THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXII., No. 131.—FEBRUARY, 1876.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
A SEQUEL OF THE GLADSTONE CONTROVERSY.[228]
“It is wonderful,” wrote Proudhon, “how in all our political questions we always stumble on theology.” Mr. Gladstone will doubtless concur in this sentiment; for he cannot take a step without stumbling on the Catholic Church. She is everywhere, and everywhere she is to him a cause of alarm. So potent is her influence growing to be, so cunningly laid are the plans by which her policy is directed, so perfect is the organization and discipline of her forces, so insidious are her methods of procedure, as he would have us believe, that it is full time all Christendom should be warned of the approaching danger. She is in his eyes an ever-present menace to the civilization of the world.
He at least bears testimony to her power and vitality. She is not a relic of a past age; she lives, and, what is more, it does not seem that she is willing to die. If we consider the various efforts by which men are seeking to weaken and destroy the church, we shall find in them no mean evidence of her divine strength. And first of all, in an age intellectually most active, she is the subject of universal criticism, and is cited before every tribunal of human knowledge to be tried on an hundred different and often contradictory counts. Her historical relations with the world, extending over eighteen hundred years and co-extensive with Christendom, are minutely examined into by men who, shutting their eyes to the benefits which she has conferred upon the human race, are eager to discover charges against her. She is made responsible for the crimes of those who called themselves Catholics, though she was the first to condemn their evil deeds. The barbarism, the ignorance, and the cruelty of the middle ages are set to her count, when, in fact, she was the chief source of civilization, of enlightenment, and of mercy during that period. When she opposes the tyranny of kings, she is called the enemy of the state; when she seeks to restrain the lawlessness of the people, she is proclaimed the friend of tyrants. Against her dogmas and institutions all the sciences are brought to bear—astronomy, geology, ethnology, and the others. Not in politics alone, but in all the physical sciences, men in our day stumble on the Catholic Church.
We are told that she is the one great spiritual organization which is able to resist, and must as a matter of life and death resist, the progress of science and modern civilization. These men profess to find innumerable points of collision between her dogmas and the conclusions of science, and are surprised when she claims to understand her own teachings better than they, and is not prepared to abandon all belief in God, the soul, and future life because physical research has given men a wider knowledge of the phenomena of matter. Now we hear objections to her moral teaching—that it is too severe, that she imposes burdens upon men’s shoulders too heavy for human nature to bear, that she encourages asceticism, celibacy, and all manner of self-denial opposed to the spirit of the age and of progress; then, on the contrary, that her morality is lax, that she flatters the passions of men, panders to their sensual appetites, and grants, for gain, permission to commit every excess.
At one time we are told that her priests are indolent, immoral, ignorant, without faith; at another, that they are ceaselessly active, astute, learned, and wholly intent upon bringing all men to their own way of thinking. Now we are informed that her children cannot be loyal subjects of any government; and immediately after we hear that they are so subservient, so passively obedient, that they willingly submit to any master. And here we come more immediately upon our subject; for whereas Mr. Gladstone has declared that the loyalty of Catholics is not to be trusted, M. de Laveleye asserts that “despotic government is the congenial government of Catholic populations.”
The pamphlet from which we quote these words, and which we propose now to examine, has been presented to the English-reading public by the special request of Mr. Gladstone, and has been farther honored by him with a prefatory letter. The author, it is true, takes a fling at the Church of England, and plainly intimates that in his opinion it is little better than the Catholic Church; but the ex-premier could not forego the opportunity of striking his enemy, though he should pierce his dearest friend in giving the blow. He takes the precaution, indeed, to disclaim any concurrence in M. de Laveleye’s “rather unfavorable estimate of the Church of England in comparison with the other reformed communions.” The question discussed in the pamphlet before us, as its title implies, is the relative influence of Catholicism and Protestantism on the liberty and prosperity of nations; and the conclusion which is drawn is that the Reformation is favorable to freedom and progress, and that the Catholic Church is a hindrance to both.