A policy like this appears to us both wrong in itself and derogatory to the cause it is employed to serve. It argues either a timid faith which fears the light, or a false morality which would do evil that good might come. How often have Catholics involved themselves in hopeless contradiction, sacrificed principle to opportunity, adapted their theories to their interests, and staggered the world's reliance on their sincerity by subterfuges which entangle the Church in the shifting sands of party warfare, instead of establishing her cause on the solid rock of principles! How often have they clung to some plausible chimera which seemed to serve their cause, and nursed an artificial ignorance where they feared the discoveries of an impertinent curiosity! As ingenious in detraction as in silence and dissimulation, have they not too often answered imputations which they could not disprove with accusations which they could not prove, till the slanders they had invented rivalled in number and intensity the slanders which had been invented against them? For such men principles have had only temporary value and local currency. Whatever force was the strongest in any place and at any time, with that they have sought to ally the cause of religion. They have, with equal zeal, identified her with freedom in one country and with absolutism in another; with conservatism where she had privileges to keep, and with reform where she had oppression to withstand. And for all this, what have they gained? They have betrayed duties more sacred than the privileges for which they fought; they have lied before God and man; they have been divided into fractions by the supposed interests of the Church, when they ought to have been united by her principles and her doctrines; and against themselves they have justified those grave accusations of falsehood, insincerity, indifference to civil rights and contempt for civil authorities which are uttered with such profound injustice against the Church.
The present difficulties of the Church—her internal dissensions and apparent weakness, the alienation of so much intellect, the strong prejudice which keeps many away from her altogether, and makes many who had approached her shrink back,—all draw nourishment from this rank soil. The antagonism of hostile doctrines and the enmity of governments count for little in comparison. It is in vain to point to her apostolic tradition, the unbroken unity of her doctrine, her missionary energy, or her triumphs in the region of spiritual life, if we fail to remove the accumulated prejudice which generations of her advocates have thrown up around her. The world can never know and recognise her divine perfection while the pleas of her defenders are scarcely nearer to the truth than the crimes which her enemies impute to her. How can the stranger understand where the children of the kingdom are deceived?
Against this policy a firm and unyielding stand is of supreme necessity. The evil is curable and the loss recoverable by a conscientious adherence to higher principles, and a patient pursuit of truth and right. Political science can place the liberty of the Church on principles so certain and unfailing, that intelligent and disinterested Protestants will accept them; and in every branch of learning with which religion is in any way connected, the progressive discovery of truth will strengthen faith by promoting knowledge and correcting opinion, while it destroys prejudices and superstitions by dissipating the errors on which they are founded. This is a course which conscience must approve in the whole, though against each particular step of it conscience may itself be tempted to revolt. It does not always conduce to immediate advantage; it may lead across dangerous and scandalous ground. A rightful sovereign may exclude the Church from his dominions, or persecute her members. Is she therefore to say that his right is no right, or that all intolerance is necessarily wrong? A newly discovered truth may be a stumbling-block to perplex or to alienate the minds of men. Is she therefore to deny or smother it? By no means. She must in every case do right. She must prefer the law of her own general spirit to the exigencies of immediate external occasion, and leave the issue in the hands of God.
Such is the substance of those principles which shut out The Home and Foreign Review from the sympathies of a large portion of the body to which we belong. In common with no small or insignificant section of our fellow-Catholics, we hold that the time has gone by when defects in political or scientific education could be alleged as an excuse for depending upon expediency or mistrusting knowledge; and that the moment has come when the best service that can be done to religion is to be faithful to principle, to uphold the right in politics though it should require an apparent sacrifice, and to seek truth in science though it should involve a possible risk. Modern society has developed no security for freedom, no instrument of progress, no means of arriving at truth, which we look upon with indifference or suspicion. We see no necessary gulf to separate our political or scientific convictions from those of the wisest and most intelligent men who may differ from us in religion. In pursuing those studies in which they can sympathise, starting from principles which they can accept, and using methods which are theirs as well as ours, we shall best attain the objects which alone can be aimed at in a Review,—our own instruction, and the conciliation of opponents.
There are two main considerations by which it is necessary that we should be guided in our pursuit of these objects. First, we have to remember that the scientific method is most clearly exhibited and recognised in connection with subjects about which there are no prepossessions to wound, no fears to excite, no interests to threaten. Hence, not only do we exclude from our range all that concerns the ascetic life and the more intimate relations of religion, but we most willingly devote ourselves to the treatment of subjects quite remote from all religious bearing. Secondly, we have to remember that the internal government of the Church belongs to a sphere exclusively ecclesiastical, from the discussion of which we are shut out, not only by motives of propriety and reverence, but also by the necessary absence of any means for forming a judgment. So much ground is fenced off by these two considerations, that a secular sphere alone remains. The character of a scientific Review is determined for it. It cannot enter on the domains of ecclesiastical government or of faith, and neither of them can possibly be affected by its conclusions or its mode of discussion.
In asserting thus absolutely that all truth must render service to religion, we are saying what few perhaps will deny in the abstract, but what many are not prepared to admit in detail. It will be vaguely felt, that views which take so little account of present inconvenience and manifest danger are perilous and novel, though they may seem to spring from a more unquestioning faith, a more absolute confidence in truth, and a more perfect submission to the general laws of morality. There is no articulate theory, and no distinct view, but there is long habit, and there are strong inducements of another kind which support this sentiment.
To understand the certainty of scientific truth, a man must have deeply studied scientific method; to understand the obligation of political principle requires a similar mental discipline. A man who is suddenly introduced from without into a society where this certainty and obligation are currently acknowledged is naturally bewildered. He cannot distinguish between the dubious impressions of his second-hand knowledge and the certainty of that primary direct information which those who possess it have no power to deny. To accept a criterion which may condemn some cherished opinion has hitherto seemed to him a mean surrender and a sacrifice of position. He feels it simple loss to give up an idea; and even if he is prepared to surrender it when compelled by controversy, still he thinks it quite unnecessary and gratuitous to engage voluntarily in researches which may lead to such an issue. To enter thus upon the discussion of questions which have been mixed up with religion, and made to contribute their support to piety, seems to the idle spectator, or to the person who is absorbed in defending religion, a mere useless and troublesome meddling, dictated by the pride of intellectual triumph, or by the moral cowardice which seeks unworthily to propitiate enemies.
Great consideration is due to those whose minds are not prepared for the full light of truth and the grave responsibilities of knowledge; who have not learned to distinguish what is divine from what is human—defined dogma from the atmosphere of opinion which surrounds it,—and who honour both with the same awful reverence. Great allowances are also due to those who are constantly labouring to nourish the spark of belief in minds perplexed by difficulties, or darkened by ignorance and prejudice. These men have not always the results of research at command; they have no time to keep abreast with the constant progress of historical and critical science; and the solutions which they are obliged to give are consequently often imperfect, and adapted only to uninstructed and uncultivated minds. Their reasoning cannot be the same as that of the scholar who has to meet error in its most vigorous, refined, and ingenious form. As knowledge advances, it must inevitably happen that they will find some of their hitherto accepted facts contradicted, and some arguments overturned which have done good service. They will find that some statements, which they have adopted under stress of controversy, to remove prejudice and doubt, turn out to be hasty and partial replies to the questions they were meant to answer, and that the true solutions would require more copious explanation than they can give. And thus will be brought home to their minds that, in the topics upon which popular controversy chiefly turns, the conditions of discussion and the resources of arguments are subject to gradual and constant change.
A Review, therefore, which undertakes to investigate political and scientific problems, without any direct subservience to the interests of a party or a cause, but with the belief that such investigation, by its very independence and straightforwardness, must give the most valuable indirect assistance to religion, cannot expect to enjoy at once the favour of those who have grown up in another school of ideas. Men who are occupied in the special functions of ecclesiastical life, where the Church is all-sufficient and requires no extraneous aid, will naturally see at first in the problems of public life, the demands of modern society, and the progress of human learning, nothing but new and unwelcome difficulties,—trial and distraction to themselves, temptation and danger to their flocks. In time they will learn that there is a higher and a nobler course for Catholics than one which begins in fear and does not lead to security. They will come to see how vast a service they may render to the Church by vindicating for themselves a place in every movement that promotes the study of God's works and the advancement of mankind. They will remember that, while the office of ecclesiastical authority is to tolerate, to warn, and to guide, that of religious intelligence and zeal is not to leave the great work of intellectual and social civilisation to be the monopoly and privilege of others, but to save it from debasement by giving to it for leaders the children, not the enemies, of the Church. And at length, in the progress of political right and scientific knowledge, in the development of freedom in the State and of truth in literature, they will recognise one of the first among their human duties and the highest of their earthly rewards.