I have not here to make a profession of faith for others; but I affirm that, from 1830 to 1848, the Prince whom I had the honor to serve, and the Cabinets to which I had the honor to belong, not only always had at heart the maintenance, however difficult, of the principle of religious liberty, but that they always felicitated themselves upon the progress made by the Christian Faith, even when the manner of that progress was for them a source of serious embarrassment. In 1841 we were placed, in this respect, in a most trying position. Great was the general astonishment, and violent were the attacks made upon us, when, with a devotedness to Catholicism even bolder than had been his conferences at Notre Dame, the Abbé Lacordaire returned from Rome a monk, and a monk of an order which has left more somber memories behind it than any other, that of St. Dominic. This is not the place to examine what the utility may be in our days to the Catholic Church of the monastic orders, or to inquire whether the services they are capable of rendering the Church outweigh the objections and the feelings of repulsion and uneasiness which they arouse. No well-read man can deny their having, in seasons of chaotic confusion, effectually served the cause, not only of the Christian Faith, but of civilization, of science, and even of liberty.
The condition of society and of the human mind is now very different, and the monastic orders cannot take the same position or produce the same effects. But whatever we may think of the opportuneness of their reconstruction, of the right there can be no doubt. Under a system sanctioning freedom of conscience and free institutions, associations for religious purposes cannot be worse treated than those for purposes of industry, commerce, or literature. The State is required to exercise upon combinations of every kind a certain degree of surveillance; but doubtless the union of souls and of lives under one rule and in one costume, with a view to eternal interests, is not a juster cause for disquietude than a union of purses and of labor for the purpose of economizing both, with a view to worldly interests. In 1829, some young Catholic Liberals, MM. de Carné, de Cazalès, de Champagny, de Montalembert, Foisset de Meaux, Henri Gouraud, founded a periodical, Le Correspondant, devoted to the reconciliation of Catholicism with the free social institutions of the age. The Correspondant had been suspended in 1835, but reappeared in 1843, under the editorship of M. Charles Lenormant, one of those friends I have lost who retain in my memory the place they occupied in my life. In conducting this work, he kept ever in view the principles in which it had originated, and among other positions, he defended in 1845, with the frank intrepidity both of a Catholic and of a Liberal, the rights of those religious associations which were at the time the object of violent debate. [Footnote 7]
[Footnote 7: Des associations religieuses dans le catholicisme; de leur esprit, de leur histoire et de leur avenir; par Charles Lenormant, de l'Institut. Paris: 1845.]
The cabinet abstained from all measures of repression, and left the new monks freely to their chances of success or failure. Twenty-five years have since elapsed; the Père Lacordaire mounted once more, in his costume as a Dominican, his pulpit in Notre-Dame; he resuscitated in France an order forgotten, or the object of dread only; and to what trouble or embarrassment, I ask, to what complaints even, has this resuscitation led? To what pretensions of ambition have these monks laid claim? what turbulent disposition have they manifested? They have paced meekly along our streets; they have preached eloquently in our churches; they have founded some houses of education; they have made use of their rights as freemen, without offering in any way to infringe the liberty of any other class of citizens. More than all this: the sincerity of their sentiments and language has been put to the proof; the Père Lacordaire resumed, as a Dominican, at Paris, at Toulouse, at Nancy, at Bordeaux, the conferences and the preaching that had rendered him popular as a simple priest; they became, perhaps, more liberal even than they had been originally. When the tempest of 1848 had given birth, in the imaginations of all men, to every kind of dream, and had opened to every ambition every career, the Père Lacordaire was returned by the popular suffrage as Deputy to the Constituent Assembly. For a moment he thought a new era opening for his Church—perhaps for himself. In this arena, upon which the passions of party were unchained amid the general darkness resting upon society, he soon discovered that the priest and monk of our day was not in his proper place; he withdrew from it to resume, in his modest retreat at Sorèze, his true mission as a Christian teacher. He afterward issued from it, but for a moment only, to express in the French Academy his faith as a Catholic, and his confidence in the democratic principles of modern times. Such are the peaceable, such the only results among us, of the re-establishment of the order of the Dominicans and of the glory of its restorer.
Its only results? Not so; if the work of the Père Lacordaire did not exercise any important influence upon the laity, it was attended with fruitful and salutary effects in the Church of Rome itself. Like him, other priests had the courage to brave the prejudices of the age respecting the religious orders; like him, others refused to suffer themselves to be subjugated by the alarms felt by most members of their Church at the names of Science and of Liberty; and like him, they scrupled not to devote themselves to a common life and a common rule, "to work together," according to their own expressions, "to secure the triumph of Christian truth, and its triumph by means of Philosophy and Science." Thus was re-established, under the direction of the pious curate of Saint-Roch, the Père Pététot, the congregation of the Oratoire—that learned and modest society that gave to France Malebranche and Massillon, and of which Bossuet said, two centuries ago: "The immense love for the Church of the Cardinal de Bérulle inspired him with the design of forming a company, to which he desired to give no other spirit than the very spirit of the Church, no other rule than its canons, no other superiors than its bishops, no other goods than its charity, no other solemn vows than those of baptism and the priesthood. … There, to form true priests, they lead them to the fountain of truth; they have always in their hands the sacred volume, to search there unceasingly its literal sense by study, its spirit by prayer, its depth of meaning by retreat from the world, and its end by charity—the termination of everything and the treasure of Christianity—'Christiani nominis thesaurus,' as Tertullian terms it." [Footnote 8]
[Footnote 8: Bossuet, Oraison funèbre du père Bourgoing, delivered in 1662, vol. viii, p. 271.]