A body which has lost the principle of its animation becomes dust. Hence it is an axiom that the change or perversion of the principles by which anything was produced, is the destruction of that very thing; if you can change or pervert the principles from which anything springs, you destroy it. For instance, one single foreign element introduced into the blood produces death; one false assumption admitted into science, destroys its certainty; one false principle admitted into morals, is fatal. Now our American nation is departing from the principles which created their civilization, and upon which their grand Republic is based. Their civilization is becoming every day more and more material, and this material civilization, while more and more material, is becoming less moral; society is becoming less solid, less safe, less stable; individuals are becoming more anarchical, the intellect more licentious, the wills of men more stubborn, and this self-will expresses itself in their actions, so that it is true to say that, by means of godless education, the principles of Christianity upon which the American Republic was founded, and by which it has hitherto been preserved, have been rejected, and are being violated on every side. Our Republic, therefore is no more progressing, but is going back.
About fifteen years ago a number of leading politicians and statesmen of America, of highest name and note, met together to consider the condition of the United States. It was before the war, when there were already many causes of anxiety. It was said that there was a universal and growing license of the individual will, and that law and government were powerless to restrain it; that if the will of the multitude became licentious, it would seriously threaten the public welfare and liberty of the country. The conclusion they came to was, that, unless there could be found some power which could restrain the individual will, this danger would at last seriously menace the United States.
Now it is easy to say what that power is. It is the power which created the Christian society—it is the power which drew the world out of the darkness of heathenism, abolished slavery, restored woman to her true dignity—it is the power which established and maintained republican governments, and that power is the power of Catholicity. Whensoever this power is weakened or lost, immediately all political society decays. There will be a bright future for America if this power will be maintained and preserved.
The Catholic Church is the grandest Republic that was ever established. But it is a Republic of a supernatural order. It has for its Founder Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself. He chose St. Peter for its first President. This grand Republic is divided, as it were, into as many States as there are dioceses; each diocese has a Bishop—a true successor of the Apostles—for Governor, and each Bishop has priests to assist him in the spiritual government of the diocese. The Constitution of this Republic was made by Jesus Christ. It cannot be changed or altered at all, either by the President, or by the votes of its citizens. St. Peter and the other Apostles, and their lawful successors, were bound in conscience, by Jesus Christ, to keep His Constitution—His doctrine—and teach others to keep it, under pain of forfeiture of eternal life. The President and the Governors of this Republic—the Pope and the Catholic Bishops—are not at liberty to govern its citizens, the Catholics, as they please; they have to govern them according to the Constitution—the Doctrine of Jesus Christ. Now Almighty God governs men in accordance with the nature with which He has created them, as beings endowed with reason and free-will. God adapts His government to our rational and voluntary faculties, and governs us without violence to either, and by really satisfying both. The rulers of the Catholic Church have to do the same; they must govern men as freemen. Hence the Catholic Church leaves to every people its own nationality, and to every State its own independence; she ameliorates the political and social order, only by infusing into the hearts of the people and their rulers the principles of justice and love, and a sense of accountability to God. The action of the Church in political and social matters is indirect, not direct, and in strict accordance with the free-will of individuals and the autonomy of states. Servile fear does not rank very high among Catholic theologians. The Church, when she can, resorts to coercive measures only to repress disorders in the public body. Hence her rulers are called shepherds, not lords, and shepherds of their Master's flock, not of their own, and are to feed, tend, protect the flock, and take care of its increase for Him, with sole reference to His will, and His honor and glory. The Catholic Church proffers to all every assistance necessary for the attainment of the most heroic sanctity, but she forces no man to accept that assistance. Catholics believe the doctrines of the Church, because they believe the Catholic Church the Church of God—they believe that Jesus Christ commissioned St. Peter and the Apostles, and their lawful successors, to teach all men in His name—to teach them infallibly and authoritatively His divine doctrine—they believe that this Church is the medium through which God manifests His will and dispenses His grace to man, and through which alone we can hope for heaven; they believe that nothing can be more reasonable than to believe God at His word, and that, above all, they must seek the kingdom of God and secure their eternal salvation.
Being governed by the Church, as freemen, in the spirit of a republican government, and enjoying, as they do, the freedom of the children of God, Catholics feel nowhere more at home than under a republican form of government. If a great pope could say in truth that he was nowhere more pope than in America, every Catholic can, and does, also, say in truth, "Nowhere can I be a better Christian than in the United States." Hence it is that Catholics are very generally attached to the republican institutions of the country—no class of our citizens more so—and would defend them at the sacrifice of their lives. Catholics far more readily adjust themselves to our institutions than non-Catholics, and among Catholics it must be observed that they succeed best who best understand and best practise their religion. They who are least truly American, and yield most to demagogues, are those who have very little of Catholicity, except the accident of being born of Catholic parents, who had them baptized in infancy.
Practical Catholics are the best Republicans! If we consult history, we find that they were always foremost in establishing and maintaining the republican form of government. Who originated all the free principles which lie at the basis of our own noble Constitution? Who gave us trial by jury, habeas corpus, stationary courts, and the principle—for which we fought and conquered in our revolutionary struggle against Protestant England—that taxes are not to be levied without the free consent of those who pay them? All these cardinal elements of free government date back to the good old Catholic times, in the middle ages—some three hundred years before the dawn of the Reformation! Our Catholic forefathers gave them all to us.
Again, we are indebted to Catholics for all the republics which ever existed in Christian times, down to the year 1776: for those of Switzerland, Venice, Genoa, Andorra, San Marino, and a host of minor free Commonwealths, which sprang up in the "dark ages." Some of these republics still exist, proud monuments and unanswerable evidences of Catholic devotion to freedom. They are acknowledged by Protestants, no less than by Catholics. I subjoin the testimony of an able writer in the New York Tribune, believed to be Bayard Taylor. This distinguished traveller—a staunch Protestant—appeals to history, and speaks from personal observation. He writes:
"Truth compels us to add that the oldest republic now existing is that of San Marino, not only Catholic, but wholly surrounded by the especial dominion of the popes, who might have crushed it like an egg-shell at any time these last thousand years—but they didn't. The only republic we ever travelled in besides our own is Switzerland, half of its cantons or states entirely Catholic, yet never, that we have heard of, unfaithful to the cause of freedom. We never heard the Catholics of Hungary accused of backwardness in the late glorious struggle of their country for freedom, though its leaders were Protestants, fighting against a leading Catholic power avowedly in favor of religious as well as civil liberty. And chivalric, unhappy Poland, almost wholly Catholic, has made as gallant struggles for freedom as any other nation; while of the three despotisms that crushed her, but one was Catholic."
Let us bring the subject home to our own times and country. Who, I would ask, first reared in triumph the broad banner of universal freedom on this North American Continent? Who first proclaimed in this new world a truth too wide and expansive to enter into the head of, or to be comprehended by, a narrow-minded bigot—a truth that every man should be free to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience? Who first proclaimed, on this broad continent, the glorious principles of universal freedom? Read Bancroft, read Goodrich, read Frost, read every Protestant historian of our country, and you will see there inscribed, on the historic page, a fact which reflects immortal honor on our American Catholic ancestry—that Lord Baltimore and his Catholic colonists of Maryland were the first to proclaim universal liberty, civil and religious; the first to announce, as the basis of their legislation, the great and noble principle that no man's faith and conscience should be a bar to his holding any office, or enjoying any civil privilege of the community.
What American can forget the names of Rochambeau, De Grasse, De Kalb, Pulaski, La Fayette, Kosciusko? Without the aid of these noble Catholic heroes, and of the brave troops whom they led on to victory, would we have succeeded at all in our great revolutionary contest? Men of the clearest heads, and of the greatest political forecast, living at that time, thought not; at least they deemed the result exceedingly doubtful.