THE RELIGIOUS POLICY OF THE SECOND EMPIRE.
[The following is the translation of a remarkable memoir presented to Napoleon III. by one of his Ministers of Public Worship. Its authenticity is guaranteed under oath by Leon Pagès, and the date of its presentation seems to be about the year 1860. It furnishes the key to the religious events of the second period of the reign of Napoleon III., and shows how a government calling itself Catholic plotted against, and was gradually destroying the liberty of, the church. The perfidy and falsehoods contained in the document speak for themselves. The programme detailed in the second part of the same was only too faithfully carried out, not only to the ruin of the emperor, but to that of France also. It began to be put in practice in the year 1860, and was persevered in until the day when all power was taken from the hands of its authors and abettors. The key-note to the whole insidious production is contained in the opening sentence—viz., that no matter what is done by the Catholic Church, it must be for the sake of obtaining influence over souls, not for their spiritual and eternal welfare, but for mere temporal and selfish ends—for worldly power. To the Catholic reader this one remark will be sufficient to place him on his guard. We copy from the Revue du Monde Catholique.—Translator.]
I.
The essential tendency of Roman Catholicism has been, is, and always will be, the spirit of secular domination, the inevitable result of transforming a man, the Pope, into the infallible and absolute vicar of Jesus Christ on earth.
If, before the Revolution of '89, the clergy were Gallican—that is to say, national—it was because it had sufficiently attained that end of temporal rule. It was the first order of the state; it possessed great wealth; it had its own organization, and enjoyed considerable privileges; its religion was the exclusively dominant one. What else could it ask, unless it wished to displace royalty itself? The clergy then was much more French and royalist than Roman, solely because it had such enormous interests at stake in the soil and in the constitution of the kingdom.
Again, if we study carefully the so-called maxims and liberties of the Gallican Church, we quickly recognize that between the kings and the clergy these liberties constituted a sort of commutative contract entered into almost wholly at the expense of the Papacy. The bishops, generously treated by royalty, in return consented to sacrifice to royalty many of the Roman pretensions, which, however, were consequences of the spiritual supremacy; and, with more reason, they allowed the sovereign to settle all matters of purely political independence. In the Gallican Church, the king rejected Papal infallibility, because it necessarily implied his temporal supremacy; and the bishops to whom the doctrine would perhaps in any other country have been acceptable, rejected it likewise because it would have disturbed their privileges and their possessions, which they owed to royalty. It ought to be added that all this was according to the ancient traditions of the land, which had rendered better service to the church than any other, and which never desired any foreign interference in its own affairs. But certainly both the French clergy and bishops would have gone back to the pope and to ultramontane ideas, unless their independence, peaceful and magnificent, had been assured them.
After the Revolution of '89, the clergy, deprived of its possessions, its privileges, its constitution, reduced to the condition of salaried functionaries, feeling its utter dependence on the state, felt the necessity of creating for itself a new influence by detaching itself from administrations over-neutral in its regard. For a short time it saluted Napoleon I. as the restorer of the altar; then it submitted to his powerful hand; but it hastened to desert him when conquered, calling him the persecutor of Pius VII. It came to the support of the Restoration, because of the recollections of the past, and, above all, because it hoped therefrom the re-establishment of many immunities which the Restoration did not dare, in opposition to public opinion, to concede to it. This is the reason that, under the Restoration, it came to pass that the clergy was more occupied in caring for itself than for royalty, so much so that it is from this epoch that the first efforts of return to ultramontanism date their origin. No excuse can be offered for Louis XVIII. and for Charles X. for having allowed the Concordat of 1801 and the organic articles to remain in force, and for not having given to the church an indemnity, as they did to the exiles.
Under Louis Philippe, the clergy was not deluded; it understood very well that a parliamentary and democratic government would never permit it to work for the re-establishment of its power. Consequently, and under the pretext that the church, accepting all de facto governments, ought not to mix in the risks and responsibilities of politics, the clergy proclaimed its absolute neutrality, which was but another name for a complete separation. Hence nothing is easier of comprehension that it quickly gave up all Gallican ideas, to rally to the support of ultramontane doctrines. Isolated, without influence, without wealth, cramped in its sphere of activity, it had no interest in upholding the independence of the state against the Holy See, whilst everything invited it to defend once more the famous thesis of the Catholic Church, directing kings and peoples, and giving to the clergy the influence of a class superior to all others. The anti-Gallican demonstration, aided by the politicians of legitimacy and of the Catholic party, who had adopted as their watchword free education, began to develop itself rapidly in the episcopate, amongst the inferior clergy in the seminaries and religious orders, and even in the halls of the two chambers. Everything was prepared for the solemn return to Rome, when the Revolution of 1848 burst forth.
The religious party as well as the legitimists, its auxiliary, at first accepted that revolution because it destroyed the upstart, usurping, and Voltairian party. It afterwards strove with energy to form a coalition of all the elements of public order, so as to escape from the power of the demagogues; it was this same motive which influenced its votes in favor of the president; it thus struck a blow at the democratic and social republic. But when it believed that Napoleon III., who had become successively dictator and emperor, would consent to play the part of another Charlemagne, Episcopus ad extra, it became devoted to him and enthusiastic. But the emperor had no such thought; he only wished to attach the clergy firmly to the Empire by honorable laws ensuring its safety and liberty. By so doing he supplied one of the greatest social needs, without, however, departing from a wise public policy; but he had no intention of handing the state over to the church. The clergy, on its part, easily imagined what he desired. Hence we see in 1852 (and this must not be passed over) more earnestness and greater sympathy in that portion of the episcopate which was notoriously ultramontane. It was that portion which had been the best initiated by Rome into its projects of encroachment, which carried them out with the greatest zeal, and which consequently sought to conciliate the good-will of the sovereign and to engage him to pursue a course of liberal toleration.
Thus it came to pass that it immediately insinuated how exceedingly becoming it would be to enter into what was called a compact between the church and state—viz., the negotiation of a treaty which was to replace the organic articles.