Here, we apprehend, is the real secret of the success of Protestant missions in old Catholic nations; not in the ignorance of the Catholic clergy of the real character of contemporary Protestantism, as the Abbé Martin maintains. He shows, perhaps exaggerates, the danger which the church runs in these old Catholic nations, and admits that it is becoming apparent, if not to all, at least to many of the clergy, and asks,
"How could it be otherwise with the French clergy, so learned, so pious, so vigilant, and so zealous? They are preparing themselves for the struggle; they proceed to the battle with the energy of faith; they lack not ability; but they lack a knowledge of contemporary Protestantism. If they would struggle with success, if they would revive the glorious days of the Catholic apologetic of the seventeenth century, or rather, if they would create a new apologetic in harmony with the wants and errors of the times, they must study Protestantism in its latest evolutions and in its actual physiognomy." (Pp. 178, 179.)
No doubt there is more or less ignorance even among the French clergy as to the various phases and wiles of Protestantism, and which their text-books will hardly help them to dissipate; but what seems to us to stand most in their way is precisely their need of studying Catholic theology more thoroughly in its relations to human reason and the secular order—a study they could hardly prosecute under what are facetiously termed "the Gallican liberties;" that is, liberties of the government to enslave the church. No man who has learned Catholic theology as catholic instead of national, who has learned that the church represents on earth the spiritual order, and has the freedom and courage to maintain that the spiritual is superior to the temporal, is, in fact, the end for which the temporal exists, and therefore that which prescribes to the temporal its law, can ever be at a loss to understand or to know how to meet Protestantism the moment he sees it, whatever the particular phase it may exhibit. Protestantism is not and never was any thing but a series of negations, and all the advantage it has ever had or ever will have over Catholics is precisely in their ignorance of the real or intrinsic relation of the Catholic doctrine or doctrines it denies to the whole body of Catholic truth.
Protestantism, the author himself sees, is simply revived paganism; but what he does not see is, that the state in all European nations has always been pagan, and never in its principle or constitution been truly Christian. Our own political constitution may be very imperfect, may be destined to a speedy end; but it is the first and only instance in history of a political constitution based on Christian principles; that is, on the recognition of the independence of religion and the supremacy of the spiritual order. It recognizes, in our modern phrase, the inalienable rights of man as its basis; but what the American statesman calls the rights of man are, in reality, the rights of God, which every human authority must hold sacred and inviolable. We pretend not that the American people or American statesmen fully understand or adhere practically to the American constitution, or that they ever will till they become Catholics and understand, as comparatively few Catholics even now do, the principles of their church in their political and social applications. Nevertheless, the constitution is based on the independence and supremacy of the spiritual order, which the secular order must always and everywhere recognize, respect, and defend. This is in direct contradiction of the principle of the pagan republic, which asserts the independence and supremacy of the state alike in temporals and spirituals.
But this pagan principle of the supremacy of the state has always been the basis of the European public law, and the church, though she has always maintained the contrary, has always been held in the civil jurisprudence to have only the rights accorded her by the civil government. This has always been the doctrine alike of the Civil Law and the Common Law courts, always rigidly enforced by the French parliaments, and not seldom yielded by courtly prelates afraid, as in England, of the statute of præmunire. There have been individual sovereigns who personally understood and yielded the church her rights; but their lawyers never recognized them save as grants or concessions by the prince. Hence the interminable quarrel of the legists and the canonists, and the sad spectacle of the bishops of a nation not seldom deserting almost in a body the supreme pontiff in his deadly struggle with their civil tyrants in defence of their own rights, and the freedom and independence of the spiritual order. Hence, too, we see Italian statesmen, while pretending to acknowledge and confirm religious liberty, confiscating the goods of the church, and prescribing in the name of the state the conditions on which the bishops of the church will be permitted to exercise their pastoral functions. Hence it is, also, that we have seen pious and devout Catholics defend the revolution and preach political atheism in one breath, and the most rigid orthodoxy in another.
With all deference to M. l'Abbé Martin, we must think that what is wanting in the Catholic populations of old Catholic countries in order to resist the Protestant propaganda, is not so much a better knowledge of Protestantism, as a more thorough knowledge of their own faith, and of Catholic principles themselves, in relation to one another and to the secular order—a knowledge which has been hindered, and to a great extent prevented, by the paganism of the state, which has disabled the church from freely and fully giving it. Happily, the European governments by ceasing to be protectors of the church have in great measure lost the power, if not to afflict and persecute, at least to enslave her. The bishops, with only here and there an exception, no longer take the side of Cæsar against Peter, and see that their interests and those of the church can be saved only by the strictest union with and submission to the supreme pastor, the vicar of Christ. The supreme pastor himself, without consulting earthly potentates or conferring with flesh and blood, has pronounced in his Encyclical and Syllabus, a rigorous judgment on political atheism and paganism in modern society, and set forth the Catholic principles in which the faithful need to be instructed in order to resist the Protestant propaganda, supported by rationalism and the revolution. He has asserted the independence and freedom of the church in convoking by his own authority, almost in defiance of the secular powers, an œcumenical council, to be held in his own palace of the Vatican, in which the universal church, aided by the Holy Ghost, will, we presume, deliberate and pronounce upon the errors of the times, and indicate the means of arresting the evils that now so grievously afflict society, both spiritual and secular. Hereafter, we may hope, the faithful, cost what it may, will be more thoroughly instructed as to the relations of the two powers, and of faith to reason and civil society, so that an end will be put to the progress in Catholic nations of Protestantism, rationalism, and political atheism.
The Abbé Martin succeeds better in describing Protestantism as it is, and in setting forth the danger it threatens, than in pointing out the remedy to be applied by Catholics, or in assigning the causes of the defects he finds or thinks he finds among them. He does not see that these defects, in so far as general, are almost wholly due to the pagan constitution of the state, which has survived the downfall of pagan Rome, and to the fact that the church has never yet in the Old World had her full freedom and independence, but has always been more or less restrained in her action by the jealousy or hostility of the state. The lack of individual energy and self-reliance of Catholics in asserting and defending the rights of the church, which the abbé deplores, has its origin in the restraint imposed by the civil authority on the freedom of the church.
"Catholics," he says, "relying on authority, full of confidence in its unfailing promises, are quite ready to think that it is enough for them to preserve the faith in their hearts, and to perform its works, while the defence and preservation of the church is the care of Providence. This sentiment, very commendable, no doubt, is yet, when not joined to a masculine energy which counts no sacrifices, if needed, in sustaining the work of God, only an enervating sloth. Catholics—may I say it?—need the activity of individual forces, not, indeed, of that excessive individualism which, puffed up by pride, drives the Protestant over the dark waves of doubt, but that Christian individualism which, accepting by conviction the compass of authority, knows how to employ all its personal forces in its service. This individualism, Protestants reproach us with lacking; let us prove to them the contrary, and show that individual action is quite as powerful and far more productive, when it is well balanced, measured, and subjected to wise rules, as when it wanders without law or discipline, and acts only under the varying impulses of free inquiry. It is, moreover, necessary to enter into this way; for the time has come for Catholics to understand that they can henceforth nowhere on earth count on any support but from God and themselves." (Pp. 175, 176.)
The author adds that Catholics, not only nominal but even many practical Catholics, lack the individual energy that
"springs from profound faith, the faith which goes to the marrow, and enters even the centre of the soul, and radiates from it in earnest convictions over all religious practices, over the entire life, giving to them their true sense and to it the right direction and end. Protestants accuse our church of materialism in her worship....
"The charge is false when applied to the church and her worship, but is only too true when applied to her members. Hence the painful inconsistencies in their conduct. They are Catholics in the church, Catholics in essential religious practices, sometimes even in works of supererogation, but are elsewhere and in other matters hardly Christians. The petit devotion is sterile; manly, robust piety alone is productive, and it is it alone that we must labor to diffuse. We should seek to make it enter into souls and become fused with their very substance. Catholic worship is the most admirable vehicle of the spirit of life; but souls must comprehend it, and be instructed to draw the spirit of life from it." (Pp. 176, 177.)