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

by Jaime Luciano Balmes

Admirable are the designs of Providence! Christianity, persecuted in the towns, fertilizes and embellishes the deserts; the precious grain requires for its development neither the moisture of the earth nor the breeze of a mild atmosphere; when carried through the air on the wings of the storm, the seed loses nothing of its vitality; when thrown on a rock, it does not perish. The fury of the elements avails nothing against the work of God, who has made the north wind His courser: the rock ceases to be barren when He pleases to fertilize it. Did He not make pure water spring forth at the mysterious touch of His Prophet's rod?

When peace was given to the Church by the conqueror of Maxentius, the germs contained in the bosom of Christianity were able to develop themselves everywhere; from that moment the Church was never without religious communities. With history in our hands, we may defy the enemies of religious institutions to point out any period, however short, when these institutions had entirely disappeared. Under some form or in some country, they have always perpetuated the existence which they had received in the early ages of Christianity. The fact is certain and constant, and is found in every page of ecclesiastical history; it plays an important part in all the great events in the annals of the Church. It is found in the west and in the east, in modern and in ancient times, in the prosperity and in the adversity of the Church; when the pursuit of religious perfection was an honor in the eyes of the world, as well as when it was an object of persecution, raillery, and calumny. What clearer proof can there be that there is an intimate connection between religious institutions and religion herself? What more is required to show us that they are her spontaneous fruit? In the moral and in the physical order of things, the constant appearance of the one following the other, is regarded as a proof of the reciprocal dependence of two phenomena. If these phenomena have towards each other the relations of cause and effect—if we find in the essence of the one all the principles that are required in the production of the other, the first is called the cause and the other the effect. Wherever the religion of Jesus Christ is established, religious communities are found under some form or other; they are, therefore, its spontaneous effect. I do not know what reply can be made to so conclusive an argument.

By viewing the question in this way, the favor and protection which religious institutions always found with the Pontiff is naturally explained. It was his duty to act in conformity with the spirit which animates the Church, of which he is the chief ruler upon earth; it is certainly not the Pope who has made the regulation, that one of the means most apt to lead men to perfection is to unite themselves in associations under certain rules, in conformity with the instructions of their Divine Master. The Eternal Lord thus ruled in the secrets of His infinite wisdom, and the conduct of the Popes could not be contrary to the designs of the Most High. It has been said that interested views interposed; it has been said that the policy of the Popes found in these institutions a powerful means of sustaining and aggrandizing itself. But can you not see any thing but the sordid instruments of cunning policy in the societies of the primitive faithful, in the monasteries of the solitudes of the East, in that crowd of institutions which have had for their object only the sanctification of their own members and the amelioration of some of the great evils of humanity? A fact so general, so great, so beneficent, cannot be explained by views of interest and narrow designs; its origin is higher and nobler; and he who will not seek for it in heaven ought at least to seek for it in something greater than the projects of a man or the policy of a court; he ought to seek for lofty ideas, sublime feelings, capable, if they do not mount to heaven, at least of embracing a large part of the earth; nothing less is here required than one of those thoughts which preside over the destinies of the human race.

Some persons may be inclined to imagine private designs on the part of the Popes, because they see their authority interfere in all the foundations of later ages, and their approbation constitute the validity of the rules of religious institutions; but the course pursued in this respect by ecclesiastical discipline shows us that the most active intervention of the Popes, far from emanating from private views, has been called for by a necessity of preventing an excessive multiplication of the religious orders in consequence of an indiscreet zeal. This vigilance in preventing abuses was the origin of this supreme intervention. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the tendency to new foundations was so strong that the most serious inconveniences would have resulted from it, without a continual watchfulness on the part of the ecclesiastical authority. Thus we see the Sovereign Pontiff Innocent III. ordain, in the Council of Lateran, that whoever wished to found a new religious house shall be bound to adopt one of the approved rules and institutions.

But let us pursue our design. I can understand how those who deny the truth of the Christian religion, and turn into ridicule the counsels of the Gospel, bring themselves to deny all that is celestial and divine in the spirit of the religious communities; but the truth of religion once established, I cannot conceive how men who boast of following its laws can declare themselves the enemies of these institutions considered in themselves. How can he who admits the principle refuse the consequence? How can he who loves the cause reject the effect? They must either affect a religion hypocritically, or they profess without comprehending it.

In default of any other proof of the anti-evangelical spirit which guided the leaders of the pretended Reformation, their hatred to an institution so evidently founded on the Gospel itself should suffice. Did not these enthusiasts for reading the Bible without note or comment—they who pretend to find all its passages so clear—did they not remark the plain and easy sense of that multitude of passages which recommend self-abnegation, the renunciation of all possessions, and the privation of all pleasures? These words are plain—they cannot be taken in any other signification—they do not require for their comprehension a profound study of the sacred sciences, or that of languages; and yet they have not been heard: we should rather say, they have not been listened to. The intellect has understood, but the passions have rejected them.

As to those philosophers who have regarded religious institutions as vain and contemptible, if not dangerous, it is clear that they have meditated but little on the human mind, and on the deep feelings of our hearts, full as they are of mystery. As their hearts have felt nothing at the sight of those numbers of men and women assembled for the purpose of sanctifying themselves or others, or of relieving wants, and consoling the unfortunate, it is but too clear that their souls have been dried up by the breath of skepticism. To renounce for ever all the pleasures of life; to live in solitude, there to offer one's self, in austerity and penance, as a holocaust to the Most High: this, certainly is a matter of horror to those philosophers who have only viewed the world through their own prejudices. But humanity has other thoughts; it feels itself attracted by those objects which philosophers find so vain, so devoid of interest, so worthy of horror.

Wonderful are the secrets of our hearts! Although enervated by pleasure, and involved in the whirlwind of amusement and mirth, we cannot avoid being seized with deep emotion at the sight of austerity and recollection of soul. Solitude, and even sadness itself, exert an inexpressible influence over us. Whence comes that enthusiasm which moves a whole nation, excites and makes it follow, as if by enchantment, the steps of a man whose brow is marked by recollection, whose features display austerity of life, whose clothes and manners show freedom from all that is earthly, and forgetfulness of the world? Now, it is a fact, proved by the history both of true and of false religions; so powerful a means of attracting respect and esteem has not remained unknown to imposture: licentiousness and corruption, desirous of making their fortunes in the world, have more than once felt the imperious necessity of disguising themselves under the mantle of austerity and purity. What at first sight might appear the most opposed to our feelings, the most repugnant to our tastes—this shade of sadness diffused over the recollection and solitude of the religious life—is precisely what enchants and attracts us the most. The religious life is solitary and pensive; therefore it is beautiful, and its beauty is sublime. Nothing is more apt than this sublimity to move our hearts deeply, and make indelible impressions on them. In reality, our soul has the character of an exile; it is affected by melancholy objects only; it has not attained to that noisy joy which requires to borrow a tint of melancholy only for the sake of a happy contrast. In order to clothe beauty with its most seductive charms, it is necessary that a tear of anguish should flow from her eyes, that her forehead should assume an air of sadness, and her cheeks grow pale with a melancholy remembrance. In order that the life of a hero excite a lively interest in us, it is requisite that misfortune be his companion, lamentation his consolation—that disaster and ingratitude be the reward of his virtues. If you wish that a picture of nature or art should strongly attract our attention, take possession of and absorb the powers of our soul, it is necessary that a memorial of the nothingness of man, and an image of death, should be presented to our minds; our hearts should be appealed to by the feelings of a tranquil sadness; we desire to see sombre tints on a monument in ruins—the cross reminding us of the abode of the dead, the massive walls covered with moss, and pointing out the ancient dwelling of some powerful man, who, after having lived on earth for a short time, has disappeared.

Joy does not satisfy us, it does not fill our hearts; it intoxicates and dissipates them for a few moments; but man does not find there his happiness, because the joys of earth are frivolous, and frivolity cannot attach a traveller who, far from his country, walks painfully through the valley of tears. Thence it comes that, while sorrow and tears are accepted—we should rather say, are carefully sought for by art—whenever a deep impression is to be made upon the soul, joy and smiles are inexorably banished. Oratory, poetry, sculpture, painting, music, have all constantly followed the same rule; or, rather, have always been governed by the same instinct. It certainly required a lofty spirit and a heart of fire to declare that the soul is naturally Christian. In these few words an illustrious thinker has known how to express all the relations which unite the faith, morality, and counsels of this divine religion, with all that is most intimate, delicate, and noble in our hearts. Do you know Christian pensiveness; that grave and elevated feeling which is painted on the forehead of the Christian, like a memorial of sorrow on that of an illustrious proscribed one; this feeling which moderates the enjoyments of life by the image of the tomb, and lights up the depths of the grave with the rays of hope; that pensiveness so natural and consoling, so grave and noble, which causes diadems and sceptres to be trodden under foot like dust, and the greatness and splendor of the world to be despised as a passing illusion? This melancholy, carried to its perfection, vivified and fertilized by grace, and subjected to a holy rule, is what presides over the foundation of religious institutions, and accompanies them as long as they preserve their primitive fervor, which they received from men who were guided by divine light, and animated by the Spirit of God. This holy melancholy, which carries with it freedom from all earthly things, is the feeling which the Church wishes to instil into and preserve in, the religious orders, when she surrounds their silent abodes with a shade of retirement and meditation.

That amid the fury and the convulsions of parties, a mad and sacrilegious hand, secretly excited by malice, should plunge a fratricidal dagger into an innocent heart, or set fire to a peaceful dwelling, may be conceived; for, unhappily, the history of man abounds in crimes and frenzies; but that the essence of religious institutions should be attacked, that their spirit should be considered narrow and imbecile, that they should be deprived of the noble titles which give honor to their origin, and the beauties which adorn their history, can be allowed neither by the intellect nor by the heart. A false philosophy, which dries up and withers all that it touches, has undertaken so mad a task. But, setting aside religion and reason, literature and the fine arts have rebelled against this attempt; literature and the fine arts, which have need of old recollections, and which are indebted for their wonders to lofty thoughts, to grave and noble scenes, and deep and melancholy feelings; literature and the arts, which delight in transporting the mind of man into regions of light, in guiding the imagination through new and unknown paths, and in ruling the heart by mysterious charms.