NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Conversations on Liberalism and the Church. By O. A. Brownson, LL.D. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co.
This is the first production of the pen of Dr. Brownson which has appeared under his own name for several years. During this time he has been a constant contributor to this magazine, and has furnished a considerable number of valuable articles to other periodicals, particularly the Tablet, of which he has for some time past had the principal editorial charge. Those who are familiar with the leonine style of the great publicist cannot have failed to recognize it even in his anonymous productions, or to admit, whether with good or with ill grace, that he still remains facile princeps in that high domain which he has chosen for himself. We welcome the venerable author most heartily on his reappearance upon the field of intellectual combat with his visor up, and his own avowed recognizance upon his shield. He appears as the champion of the encyclical of Pius IX. against that conglomeration of absurd and destructive errors which its advocates have decorated with the name of liberalism, and as the defender of the true, genuine principles of liberty—that liberty which Catholic training and Christian civilization prepare the greatest possible number of men to enjoy, to the greatest possible extent, with the least possible danger to themselves and society.
The volume is small in size, but weighty and precious in matter, like a lump of gold. There is enough precious metal in it to keep an ordinary review-writer a-going for three years. The wretched, flimsy sophistries and falsehoods with which we are bored to death every day by the writers for the daily papers, screaming like macaws the few changes of their scanty vocabulary, Railroads, railroads! progress, progress! mediæval fossil! nineteenth century! are all summed up by Dr. Brownson in a few sentences much better than one of themselves can do it. These expressions of the maxims of our soi-disant liberal editors are put into the mouth of an imaginary representative of the class, who is supposed to be conversing with a Catholic priest at an unfashionable watering-place. The author, by the mouth of the priest, answers him fully, and makes an exposition of his own views and opinions. The editor has nothing to say in rejoinder, except to repeat over his tiresome, oft-refuted platitudes, ignoring all his antagonist has alleged and proved against him. Perhaps it will be said that the doctor has purposely put a weak defence into the editor's mouth. Not at all. It is no sport to such an expert swordsman to run a tilt against any but an expert and doughty antagonist. Give him his choice, and he would prefer to contend with one who would make the best possible fight for liberalism. In this case, as the doctor has been obliged to play both sides of the game, one hand against the other, he has carefully avoided the common fault of collusion between the right and left hand. He has made his imaginary editor say all that the real editors can say, and in better fashion than they can say it. Any person who has taken the trouble to read the comments of the writers for the press on the massive arguments of Dr. Brownson's articles, or their other lucubrations on the subjects treated in this book, will perceive that its author has not diluted them at all, but has rather infused some of his own strong tea into their tepid dish-water.
The errors of the liberalists have been to a certain extent already discussed in our pages, and will be probably discussed more fully and to greater advantage after the decrees of the Council of the Vatican are published.
We therefore confine ourselves at present to a particular notice of one point only in Dr. Brownson's argument, to which we desire to call special attention. We allude to his exposition of his views in regard to the relation of the Catholic religion to the principles of the American constitution. Dr. Brownson is a thorough Catholic and a thorough American. As a Catholic, he condemns all the errors condemned by the syllabus of Pius IX. As an American, he accepts all the principles of the constitution of the United States. As a philosopher, he reconciles and harmonizes the two documents of the ecclesiastical and political sovereignties to which he owes allegiance. If he were wavering or dubious in obeying the instructions of the encyclical, his exposition of the relation between Catholic and American principles would have no weight whatever; for it would be merely an exposition of his own private version of Catholicity and not of the authorized version. If he were not thoroughly American, his exposition of the Catholic's ideal conception of the relations of the church and civil society might be very perfect, but it would rather confirm than shake the common persuasion that there is a contrariety between the principles of our political order and those of the Catholic Church. If he were not a philosopher, he might present both his religious and his political doctrines, separately, in such a way as to satisfy the claims both of orthodoxy and of patriotism; but he would not be able to show how these two hemispheres can be joined together in a complete whole. It is one of his greatest merits that he is perpetually aiming at the construction of these synthetic harmonies of what we may call, for the sake of the figure, the different gospels of truth, and is perpetually approximating nearer and nearer to that success which perhaps cannot be fully achieved by any human intellect. We think he has substantially succeeded in the task undertaken in the present volume, and we commend it to the perusal of all Americans, whether Catholics or non-Catholics, in the hope that it may strengthen both in the determination to do no injustice to each other, and to remain always faithful to the allegiance we owe to the American republic. We recommend it also to Dr. Brownson's numerous admirers and friends in Europe as a valuable aid to the understanding of what are commonly called American principles.
So far as the exterior is concerned, this is one of the very finest books which the Sadliers have yet published.
The End of the World, and the Day of Judgment. Two Discourses preached to the Music Hall Society, by their minister, the Rev. William Rounseville Alger. Published by request. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
Considering what are the contents of these "discourses," for which, naturally, the preacher failed to find any text, their title seems like a dismal jest. There is nothing, however, too absurd for the Music Hall of Boston, not even the amalgamation of puritanism and pantheism. We have two palmary objections to the argument of these discourses, which is, of course, intended to disprove the Christian doctrine respecting the last judgment and the end of the world. The first is, the boundless credulity which underlies the whole series of assumptions on which it is founded; the second is, its total want of scientific method and accuracy. Mr. Alger has an extensive knowledge of certain departments of literature, a vivid imagination, a certain nobleness of sentiment, and a considerable power of graphic delineation and combination of his intellectual conceptions; but no logic or philosophy, very little discriminative or analytic skill, and nothing of the judicial faculty. Wherever his imagination leads, his intellect follows, and willingly lends itself to clothe all the visions which are met with on the aerial journey with the garb of real and rational discoveries. Therefore, we say that his argument in these discourses rests on credulity, a basis of vapor, like that which supports a castle in the clouds. We proceed to give some instances. Mr. Alger has fashioned to himself a conception of what our Lord Jesus Christ ought to have been, and ought to have said and done. Throughout these discourses, and his other works, he explains every thing recorded of the sayings and doings of our divine Lord in the New Testament according to this à priori conception of his own, without regard to common sense or sound criticism. This is credulity, and nothing more. As well might we say, Mr. Alger is a man of sense and honesty, and therefore he can never have meant any of the absurd things he seems to say against the Catholic doctrine. Another extraordinary instance of credulity is the theory of accounting for the similarity to the principal Catholic dogmas which is seen in the religious beliefs of heathen nations. It is a fanciful conjecture, and, as a philosophical theory, untenable, that the same myths had an independent origin and development among distinct races. There must have been a common cause and origin of religious traditions, as well as of languages. Another instance of credulity is found in the following passage: "It is confidently believed that within twenty years the views adopted in the present writing will be established beyond all cavil from any fair-minded critic." Here is a heavy strain indeed on our faith, worse than that which Moses makes upon poor Colenso! Worse than all is the following, which we will not credit to the author's credulity any further than he himself warrants us in doing by his own language, which we will quote entire, that the reader may judge for himself of the extent to which it shows in the author a penchant for the marvellous, provided that the marvellous is in no way connected with revelation. "A brilliant French writer has suggested that even if the natural course of evolution does of itself necessitate the final destruction of the world, yet our race, judging from the magnificent achievements of science and art already reached, may, within ten thousand centuries, which will be long before the foreseen end approaches, obtain such a knowledge and control of the forces of nature as to make collective humanity master of this planet, able to shape and guide its destinies, ward off every fatal crisis, and perfect and immortalize the system as now sustained. It is an audacious fancy. But, like many other incredible conceptions which have forerun their own still more incredible fulfilment, the very thought electrifies us with hope and courage." (P. 18.)
This is indeed brilliant! It surpasses the famous moon-hoax of Mr. Locke, and the balloon-voyages of that wild genius Edgar A. Poe, from whom we have some recent and interesting intelligence, contained in a volume which we recommend to the congregation of Music Hall; the volume being entitled Strange Visitors, by a Clairvoyant. In those days, probably, our Congress will have a committee on comets, and make appropriations for a railroad to the Dog-star.
The second objection to Mr. Alger's argument runs partly into the first. It is, we have said, totally wanting in scientific method and accuracy. This is true of the entire process by which the thesis of the discourses is sustained. This thesis is, that the present constitution of the world and the human race will endure for ever, or at least for an indefinitely long period. If there were no light to be had on this point except the light of nature, the opinion maintained by the author would be at best only a conjecture. It could not be made even solidly probable, unless some rational theory were first established concerning the ultimate destiny of the human race, and the end for which the present miserably imperfect constitution of the world had been decreed by the Creator, and the perpetuity of the existing order on the earth were shown to have a reason in this final cause of man's creation. The author has not done this, and we do not believe that it is possible to do it, even prescinding all question of revelation. Even on scientific grounds—that is, reasoning from all the analogies known to us, and from purely rational and philosophical data—it is far more probable and reasonable to suppose that the present state of the world is merely preparatory to a far higher and more perfect state, and will be swept away to make place for it. But when we consider the universality and antiquity of this latter belief, and the solid mountain of historical, miraculous, and moral evidence on which rests the demonstration that this belief proceeds from a divine revelation, it is the most unscientific method that can be conceived to ignore it, or leap over it by the aid of fanciful hypotheses, as Mr. Alger does. The manner in which the Catholic doctrine is distorted and misrepresented, in extremely bad rhetoric, is also unscientific. Nearly all the pith of this so-called argument consists in a violent invective against the notion of a partial, unjust, vindictive Divinity, who rewards and punishes like an ambitious tyrant, without regard to necessary and eternal principles of truth, right, and moral laws. So far as this invective is directed against Calvinism, considered in its logical entity, and apart from the correctives of common sense and sound moral sentiment which practically modify it, we give the author the right of the case. But it is palpably false, as the author has had ample opportunity of knowing, as respects the Catholic doctrine. He is unscientific, moreover, in confusing the substance of the doctrine that the generation of the human race will cease, all mankind be raised from the dead in their bodies immortal, the ways of God to man be openly vindicated before the universe, and each one assigned to an immutable state according to his deserts or fitness, this visible earth also undergoing a corresponding change of condition; with the scenic act of proclaiming judgment and inaugurating the new, everlasting order, which is commonly believed in, according to the literal sense of the New Testament. If Mr. Alger can show good reasons for substituting a figurative, metaphorical interpretation of the passages depicting this last grand scene in the drama of human history for the literal sense, he is welcome to do it; but he has not touched the substance of the Catholic dogma which he gratuitously denies. Mr. Alger tells us, (p. 46,) "Loyalty to truth is the first duty of every man." It is also one in which he himself signally fails, by a persistent misrepresentation of Catholic doctrines, by disregarding the evidence which has been clearly set before him of their truth, subjecting his intellect to his imagination, and preaching as "truth" opinions which he cannot possibly prove, in the teeth of arguments which he cannot possibly refute. One who wilfully sins against "the first duty of man," by rejecting the faith and law of his Sovereign Creator when sufficiently proposed to him, must surely be condemned by divine justice; and it is only such who, the Catholic Church teaches, will be condemned for infidelity or heresy at the tribunal of Christ. "The judgment of God," says the author, "is the return of the laws of being on all deeds, actual or ideal." (P. 66.) God, therefore, will judge all men by acting toward them throughout eternity in accordance with that revealed law which is the transcript of his own immutable nature, and which assures us that beatitude is gained or lost by the acts which every responsible creature performs during the time of probation, and that every merit or demerit has its appropriate retribution in another life. Perhaps the most foolish thing in these discourses is the gleeful assurance to the congregation of Music Hall that the world will not come to an end because it has gone on so long already, although many people expected the end before this. A great pope has already cautioned us against this error, in an encyclical of the first century, beginning Simon Petrus, Servus et Apostolus Jesu Christi. "In the last days there shall come scoffers with deceit, walking according to their own lusts, saying, Where is his promise, or his coming? For since the fathers slept, all things continue so from the beginning of the creation," (2 Pet. iii.)
The good people of the Boston Music Hall who requested the publication of these discourses, no doubt because they were so much delighted to think that the world may stand for ever, have been a little premature in their exultation. The publication of Mr. Alger's manifesto against St. Peter only gives another proof that the first of the popes was also a prophet. Who is more likely to be infallible, Mr. Alger or St. Peter?
Life Duties. By E. E. Marcy, A.M., M.D. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1870.
This book contains many good things, and is written in a very pleasing, literary style. The portions of it which treat of moral and religious duties are likely to be useful to a certain class of persons who seldom or never read a book containing so much sound doctrine and wholesome advice. The author, no doubt, wrote with a good intention, and endeavored to teach what he sincerely thinks to be Catholic doctrine, and, of course, the publishers have issued the book in good faith, without any suspicion that it contains any thing erroneous. The author has, however, made a great mistake in supposing that he is sufficiently learned in theology to be able to distinguish, in all cases, sound Catholic doctrine, from his own imperfect, and frequently incorrect, opinions, or that he is authorized to teach the faithful in doctrinal and spiritual matters, without first submitting his book to revision by a competent authority. He has, in consequence, made some very grave mistakes in doctrine, or at least in his manner of expressing himself on matters of doctrine, and also said a number of things which are very rash and unsuitable in a Catholic writer. On page 13 he says, "It is doubtful whether any human being has ever passed through a life of ordinary duration without an occasional violation of them"—that is, of the commandments of God. If this refers to grievous sins, it is contrary to the universal sentiment of Catholics, that very many persons have passed through even a long life without committing any grievous sin; if it refers to venial sin, it is false, at least as respects the blessed Virgin Mary, who was wholly sinless. The phraseology employed respecting the sacraments of penance and extreme unction is altogether deficient, diverse from that which is sanctioned by ecclesiastical usage, and suggestive of errors. The sacrament of penance is called, "repentance, acknowledgment, reformation," without express mention of sacramental absolution, and extreme unction is designated as "prayer for the sick," whereas the holy oil is the matter of the sacrament which was prescribed by the command of Jesus Christ. The fathers, doctors, and scholastic theologians, and the methods of scholastic theology, are criticised with an air of superior wisdom unbefitting any Catholic writer, but especially a tyro in theological science. After saying that the disbelief of the real presence is partly due to the neglect of religious teachers "to make such clear and just explanations as the Holy Scriptures authorize them to make," (p. 250,) the author undertakes to correct the method of St. Thomas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and the other theologians who have hitherto been considered as our masters and teachers, to supply for their defects, and to explain the mystery of transubstantiation in such a clear manner as to remove all difficulty out of the way of believing it. The good doctor has unfortunately, however, proposed a theory which subverts the Catholic doctrine of the incarnation, and that of the resurrection of the body. So far as we can understand his meaning, he holds that the spiritual or glorified body is the same thing with the spirit or soul. In other words, the spirit or soul is an ethereal substance which is called spirit, inasmuch as it is intelligent; and body, inasmuch as it is visible and subsisting under a certain configuration. This is the doctrine of the spiritists, and not that of the Catholic Church. The Catholic doctrine is, that soul and body are distinct, diverse substances; that the souls of the departed are existing now in a separate state, and that they will receive again their bodies at the resurrection. The author of course explains the resurrection and present state of our Lord in harmony with this notion; but in contradiction to the Catholic doctrine that our Lord raised up, glorified, and elevated to heaven that same flesh and blood which he took of the Virgin in the incarnation. He moreover confuses the human with the divine nature of Christ, by affirming, with the Lutherans, the ubiquity of the sacred humanity of Christ, whom he calls the "spirit Christ," and affirms to be everywhere by virtue of his divine omnipresence. This again is erroneous doctrine. The way is prepared by these statements for an explanation of the presence of Christ in the eucharist, and transubstantiation. It is not difficult to believe that God annihilates the bread and wine, but still causes a miraculous appearance to make the same impression on our senses which the bread and wine made before the consecration. Christ, being everywhere present, imparts the special effects of his grace at the time of consecration and communion. The only trouble in the matter is, that the theory is not true or orthodox. The body and blood of Christ are made present under the sacred species by the force of the consecrating words, not his soul or divinity. The soul and divinity of our blessed Lord are present by concomitance; but transubstantiation is the change of the substance of the bread into the body, and of the wine into the blood of Christ, and here is the chief mystery of the dogma which the author, in endeavoring to explain, has explained away. It is possible that the author's sense is more orthodox than his language, and no doubt his intention is more orthodox than either. His language, however, bears on the face of it the appearance of a sense which is, in itself, contrary in some points to definitions of faith, and in others to the common doctrine of theologians.
It is very necessary that all Catholics should understand that they are not at liberty to interpret either the scripture, tradition, or the definitions of councils in contradiction to the Catholic sense and acceptation made known by the living voice of the pastors and teachers who are authorized by the church. Those who desire to feed on the pure milk of sound doctrine will find their best security against error in selecting for their theological or spiritual reading those books which they are well assured have the sanction and approbation of their pastors.
The Visible Unity of the Catholic Church maintained against Opposite Theories. With an explanation of certain passages in Ecclesiastical History erroneously appealed to in their support. By M. J. Rhodes, Esq., M.A. Dedicated by permission to the Right Rev. William Delany, D.D., Lord Bishop of Cork. London: Longmans, Green & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
The superb exterior of this book, published in the best English style, leads the reader to expect something unusually excellent in the contents. Nor will he be disappointed. This work is no mere repetition of other books. It is learned, original, carefully prepared, well written, and has undergone an examination by competent theologians, not only in England, but also at Rome. The genuine doctrine of Catholic unity, as opposed to the pseudo-catholicity of Anglicans, is exposed in it, with a refutation of the objections of Bishop Forbes, Dr. Pusey, and others. The questions of the Easter controversy, the dispute between St. Cyprian and Pope St. Stephen, the dispute between Paulinus and St. Meletius of Antioch, the Celtic controversies, etc., are fully discussed. The only criticism we have to make is concerning the manner of treating the question of the divided obediences at the epoch between the pontificate of Urban VI. and that of Martin V. The author thinks that the adherents of Peter de Luna, called Benedict XIII., were really in schism, although most of them were innocent of any sin. We think otherwise, and our opinion has been derived from the most approved Catholic authors. Without doubt, the authors of the division were formal schismatics. Yet they were able to make out such a plausible case against Urban and in favor of Benedict, that for the time being Urban's right was doubtful in a large portion of Christendom. Those who refused to recognize him were not therefore guilty of rebellion against the Roman pontiff as such, any more than those would be who should refuse to obey a papal rescript of doubtful authenticity. After the election of Alexander V. there was much greater reason to doubt which of the three rival claimants, Gregory XII., Benedict XIII., or Alexander V., was the true pope. It is now perfectly certain that Gregory XII. was canonically elected, and we suppose it is by far the more probable opinion that he remained in possession of his right as legitimate pope until his voluntary resignation at the Council of Constance. Nevertheless, his claim, at the time, was a doubtful one, and the majority of the cardinals and bishops adhered, after the Council of Pisa, to Alexander V. and his successor John XXIII. Peter de Luna was a schismatic in the fullest extent of the word. But what shall we say of Alexander and John? Their names still appear on the lists of popes, and some maintain that they were true popes. They undoubtedly believed that a council could depose doubtful popes, and that therefore the Council of Pisa could deprive both Gregory and Benedict of whatever claim either of them might have to the papal throne. They believed themselves lawfully elected, and were not, therefore, schismatics, even though they were not lawful popes. If the author maintains that two of the three obediences which eventually concurred at Constance in the election of Martin V. were in a state of schism until that time, we cannot agree with him, and we think we have the best authorities on our side. For, if these obediences were in schism, they were no part of the true church, the jurisdiction of their bishops and priests was forfeited, and the Catholic Church was limited to the obedience of the legitimate pontiff. This theory would involve the author in considerable difficulties, and we wonder that it was allowed to escape the notice of his Roman examiners. The case is very plain, to our thinking. Neither of these three parties rebelled against the Roman see, or refused to obey the laws of any pontiff whose legitimacy was unquestionable. It was a dispute about the succession, not a revolt against the principle of authority. There was, therefore, no schism in the case; all were equally members of the Catholic Church, and jurisdiction remained in the bishops of all the contending parties. Those who wilfully promoted this dissension were grievously culpable, but the rest were free from sin, as long as they acted in good faith. The author devotes only a short space to this question, and with this exception his work is most admirable, and worthy of a most extensive circulation.
The Evidence for the Papacy. By the Hon. Colin Lindsay. London: Longmans & Co. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.
Mr. Lindsay was president of the Anglican Union when, after long study, he submitted to the authority of the holy Roman Church. His conversion made a great sensation, and called out the usual amount of foolish, ill-natured twaddle. In this volume he has given a masterly, lawyer-like, and extensive summary, richly furnished with evidences and authorities, of the scriptural and historical argument for the supremacy of St. Peter and his successors. We welcome and recommend this admirable work most cordially. The author is a convert of the old stamp of Newman, Wilberforce, Oakeley, Faber, and Manning; that is, a convert to genuine and thorough-going Catholicity; and not one of those who has been spoiled by the fatal influence of Munich. The spurious coin which dealers in counterfeit Catholicism are seeking just now to palm off on the unwary is distinguished from the genuine by its faint delineation of the pope's effigy on its surface. A primacy in the universal church similar to that of a metropolitan in a province is all they will admit the pope to possess jure divino. The true Catholicity brings out the divine supremacy of the successor of St. Peter into bold relief. This is just now the great question, the criterion of orthodox belief, the touchstone of faith, the one great fact and doctrine to be insisted on against every form of anti-Catholic error, from that of the Greeks to that of the atheists. The pope is the visible representative of Christ on the earth, of God's law, of revealed religion, of the supernatural, and of moral and political order. The one question of his supremacy in the true and full sense of the word being settled, every thing else follows as a necessary consequence, and is established. It is very important, therefore, that books should be multiplied on this topic, and that the utmost pains should be taken by the clergy to indoctrinate the people and instruct fully converts concerning that loyal allegiance and unreserved obedience which all Catholics owe to the vicar of Christ. This book will be found to be one of the best. We have received also from London a very clever critique on "Janus," by F. Keogh, of the Oratory, and are glad to see that the learned Dr. Hergenröther, of Würzburg, is preparing an elaborate refutation of that mischievous production. The second part of F. Bottalla's work on the papacy is also announced as soon to appear.
Geology and Revelation; or, The Ancient History of the Earth, considered in the Light of Geological Facts and Revealed Religion. By the Rev. Gerald Molloy, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Royal College of St. Patrick, Maynooth. London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer. 1870. For sale by the Catholic Publication Society, New York.
The author discusses in this volume two interpretations of the Mosaic account of creation: 1st, that a long interval may have elapsed between the creation and the work of the six days; 2d, that the six days themselves may be long periods of time; and shows that they are both admissible, and that the last corresponds pretty well with the present state of geological science. In a subsequent work, he proposes to discuss the question of the antiquity of man.
Though he does not claim to have written a manual of geology, the first and larger part of the work is in fact an excellent compendium of the science, and is written in a remarkably interesting and readable style. A few such books would do much to remove the dislike and distrust of geology which still prevails to some extent among religious people, and perhaps also to convince scientific unbelievers.
Reports on Observations of the Total Eclipse of the Sun, Aug. 7, 1869. Conducted under the direction of Commodore B. F. Sands, U.S.N., Superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory, Washington, D.C. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1869.
This volume contains the reports of the parties sent from the Naval Observatory to Des Moines, Iowa, Plover Bay, Siberia, and Bristol, Tennessee; as well as those of Mr. W. S. Gilman, Jr., and General Albert J. Myer, at St. Paul Junction, Iowa, and Abingdon, Va., respectively, who also communicated their observations to the superintendent. The latter saw the eclipse from the top of White Top Mountain, 5530 feet high; the effect was, of course, magnificent. The papers of Professor Harkness on the spectrum, and of Dr. Curtis on the photographs which they obtained at Des Moines, are specially interesting. One hundred and twenty-two photographs were taken in all, two during the totality, fac-similes of which last are appended, together with other representations of the total phase, and copies of the spectra observed, etc. Professor Harkness observed what appears to be a very decided iron line in the spectrum of the corona, which was otherwise continuous, and he considers it quite probable that this mysterious halo is to a great extent or even perhaps principally composed of the vapor of this metal. He saw magnesium and hydrogen in the prominences, and the unknown substance which has been elsewhere observed.
Professor Hall, who went to Siberia, was unfortunate, the weather being cloudy during the eclipse, though clear before and afterward; but he made what observations were practicable under the circumstances.
A Text-Book of Practical Medicine. By Dr. Felix Von Niemeyer, Professor of Pathology and Therapeutics; Director of the Medical Clinic of the University of Tübingen. Translated from the seventh German edition, by special permission of the author, by George H. Humphreys, M.D., and Charles E. Hackley, M.D. In two volumes octavo, 1500 pp. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
These books place at once before the American practitioner the most advanced scientific knowledge on the general practice of medicine possessed by the German school, of which Professor Niemeyer is considered, and justly, one of the most erudite and brilliant ornaments.
Each subject treated shows the profound and masterly manner in which its details have been garnered by him from the only reliable source of such knowledge, the hospital clinic.
The rapidity with which it has passed through seven German editions, the last two of triple size, and the fact that it has been translated into most of the principal languages of the old continent, afford ample proof of its appreciation in Europe.
The medical student is here presented with a solid, comprehensive, and scientific foundation upon which to rear his future superstructure of learning, while the over-worked practitioner will find a never-failing source of gratification in the work for casual reference and study.
Nothing can so much advance truly Catholic science and literature as the free interchange of national ideas and opinions, expressed through the master minds of the various professions and pursuits.
Life Pictures of the Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Translated from the German of Rev. Dr. John Emmanuel Veith, formerly Preacher of St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna. By Rev. Theodore Noethen, Pastor of the Church of the Holy Cross, Albany, N. Y. Boston: P. Donahoe.
The various personages connected with the sufferings and death of our Saviour—Judas Iscariot, Caiaphas, Malchus, Simon Peter, etc.—receive each a chapter in this book, in which their characters are portrayed with appropriate reflections and illustrations drawn from history, religious and secular.
The author is one of the most distinguished preachers in Europe. The translator is a clergyman well and favorably known for the many excellent translations of German religious books which he has given to the American public.
Life Pictures will be found very suitable reading for this season of the year.
Health by Good Living. By W. W. Hall, M.D. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1870. Pp. 277.
This work is intended to show that good health can be maintained, and many diseases prevented, by proper care in eating. The doctor does not use the phrase "good living" in its ordinary meaning; he defines it to be a good appetite followed by good digestion. His rules for obtaining this two-fold blessing are generally sensible; but a few of his statements are somewhat exaggerated. We have no doubt that the health of the community would be improved by following the common-sense directions of Dr. Hall; but unfortunately, as the doctor himself remarks, not one person in a thousand of his readers will have sufficient control over his appetite to carry out these suggestions, which require so much self-denial. We are glad to see the doctor recommends a strict observance of Lent.
A General History of Modern Europe, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Council of the Vatican. Third edition, revised and corrected. By John G. Shea. New York: T. W. Strong, (late Edward Dunigan & Brother.)
The merit of this history as a text-book has been long and widely recognized. The correction, revision, and addenda do not call for any special notice.
The Ferryman of the Tiber. An Historical Tale. Translated from the Italian of Madame A. K. De La Grange. New York: P. O'Shea, 27 Barclay street. 1870.
This is a beautiful story of the early days of the church, when the effeminacy and luxury of the pagans made the noble virtues of the Christians shine with the greater splendor; when St. Jerome lived in Rome, and the Roman matrons and virgins, following his instructions, gave to the world such beautiful examples of virtue, and to the church so many saints. It is a book that should be read now; for though we do not live in a pagan age, we surely are not living in an age of faith; and the example of a Jerome, a Melania, and a Valeria are as necessary as when the light of Christianity had but just begun to shine upon the world.
The Grammar of Assent. By John Henry Newman, D.D.
This is a treatise on the science, not the art of logic, with application to religious belief and faith in the divine revelation. We have only had time to glance at its contents, and must, therefore, postpone any critical judgment upon them. What we have seen in looking over the leaves of the advanced sheets sent us by the kindness of the author is enough, however, to show that in this book Dr. Newman has put thought and language under a condenser which has compressed a folio of sense into a duodecimo of size.
The Catholic Publication Society will issue the work in a few weeks.
The Earthly Paradise. A Poem by William Morris. Part III. Boston: Roberts Brothers. Printed at the Cambridge University Press.
An extremely beautiful book, which it is a luxury to handle and look at. Every body knows, long before now, that Mr. Morris is a true poet, and there is no need of our saying what will be no news to any one who loves poetry. We will only say, therefore, that we like Mr. Morris, because he is antique, classical, and pure, and it is refreshing to get away from the dusty, hot highway of recent literature into his pages.
The Double Sacrifice; or, The Pontifical Zouaves. A Tale of Castelfidardo. Translated from the Flemish of the Rev. S. Daems. Baltimore: Kelly, Piet & Co. Pp. 242.
A well-deserved tribute to those gallant youths who cheerfully offered up their all, home, friends, life itself, for Peter's chair, and in defence of holy church. As a story it has no particular merit.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
From Scribner, Welford & Co., New York: Sermons bearing on the Subjects of the Day. By John Henry Newman, B.D. New edition. Rivingtons: London, Oxford, and Cambridge. 1869.
From Roberts Brothers, Boston: A Day by the Fire; and other papers hitherto uncollected. By Leigh Hunt. 1870.
From Carleton, New York: Strange Visitors.
From P. Fox, Publisher, 14 South Fifth street, St. Louis: Letters on Public Schools, with special reference to the system as conducted in St. Louis. By the Hon. Charles R. Smythe. 1870.
From the University, Ann Arbor: Report on a Department of Hygiene and Physical Culture in the University of Michigan, by a Committee of the University Senate. 1870.
From Murphy & Co., Baltimore: General Catechism of the Christian Doctrine; for the Use of the Catholics of the Diocese of Savannah and Vicariate Apostolic of Florida. 1869.—Peabody Memorial. January, 1870.
From James Miller, 647 Broadway, New York: History of American Socialisms. By John Humphrey Noyes.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XI., No. 62.—MAY, 1870.
CHURCH AND STATE.[21]
Il Signor Cantù is one of the ablest men and most distinguished contemporary authors of Italy. He is a layman, and has usually been reckoned among the better class of so-called liberal Catholics, and certainly is a warm friend of liberty, civil and religious, a sincere and earnest Italian patriot, thoroughly devoted to the holy see, and a firm and fearless defender of the rights, freedom, independence, and authority of the spiritual order in its relation to the temporal.
We know not where to look for a truer, fuller, more loyal, or more judicious treatment in so brief a compass of the great and absorbing question in regard to the relation of church and state, than in his article from the Rivista Universale, the title of which we give at the foot of the page. He is an erudite rather than a philosopher, a historian rather than a theologian; yet his article is equally remarkable for its learning, its history, its philosophy, its theology, and its canon law, and, with slight reservation, as to his interpretation of the bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII. and some views hinted rather than expressed as to the origin and nature of the magisterium exercised by the popes over sovereigns in the middle ages, we believe it as true and as exact as it is learned and profound, full and conclusive, and we recommend its careful study to all who would master the question it treats.
For ourselves, we have treated the question of church and state so often, so fully, and so recently, in its principle and in its several aspects, especially in relation to our own government, that we know not that we have any thing to add to what we have already said, and we might dispense ourselves from its further discussion by simply referring to the articles, Independence of the Church, October, 1866; Church and State, April, 1867; Rome and the World, October of the same year; and to our more recent articles on The Future of Protestantism and Catholicity, especially the third and fourth, January, February, March, and April, of the present year; and also to the article on The School Question, in the very last number before the present. We can do, and we shall attempt, in the present article, to do, little more than bring together and present as a whole what is scattered through these several articles, and offer respectfully and even timidly such suggestions as we think will not be presumptuous in regard to the means, in the present emergency, of realizing more perfectly at home and abroad the ideal of Christian society.
We assume in the outset that there really exist in human society two distinct orders, the spiritual and the temporal, each with its own distinctive functions, laws, and sphere of action. In Christian society, the representative of the spiritual order is the church, and the representative of the temporal is the state. In the rudest stages of society the elements of the two orders exist, but are not clearly apprehended as distinct orders, nor as having each its distinct and proper representative. It is only in Christian society, or society enlightened by the Gospel, that the two orders are duly distinguished, and each in its own representative is placed in its normal relation with the other.
The type, indeed the reason, of this distinction of two orders in society is in the double nature of man, or the fact that man exists only as soul and body, and needs to be cared for in each. The church, representing the spiritual, has charge of the souls of men, and looks after their minds, ideas, intelligence, motives, consciences, and consequently has the supervision of education, morals, literature, science, and art. The state, representing the temporal, has charge of men's bodies, and looks after the material wants and interests of individuals and society. We take this illustration from the fathers and mediæval doctors. It is perfect. The analogy of church and state in the moral order, with the soul and body in the physical order, commends itself to the common sense of every one, and carries in itself the evidence of its justness, especially when it is seen to correspond strictly in the moral order, to the distinction of soul and body in the physical order. We shall take, then, the relation of soul and body as the type throughout of the ideal relation of church and state.
Man lives not as body alone, nor as soul alone, but as the union of the two, in reciprocal commerce. Soul and body are distinct, but not separate. Each has its own distinctive properties and functions, and neither can replace the other; but their separation is death, the death of the body only, not of the soul indeed, for that is immortal. The body is material, and, separated from the soul, is dust and ashes, mere slime of the earth, from which it was formed. It is the same in the moral order with society, which is not state alone, nor church alone, but the union of the two in reciprocal commerce. The two are distinct, each has its distinctive nature, laws, and functions, and neither can perform the functions of the other, or take the other's place. But though distinct, they cannot in the normal state of society be separated. The separation of the state from the church is in the moral order what the separation of the body from the soul is in the physical order. It is death, the death of the state, not indeed of the church; for she, like the soul, nay, like God himself, is immortal. The separation of the state from the church destroys its moral life, and leaves society to become a mass of moral rottenness and corruption. Hence, the holy father includes the proposition to separate church and state, in his syllabus of condemned propositions.
The soul is defined by the church as the forma corporis, the informing or vital principle of the body. The church in the moral order is forma civitatis, the informing, the vital principle of the state or civil society, which has no moral life of its own, since all moral life, by its very term, proceeds from the spiritual order. There is in the physical order no existence, but from God through the medium of his creative act; so is there no moral life in society, but from the spiritual order which is founded by God as supreme law-giver, and represented by the church, the guardian and judge alike of the natural law and the revealed law.
The soul is the nobler and superior part of man, and it belongs to it, not to make away with the body, or to assume its functions, but to exercise the magisterium over it, to direct and govern it according to the law of God; not to the body to assume the mastery over the soul, and to bring the law of the mind into captivity to law in the members. So is the church, as representing the spiritual order, and charged with the care of souls, the nobler and superior part of society, and to her belongs the magisterium of entire human society; and it is for her in the moral order to direct and control civil society, by judicially declaring, and applying to its action, the law of God, of which she is, as we have just said, the guardian and judge, and to which it is bound by the Supreme Law-Giver to subordinate its entire official conduct.
We note here that this view condemns alike the absorption of the state in the church, and the absorption of the church in the state, and requires each to remain distinct from the other, each with its own organization, organs, faculties, and sphere of action. It favors, therefore, neither what is called theocracy, or clerocracy, rather, to which Calvinistic Protestantism is strongly inclined, nor the supremacy of the state, to which the age tends, and which was assumed in all the states of Gentile antiquity, whence came the persecution of Christians by the pagan emperors. We note farther, that the church does not make the law; she only promulgates, declares, and applies it, and is herself as much bound by it as is the state itself. The law itself is prescribed for the government of all men and nations, by God himself as supreme law-giver, or the end or final cause of creation, and binds equally states and individuals, churchmen and statesmen, sovereigns and subjects.
Such, as we have learned it, is the Catholic doctrine of the relation of church and state, and such is the relation that in the divine order really exists between the two orders, and which the church has always and everywhere labored with all her zeal and energy to introduce and maintain in society. It is her ideal of catholic or truly Christian society, but which has never yet been perfectly realized, though an approach to its realization, the author thinks, was made under the Christian Roman emperors. The chronic condition of the two orders in society, instead of union and coöperation, or reciprocal commerce, has been that of mutual distrust or undisguised hostility. During the first three centuries, the relation between them was that of open antagonism, and the blood of Christians made the greater part of the world then known hallowed ground, and the Christians, as Lactantius remarks, conquered the world, not by slaughtering, but by being slaughtered. The pagan sovereign of Rome claimed, and was held to unite both powers in himself, and was at once imperator, pontifix maximus, and divus, or god. The state, even after the conversion of the empire and of the barbarians that overturned it and seated themselves on its ruins, never fully disclaimed the spiritual faculties conceded it by Græco-Roman or Italo-Greek civilization.
All through the middle ages, Kenelm Digby's ages of faith, when it is pretended the church had every thing her own way, and the haughty power of her supreme pontiffs and their tyranny over such meek and lamb-like temporal princes as Henry IV., Frederick Barbarossa, and Frederick II. of Germany, Philip Augustus of France, Henry II. and John Lackland of England, have been the theme of many a school-boy declamation against her, and adduced by grave statesmen as an excuse for depriving Catholics of their liberty, confiscating their goods, and cutting their throats—all through those ages, we say, she enjoyed not a moment's peace, hardly a truce, and was obliged to sustain an unceasing struggle with the civil authority against its encroachments on the spiritual order, and for her own independence and freedom of action as the church of God. In this struggle, the struggle of mind against matter, of moral power against physical force, the church was far from being, at least to human eyes, always victorious, and she experienced more than one disastrous defeat. In the sixteenth century, Cæsar carried away from her the north of Europe, as he had long since carried away the whole east, and forced her, in the nations that professed to recognize her as representing the spiritual order, to make him such large concessions as left her little more than the shadow of independence; and the people and their rulers are now almost everywhere conspiring to take away even that shadow, and to render her completely subject to the state, or representative of the temporal order.
There is no opinion more firmly fixed in the minds of the people of to-day, at least according to the journals, than that the union of church and state is execrable and ought not to be suffered to exist. The words cannot be pronounced without sending a thrill of horror through society, and calling forth the most vigorous and indignant protest from every self-appointed defender of modern civilization, progress, liberty, equality, and fraternity. What is called the "Liberal party," sometimes "the movement party," but what we call "the revolution," has everywhere for its primum mobile, its impulse and its motive, the dissolution of what remains of the union of church and state, the total separation of the state from the church and its assertion as the supreme and only legitimate authority in society, to which all orders and classes of men, and all matters, whether temporal or spiritual, must be subjected. The great words of the party, as pronounced by its apostles and chiefs, are "people-king," "people-priest," "people-God." There is no denying the fact. Science, or what passes for science, denies the double nature of man, the distinction between soul and body, and makes the soul the product of material organization, or a mere function of the body; and the more popular philosophy suppresses the spiritual order in society, and therefore rejects its pretended representative; and the progress of intelligence suppresses God, and leaves for society only political atheism pure and simple, as is evident from the savage war-whoop set up throughout the civilized world against the syllabus of condemned propositions published by our holy father, December, 1864. This syllabus touched the deep wound of modern society, probed it to the quick, and hence the writhings and contortions, the groans and screechings it occasioned. May God grant that it touched to heal, exposed the wound only to apply the remedy.
But the remedy—what is it, where shall we seek it, and how shall it be applied? The question is delicate as well as grave, let it be answered as it may. The principles of the church are inflexible and unalterable, and must be preserved inviolate; and even the susceptibilities of both statesmen and churchmen, in regard to changes in old customs and usages, even when not unchangeable in their nature, are to be gently treated. The church is not less bound by the law of God than is the state; for she does not, as we have said, make the law, she only administers it. Undoubtedly, she has in a secondary sense legislative authority or power to enact canons or rules and regulations for preserving, carrying out, and applying the law, as the court adopts its own rules and regulations, or as does the executive authority, even in a government like ours, for executing the law enacted by the legislative power. These may no doubt be changed from time to time by the church as she judges necessary, proper, or expedient in order the better to meet the changing circumstances in relation to which she is obliged to act. But even in these respects, changes must be made in strict conformity to law; and although they may be so made and leave the law intact, and affect only the modes or forms of its administration, they are not without a certain danger. The faithful may mistake them for changes or innovations in the law itself, and enemies may represent them as such, and sophistically adduce them against the church as disproving her immutability and infallibility.
There have been, and no doubt are still, abuses in the church growing out of its human side, which need changes in discipline to reform them; but these abuses have always been exaggerated by the best and holiest men in the church, and the necessity of a change in discipline or ecclesiastical law, as distinguished from the law of God, is seldom, if ever, created by them. When evils exist that menace both faith and society, it is not the church that is in fault, but the world that refuses to conform to the law as she declares and applies it. It was not abuses in the church that were the chief cause of the revolt, the heresy, and schism of the reformers in the sixteenth century; for they were far less then than they had been one, two, three, or even four centuries previous. The worst abuses and greatest scandals which had previously obtained had already been corrected, and Leo X. had assembled the Fifth Council of the Lateran for the purpose of restoring discipline and rendering it still more effective. The evil originated in the temporal order as represented by the state, and grew out of secular changes and abuses. It was so then, it is so now, always was and always will be so. Why, then, demand changes or reform in the church, which cannot reach them? The church causes none of the evils at any time complained of, and offers no obstacle to their removal, or the redress of social grievances. It is for the temporal to yield to the spiritual, not for the spiritual to yield to the temporal. Very true; and yet the church may condescend to the world in its weakness for the sake of elevating it to harmony with her own ideal. God, when he would take away sin, and save the souls he had created and which he loved, did not stand aloof, or, so to speak, on his dignity, and bid the sinner cease sinning and obey him, without stretching forth his hand to help him; but made himself man, humbled himself, took the form of a servant, and came to the world lying in wickedness and festering in iniquity, took it by the hand, and sweetly and gently led the sinner away from sin to virtue and holiness.
For four hundred years, the church has sought to maintain peace and concord between herself and the state by concordats, as the wisest and best expedient she found practicable. But concordats, however useful or necessary, do not realize the ideal of Christian society. They do not effect the true union of church and state, and cannot be needed where that union exists. They imply not the union, but the separation of church and state, and are neither necessary nor admissible, except where the state claims to be separate from and independent of the church. They are a compromise in which the church concedes the exercise of certain rights to the state in consideration of its pledge to secure her in the free and peaceable exercise of the rest, and to render her the material force in the execution of her spiritual canons, which she may need but does not herself possess. They are defensible only as necessary expedients, to save the church and the state from falling into the relation of direct and open antagonism.
Yet even as expedients concordats have been at best only partially successful, and now seem on the point of failing altogether. While the church faithfully observes their stipulations so far as they bind her, the state seldom observes them in the respect that they bind it, and violates them as often as they interfere with its own ambitious projects or policy. The church has concordats with the greater part of the European states, and yet while in certain respects they trammel her freedom, they afford her little or no protection. The state everywhere claims the right to violate or abrogate them at will, without consulting her, the other party to the contract. It has done so in Spain, in Italy, and in Austria; and if France at present observes the concordat of 1801, she does it only in the sense of the "organic articles," never inserted in it, but added by the First Consul on his authority alone, and always protested against by the supreme pontiff and vicar of Christ; and there is no foreseeing what the present or a new ministry may do. Even if the governments were disposed to observe them, their people would not suffer them to do so, as we see in Spain and Austria. Times have changed, and the governments no longer govern the people, but the people, or the demagogues who lead them, now govern the governments. The European governments sustain their power, even their existence, only by the physical force of five millions of armed soldiers.
There is evidently, then, little reliance to be placed on the governments; for they are liable, any day, to be changed or overthrown. The strongest of them hope to sustain themselves and keep the revolution in check only by concessions, as we see in the extension of suffrage in England, and the adoption of parliamentary government, under a constitutional monarch, in Austria, France, North Germany, and elsewhere. But as yet the concessions of the governments have nowhere strengthened them or weakened the revolution. One concession becomes the precedent for another, and one demand satisfied only leads to another and a greater demand, while it diminishes the power of the government to resist. What is more, the closer the union of the church with the government the more helpless it becomes, and the greater the hostility it incurs. The primum mobile of the movement party, as we now find it, is not the love of honest liberty, or a liberty compatible with stable government, or the establishment of a democratic or republican constitution; and it is not hostile to the church only because she exerts her power to sustain the governments it would reform or revolutionize, but rather, because it regards them as upholding the church, which they detest and would annihilate. The primum mobile is hatred of the church. This is the reason why, even when the governments are well disposed, as sometimes they are, the people will not suffer them to observe faithfully their engagements to the church.
Here was the mistake of the brilliant but unhappy De la Mennais. He called upon the church to cut herself loose from her entangling alliance with the state, and throw herself back on the people; which would have been not bad counsel, if the people were hostile to her only because they supposed her allied with despotic governments, or if they were less hostile to her than the governments themselves. But such is not the fact at present. The people are to-day controlled by Catholics who care little for any world but the present, by Protestants, rationalists, Jews, infidels, and humanitarians; and to act on the Lamennaisian counsel would seem very much like abandoning weak, timid, and too exacting friends, to throw one's self into the arms of powerful and implacable enemies. When, in the beginning of his reign, the holy father adopted some popular measures, he was universally applauded, but he did not win those who applauded him to the church; and his measures were applauded by the outside world only because believed to be such as would tend to undermine his own authority, and pave the way for the downfall of Catholicity. The movement party applauded, because they thought they could use him as an instrument for the destruction of the church. In the French Revolution of February, 1848, originating in deep-seated and inveterate hostility to the church, the ready acceptance of the republic, the next day after its proclamation, by the French bishops and clergy, did not for a moment conciliate the hostility in which the revolution had its origin. They were applauded indeed, but only in the hope of making use of them to democratize, or secularize, and therefore to destroy the church as the authoritative representative of the spiritual order. The bishops and priests, all but a very small minority, showed that they understood and appreciated the applause they received, by abandoning the revolution at the earliest practicable moment, and lending their support to the movement for the Establishment of imperialism; for they felt that they could more safely rely on the emperor than on the republic.
These facts and the reminiscences of the old French Revolution, have created in the great majority of intelligent and earnest Catholics, wisely or unwisely, we say not, a profound distrust of the movement party, which professes to be the party of liberty, and which carries in its train, if not the numerical majority, at least the active, energetic, and leading minds of their respective nations, those that form public opinion and give its direction, and make them honestly believe that Catholic interests, which are not separable from the interests of society, will be best protected and promoted by the church's standing by the governments and aiding them in their repressive measures. Perhaps they are right. The church, of course, cannot abandon society; but in times like ours, it is not easy to say on which side lie the interests of society. Is it certain that they lie on either side, either with the governments as they are, or with the party opposed to them? At present the church neither directs the governments nor controls the popular or so-called liberal movement; and we confess it is difficult to say from which she and society have most to dread. Governments without her direction want morality, and can govern only by force; and popular movements not inspired or controlled by her are blind and lawless, and tend only to anarchy, and the destruction of liberty as well as of order, of morality as well as of religion as a directing and governing power. We distrust both.
For ourselves personally, we are partial to our own American system, which, unless we are blinded by our national prejudices, comes nearer to the realization of the true union as well as distinction of church and state than has heretofore or elsewhere been effected; and we own we should like to see it, if practicable there, introduced—by lawful means only—into the nations of Europe. The American system may not be practicable in Europe; but, if so, we think it would be an improvement. Foreigners do not generally, nor even do all Americans themselves fully understand the relation of church and state, as it really subsists in the fundamental constitution of American society. Abroad and at home there is a strong disposition to interpret it by the theory of European liberalism, and both they who defend and they who oppose the union of church and state, regard it as based on their total separation. But the reverse of this, as we understand it, is the fact. American society is based on the principle of their union; and union, while it implies distinction, denies separation. Modern infidelity or secularism is, no doubt, at work here as elsewhere to effect their separation; but as yet the two orders are distinct, each with its distinct organization, sphere of action, representative, and functions, but not separate. Here the rights of neither are held to be grants from the other. The rights of the church are not franchises or concessions from the state, but are recognized by the state as held under a higher law than its own, and therefore rights prior to and above itself, which it is bound by the law constituting it to respect, obey, and, whenever necessary, to use its physical force to protect and vindicate.
The original settlers of the Anglo-American colonies were not infidels, but, for the most part, sincerely religious and Christian in their way, and in organizing society aimed not simply to escape the oppression of conscience, of which they had been the victims in the mother country, but to found a truly Christian commonwealth; and such commonwealth they actually founded, as perfect as was possible with their imperfect and often erroneous views of Christianity. The colonies of New England inclined, no doubt, to a theocracy, and tended to absorb the state in the church; in the Southern colonies, the tendency was, as in England, to establish the supremacy of the civil order, and to make the church a function of the state. These two opposite tendencies meeting in the formation of American society, to a great extent, counterbalanced each other, and resulted in the assertion of the supremacy of the Christian idea, or the union and distinction under the law of God, of the two orders. In principle, at least, each order exists in American society in its normal relation to the other; and also in its integrity, with its own distinctive nature, laws, and functions, and therefore the temporal in its proper subordination to the spiritual.
This subordination is, indeed, not always observed in practice, nor always even theoretically admitted. Many Americans, at first thought, when it is broadly stated, will indignantly deny it. We shall find even Catholics who do not accept it, and gravely tell us that their religion has nothing to do with their politics; that is, their politics are independent of their religion; that is, again, politics are independent of God, and there is no God in the political order; as if a man could be an atheist in the state, and a devout Catholic in the church. But too many Catholics, at home and abroad, act as if this were indeed possible, and very reasonable, nay, their duty; and hence the political world is given over to the violence and corruption in which Satan finds a rich harvest. But let the state pass some act that openly and undisguisedly attacks the rights, the freedom, or independence of the church, in a practical way, it will be hard to find a single Catholic, in this country at least, who would not denounce it as an outrage on his conscience, which shows that the assertion of the separation of politics from religion so thoughtlessly made, really means only the distinction, not the separation of the two orders, or that politics are independent, so long as they do not run counter to the freedom and independence of religion, or fail to respect and protect the rights of the church. Inexactness of expression, and bad logic do not necessarily indicate unsound faith.
Most non-Catholics will deny that the American state is founded on the recognition of the independence and superiority of the spiritual order, and therefore, of the church, and the confession of its own subordination to the spiritual, not only in the order of logic, as Il Signor Cantù maintains, but also in the order of authority; yet a little reflection ought to satisfy every one that such is the fact, and if it does not, it will be owing to a misconception of what is spiritual. The basis of the American state or constitution, the real, unwritten, providential constitution, we mean, is what are called the natural and inalienable rights of man; and we know no American citizen who does not hold that these rights are prior to civil society, above it, and held independently of it; or that does not maintain that the great end for which civil society is instituted is to protect, defend, and vindicate, if need be, with its whole physical force, these sacred and inviolable rights for each and every citizen, however high, however low. This is our American boast, our American conception of political justice, glory. These rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are the higher, the supreme law for civil society, which the state, however constituted, is bound to recognize and obey. They deny the absolutism of the state, define its sphere, restrict its power, and prescribe its duty.
But whence come these rights? and how can they bind the state, and prescribe its duty? We hold these rights by virtue, of our manhood, it is said; they are inherent in it, and constitute it. But my rights bind you, and yours bind me, and yet you and I are equal; our manhoods are equal. How, then, can the manhood of either bind or morally oblige the other? Of things equal one cannot be superior to another. They are in our nature as men, it is said again, or, simply, we hold them from nature. They are said to be natural rights and inalienable, and what is natural must be in or from nature. Nature is taken in two senses; as the physical order or the physical laws constitutive of the physical universe, and as the moral law under which all creatures endowed with reason and free-will are placed by the Creator, and which is cognizable by natural reason or the reason common to all men. In the first sense, these rights are not inherent in our nature as men, nor from nature, or in nature; for they are not physical. Physical rights are a contradiction in terms. They can be inherent in our nature only in the second sense, and in our moral nature only, and consequently are held under the law which founds and sustains moral nature, or the moral order as distinct from the physical order.
But the moral law, the so-called law of nature, droit naturel, which founds and sustains the moral order, the order of right, of justice, is not a law founded or prescribed by nature, but the law for the moral government of nature, under which all moral natures are placed by the Author of nature as supreme law-giver. The law of nature is God's law; and whatever rights it founds or are held from it are his rights, and ours only because they are his. My rights, in relation to you, are your duties, what God prescribes as the law of your conduct to me; and your rights are, in relation to me, my duties to you, what God prescribes as the rule of my conduct to you. But what God prescribes he has the right to prescribe, and therefore can command me to respect no rights in you, and you to respect no rights in me, that are not his; and being his, civil society is bound by them, and cannot alienate them or deny them without violating his law, and robbing him of his rights. Hence, he who does an injury to another wrongs not him only, but wrongs his Maker, his Sovereign, and his Judge.
Take any of the rights enumerated as inalienable in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. Among these is the right to life. This right all men and civil society itself are bound to treat as sacred and inviolable. But all men are created equal, and under the law of nature have equal rights. But how can equals bind one another? By mutual compact. But whence the obligation of the compact? Why am I obliged to keep my word? Certainly not by the word itself; but because I should deprive him of his right to whom I have pledged it. But I have given my word to assist in committing a murder. Am I bound to keep it? Not at all. Why not? Because I have pledged myself to commit a crime, to do a wrong or unjust act. Evidently, then, compacts or pledged words do not create justice, they presuppose it; and it is only in virtue of the law of justice that compacts are obligatory, and no compacts not conformable to that law can bind. Why, then, am I bound to respect your life? It is not you who can bind me; for you and I are equals, and neither in his own name can bind the other. To take your life would be an unjust act; that is, I should rob justice of its right to your life. The right to life is then the right of justice. But justice is not an abstraction; it is not a mental conception, but a reality, and therefore God; and hence the right for you or me to live is the right of him who hath made us and whose we are, with all that we are, all that we have, and all that we can do. Hence, the right to life is inalienable even by myself, and suicide is not only a crime against society, but a sin against God; for God owns it as his right, and therefore he has the right to command all men to hold it in every man sacred and inviolable, and never to be taken by other men or even civil society, but at his order. So of all the other rights of man.
If the rights of man are the rights of God in and over man as his creature, as they undeniably are, they lie in the spiritual order, are spiritual, not temporal. The American state, then, in recognizing the independence, superiority, and inviolability of the rights of man, does recognize, in principle, the independence, superiority, and inviolability of the spiritual order, and its own subordination to it, and obligation to consult it and conform to it. It then recognizes the church divinely appointed and commissioned by God with plenary authority to represent it, and apply the law of God to the government of the people as the state no less than to the people as individuals. This follows as a necessary consequence. If God has made a supernatural revelation, we are bound by the natural law to believe it; and if he has instituted a church to represent the spiritual, or concreted the spiritual in a visible organism, with plenary authority to teach his word to all men and nations, and to declare and apply his law in the government of human affairs, we are bound to accept and obey her the moment the fact is brought sufficiently to our knowledge. This shows that the true church, if such church there be, is sacred and inviolable, and that what she declares to be the law of God is his law, which binds every conscience; and all sovereigns and subjects, states and citizens are alike bound to obey her. He who refuses to obey her refuses to obey God; he who spurns her spurns God; he who despises her despises God; and he who despoils her of any of her rights or possessions despoils God. Kings and the great of the earth, statesmen and courtiers, demagogues and politicians are apt to forget this, and because God does not instantly punish their sacrilege with a visible and material punishment, conclude that they may outrage her to their heart's content with impunity. But the punishment is sure to follow in due course, and so far as it concerns states, dynasties, and society, in the shape of moral weakness, imbecility, corruption, and death.
That the American state is true to the order it acknowledges, and never usurps any spiritual functions, we do not pretend. The American state copies in but too many instances the bad legislation of Europe. It from the outset showed the original vice of the American people; for while they very justly subjected the state to the law of God, they could subject it to that law only as they understood it, and their understanding of it was in many respects faulty, which was no wonder, since they had no infallible, no authoritative, in fact, no representative at all of the spiritual order, and knew the law of God only so far as taught it by natural reason, and spelled out by their imperfect light from an imperfect and mutilated text of the written word. They had a good major proposition, namely, the spiritual order duly represented is supreme, and should govern all men collectively and individually, as states and as citizens; but their minor was bad. But we with our reading of the Bible do duly represent that order. Therefore, etc. Now, we willingly admit that a people reverencing and reading the Bible as the word of God, will in most respects have a far truer and more adequate knowledge of the law of God than those who have neither church nor Bible, and only their reason and the mutilated, perverted, and even travestied traditions of the primitive revelation retained and transmitted by Gentilism, and therefore that Protestantism as understood by the American colonists is much better for society than the liberalism asserted by the movement party either here or in Europe; but its knowledge will still be defective, and leave many painful gaps on many important points; and the state, having no better knowledge, will almost inevitably misconceive what on various matters the law of God actually prescribes or forbids.
The American state, misled by public opinion, usurps the functions of the church in some very grave matters. It assumes the control of marriage and education, therefore of all family relations, of the family itself, and of ideas, intelligence, opinions, which we have seen are functions of the church, and both are included in the two sacraments of marriage and orders. It also fails to recognize the freedom and independence of the spiritual order in refusing to recognize the church as a corporation, a moral person, as capable of possessing property as any natural or private person, and therefore denies to the spiritual order the inalienable right of property. The American state denies to the church all possessory rights unless incorporated by itself. This is all wrong; but if no better, it is no worse than what is assumed by the state in every European nation; and the most that can be said is, that in these matters the state forgets the Christian commonwealth for the pagan, as is done everywhere else.
But except in these instances, the American state is, we believe, true to the Christian principle on which it is based, as true, that is, as it can be in a mixed community of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants. The state has no spiritual competency, and cannot decide either for itself or for its citizens which is or is not the church that authoritatively represents the spiritual order. The responsibility of that decision it does and must leave to its citizens, who must decide for themselves, and answer to God for the rectitude of their decision. Their decision is law for the state, and it must respect and obey it in the case alike of majorities and minorities; for it recognizes the equal rights of all its citizens, and cannot discriminate between them. The church that represents for the state the spiritual order is the church adopted by its citizens; and as they adopt different churches, it can recognize and enforce, through the civil courts, the canons and decrees of each only on its own members, and on them only so far as they do not infringe on the equal rights of the others. This is not all the state would do or ought to do in a perfect Christian society, but it is all that it can do where these different churches exist, and exist for it with equal rights. It can only recognize them, and protect and vindicate the rights of each only in relation to those citizens who acknowledge its authority. This recognizes and protects the Catholic Church in her entire freedom and independence and in teaching her faith, and in governing and disciplining Catholics according to her own canons and decrees, which, unless we are greatly misinformed, is more than the state does for her, in any old Catholic nation in the world.
This is not tolerance or indifference; it only means that the state does not arrogate to itself the right to decide which is the true church, and holds itself bound to respect and protect equally the church or churches acknowledged as such by its citizens. The doctrine that a man is free before God to be of any religion, or of no religion as he pleases, or the liberty of conscience, as understood by the so-called liberals throughout the world, and which was condemned by Gregory XVI. of immortal memory, in his encyclical of August 15th, 1832, receives no countenance from the American state, and is repugnant to its fundamental constitution. Heretical and schismatic sects have, indeed, no rights; for they have no authority from God to represent the spiritual order, and their existence is, no doubt, repugnant to the real interests of society as well as destructive to souls; but in a community where they exist along with the true church, the state must respect and protect in them the rights of the spiritual order, not indeed because they claim to be the church, but because they are held to be such by its citizens, and all its citizens have equal rights in the civil order, and the equal right to have their conscience, if they have a conscience, respected and protected. The church of God exacts nothing more of it in this respect than to be protected in her freedom to combat and vanquish the adherents of false churches or false religions with her own spiritual weapons. More she might exact of the state in perfect Christian society; but this is all that she can exact in an imperfect and divided Christian society, as is the case in nearly all modern nations.
This is the American system. Is it practicable in the old Catholic nations of Europe? Would it be a gain to religion, if suffered to be introduced there? Would the government, if it were accepted by the church, understand it as implying its obligation to respect and protect all churches equally as representing the spiritual order, or as asserting its freedom to govern and oppress all at will, the true church as the false? There is danger of the latter, because European society is not based on the Christian principle of the independence and inviolability of the rights of man, that is, the rights of God, but on the pagan principle of the state, that all rights, even the rights of the church, and society emanate from the state, and are revocable at its will. Hence the reason why the church has found concordats with the secular powers so necessary. In the sense of the secular authority, these concordats are acts of incorporation, and surrendering them by the church would be the surrender of its charter by a corporation. It would be to abandon all her goods to the state, leave her without a legal status, and with no rights which the state holds itself bound to recognize, protect, or enforce through its courts, any more than she had under the persecuting Roman emperors. This would be the farthest remove possible from the American system. Before the American system could be introduced into European states in the respect that it affords freedom and protection to the church in the discharge of her spiritual functions, the whole structure of European society would need to be reconstructed on the Christian foundation, or the basis of the inherent rights and supremacy of the spiritual order, instead of its present pagan or Græco-Roman basis of the supremacy of the city or state.
Undoubtedly, the liberals, or movement party, are, and have been, for nearly a century, struggling by all the means in their power, fair or foul, to overthrow European society, and reconstruct it after what they suppose to be the American model, but in reality on a basis, if possible, more pagan and less Christian than its present basis. They assert the absolute supremacy of the state in all things; only, instead of saying with Louis XIV., "L'état, c'est moi," they say "L'état, c'est le peuple," but they make the people, as the state, as absolute as any king or kaiser-state ever pretended to be. The church would, in their reconstructed society, not have secured to her the rights that she holds under our system, by the fact that it is based on the equal and antecedent rights of all citizens, really the rights of God, which limit the power of state, of the people in a democratic state, and prescribe both its province and its duty.
Even with us, the American system has its enemies, and perhaps only a minority of the people understand it as we do, and some of the courts are beginning to render decisions which, if in one part, they sustain it, in another part flatly contradict it. The Supreme Court of Ohio, in the recent case of the School Board of Cincinnati, has decided very properly that the board could not exclude religion; but, on the other hand, it maintains that a majority of the people in any locality may introduce what religion they please, and teach it to the children of the minority as well as to their own, which is manifestly wrong; for it gives the majority of the people the power to establish their own religion, and exclude that of the minority when, in matters of religion, that is, in matters of conscience, votes do not count. My conscience, though in a minority of one, is as sacred and inviolable as it would be if all the rest of the community were with me. As in the Polish Diet, a single veto suffices to arrest the whole action of the state. The American democracy is not what it was in 1776. It was then Christian after a Protestant fashion; it is now infected with European liberalism, or popular absolutism; and if we had to introduce the American system now, we should not be able to do it.
There are serious difficulties on both sides. The church cannot confide in the revolution, and the governments cannot or will not protect her, save at the expense of her independence and freedom of action. They, if we may believe any thing the journals say, threaten her with their vengeance, if she dares to make and publish such or such a dogmatic decision, or to define on certain points which they think touch them, what her faith is and always has been. This is a manifest invasion of her right to teach the word of God in its integrity, and simply tells her, with the sword suspended over her head, that she shall teach only what is agreeable to them, whether in God's word or not. This insolence, this arrogant assumption, applauded by the universal sectarian and secular press, if submitted to, would make the church the mere tool of the secular authority, and destroy all confidence in her teaching.
We know not how these difficulties on either side are to be overcome. The church cannot continue to be shorn of her freedom by the secular governments, and made to conform to their ambitious or timid politics, without losing more and more her hold on the European populations. Nor can she side with the revolution without perilling the interests of society from which her own cannot be separated. We see no way out of the dilemma but for her, trusting in the divine protection, to assert simply and energetically her independence of both parties alike, and confide in the faithful, as she did in the martyr ages, and as she does now in every heathen land.
We do not assume the propriety or necessity of trying to introduce the American system into the old world, nor do we urge the church to break either with the governments or with the people; but we may, we hope, be permitted to say that what seems to us to be needed is, for the church to assert her independence of both so far as either attempts to control her in the free discharge of her functions as the church of God; and we think the faithful should be prepared for the consequences of such assertion, whatever they may prove to be. The church cannot fulfil her mission, which is not confined to the Catholic nations of Europe, but embraces the whole world, if she is thus denied her independence and crippled in her freedom of action. If the assertion of her independence in face of the temporal order deprives her of her legal status, and places her out of the protection of the civil law, it perhaps will, in the end, prove to be no serious calamity, or at least a less evil than her present cramped and crippled condition. She has held that position heretofore, and, aided by Him whose spouse she is, and who hath purchased her with his precious blood, she in that very condition conquered and subdued the world against the hostility of the most powerful empire that ever existed. What she has done once, she is no less able to do again. The worst that the state can do is to strip her of her temporalities, and forbid her to preach in the name of Jesus. The worst the revolution can do is the same, and in its fury to massacre bishops and priests, monks and nuns, men and women, because they choose to obey God rather than men.
Well, all this has been more than once. We have seen it in Ireland, where the church was despoiled of her revenues, the people of their churches, schools, colleges, and religious houses, and only not of the use of the graveyard; where Catholic worship was prohibited under pain of death, and armed soldiers hunted and shot down as a wild beast the priest who ventured to say mass in a private house, in a remote morass, or a cave in the mountain, and the faithful were slaughtered as sheep by fiery zealots or the graceless myrmidons of power; where not only the church was despoiled and left naked and destitute, but her children were also despoiled of their estates and reduced to poverty, while laws were devised with satanic ingenuity and enforced with savage ferocity to degrade and debase them, and to prevent them from escaping from their poverty or their enforced secular ignorance. Yet we have seen the faith in spite of all live and gain on its enemies, the church survive and even prosper; and only the last year, when offered freely a government subsidy for her clergy and her services, we have seen the noble Irish hierarchy, without a dissenting voice, refuse it, and prefer to rely on the voluntary offerings of the faithful to coming under any obligation to the temporal power.
In this country the people were, in the outset, as hostile to the church as they could be anywhere or in any age, and they are not even yet converted, very generally, into warm and eager friends; yet without any public provision, relying solely on the alms of the faithful at home and abroad, principally at home, the missionaries of the cross have been sustained, the widow's handful of meal and cruse of oil have not failed; and yet we have founded and sustained schools, colleges, universities, erected convents for men and for women, and are erecting throughout the whole country churches, the finest in it, and some of which may be regarded as architectural ornaments; and nearly all this has been achieved within a single lifetime.
Men who sit at their ease in Zion, and find their most engrossing occupation in solving an antiquarian problem, or disserting on some heathen relic just dug up, though the world is breaking up and falling to pieces around them, may be frightened at the prospect of being deprived of comforts they are used to; but let governments and peoples do their worst, they cannot do worse than heathen Rome did, worse than France did in the revolution of 1789, or England has been doing in Ireland for three hundred years. Fear! What is there to fear? If God be for us, who can be against us? The danger seems great, no doubt, to many; but let Catholics have the courage of their faith, and they will no longer fear him who can kill the body, and after that hath no more power. The danger before men of Christian courage will disappear as the morning mist before the rising sun. Can a Catholic fear poverty, want, labor, suffering, torture, or death in His cause who for our sakes became poor, and had not where to lay his head; who took the form of a servant, and obeyed unto death, even the death of the cross? Know we not that Catholic faith and Catholic charity can weary out the most cruel and envenomed persecutors, and in the end gain the victory over them? If the church finds it necessary, then, in order to maintain her independence, to incur the hostility of kings or peoples, and the loss of her goods, there need be no fear; God will not forsake her, and the charity of the faithful never faileth.
DION AND THE SIBYLS.
A CLASSIC, CHRISTIAN NOVEL.
BY MILES GERALD KEON, COLONIAL SECRETARY, BERMUDA, AUTHOR OF "HARDING THE MONEY-SPINNER," ETC.