But if the evil denounced is only too real, it is not necessary to represent it as greater than it is, or to conclude, because faith in many souls has grown feeble, that it has entirely perished, and is no longer to be found among men. We know how difficult and how delicate it is to establish the balance-sheet of religious society. Appearances are deceptive, and to reach the real facts we must explore, to the bottom, the consciences of men, which only God can do. However, there are certain exterior circumstances which may enable us even on this point to approximate the real facts in the case. It is undeniable that there are in all the degrees of society men who really believe and faithfully practise religion; others who believe but practise not; [{733}] and still others who make an open profession of not believing. The first division have representatives in every social class, among the poor as well as among the rich, in the sciences, in literature, in art, in industry, in politics. Their faith in general is equally firm and enlightened, for it has been thoroughly tried, and has withstood every attack, both from within and from without.
The second class are more numerous, at least in the great centres of population, and form in those centres the bulk of society. They believe, but their faith is weak, or perhaps it were more proper to say that they have not faith, but only vague and indecisive beliefs, whose level rises or falls according to events. They recoil alike from avowed apostasy and from distinct, precise, and frank affirmation of the truth. As they have abandoned the practice of their religion, it may be supposed that they have lost all belief, but that is far from being the case, for often the slightest breath from without suffices to rekindle what seems to be extinct, but is really only asleep. It is rare, above all, that at the last moment, when the passions have been appeased, when they stand face to face with reality and see it as it is, their last and solemn word is not a word of faith.
The third class, those who make an open profession of unbelief, are relatively few; but they make up for their lack of numbers by their activity and the powerful means at their disposal. They fill high positions in the state, control the greater part of the organs of publicity, and gain the multitudes to their side all the more easily because they excel in the art of caressing popular prejudices and pandering to popular passions. Beside, their hatred of truth is greater than their attachment to any doctrine whatever, and they can, therefore, hold themselves free to attack the faith without being bound to defend anything of their own against it, or to maintain any self-consistency in their attacks. What moves and governs them is not the desire to ascertain or defend the truth, but to appear to have independence and hardihood of mind, and to pose themselves as despisers of the past and precursors of the future.
But to appreciate the real situation of things, it is not enough to regard the present. We must also consider the past. No society makes itself such as it is, and every society holds infinitely more from the generation that went before than from the existing generation. Now, as the society of the past was manifestly a Christian society, it cannot be that the present should not remain Christian in the greater part of its elements; and in fact, notwithstanding the formidable efforts that have been made to unchristianize modern society, and its numerous deviations, it is still the Christian spirit that inspires the laws, manners, and institutions, and so pervades the general intelligence that even those who would attack the Christian dogmas are constrained, in order to render their attacks more effective, to appeal to the very principles which Christianity has brought to light and made predominant.
Moreover, religious faith, far from decreasing, is actually progressing, and, if it has not yet recovered all the ground it had lost, its gains since the commencement of the present century have been far greater than its losses.
It is not difficult to detect the vice of the first proposition. It consists in assuming that Christian faith is dead, while it has only been lessened; that it has lost all authority over the intelligent, while, in fact, it continues to exercise, directly or indirectly, such an empire over them that its principles are universally regarded as the foundation and support of the social edifice itself.
But not contented with assuming that Christianity is dead, the positivists go further, and pretend that it cannot be restored to life, because its dogmas are found to be incompatible with the discoveries of science. This is not [{734}] a fact distorted, not a fact invented, and for which no proof is offered or attempted to be offered. We have in vain sought in the writings of Messrs. Comte and Littré even the semblance of a reason of any sort in support of the allegation. The positivists announce it, affirm it, but make no effort even to prove it, or at most only stammer out by the way the name of Galileo, as if it had not been a thousand times answered, at first, that the sacred writers must have spoken the language of their times, which after all is still the language of our times; afterward that Copernicus dedicated, in 1545, to Pope Paul III., his great work, in which he sets forth and defends the new or heliocentric system of the universe; that nearly a century elapsed before any censure of it intervened; that Galileo, although technically condemned, was neither loaded with chains nor cast into a dungeon; in fine—and it is the important point—that the holy office which condemned him, though possessing great and legitimate authority, is not the Church, and has no claim to infallibility. [Footnote 114]
[Footnote 114: This was written before the Encyclical of the Holy Father, dated December 8, 1864, otherwise the noble author might have modified his expression so as not even to seem to incur its censure. Without raising any question as to the infallibility of the pontifical congregations when they render a dogmatic Judgment approved by the Holy Father, it is evident that the judgment rendered in the case of Galileo was not a dogmatic judgment in the understanding of even Rome herself, for she has since rescinded it, and has permitted the theory to be taught in her schools as science. The judgment was disciplinary, not dogmatic, and assuming, therefore, that Galileo held the scientific truth, it offers no evidence of the incompatibility of Catholic dogma with science, any more than the condemnation of an unwarrantable insurrection in a monarchical country in favor of democracy would prove that the Church is hostile to liberty.—TRANSLATOR. ]
Unable to produce any facts to support their thesis, the positivists resort to historical induction. They argue that the sciences have been in a state of continuous progress for three centuries; but during the same three centuries they say faith has been in a state of continual decline; there is, therefore, an intimate correlation between the two facts, so intimate that we may assert the former as generating the latter. But to a legitimate induction, all the facts on which it depends should be carefully observed and reported, which in this case is not done.
It is not true that faith has declined in a fatal and continuous manner; nor is it true that the sciences have made their greatest progress in those epochs in which faith has most declined. Ask history. In the beginning of the sixteenth century occurred Luther's revolt; It produced in the Christian world a universal shock. During several years heresy made every day new progress, and a part of Europe was detached from the centre of unity; but very soon the movement was arrested, and before the end of that same century a reaction against it had begun, followed by a religious revival or re-birth which produced one of the grandest epochs in the history of mankind. In the eighteenth century a new attack, more formidable than the first, is made on faith; it triumphs, and seems to be on the point of destroying all truth. Yet from the beginning of the next century a second religious restoration is effected, of which it may be as yet too early to determine the full bearing on the future, but which has already had too serious results to allow its great importance to be questioned. Thus out of four centuries there are two, the sixteenth and the eighteenth, in which faith has declined, and two, the seventeenth and the nineteenth, in which faith has revived and increased. There is not then a fatal and continuous march of faith in a certain direction. There are two contrary currents that meet and combat each other, without its being lawful as yet from the point of view of science to say which will ultimately triumph.