"They declared their object plainly enough: it was to claim back for the church of France every privilege of liberty, whilst rejecting none of its burdens. The revolution had just made a clean sweep of all ancient traditions. Since the restoration of order and public worship at the beginning of the century, the clergy had learnt to their cost the real value of that protection granted by a power which was ill-informed as to the real nature of its relations with the church; they had found out by experience what they had gained in consideration under the empire, under the restoration, and under the recently established régime of the bourgoisie. What attitude were they to assume toward the new government? Would the old endeavors to form an alliance between the throne and the altar now recommence? The Avenir was founded to preserve them from this temptation. Its programme was, respect for the charter and for just laws; but for the rest, an absolute independence of the civil government. It consequently advocated liberty of opinion for the press, and war against arbitrary power and privilege; liberty of education, and war against the monopoly of the university; liberty of association, and war against the old anti-monastic laws revived in evil times; the liberty and moral independence of the clergy, and war against the budget of public worship. Very vague and uncertain limits were assigned to these different liberties, and the reserves stipulated for in the declarations of doctrine disappeared often enough when the writers were carried away by the ardor of discussion, and the vehemence of invective. They were more frequently engaged, we must confess, in obtaining the thing they sought than in preventing its abuse. Far too radical in their principles, the polemics of the journal were yet more so in the course of action which they recommended. 'Liberty is not given, it is taken,' was a phrase continually repeated; nor did they scruple to add example to precept. Every morning the charge was sounded, and every day witnessed some new feat of arms. The clergy were addressed as an army drawn up in battle array. Every means was tried to kindle their ardor; the zeal of the tardy was stimulated, and deserters were set in the pillory. The chiefs of the party were harangued, the plan of campaign indicated beforehand, the enemy pointed out and pursued to death. Philosophers, enemies of religion, ministers, miserable pro-consuls, members of the university, citizens, and Gallicans were all attacked at once. Resistance did but rouse the spirit of the combatants; it seemed as though the sun always set too early on their warlike ardor. Patience and discretion were not much regarded in their system of tactics; they wanted to have everything at once, and could not wait for to-morrow, and what was not granted with a good grace was to be snatched by force, and at the point of the sword. This haughty and antagonistic attitude, this want of experience in men and things, more excusable in the young disciples than it was in their master, formed, in our opinion, the greatest fault of the Avenir. Its errors and exaggerations of doctrine might have been corrected with time, good advice, and the practical teaching of facts. But those haughty accents, so strange when heard from the lips of priests, alarmed even their friends, and created a certain consternation at Rome—Rome ever calm as truth, and patient as eternity. The responsibility of this false attitude must be charged chiefly on the Abbé de la Mennais and the Abbé Lacordaire. It was the latter who drew up the most incendiary harangues, and opened the most difficult questions.
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"The philosophic opinions of M. de la Mennais, and the absolute theories of his journal, particularly those which represented the state payment of the clergy as the badge of shame and slavery, had excited a certain feeling of distrust among the episcopacy, which daily increased. The young disciples of M. de la Mennais were never afraid of a combat; but their faith and loyalty could not endure the vague suspicions raised against their orthodoxy. They began to desire a clear, open explanation, and they determined to go and demand it from the judge of all ecclesiastical controversies, the successor of St. Peter."
The first suggestion of this course came from Lacordaire. He reached Rome, with his two companions, about the end of December, 1831, and besought an audience with the Holy Father Gregory XVI. for the purpose of explaining their views and intentions, and, we may suppose, of defending their orthodoxy. But Rome is not readily moved by the dreams of young enthusiasts, and their reception was a cold one. They were denied a personal interview, and were required to put what they had to say into writing. At the end of two months, Cardinal Pacca condescended to notice their memorial, promised that it "should be examined," and courteously bade them go home. The effect of this treatment upon De la Mennais and Lacordaire respectively, is a remarkable illustration of their characters. The one, deeply wounded in his pride, is sullen under the reproof and at last throws away for ever the precious gift of faith. The other acknowledges his errors, bows humbly to the command of God, and, delivered from "the most terrible of all oppressions, that of the intellect," starts afresh upon a more glorious career than the one he is forced to abandon. "When I arrived at Rome," he writes, "at the tomb of the holy apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, I knelt down and said to God, 'Lord, I begin to feel my weakness, my sight fails me, truth and error alike escape my grasp; have pity on thy servant, who comes to thee with a sincere heart; hear the prayer of the poor.' I know neither the day nor the hour when it took place, but at last I saw what I had not before seen, and I left Rome free and victorious. I had learned from my own experience that the church is the deliverer of the human intellect; and as from freedom of intellect all other freedoms necessarily flow, I perceived the questions which then agitated the world in their true light." "It was at this moment, as I venture to believe," says Montalembert, "that God for ever marked him with the seal of his grace and laid up for him the reward due to his unshaken fidelity, so worthy of a priestly soul."
Lacordaire now resolved to return at once to France, and abandon the Avenir entirely. De la Mennais persisted in remaining at Rome longer and resuming the suspended periodical; but when the pope decided at last in his Encyclical Letter of August 15th, 1832, and decided against him, he made a temporary submission, and withdrew to his country-house at La Chesnaie. In this solitary retreat, where, in the days of his greatness, a knot of favorite disciples used to sit at his feet, he was once more joined by Lacordaire, who had more confidence in the reality of his master's obedience to the Holy See than after events justified. Before long, others of the young school gathered under the roof of the lonely manor-house. De la Mennais chafed daily more and more under the affront to his intellect. He gave signs of rebellion. His heart was torn by passion, and his lips let fall dark threats and alarming murmurs. "The harrowing spectacle," says Lacordaire, "became too much for me to bear." He wrote M. de la Mennais an affecting letter of farewell; and left La Chesnaie alone and on foot. It was not long before the apostasy of De la Mennais brought the sad history to an awful close.
The young priest, who had escaped from the snare, hastened to present himself to the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr. de Quélen. He was received with open arms, as a son who had returned wounded and weary from some dangerous adventure. "You want another baptism," said the archbishop, "and I will give you one." He reappointed him to the chaplaincy of the Visitation, and in the retirement of that peaceful retreat he found rest for his disturbed soul, and girded up his loins for a fresh battle with the world.
He spent about a year in this solitude, and then accepted an invitation from the officers of the Stanislaus College in Paris, to preach a series of conferences to the students. Here, at last, was the vocation for which God had designed him. The pulpit was his proper sphere. After the first day, the pupils had to give up their places to crowds of strangers, and the chapel could not contain the numbers who flocked to listen to his indescribable eloquence. It was an eloquence not restricted by rules. The orator trampled under foot the artificial forms which for centuries had cramped and confined the utterances of the pulpit. He outraged at pleasure all the canons of the schools. His conferences were neither lectures, nor homilies, nor sermons, but rather were brilliant discourses on sacred subjects in which all the sympathies of the audience were by turns engaged. He spoke not merely as a priest, but as a citizen, a poet, a philosopher, as a man of the day, appreciating the spirit and the wants of his own time. But, like all men who strike out in a new path, and are not satisfied to follow exactly in the footsteps of their grandfathers, he encountered bitter opposition from a certain class of purblind formalists. His style, they said, was too human; his rhetoric was too erratic; his disrespect for the text-books of the schools of eloquence was positively appalling. Nay, was he not one of that pestiferous brood which De la Mennais had hatched in the woods of La Chesnaie, and which the Pope had solemnly condemned? Was he not a liberal in politics, a friend of liberty, an admirer of American republicanism? He had recanted his errors; but that was forgotten. He had given the strongest proofs of the steadfastness of his faith and the completeness of his submission to the Holy See; but these were overlooked. He was not merely an orator, but an accomplished theologian, for he had always been a hard student; but to this his opponents resolutely shut their eyes. They denounced him as a dangerous man, a fanatic, an innovator, and a corrupter of youth. Their clamor at last prevailed, and by order of the archbishop the conferences were suspended. This second humiliation, which he accepted with the same docility as the first, was of short duration. M. Affre, afterward Archbishop of Paris, pleaded so earnestly for his reinstatement that he was not only restored to the pulpit but appointed a series of conferences in the great cathedral of Notre Dame. We shall tell in his own words how, after a brief hesitation, he entered upon this important duty:
"The day having come, Notre Dame was filled with a multitude such as had never before been seen within its walls. The liberal and the absolutist youth of Paris, friends and enemies, and that curious crowd which a great capital has always ready for anything new, had all flocked together, and were packed in dense masses within the old cathedral. I mounted the pulpit firmly but not without emotion, and began my discourse with my eye fixed on the archbishop who, after God, but before the public, was to me the first personage in the scene. He listened with his head a little bent down, in a state of absolute impassibility, like a man who was not a mere spectator, nor even a judge, but rather as one who ran a personal risk by the experiment. I soon felt at home with my subject and my audience, and as my breast swelled under the necessity of grasping that vast assembly of men, and the calm of the first opening sentences began to give place to the inspiration of the orator, one of those exclamations escaped from me which, when deep and heartfelt, never fail to move. The archbishop visibly trembled. I watched his countenance change as he raised his head and cast on me a glance of astonishment. I saw that the battle was gained in his mind, and it was so already in that of the audience. Having returned home, he announced that he was going to appoint me honorary canon of the cathedral; and they had some difficulty in inducing him to wait until the end of the station."
The effect of these discourses was irresistible. All Paris came to hear them; and over the young men especially, into whose wants, tastes, feelings, hopes, aspirations, disappointments Father Lacordaire entered so thoroughly, because he had experienced them all himself, his influence was almost unbounded.