In discussing the comparative morality of Catholic and Protestant nations it would be more satisfactory, even though it should not be more conclusive, to consider their
respective virtues rather than their vices. There would seem to be neither good sense nor logic in taking the individuals and classes that are least brought under religious influences of any kind, in order to use their depravity as an argument for or against the church or Protestantism. In the apostolic body one out of twelve was a thief and traitor, yet neither Catholics nor Protestants are in the habit of concluding from this that they must all have been rogues and hypocrites. The amount of crime, one would think, is but a poor test of the amount of virtue. As the greatest sinners have made the greatest saints, so in the church depravity may co-exist with the most heroic virtue, though, of course, not in the same individual. Our divine Saviour plainly declares that in his church the good shall be mingled with the bad; that the cockle shall grow with the wheat till the harvest time; that some shall call him Lord and Master, and yet do not the will of his Father; that even, with regard to those who sit in the chair of Moses—and, let us add, of Peter—though their authority must ever be acknowledged, yet are not their lives always to be imitated, nor approved of even. It is manifestly contrary to the teaching of Christ to make the note of sanctity in his church consist in the individual holiness of each and every member. He is no Puritan, though he is the all-holy God. A puristic religion is essentially narrow, self-conscious, and unsympathetic; it draws a line here on earth between the elect and the reprobate; its disciples eat not with sinners, nor enter into their abodes, nor hold out to them the pleading hands of large-hearted charity. Such a faith does not grow upon men; it
does not win and convert them to God.
If, instead of comparing the crimes, we should consider the respective virtues of Catholic and Protestant nations, we should at once be struck by the difference in their standards of morality. The most practical way of determining the real standard of morality of any religion is to study the character of its saints. There we find religious ideals made tangible and fully discernible. Here at once we perceive that there is an essential difference between the Catholic and the Protestant standard of morality. The lives of our saints, even when understood by Protestants, generally repel them. They are, in their eyes, useless lives, idle lives, superstitious lives, unnatural and inhuman. We take the words of Christ, “If thou wouldst be perfect, go sell what thou hast, give it to the poor, and come and follow me,” in their full and complete literal meaning. The highest life is to leave father and mother, to have nor wife nor children, nor temporal goods except what barely suffices, and to cleave to Christ only with all one’s soul in poverty, chastity, and obedience. Now, this life of prayer in poverty, chastity, and obedience is an offence to Protestants. They do not believe in perfect chastity, they hold religious obedience to be a slavery, and poverty, in their eyes, is ridiculous. Inasmuch as the monks tilled the earth, transcribed books, and taught school, they receive a partial recognition from the Protestant world; but inasmuch as they were bound by religious vows they excite disgust. We should say, then, that the distinctive trait of Catholic morality is ascetic, while the Protestant is utilitarian. The one primarily regards the world that is to be, the
other that which already is. The one inclines us to look upon this as a worthless world to lose or win; the other is shrewd and calculating—this is the best we have any practical experience of; it is the part of wisdom to make the most of it. The one seems to be more certain of the future life, the other of the present. It is needless to prolong the contrast, and we shall simply confess that we have always been inclined to the opinion of those who hold that Protestantism, in its aims and direct tendencies, is more favorable to what is called material progress than Catholicism. In fact, one cannot realize the personal survival of the soul through eternity, and at the same time be supremely interested in stocks or the price of cotton.
Not that the church discourages efforts which have as their object the material interests of mankind; but, in her view, our duties to God are of the first importance, and to these all others are subordinate. What doth it profit? she is always asking, whereas Protestantism is busy trying to show us how very profitable and pleasant the Reformation has made this world—and virtuous, too, since honesty is the best policy and enlightened self-interest the standard of morals. It is the old story—God and the world, the supernatural and the natural, progress from above and progress from below.
But we feel that it is time we should give our readers proof that we have no desire to avoid direct issue with M. de Laveleye. We flatly deny, then, his assertion that the Catholic nations are more immoral than the Protestant; and when he further affirms that Catholic writers themselves—for his words can have no other meaning—admit this, he lies under a mistake for which there
can be no possible excuse. In the statement of facts, however, which we propose now to give, we make no use whatever of the testimony of Catholics, but rely exclusively upon the authority of Protestants and of statistics; and that our readers may have the benefit of observations extending over considerable time as well as space, we will not confine ourselves to the most recent writers or statistics on the subject under discussion. Laing, a Scotch Presbyterian and a most conscientious and observant traveller, who wrote some thirty-five years ago, says of the French: “They are, I believe, a more honest people than the British.… It is a fine distinction of the French national character and social economy that practical morality is more generally taught through manners among and by the people themselves than in any country in Europe.”[4] Alison, the historian, writing about the same time, but referring to the early part of this century, says that the proportion of crime to the inhabitants was twelve times greater in Prussia than in France.[5] To this may be added the testimony of John Stuart Mill, in his Autobiography, published since his death, who passed a considerable portion of his life in France. Referring to his sojourn there when quite a young man, he says:
“Having so little experience of English life, and the few people I knew being mostly such as had public objects of a large and personally disinterested kind at heart, I was ignorant of the low moral tone of what in England is called society: the habit of, not indeed professing, but taking for granted in every mode of implication that conduct is of course always directed towards low and petty objects; the absence of high feelings,
which manifests itself by sneering depreciation of all demonstrations of them, and by general abstinence (except among a few of the stricter religionists) from professing any high principles of action at all, except in those preordained cases in which such profession is put on as part of the costume and formalities of the occasion. I could not then know or estimate the difference between this manner of existence and that of a people like the French, whose faults, if equally real, are at all events different; among whom sentiments which, by comparison at least, may be called elevated are the current coin of human intercourse, both in books and in private life, and, though often evaporating in profession, are yet kept alive in the nation at large by constant exercise and stimulated by sympathy, so as to form a living and active part of the existence of a great number of persons, and to be recognized and understood by all. Neither could I then appreciate the general culture of the understanding, which results from the habitual exercise of the feelings, and is thus carried down into the most uneducated classes of several countries on the Continent, in a degree not equalled in England among the so-called educated, except where an unusual tenderness of conscience leads to a habitual exercise of the intellect on questions of right and wrong.”[6]