How would they then reconstruct that French policy that had been at once so overthrown and so regenerated? By what means would they conciliate new and ancient ideas, new and ancient interests? Upon what terms would Authority and Liberty consent to be reconciled, and to live henceforth side by side—Authority soaring triumphant after her fall, Liberty embarrassed with her recent excesses; and yet both of them more than ever necessary to society, if society was to be healthy and strong? This was evidently the vital question of the new century. God placed its solution at first in the hands of Napoleon, the crown and the scourge of the Revolution, the most remarkable example at once of reaction and of progress recorded in the history of the world.
In this condition, so new to France, the situation of the Jesuits was embarrassing and perilous. Napoleon was again re-establishing the Church of Rome, and at the same time enforcing the maxims of Absolutism—a double title to their sympathy. On the other hand, he was consolidating the Revolution, and maintaining and putting into practice some of its essential principles, among others, that of freedom of conscience. Napoleon arrogated also to himself the right of dictating and acting as master in the Church as in the State, at Rome as at Paris; he was neither a serious believer in the faith of Christ nor a sure friend of the Papacy. In this twofold aspect, the Jesuits could not but regard him with distrust. The distrust was mutual: for if Napoleon was for the Jesuits a too faithful and too ambitious heir of the Revolution, the Jesuits were for him Catholics too independent and too devoted to their Church and to its chief. As far back as 1804, their establishments, scarcely disguised under different names, had been a source of disquietude to Napoleon. He directed them to be closed, enforced the laws which denied to religious corporations an independent existence, and founded the University, which at the same time he invested with the privilege of teaching. This system was not abolished at the Restoration. The Jesuits then entered into the simultaneous possession of two forces novel to them—the one sprang from the support of power, the other was derived from the progress of liberty. They had the favor of the court, and might wield as their own arms, and in their own interests, the liberal principles that were dear to the people. A position excellent, had they known how to restrict themselves to their religious mission, keep aloof from political contests, and devote themselves exclusively to the task of awakening the faith of Christians, and arousing them to a Christian life! Their action upon the soul might have extended their influence beyond their peculiar sphere to the world without. Had they not then a striking instance of such an influence even in their own order? To what cause, thirty years ago, did the Père Ravignan owe the respect and moral authority with which he was surrounded, not only by members of his own Church, but by men not remarkable for their faith? Far less to his talent as an orator, than to the thorough sincerity and disinterestedness of his religious character. He was a believer, a pious Christian, and a stranger to every mental reservation; neither was he a partisan, but solely occupied with the service of God, of his Church, and of his order, at the same time that he was propagating the faith and enforcing piety. He declared himself aloud a Jesuit, but the declaration excited no distrust even in his adversaries. If his order had imitated his example, it would have obtained a similar success. Nor was the instance new. In the seventeenth century, at the court of Louis XIV., Bourdaloue displayed the same virtues as the Père Ravignan in our own days; and, in all certitude, did more honor and rendered more service to his Church and order than had ever been done or rendered by Père la Chaise.
I shall not attempt to examine how far the Jesuits in effect were really engaged, or what was the degree of their direct agency in the intrigues of the retrograde party who were seeking to repossess themselves of the relics of the ancient institutions, in the idle hope of reconstructing the social edifice upon those ruined foundations. I am convinced that France felt at this epoch far too much alarm for this party and its allies, Jesuits or no Jesuits, just as the Monarchy itself felt too much apprehension of the Revolutionists. No graver fault can be committed by nations or by governments than to give way to fears out of proportion with the dangers which they encounter. France had no reason under the Restoration to dread either the triumph of Theocracy or of Absolutism; and yet she was alarmed at both, and the people persisted in believing that the Jesuits were serving this double cause—that of the ancient régime of the Papacy, and of the ancient régime of the Monarchy. The Jesuits had then to struggle at once against the ideas and the passions of modern society, and the traditions and maxims of ancient France herself; they had for adversaries, the laity, the bar, and the liberals, respectively represented by M. de Montlosier, M. Benjamin Constant, and M. Dupin. The odds against them were too great; even the Monarchy itself, however well disposed toward them, was carried away by the movement which attacked them, and Charles X. did not think his own position strong enough to dispense with treating them, by his ordonnances of the 21st June, 1828, as Napoleon had done by his decree of the 22d June, 1804. Throughout this whole period the conduct of the Jesuits was feebler than their cause. Sworn and devoted to the defense of Authority, they had not foresight enough to perceive by what means and on what conditions Authority might raise and consolidate itself. Haunted by the traditions of past times, and having the history of their own order continually before their minds, they no longer regarded the future boldly or confidently; they failed to appreciate justly the present; they did not believe sufficiently in the power of Christ's faith, and they believed too implicitly in the efficiency of worldly policy. By this vulgar blunder they compromised, in the case of many Christians, the full effect of that great stirring movement of Christianity, at the very time that, with respect to others, they aided it materially.
The Revolution of 1830 inflicted a rude blow upon these retrograde tendencies, and a new element started up in the bosom of the Church of Rome. In the midst of the grand manifestation and progress of liberty now realizing itself in the State, Catholics, genuine and ardent too, conceived the hope of turning both to the profit of the Church of Rome, and of at last setting Catholicism at peace and in harmony with the new social institutions of France. Then the group, I will not say the party, formed itself of men at once generous and hardy, who did not hesitate to declare themselves Ultramontanists, like the Père de Ravignan, Liberals like M. de la Fayette. It consisted of priests and laymen, of men of mature years and men in the spring-time of life—the Abbé Lacordaire, Abbe Gerbet, M. de Montalembert, and M. de Coux: I confine myself to the names that at the outset gleamed on their banners. They founded an agency for the defense of the liberties of religion, and a journal, the Avenir, to develop its principles and its constitution. But the association was born under an unlucky star; for its little army had for its declared chief, and the object of its passionate reverence, the Abbe de la Mennais. In the more intimate and unrestricted relations of life this great man appears to have exercised extraordinarily attractive power over his friends and disciples. Cited jointly with him on the 31st January, 1831, before the Cour d'Assises of Paris to answer for the appearance of two articles in the Avenir, the Abbé Lacordaire said, "I stand here near the man who began the reconciliation of Catholicism with the world. Let me tell him how affected I am by the part that God has made for me in giving me him as my master and my father. Suffer these words of filial piety to penetrate to the heart of one so long misunderstood; suffer me to exclaim with the poet:
"L'amitié d'un grand homme est un bienfait des dieux." [Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: "A great man's friendship, blessed gift of Heaven.">[
The Abbé Lacordaire had soon to feel the danger and to repel with sorrow the yoke of this seductive friendship. The errors and the evil passions of the Abbé de la Mennais were not long in exploding; his was a mind lofty and powerful, but without grasp, without foresight, without moderation, and without equity; incapable of discerning the different sides of a subject and of embracing all the elements of the problem demanding solution, he was a haughty slave to the truth that he served but partially, and the somber enemy of every one who wounded his pride by contesting his opinions. He gave to the Avenir a character at once democratic and theocratic, imperious and revolutionary. All the ideas contrary to his own, all the institutions, all the governments, that stood in his way, were attacked by him with a degree of vehemence, insult, and menace never surpassed by any political partisan, however violent. The maxims of the Gallican Church were, to cite his words, "an object of disgust and horror; opinions as odious as they were base, which, while rendering even the conscience the accomplice of tyranny, make servility a duty and brute force an independent and just right." He demanded the separation of Church and State as a necessity absolute and urgent; "for," said he, "we regard as abolished and of no effect every particular law which contradicts the Charter, and is incompatible with the liberties that it proclaims. In the event of such law, we believe that it becomes immediately and without delay the duty of government to come to an understanding with the pope, and to rescind the Concordat, which lost all the means of being executed from the instant when, thank God, the Catholic religion ceased to be a state religion." Four months had scarcely elapsed since the birth of the government of July, and because the liberty of teaching promised by the Charter of 1830 was not already in vigor, the Abbé de la Mennais said to the Catholics: "Whence comes the oppression that weighs upon us? Either, in what concerns us, the government cannot or it will not keep its promises. If it cannot, what is this mockery of a sovereignty, this miserable phantom of government, and what have we to do with it? It is as far as we are concerned as if it were not, and nothing remains to us but to forget it, and seek our safety in ourselves. Let us proclaim aloud who the powers are that are hostile to us; whose servants seek only to satisfy blindly their thirst for persecution." What attacks leveled at a government were ever more precipitate, more violent, and showed a less just appreciation of facts? What revolutionary party ever proclaimed with greater audacity disobedience to the laws, and insurrection as the first of rights and of duties?