which God has given them to preserve and perpetuate these rights, and to protect the more helpless classes of their fellow-Catholics, the poor, the orphans, the sick, the outcasts of society, in the enjoyment of their religious rights. This includes a great deal. First and foremost at the present moment is liberty of education. Besides this, there are the rights of religious instruction and sacraments for those who are in the army and navy, in hospitals, asylums, and prisons, and in those institutions where children are justly or unjustly placed by the civil authority as vagrants. In short, everywhere, where the state takes hold of the individual, or exercises a right of control over any lesser corporation which takes hold of him, in such a way that there is a chance for tyranny over his conscience, and the violation or abridgment of his religious rights and liberty in the interest of sectarianism or secularism, it is the duty of the most eminent Catholic laymen to become, together with their bishops and priests, the champions of the oppressed.
Does any one say that there is no need of vigilance or action, because there is no danger that our rights will be disregarded or infringed? We think he is in error. “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And as one proof that Catholics in this republic have need to exercise this vigilance, we will cite an example of the disastrous consequences which have followed from the neglect of it in another republic.
The Confederation of the Swiss Cantons established and guaranteed in the most solemn and explicit manner the liberty of religion for Catholics and Protestants alike. Nevertheless, the liberty of the Catholic Church has been taken away in the most flagrant manner, even in the Catholic Cantons, by tyrannical federal
and cantonal legislation. Fifty religious establishments were suppressed at one blow. Since that time,—that is, since 1848—religious houses and schools have been forcibly suppressed at Ascona, Lugano, Mendrisio, and Bellinzona, and the diocesan seminaries at Pollegio and Aargau. Nearly all the Catholic schools in most of the mixed cantons have been changed into mixed schools, and in Thurgau they have been all suppressed. No priest can be admitted to the exercise of his functions who has studied at any Jesuit college. The catechism of the bishop in whose diocese Aargau is situated, the Bible History of Schuster, and the Moral Theologies of Gury and Kenrick, have been interdicted by the civil authority. Prohibitions have been issued against missions, retreats, the publication of the Jubilee, and the devotions of the Month of Mary. In Aargau, no youth can embrace the ecclesiastical state without the leave of the cantonal assembly, before which august and holy tribunal he must pass two examinations. In the Catholic canton of Ticino, the cantonal assembly arrogates to itself the right of changing the destination of religious foundations, fixing and regulating the election, installation in benefices, and official functions of beneficiaries, erecting new parishes and abolishing existing ones. The placet of the civil authority is requisite for all ecclesiastical decrees of the bishops and the Pope under penalty of fines varying from five to five thousand francs. In several cantons civil marriage is obligatory. In short, the Catholics of Switzerland are in an enslaved and insupportable condition, as is proved by a memorial of the whole body of the Swiss Episcopate, in which these and many other particulars are given.[158]
The profession of liberalism affords no guarantee to Catholics against the most flagrant and cruel oppression. Neither is there any security in the mere fact that the form of government is democratic or republican. Everywhere, as well in countries called Catholic as in those which are not, under republican as well as under monarchical constitutions, the price of liberty is unceasing vigilance and activity. Catholics must rely entirely on themselves, and not delegate the office of protecting them to any party or ruling power. This is necessary in the United States as well as in Switzerland. We do not ascribe to the majority of the non-Catholic citizens of our federal republic or of any state a disposition to abridge our liberty. But it is not the majority which really governs. Principles, maxims, arguments, watch-words, measures, are initiated by a few persons. Majorities are carried along by leaders, orators, writers for the press, they know not why, how, or toward what end. There is danger, therefore, though not from the American people, from the masters of state-craft, but from restless, revolutionary spirits, from violent sectarian leaders, from ambitious demagogues, from parties which may start up and be violently impelled by sudden excitements.
The conclusion of all this is, that the élite of the Catholic laity are bound to understand the sound Catholic principles of public law and right which are involved in the relation of liberty of conscience and religion to the sovereignty of the state, under our American republican institutions. They are bound to instruct those who are uneducated in their rights and obligations as citizens. They are bound to set before the public the grounds and reasons
of Catholic rights, as based on the natural and divine law, and the American constitution. And they are bound to exclude unprincipled, ignorant demagogues from the leadership of the Catholic people by taking it themselves, and in that position opposing with all their might every political scheme for giving the state a usurped power over conscience and religion. Those who are incapable of doing anything else in this direction can at least aid by their wealth the Catholic press in diffusing true and just ideas, and advocating Catholic rights.
[158] See Dublin Review for October, 1871.