greater or less degree been drawn to help on this growth. Another century, bringing other circumstances, with them will bring the opportunity and the duty of other work. A more thorough organization must be given to our educational system; Catholic universities mast be created which in time will grow to be intellectual centres in which the best minds of the church in this country may receive the culture and training that will enable them to work in harmony for the furtherance of Catholic ends; a more vigorous and independent press, one not weakened by want or depraved by human respect or regard for persons, must be brought into existence. We must prepare ourselves to enter more fully into the public life of the country; to throw the light of Catholic thought upon each new phase of opinion or belief as it rises; to grapple more effectively with the great moral evils which threaten at once the life of the nation and of the church. All this and much else we have to do, if our God-given mission is to be fulfilled.
And now we will crave the indulgence of our readers while we conclude with a brief reference to what we conceive to be the office which the Catholic Church is destined to fulfil in behalf of the American state and civilization.
De Tocqueville, in his thoughtful and singularly judicious treatise on American institutions, makes the following very just remarks:
“I think the Catholic religion has been falsely looked upon as the enemy of democracy. On the contrary, Catholicism, among the various sects of Christians, seems to me to be one of the most favorable to the equality of social conditions. The religious community in the Catholic Church is composed of but two elements—the priest and the people. The priest
alone is lifted above his flock, and all below him are equals. In matters of doctrine the Catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and the ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed; it imposes the same observances upon the rich and the poor; it inflicts the same austerities upon the powerful and the weak; it enters into no compromise with mortal man, but reducing the whole human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent more than to render them equal.… But no sooner is the priesthood entirely separated from the government, as is the case in the United States, than it is found that no class of men are naturally more disposed than the Catholics to transfuse the doctrine of the equality of conditions into political institutions”[126]
The generous sentiments which two centuries and a half ago led the Catholics of Maryland to become the pioneers of religious liberty in the New World, are still warm in the hearts of the Catholic people of the United States. We have even here been the victims of persecution, and it is not impossible that similar trials may await us in the future; but we have the most profound conviction that, even though we should grow to be nine-tenths of the population of this country, we shall never prove false to the principle of religious liberty, which, to the Catholics of the United States, at least, is sacred and inviolable. For our own part, we should turn with unutterable loathing from the man who could think that any other course could ever be either just or honorable.
The Catholics of this republic are
deeply impressed with the inviolability of the rights of the individual. We believe that the man is more than the citizen; that when the state tramples upon the God-given liberty of the most wretched beggar, the consciences of all are violated; that it is its duty to govern as little as possible, and rather to suffer a greater good to go undone than to do even a slight wrong in order to accomplish it. For this reason we believe that when the state assumed the right to control education, it took the first step away from the true American and Christian theory of government back towards the old pagan doctrine of state-absolutism. Though we uphold the rights of the individual, we are not the less strong in our advocacy of the claims of authority. In fact, the almost unbounded individual liberty which our American social and political order allows would fatally lead to anarchy, if not checked by some great and sacred authority; and this safeguard can be found only in the Catholic Church, which is the greatest school of respect the world has ever seen. The church, by her power to inspire faith, reverence, and obedience,
will introduce into our national life and character elements of refinement and culture which will temper the harshness and recklessness of our republican manners. By her conservative and unitive force she will weld into stronger union the heterogeneous populations and widely-separated parts of our vast country. The Catholics were the only religious body in the United States not torn asunder by sectional strife during our civil war, and we are persuaded that, as our numbers grow and our influence increases, we are destined to become more and more the strong bond to hold in indissoluble union the great American family of States. The divisions and dissensions of Protestantism have a tendency to prepare the public mind to contemplate without alarm or indignation like divisions and dissensions in the state; and all who love the country and desire that it remain one and united for ages must look with pleasure upon the growth of a religion which, while maintaining the unity of its own world-wide kingdom, inspires those who are guided by its teachings with a horror of political dissensions and divisions.
[125] Bishop England’s works, vol. iii. p. 233.