But Catholics, we should add, are indebted to the United States for something more than simple liberty. They have there learned to appreciate their real power. They have learned by experience how little they have to fear from pure universal liberty, how much strength and influence they can acquire in such a state of society. There is this good and this evil in liberty—that it always proves to the advantage of the strong; so that when there is question of the relations between man and man, it must be a well-regulated liberty, or it will result in the oppression of the weak. But the case is different when it comes to a question of discordant doctrines: man has everything to gain by the triumph of sound, strong principles and the destruction of false and specious theories. In such a contest, let but each side appear in its true colors, and we have nothing to fear for the cause of truth. The United States will at least have had the merit of affording an opportunity for a powerful demonstration of the truth; and great as are the advantages which the Catholic Church can confer upon the country, she herself will reap still greater advantages by conferring them; for it will turn to her benefit in her action upon the world at large.
In fact, the experience of the Church [{17}] in America has doubtless gone for something in the familiarity which religious minds are gradually acquiring with the principles of political liberty; and thus the growth of American Catholicism is allied to the world-wide reaction which is now taking place after the religious eclipse of the last century. This transformation of the United States, in truth, is only one marked incident in the intellectual revolution which is drawing the whole world toward the Catholic Church—England as well as America, Germany as well as England, even Bulgaria in the far East. The foreign press brings us daily the signs of this progress; and nothing can be easier than to point them out in France under our own eyes. But unfortunately we have been too much in the habit, for the last century, of leading a life of continual mortification, too conscious that we were laughed at by the leaders of public opinion. We crawled along in fear and trembling, creeping close to the walls, dreading at every step to give offence, or to cause scandal, or to lose some of our brethren. Accustomed to see our ranks thinned and whole files carried off in the flower of their youth, we stood in too great fear of the deceitful power of doctrines which seemed to promise everything to man and ask nothing from him in return. And therefore many of us still find it hard to understand the new state of things in which we are making progress without external help. This progress, however, inaugurated by the energy of a few, the perseverance of all, and the overruling hand of divine Providence, is unquestionably going on, and may easily be proved. We have only to visit our churches, attend some of the special retreats for men, or look at the Easter communions, to see what long steps faith and religious practice have taken within the last forty years. The change is most perceptible among the educated classes and in the learned professions. We have heard old professors express their astonishment in comparing the schools of the present time with those of their youth. It was then almost impossible to find a young man at the École Polytechnique, at St. Cyr, or at the École Centrale, with enough faith and enough courage openly to profess his religion; now it may be said that a fifth or perhaps a fourth part of the students openly and unhesitatingly perform their Easter duty. We ourselves remember that no longer ago than 1830 it required a degree of courage of which few were found capable to manifest any religious sentiment in the public lyceums. Voltairianism—or to speak better, an intolerant fanaticism—delighted to cover these faithful few with public ridicule; while now, if we may believe the best authorized accounts, it is only a small minority who openly profess infidelity. We can affirm that in the School of Law the change is quite as great, and it has begun to operate even in that time-honored stronghold of materialism, the School of Medicine.
But what must strike us most forcibly in the examination of these questions is the fact, already pointed out by the Abbé Meignan, that the progress of religion has kept even pace with the extension of free institutions. Wherever the liberal régime has been established, the reaction in favor of religion has become stronger, no doubt because liberty places man face to face with the consequences of his own acts and the necessities of his feeble nature. Man is never so powerfully impelled to draw near to God as when he becomes conscious of his own weakness; never so deeply impressed with the emptiness of false doctrines as when he has experienced their nothingness in the practical affairs of life. The violence of external disorder soon leads him to, reflect upon the necessity of solid, methodical, moral education, such as regulates one's life, and such as the Church alone can impart. And therefore the great change of sentiment of which we have spoken is perceptible chiefly among the educated and liberal classes, while with the ignorant and [{18}] vulgar infidelity holds its own and is even gaining. The educated classes, more thoughtful, knowing the world and having experience of men, see further and calculate more calmly the tendency of events; with the common people reason and plain sense are often overpowered by the violence of their temperament and the impetuosity of their passions. Ignorance and inordinate desires do the rest, and they imagine that man will know how to conduct without knowing how to govern himself.
Whatever demagogues may say, history proves that the head always rules the body. The period of discouragement and apprehension is past. We shall yet, no doubt, have to go through trials, and violent crises, and perhaps cruel persecutions; but we may hope everything from the future. And why not? If we study the history of the Jewish people, we shall see how God chastises his people in order to rouse them from their moral torpor, and raise them up from apparent ruin by unforeseen means. Weakness, in his hand, at once becomes strength; he asks of us nothing but faith and courage. We have traced his Providence in the methods by which he has stimulated the growth of the American Church—methods all the more effectual because, unlike our own vain enterprises, they worked for a long time in silence and obscurity. These Western bishoprics remained almost unknown up to the day when, the light bursting forth all at once, the world beheld a Church already organized, already strong, where it had not suspected even her existence.
There is a magnificent and instructive scene in Athalie, where the veil of the temple is rent, and discloses to the eyes of the terrified queen, Joas, whom she had believed dead, standing in his glory surrounded by an army. Even so, it seems to us, was the American Church suddenly revealed in all her vigor to the astonished world, when her bishops came two years ago to take their place in the council at Rome. And the same progress is making all over the globe. Noiseless and unobtrusive, it attracts no attention from the world; it is overlooked by Utopian theorists; it goes on quietly in the domain of conscience; but the day will come when its light will break forth and astonish mankind by its brightness. Such are the ways of God!
NOTE.—The greater part of the materials for the preceding article were written or collected during the course of a journey which we made in the United States in 1860. Since then the progress of Catholicism has necessarily been somewhat checked by the events of the lamentable civil war which is desolating the country; but the check has been far less serious than might have reasonably been apprehended. Religion has been kept apart from political dissensions and public disorders; it has only had to suffer the common evils which war, mortality, and general impoverishment have inflicted upon the whole people. If all these things are to have any bad effect upon the progress of the Church, it will be in future years, not now. In fact, all the documents which we have been able to collect show that the numbers of both the faithful and the clergy, instead of falling off, have gone on increasing. In thirty-eight dioceses there are now 275 more priests than there were in 1860; from the five other sees, namely, those of New Orleans, Galveston, Mobile, Natchitoches, and Charleston, we have no returns. This increase is confined almost entirely to the regions in which the Church was already strongest; elsewhere matters have remained about stationary.
Of this number of 275 priests added to the Church in the course of three years, 251 belong to the following fourteen dioceses, namely: Baltimore, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Brooklyn, Albany, Alton, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Detroit, Fort Wayne, Vincennes, and Hartford. The last-named belongs to the [{19}] Northeastern or New England group, all the others to the Central and Western. Thus fourteen dioceses alone show nine-tenths of the total increase, and the others divide the remaining tenth among them in very minute fractions. From some states, it is true, the returns are very meagre, and from others they are altogether wanting; but the disproportion is so strong as to leave no doubt that the future conquests of the Church in the United States will be gained, as we have already said, principally in the Middle and Western States.
E. R.