; but what is equally important and less frequent, a judicious one. The book is published in elegant style, and we cordially recommend it to all our readers.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. X., No. 59.—FEBRUARY, 1870.
THE FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM AND CATHOLICITY.[144]
SECOND ARTICLE.
The Abbé Martin divides his treatise into nine books, each of which he subdivides into several chapters. In the first book he labors to prove that Protestantism is imperishable; in the second, he discusses the Protestant revival and its effects; in the third, he treats of the Protestant propaganda, or Protestant missions and their results; in the fourth, of the wealth and well-being of Protestant as compared with Catholic nations; in the fifth, of Catholic and Protestant tolerance and intolerance; in the sixth, of liberty and its influence on the future of Protestantism; in the seventh, of religious liberty in its relations with Protestantism; in the eighth, of the decline of Catholic nations and governments, and the progressive march of Protestant nations and governments; and in the ninth and last, of the union or alliance of Protestantism with the revolution, or the revolutionary spirit so active in nearly all modern society.
In our former article we reviewed the subjects treated in the first, second, and part of the third books, and reserved for our present article two of the three causes the author assigns for the partial success of Protestant missions in old Catholic nations, namely, the prestige which Protestant nations enjoy of surpassing Catholic nations in wealth and well-being, and of having founded and sustained civil and religious liberty. But these two causes, though treated by the author in his third book, really embrace the subject of the remaining six books. We cannot say that the author has so digested and arranged his ample materials as to avoid repetitions, or so as to bring all that belongs to the same topic under one head; but treats it partly under one head and partly under another. A glance at the titles of the last six books will satisfy the reader as well as the reviewer, that the subjects treated fall under two general heads. First, civil and religious liberty; second, the comparative wealth and well-being of Catholic and Protestant nations; and under these two heads we shall arrange our summary of the views of the author, and our own comments. We begin with the last.
I. The author assigns, as we have seen, as one of the causes of the success of Protestant missions in old Catholic nations, the prestige which Protestant nations enjoy of surpassing Catholic nations in material wealth and well-being. That this prestige attaches to Protestant nations is a fact not to be disputed; but is it well founded? The author seems to concede that it is, and maintains that "there is in Protestant nations and Protestant individuals a superior aptitude and a greater eagerness and tenacity in the pursuit and acquisition of the goods of this world" than there is in Catholic nations and individuals.
"Place," he says, "Catholics and Protestants side by side on the same territory, in conditions perfectly equal, and leave each to act under the influence of their respective principles, and not a half-century will elapse before the Protestants will have taken in the material order a marked superiority. The Protestants will have the finest vineyards, the best cultivated fields, the greenest meadows, the most elegant mansions, and the freshest shade. They will have almost the monopoly of industry, commerce, large capital, the bourse, the bank, money at interest, and own all the mills and factories, if any there are. If you doubt it, consult Alsace and Strasburg, Nimes, Montpellier, the environs of Bourdeaux, the mixed Swiss cantons, and the conquests the American Union has made of the Spaniards of Mexico.... Wherever Protestants plant themselves, they are able to attain a preponderating influence in all civil affairs. With only a fourth of the population they will hold three fourths of the public offices, have the majority in the municipal council, the mayor of the commune, if not the adjunct, the highest grades in the national guard, the member of the conseil-général, the deputy, sometimes the senator, and the most widely circulating journal of the district, daily filled with eulogiums on their merit.
"It is the same on a large scale among nations. Who knows not that there are more wealth, more well-being, more comfort, eleganter houses, softer couches, more sugar and coffee, in England, Scotland, Holland, Prussia, at Zurich, Berne, Geneva, New York, than in Spain, Portugal, Austria, at Rome or Rio Janeiro?
"It would seem that there is a sort of preëstablished harmony between Protestantism and the earth, that they know and attract each other. Where the earth is most smiling and wears the richest decorations, it naturally becomes Protestant. In Switzerland, the richest and most fertile districts are Protestant, the rugged and barren are Catholic. The former, with their facile enjoyments, seem to invite to very forgetfulness of heaven; the latter only to raise and fix the affections above the earth, and can be made or become Protestant possessions only by force or violence." (Pp. 186-188.)
We are not prepared to make quite so large concessions. Protestants do not monopolize all the pleasant, rich, and fertile spots of the earth. The fact may be true of Switzerland, but it is not true of the Italian peninsula nor of the Iberian, in which are the richest and most fertile districts of Europe; nor, in point of climate, soil, and productions, does Protestant Germany surpass Catholic Germany. The preëstablished harmony alleged has no foundation in fact, and we have heard the contrary more than once maintained by well-informed Catholic prelates. Nor are we prepared to concede that, if you speak of the whole population, there is more comfort and well-being in Protestant than in Catholic nations. The peasantry of Italy, before the late political changes, had as much comfort and well-being as the peasantry of Denmark, Sweden, or Norway, or even Great Britain and Holland, and the peasantry of Austria proper are in the same respects better off than those of Prussia or Hanover. In no countries in the world is there to be found such squalid wretchedness as in those under the British crown, and governed by the head of the Protestant church. There may be more wealth in Great Britain than in France, but there is also more and far deeper poverty. France, by a war with all Europe, was prostrated in 1815; her capital was held by foreign invaders, and she was forced to pay millions by way of indemnification to the invaders, and to support an allied army cantoned on her territory to compel her to keep the peace; and yet she met her extraordinary expenses, greatly reduced her national debt, reasserted her freedom of action and her position as a great European power, and extended her territory by the conquest of Algiers, in less than fifteen years, under the restoration and under a Catholic government. No nation under a Protestant government can be named that has ever carried so heavy a burden so easily, or done so much in so short a time to lighten it. We have seen nothing like it in England, the model Protestant nation. Since 1830, France has ceased to be a Catholic nation, under a Catholic government, and has to a great extent adopted the British industrial and commercial system. She has shown nothing since of that marvellous recuperative energy she showed under the Bourbons. She is burdened now with a constantly increasing national debt, her people are taxed for national and municipal expenses to the last cent they can bear, and there can be no doubt that she is relatively poorer and weaker to-day than she was during the last years of the Restoration.
Our experience in this country does not warrant the concessions of the author. Placed side by side and in equal conditions with Protestants, Catholics have shown themselves in no sense inferior to Protestants in their aptitude to get on in the world. Their progress here in wealth, in comfort, and ease has been relatively greater than that of the older Protestant population; for they started from an inferior worldly position, and with far inferior means. To be convinced of it, we need but look at the schools and colleges they have founded, at the costly and splendid churches they have erected, and at the large sums they have contributed for the support of Catholic charities and their friends in Ireland and other countries, from which the majority of them have emigrated. With an intense Protestant prejudice against them, they have, in a very few years, risen in the social scale, gained a respectable standing in the American community, carried away the first prizes in law and medicine, and secured their full share of public offices both civil and military.
The United States have proved themselves too powerful for the Mexicans, we concede, and they well might do so, with vastly greater resources and a population three times as large. The Mexicans are only about one in nine of pure Spanish blood; the rest are pure-blooded Indians, or a mixed race of whites and Indians, and of Indians and negroes. Yet if our officers who served in the Mexican war may be believed, braver, hardier, more enduring or energetic soldiers than the Mexicans cannot easily be found. The feebleness of Mexico is not due to her Catholicity, but to her lack of it; to her mad attempts to establish and maintain a republican form of government, for which her previous training, manners, and habits wholly unfitted her. Had she, on gaining her independence of Spain, established monarchical institutions, and not been influenced by our example and intrigues, and the insane theories of European revolutionists, she would not have fallen below her non-Catholic neighbor. No Protestant people surpass in bravery, boldness, enterprise, energy, national or individual, the Spaniards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and they were far better Catholics then than they or Spanish-Americans are now.
There is an important fact too often lost sight of in discussing the alleged superior aptitude of Protestants in relation to this world. We find nowhere braver soldiers, bolder sailors, more enterprising merchants, or more ingenious workmen than were the Venetians, the Genoese, the Florentines, and the Portuguese when in their best estate. A Portuguese sailor opened the way by the Cape of Good Hope to India; a Genoese discovered this western continent, which bears an Italian name; an Italian, also, was the discoverer of this northern half of the American continent; and it was a Catholic sovereign who aided the Anglo-American colonies to assert their independence. Yet Portugal, Venice, Genoa, Florence, when they were greatest, were Catholic, and their decline in later times is not owing to their Catholicity; for they were Catholic all the time that they were rising from their feeble beginnings, and at the period of their greatest power and splendor, more bigotedly so, as our liberals would say, than they are now; and what did not hinder their rise and growth could not be the cause of their decline. They have declined through other causes, and causes well known to the student of the rise and fall of nations.
It is, no doubt, true that in France, Belgium, and Italy, and perhaps in other old Catholic states, Catholics, even where they are the immense majority, permit the public offices to be filled, and themselves to be ruled by Protestants, Jews, infidels, and such secularized Catholics as hold the state should govern the church; and we have often felt not a little indignant to find it so; but modern society in all Catholic states recedes from the old aristocratic constitution of Europe, and tends to democracy; and democracy, as our American experience proves, elevates to power not the best men in the community, but often the worst, the least scrupulous, the most intriguing, selfish, and ambitious. The fact may also be explained by the false political education which the Catholic populations have received. Under Gallicanism they are not instructed to regard Catholicity as catholic, and are taught to look upon politics as exempted from the law of God as defined by the church. For them religion and politics are wholly disconnected, have no necessary relation one to the other, rest not on a common principle. Their political education relegates religion to private and domestic life, to the personal and domestic virtues, and has nothing to say in public affairs. Why then should not Protestants, Jews, infidels, or merely nominal Catholics, fill the public offices, and take the management of public affairs?
The French, and other Catholics, who see and deplore this, having received the same sort of education, make the evil worse by laboring not to bring politics up to Catholicity, but to bring the church down to the level of politics, thus lowering the one without elevating the other. They assume an attitude toward the government of distrust, if not of hostility, and exert their influence to Jacobinize the church instead of destroying her, as the revolution would do if it could. Practically, they are only Catholic instead of infidel Jacobins; and whatever their personal hopes and intentions, simply play into the hands of the revolution. It is not the church that needs liberalizing, but the state that needs Catholicizing. The evil, the political imbecility of Catholics in these old Catholic nations, results from the divorce of politics from religion, or the withdrawal of the political order from its proper subordination and subserviency to the spiritual. It is the fruit of the so-called "Gallican liberties," and the remedy is not in the alliance of the church either with democracy or with monarchy, with Jacobinism or with absolutism; but in bringing the faithful to understand that the Catholic religion is catholic, and has the right from God to govern them alike in their public relations and in their private and personal relations; in their public and official life, and in their private and domestic life.
In all these old nations the predominant religion is Christian, but the politics are pagan; and Protestants take the lead in political affairs because they have succeeded in paganizing their own religion, and in eliminating all antagonism between it and their politics; while the Catholics are politically inefficient because, owing to the paganism of the state, they have not been able to Christianize their politics and bring them into harmony with their religion. They themselves sympathize politically with Protestants, but are less efficient than they, because more or less restrained by their religion. Eliminate, by Christianizing politics, all antagonism between politics and religion, which now renders Catholics politically indifferent or imbecile, and enable them to act with a united instead of a divided mind, and they will show even a greater aptitude for the affairs of this world than Protestants, because they will act from a higher plane, from profounder and more luminous principles, and with the energy and tenacity of an ever-present and living faith, instead of interest or expediency. But how can they do so when politics in every state in Europe are divorced from Catholic principle, are pagan, and at war with Christianity, and to take part in them they must sacrifice their religion and give up heaven for earth?
It is not Catholicity that renders the Catholics of old Catholic nations politically imbecile, and that permits a miserable minority of Protestants, Jews, and infidels to control the state, but the lack of it; not the fact that they are, but that they are not, thoroughly Catholic. It is the paganism that rules in the state, and is the basis of modern politics, that renders them timid and inefficient. In all Protestant nations religion itself is paganized, and there is as little conflict between religion and politics as there was in old pagan Greece or Rome. They are torn, distracted, weakened by no internal conflict between the two powers; for the first act of the Reformation was to subject the spiritual order to the secular. Hence, they can act politically with undivided mind and undivided strength and energy. They have conformed their religion to their politics. But in all Catholic nations the governments, and, therefore, politics are pagan, and really, if not avowedly, at war with their religion that remains Christian. Those nations are therefore distracted, divided, weakened by the irrepressible antagonism between pagan politics supported by the secular authorities, and the Christian religion sustained only by the church, crippled by being denied her freedom.
It is easy now to understand why Protestant missions in old Catholic nations should not be wholly barren of results. They are backed by the whole weight of Protestant nations, governments and people; they are aided by the real sympathies and tendencies of the so-called Catholic governments and the pagan politics of Catholics themselves. What is surprising is, that their successes are no greater. It is no mean proof of the life and power of the church, and of her divine assistance, that she is able to retain so strong a hold as she does on so large a portion of the old Catholic populations, and to bear up against so many and such powerful enemies, enemies within as well as without the fortress.
The explanation offered by the author of the facts he concedes does not wholly satisfy us. He attributes them to the influence of the Catholic faith in inducing a renunciation of the world, producing in the minds and hearts of the faithful indifference to it, and a disposition to live only for piety and heaven.
That Catholicity has, and was designed to have this tendency, of course, we ourselves maintain; but we have studied the Gospel and Providence as manifested in human affairs to little effect if the renunciation of the world for Christ's sake is not the very way to secure it. They who give up all for Christ have even in this world the promise of a hundred-fold, and in the world to come life everlasting. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you." The true principle, both of political and domestic economy, is self-denial, renunciation. He who seeks the world and lives for it, shall lose it, since in so doing he violates the divine order, and takes as his end what at best is only a means. Other things being equal, then, we should expect a truly Catholic people to surpass in wealth and well-being, as in industry and virtue, a heathen, an infidel, or a Protestant people. Certainly, the inferiority of Catholic nations in material wealth and well-being is no argument against Catholicity; but it is, in our judgment, a proof that its government and people are not truly Catholic. We do not admit, to the extent the author does, the alleged superiority of Protestant nations, even as to the material goods of this life; but as far as they can claim any superiority over Catholic nations in this respect, we attribute it to what we have called paganism in politics, or to the fact that in no Catholic nation since the revival of pagan literature in the fifteenth century have politics been elevated to the Catholic standard and made to harmonize with the Christian religion.
The author concedes, also, that, during the last century and the present, Catholic nations have been steadily declining, and Protestant nations advancing. At the opening of the seventeenth century, the Catholic were the great and leading nations of the world. Italy, it is true, had begun to decline; Spain had attained its zenith; but the German empire was still the first power in Europe. France was succeeding to the rank of Spain, and Poland was regarded as the barrier of Catholicity against the North and the East, while England was weakened by revolution at home. Prussia was only a principality, though soon to become a kingdom, and the United States did not exist. At present, England is the undisputed mistress of the ocean, is a great Asiatic and a great American power, weighing heavily on continental Europe; Prussia is absorbing all Germany. The United States have the mastership of the new world, and are exerting a terrible pressure on the old; while, on the other hand, Portugal has become virtually a colony of England; Spain has lost a world, ceased to be a great power, and is worse than nothing to the Catholic cause; Poland is divided among her neighbors, and annihilated; Austria is expelled from Germany, and threatened with the fate of Poland; Italy, at war with the pope, throws her weight on the side of the Protestant nations. Russia and the new Greek empire that is to be are not Protestant; but, as schismatic powers, will sustain the Protestant policy as against Catholicity. France, if she has not declined, has abandoned her mission as a great Catholic power, and is as little to be counted on to resist Anglo-Saxon ascendency as Russia or the revived Greek empire.
The excellent abbé, however, admonishes us that this decline on the one side, and growth and preponderance on the other, is political, not religious; and indicates no decline in Catholicity, or progress of Protestantism. The Latin races, except in France, have declined; but the church has gained more members than she has lost. Only the Anglo-Saxon race, the bulwark of Protestantism, has advanced. Denmark, Sweden, and Holland, considerable Protestant powers at the opening of the seventeenth century, have lost their political importance. Holland is half Catholic, and the Dutch Catholics are not less devoted to the church, less tenacious of their rights, nor less politically active and energetic than the Catholics of Ireland, and even less distracted by questions of national relief or national independence.
One third of the population of Prussia is Catholic, and a larger proportion will be if she, as is likely, absorbs Southern Germany. Not much reliance is to be placed on Prussia as a Protestant power. The future belongs to the Anglo-Saxon race—England and the United States—to be disputed only by schismatic Russia and the new schismatic Greek empire in the process of formation. This relieves the gloom of the picture a little.
But while we agree with the author that Britain and our own country are the principal supports of Protestantism and of Protestant politics, unless we except France, usually reckoned as a Catholic power, we do not believe that even the United States and Britain, acting in concert, are so formidable, in an anti-Catholic sense, as he represents them. The British crown has more Catholic than Protestant subjects, and its Catholic subjects are for the most part enfranchised, and beginning to exert a powerful and constantly increasing influence on the policy of the government. England is obliged to count with Ireland, not only as to Irish interests in Ireland, but, to some extent, as to Catholic interests throughout the empire. The Catholic population in the United States is rapidly growing in numbers, education, wealth, and influence, and is already too large to be oppressed with impunity, and large enough, when not misled by foreign passions and interests, to prevent the government from adopting a decidedly anti-Catholic policy either at home or abroad. Were the United States even to absorb the Catholic states on this continent, it would be advantageous, not detrimental, to Catholic interests. Mexican and Cuban, as well as Central and South American Catholics would gain much by being annexed to the Union, and brought under the direct action of the ecclesiastical authority, as are the Catholics of the United States. We see nothing reassuring, we own, to the so-called Latin races in the growth and preponderance of the Anglo-Saxon nations, but not much that is promising to Protestantism; for we cannot believe that Christianity has failed, or that the future of society belongs to paganism.
The abbé does not attribute the decline of the Latin races to any religious cause, but finds its explanation—1. In the law of growth and decay, to which nations as individuals are subjected; 2. In climate—the southern climate tends to soften and enervate, the northern to harden and invigorate; 3. In geographical position; 4. In difference of temperaments; 5. Political constitutions; and 6. In accidental or providential causes, not to be foreseen and guarded against—the presence or absence of a great man, the defeat of a well-devised, or the success of a blundering policy, the gain of a battle that should have been lost, or the loss of a battle that should have been gained, etc. (Pp. 497-508.)
Most of these causes we examined and disposed of, some time ago, in a review of Professor Draper's works. The first and second we do not count. We do not believe that nations, like individuals, are subject to the law of growth, maturity, old age, and death. There are no facts or analogies from which such a law can be adduced, and a Catholic nation, if truly Catholic, has in its religion a fountain of perennial youth. Whatever disasters befall a Catholic nation, if not absorbed by another, it has always in itself a recuperative power. We believe just as little in the influence of climate as one of the causes of the decline of the Latin nations. The climate under which they have declined is the same under which they grew up and became the preponderating races. The extreme heat within the tropics is less unfavorable to mind or body than the extreme cold of the Arctic regions. The Latin races have lived both in their growth and in their decline under the finest, mildest, and healthiest climate within the temperate zone. The ablest men, as scholars, artists, statesmen, and generals, of France have belonged to her southern departments; and we found in our recent civil war that the men from the extreme Southern States, in their physical qualities, bravery, activity and vigor of body, and power of endurance, were not at all inferior to the men of the more Northern States. In fact, they could bear more fatigue, and suffer more privations, with less demoralization than the Northern man. We make just as little account of difference of temperament. The southern nations, with the same temperament, were once the preponderating nations of Europe, and the French are in no respect inferior to the English, and in many things superior. Spain in the sixteenth century not only surpassed what England then was, but even what she now is; and there was a time when it was said of Portugal, the sun never sets on her empire. We do not believe much in differences of race; for God hath made all nations of one blood.
Geographical position counts for something. The nations that have ports only on the Mediterranean, or access to the ocean only through that sea, have been unfavorably affected by the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, and of this western continent in the fifteenth century. These maritime discoveries, which have changed the routes of commerce as well as the character of commerce itself, have given the advantage to the nations that open on the Atlantic, and sufficiently account for the decline of the Italian republics. The canal across the Isthmus of Suez, just opened, will do something, no doubt, to revive the commerce of the Mediterranean, but cannot restore it, because the Indian trade is not now of the same relative importance that it was formerly. The American trade comes in for its share, rivals and even exceeds it, and this trade, whether a ship-canal be or be not opened across the Isthmus of Darien, will be chiefly in the hands of the United States and the western nations of Europe, for their geographical position enables them to command it. The insular position of Great Britain has also given her some advantages.
Political constitutions also count for something; but in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the political constitutions of the several European states, except the Italian republics, the Swiss Cantons, and the United Netherlands, were essentially the same, that is, Roman monarchy engrafted on feudalism. Monarchy was as absolute in England under the Tudors and the Stuarts as it ever was in France or Spain, and the other estates counted for no more in her than in them. The Protestant states of Germany were not more popular in their constitution than the Catholic states, and Austria has never been so despotic as Prussia. We cannot, however, attribute much to this cause; for why have the Latin states been less successful in developing and ameliorating their political constitution than the Anglo-Saxon, if we assume that they have not been?
The accidental or providential causes, in the author's sense, being measurable by no rule and subject to no known law, cannot be very well discussed, and we are not inclined to attach much importance to them. A nation is already declining, or passed its zenith, if the loss of a single battle can ruin it; and on its ascending course, if the winning of one can secure it a permanent ascendency. Napoleon won many important battles, and yet he died a prisoner on the barren rock of St. Helena. A victory by Pompey at Pharsalia, or by Brutus and Cassius at Philippi, could not have restored the patrician republic or changed the fate of Rome. The republic was lost before Cæsar crossed the Rubicon. Great men play an important part, no doubt; but a nation that can be saved by the presence of a great man is in no serious danger, or that could be lost by his absence cannot be saved by his presence. Individuals count for less than hero-worshippers commonly imagine. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
Except in the loss of the commercial supremacy of the Italian republics by the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century, we regard, though not in the sense of Protestants, the chief causes of the decline of the Latin nations as religious, and the ascendency of Protestant nations as, in the main, the counterpart of the decline of Catholic nations. The Catholic nations have declined, not because they have been Catholic, but because they and their governments have not been truly Catholic. Something, indeed, is due to the fact that England completed her revolution a hundred years before that of the Latin nations began. She had passed through her principal internal struggles, established the basis of her constitution, settled her dynasty, and was in a position when the Latin revolutions broke out to turn them to her own advantage. She used the madness of French Jacobinism, and the o'er-vaulting ambition of the first Napoleon. Being earlier too, the English revolution was less democratic than that of the Latin nations, and did not so essentially weaken the nation by eliminating the aristocratic element. England is only just now entering upon the fearful struggle between aristocracy and democracy, and it is very possible that she will lose her ascendency before she gets through it. Still we find the principal cause of the deterioration of Catholic nations connected, at least, with religion.
Both the nations that became Protestant and those that remained Catholic were affected by the revival of Greek and Roman paganism in the fifteenth century. The northern nations, adopting it in politics, speedily conformed their religion to it, subjected the spiritual to the secular, abandoned the church, made themselves Protestant, and harmonized their interior national life. The southern nations adhered to the church, for there were in them too many enlightened, earnest-minded, and devout Catholics to permit them to break wholly with the successor of Peter; but their governments, statesmen, and scholars, artists and upper classes, adopted pagan politics, literature, art, and manners, and thus created an antagonism between their religion and their whole secular life, which greatly impaired the influence of the church, and led to a fearful corruption of politics, manners, and morals. The cause of the deterioration of these nations is precisely in this antagonism, intensified by the so-called Renaissance, and which has continued, down to the present time, and will, most likely, continue yet longer.
The Council of Trent did something to check the evil, but could not eradicate it; for its cause was not in the church, nor in the abuses of ecclesiastical discipline or administration, but in the secular order, in which the secular powers would suffer no radical reforms either in facts or principles. They were willing the church should reform her own administration, but would not conform their own to the principles of which she was the appointed guardian. They would protect her against heretical powers; but only on their own terms, and only so far as she would consent to be made or they could use her as an instrument of their ambition. Charles V. would protect her only so far as he could without losing in his military projects the support of the Protestant princes of the empire; and when he wished to force the pope to his terms, he let loose his fanatical troops under the Constable Bourbon against Rome, who imprisoned him and spoiled and sacked the city for nine months; Philip II. would also serve the church and make a war of extermination on heretics in the Low Countries, but only in the hope of using her as an instrument in attaining to the universal monarchy at which he aimed. Louis XIV., and after him Napoleon I., attempted the same. They all thought they could use her to further their own ambition; but they failed—and failed miserably, shamefully. He to whom it belongs to give victory or defeat, who demands disinterested services, and who will not suffer his church to be used as an instrument of earthly ambition, touched them with his finger, and their strength failed, they withered as grass, and all their plans miscarried. It was better that her avowed enemies should triumph for a season than that she should be enslaved by her protectors, or smothered in the embraces of her friends. God is a jealous God, and his glory he will not give to another.
Here we see the cause. Paganism in the state corrupted the sovereigns, their courts, and the ruling classes in morals and manners, enfeebled character, debased society, in the Catholic states. The failure, through divine Providence, of the ambitious and selfish schemes of such professedly Catholic sovereigns as Philip II., Louis XIV., and Napoleon I., reduced the Latin races to the low estate in which we now find them, and gave, in the political, commercial, and industrial order, the ascendency to Protestant nations, as a chastisement to both, and a lesson to Catholics from which it is to be hoped they will profit. If the Catholic nations had been truly Catholic, if the educated and ruling classes had recognized and defended the church steadily from the first on Catholic principles, and unflinchingly maintained her freedom and independence as the kingdom of God on earth, representing him who is King of kings and Lord of lords, these nations would have retained their preponderance, the church would have reformed the morals and manners of society, and the Protestant nations would never have existed, or would have speedily returned to the fold.
Yet we do not despair of these Latin races; for, though their governments have betrayed the faith, and the people have been alienated from the church by attributing to her the political faults of their rulers, from which she and they alike have suffered, they still retain Catholic tradition, and have in them large numbers of men and women, more than enough to have saved the cities of the plain, who are true believers, and who know and practise in sincerity and earnestness their faith. They have still a recuperative energy, and may yet re-ascend the scale they have descended. The present emperor of the French believed it possible, and his mission to recover the Latin races. He attempted it, and his plan, to human wisdom, seemed well devised and practicable. It was to break the alliance between England and Russia; to create an independent, confederated, or united Italy; to divide the Anglo-Saxon race in the United States, and to raise up and consolidate a Latin power in Mexico and Central America, while he extended the French power in North Africa, defeated English and Russian diplomatic preponderance in the East, opened a maritime canal across the Isthmus of Suez, and recovered the commerce of India for the Mediterranean powers. By these means he would give to France the protectorate of the Latin races, and guard alike against Anglo-Saxon and Russian preponderance. But his plan made no account, or a false account, of the moral and religious causes of the decline of Latin races, and sought to elevate them not as truly Catholic but as temporal powers, and to use the church for a secular end, instead of using the secular power he possessed for a spiritual and Catholic end. He committed over again the error of his uncle, Louis XIV., and Philip II., and has failed, as he might have foreseen if he had understood that the church must be served, if at all, for herself, and that she serves the secular only when the secular serves her for her own sake.
The result of Napoleon's policy has been not to elevate the Latin races and to bring them to gravitate around France as the great central Latin power, but to weaken the power of the church over them, to strengthen the antagonism between their faith and their politics, and to depress them still more in relation to the Teutonic and Slavonic races. The emperor of the French, whether he had or had not Catholic interests at heart, has done them great injury. He began by subordinating the spiritual to the secular, when he should have begun by subordinating the secular to the spiritual. He would then have secured the divine protection and assistance, and been invincible. He has, in reality, only defeated the end he aimed at, and left the Latin races in a more deplorable condition than that in which he found them. As a Catholic and as a Latin sovereign, he has not been a success. The Protestant and schismatical powers have grown only by the faults and blunders, the want of submission and fidelity of the professedly Catholic powers; not by any means, as they suppose, by the errors and abuses of the ecclesiastical administration, nor by any positive virtue, even for this world, in their heresy and schism. God, as we have just said, is a jealous God, and his glory he will not give to another. The Latin races, so called, when in power sought not his glory but their own, and failed. But they may yet recover their former power and splendor, if not their commercial preponderance, by rejecting the subtle paganism which has enervated them, the infidel politics they have adopted; by restoring to the church her full freedom and independence as the spiritual order, and by subordinating the secular to the spiritual order; that is, by making themselves really and truly Catholic.
In France there was, at an early day, an attempt made to reconcile paganism in politics with Catholicity in religion, in what is called Gallicanism, which, however, only served to systematize the antagonism between church and state, and to render it all the more destructive to both. We look upon Gallicanism, as expressed in the four articles adopted at the dictation of the government by the assembly of the French clergy in 1682, and which had shown itself all along from Philip the Fair, the grandson of St. Louis, which broke out in great violence with Louis XII., and his petit council of five cardinals at Pisa, acted on by the politiques of Henry IV., and formulated by the great Bossuet under Louis XIV., as the most formidable as well as the most subtle enemy the church has ever had to contend with.
The essence, the real virus, so to speak, of Gallicanism is not, as so many suppose, in the assertion that the dogmatic definitions of the pope are not irreformible—though that is a grave error, in our judgment—but in the assertion of the independence of the state in face of the spiritual order. No doubt Bossuet's purpose in drawing up the four articles was to prevent the French government from going farther and carrying away the kingdom into open heresy and schism; but the Subtle secularism to which he gave his sanction, especially as sure to be practically understood and applied, is far harder to deal with than either heresy or schism, and it seems to us far more embarrassing to the church. It forbids the Catholic to be logical, to draw from his Catholic principles their proper consequences, or to give them their legitimate application; takes away from the defences of faith its outposts, and reduces them to the bare citadel, and proves an almost insurmountable obstacle to the church in her efforts to reach and subdue the world to the law of God. It withdraws the secular order from its rightful subjection to the spiritual order, and denies that religion is the supreme law for nations as well as for individuals, and for kings as well as for subjects.
The principal fault we find with the author, as may be gathered from what we have said, is that he appears to see in the antagonism between pagan politics and Christian, or in the original and inextinguishable dualism asserted by Gallicanism, no cause of the deterioration of Catholic nations, or of the partial success in old Catholic populations of Protestant missions in unmaking Catholics, if not in making Protestants. He seems to accept the one-sided asceticism which places the goods of this life in antagonism with the goods of the world to come, and, though he does not avow Gallicanism, originated by paganism in the state, he does not disavow it, or appear to be aware that it has any influence in detaching the people from the church, by making them Catholics only on one side of their minds, and leaving them pagan on the other.
The enemies of the church understand this matter far better, and they look upon a Gallican as being as good as a Protestant. James I., the English Solomon, declared himself ready to accept the church, if allowed to do it on Gallican principles. Protestants have very little controversy with out-and-out Gallicanism. They feel instinctively that the Catholics who assert the independence, which means practically the supremacy, of the secular order, and bind the pope by the canons which the church herself makes, are near enough to them; and if they are not separated from the church, it is all the better, because they can better serve the Protestant cause in her communion than they could if out of it. It is the Papal, not the Gallican church they hate.
We do not agree, if we may be permitted to say so, with the author as to the superiority of Protestant nations, or that they are likely to retain for any great length of time the superiority they appear now to have, nor do we accept, as we have already intimated, the one-sided asceticism which supposes any necessary antagonism between this world and the next. The antagonism grows out of the error of placing this world as the end or supreme good, when it is, in fact, only a medium. We as Christians renounce it as the end we live for; but if we so renounce it, and live only in Christ for God, who is really our supreme good, we find this world in its true place with all its goods; and a really Catholic nation that holds the spiritual and eternal supreme, and subordinates the secular to it, will have a hundred-fold more of the really good things of this life, than a nation that subordinates the spiritual to the secular, and seeks only material goods. We believe, and the author proves it, that there is even now more real wealth and well-being in Catholic than in Protestant nations; though we agree with the author, that if it were not so, it would be no argument against the church.
The question of tolerance and intolerance, and of civil and religious liberty, as related to Catholic and Protestant nations respectively, will form the subject of a future article. In the mean time we commend again to our readers the work we are reviewing.