"You Go too Far," (The Power of the Pope during the Middle Ages), Brownson's Quarterly Review for Jan. 1854
That this work exhibits learning and much patient research, no one can deny, and it certainly brings together much valuable information on a large number of interesting and important questions. It enjoys a very high reputation, and is by far the best work that has been written in defense of the conduct of the Popes and Councils in the Middle Ages, by an author who denies, or is unwilling to assert, the temporal authority of the Church over sovereigns by divine right. The author professes to waive the theological controversy on the subject, and perhaps does not, in just so many words, deny the theological opinion, as he calls it, which attributes to the Pope a temporal jurisdiction over sovereigns, at least indirect, by divine right; and yet it is clear from his work that he does not hold that doctrine, and he certainly labors with extreme diligence to refute it historically. He does not, indeed, undertake to refute from the point of view of theology, or by theological arguments; but he does labor to bring all the weight of history against it, and for this purpose not seldom reads history backwards. We are frequently reminded, in reading his work, of our modern physicists who profess to have nothing to do with religion, and to investigate nature as simple scientific inquirers. As such, they bring out, not facts, but theories and explanations of facts utterly repugnant to revelation, and if we object in the name of religion, they gravely reply, “We deal only with science, we leave theological questions to the theologians.” As if anything can be scientifically true and theologically false, or scientifically false and theologically true! M. Gosselin knows perfectly well that there can be no discrepancy between history and Catholic theology, and therefore that, if he places history and any theological opinion in conflict, he necessarily assumes either that the opinion is not true, or that his history is false.
We should not like to assert that the doctrine of St. Thomas, of Bellarmine, Suarez, Du Perron, and the great majority of Catholic theologians, which attributes to the Pope, as the visible head of the Church, temporal jurisdiction over sovereigns, at least indirect, by divine right, is a simple theological opinion, which may, as M. Gosselin represents, be held or rejected as the individual Catholic thinks proper. There have been some recent decisions and condemnations of Gallican works, at Rome, which may be thought to put a new face on the question, and to raise that doctrine to the rank of a sententia Ecclesiae rather than a sententia in Ecclesia. But however this may be, M. Gosselin in so far as his theory excludes the temporal authority, at least indirect, of the Church, by divine right, cannot make it incumbent upon us to accept it. If he is free to assert, we are equally free to dent it. Rome has never been partial to it, and has shown, on more occasions than one, what she thinks of it. We do not believe it. We believe, we have been forced to believe, after the fullest investigation we have been able to make of the subject, the direct temporal authority of the Pope, as Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. We do not put this forth as Catholic dogma, nor have we ever insisted upon it in our pages, but we do not believe Catholic dogma requires us to assert, at least, the indirect power contended for by Bellarmine and Suarez, unless we would forego our logic. Without going thus far at least, all Catholic history is to us a chaos of unintelligible facts, and Catholicity itself sinks very nearly to the level of the Greek schism, and is not much better than High-Church Anglicanism. We do not question M. Gosselin’s good intentions; we do not question his honest desire to serve the cause of religion, but his book is not a little repugnant to our Catholic convictions and feelings. The liberties he takes with the language of illustrious pontiffs and distinguished doctors is startling. He does not hesitate to interpret their language in what seems to us a sense the very opposite of its plain and obvious meaning, and we feel that, if such liberty may be taken throughout, not a little in Catholic theology would lose that fixed and certain character which it has been supposed to possess. Even according to his own concession, if he is right, Popes, Councils, doctors, and the great body of the faithful, for centuries entertained an erroneous theological opinion. A doctrine of which this can be said, or which requires so liberal a concession to the enemies of the Church, it seems to us, ought to be received with suspicion by every sincere and generous-hearted Catholic.
Without expressly denying the theological doctrine of the divine right of the Church to temporal authority, M. Gosselin contends that the temporal authority of the Popes in the Middle Ages did not originate in that doctrine, for they possessed it, he says, before that opinion, as he calls it, was known, and therefore it could not have been its source. Whether that opinion be true or false, he contends, it did not originate the title by which they held and exercised their temporal power. The title by which they really did hold and exercise it, he maintains, was the jus publicum of the times, the constitution and laws of Catholic states in the Middle Ages. They had a real and valid title to it jure humano, but not jure divino. That the temporal authority of the Popes in the Middle Ages was a part of the jus publicum, we certainly do not deny, but that it derived from the jus publicum we do not believe. The learned author seems to us, to use a homely illustration, to put the cart before the horse. The Pope preceded the constitution and laws of the states of the Middle Ages, and, as a matter of fact, gave law to them, instead of receiving his title from them. They received their peculiar character from him, as the Vicar of Jesus Christ. They did not spring into existence without him, and then create him supreme arbiter of temporal affairs, but were made what they were under his abitratorship. We might as well contend that the Creator derives his authority as Universal Lord from his creatures, as that the Pope derived his temporal jurisdiction from the constitutions and laws which he dictated or inspired. The simple fact is, that the constitution and laws of Catholic states, in the Middle Ages, recognized the temporal supremacy of the Church, and conformed to it, but did not confer that supremacy. The Church has by divine right power to enact canons for the government and interests of the Church, and these canons, when enacted, bind all, sovereigns as well as subjects, and therefore the civil authority itself, in so far as they touch it. The civil authority may or may not recognize them, but their vigor as laws remains the same in either case. The state, by refusing to recognize them, may impede their operation, but cannot annul them. It may recognize them, conform the civil law to them, or declare them, as far as they go, the law of the land; but in doing so, it only facilitates their operation, it does not give them their vigor as laws. The sovereigns in the Middle Ages did not, historically considered, confer the authority on the Pope which he exercised over them; they simply acknowledged it, and promised to obey it. In modern times most states have become pagan, and refuse to do so, just as the individual sinner refuses to recognize and obey the law of God; but this, while it obstructs the operation of the temporal authority of the Popes, does not take it away, or in the least affect their title to it. One of two things, it seems to us, must be admitted, if we have regard to the undeniable facts in the case; namely, either the Popes usurped the authority they exercised over sovereigns in the Middle Ages, or they possessed it by virtue of their title as Vicars of Jesus Christ on earth. We do not, therefore, regard M. Gosselin’s theory as tenable, and we count his attempted defense of the Pope, on the ground of human right, a failure.
There is, in our judgment, but one valid defense of the Popes, in their exercise of temporal authority in the Middle Ages over sovereigns, and that is, that they possess it by divine right, or that the Pope holds that authority by virtue of his commission from Jesus Christ, as the successor of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, and visible head of the Church. Any defense of them on a lower ground must, in our judgment, fail to meet the real points in the case, and is rather an evasion, than a fair, honest, direct, and satisfactory reply. To defend their power as an extraordinary power, or as an accident in church history, growing out of the peculiar circumstances, civil constitution, and laws of the times, now passed away, perhaps forever, may be regarded as less likely to displease non-Catholics and to offend the sensibilities of power, than to defend it on the ground of divine right, and as inherent in the divine constitution of the Church; but even on the low ground of policy, we do not think it the wisest, in the long run. Say what we will, we can gain little credit with those we would conciliate. Always, to their minds, will the temporal power of the Pope by divine right loom up in the distance, and always will they believe, however individual Catholics here and there may deny it, or nominally Catholic governments oppose it, that it is the real Roman Catholic doctrine, to be reasserted and acted the moment that circumstances render it prudent or expedient. We gain nothing with them but doubts of our sincerity, and we only weaken among ourselves that warm and generous devotion to the holy Father which is so essential to the prosperity of the Church, in her unceasing struggles with the godless powers of this world.
The excellent author, no doubt, believes that he has hit upon a theory which enables him to vindicate the conduct of the Popes and Councils of the Middle Ages, in their relations to temporal sovereigns, without incurring the odium attached to the higher ground of divine right, and this, he will pardon us for believing, is his chief motive for elaborating and defending it. He cannot be unaware, that the doctrine he rejects is the most logical, the most consonant to Catholic instincts, the most honorable to the dignity and majesty of the Papacy, or that it has undeniably the weight of authority on its side. The principal Catholic authorities are certainly in favor of the divine right, and the principal authorities which he is able to oppose to them are of parliaments, sovereigns, jurisconsults, courtiers, and prelates and doctors who sustained the temporal powers in their wars against the Popes. The Gallican doctrine was, from the first, the doctrine of the courts, in opposition to that of the Vicars of Jesus Christ, and should therefore be regarded by every Catholic with suspicion? M. Gosselin cannot be ignorant of this, and therefore we must believe that he is attached to his theory principally from prudential considerations. We confess that we see nothing in his theory that can alarm the pride of power, or offend the enemies of religion. This is, no doubt, what the author has seen and felt. He professes to regard it as a recommendation of his theory, that many learned Protestants have adopted it, and he cites, under a special head, a number of Protestant authorities in its favor, winding up with a clincher from Voltaire. We see nothing in his theory which Voltaire or any intelligent Protestant might not assent to, or even maintain, without once dreaming of becoming a Catholic; but this fact alone creates in our mind a strong presumption against it. The author seems to us to have fallen into the new snare of Satan. The latest and most approved mode of warfare against the Church is, not to denounce her as a Satanic institution, but to generate a habit of thinking and speaking of her as a simple human institution. None of her intelligent enemies sympathize with the vulgar Protestantism which calls the Church Babylon and the Pope Antichrist. They have too little religious belief, and are too cunning, for that. They speak of her under a human point of view, as a human institution, and as such adopt the language of eulogy, not of vituperation. They admire her, are struck with her profound policy, her deep knowledge of human nature, and her marvelous skill in governing the masses of the people. As a human institution, especially for the infancy of nations, they are in raptures with her, and pen occasionally magnificent paragraphs in her favor, as we see in Ranke, Macaulay, and others. As far as he goes, the simple-hearted author falls in with them, and his whole method of explaining the origin of what he calls the extraordinary power of the Popes, by representing them as obeying the impulses of the Christian populations, making them, as it were, the impersonations of the popular opinions and instincts of their times, and defending their temporal power by the pious belief of the people, the maxims and jurisprudence of the age, is in perfect harmony with the method of these modern humanizers, who will extol the Popes to the skies as men, as secular arbiters of temporal affairs, and treat with the most ineffable scorn every one of their claims as the Vicars of Jesus Christ. We wish M. Gosselin had been careful to render broader and more distinct the line of demarcation which separates him from these our ablest, subtlest, and most dangerous enemies.
M. Gosselin puts forth his theory as historical, as an induction from the historical facts in the case. We do not much like this; we have very little confidence in any inductive theory of the sort, and no man can truly represent the history will he has ascertained the theology of the Church. The doctrines of the Church are the fonts of her history; they precede and determine the facts. The Church works more humano by human agents indeed, but is herself superhuman, and introduces a superhuman element into all her operations. No fact in her long history can be explained, that is, adequately explained, from a purely human principle. Every explanation of an ecclesiastical fact on that principle alone is partial, and leaves out the element most essential to be considered; and, moreover, tends to give us false views of the Church, and to degrade her to the level of human sects, philosophies, and governments. But, even as an historical induction, M. Gosselin’s theory does not satisfy us. We have already shown that the temporal authority of the Pope preceded the civil constitution and laws of the Middle Ages, and was exerted in determining their peculiar character. The whole current of history is against the author. He cannot adduce a single official act of Pope or Council which concedes that the temporal authority exercised was held only by a human title. All history fails to show an instance in which the Pope, in deposing a temporal sovereign, professes to do it by the authority vested in him by the pious belief of the faithful, generally received maxims, the opinion of the age, the concessions of sovereigns, or the civil constitution and public laws of Catholic states. On the contrary, he always claims to do it by the authority committed to him as the successor of the Prince of the Apostles, by the authority of his Apostolic Ministry, by the authority committed to him of binding and loosing, by the authority of Almighty God, of Jesus Christ, King of kings and Lord of lords, whose minister, though unworthy, he asserts that he is,- or some such formula, which solemnly and expressly sets forth that his authority is held by divine right, by virtue of his ministry, and exercised solely in his character of Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth. To this, we believe, there is not a single exception. Wherever the Popes cite their titles, they never, so far as we can find, cite a human title, but always a divine title. Whence is this? Did the Popes cite a false title? Or was this assertion of title an empty form, meaning nothing? This is a grave matter, and this fact alone seems to us decisive against the author.
M. Gosselin feels the force of this argument, and seeks to evade it by saying that deposition was only an incidental or indirect effect of excommunication; and as excommunication is a spiritual act, the Pope could rightly set forth that he performed it by virtue of his apostolic authority. That excommunication did in some cases work deposition may be true, but that it did in all cannot be asserted, and numerous instances may be cited of excommunication without deposition. But there are documents enough in which the Pope not only excommunicates, but solemnly deposes, a prince, and in these very documents we find that the title set forth, and the only title set forth, is that derived from his Apostolic Ministry. Never does the Pope profess to depose, any more than to excommunicate, by virtue of any other than a divine title. Whatever he does in the case, he always professes to do it by his supreme jurisdiction as Prince of the Apostles. That the Popes willfully erred, M. Gosselin cannot pretend; that they held the theological opinion which founds their power on divine right, that is, as private doctors so held, he concedes, or at least regards as highly probable. He will, then, permit us to think that, even as private doctors, the opinion of such illustrious pontiffs as St. Gregory the Seventh, Alexander the Third, Innocent the Third, Innocent the Fourth, Boniface the Eighth, St. Pius the Fifth, and Sixtus Quintus, may weigh as much in the scale as that of the learned author of the work before us. We permit ourselves to believe that these illustrious pontiffs knew the origin and ground of their title as well as he does, and that, had they even been acquainted with his theory, they would have continued to think and act as they did. We mean no disrespect to the author, but really we have no patience with this manifest irreverence and want of filial respect and devotion to the Holy See. Our Lord founded his Church on Peter, and we have no patience with those who, with good or bad intentions, constantly laboring to undermine its foundation. We may err, but if we do, God grant it may never be in denying to the successors of the Prince of the Apostles any portion of that power which he has conferred on them. Never for one moment shall Caesar weigh in the scale with us against Peter. Indeed, we can better endure open, avowed Protestantism itself, than stingy, narrow-minded, and frozen-hearted Gallicanism, always studying to split the difference between Peter and Caesar, God and the Devil. It has been a blight on religion and society wherever it has prevailed, and terrible, terrible have been the calamities it has brought upon the Christian nations of the East, upon Germany, upon France, and upon England. It is a traitor in our camp, an enemy in the guise of a friend, who damps our zeal, depresses our courage, renders us lukewarm, unfits us for all heroic deeds, and opens the gates of the citadel to the adversary. We may die, but let us die with the blessing of the Holy Father.
But we have said more of M. Gosselin and his theory than we intended. We do not like his theory; we do not believe it, and could not believe it, without violence to our whole understanding of the Catholic system of truth. The author, in principle, is a thorough-going Gallican, and, if he defends the illustrious pontiffs who have been so maligned by non-Catholics and courtiers, he does it on principles which seem to us to humiliate them, and to degrade them to the rank of mere secular princes. His theory, at first view, may have a plausible appearance, but it is illusory, like all theories invented to recommend the Church to her enemies, or to escape the odium always attached to truth by the world. In saying this, we are not ignorant that many whom we love and respect embrace that theory in part, and explain and defend by it the temporal power exercised by Popes and Councils over sovereigns in the Middle Ages. They do not, indeed, agree with M. Gosselin, in his denial that the Popes held that power by divine right, but they think it suffices to explain and defend it on the ground of human right. They agree with us as to the supremacy of the spiritual order, and the temporal jurisdiction of the Popes, but they think that all the objections of non-Catholics can be adequately and honestly answered without taking such high ground, and the ground of human right being sufficient and less offensive, it should, in prudence, be adopted, and the other doctrine be passed under the disciplina arcani. They therefore disapprove of the course we take, and wish we could content ourselves with more moderate views, not because we are uncatholic, but because we are imprudent, and subject Catholics to unnecessary odium.
There are those who reason in the same way on a variety of other topics, and who regret to find us and other Catholic journalists broaching certain delicate subjects, and bringing out doctrines which, though true enough in the abstract, are exceedingly offensive to the public, and have just now, in their judgment, no practical application. Undoubtedly Catholicity, they confess, is the only solid basis of the social fabric, and the state ought to recognize and conform to the revealed doctrines which the Church teaches; but public opinion is against it; modern states have fallen back on the simple natural law, and the Church must withdraw from the sphere of political and social action, and content herself to minister in spirituals to those who recognize her authority. It is idle to expect to realize in the political and social order the Catholic ideal. This may be a calamity, but it is, in our times, a necessity, and, however reluctantly, we must submit. Consequently, we should not suffer ourselves to reaffirm those high-toned Catholic doctrines which were current in the Middle Ages, and which were well enough when society avowed itself Catholic, but which are practically obsolete now. Society has abandoned them, and is not prepared to resume them.
We acknowledge that this objection is at least plausible, and deserves to be treated with respect. But possibly it originates in too desponding a view of society, and a certain lack of confidence in the power of Divine Truth. We do not shut our eyes to the present state of society, and we think we are not ignorant of the prevailing public opinion. Certainly we shall not succeed in realizing in all respects the Catholic ideal, or in bringing society into perfect harmony with the principles of our holy religion. Always will the Philistines dwell in the land. But, as in the case of individual sanctity, it is better, even here, to aim high than it is to aim low. He who aims only as so much virtue as will barely admit him into heaven, is in great danger of falling short of his mark. In the constitution of government, in practical legislation or administration, the rule of wisdom is to consult, not what is ideally perfect, but what here and now is practicable. We cannot go, and it is worse than useless to attempt to do, far in advance of the community. Our American society is pagan, not Christian, and by no possible legislative or administrative acts can it be made Catholic. To organize and conduct it on Catholic principles is utterly impracticable, and no Catholic statesman worthy of the name, were he in power, would make the attempt. People must be converted to the Catholic faith before they can be organized or governed as Catholics, and conversion cannot be forced. To keep the faith when once received, may be of necessity, but to receive it is a matter of free will, which cannot be coerced. Our Lord forces, and allows his Church to force, no one to accept his bounty. He proffers it freely to all, but if anyone chooses to reject it and suffer the consequences, he is free to do so. Our Lord suffers no dragooning of unbelievers into his Church; he asks the heart, the free will, a voluntary, not a forced worship.
Nevertheless, it by no means follows that the state, in the sight of God, has any more right than the individual to profess a false religion, or to be indifferent to the true; far less does it follow that society organized on uncatholic principles, and operating in opposition thereto, can long subsist or answer, even as to the natural order, the true ends of society. All society worthy to be so called, in the ancient Gentile world, was preserved by virtue of the Catholic principles it retained, after the dispersion of mankind, from the primitive revelation made to our first parents, and all Gentile society tended to complete dissolution in proportion as those principles became more and more corrupted or lost sight of. Society has been preserved in Protestant nations only by virtue of the Catholic traditions and usages which they did not reject when they broke away from the Church, and disappears in proportion as those traditions and usages lose their hold, and are exchanged for new modes of thought and new manners and customs. There is no true society, no genuine human race, no human race in its unity and integrity, out of the Catholic society or Church, as the lamented Donoso Cortes, in his profound Essay on Catholicity, Liberalism, and Socialism, demonstrates with equal truth and eloquence. The reason of this is, that man in the present decree of God is under a supernatural providence, the unbeliever no less than the believer, ordained to supernatural rewards or to supernatural punishments. The natural nowhere in human life subsists alone, and nowhere can it prosper, save as nourished with the sap of the supernatural.
We cannot make infidel governments, hardly professedly Catholic governments themselves, understand this, consequently almost everywhere the faithful, as under the Pagan emperors of Rome, must constitute a society of their own, independent of the pagan society in the midst of which they live, complete in itself, and adequate to all social wants and necessities. This Catholic society is in the Old World the remains of a once general Catholic society; in our country it is, as under the Pagan Caesars, the germ or nucleus of a new Catholic state. All the hopes of the Old World center in these Catholic remnants, all the hopes of the New in this Catholic germ. It is this Catholic society sustaining itself or forming itself under overshadowing heathenism, that we must consult in our addresses and discussions. To save the non-Catholic society from continual decline and corruption is as hopeless as it was to save the Jewish state under the Roman governors, or pagan society under Nero or Diocletian. The thing is out of the question, because modern society as distinguished from the Catholic has in itself no recuperative energy, no germ of life. All society must conform to the principles of our holy religion, and spring from Catholicity as its root, or sooner or later lapse into barbarism. The living germ in all modern nations, the nucleus of all future living society, is in the Catholic portion of the population. They are the salt of the earth; they are the leaven which is to leaven the whole lump. Hence the important thing is to look to it that the salt lost not its savor, nor the leaven its virtue. If the faithful themselves become conformed, in all things not expressly of dogma and ritual, to the unbelieving world in which they live, or if no care be taken to give them juster views of society, or any truer or nobler political and social ideas, than those entertained by that world itself, little influence will they be able to exert, either in saving themselves from the fate of all anti-Catholic society, or in forming a society in accordance with the Catholic ideal.
It cannot have escaped any moderately careful observer, that, amid the political and social convulsions of modern times, the Catholic populations have themselves to a fearful extent lost the idea of Catholic society. The anti-social doctrines of the age have on all sides penetrated into the Catholic camp, and vast masses of Catholics half believe that, for all the purposes of society, government, and general civilization, Protestantism is preferable to Catholicity. Our young men grow up with this feeling, and though they make it, in some instances, a point of honor not to desert the religion of their fathers, they look with something like envy on their Protestant companions. As a religion, they hold Protestantism in sovereign contempt, but as an instrument of civilization and worldly prosperity they almost venerate it. Nothing, it strikes us, is of more pressing importance, than to disabuse our young ambitious Catholics of this fatal illusion, and to show them, as well as the Catholic populations generally, that society has its root in those great principles which Catholics alone do or can possess in their unity and integrity, as living and life-giving principles. We must insist on this, not so much for those who are without as for those who are within. The Church cannot in these times rely on her own children. These false political doctrines and social theories, so widely diffused among us, and borrowed from and sustained by the spirit of the age, are so many impediments to the progress of religion. They prevent it from doing its work, and occasion the ruin of innumerable souls. Can it then be useless, or in any sense unimportant, to bring out with clearness and distinctness, with earnestness and power, those very Catholic principles which stand directly opposed to these false doctrines and destructive theories?
Perhaps they who counsel reserve and moderation would not do amiss to bear in mind, that in some respects our position is also very different from that of the early Christians under the Pagan Ceasars. They could observe the discipline of the secret, we cannot; they had not a past to defend, we have. It was enough for them to unfold the political and social bearings of their faith as occasion offered for its political or social application. The Fathers under the Pagan emperors had no occasion to discuss the rights and duties of a Catholic state towards heretics and schismatics, for as yet there was no Catholic state. It was enough for them to confine themselves to the question in so far as it was then a practical question. The same remark is applicable to a large number of other grave questions. But it is not so with us. There have been and still are Catholic states, and the answers which the Church gives to all great practical questions have become historical. These answers are, in many instances, no doubt, very offensive to the spirit of the present age, and such as the prevailing public opinion denounces; but there they stand on the page of history, and can be neither honestly nor successfully denied or explained away. What the Church has done, what she has expressly or tacitly approved in the past, that is exactly what she will do, expressly or tacitly approve in the future, if the same circumstances occur. This may be a difficulty, an embarrassment, but it will not do to shrink from it. We are responsible for the past history of the Church, in so far as she herself has acted, and to attempt to apologize for it by an appeal to the opinion of the times, or to explain it in conformity with the prevailing spirit and theories of non-Catholics, in our age, is only to weaken the reverence of the faithful for the Church, and yield the victory to her enemies. The odium we may incur should not move us. There never was a time when Catholicity was not odious to the non-Catholic world, and there never will come a time when it will not be. That world hated our Lord, and it hates his Church because it hates him. But our faith gives us the victory over the world. Always have we this consolation in the worst of times,- the truth is able to sustain itself and all who are faithful to it. It is no difficult matter to vindicate to the catholic mind the historical answers we allude to, for they are all intrinsically just and true, and as for vindicating them to the non-Catholic mind, we can waive that. If we believe Catholicity is true, we believe non-Catholics are wrong, and can become right, and form correct judgments of Catholic things, only through conversion. We would never unnecessarily offend them, we would studiously avoid throwing any obstacles in their way, and for their sake do all in our power to bring them to a knowledge of the truth. But we shall best promote their conversion by commanding their respect, and this we shall best do by convincing them that we have nothing in the past history of our Church of which we are ashamed, or that we wish to conceal, explain away, or apologize for; and by making all our Catholics firm, frank, ingenuous, and intrepid defenders of unemasculated Catholicity.
These were the principles prescribed to us for our guidance when we commenced this Review as a Catholic Review, and on these principles we have endeavored to conduct it to the best of our ability. The age is latitudinarian, and thinks one religion, unless it be the Catholic, as good as another, because it believes in none. We found our Catholic laity extensively infected with a latitudinarian spirit, fraternizing with their “separated brethren,” and calling upon Protestant ministers to say grace for them at their public dinners, and in presence of their own priests too,- throwing up their hands in pious horror at our illiberality, if we hinted that their liberal Protestant friends could not be saved unless they became Catholics, and most loudly applauding themselves for being liberal Catholics. We found our current catholic literature so explaining the qualification which some theologians add to the dogma, Out of the Church there is no salvation, as to open heaven to the great mass of heretics and infidels, and to save more by the exception than the rule. Indeed, every Protestant, Anglican, Calvinist, Socinian, or Deist, of decent manners and kind feelings, was looked upon as in the way of salvation. What was our duty as a Catholic writer? We found the age clamoring for religious liberty, meaning thereby the liberty of infidelity to enslave and oppress the Church, and we found Catholics uniting in the clamor, and maintaining that every man has the natural right to be what religion he chooses, thus denying the essential distinction between truth and falsehood, virtue and vice. Were we to be silent, and suffer a manifest error to be imbibed by our Catholic community, an error which would create serious embarrassments for our grandchildren, lest by contradicting it, and stating the truth on the subject, we might expose our religion to the censure of non-Catholics? If Catholics themselves were in no danger of being infected with the error, prudence would require us to pass it over silence; but when we could hardly speak with a Catholic layman in the country, who would not echo the condemned doctrine of Voltaire on Tolerance, it was manifestly our duty to state the truth as taught by our approved Catholic theologians.
We found a very general disposition among the Catholic laity to separate religion from politics, to emancipate politics from the Christian law, to vote God out of the state, and to set up the people against the Almighty. Was this in these revolutionary times to be passed over in silence, and no effort made to arrest the tide of political atheism? We saw our Holy Father driven into exile; we saw large numbers of nominal Catholics rejoicing at the impious usurpations of Mazzini and Co., sympathizing with the infamous assassins and parricides who, in the name of liberty and democracy, were seeking to overthrow the Papacy, and destroy the world’s last hope. What was then our plain duty? Was it not to assert the supremacy of God, the jurisdiction of the spiritual power, to expose the fatal error of Gallicanism, and, as far as we could, exhibit the real position of the Papacy in the Catholic system? So we have felt, and so we have done. We have always believed it the duty of every publicist to defend the outraged truth, the truth that for the time being is the least popular, the most offensive to public opinion, therefore the most needed, and the most endangered. The popular truth, the truth which nobody questions, stands in no need of any special defense. It is the unpopular truth, as the unpopular cause, attacked by all the armies of error, and deserted by all its timid and timeserving friends, that calls for defenders, and that the Christian hero or the really brave man will make it his first duty to defend.
Certainly society in our days is far enough below the Catholic ideal, and even the Catholic populations themselves, though far above what they were fifty years ago, are by no means fully prepared for a society organized throughout and conducted on the principles of their religion. Yet bad as society now is, it is not farther removed from the Catholic standard than it was when St. Peter transferred his chair from Antioch to Rome, or than it was under Constantius, the son of Constantine, or when Odoacer placed himself on the throne of the Caesars, and the Church is as vigorous and Catholicity inherently as living and as powerful as it was then. It is no greater work to bring society up to the Catholic standard from where it now is, than from what it was in the days of the Apostles, or at the irruption and conquest of the barbarians. We have all the forces to work with that our Catholic ancestors had, for the Church never grows old or falls into a decline. We cannot share the despondency of the late Donoso Cortes, who seemed to think the European nations were past being recovered, and placed what hope he had for society in the army, instead of Church’s militia. As long as the Church stands, there is hope for society, for she is the medium of a constant supply of supernatural force. All she asks is that her children offer no impediment to its operation. We see no ground for concluding that it is all over with Catholic society, or that society in the future may not be brought even nearer to the Catholic ideal than it ever was in the past. We know the world is not prepared for that ideal; even our Catholic populations are not prepared for it. But does it follow from this that they cannot be, and that no efforts should be made to prepare them for it? And shall we prepare them for it, if we do not call their attention to it, present it before them as something to be desired, to be sought, to be struggled for? Shall we prepare them for it by representing it as wholly impracticable, and by denouncing those who have the disposition and the courage to labor for it as pursuing mere abstractions, as pushing matters to extremes, as being more Catholic than Catholicity, and threatening them, if they do not desist, with an opposition from plain, sensible, honest-minded Catholics, that they will find it impossible to resist?
We have heard some very loud whispers about ultra-Catholicity, and have received some significant hints that we are ultra-Catholic. But we venture to hint, in reply, that there is and can be no such thing as ultra-Catholicity, and that the charge is absurd. Catholicity is a definite system of truth, and to be more or less than Catholic is simply not to be Catholic at all. Catholicity, so long as it continues to be Catholicity, cannot be carried to excess. It is not one system among many. It is simply the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It excludes all not itself; it recognizes no rival; it will be all or nothing. The more thoroughly we take it in, the more completely we are filled with its spirit, the more exclusively we are under the dominion of its teaching and submissive to its inspirations, the better Catholics we are, and the more powerful we are for pulling down the strongholds of error and sin. We believe the best way to convert infidels, to bring back heretics, and spread our holy religion, is to throw ourselves unreservedly upon the living body of Catholic truth, in its unity and integrity, its principles and its consequences, and to strive constantly with all our strength, through grace, to realize it in all our thoughts, words, and deeds.
Prudence is certainly a virtue, and zeal without prudence can only do harm; but we must remember that the Church does not stand in human prudence, and it was not by human prudence, any more than by human sagacity and virtue, that the Fathers converted the world from paganism, and founded Christian society. God’s ways are not our ways, and he seems to delight in bringing the schemes and plans of human wisdom to nought. His ways are always foolishness to the wise and prudent of this world. True prudence, under the gracious providence of God, is always rashness or folly in the world’s estimation. Perhaps our most prudent men, who are so excessively studious to avoid giving offense, or exciting the prejudices of non-Catholics, or disturbing the equanimity of lukewarm, indolent, or cowardly Catholics, are, in a Christian sense, our most imprudent men, and the least successful in adapting their means to the their end.
We are not ignorant that the course we have pursued differs from that which was some time since generally pursued in England and this country. Crushed to the earth by triumphant heresy, our English and American Catholics had lost heart and hope; they forget their privileges as Catholics, and felt that they must, so far as society is concerned, hang down their heads and be silent. The most they dared hope was to be connived at, and permitted to hold fast to their religion for themselves, without having their throats cut, or being hung, drawn, and quartered as traitors. They hardly dreamed of making a convert, and if they heard a Protestant speak of their faith without blaspheming it, or insulting them, they were ready to fall down and kiss the hem of his garment. Everywhere Catholics felt that they were an oppressed people, and that from their oppression there was no deliverance but in death. It was a day of trial, and far be it from us to judge harshly of the policy adopted. Their silence, their meekness, their submissiveness, their perseverance, were precious in the sight of Heaven, and have brought their reward in the altered position of Catholics at the present day. But to every day its own work. The day of apology has passed away, though not the day of trial. The time has come for Catholics to feel and act as freemen of the Lord, to resume, in a bolder and more energetic spirit, the unceasing war which the Church wages against error and sin, and to go forth as Christian soldiers to attack, as well as simply to defend.
We know that the policy we insist on has its disadvantages. It excites controversy. The high-toned Catholic doctrines we contend for give great offense to the age, and create some difficulties for our friends, especially if they deem it necessary to reply to every paragraph non-Catholics may indite against them. We may sit in our closet and write and publish, and from our retired position feel no inconvenience, while we are creating serious embarrassments for those whose position and duties bring them in daily and hourly contact with embittered non-Catholics. All this we have considered, and if only non-Catholics were concerned, or if the highest-toned Catholicity were not necessary for Catholics themselves, or were not even to a great extent even rejected by them, we should pursue quite a different course, and be as tame and commonplace as any one who charges us with being ultra-Catholic could desire. But it is for Catholics we write, and it is to maintain sound doctrine in all respects in their minds, and to guard them against the lying spirit of the age, the subtle and dangerous heresies to which they are everywhere no exposed, that we pursue that course which, no doubt, embarrasses many who consult only tranquility, and to gain it half fall in with the dangerous popular political and social doctrines of the age and country.
It is not in mere wantonness that we have expressed our dislike to M. Gosselin’s book. We do not attack Gallicanism, and assert the temporal authority of the Popes by divine right, for the sake of showing our courage or our indifference to public opinion. If we found in this case, as in others, merely an omission to take the higher ground, without denying that higher, stronger, and more tenable ground, we certainly should deem it our duty to be silent, for in our own country there is at present little room for its practical application. If we had not found Catholics bringing out an erroneous doctrine on religious liberty, and endeavoring to prove that Catholicity approves of religious liberty in the sense it is asserted by non-Catholics, we should not have taken up the subject. If, in refuting the error, we have been obliged to oppose to it an unpalatable truth, the fault is theirs who paraded the error, and made its denial necessary. If we have attempted to assert and vindicate authority against the licentious spirit of the age, and to defend vested rights against the wild and destructive radicalism of the age, it has been because we found Catholics imbibing that spirit, and hooraying for that radicalism. As the denial of the spiritual authority soon leads to a denial of the temporal, so the denial of the temporal soon leads to the denial of the spiritual. When we found democracy even by nominal Catholics embraced in that sense in which it denies all law, and asserts the right of the people, or rather of the mob, to do whatever they please, and making it criminal in us to dispute their infallibility, we felt that we must bring out the truth against them, and if scandal resulted, we were not its cause. The responsibility rests on those whose obsequiousness to the multitude made our opposition necessary.
So it is with Gallicanism. It is not even with us an abstract, but a terribly practical question. If our friend McGee, who is now doing such noble service to the good cause, had not been brought up a Gallican and taught to believe that his religion had no concern with his politics, he had never occasioned those scandals which nobody now deplores more than he does; if the brilliant T. Francis Meagher had been instructed from his youth up in the true temporal supremacy of the Church, we should not have now to seem to treat him with inhospitality, and to guard against him as the most dangerous enemy, in proportion to his influence, of his countrymen naturalized or domiciled in the United States, that we have amongst us. If in other countries, in Ireland, England, France, and especially in Lombardy and Piedmont, the youth had not been suffered to grow up with a conviction that the Pope has no temporal authority, and that politics are quite distinct from religion, we should have seen very few of the deplorable scandals which so deeply afflict every Catholic heart. In proportion as we wish to save religion and society, we must raise our voice against Gallicanism, turn to the Holy Father, and, instead of weakening his hands and saddening his heart by our denial of his plenary authority, reassert his temporal as well as his spiritual prerogatives. We have no hope but in God, and God helps us only through Peter, and Peter helps us only through his successors, in whom he still lives and exercises his Apostolate. Blame not us, then, if there are scandals, but them rather whose errors, whose timidity, whose indolence or worldly-mindedness, have caused them, and made our course a painful duty.