BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS RECEIVED.
From D. & J. Sadlier & Co., New York: Rose Leblanc. By Lady Georgiana Fullerton. 16mo, pp. 220.—The Two Victories. By Rev. T. J. Potter. Third edition. 16mo, pp. 170.—Olive’s Rescue, etc. 18mo, pp. 149.—True to the End. 18mo, pp. 150.—The Little Crown of St. Joseph. Compiled and translated by a Sister of St. Joseph. 24mo, pp. 347.
—The Double Triumph: A Drama. By Rev. A. J. O’Reilly. Paper, 16mo, pp. 66.—The Foundling of Sebastopol: A Drama. By W. Tandy, D.D. Paper, 16mo, pp. 70.
—A Politico-Historical Essay on the Popes as the Protectors of Popular Liberty. By Henry A. Brann, D.D. 8vo, pp. 30, paper.
From G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York: Philosophy of Trinitarian Doctrine. By Rev. A. J. Pease. 12mo, pp. 183.
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From the Author: Mansions in the Skies: An Acrostic Poem on the Lord’s Prayer. By W. P. Chilton, Jr. 12mo, pp. 27.
From Roberts Brothers, Boston: Through the year: Thoughts Relating to the Seasons of Nature and the Church. By Rev. H. N. Powers. 16mo, pp. 288.
From Baker, Godwin & Co., New York: Reports of the Board of Directors and the Committees of the Xavier Union, New York, etc. 1875.
From J. W. Schermerhorn & Co., New York: The Mosaic Account of the Creation, the Miracle of To-day; or, New Witnesses of the Oneness of Genesis and Science. By Chas. B. Warring. 1875.
From Henri Oudin, Paris: Les Droits de Dieu et les Idées Modernes. Par l’Abbé François Chesnel. 8vo, pp. xxxix., 394.
From the Author: The Proposed Railway across Newfoundland: a Lecture. By Rev. Father Morris. 8vo, pp. vi., 46, paper.
THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXI., No. 126.—SEPTEMBER, 1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
THE RIGHTS OF THE CHURCH OVER EDUCATION.
FROM LES ETUDES RELIGIEUSES, ETC.
Of all the questions which preoccupy—and justly—public opinion, and on which war is declared against the Catholic Church, one of the most vital is that of education.
“It is certain that instruction is, in fact, the great battle-field chosen in our days by the intelligent enemies of the faith. It is there they hope to take captive the youth of France, and to train up future generations for impiety and scepticism. And it must be admitted that they conduct this war with a skill which is only equalled by their perseverance.”[167]
We endeavored to point out, in a former article, the intentions of the enemies of the church, the depth of the abyss they are digging for Christian society, and the infernal art which they have shown in combining their plan of attack.[168] Since then, a first success has befallen them to justify their hopes and inflame their ardor. We may expect to see them increase their efforts to carry the fortress. Why should they not succeed when they have opposed to them only divided forces?
Happen what may, however, we must remain true to ourselves. It is our duty to hold fast the standard of our faith, in spite of the contradictions of human reason; and to oppose to the pagan error, that the state is master of education, the Christian truth, that the church alone is endowed with the power to educate the young.… The opponents of the church on this point are of two classes. One consists of those who never belonged to her, or who do so no longer; the other, of those who still call themselves her children. The former are principally Protestants, and those philosophical adversaries of revelation who deny, with more or less good faith, Catholic doctrine, and pretend to find nothing in it but illusion and blind credulity. These are, it must be owned, consistent with themselves when they refuse to the church the rights she claims over education. Their logic is correct; but it is the logic of error, and to contend with such adversaries we should have to begin with a proof of Christianity. That is not our object. Whatever may be their error, however, on the subjects of Christian revelation and the church, we hope to be able to convince them that a spirit of encroachment and ambition of rule has no part in the pretensions of the church, in the matter of the education of the young. Rather, they ought to acknowledge, with us, that therein we only fulfil a duty the most sacred, the most inviolable—that of conducting Christian souls to their supreme and eternal destiny.
But what is far less excusable is the inconsistency of certain Catholics. They are persuaded, they say, of the truth of the Catholic religion; they profess to believe her doctrine, to submit to her authority; and yet one sees them make common cause with the enemies of their faith in repudiating all control of the church in questions of instruction and of education. It is for these especially we write, in the hope of convincing them that, in challenging for herself not only complete liberty to teach her children divine and human science, but also the moral and religious direction of all Christian schools, the Catholic Church claims nothing but what is her right, and pretends to nothing more than the legitimate exercise of a necessary and divine power. Would that they could understand, in short, that no Catholic can, without inconsistency and without a kind of apostasy, assent to the exclusion of the Church from the supervision of instruction, and to the whole of it being directed by the sole authority of the civil power!
I.—THE PRINCIPLES OF SOLUTION IN THE PRESENT QUESTION.
The whole Christian theory of education rests on the following twofold truth taught by the Catholic Church: that man is created by God for a supernatural end, and that the church is the necessary intermediary between man and his supreme destiny. These two points cannot be admitted without admitting, also, that the church is right in all the rest. Unfortunately, nothing is less common than the clear understanding of these truths, essential as they are to Christianity. It will, therefore, not be unprofitable to take a brief survey of them.
The Christian religion does not resemble those philosophical theories which an insignificant minority of the human race have been discussing for three thousand years without arriving at any conclusion, and which have no practical issue for the rest of mankind. Its aim, on the contrary, is essentially practical. From the first it addresses itself, not to a few persons of the highest culture, but to all indifferently, rich and poor, learned and ignorant. It is designed for every one, because every one has a soul, created in the image of God, and because this soul religion alone can save—that is to say, conduct to its ultimate end, by rendering it at last conformable to its divine type, to the infinite perfections of God. But especially is Christianity practical, because, without any long discussions, it says to every one of us, “I am the voice of God revealing to men truths which it is their duty to believe, virtues which it is their duty to practise in this life in order to deserve, after death, everlasting happiness in the very bosom of God. Here are my credentials; they affirm the mission I have received from on high. Believe, then, the Word of God; practise his precepts, and you will be saved.” Her credentials having been verified, it comes to pass that multitudes of men yield faith to the teachings of Christianity as coming from God; they place themselves under her obedience, and the Christian society is founded, with its hierarchy, its object clearly defined, and its special means determined by Jesus Christ, its divine founder.
But is it all, and will it be sufficient to call one’s self Christian, to be enrolled in the number of believers, to have received baptism, and to practise with more or less fidelity the precepts of the divine and ecclesiastical law? To suppose that it is, is the fatal error of a number of modern Christians, as unacquainted with their religion as they are lukewarm in fulfilling its duties. Thus understood, would Christianity have done anything but add to the religions of the philosophers incomprehensible mysteries, exceedingly troublesome practices, and ceremonies as meaningless to the mind as useless to the soul? Far from this, Christianity is itself, also, radical after its fashion. It deprives man of nothing which constitutes his nobility; it enriches it rather. It does not oppose his legitimate aspirations for what is great, for what is beautiful; it hallows them rather. It does not deny him the gratification of any of his loftier and more generous instincts; it only supplies them with an object infinitely capable of contenting them. In a word, it does not destroy nature; it transforms and deifies it, by communicating to it a supernatural and divine life.
What is life in mortal man but the movement of all his powers in quest of an object which gives them happiness? Well, then, Christianity lays hold of these human powers, and, in order to transform them, it infuses into them a new principle, which is grace—that is, the virtue of God uniting itself to the soul; it places a higher end before them—the possession of God in his own essence, an infinite object of knowledge and of love; it enables them, indeed, to bring forth works not possible to our frail nature without a divine illumination which enlightens the intelligence, and without a holy inspiration which strengthens and assists the will. It is a completely new man grafted on the root of the natural man. It is a new way of living, wherein, under the influence of a supernatural and divine principle, our feelings become purified by finding their source in God, our knowledge enlarges, because it penetrates even into the mysteries of the divine essence, and our love becomes limitless as God himself, the only true good, whom we love in himself, and in his creatures, the reflex of himself.
We know well that rationalistic philosophy, when it hears us speak of a divine life, of union with God by a higher principle than nature, shrugs its shoulders, and with superb self-complacency rings the changes on the words illusion, mysticism, extravagance. But what matter? Has it ever, like us, had any experience of this second life of the soul, so as to understand its reality and its grandeur? Its God, silent and solitary, exists only for reason. He will never issue from his eternal repose. He will not meddle with his creatures to constitute their happiness. This is not the God to satisfy our nature, thirsting for the infinite. He is not the God of Christianity whom we have learned to know and to love.
But to return to the church. Manhood is not the work of a day. Thirty years at the least pass away before the human being arrives at maturity, passing successively through the stages of infancy, boyhood, and youth. What care, what pains, and what active solicitude are needed for his education! A mother, a father, a master, devote themselves to it by turns. Fortunate if, after all, these efforts are crowned with success! Is it to be said that it costs less time and labor to bring a soul to spiritual maturity, to raise it to the perfection of this divine life? A day, a year—will they suffice to enlighten the intelligence with truths it must believe, to instruct it in obligations it must fulfil, but, above all, to form in it a habit of all those virtues it is bound to practise? Or is its education so different from the natural education that it can dispense with an instructor? Will the child, unaided, raise itself to God—we mean to the highest degree of moral perfection, of Christian sanctity? It would be folly to suppose it. It needs, therefore, a master; some one charged with the duty of teaching it truth, of forming it in virtue. Who is this instructor? Is it any other than that one to whom Jesus Christ, the divine but invisible Master, once said, “As my Father has sent me, I send you. Go then, teach all nations; teaching them to observe my whole law.” This instructor is the church, represented by her pastors, the lawful successors of the apostles.
This principle must be borne in mind, this indisputable truth of revealed doctrine. We shall see the consequences of it presently. We assert that the church, and the church alone, has received from Jesus Christ the power of forming the supernatural man—the Christian in the full force of that term. No one else can pretend to it. Not the state, with its power; not private individuals, with their knowledge, however great; not even the father or mother of the family, great as is the authority over their children’s souls with which God has invested them. And wherefore? Because the church alone possesses the means indispensable for a Christian education.
These means are of three kinds. In the name of God, the church gives truth to the understanding; she imposes a law on the will; and she dispenses grace, without which the Christian would lack power to believe the truth and to fulfil the law. Withdraw these things, and Christian education ceases to exist. You deliver up the understanding to human opinions; therein it loses faith. The will becomes a law to itself; that is to say, it has no other law to guide it than its own caprices and passions; and then, the moral force disappearing, man in the face of duty is oftener than not powerless to fulfil it. Now, who is it whom God has charged with the duty of preserving amongst men, and of communicating to every generation the treasure of revealed truths? Who is it who represents on earth the divine power, and has the right of enlightening consciences on the subjects of justice and injustice, of right and wrong? Whom, in short, has Jesus Christ appointed minister of his sacraments to distribute to souls the supernatural succors of grace? The church, and the church alone. To her have all generations of mankind been entrusted throughout the progress of the ages, in order that she may bring them forth to spiritual life, and form in them Jesus Christ, the divine model whom Christian education ought to reproduce in every one of us. It is, then, true that the formation of the supernatural man, of the Christian, is the proper ministry of the church; that this ministry constitutes a part of her essential functions; that it is, in a sense, her whole mission on earth; so much so, that she could not abdicate it without betraying her trust, without abandoning the object of her mission, and overthrowing the whole work of Christianity.
This is a fundamental principle which no sincere Catholic could think of rejecting, so solidly is it based on revelation, and so conformable is it to the principles of faith. There remains, consequently, only to deduce from it its consequences, and to point out how the whole claim of power over the instruction and education of Christian youth which the church asserts flows from it as a necessary and logical deduction. Now the church herself having been careful to determine the rights which belong to her, it is her word we shall take for our guide, it is her doctrine we propose to defend. It is clearly annunciated in the Encyclical Quanta Cura, and in the Syllabus, the most authentic exposition of the mind of the church on all the disputed questions of the day, as it is the most assailed.
II.—POSITION OF THE QUESTION.
For nearly three centuries the government of France has labored with indefatigable persistency and energy to concentrate in its hands all the social powers, and to constitute itself, as it were, the universal motive-cause in the state. Autonomy of provinces, communal franchises, individual or collective precedence in certain great public services, all have successively disappeared before the continual encroachments of the central power. Thus the state is no longer a living organism of its own life, at once manifold and ordered. It has become a huge mechanism, whose thousands of wheels, inert and powerless of themselves, move only at the impulse of the centre of the motive forces. To make of society a kind of human machine may be the ideal of a certain materialist and socialist school. It has never been the idea of Christianity. We Christians have too much regard for our personal dignity, we know too well the limits of the functions of the civil power, thus to abdicate all spontaneity, all precedence of our own, and to consent to become nothing but mere parts of a machine, when we can be, and ought to be, activities full of life and movement.
In the matter of education especially, what errors have not been committed, of what usurpations has not the civil power incurred the guilt? By the creation of an official, pattern university, monopolizing instruction, and subject exclusively to the direction of the government, all the authorities to whom belonged formerly the instruction and education of youth have been suppressed at one blow. There is no longer any right recognized, any action suffered, but that of the state, master both of school and pay. Everything by the state, everything for the state, this through long weary years has been the undiscussable maxim against which Catholic consciences, little disposed to sacrifice their right to the usurped power of the government, struggled in vain.
At last, thanks to the persistent protest of those consciences, so long despised; the principle has lost its pretended obviousness, and the fact itself has received its first check—sure prelude of its approaching disappearance. The moment seems to have arrived when those who have the right ought to claim their legitimate share in the exercise of a function eminently social. Now all have a right here. The government has its rights; as responsible for the good and evil which befall society; for the evil, to check and prevent it; for the good, to help in effecting it. The church has her rights, because she is the great moral power in society, and there is question here, pre-eminently, of a moral function. The family has its rights, for it is its fruit which has to be reared and instructed. Individuals, even, have their rights—the right of devotion and sacrifice in behalf of a holy work, and of a ministry which, more than any other, stands in need of those graces.
Here are, assuredly, enough of rights, despised for three-quarters of a century, and swallowed up in the insatiable power of the state. It would be a deed worthy of our generation to re-establish all in their original and proper order. It is being attempted, we know, and already the National Assembly[169] has begun to concede an instalment of justice to the family and to individuals. But the church! Why is silence kept concerning her? Why is it sought to exclude her from the debate, and to treat her claims as null and void? We Catholics cannot accept this disavowal of our rights. It concerns us to ascertain what place they propose to assign to our church in the modern state. We should like to know whether we still belong to a Christian society, or must prepare to defend the rights of our conscience in a state decidedly pagan.
What are these rights? What do we demand for the church? What position, in short, do we wish to see her assume in all that concerns the education of youth? Such are the questions we propose to solve. We will state them with yet more precision. When there is question of the rights of the church in communities, three hypotheses are possible according to the different conditions of those communities. We may suppose a state religiously constituted—that is to say, wherein the gospel and Christianity are not only the rule of life and the religion of individuals, but, besides, the foundation of legislation, the worship adopted in the manifestations of public piety; whatever may be, in other respects, the general aspect of the relations established, by common consent, between the church and the state.
In opposition to this first hypothesis there exists another—that of a civil society, wherein the religious authority and the political authority have the appearance of ignoring one another; wherein the state affects indifference with regard to all religions, fosters no one of them, and, limiting its action exclusively to the material interests of the community, leaves individuals to embrace and practise whichever of the worships suits them best. To borrow the popular formula, such a constitution would realize “a free church in a free state”; or, more exactly, “a state separated from the church.”[170]
Lastly, modern times have given birth to a third kind of political constitution, a mean between the two preceding ones, in which Catholicity is no longer the base of the social edifice in preference to every other religion, and is only one of the public worships recognized by the state; at times that of the majority of the citizens, and observed as such in the religious solemnities in which the government takes a part. In this hypothesis, the state remains religious, but it is neither Catholic nor Protestant. A Christianism vague and general enough to lend itself to all communions, a kind of rational deism, rather, inspires its legislation; honor is done to ministers of recognized worships, and when government feels a need of betaking itself to God, in order to implore his mercy, or to give him thanks for his blessings, it orders prayer in all the places of worship without distinction. Manifold, as may be supposed, are the shades of difference in the manner of constituting a state of such indefinite religious forms. It is nevertheless true that the greater number of our modern constitutions reproduce, more or less, the type we have just sketched. Are we to see in this merely a kind of transition between ancient communities, which almost all realized the first hypothesis, and the communities of the future? Or will the state, separated from the church, organize itself and govern itself in a complete independence of all religion? This is the dream of our free-thinkers. For the happiness of humanity, we hope it will not be realized.
In addition to these three hypotheses there remains the state persecutor of the church. But although this is by no means uncommon in these days, it does not enter into our present subject; which is limited to determining the rights and action of the church in a tranquil and, up to a certain point, regular state of things.
Further, Christianity being to us truth, and the Catholic Church the only true Christianity, it evidently follows that the first hypothesis constitutes the normal state of society, that in which it attains its end with the greatest perfection by the most abundant and most appropriate means. Religion, in short, is as necessary to communities as to individuals; and of all religions, only the true one can be a real element of the prosperity of states.
The problem to solve, then, is as follows: First to examine and determine the rights which belong to the church in a well-organized society—that is to say, in a Christian or Catholic society. Then, when we know the better, the more perfect, to lay down the necessary and the possible, in communities where human passions have made for the church an inferior position, but little favorable to the full exercise of her rights.
III.—CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN A CHRISTIAN STATE.
The Jews in this resembled, to a certain extent, a Christian—that is a Catholic—people; namely, that amongst them one of the tribes had been chosen by God to be wholly consecrated to his service, and to be devoted exclusively to the ministry of the altars. So also, but with the difference demanded by the new conditions of the priesthood, God chooses amongst the faithful his clerics, divinely called to exercise the sacerdotal functions; for under the New Law, as under the Old, no one can pretend to this honor unless he be called of God. Here, then, are two categories of individuals in the nation; those who, by divine vocation, are destined for the service of the church, and those who continue in the ordinary condition of Christians—the ecclesiastics and the laics. The distinction is necessary, because the church does not claim the same rights in regard to both.
The Rights of the Church over the Education of Clerics.—The education of clerics—of young men, that is, who devote themselves to the ecclesiastical ministry—has always been the object of the liveliest solicitude of the church. Solely anxious to see the knowledge of the faith and true piety flourish among the faithful entrusted to her care, could she forget that people conform themselves to the model of those who govern them, and that the essential condition for enlightening understandings in the truths of religion, as well as for inclining their hearts to the practice of Christian virtues, is first to fashion a clergy solidly instructed and sincerely pious? In Thomassin[171] may be found innumerable examples testifying to the solicitude of the church on the subject of schools wherein young clerics are instructed. But the most solemn act, and the most prolific in happy results, that has been accomplished for this object, is, without contradiction, the decree of the holy Council of Trent, directing all the bishops, metropolitans, and other pastors charged with the government of the church to erect, each in their respective dioceses, a house or seminary for the purpose of lodging there, of instructing in ecclesiastical science, and bringing up in ecclesiastical virtue, the children of the town, diocese, or province, who shall show signs of a true divine vocation.[172]
At the same time that it directs the institution of seminaries, the council is at the pains to explain their great usefulness, the necessity, even, of them for the church, as the only efficacious means of always providing zealous as well as solidly instructed ministers. It lays down also the way of life which should be observed within them, the studies to which especially the young men should devote themselves, the means to be employed by the masters for the complete education of their pupils, and even the resources of which the bishops will be able to avail themselves to help to defray the expenses of these precious schools.
It may have been already remarked how the council regulates everything of its own authority and without asking aught of secular powers. It proves the church’s right to herself alone institute and organize her ecclesiastical seminaries. But that which decisively manifests her mind on this point is the care which the Council of Trent takes to place the entire administration of these schools in the hands of the bishops, assisted by two of the oldest and most prudent of the cathedral chapter, chosen by them under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.[173] Such is the authority to which belongs exclusively the right of regulating all that concerns the education of clerics. Neither can the lay faithful, nor Christian families, nor, still less, governments, meddle at all with this work, which is exclusively the affair of the church. Accordingly, in the forty-sixth proposition of the Syllabus, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IX., has reproved, proscribed, and condemned the doctrine of those who pretend “to subject to civil authority the method to be followed in the theological seminaries.”
The church claims, then, complete liberty to choose her ministers herself, and to form them in the manner which seems to her most desirable. This is no privilege which she asks of the state, it is a right which she holds from Jesus Christ, and by his divine appointment: the right of existing, the right of perpetuating herself upon earth by keeping up her hierarchy of teaching pastors and faithful taught, and in recruiting from among the latter those whom God himself calls to the honors of the priesthood.
And, in truth, to what rights over the education of clerics can a civil government pretend? Is it to judge of the knowledge which is necessary for the ministers of the altar? But is not the church appointed by Jesus Christ the sole guardian of revealed truth, and has not she alone received the mission of teaching the peoples? Can it be, indeed, to discern in the subjects who present themselves a divine vocation, and the degree of virtue requisite for a priest? But for such discernment, has, then, the civil power the special illumination of the Holy Ghost? Does it know the mysterious action of grace in the soul, and does God reveal to it his secrets? Or can it be, as some governments have not been afraid to do, to determine the number of young men who ought every year to respond to the call of God and enrol themselves in the sacred army? Impious and sacrilegious pretension! which says to the Spirit of God, “Thus far shall your inspirations go, and no farther.” As if the state, and not God, were the judge of the church’s needs! As if the civil power had received from Jesus Christ the commission to fix annually in the budget the effective of men employed in his divine service, after the same fashion as it regulates the annual contingent of soldiers called to the service of the state!
But no, not one of these pretensions is tenable. The state has no power whatever over the education of clerics; and the church, by its divine institution, is alone competent for this work, necessary above all to its existence and the perpetuity of its action in the world.
Such are the rights of the church in this first department of education. They are absolute, exclusive, and inalienable. What have we next to say of those she possesses in the education of the laity?
The Rights of the Church over Public Education.—That which certain Catholics refuse to the church, even in a community Christianly constituted, is not the right of giving instruction in the public schools, and making her influence felt there to the advantage of the morality and good education of the youth. No one but a rationalist or free-thinker can deny the necessity of making religion the foundation of all education, if we would bring up Christians, and not unbelievers. More than this, these same Catholics acknowledge, besides, that the church by her priests, and her religious devoted to the education of youth, enjoys the right possessed by all citizens of opening public schools and teaching, not only the verities of the Catholic faith, but letters and human science in all its branches. They are generally advocates of freedom of instruction to its utmost extent; and the power they accord to the humblest citizen they do not commit the folly of refusing to those whose character, knowledge, and disinterestedness best qualify them for those delicate functions.
Here, then, are two acknowledged rights of the church, on which we need not insist further. First, the right of providing religious instruction for the youth at school, and their education according to the principles of Christian morality. Secondly, the right of giving, herself, to children and to young people, whose families entrust them to her, a complete education, embracing instruction in letters and in the secular sciences; the right, consequently, of founding religious congregations entirely consecrated to the ministry of instruction and Christian education; the right of establishing these institutions, providing for their recruitment, and for their material means of existence. All this, it is acknowledged, constitutes the normal condition of the church in communities which concede a just share of influence to the Catholic religion, to its ministers, and to all those who are inspired with its spirit of devotion to the general welfare. But observe the points of divergence between the Catholics of whom we are speaking and those who are more jealous to preserve intact the rights conferred by Jesus Christ upon his church. According to the former, a distinction must be made between religious education and literary or scientific education. The former, by its object and by its end, escapes from the competence of the state to re-enter what is exclusively the province of the church. It is different with literary and scientific instruction. That, they say, is a social service which belongs, like other services of a similar kind, to the jurisdiction of the city or nation. The exercise of the teaching ministry is undoubtedly free. Private individuals are entitled to devote themselves to it without let or hindrance. But the direction of this ministry should be ascribed to the state, the only judge of whatever affects the present and the future of society. Guardian of order, of justice, and of morals in the community, it is the duty of government itself to regulate the discipline of public schools, the instruction which is given there, the academic titles which open the way to certain civil or administrative careers, and the choice of masters; who, at any rate, should not have incurred any of the disqualifications determined by the law. Moreover, since its functions impose on it the duty of encouraging, as much as possible, useful institutions, and such as are essential to public prosperity, the government is bound to support schools founded by private individuals; and even, if there be not enough of them for the needs of the people, to institute others by its own authority, and out of the public funds. This, according to them, belongs to the domain of the state. Here it reigns supreme, without having to share its power with any other power, civil or religious. Public instruction is a branch of administration on the same grounds as war or finance.
Thus think and speak Catholics of the modern political school. Unluckily for them, such is not the doctrine of the church. Pius IX., in the forty-fifth proposition of the Syllabus, explicitly condemns the opinion we have just described, and which he formulates in the following terms: “The whole direction of public schools, in which the youth of a Christian state is brought up, with the exception, to a certain extent, of episcopal seminaries, can be and ought to be vested in the civil authority, and that in such a manner that the right of no other authority should be recognized to interfere with the discipline of those schools, with the curriculum of studies, with the conferring of degrees, or with the choice or approval of masters.” This, however specious, is thus erroneous, and no Catholic can maintain it. It is, in fact, false in a two-fold point of view—false in a merely natural point of view, because it ascribes to the state a function which, in default of the church, belongs exclusively to the family; false also, and especially, in a supernatural point of view, because it separates what ought to be united, the temporal consequences of education, and its supernatural end. We will expose this twofold error.
Under the empire of a nondescript philosophical paganism, our modern politicians have a striking tendency to enlarge more and more in society the circle of governmental privileges. One would suppose, to listen to them, that it was the function of power to completely absorb all the organic elements which go to make a nation, and to leave no longer existing side by side of it, or beneath it, aught but inert individualities, social material capable of receiving impulse and movement only from it. Healthy reason protests against a theory so destructive of the most indispensable elements of social prosperity. Families collecting into cities forfeited none of their natural rights; cities, in associating themselves in nations did not pretend to abdicate all their powers. What both sought, on the contrary, in association, was a stronger guarantee of those very rights; it was the maintenance of the most inviolable justice in human relations; it was, in short, an efficient protection against violence and oppression, whether from within or without.
What! Are we to admit that the right and the duty of educating children sprung from society, and was originated by it? The bare thought is folly. From the first creation of the family, God willed that the infant should come into the world in feebleness and impotence; that, physically, intellectually, and morally, it should have need of a long and toilsome education before becoming a complete man. On whom was it, then, that he imposed a natural obligation of undertaking and accomplishing its education? Certainly not on society, which did not then exist. It was on the family itself, on the father especially, who is its responsible head. The power of engendering human beings includes of necessity the duty of not leaving such a work incomplete—the duty, consequently, of guiding the infant up to full manhood.
The family thus, by virtue of a law of nature, possesses the power of instructing and educating the understanding and will of the child born of it; and this power the family does not lose by being associated with others in social life. For, we repeat, the state is not instituted to absorb into its collective life all pre-existing rights. The act of union merely consecrates those rights by placing them under the protection of public authority. But when this authority, instead of protecting the rights of the family, proceeds to take possession of them, it commits an usurpation, it breaks the social pact, by making itself guilty of the very crime which it ought to prevent.
Nothing less than the utter and ruinous confusion of ideas introduced by the philosophy of the last century, and by its absurd theories about the Social Contract, could have caused principles so clear and so indisputable to be lost sight of, and all the usurpations of the liberty and rights of families and individuals by the civil power to be legitimized. But, be the errors of the time what they may, it is not fitting that we Catholics should be either their accomplices or their dupes. Enlightened by faith, our reason must hold fast those principles on which human society is based, and were we to be their only defenders, it would be to our honor to have maintained them against all the negations of the spirit of system. To judge, then, only by reason, the state has not those rights over the education of youth which a certain school ascribes to it.
We asserted, moreover, that the opinion of this school is also false in a supernatural point of view, because it separates what ought to be united, because it makes the inference the principle, and despises the one in order to attach itself exclusively to the other. And here we touch the pith of the question.
It is alleged, a public education good or bad, has very serious consequences for society. Its security or its ruin may depend on it, and, anyhow, nothing more vitally affects its peace, strength, and prosperity. The power, therefore, with which the government of a community is invested cannot be a matter of indifference in education. It ought, then, to superintend and direct it, and to place itself at its head, as it naturally does of every social function. We shall presently see how much this reasoning is worth. It includes three things—a principle, a fact, and an inference. The principle is as follows: Whatever is for society an element of strength and progress, and can cause its prosperity and decay, is within the competence of the civil authority and ought to be subject to it. The fact is affirmed in the premises of the argument, to wit, that public education, according as it is good or bad, is naturally of serious consequence to the state. Whence the inference, that it ought to be subject to the civil authority—that is, to the government.
The principle we dispute; the fact is explained and vindicated in another way, and the inference is inconsequential.
First, it is not true that whatever affects the prosperity of the state ought of necessity to belong to the jurisdiction of the civil power, and to be subject to its direction and control. Are not commerce and manufacture elements of national prosperity? Is it necessary, on that account, that the government should assume the direction of them, and that nothing should be done in those two departments of social activity except by it. No. In these the office of power is limited to causing right and justice to be respected in industrial and commercial transactions, to intervene in contentions to decide what is just, to secure the observance of positive laws enacted by it for the purpose of applying to every particular case the general principles of the natural and of the divine law. The rest is an affair of individual enterprise among citizens. Thus, in the question which engages us, that the education of youth ought to contribute much towards the prosperity of a state is not sufficient reason to induce us to resign the whole of it into the hands of the civil power. We must further inquire if there is not some one in the community authorized, by the law of nature or by divine right, to assume its direction and control. If this be so, it will not do to invest the state with a right which belongs to another.
In the second place, the happiness and prosperity of a state are certainly the result of a good education of its youth; of a complete education, that is, well conducted; such, in a word, as gives to the young man all the qualities of perfect manhood. Now, this education is, of necessity, Christian education, in which the state can do nothing—the church, and the church alone, as we have endeavored to show, everything.
What, once more, is education? We have already defined it: the work of fitting a man to fulfil his destiny; to place the faculties of man in a condition of sufficing for themselves, and of pursuing, with the help of God, the end which is allotted to them. Such, clearly, is the work of education; such the end it must of necessity propose to itself. Suppose that in educating a child this consideration of his final destiny should be neglected, that he was brought up with an eye solely to a proximate and terrestrial end, beyond which he could do nothing. Could such an education be called complete? Could it be called sufficient? Would it deserve even the name of education? Undoubtedly not. That child would not have been educated. He would never become a man, vir, in the full sense of that term, because the vision of his intelligence would never reach beyond the narrow horizon of this world; because his powers of well-doing would necessarily be extremely limited; because, at last, he would miss the end which every man is bound to attain, and would be compelled to remain for ever nothing but an immortal abortion.
Such is the necessity of recognizing man’s final end in education. That must be its aim, that only, under pain of compromising all the rest. Is there any need of mentioning the guarantees afforded by generations thus educated, for the peace and happiness of communities? Has not true and sincere piety, in the words of the apostle,[174] promise of this life as well as of that of eternity? Is it in any other way than in practising the virtues which make man a social being that we can hope to achieve immortality? Thus to labor to render ourselves worthy of the destiny which awaits us is, also, to prepare ourselves to become good citizens of the earthly city, is to give to society the best possible security of being useful as well as loyal to it. The greatest men of whom humanity is proud, were they not at the same time the most virtuous?
Now, we must repeat to Catholics who forget it, that there are not two last ends for man, but only one; and that is the supernatural end of which we treated at the commencement. Created by God to enjoy his glory and his happiness through eternity, in vain would man seek elsewhere the end of his efforts and of his existence. Everything in him tends towards this end. It is his perfection, and in order to exalt himself to it, he ought to give to his faculties the whole power of development of which they are capable. Woe to him, but much more woe to those who have had the responsibility of his education, if, through their fault, he does not find himself on the level of his destiny; if, instead of gravitating towards heaven in his rapid passage across life, he drags himself miserably along the ground, wallowing in selfish interests and sensual passions!
But if this be so, what can the state do to guide souls to heights which surpass itself? There is nothing to be done but to apply the principle formulated by S. Thomas: “It is his to order means to an end, in whose possession that end is”—Illius est ordinare ad finem, cujus est proprius ille finis.[175] The supernatural transformation of the soul into God, and eternal beatitude, which education ought invariably to propose to itself, are not the objects of human society any more than of the civil power which regulates it. That power is consequently incapable, of itself, of ordaining the means which contribute to this supernatural end. It cannot afford the very smallest assistance to education in this respect, nothing to form the man, and to adapt him to the grand designs of God in his behalf. In a word, education is not within the jurisdiction of earthly governments. It is above their competence.
What, then, is the power in the Christian communities commissioned with the sublime ministry of the education of souls? Who has received from God the divine mission of begetting them to the supernatural and divine life, rough-drawn on earth, perfected in heaven? There is, there can be, but one reply. The church! When he founded that august spiritual society, Jesus Christ assigned to it as its end, to guide men to eternal happiness; and on that account he endowed it with all the powers necessary to ordain and to put in operation the proper means for this end. Education conducted in a spirit fundamentally Christian—such is the universal, indispensable mean, over which, consequently, the church has exclusive rights.
See then, established by Jesus Christ, the great instructress of the human race—the only one which can rightfully pretend to direct public education in Christian communities! That superintendence, that direction, are an integral part of the pastoral ministry. The church cannot renounce it without prevarication.
Her reason, therefore, is obvious for insisting, with such obstinate persistency, in claiming, everywhere and always, the exercise of a right which she holds from God himself. Obvious is the reason for which the Sovereign Pontiffs have so severely condemned a doctrine which is the denial of this inalienable right for which, in the concordats concluded with Catholic powers, a special clause invariably reserves for the church the faculty of “seeing that youth receive a Christian education.”[176]
Nothing is more clear than that, when the Catholic Church, in a Christian state, claims for itself the ministry of public instruction, it is no monopoly which it seeks to grasp for the profit of its clerics. It has but one object, to wit, that instruction should have as wide a scope as possible; and for this object she appeals to all devotedness. Laymen and ecclesiastics, seculars and religious, all—all are besought to take a part in this work of instructing the peoples. Whoever offers himself with the necessary qualifications, a pure faith, Christian manners, and competent knowledge, is welcome. To such an one the church opens a free scope for his energies, to cultivate the rising generations under her shelter and in co-operation with her, in order to enable them to bring forth the fruits of knowledge and of virtue. What she does not assent to, what she cannot assent to, is that, under the pretext of liberty of instruction, the ravening wolf should introduce himself into the fold, in the person of those teachers of errors and falsehood who lay waste the flock by bringing into it discord and war; that, under the guise of science and intellectual progress, they should sap the religious belief of a people, assault Christian truth, and infect the young understanding with the deadly poison of doubt and unbelief. No, indeed! Such havoc the church can neither sanction nor allow them an opportunity to accomplish. She remembers that she has received from Christ the care of souls, that the salvation of his children has been entrusted to her keeping, and that God will demand of her an account of their blood shed—that is to say, of their eternal perdition. Sanguinem ejus de manu tua requiram (Ezech. iii. 18). As a watchful sentinel she keeps guard over the flock, and so long as the criminal violence of human powers does not rob her of her rights, neither the thieves nor the assassins of souls can succeed in exercising their ravages.
By way of recapitulation we will enunciate, in five or six propositions, the whole of this doctrine of the rights of the church over education, and thus place the reader in a better position for judging of its full force and extent.
1st. The education of clerics destined to ecclesiastical functions is the exclusive right of the church. She alone regulates everything connected with it, whether the erection of seminaries, or their interior discipline, or the appointment of masters, or the instruction in letters and science, or the good education of the pupils, or their admission into the ecclesiastical body.
2d. The church implicitly respects the right of families to provide a private education for their children by whomsoever and in whatever manner they prefer. Only she imposes on the consciences of Christian parents the obligation of seeing to it that that education be religious and in conformity with the faith they profess.
3d. The superintendence and direction of the public schools, as well of those wherein the mass of the people are instructed in the rudiments of human knowledge, as of those where secondary and higher instruction are given, belong of right to the Catholic Church. She alone has the right of watching over the moral character of those schools, of approving the masters who instruct the youth therein, of controlling their teaching, and dismissing, without appeal to any other authority, those whose doctrine or manners should be contrary to the purity of Christian doctrine.
4th. Subject to the condition of being able to guarantee pure faith, irreproachable manners, and competent knowledge, entire liberty is left to private individuals, ecclesiastics and laity, seculars and religious, to devote themselves to the ministry of teaching and education of youth, to form associations for this object, to found academies and universities wherein the sciences are taught, and which govern themselves by their internal discipline, the choice of masters, and the regulation of the studies, programmes, examens, etc. The church only reserves to herself, in their case, her right of superintendence in the matters of morality and the integrity of the faith.
5th. The church not only does not refuse the co-operation of the state in education, but, on the contrary, she solicits it, whenever private enterprise and her own resources do not suffice to enable her to extend instruction as much as she would wish and as the welfare of peoples demands. She then appeals to the communes, to the provinces, to the nation, in order that everywhere the co-operation of the two powers may effect the foundation of schools, the increase of the number of masters, and may come to the aid of the indigent parents. But even in these schools established with the concurrence of the civil power, if the state may superintend the administration of material interests, the right of direction and superintendence of teaching remains with the church.
6th. Lastly, the power, nevertheless, which the church exercises over public instruction does not hinder governments, if they deem it expedient, from establishing schools where professors chosen by them may give a special training to young people who devote themselves to administrative and military careers. The administration and the army belong, in fact, exclusively to the jurisdiction of governments. It is but just, therefore, that they should be able to give to those who are to belong to them the especial knowledge required for their employment. Only, here, the civil or military authority contracts the same obligations as those which bind the consciences of individuals, to wit, to watch that there be nothing in those schools contrary to religion and to good morals.
Such is the whole doctrine of the Catholic Church with regard to the education of youth in Christian states. Is there not in this organization an ideal which one may justly long to see realized, since it would be the solution of a certain number of problems which strangely perplex our insecurely founded and badly balanced modern communities? Two authorities, each having a distinct object, but united and being mutually the complement one of the other, have the guardianship of human interests—interests of time and interests of eternity. One, the civil authority, has for its direct domain, temporal affairs. The other, the religious authority, commands and directs in all that concerns the supernatural life. The latter, having the responsibility of guiding man from his birth up to his entrance into eternity, educates him, instructs him, and transforms him into a perfect man, into a Christian worthy by his virtues of the destiny which awaits him. The former benefits generations thus formed, and out of these elements, so well prepared to fulfil all the duties of the present life, it constitutes social communities as so many provisional countries, where justice and charity, loyally practised, present an image of the true and final country—Heaven. Thus, the two powers lend to one another a mutual support; the civil power, by securing to the spiritual power a complete liberty of action; and the spiritual power, in its turn, by forming for the state honest and perfect citizens. Thus peace and concord reign throughout the entire society, interests harmonize, justice is loved, order exists everywhere from the highest to the lowest step of the social ladder, and every one, content with his position here on earth, because his hopes are on high, is more intent on making himself better than on overthrowing existing institutions that he may raise himself on their ruins.
Where is to be found, once more we demand, an ideal more grand and more true than this conception of Christian society? The middle ages were not far from realizing it. Unhappily, a work so well begun at the inspiration of the church, first legists, courtiers of the civil power, afterwards Protestantism and its direct off-shoot, rationalism, were fain to interrupt it, and gradually to throw us back into a state of things which threatens to become worse than paganism or barbarism. There is yet time to return to truth, to right and order, which are impossible to be found except in a society based on Christian principles. But will peoples and legislators have a sufficiently clear perception of their duty and their interest to stay themselves at once on the incline down which they are gliding, and dragging us with them, towards a dark and tempest-threatening future?
IV.—CONDUCT OF THE CHURCH IN NON-CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES.
In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Christianity is the divine afflatus, breathing upon human society to give it a soul and infuse life. Without her there can be in it no true nor prolific life, and every social organization which is not inspired by Christianity is, of necessity, defective and abnormal. The church cannot regard such an organization as a benefit, much less as a progress beyond Christian communities.[177] She deplores it, on the contrary, and she endeavors to persuade people that it would be better for them to submit absolutely to religion, and to take it as the guide and regulator of their social interests. Never has the church concealed her desire, not to lord it over, but to direct communities, to penetrate them with her spirit, to recover the salutary influence over them which is their due, and which they cannot reject without serious injury. The church has never made any mystery of this ambition. Her enemies themselves are witnesses to it, even when they permit themselves, as they too often do, to travesty and calumniate her motives in order to render them odious.
Lamentable, however, as may appear to her to be the inferior position which is allotted to her in modern communities, she does not abandon herself to useless regrets. Without renouncing her inalienable rights, she sets out from a fact which it is not in her power to change, and exhausts her ingenuity in making the best she can of it for the good of souls. The little liberty and influence left to her, she employs to fulfil her ministry; her zeal is inventive to supply by redoubled vigilance the want of her ordinary means in the spiritual government. Must not the work of God be accomplished on earth, in spite of the difficulties, in spite of the impediments of all kinds devised by hell?
Such, then, is the principle which regulates the conduct of the church in states where her authority is disowned. To take into consideration circumstances, established facts; to do nothing brusquely, but using whatever power still remains to her, to exert every effort to ameliorate the situation, to make herself more useful to the faithful and to society. Let us see how she applies this rule to education in non-Christian communities.
We find first the communities wherein the constitution proclaims the liberty of all worships, and their equality before the law. Here, the Catholic Church has ceased to be the religion of the state, which no longer lives in her spirit, no longer accepts her direction in matters of religion and morality, but prefers independence to all the advantages of a union with which it thinks it can dispense. How will the church act in this novel position? In the name of liberty, and of the equal protection accorded to every worship, she demands, first of all, the right of recruiting her ministers, and that of training them according to her own laws; the establishment of large and small seminaries, as well as their administration by the bishops exclusively. This is the first need to satisfy. It is her right, included in her claim to existence.
She demands, moreover, that in the public schools created or authorized by the government, religion be invariably the foundation of education; that the pupils be instructed in the verities of the faith, and that neither atheism nor religious indifferentism be taught there. She demands that at least the primary schools remain denominational—that is to say, specially appropriated to the children of every religion, and that the Catholic clergy have free admission to the schools for Catholics. The preservation of the faith in those young hearts is at stake here; for the church knows by experience the doleful effects of an early education in which religion has not had the principal part. Thus she may, with good right, claim of a government, Christian in name, that it leave to the religions protected by the law this legitimate amount of influence in the education of the people. From the same motives, the church positively rejects the system of non-denominational schools, in which eventuates a jumble of religions fatal to the faith and piety of children. Assuredly Catholics know how to recognize and respect the rights of dissenters, nor do they dream of doing violence to the conscience of any one. Is it not, then, simply common justice that no advantage should be taken of the liberty and equality of the several religions before the law, to hand over Catholic children to a manifest danger of religious perversion and moral ruin?
But this is not all. The principles on which the communities of which we speak rest, permit Catholics to require more. True liberty for a religion consists in its being able to be not only practised by its adherents, but also transmitted in its integrity to succeeding generations, with its beliefs, its precepts, its exterior forms, and, above all, its interior spirit. Now, that is only possible by means of education. It is, then, permitted to the church to demand that liberty be left to families to choose themselves masters worthy of their confidence, and whom they can trust to instruct and educate their children in the principles of the Catholic religion. When the national constitution has already embodied the liberty of instruction in every stage, Catholics make as extensive use of it as they can, and as their peculiar property, imitating in that the shipwrecked man who collects together the waifs saved from the wreck, and out of them tries to rebuild his shattered fortune. If, on the contrary, the monopoly in favor of the state should be embodied in the law, they arm themselves with maxims of natural right, at times even with the commonly accepted ideas of liberty, wherewith to beat down this scandalous monopoly. They know how to set in motion all legal means; and without having recourse, like many of their adversaries, to insurrection or corruption, they succeed, sooner or later, in bringing over public opinion to the side of justice and truth, and in recovering, thus, a portion of the rights which belong to their church, the right of making instructed and conscientious Christians. After that, the church can await from the divine benediction and her own efforts the return of a happier era, for which she exerts all the means at her disposal, by a solid Christian education given to youth, by preaching, and by good example. She will, at least, have neglected nothing to acquit herself of her mission, and to make herself useful even to the communities which repudiate her.
There remains, lastly, the third hypothesis, that of a state separated from the church—that is to say, organized wholly out of the religious idea, a “lay state,” in the full force of that phrase.
We observe, first, that there is more than one degree in this secularization of the state. The first realizes the rationalist idea, according to which governments, respectful towards religion, and allowing absolute liberty, leave the church to organize herself after her fashion, to preach in her temples, to teach in her schools, and to govern the consciences subject to her authority, whilst themselves govern according to the right of rationalism, and without asking counsel of any religious power. It is the dream of more than one liberal, simple enough to believe a perfect equilibrium of human passions to be possible in society, by the sole force of nature and reason. But experience soon dissipates the illusion of so fair a dream. All the degrees of separation between religion and society are soon traversed up to the last, wherein the state, no longer acknowledging creed, church, or religion, announces itself atheist, and forces consciences to the inflexible level of an impious legislation. From thence there is but a step to the proscription of Catholics, and to open persecution.
However, in the conditions of an existence so unpromising what is the conduct of Catholics? What can they do save invoke the common right, and turn against their adversaries the weapons by which the latter dispossessed them? The lay state proclaims liberty for all to speak, write, and teach, as seems good to them. It is in the name of this pretended principle that the church saw herself robbed of almost all her rights and driven from society. Do not imagine that she approves or that she will ever adopt so monstrous an error. But this liberty of speaking, writing, and teaching which you do not refuse to error, is it forbidden to claim it for truth? Truth! It is herself; and her right to speak to the world she holds, not from false maxims inscribed in modern constitutions, but from Jesus Christ, her divine founder. Strong in this right, superior to human constitutions, the church never hesitates to assume in communities the whole space they leave her to occupy, and to extend her action to the uttermost. If they claim to exclude her, she fashions a weapon out of common right. She summons the governments to admit her to the benefit of the universal liberty inscribed in the law, and too profusely lavished on teachers of error. What exception can be taken to this conduct, at once so loyal and so right?
But they charge it against us as an unworthy manœuvre, that we claim for ourselves, in modern communities, and in the name of their principles, a liberty we shall refuse to our adversaries the moment we regain power. In presence of this accusation, the more exalted liberals demand that preventive reprisals be employed in our regard, and that liberty be denied us. The more moderate, affecting a sort of confidence in the stability of their work—or rather, in the impossibility of modern communities ever again returning to the yoke of religion—prefer to show themselves generous, and to vote for liberty even although it be that of Catholics. Touching self-sacrifice, and which it must be owned is no longer in unison with the temperament of contemporary liberalism!
Be that as it may, the accusation is sheer calumny, as facts prove. Neither in the small Swiss cantons, nor in Belgium, where Catholics govern, are dissenters oppressed. If persecution rages anywhere in the two hemispheres, it is where liberalism has planted its banner, and against Catholics. It is something more than ignorance which can accuse us of persecuting tendencies at this time of day. The truth is that social peace has no firmer supporters than Catholics.
We have before asserted, but it is well to repeat it, that the Catholic Church professes and practises the most absolute respect for acquired rights, for conventions concluded and accepted. Thus, for the sake of peace, certain governments have felt themselves obliged to recognize the right of dissenters to live in the state, retaining their beliefs and their religious forms. Liberty of conscience has been proclaimed, the public exercise of all the worships authorized. It is, doubtless, a misfortune that religious unity in society should be broken. The church regrets this misfortune, and her most earnest desire is to see, some day, unity re-established. But is that to say that she wishes violently to change a situation imposed on her by circumstances? that she meditates seizing again, at a blow, and in contempt of acquired rights, the power she enjoyed in better times? By no means. The liberty which the various sects enjoy, for the sake of peace, the Catholic Church respects and knows how to maintain. Dissenters may continue to practise publicly their religion, provided that they trouble neither order nor the tranquillity of the state. Equality of civil and political rights is guaranteed to all citizens, Catholic or not. The same liberty is conceded to them to open schools, and to educate their children according to their beliefs. Nothing, in short, which is just and equitable among fellow-citizens is refused by Catholics to those who do not share their faith. What more do they want? And what is lacking in this conduct to constitute true toleration in mixed communities?
Of Catholics who have become the depositaries of power in these communities the church demands complete liberty to fulfil the duties with which she has been charged by Jesus Christ—the right of organizing herself according to her own laws; of recruiting the sacerdotal ministry and exercising all its functions; of watching over the good education of Catholic youth; of founding and directing schools, colleges, and universities; of having her religious congregations consecrated to prayer, preaching, or education; of being able, in short, to exercise her salutary influence in society, and of being free to devote herself to rendering the people better, better instructed in their duties, and more resolute to fulfil them. As regards non-Catholics, she demands of the government not to substitute license for liberty, but to use its utmost efforts to banish from society two things which are the most hostile to its prosperity and to its happiness: we mean immorality and irreligion. If, later on, differences disappear, if all hearts should unite in the profession of one same faith, it will then be a source of regret to no one that the church resumes her rank, and that society is once more Christian and Catholic.