Protestantism and Catholicity compared in their effects on the civilization of Europe

by Jaime Luciano Balmes

It has been acknowledged at all times and in all countries, as an incontestable principle, that the public authority has, in certain cases, the right of prohibiting certain acts, in violation of the consciences of individuals who claim the right of performing them. If the constant testimony of history were not enough, at least the dialogue which we have just held ought to convince us of this truth; we have seen that the most ardent advocates of tolerance may well be compelled, in certain cases, to be intolerant. They would be obliged to be so in the name of humanity, of modesty, of public order; universal toleration, then, with respect to doctrines and religions—that toleration which is proclaimed as the duty of every government—is an error; it is a theory which cannot be put in practice. We have clearly shown that intolerance has always been, and still is, a principle recognised by all governments, and the application of which, more or less indulgent or severe, depends on circumstances, and above all, on the particular point of view in which the government considers things.

A great question of right now presents itself—a question which seems, at first sight, to require to be solved by condemning all intolerance, both with respect to doctrines and acts; but which, when thoroughly examined, leads to a very different result. If we grant that the mind is incapable of completely removing the difficulty by means of direct reasoning, it is not the less certain that indirect means, and the reasoning called ad absurdum, are here sufficient to show us the truth, at least as far as it is necessary for us to know it as a guide for human prudence, always uncertain. The question is this: "By what right do you hinder a man from professing a doctrine, and acting in conformity with it, if he is convinced that it is true, and that he only fulfils his duty, or exercises a right, by acting as it prescribes?" In order to prevent the prohibition being vain and ridiculous, there must be a penalty attached to it; now, if you inflict this penalty, you punish a man who, according to his own conscience, is innocent. Punishment by the hand of justice supposes culpability; and no one is culpable without being so first in his conscience. Culpability has its root in the conscience; and we cannot be responsible for the violation of a law, unless that law has addressed us through our conscience. If our conscience tells us that an action is bad, we cannot perform it, whatever may be the injunctions of the law which prescribes it; on the contrary, if conscience tells us that an action is a duty, we cannot omit it, whatever may be the prohibitions of the law. This is, in a few words, and in all its force, the whole argument that can be alleged against intolerance in regard to doctrines and facts emanating from them. Let us now see what is the real value of these observations, apparently so conclusive.

It is apparent that the admission of this principle would render impossible the punishment of any political crime. Brutus, when plunging his dagger into the heart of Cæsar; Jacques Clement, when he assassinated Henry III., acted, no doubt, under the influence of an excitement of mind, which made them view their attempts as deeds of heroism; and yet, if they had both been brought before a tribunal, would you have thought them entitled to impunity—the one on account of his love of country, and the other on account of his zeal for religion? Most political crimes are committed under a conviction of doing well; and I do not speak merely of those times of trouble, when men of parties the most opposed are fully persuaded that they have right on their side. Conspiracies contrived against governments in times of peace are generally the work of some individuals who look upon them as illegal and tyrannical; when working to overthrow them, they are acting in conformity with their own principles. Judges punish them justly when they inflict on them the penalties appointed by legislators; and yet, neither legislators when they decree the penalty, nor the judges when they inflict it, are, or can be, ignorant of the condition of mind of the delinquent who has violated the law. It may be said, that compassion and indulgence with respect to political crimes increase every day, for these reasons. I shall reply, that if we lay down the principle that human justice has not the right to punish, when the delinquent acts according to his conviction, we must not only mitigate our punishments, but even abolish them. In this case, capital punishment would be a real murder, a fine a robbery, and other penalties so many acts of violence. I shall remark in passing, that it is not true that severity towards political crimes diminishes as much as it is said to do; the history of Europe of late years affords us some proofs to the contrary. We do not now see those cruel punishments which were in use at other times; but that is not owing to the conscience of the criminal being considered by the judge, but to the improvement of manners, which, being everywhere diffused, has necessarily influenced penal legislation. It is extraordinary that so much severity has been preserved in laws relating to political crimes, when so great a number of legislators among the different nations of Europe knew well that they themselves, at other times, had committed the same crimes. And there is no doubt that more than one man, in the discussion of certain penal laws, has inclined to indulgence, from the presentiment that these very laws might one day apply to himself. The impunity of political crimes would bring about the subversion of social order, by rendering all government impossible. Without dwelling longer on the fatal results which this doctrine would have, let us observe, that the benefit of impunity in favor of the illusions of conscience would not be due to political crimes alone, but would be applicable also to those of an ordinary kind. Offences against property are crimes of this nature; and yet we know that many at former periods regarded, and that unfortunately some still regard, property as a usurpation and an injustice. Offences against the sanctity of marriage are ordinarily considered crimes; and yet have there not been sects in whose sight marriage was unlawful, and others who have desired, and still desire, a community of women? The sacred laws of modesty and respect for innocence have alike been regarded by some sects as an unjust infringement of the liberty of man; to violate these laws, therefore, was a meritorious action. At the time when the mistaken ideas and blind fanaticism of the men who professed these principles were undoubted, would any one have been found to deny the justice of the chastisement which was inflicted on them when, in pursuance of their doctrines, they committed a crime, or even when they had the audacity to diffuse their fatal maxims in society?

If it were unjust to punish the criminal for acting according to his conscience, all imaginable crimes would be permitted to the atheist, the fatalist, the disciple of the doctrine of private interest; for by destroying, as they do, the basis of all morality, these men do not act against their consciences; they have none. If such an argument were to hold good, how often would we have reason to charge tribunals with injustice, when they inflict any punishment on men of this class. By what right, we would say to magistrates, do you punish this man, who, not admitting the existence of God, does not acknowledge himself culpable in his own eyes, or consequently in yours? You have made a law, by virtue of which you punish him; but this law has no power over the conscience of this man, for you are his equals; and he does not acknowledge the existence of any superior, to give you the power of controlling his liberty. By what right do you punish another, who is convinced that all his actions are the effect of necessary causes, that free-will is a chimera, and who, in the action which you charge on him as a crime, believes that he had no more power of restraining himself than the wild beast, when he throws himself upon the prey before his eyes, or upon any other animal that excites his fury? With what justice do you punish him, who is persuaded that all morality is a lie; that there is no other principle than individual interest; that good and evil are nothing but this interest, well or ill understood? If you make him undergo any punishment, it will not be because he is culpable in his own conscience; you will punish him for being deceived in his calculation, for having ill-understood the probable result of the action which he was about to commit. Such are the necessary and inevitable deductions from the doctrine, which refuses to the public authority the power of punishing crimes committed in consequence of an error of the mind.

But I shall be told that the right of punishment only extends to actions, and not to doctrines; that actions ought to be subject to the law, but that doctrines are entitled to unbounded liberty. Do you mean doctrines shut up in the mind and not outwardly manifested? It is clear that not only the right, but also the possibility of punishing them is wanting, for God alone can tell the secrets of the heart of man. If avowed doctrines are meant, then the principle is false; and we have just shown that those who maintain it in theory, find it impossible to reduce it to practice. In fine, we shall be told that, however absurd in its results may be the doctrine which we have been combating, it is still impossible to justify the punishment of an action which was ordered or authorized by the conscience of the man who committed it. How is this difficulty to be solved? How is this great obstacle to be removed? Is it lawful in any case to treat as culpable the man who is not so at the tribunal of his own conscience?

Although this question seems entirely to turn upon some point on which men of all opinions are agreed, there is nevertheless a wide difference in this respect between Catholics on one side and unbelievers and Protestants on the other. The first lay it down as an incontestable principle, that there are errors of the understanding which are faults; the others, on the contrary, think, that all errors of the understanding are innocent. The first consider error in regard to great moral and religious truths, as one of the gravest offences which man can commit against God; their opponents look upon errors of this kind with great indulgence, and they ought to do so in order to be consistent. Catholics admit the possibility of invincible ignorance with respect to some very important truths; but with them this possibility is limited to certain circumstances, out of which they declare man to be culpable: their opponents constantly extol liberty of thought, without any other restriction than that imposed by the taste of each one in particular; they constantly affirm that man is free to hold the opinions which he thinks proper; they have gone so far as to persuade their followers that there are no culpable errors or opinions, that man is not obliged to search into the secret recesses of his soul, to make sure that there are no secret causes which induce him to reject the truth; they have in the end monstrously confounded physical with moral liberty of thought; they have banished from opinions the ideas of lawful and unlawful, and have given men to understand that such ideas are not applicable to thought. That is to say, in the order of ideas, they have confounded right with fact, declaring, in this respect, the uselessness and incompetency of all laws, divine and human. Senseless men! as if it were possible for that which is most noble and elevated in human nature to be exempt from all rule; as if it were possible for the element which makes man the king of the creation, to be exempted from concurring in the ineffable harmony of all parts of the universe with themselves and with God; as if this harmony could exist, or even be conceived in man, unless it were declared to be the first of human obligations to adhere constantly to truth.

This is one of the profound reasons which justify the Catholic Church, when she considers the sin of heresy as one of the greatest that man can commit. You, who smile, with pity and contempt at these words, the sin of heresy; you, who consider this doctrine as the invention of priests to rule over consciences, by retrenching the liberty of thought; by what right do you claim the power of condemning heresies which are opposed to your orthodoxy? By what right do you condemn those societies that profess opinions hostile to property, public order, and the existence of authority? If the thought of man is free, if you cannot attempt to restrain it without violating sacred rights, if it is an absurdity and a contradiction to wish to oblige a man to act against his conscience, or disobey its dictates—why do you interfere with those men who desire to destroy the existing state of society? Why baffle, why oppose those dark conspiracies, which, from time to time, send one of their members to assassinate a king? You invoke your convictions to declare unjust and cruel the intolerance which has been practised at certain times against your enemies; but you must remember that such societies and such men can also invoke their convictions. You say that the doctrines of the Church are human inventions; they say that the doctrines prevailing in society are also human inventions. You say that the ancient social order was a monopoly; they say the present social order is a monopoly. In your eyes, the ancient authorities were tyrannical; in theirs the present ones are so. You pretended to destroy what existed, in order to found new institutions conducive to the good of humanity; to-day these men hold the same language. You have proclaimed holy the war which was waged against ancient power; they proclaim holy the war against present power. When you availed yourselves of the means which offered themselves, you pretended that necessity rendered them legitimate; they declare to be not less legitimate the only means which they possess, that of combinations, of preparing for their opportunity, and of hastening it by assassinating great men. You have pretended to make all opinions respected, even atheism, and you have taught that nobody has a right to prevent your acting in conformity with your principles; but the fanatics in question have also their horrible principles and their dreadful convictions. Do you require a proof of this? See them amid the gayety of public celebrations, glide, pale and gloomy, among the joyful multitude, choose the fitting moment to cast desolation over a royal family, and cover a nation with mourning, while they accumulate on their own heads the public execration, certain, moreover, of finishing their lives on the scaffold. But our adversaries will say, such convictions are inexcusable. Yours are so also. All the difference is, that you have contrived your ambitious and fatal systems amid ease and pleasure, perhaps in opulence, and under the shadow of power, while they have conceived their abominable doctrines in the bosom of obscurity, poverty, misery, and despair.

Indeed, the inconsistency of some men is shocking to the last degree. To ridicule all religions, to decry the spirituality and immortality of the soul, and the existence of God, to overturn all morality, and sap its deepest foundations, all this they have considered excusable, and we may even say, worthy of praise; moreover, the writers who have undertaken this fatal task are worthy of apotheosis; men must expel the Divinity from his temples to place there the names and busts of the leaders of their schools; under the vaults of splendid basilicas, where repose the ashes of Christians awaiting the resurrection, they must raise the mausoleum of Voltaire and Rousseau, in order that future generations, when they descend into their dark and silent abodes, may receive the inspirations of their genius. But have they, then, a right to complain that property, and domestic life, and social order are attacked? Property is sacred; but is it more sacred than God? However great may be the importance of the truths relating to the family and to society, are they of a superior order to the eternal principles of morality, or rather, are they any thing more than the application of these principles?

But let us resume the thread of our discourse. When the principle, that there are culpable errors, is once established (a principle which in practice, if not in theory, must be received by all men, but which Catholicity alone can logically maintain in theory), it is easy to see the reason of the punishments which human power decrees against the propagation and teaching of certain doctrines; and we can understand why it is legitimate to punish, without considering the conviction that animated the culprit, the actions which are the result of his doctrines. The law shows that this mortal error has existed, or can exist; but in this case it declares the error itself to be culpable; and if man adduces the testimony of his own conscience, the law reminds him that it is his duty to rectify his conscience. Such is, in truth, the foundation of a legislation which has appeared so unjust; a foundation which it is necessary to point out, in order to vindicate a great many human laws from a deep disgrace; for it would be a great disgrace to claim the right of punishing a man who was really innocent. Such an absurd right is so far from belonging to human justice, that it does not belong even to God. The infinite justice of God would cease to be what it is, if it could punish the innocent.

Perhaps another origin will be assigned for the right which governments possess, of punishing the propagation of certain doctrines and the actions committed in consequence of them, when the criminal has acted from the deepest conviction. "Governments," it may be said, "act in the name of society, which, like every being, possesses the right of self-defence. There are certain doctrines which menace its existence; it has, therefore, of necessity and right, the power of resisting those who promulgate them." Such a reason, however plausible it may appear, is liable to this grave objection, that it destroys at one blow the idea of punishment and justice. To wound an aggressor in self-defence is not to chastise but to resist him. If we consider society in this point of view, the criminal led to punishment will no longer be a real criminal, but the unfortunate victim of a rash and unequal struggle. The voice of the judge condemning him will no longer be the august voice of justice; his sentence will only be the act of society avenging the attack made upon it. The word punishment will then assume quite a different meaning; the gradations of it will depend entirely upon calculations, and not on justice. We must remember this; if we suppose that society, by virtue of the right of self-defence, inflicts a punishment upon the man whom it considers quite innocent, it no longer judges or condemns, but fights and struggles. That which is perfectly suitable with respect to the relations between one society and another, is in no way suitable to society in its relations with individuals. It then appears like a combat between a giant and a pigmy. The giant takes the pigmy in his hand, and crushes him against a stone.