Christianity Viewed in Relation to the Present State of Society and Opinion.

by François Guizot

I am aware of the capital objection made to its empire. "The Physic without the Physicians," exclaimed Rousseau, in a sally against medical men, but the expression shows nevertheless how little he was disposed to forget that it is possible for medicine to be good and salutary. How often have I heard men of intelligence and men in all other respects very worthy of consideration, exclaim, "Let me have Religion without the priests: I am a Christian, but no friend of the clergy." I am far from seeking to leave this difficulty unnoticed, or to elude it. It is a difficulty of the gravest nature, not in essence, but in the actual circumstances and state of opinions at the present day.

As a Protestant it does not concern me. The clergy is not amongst Protestants the object of any such uneasiness. One of the best results, in my opinion, of the Reformation of the 16th century, whether regarded as Lutheran or Calvinistic, as Anglican, or as the work of other Dissidents in religion, is that it strongly cemented the union between the ecclesiastics and the general religious community—between the spiritual and the lay members of the Church. The Reformation produced this effect, first, by authorising the clergy to marry and to enter into the relations which a life of family brings with it; and, secondly, by giving to the laity a share in the government of the Church. The partition was not always judicious or equitable. At one time the clergy, at another the laity, have been transported from their natural places, and injured in their legitimate rights; but the relations between the two classes ceased to present the appearance of either absolutism on the one hand, or of entire subordination on the other; the laity obtained a voice and influence in the affairs of the flock; the priests, although remaining religious pastors and religious magistrates, ceased to be spiritual masters. This organisation has led to the two social institutions combining themselves in a variety of ways. At one time the civil power has invaded the government of the religious society, and deprived the clergy, not merely of empire, but of independence; at another time the two forms of society, the State and the Church, have regulated by treaty the terms of their mutual relations; whereas, in the United States of America, the two forms of society have been entirely separated, and have mutually recovered their independence; elsewhere, as amongst the Quakers and the Moravians, all ecclesiastical authority and orders of priesthood have been abolished, and laymen have lived in the isolation each of his individual conscience, obedient only to its spontaneous impulses. But amidst all this diversity, it is the fundamental characteristic of the churches and of the sects which issued from the Reform of the 16th century, that priests do not in themselves constitute the necessary and sovereign mediators between God and man's soul, nor the sole rulers of religious society. It is particularly by virtue of this principle that the distinction between civil life and religious life has become an efficacious and a consecrated doctrine, and that Liberty has resumed its right and become an active influence in religious society itself.

But amongst Roman Catholic nations, priests are the objects of a persistent distrust which has been the fruitful source of much calamity to Christianity. History forbids surprise. The Roman Catholic clergy has often presented the spectacle of ambition and passion, of mundane and selfish interests, strangely intermixed with faith and with earnest zeal for the furtherance of their religious mission. Serious ills and grave abuses have resulted therefrom in the relation of Church to State, and of priests to their flocks, and even in the bosom of the Church itself. These are facts almost as undisputed as they are indisputable; in proof of them the testimony, not only of its adversaries, but of the holiest members of the Church of Rome itself, may be invoked. Nothing is more natural, and indeed more inevitable, than that this should have led and should still lead, not only to ill-will towards priests, but to their being regarded as proper subjects for attack. It is not, however, on that account less certain that such an attack is, in our days, and as society is at present constituted, unjust, silly, and inopportune, as injurious to State as to Church, to Liberty as to Religion. There may be injustice and ingratitude to institutions as well as to individuals. From the fall of the Roman Empire, and during the rudest and most sombre ages of modern history, the Catholic clergy, whether as Popes, Bishops, monastic orders, or simple priests, in the midst of their selfish pretensions and ambitious usurpations, displayed and expended treasures of intellect, courage, and perseverance in order to affirm and protect the immaterial and moral interests of humanity. They did not on all occasions accept their mission to its full extent; they did not maintain the Christian Religion in all its breadth, and in all its evangelical disinterestedness; they had their share in the acts of violence, iniquity, and tyranny of the different masters of society for the time being; they often made Liberty pay dearly for the services which they rendered to civilization; but when Liberty has become one of the conquests of that very civilization, the proof as well as the guarantee for its further progress, there is injustice and ingratitude in forgetting what part the Roman Catholic clergy effected towards the constitution of that society, the ultimate result of which has been so glorious.

The injustice is the greater that it is now inopportune and useless. From the acrimony, the anger, and alarm which characterise the attacks directed at Roman Catholicism and its Priests, we might suppose that the Inquisition was at our gates, that Rome was making a perilous onslaught upon our civil and religious liberties, and that we need to deploy all our force and all our passions to repulse the domination of the Court of Rome and of its army. Was there ever so strange a perversion of facts? For a century past, on which side has been the movement and the aggression? Is it not evidently the spirit of religious and political liberty which has now the initiative, the impulsive, onward movement? The defensive is the natural and enforced situation of the Roman Catholic Church; Romanism is much more menaced, much more attacked by public opinion in these days than our liberties are menaced or attacked by her. The supreme power in the Church of Rome, the Papacy, does indeed maintain, in principle, certain maxims and certain traditions irreconcileable with, the actual state of opinion and society; it continues to condemn authoritatively some of the essential principles of modern civilization. In all earnestness, yet with every feeling of respect, I shall here make at once use of my right, both as a Protestant and as the citizen of a free country, to declare my profound conviction that this systematic persistence, however conscientious and dignified it may be, shows a great want of religious foresight as well as of political prudence. I think that Romanism, without abdication and without renouncing anything that is vitally essential to itself, might assume a position in harmony with the moral and social state in these days, and with the conditions also vitally essential to the existence of such state. I may add, that so long as the government of the Romish Church shall not have accepted and accomplished this work of conciliation—conciliation real and profound—the friends of Liberty will be justified in keeping themselves on the alert, and in maintaining a reserve towards it, as representing, themselves, those moral and liberal principles which it disavows. But let them not attribute to this disavowal a greater importance than it deserves; let them watch the ecclesiastical power which utters it, without alarm; it has in it nothing very menacing, nothing that opposes any effectual barrier to the march of events; Liberalism is not the less victorious in these days, and not the less advancing. Many faults have been committed, and many probably will continue to be committed; as has already been the case, we shall have perhaps many a barrier opposed in our path, many a reactionary movement to endure, but the general onward impulse will nevertheless be the same, and the final result, the conquest of Liberty, religious, civil and political, not the less a certainty.

This is no mere philosophical aspiration. It is already history. There have been many vicissitudes in France, and many a crisis of different kinds during the last hundred years in the struggle between Liberalism and Roman Catholicism; the former has often committed errors, made mistakes, by which Romanism has adroitly profited; but at every reverse Romanism has recognised her own defeat, and accepted some part of its consequences. The Constituent Assembly by the civil organisation of the clergy, the National Convention by its proscriptions, had endeavoured, the one to enslave, the other to abolish the Catholic Church; the great master of the revolution, Napoleon, raised it up again by the Concordat of 1802; but the Concordat at the same time consecrated many of the fundamental principles of the liberal regime, and the Catholic Church of Rome consecrated Napoleon and signed the Concordat, even whilst protesting against some of its consequences. At the Restoration some wished to discuss again the question of the Concordat, and to re-establish the relation between Church and State upon their ancient foundations; but the attempt encountered, in the ranks of the Royalists themselves, a decisive resistance, and totally failed. Under the Government of 1830, Roman Catholicism regained its ground and resumed fresh vigour by both using the name of Liberty and claiming its right. When the Republic again appeared in 1848, Roman Catholicism treated it with as much tenderness as it experienced itself from the Republic. I pause before the actual relations of the Church of Rome to the new Empire; Rome has paid a dear price for all that she has received from the Empire; but even here she showed, and appears disposed still to show, a large measure of patience and resignation. She is right.

One fact particularly arrests my attention in the course of this stormy history. In the midst of her reverses and her concessions, Roman Catholicism has displayed rare and energetic virtues of fidelity and independence. She has opposed to the bloody persecution of Terrorism, the inexhaustible blood of her martyrs, bishops, priests, monks, men and women; that Clergy of France, once so vacillating in faith and so mundane in morals, bore their cross with an indomitable sentiment of Christian honour. The despotism of the Emperor Napoleon encountered in the person of Pope Pius VII., in some Cardinals, and some Bishops, a passive but firm resistance, which neither the power of the Despot, nor the contagious servility of their contemporaries, could surmount. And again, in these days, who can fail to perceive with what activity and devotedness, with what sacrifices and efficacy, Roman Catholicism, by the mere force of its native energy, upholds the cause of its chief and of itself? If civil society had defended its liberties and its dignities as the Church of Rome defends hers, Liberalism in France would be farther advanced on its road and towards its object.

But let not Romanists deceive themselves: one cannot make use of Liberty without being forced to enter into an engagement and compromise with Liberty; one cannot appeal to Liberty without doing homage to her; she lays her hand upon those to whom she lends her aid. The great fact which I before invoked, the work of reconciliation between modern society and Roman Catholicism, is more advanced than those believe who still stand aloof from it and oppose it. This is proved by two facts. In the very bosom of Roman Catholicism, and from amongst its most zealous defenders, that group of liberal Catholics was formed which has played and which continues to play so active a part in struggling for the Liberties of their church, and for the rights of their chief: these are at once the ornaments of then church, and its intellectual sword; and the publication which supports their views, the "Correspondant," is, next to the "Revue des deux Mondes," the periodical which meets with most success and has the greatest circulation. Passing from this brilliant group to the more modest ranks of the Roman Catholic clergy, I ask what is the disposition, the attitude, the conduct of those faithful and humble priests who exercise the Christian ministry in our provinces and in the inferior quarters of our cities; they have not always all the science, all the mental culture, which one might desire; but whilst adhering to Catholic faith and giving the example of Christian lives, they live in the midst of the people; they know it, they understand it; they are aware what the conditions are which permit them to live with and to exercise an influence upon the people; they enter by degrees into its sentiments and its instincts; without premeditation, almost without perceiving it, they become each day more and more men of their time and country, more familiar with the ideas and liberal tendencies of modern society. Thus at the two poles of Roman Catholicism, in its most elevated ranks and in its popular militia, the same result is obtained, in the one case by men of enlightened views and of superior ability, and in the other case by men of good sense and honesty of purpose; and thus in the Roman Church those moral and political principles of 1789 make their way, which form the basis of the new social edifice, of its laws, and of its liberties.

I do not dispute, neither do I attack; I record facts as I observe and appreciate them. And in my opinion, with reference to French institutions,—for I speak only of France,—the essential consequences from these facts, as far as they bear upon the relations of Christianity to Liberty, are as follows.