And what is the state, to-day, of France? Religious belief is vigorously attacked and even philosophical faith seems ready to disappear. The truths of reason are overthrown, and a pretended science, intoxicated with itself, denies human reason, and wishes, in the name of atheism and materialism, to snatch from man his belief in the immortality of the soul and his faith in God. The most dangerous doctrines concerning morals, society, the soul, the family, a future life, and God, are warmly defended by means of journals, pamphlets, and even novels. Our contemporaries are either wrecked on this sea of errors, or float, without a helm or a compass, at the mercy of every wind of doubt. Dark storms are rising in human souls, and they penetrate the very depths of the masses of the people.
At the same time, there are many misunderstandings in regard to the church, and consequently there is an animated attack upon her doctrines. When the revolution, which is now making a tour through Europe and the rest of the world, appeared in France, the church was attached by bonds, which time had forged, to the old political order. She was carried with that political system into the struggle. Hence it comes that men have not been able to distinguish that which belongs to a legitimate state of society, without being at all necessary to the church, and that which constitutes the essential principles and immutable spirit of Christianity.
With certain men there is only one feeling toward the church—that of blind and implacable hatred. Forgetting eighteen centuries of benefits, they continue to wage an ungrateful war. The waves of revolution sweep in their course both truth and falsehood, virtue and crime, benefits and injuries, and the church, because she can make no compromise with error and vice, must persist in pointing out the illusion of deceitful words and the danger of false doctrines. Many stubbornly charge the church with thoughts and doctrines which are not hers. An infidel press and unscrupulous blasphemy against the church strive to separate the people from her fold. We hear, both in disorderly conventions and in the writings of those journalists who convene them, the most stupid and reckless assertions against the church mingling with threats of social war. And even in our legislative assemblies this unreasonable enmity appears, demanding a violent separation of the church and society.
And lately, when the voice of the Sovereign Pontiff was raised to describe the overflow of those impious and immoral theories which now inundate us, how many complaints, how many unmerited accusations were everywhere made! Without caring to understand his meaning, the Holy Father was calumniated. And with grief we saw statesmen, under the influence of violent passion and without asking or writing for any explanation, hasten to proclaim an antagonism which, thank God, does not exist.
These hostilities against the church, while separating from her the people who are deluded, render the peril in which these contemporary errors would drag us far more formidable. Doctrines are not inoffensive; M. De Bonald promulgated a law of history which is confirmed by constant experience, when he wrote these forcible words: "There are always great disorders where there are great errors, and great errors where there are great disorders." It is thought that brings forth facts; storms come from above.
And I say to men of good faith, you expected to establish the government of people and the conduct of life on reason alone. This experiment has been tried for three quarters of a century in France; what is the result? Are the morals of our people better? Is the civil authority respected? Is liberty well established? Has war disappeared? Or misery? Or ignorance? And what can be said of those questions which reason asks with a rare fertility of invention, but which she cannot answer, and which concern the very organization of society—questions about labor, wages, and workmen? I do not exaggerate when I assert that since reason has pretended to reign alone, she reigns, like the night star, over shadows which she cannot dissipate. Even in the most civilized countries, the earth has become an abode of anxiety, distress, strife, and terror. The nineteenth century will soon close, agitated, weary, barren, and incontestably diseased. Rash indeed would be the one who would venture to predict that it would close in glory and not in perdition.
IV.
Review Of The Past
However, I beseech my friends and brethren in the faith not to exaggerate anything. It is permitted to be sad, I repeat, when we consider the present times; and I should feel bound to consider the soul which is not saddened by these things as possessing very little true nobility. The sons of the nineteenth century, the men of my day, have had many enchanting dreams; we have nourished many generous hopes; but now we are going to die, and to die deluded. But what! is our short life the whole of history? We did not live in the sixteenth century; we shall not see the twentieth; but the church lived yesterday, and she will live to-morrow. If I should say what she hopes, all my prophecies would not be forebodings; and if I should question her memory, the present times would appear all the brighter by being compared with the past. If we glance at ages which are no more, shall we find many centuries which did not have their troubles and their dangers? Ah! the discouragement of certain Catholics calls to mind the sentence of one of the sapiential books: "Say not: what thinkest thou is the cause that former times were better than they are now? for this manner of question is foolish." [Footnote 287] I was reading a few days since some of the bulls of convocation of the ancient councils of the middle ages. The lamentation of those popes of the misfortunes of their time far exceeds anything which is heard to-day. And, not to go further back than the Council of Trent, let the church tell us of those times, for she was present to them. What did she see then?
[Footnote 287: Eccles. vii. 11.]
That century was much like ours, because of its great discoveries, its appreciation of learning, and its revival of the arts; it was like the present century, also, in the bad use it made of these gifts. The sixteenth century peopled America, which had been only recently discovered; abandoned itself to cruel excesses of crime and avarice there, and introduced the disgrace of human slavery. It received treasures from that country, and it used them for the corruption of the morals of Europe. Whether we look upon the thrones, or among the masses of the people, or even in the church herself, we find many a sad spectacle. This century was the witness of the crimes of Henry VIII.; Elizabeth; Ivan the Terrible; Christian II.; the Medici; Charles IX.; and Henry III. This century saw the pillaging of Rome and the siege of Paris. This century saw the pretended reformation rend the church, disturb the peace of all Europe, and divide Christians into two parts. If one desires to find out the evils which existed in the church and in society in those days, let him read the lives of great and holy people of that time; let him read of Bartholomew, of the Martyrs St. Charles Borromeo and St. Francis of Sales. I have already mentioned the papal bulls of the middle ages; but read those of the pontiffs who convoked the Council of Trent, and it will be soon seen that Adrian VI., Paul III., Pius IV., were then more alarmed at the dangers of the Christian republic than Pius IX. now is. There was tepidity, disorder, and scandal; the clergy poorly organized; the religious orders much relaxed; and then, too, princes were divided, the people oppressed, and war a daily occurrence in every country. And the council which had assembled amid such sad circumstances was compelled to meet in a little village hidden in the mountains of Tyrol, and or six years it was at the mercy of temporal princes to suspend or to allow it to proceed; and thus it was compelled to endure a perpetual conflict.