There is the law, and it is sure to be carried out. Well, the bishops will go to prison, will pay the fines, or become exiles. They will continue to ordain priests and educate them, irrespective of that power called the state. And the real difficulty begins now. The Catholics cannot yield: sooner or later, the state must.
One fact has come out of it all which is worthy of notice. This XIXth century, at least this latter half of it, has been lauded and glorified superabundantly as the age of freedom, the liberal age.
Catholics began to forget their history. They began to think the era of persecution for conscience’ sake over, when they heard it proclaimed on all sides that perfect freedom of thought was the order of the day; there was to be no such distinction as Catholic or Protestant, or Jew or Gentile, any more; the lion was to lie down with the lamb, the world to become a haven of brotherly love, and the dawn of the millennium was seen in the heavens. The rack, the gibbet, the fagot, and the hurdle were all to be banished out of sight and forgotten, or only preserved in museums as evidence of what horrible beings our sires could become. It was all very gushing and nice; the narrow lines of prejudice were to be softened down, and old-fogy, stiff-kneed notions to be voted out.
Suddenly rang out the voice of Peter’s successor: Liberalism is false: beware of it. It is only a few years back since these words startled the world in the Syllabus. A storm of hatred and malign fury arose on all sides, endeavoring to drown the voice of the church. Who are you who condemn us? asked the world.
The infallible head of the church! Men proclaimed that Catholics themselves did not accept it; and the Catholic Church spoke out boldly in these days, not to proclaim a new doctrine, but only to acknowledge to a doubting world what it had always accepted and believed, that the head of the church upon earth is infallible. There was no more talk of softening down of lines: Catholics believed this, or were not Catholics. Listen to the voice of one of the bitterest and most persistent enemies of the Pope, speaking only the other day:
“It is impossible to imagine a belief more sincere, a vision more intense, a life more consistent, than that of the man who has claimed for more than a quarter of a century to be the lord and master of the whole world. If there be neither folly nor sin in such a claim, then we may admire Pius IX., and indeed must worship and obey him also.”[149]
Was the “intense vision” mistaken in detecting the poison which lay at the bottom of liberalism? Prince Bismarck has just deserted the conservative party to which he adhered so long—all his political life almost—and thrown himself into the arms of the liberals. These ecclesiastical bills are the result—such is liberalism. “We will force your children to go to our schools and receive the education we give them, which you call godless,” says Huxley, scientific liberal like Dr. Falk. La Commune was the essence of liberalism, and it shot the Archbishop of Paris and the priests out of pure sport apparently. “A free church in a free state” was the Cavour doctrine for liberal Italy, and the bill for the appropriation of church property and of that belonging to the religious orders has followed naturally upon the appropriation of the Papal States and the imprisonment of the head of the church. Switzerland, the liberal republic, banishes the Jesuits, closes the convents, and follows Bismarck’s steps in its dealings with the Catholic clergy. The South American states are doing the same in the name of liberalism. The whole world may be traversed, and wherever liberalism is strongest, there is violence done in the name of freedom.
And here in this free republic men are found, like the writers in the Nation and throughout the Protestant press, to approve of all this. And they are republicans—Americans—lovers of freedom. If Americans, they are traitors to their country, repudiators of the principles of their sires. They forget their history. What brought the Pilgrim Fathers hither? The refusal to take the oath of supremacy to the state. Is what was right in them wrong in us? Freedom was the one word written on the virgin brow of this yet young republic. You who approve of these measures in Prussia would wipe that word out, and set in its place slavery.
The effect which these measures have produced on the outer world is significant. Those who hailed the first outburst on the part of Prince Bismarck with such loud acclaim begin to hesitate and draw back. The secular journals in this country and in England, as a rule, either watch and pronounce upon the steps which have led up to this final outrage with timid caution, or, in a few instances, with downright disapproval.