LIBERALISM IS A SIN
"Liberalism is the dogmatic affirmation of the absolute independence of
the individual and of the social reason. Catholicity is the dogma of the
absolute subjection of the individual and of the social order to the
revealed law of God. One doctrine is the exact antithesis of the other.
They are opposites in direct conflict." (Ch. 6).
"Protestantism is now a dead dog; Liberalism a living lion going about
seeking whom be may devour. Its dreadful doctrine is permeating society
to the core; it has become the modern political creed and threatens us
with a second revolution, to turn the world over once again to paganism.
" (Page 74).
Physical
science tells us that floating through the atmosphere are innumerable
disease germs seeking a suitable nidus in which to settle and propagate
and that we are constantly breathing these germs into the lungs. If the
system be depleted or weakened, the dangerous microbe takes up its abode
with us, and propagating its own kind with astonishing rapidity,
undermines and ravages our health. The only safeguard against the
encroachments of this insidious enemy, which we cannot escape, is a
vigorous and healthy body with adequate powers of resistance to repel
the invader.
It is
equally true that we are subject to like infectious attacks in the
spiritual order. Swarming in the atmosphere of our spiritual lives are
innumerable deadly germs, ever ready to fasten upon the depleted and
weakened soul and, propagating its leprous contagion through every
faculty, destroy the spiritual life. Against the menace of this
ever-threatening danger, whose advances we cannot avoid in our present
circumstances, the ever-healthy soul alone can be prepared. To escape
the contagion, the power of resistance must be equal to the emergencies
of the attack, and that power will be in proportion to our spiritual
health. To be prepared is to be armed, but to be prepared is not
sufficient; we must possess the interior strength to throw off the germ.
There must be no condition in the soul to make a suitable nidus for an
enemy so insidious and so efficacious as to need only the slightest
point of contact whence to spread its deadly contagion.
It is
not only through the avenues of disordered passions that this spiritual
disease may gain an entrance; it may make its inroad through the
intellect, and this under a disguise often calculated to deceive the
unwary and incautious. The Trojans admitted the enemy into their walls
under the impression that they were actually securing a valuable
acquisition to their safety, and today their fatal experience has come
down to us in the proverb--"Beware of the Greeks when they bring gifts."
Intellectual torpidity, inexperience, ignorance, indifference, and
complaisance, or even virtues, such as, benevolence, generosity, and
pity may be the unsuspected way open to the foe, and lo, we are
surprised to find him in possession of the citadel!
That we
may know our danger, we must appreciate the possible shapes in which it
may come. Here is just the difficulty; the uniform of the enemy is so
various, changeable, sometimes even of our own colors, that if we rely
upon the outward semblance alone, we shall be more often deceived than
certain of his identity. But before laying down any test by which we may
distinguish friend from foe in a warfare so subtly fought within the
precincts of our own souls, let us first reconnoiter the respective
positions of either camp, and to do this best, we shall consider the
origin and sources of the danger which surrounds us, for we may be
asked: "Where is this foe described as so intangible as scarcely to be
apprehended by ordinary mortals?" Or it may be urged: "Is the danger as
proximate, as frequent and [as] fearful as you allege? Whence is it
anyhow? Point it out! If we know from what direction the enemy comes, we
may better appreciate the peril."
As we
are addressing ourselves to those who live amidst the peculiar
circumstances of our American life, and as the spiritual and moral
conditions which obtain in this country make up the moral and spiritual
atmosphere in which we have our being, it is in the relation of our
surroundings to ourselves as well as of ourselves to our surroundings
that we shall find the answer to our question. Let us then consider
these surroundings in a general way for the moment.
First,
as to some patent facts: The population of this country is at present
something over 260 million. [1990 census]. Of these, 60 million are
Catholics, and according to their claim, 80 million are Protestants,
leaving a population of 120 million or more who do not profess any form
become mere differences of private opinion, dependent upon nothing but
the caprice or choice of the individual.
Outside
of these various bodies of loosely professed Christians stands a still
larger mass of our population who are either absolutely indifferent to
Christianity as a creed or positively reject it. In practice, the
distinction is of little moment whether they hold themselves merely
indifferent or positively hostile. In other words, we have here to
reckon with a body, to all practical purposes, that is infidel. This
mass comprises over 45 percent of our population, holding itself aloof
from Christianity, and in some instances virulently antagonistic to it.
In distinct religious opposition to this mass of infidelity and
Protestantism [now in excess of 76 percent of our population, but
currently enhanced to an even more frightening percentage by the vast
majority of Catholics today--1993--who either do not practice their
faith at all or who are ignorant of its teachings (especially with
regard to morality) or in practice simply disregard those
teachings--bringing the total of practical non-believing and infidel
people to probably just over 90 percent, if we can presume there to be
today approximately 25 million believing, practicing Catholics],
Catholics find themselves sharply and radically opposed. Heresy and
infidelity are irreconcilable with Catholicity. "He that is not with me
is against me" (Matt. 12:30) are the words of Our Lord Himself, for
denial of Catholic truth is the radical and common element of both
heresy and infidelity. The difference between them is merely a matter of
degree. One denies less, the other more. Protestantism, with its sliding
scale of creeds, is Simply an inclined plane into the abyss of positive
unbelief. It is always virtual infidelity, its final outcome open
infidelity, as the 120 million unbelievers in this country stand
witness.
We live
in the midst of this religious anarchy. Some 235 million of our
population can, in one sense or other, be considered anti-Catholic [1990
figures]. From this mass--heretical and infidel--exhales an atmosphere
filled with germs poisonous and fatal to Catholic life, if permitted to
take root in the Catholic heart. The mere force of gravitation, which
the larger mass ever exercises upon the smaller, is a power which the
most energetic vigor alone can resist. Under this dangerous influence, a
deadly inertia is apt to creep over the souls of the incautious and is
only to be overcome by the liveliest exercise of Catholic faith. To live
without enervation amidst an heretical and infidel population requires a
robust religious constitution. And to this danger we are daily exposed,
ever coming into contact in a thousand ways, in almost every relation of
life, with anti-Catholic thought and customs. But outside of this
spiritual inertia, our non-Catholic surroundings--a danger rather
passive than active in its influence--beget a still greater menace.
It is
natural that Protestantism and infidelity should find public expression.
What our 200 million non-Catholic population thinks in these matters
naturally seeks and finds open expression. They have their organs and
their literature where we find their current opinions publicly uttered.
Their views upon religion, morality, politics, the constitution of
society are perpetually marshaled before us. In the pulpit and in the
press they are reiterated day after day. In magazine and newspaper they
constantly speak from every line. Our literature is permeated and
saturated with non-Catholic dogmatism. On all sides do we find this
opposing spirit. We cannot escape from it. It enfolds and embraces us.
Its breath is perpetually in our faces. It enters in by eye and ear.
From birth to death, it enslaves us in its offensive garments. It now
soothes and flatters, now hates and curses, now threatens, now praises.
But it is most dangerous when it comes to us under the form of
"liberality." It is especially powerful for seduction in this guise. And
it is under this aspect that we wish to consider it. For it is as
Liberalism that Protestantism and Infidelity make their most devastating
inroads upon the domain of the Faith. Out of these non-Catholic and
anti-Catholic conditions thus predominating amongst us springs this
monster of our times, Liberalism!
Protestantism naturally begets toleration of error. Rejecting the
principle of authority in religion, it has neither criterion nor
definition of faith. On the principle that every individual or sect may
interpret the deposit of Revelation according to the dictates of private
judgment, it gives birth to endless differences and contradictions.
Impelled by the law of its own impotence, through lack of any decisive
voice of authority in matters of faith, it is forced to recognize as
valid and orthodox any belief that springs from the exercise of private
judgment. Therefore does it finally arrive, by force of its own
premises, at the conclusion that one creed is as good as another; it
then seeks to shelter its inconsistency under the false plea of liberty
of conscience. Belief is not imposed by a legitimately and divinely
constituted authority, but springs directly and freely from the
unrestricted exercise of the individual's reason or caprice upon the
subject matter of Revelation. The individual or sect interprets as it
pleases--rejecting or accepting what it chooses. This is popularly
called liberty of conscience. Accepting this principle, Infidelity, on
the same plea, rejects all Revelation, and Protestantism, which handed
over the premise, is powerless to protest against the conclusion; for it
is clear that one who, under the plea of rational liberty, has the right
to repudiate any part of Revelation that may displease him, cannot
logically quarrel with one who, on the same ground, repudiates the
whole. If one creed is as good as another, on the plea of rational
liberty, on the same plea, no creed is as good as any. Taking the field
with this fatal weapon of Rationalism, Infidelity has stormed and taken
the very citadel of Protestantism, helpless against the foe of its own
making.
As a
result, we find amongst the people of this country (excepting well
formed Catholics, of course) that authoritative and positive religion
has met with utter disaster and that religious beliefs or unbeliefs have
come to be mere matters of opinion, wherein there are always essential
differences, each one being free to make or unmake his own creed--or
accept no creed.
Such is
the mainspring of the heresy constantly dinned into our ears, flooding
our current literature and our press. It is against this that we have to
be perpetually vigilant, the more so because it insidiously attacks us
on the grounds of a false charity and in the name of a false liberty.
Nor does it appeal to us only on the ground of religious toleration.
The
principle ramifies in many directions, striking root into our domestic,
civil, and political life, whose vigor and health depend upon the
nourishing and sustaining power of religion. For religion is the bond
which unites us to God, the Source and End of all good; and Infidelity,
whether virtual, as in Protestantism, or explicit, as in Agnosticism,
severs the bond which binds men to God and seeks to build human society
on the foundations of man's absolute independence. Hence we find
Liberalism laying down as the basis of its propaganda the following
principles:
1. The
absolute sovereignty of the individual in his entire independence of God
and God's authority.
2. The
absolute sovereignty of society in its entire independence of everything
which does not proceed from itself.
3.
Absolute civil sovereignty in the implied right of the people to make
their own laws in entire independence and utter disregard of any other
criterion than the popular will expressed at the polls and in
parliamentary majorities.
4.
Absolute freedom of thought in politics, morals, or in religion. The
unrestrained liberty of the press.
Such are
the radical principles of Liberalism. In the assumption of the absolute
sovereignty of the individual, that is, his entire independence of God,
we find the common source of all the others. To express them all in one
term, they are, in the order of ideas, RATIONALISM, or the doctrine of
the absolute sovereignty of human reason. Here human reason is made the
measure and sum of truth. Hence we have individual, social, and
political Rationalism, the corrupt fountainhead of liberalist principles
[which are]: absolute freedom of worship, the supremacy of the State,
secular education repudiating any connection with religion, marriage
sanctioned and legitimatized by the State alone, etc.; in one word,
which synthesizes all, we have SECULARIZATION, which denies religion any
active intervention in the concerns of public and of private life,
whatever they be. This is veritable social atheism.
Such is
the source of liberalism in the order of ideas; such, in consequence of
our Protestant and infidel surroundings, is the intellectual atmosphere
which we are perpetually breathing into our souls. Nor do these
principles remain simply in the speculative order, poised forever in the
region of thought. Men are not mere contemplatives. Doctrines and
beliefs inevitably precipitate themselves into action. The speculation
of today becomes the deed of tomorrow, for men, by force of the law of
their nature, are ever acting out what they think. Rationalism,
therefore, takes concrete shape in the order of facts. It finds palpable
expression and action in the press, in legislation, and in social life.
The secular press reeks with it, proclaiming with almost unanimous
vociferation, absolute division between public life and religion. It has
become the shibboleth of journalism, and the editor who will not
recognize it in his daily screed soon feels the dagger of popular
disapproval. In secularized marriage and in our divorce laws, it cleaves
the very roots of domestic society; in secularized education, the
cardinal principle of our public school system, it propagates itself in
the hearts of the future citizens and the future parents; in compulsory
school laws, it forces in the entering wedge of socialism; in the speech
and intercourse of social life, it is constantly asserting itself with
growing reiteration; in secret societies, organized in a spirit
destructive of religion and often for the express purpose of
exterminating Catholicity, it menaces our institutions and places the
country in the hands of conspirators, whose methods and designs, beyond
the reach of the public eye, constitute a tyranny of darkness. In a
thousand ways does the principle of Rationalism find its action and
expression in social and civil life, and however diversified be its
manifestation, there is in it always a unity and a system of opposition
to Catholicity. Whether concerted or not, it ever acts in the same
direction, and whatever special school within the genus of Liberalism
professes it or puts it into action--be it in society, in domestic life,
or in politics--the same essential characteristics will be found in all
its protean shapes--opposition to the Church--and it will ever be found
stigmatizing the most ardent defenders of the Faith as reactionaries,
clericals, Ultramontanes [See Ch. 19], etc. Wherever found, whatever its
uniform, Liberalism in its practical action is ever a systematic warfare
upon the Church. Whether it intrigue, whether it legislate, whether it
orate or assassinate, whether it call itself Liberty or Government or
the State or Humanity or Reason, or whatnot, its fundamental
characteristic is an uncompromising opposition to the Church.
Liberalism is a world complete in itself; it has its maxims, its
fashions, its art, its literature, its diplomacy, its laws, its
conspiracies, its ambuscades. It is the world of Lucifer, disguised in
our times under the name of Liberalism, in radical opposition and in
perpetual warfare against that society composed of the Children of God,
the Church of Jesus Christ.
Liberalism, whether in the doctrinal or practical order, is a sin. In
the doctrinal order, it is heresy, and consequently a mortal sin against
faith. In the practical order, it is a sin against the commandments of
God and of the Church, for it virtually transgresses all commandments.
To be more precise: in the doctrinal order, Liberalism strikes at the
very foundations of faith; it is heresy radical and universal, because
WITHIN IT ARE COMPREHENDED ALL HERESIES. In the practical order it is a
radical and universal infraction of the divine law, since it sanctions
and authorizes all infractions of that law.
Liberalism is a heresy in the doctrinal order because heresy is the
formal and obstinate denial of all Christian dogmas in general. It
repudiates dogma altogether and substitutes opinion, whether that
opinion be doctrinal or the negation of doctrine. Consequently, it
denies every doctrine in particular. If we were to examine in detail all
the doctrines or dogmas which, within the range of Liberalism, have been
denied, we would find every Christian dogma in one way or another
rejected--from the dogma of the Incarnation to that of Infallibility.
Nonetheless Liberalism is in itself dogmatic; and it is in the
declaration of its own fundamental dogma, the absolute independence of
the individual and the social reason, that it denies all Christian
dogmas in general. Catholic dogma is the authoritative declaration of
revealed truth--or a truth consequent upon Revelation--by its infallibly
constituted exponent [the Pope]. This logically implies the obedient
acceptance of the dogma on the part of the individual and of society.
Liberalism refuses to acknowledge this rational obedience and denies the
authority. It asserts the sovereignty of the individual and social
reason and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of authority. It knows no
dogma except the dogma of self-assertion. Hence it is heresy,
fundamental and radical, the rebellion of the human intellect against
God.
It
follows, therefore, that Liberalism denies the absolute jurisdiction of
Jesus Christ, who is God, over individuals and over society, and by
consequence, repudiates the jurisdiction which God has delegated to the
visible head of the Church over each and all of the faithful, whatever
their condition or rank in life. Moreover, it denies the necessity of
divine Revelation and the obligation of everyone to accept that
Revelation under pain of eternal perdition. It denies the formal motive
of faith, viz., the authority of God revealing, and admits only as much
of revealed doctrine as it chooses or comprehends within its own narrow
capacity. It denies the infallible magistracy of the Church and of the
Pope, and consequently all the doctrines defined and taught by this
divine authority. In short, it sets itself up as the measure and rule of
faith and thus really shuts out Revelation altogether. It denies
everything which it itself does not proclaim. It negates everything
which it itself does not affirm. But not being able to affirm any truth
beyond its own reach, it denies the possibility of any truth which it
does not comprehend. The revelation of truth above human reason it
therefore debars at the outset. The divinity of Jesus Christ is beyond
its horoscope. The Church is outside its comprehension. The submission
of human reason to the Word of Christ or its divinely constituted
exponent [the Catholic Church, especially the Pope] is to it
intolerable. It is, therefore, the radical and universal denial of all
divine truth and Christian dogma, the primal type of all heresy, and the
supreme rebellion against the authority of God and His Church. As with
Lucifer, its maxim is, "I will not serve." Such is the general negation
uttered by Liberalism. From this radical denial of revealed truth in
general naturally follows the denial of particular dogmas, in whole or
in part (as circumstances present them in opposition to its
rationalistic judgment). Thus, for instance, it denies the validity of
faith by Baptism, when it admits or supposes the equality of any or all
religious cults; it denies the sanctity of marriage when it sanctions
so-called civil marriages; it denies the infallibility of the Roman
Pontiff, when it refuses to accept as laws his official commands and
teachings and subjects them to the scrutiny of its own intellect--not to
assure itself of their authenticity, as is legitimate, but to sit in
defiant judgment upon their contents.
When we
come to the practical order, Liberalism is radical immorality. Morality
requires a standard and a guide for rational action; it postulates a
hierarchy of ends, and therefore of order, within whose series there is
a subordination of means to the attainment of an ultimate purpose. It
therefore requires a principle or fundamental rule of all action, by
which the subject of moral acts, the rational creature, determines his
course and guides himself to the attainment of his end. In the moral
order, the Eternal Reason alone can be that principle or fundamental
rule of action, and this Eternal Reason is God. In the moral order, the
created reason, with power to determine its course, must guide itself by
the light of the Uncreated Reason, Who is the beginning and end of all
things. The law, therefore, imposed by the Eternal Reason upon the
creature must be the principle or rule of morality. Hence, obedience and
submission in the moral order is an absolute requisite of morality. But
Liberalism has proclaimed the absurd principle of the absolute
sovereignty of human reason; it denies any reason beyond itself and
asserts its independence in the order of knowledge, and hence in the
order of action or morality. Here we have morality without law, without
order, freedom to do what one pleases, or what comes to the same thing,
morality which is not morality, for morality implies the idea not only
of direction, but also essentially demands that of restraint and
limitation under the control of law. Liberalism in the order of action
is license, recognizing no principle or rule beyond itself.
We may
then say of Liberalism: in the order of ideas it is absolute error; in
the order of facts it is absolute disorder. It is, therefore, in both
cases a very grievous and deadly sin, for sin is rebellion against God
in thought or in deed, the enthronement of the creature in the place of
the Creator.
Liberalism is a mortal sin. But Catholic theology teaches us that all
sins are not equally grave, that there is even a distinction of degree
in venial sins. There are also degrees in the category of mortal sin,
just as there are in the category of meritorious works. The gravity of
sin is determined by the object at which it strikes.
Blasphemy, for instance, which directly attacks God Himself, is a sin of
much graver character than theft, which directly attacks man. With the
exception of formal hatred against God, which constitutes the deadliest
of all sins and of which the creature is rarely culpable--unless he be
in Hell--the gravest of all sins are those against faith. The reason is
evident. Faith is the foundation of the supernatural order, and sin is
sin insofar as it attacks this supernatural order at one or another
point; hence that is the greatest sin which attacks this order at its
very foundations. To destroy the foundations is to destroy the entire
superstructure. To cut off the branch of a tree will not kill it, but to
lay the axe to the trunk or to the roots is fatal to its life.
Henceforth it bears neither blossom nor fruit. St. Augustine, cited by
St. Thomas, characterizes sin against faith in these words: Hoc est
peccatum quo tenentur cuncta peccata. "This is the sin which comprehends
all other sins."
The
Angel of the Schools [St. Thomas Aquinas] expresses himself with his
usual clearness on this point: "The gravity of sin is determined by the
interval which it places between man and God; now sin against faith
separates man from God as far as possible, since it deprives him of the
true knowledge of God; it therefore follows that sin against faith is
the greatest of all sins."
When sin
against faith is simply a culpable privation of the knowledge of God, it
has not the same gravity as a direct and formal attack upon dogmas
expressly defined by divine Revelation. In this latter case, sin against
faith, so grave in itself, acquires that degree of gravity which
constitutes heresy. It then contains all the malice of infidelity and
becomes an express protestation against the teachings of faith or an
express adherence to a teaching which is condemned as false and
erroneous by the Faith itself. Besides the deadly sin against faith
itself, it is accompanied by hardness of heart, obstinacy, and the proud
preference for one's own reason over the reason of God Himself. Hence,
heretical doctrines--and works inspired by them--constitute the greatest
of all sins, with the exception of formal hatred against God, of which
only the demons in Hell and the damned are capable. Liberalism, then,
which is heresy, and all the works of Liberalism, which are heretical
works, are the gravest sins known in the code of the Christian law.
Liberalism is, therefore, a greater sin than blasphemy, theft, adultery,
homicide, or any other violation of the law of God, save in such case as
where one acts in good faith, in ignorance, or without thought.
It is
true that modern naturalism does not so regard or understand the case.
But the law of the Church in matters of morals and doctrines is
unchangeable; it ordains today as it did yesterday, and heresy is always
heresy, no matter what the shape it takes. Appearances may be fair, and
the devil may present himself as an angel of light.
The
danger is the greater as the outward show is more seductive. Heresy has
never been so insidious as under its present form of Liberalism. Its
range is so wide that it touches upon every note in the scale and finds
an easy disguise in its protean facilities. But its most fatal shaft is
in its plea for "liberality of mind." This, in its own eyes, is its
cardinal virtue. "Intellectual freedom from dogmatism" is its boast, a
boast in reality the mask of ignorance and pride. To meet such an enemy
requires no ordinary courage, which must be guarded by a sleepless
vigilance. When encountered, it is obligatory upon the Catholic
conscience to resist it with all the powers of the soul. Heresy and all
its works are sins; Liberalism is the root of heresy, the tree of evil
in whose branches all the harpies of infidelity find ample shelter; it
is today the evil of all evils.
As a
system of doctrines, Liberalism may be called a school; if we regard it
as an organization of adepts for the purpose of spreading and
propagating its doctrines, it may be called a sect; inasmuch as it is a
group of men seeking the political enforcement of its doctrines, it may
be called a party. But in whatever aspect we consider it--whether as a
school or sect or party (it presents itself in various degrees or
shades), yet it is still nonetheless Liberalism because variant, for
with specific and logical unity there may be a multitudinous variety.
Now the
unity of Liberalism is not positive but negative; it has no unity of its
own; it is by virtue of its opposition to truth, which is essentially
one, that Liberalism becomes accidentally one. As the vis-a-vis [or
opponent] of truth, it possesses the unity of opposition: The different
degrees of its denial will constitute the degrees of its opposition and
so give us the varieties in the negative unity of its denial. Denial is
its unity in general, and this ranges through the entire realm of
negation, the degree of denial being determined by the degree of truth
denied. If men were absolutely logical and followed to their ultimate
conclusions the premises which they lay down, they would become angels
or devils in working out the consequences according to the goodness or
badness of their first principles. But men are not always logical; they
often stop short of the consequences logically flowing from the premises
preceding. We, therefore, as a rule, see the good as only half good and
the bad as not altogether bad. Hence we find few out-and-out Liberals.
Not many go the full length of their principles. They are nevertheless
true Liberals, that is, veritable disciples, partisans or followers of
Liberalism, ranging themselves under its banner, either as a school, a
sect or a party.
There
are Liberals who accept its principles but reject the consequences, at
least those most repugnant or extreme. For instance, there are men who
believe that the Catholic Church is the great enemy of modern progress,
the one great object in the way of the triumph of their principles. Why
not then openly persecute the Church and endeavor to wipe her off the
face of the earth, as a Nero or a Domitian sought to do? No, they would
not go to this extreme, although it is the practical consequence of
their premise. Or again, if they shrink from the terrors of bloodshed
and the horrors of assassination, why do they not close our Catholic
schools, the nurseries of the Faith? To permit the existence of these
schools is to allow the active and rapid propagation of the Faith. If
Catholicity be the evil they affirm it to be, would they not be
perfectly logical in nipping it in the bud, that is, in the schoolroom?
But no, they would not go so far. Yet the suppression of the Catholic
parochial school is the surest means to strangle the Faith in our midst.
Why should there be any compunction in rooting out the greatest evil--in
their estimation--which afflicts our age, the one great dyke against the
flood of human "liberties" (now rising almost to the level of the
opposing barrier)? It is because these Liberals are inconsistent; they
shrink from the logic of conclusions. Again, there are Liberals who
accept such and such conclusions, or their application, but scrupulously
repudiate the principles whence they flow. They believe, for instance,
in absolutely secularizing education, and yet reject the doctrine of
atheism, which is the only soil congenial to its growth. They applaud
the result, while they repudiate the cause.
Some
would apply Liberalism only to education; others only to the civil
order; and others still, only to political life.
It is
the most advanced alone who seek to apply it to everything and for
everything. The attenuations and mutilations of the liberal Credo are as
many as the interests advanced or balked at by its application. It is
generally supposed that men think with their heads, but their
intelligence often has less to do with it than their hearts--and not
infrequently their stomachs determine their conclusions. Liberalism is
thus often measured out by the dose, according to the taste of the
consumer, as liquors are to drinkers, according to the appetite of each.
This one, in comparison to his more advanced neighbor (who appears to
him a brutal demagogue), is no Liberal at all; whereas, his less
advanced neighbor is, in his eyes, an out-and-out reactionary, rooted in
a stagnant past. It is simply a question of degree, whose grades slide
variously along the liberal scale, some nearer some farther from the
abyss. From the baptized or even surpliced Liberal, who boasts his
breadth of mind in his easy toleration of error, to the avowed atheist,
who hurls his open defiance against God, the difference is only one of
degree. One simply stands on a higher rung of the same ladder than the
other. Observe, when pushed to the wall, how all alike claim the same
denomination of liberal. They may even regard each other with aversion,
but all invoke the same appellation as finally descriptive of each.
Their common criterion is "liberality" and "independence of mind"; the
degree of application will be measured by the individual disposition,
more or less depending upon the variety of elements in the makeup of the
individual and his surroundings: self-interest with one, temperament
with another, education with a third, impeding a too-rapid gait on the
road to absolute Liberalism; human respect may moderate another, serving
as a balance--weight to his rashness; family or school or business
relations may clog the footsteps of a fourth. A thousand and one things
may serve as a brake to a too-accelerated descent, not to mention that
satanic prudence which counsels a conservative advance in order not to
alarm the timid. This last fashion of procedure often serves as a mask
to the most advanced Liberals, who hide their designs under the
appearance of a frank demagoguery. Sometimes Liberalism stalks along in
the careless trappings of an easy-going good nature or a simplicity of
character, which invites our affection and allays our suspicion. Its
very candor in this guise is an aggression difficult to resist. It does
not appear responsible and excites our compassion before it has awakened
our aversion. We seem to forgive it before we accuse it. But all the
greater is the danger when it appears least possible.
Such are
the various fashions of Liberalism. Its disguises are many, its degrees
various. Withal, however, it is the same evil, though motley be its
trappings. Liberalism is one; whereas Liberals, like bad wine, differ in
color and taste.
Peace in
war is an incongruity. Foes in the midst of battle cannot well be
friends. Where the pressure of conflicting forces is most intense, there
is little opportunity of reconciliation. Yet this absurdity and
contradiction we find in the odious and repulsive attempt to unite
Liberalism with Catholicism. The monstrosity resulting is what is known
as the Liberal Catholic or the Catholic Liberal. Strange as it may seem,
Catholics with good intentions have paid tribute to this absurdity and
indulged the vain hope of peace with the eternal enemy. This fatal error
has its source in the vain and exaggerated desire of reconciling and
harmonizing in peace, doctrines utterly incompatible and hostile by
their very nature.
Liberalism is the dogmatic affirmation of the absolute independence of
the individual and of the social reason. Catholicity is the dogma of the
absolute subjection of the individual and of the social order to the
revealed law of God. One doctrine is the exact antithesis of the other.
They are opposites in direct conflict. How is it possible to reconcile
them? Opposition here necessarily means conflict, and the two can no
more harmonize than the square can be made one with the circle.
To the
promoters of Catholic Liberalism the thing appears easy enough. "It is
admirable," they say, "for the individual reason to be subject to the
law of God if it so wishes, but we must distinguish between the public
and the private reason, especially in an age like ours. The modern State
does not recognize God or the Church. In the conflict of different
religious creeds, the public reason must stand neutral and impartial.
Hence the necessary independence of the public reason. The State as
State can have no religion. Let the simple citizen, if he wishes, submit
to the revelation of Jesus Christ, but the statesman and the man in
public life must comport himself as if no Revelation existed." Now all
this means civil or social atheism. It means that society is independent
of God, its Author; that while individuals may recognize their
dependence on the divine law, civil society should not--a distinction
whose sophism is founded on an intolerable contradiction.
It is
clear that, if the individual reason is obliged to submit to the law of
God, the public and the social reason cannot logically escape the same
duty without falling into an extravagant dualism by virtue of which men
would be forced to submit to the law of two contrary and opposed
consciences. Privately, men would have to be Christian; publicly they
would be free to be atheistic.
Furthermore, the road is open to an odious tyranny, for if the public
conscience were independent of the Christian law and ignored it, there
would be no public recognition of the obligation by the civil arm to
protect the Church in the exercise of her rights. Nay, more, the civil
power would readily become the means of persecution, and rulers hostile
to the Church, condemning divine law, could actually, under cover of
authority, legislate against Christianity. Nor is this a fanciful
picture, for France and Italy, legislating today [1886] on the basis of
the sovereign independence of the social and public reason, have enacted
odious laws which hold the Church in those countries in distressful
legal bondage. And the Holy Father himself is now a prisoner within the
walls of the Vatican on account of the violent usurpation of his domains
by an atheist government. [This refers to the elimination of the Papal
States, a central portion of Italy governed by the Popes, as civil
rulers, from the year 800 to 1878, when modern Italy was constituted.]
But the
results of the fatal distinction do not stop with the functions of
legislation and administration subjecting the Church to social and civil
persecution; in modern times it has gone further still and extends its
baneful influence to the schoolroom, propagating itself by placing the
education of youth under its dominating influence. It forms the
conscience of youth, not according to the divine law, which acknowledges
the will of God, but upon a premeditated and careful ignorance of that
law. It is as secular education that it seizes upon the future and
breeds atheism in the hearts of the coming generations. The Catholic
Liberal or the Liberal Catholic, admitting this fatal distinction
between the private and the public reason, thus throws open the gates to
the enemies of the faith, and posing as a man of intellect with generous
and liberal views, stultifies reason by his gross offense against the
principle of contradiction. He is thus both a traitor and a fool.
Seeking to please the enemies of the Faith, he has betrayed his trust,
the Faith itself; imagining he is upholding the rights of reason, he
surrenders it in the most abject way to the spirit of denial, the spirit
of untruth. He has not the courage to withstand the derision of his
cunning foe. To be called intolerant, illiberal, narrow, ultramontane,
reactionist, is gall and wormwood to his little soul. Under this
epithetical fire he gives way and surrenders his birthright of faith and
reason for a mess of Liberal pottage.
Strange
as may seem that anomaly called Liberal Catholicism, its reason is not
far to seek. It takes its root in a false conception of the nature of
the act of faith. The Liberal Catholic assumes as the formal motive of
the act of faith, not the infallible authority of God revealing
supernatural truth, but his own reason deigning to accept as true what
appears rational to him according to the appreciation and measure of his
own individual judgment. He subjects God's authority to the scrutiny of
his reason, and not his reason to God's authority. He accepts
Revelation, not on account of the infallible Revealer, but because of
the "infallible" receiver. With him the individual judgment is the rule
of faith. He believes in the independence of reason. It is true he
accepts the Magisterium of the Church, yet he does not accept it as the
sole authorized expounder of divine truth. He reserves, as a coefficient
factor in the determination of that truth, his own private judgment. The
true sense of revealed doctrine to him is not always certain, and human
reason therefore has something to say in the matter, as for instance,
the limits of the Church's infallibility may be determined by human
science. Within lines thus prescribed, the declarations of the Church to
him are infallible, but these limits are not to be determined by the
Church herself. Science will do that for her. She is of course
infallible, they say, but we will determine when and in what she shall
speak infallibly. Such is the absurdity which the Liberal Catholic falls
into by placing the formal motive of faith in human reason.
The
Liberal Catholic calls himself a Catholic because he firmly believes
Catholicity to be the veritable revelation of the Son of God; he calls
himself a Liberal Catholic because he believes that no one can impose
upon him any belief which his individual judgment does not measure as
perfectly rational. What is not rational he rejects; he is
intellectually free to accept or reject. What appears good he assents
to, but he is intellectually bound to no one. Thus, unwittingly, he
falls an easy victim to the snare set by the devil for the
intellectually proud. He has substituted the naturalistic principle of
free examination for the supernatural principle of faith. As a
consequence, he is really not Christian, but pagan. He has no real
supernatural faith, but only a simple human conviction. In the
acceptance of the principle that the individual reason is thus free to
believe or not to believe, Liberal Catholics are deluded into the notion
that incredulity is a virtue rather than a vice. They fail to see in it
an infirmity of the understanding, a voluntary blindness of the heart,
and a consequent weakness of will. On the other hand, they look upon the
skeptical attitude as a legitimate condition wherein intellectual
freedom is preserved, the skeptic remaining master of himself to believe
or deny. They have a horror of any coercive element in matters of faith;
any chastisement of error shocks their tender susceptibilities, and they
detest any Catholic legislation in the direction of what they are
pleased to call intolerance. The Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX is a
nightmare to them, a most inopportune, dominating, harsh, and peremptory
document, calculated to offend the sensibilities of the Protestant and
modern world; it need not be accepted as an infallible utterance, and,
if accepted, must be taken in a very modified sense. The ultramontane
interpretation to him is violent and extreme, and does much more harm
than good by driving back the well-disposed at such a show of
illiberality.
Close
upon this squeamishness in regard to the pronouncement of Catholic
doctrine follows an abhorrence of antagonizing the convictions of
others, no matter how directly opposed to revealed truth, for with
Liberal Catholics the most erroneous are as sacred as the truest
convictions, being equally founded upon the principle of intellectual
liberty. Thus they erect into a dogma what is called the principle of
toleration. The differences of belief are, after all, they complacently
argue, due to differences of temperament, education, etc.; we will not
exactly approve them, but we should at least condone them.
The
first conception of faith being naturalistic, in the development and
application of that conception, either to the individual or to society,
the same naturalistic element evolves itself. Hence it follows that the
Liberal Catholic's appreciation of the Church has no foundation in its
supernatural character. The Church does not address herself to his
sympathies as a supernatural society whose first and supernatural end is
the glory of God and the salvation of souls. It is on her social and
human side that he regards her with affection. It is as the great
civilizing and humanizing power which has lifted so many people from a
state of barbarism, as the guardian of the ancient arts and letters, as
the promoter of learning, that she wins his applause and approbation.
She is first, not because she is first in herself by divine right, but
first in virtue of the approval of his own great intellect. Under this
false conception, apologies have been written in our times, and with
strange inconsistency the Church is often lauded as the great promoter
and preserver of civilization in the past, while her regressive
tendencies are deplored in the present (as if an institution, which
alone, by divine constitution, has the perennial force of progress,
could ever weaken or fail in her mission of human regeneration). Under
the glamour of an advance towards the mirage of a false happiness in the
desert of this life, our Liberal Catholics are proclaiming the shadow
while rejecting the substance. True progress, which can only be achieved
through an advance toward God, can never be effected save through that
agency divinely appointed to lead us to God. This the Church of Jesus
Christ alone can do, for she, under His institution, is as He Himself,
the way, the truth, and the life.
Forgetting the divine and supernatural character of the Church (and she
is nothing if not divine and supernatural), Liberal Catholics talk and
write about her as a simple human development, accepting, in the
blindness of their false conception, the naturalistic definition of
faith. They thus eviscerate the Church, making her the mere husk of what
she really is.
Piety
itself does not escape the action of this pernicious naturalistic
principle; it converts it into pietism--that is to say, into a parody of
true piety, as is painfully seen in the pious practices of so many
people who seek in their devotions only the sentimental emotions of
which they themselves are able to be the source. They are devout over
themselves, worshiping their own little sentiments and offering incense
to idols graven after their own image. This is simply spiritual
sensualism, and nothing else. Thus we see in our day in so many souls
the degeneration of Christian asceticism (which is the purification of
the heart by the repression of the appetites) and the falsification of
Christian mysticism, which is neither emotion, nor interior consolation,
nor any other epicurean foible of human sentiment, but union with God
through a supernatural love for Him and through absolute submission to
His holy will. Therefore it is that the Catholicity of a great number of
people in our times is a Liberal Catholicity, or rather, a false
Catholicity. It is really not Catholicity, but mere naturalism, a pure
rationalism; it is in a word paganism disguised in Catholic forms and
using Catholic language.
When we
review the field of history in the vast stretch of time from the
beginning of Christianity to our own day, the various heresies that have
from time to time appeared seem clearly and distinctly marked off from
the environment of the orthodox faith. We seem to be able to draw a
geometrical line around about their respective areas, sharply dividing
the camp of truth from that of error, separating the light from the
darkness. But in this we are deceived; it is an illusion caused by
distance. The distinction appears so clear, so definite only because we
stand on the eminence of the present, from whose vantage ground we see,
in large outline, the massed movements of peoples in the vast panorama
of the past. A closer study, placing us in intellectual contact with
these epochs, enables us to observe that never, in any period of
history, were the dividing lines between truth and error defined with
such geometrical exactness (not that, in reality, truth was not clearly
and distinctly formulated in the definitions of the Church but) because,
in its acceptation and its exterior profession by the generations of the
past interested in these definitions, more or less confusion and
looseness characterized their manner of taking them. Error in society is
like a stain upon some precious tissue. It is easily distinguished, but
it is very difficult to define its limits. These limits are as
indefinite as the twilight which merges the departing day into the
coming night or as the dawn which blends the shadows of the spent
darkness with the newborn light. So do the limits between error and
truth in the actual affairs of men mingle in shadowy confusion. Error is
a somber night; its limits fringe away from it like a huge penumbra,
which is sometimes taken for the shadow itself, faintly brightened by
some reflections of the dying light, or rather by the luminary yet
enveloped and obscured by the first shades of evening.
So too,
all error clearly formulated in Christian society is, as it were,
surrounded by an atmosphere of the same error, but less dense, more
rarified and tempered. Arianism had its Semi-Arianism, Pelagianism its
Semi-Pelagianism, Lutherism its Jansenism, which was nothing else than a
modified Lutherism. So in our own times, Liberalism has its
Semi-Liberalism, which is nothing else than Catholic Liberalism. This is
what the Syllabus terms modern Liberalism, that is, Liberalism without
the boldness of its unvarnished first principles and stripped of the
horrors of its last consequences; it is the Liberalism of those who are
still unwilling not to appear to be Catholics or at least not to
believe--themselves Catholics. Liberalism is the baneful twilight of the
truth, beginning to be obscured in their intelligence, or heresy, which
has not yet taken complete possession of them. On the other hand, we
should not fail to note that there are those who are just emerging from
the darkness of error into the twilight of truth.
This
class has not fully penetrated into the domain of truth. That they will
ever enter the city of light depends upon their own sincerity and
honesty. If they earnestly desire to know the truth in its fullness and
seek it with sincere purpose, God's grace will not fail them. But they
are in a dangerous position. On the borderland between the realms of
light and darkness, the devil is most active and ingenious in detaining
those who seem about to escape his snares, and he spares nothing to
retain in his service a great number of people who would truly detest
his infernal machinations if they only perceived them. His method, in
the instance of persons infected with Liberalism, is to suffer them to
place one foot within the domain of truth, provided they keep the other
inside the camp of error. In this way they stand the victim of the
devil's deceit and their own folly. In this way those whose consciences
are not yet entirely hardened escape the salutary horrors of remorse; so
the pusillanimous and the vacillating, who comprise the greater number
of Liberals, avoid compromising themselves by pronouncing themselves
such openly and squarely; so the shrewd and calculating (according to
the measure of expediency--how much time they will spend in each camp),
manage to show themselves the friends and allies of both; so a man is
enabled to administer an official and recognized palliative to his
failings, his weaknesses and his blunders. It is the obscurity that
arises from the indefiniteness of clearly defined principles of truth
and error in the Liberalist's mind that makes him the easy victim of
Satan. His boasted strength is the very source of his weakness. It is
because he has no real solid knowledge of the principles of truth and
error that he is so easily deluded into the belief of his own
intellectual superiority. He is in a mental haze--a fog which hides from
him the abyss into which his vanity and pride, cunningly played upon by
Satan, are invariably drawing him.
Philosophy and theology teach that there are two kinds of atheism,
doctrinal (or speculative) and practical. The first consists in an open
and direct denial of the existence of God; the second consists in acting
and living without denying the existence of God, but yet as if He did
not really exist. Those who profess the first are called theoretical or
doctrinal atheists; those who live according to the second, practical
atheists; the latter are the more numerous.
It is
the same with Liberalism and Liberals. There are theoretical and
practical Liberals. The first are the dogmatizers of the sect--the
philosophers, the professors, the controversialists, the journalists.
They teach Liberalism in books, in discourses, in articles, by argument
or by authority, in conformity with a rationalistic criterion, in
disguised or open opposition to the criterion of the divine and
supernatural revelation of Jesus Christ.
Practical Liberalists are by far in the greater majority. Like a flock
of sheep, with closed eyes, they follow their leaders. They know nothing
in truth of principles and systems, and did they perceive the perversity
of their instructors, would perhaps detest them. But, deceived by a
false cry or shibboleth, they troop docilely after their false guides.
They are nonetheless the hands that act, while the theorists are the
heads that direct. Without them [i.e., the practical Liberals],
Liberalism would never pass beyond the narrow bounds of speculation. It
is the practical Liberalists that give it life and exterior movement.
They constitute the prime matter of Liberalism--disposed to take on any
form, ready for any folly or absurdity proposed by the leaders.
Amongst Catholic Liberals, many go to Mass, even make novenas, and yet
when they come into contact with the world, they lead the lives of
practical Liberals. They make it a rule "to live up to the times" as
they call it. The Church they believe to be somewhat out-of-date, an old
fogy, that she is held back by a certain set of reactionaries,
ultramontanes; but they have hopes that she will in the course of time
catch up with the modern spirit of progress, of which they are the van.
The barnacles of medievalism still encumber the Bark of Peter, but time,
they believe, will remedy this. The straw of medieval philosophy and
theology they hope before long to thrash out by the introduction of the
modern spirit into her schools.
Then will a new theology be developed, more in conformity with the needs
of the times, more in harmony with the modern spirit, which makes such
large demands upon our "intellectual liberty" [Unfortunately, we have
witnessed all this come to pass in the wake of Vatican Council II,
1962--1965, with disastrous results. --Editor, 1993.] So they believe
(or imagine they believe) that all is well. Is their responsibility
before God therefore lessened? Assuredly not. They sin directly in the
light of faith. They are less excusable than those Liberals who have
never been within the pale of the Church. In short they sin with their
eyes open.
Amongst Liberals we must not forget to include those who manage to evade
any direct exposition or expression of the Liberal theory, but who
nevertheless obliquely sustain it in their daily practice by writing and
orating after the Liberal method, by recommending Liberal books and men,
measuring and appreciating everything according to the Liberal
criterion, and manifesting, on every occasion that offers, an intense
hatred for anything that tends to discredit or weaken their beloved
Liberalism. Such is the conduct of those prudent journalists whom it is
difficult to apprehend in the flagrant advocacy of any proposition
concretely Liberal, but who nevertheless, in what they say and in what
they do not say, never cease to labor for the propagation of this
cunning heresy. Of all Liberal reptiles, these are the most venomous.
Liberalism of every degree and all forms has been formally condemned--so
much so that outside of the motives of its intrinsic malice, it stands
under the formal ban of the Church, which is sufficient for all faithful
Catholics. It would be impossible for an error so widespread and so
radical to escape condemnation.
Upon its
appearance in France at the time of the Revolution [1789-1799], the
famous Declaration of the Rights of Man--which contains in germ all the
follies of Liberalism--was condemned by Pius VI (1775-1799). Later, the
baneful doctrine infected all the countries of Europe. In Spain it first
took the name of Liberalism, under which it has since been known
everywhere.
Upon the
occasion of the appearance of the first errors of De Lamennais, Gregory
XVI (1831- 1846), in his encyclical Mirarl Vos, explicitly condemned
Liberalism as it was then understood, taught, and practiced by the
constitutional governments of Europe. Later on, when the full tide of
the deplorable deluge had submerged all Europe, carrying all before it,
God raised up to His Church Pius IX (1846-1878), who has justly passed
into history as the "Scourge of Liberalism."
Liberal
error, under all its forms, shapes, and shades, has been unmasked by
this Pope. That his words might carry, as it were, more authority on
this question, Providence has willed that these reiterated condemnations
of Liberalism should fall from the lips of a Pontiff who, at the
beginning of his pontificate, was hailed by Liberalists as their own.
But he left no refuge to which their error might have resort. The
numerous briefs and allocutions of Plus IX have clearly shown to
Christian peoples what this baneful heresy is, and The Syllabus of
Errors (1864) has put on the final seal of condemnation. Let us see the
principal contents of some of the Pontifical documents. Amongst all that
we might place before our readers, we will cite only a few.
On the
18th of June, 1871, responding to a deputation of French Catholics, Pius
IX spoke thus:
'Atheism
in legislation, indifference in matters of religion, and the pernicious
maxims which go under the name of Liberal Catholicism are the true
causes of the destruction of states; they have been the ruin of France.
Believe me, the evil I denounce is more terrible than the Revolution,
more terrible even than The Commune. I have always condemned Liberal
Catholicism, and I will condemn it again forty times over if it be
necessary."
In a
brief, 6th of March, 1873, addressed to the Circle of St. Ambrose of
Milan, the Sovereign Pontiff thus expresses himself:
"People
are not wanting who pretend to form an alliance between light and
darkness and to associate justice with iniquity in favor of those
doctrines called Liberal Catholicism, which, based on the most
pernicious principles, show themselves favorable to the intrusion of
secular power upon the domain of spirituals; they lead their partisans
to esteem, or at least to tolerate, iniquitous laws, as if it were not
written that no one can serve two masters. Those who thus conduct
themselves are more dangerous and more baneful than declared enemies,
not only because, without being warned of it, perhaps even without being
conscious of it, they second the projects of wicked men, but also
because, keeping within certain limits, they show themselves with some
appearance of probity and sound doctrine. They thus deceive the
indiscreet friends of conciliation and seduce honest people, who would
otherwise have strenuously combatted a declared error."
In the
Brief of the 8th of May of the same year, speaking to the Confederation
of the Catholic Circle of Belgium, the same Holy Father said:
"What we
praise above all in your religious enterprise is the absolute aversion
which, as we are informed, you show towards the principles of Liberal
Catholicism and your intrepid determination to root them out as soon as
possible. In truth you will extirpate the fatal root of discord and you
will efficaciously contribute to unite and strengthen the minds of all
in so combatting this insidious error, much more dangerous than an open
enemy because it hides itself under the specious veil of zeal and of
charity, and is so endeavoring to protect the people in general from its
contaminating influence. Surely you, who adhere with such complete
submission to all decisions of this Apostolic Seat and who know its
frequent reprobations of Liberal principles, have no need of these
warnings."
In the
Brief to the La Croix, a Belgium journal, on the 24th of May, 1874, the
Pope expresses himself thus:
"We
cannot do less than to praise the design expressed in this letter, which
we know your journal will satisfactorily fulfill, the design to publish,
to spread, to comment on and inculcate in all minds all that the Holy
See teaches against the perverse or at least false doctrines professed
in so many quarters, and particularly against Liberal Catholicism,
bitterly striving to conciliate light with darkness and truth with
error."
On the
9th of June, 1873, Pius IX wrote to the president of the Council of the
Catholic Association of Orleans, and without mentioning its name,
depicts pietistic and moderated Liberalism in the following terms:
"Although you have not, strictly speaking, to combat impiety, are you
not perhaps menaced on this side by as great dangers as those of the
group of friends deceived by that ambiguous doctrine, which, while
rejecting the last consequence of error, obstinately retains the germs,
and which, not willing to embrace the truth in its fullness, and not
daring to abandon it entirely, exhausts itself in interpreting the
traditions and teachings of the Church by running them through the mold
of its own private opinions."
In an
address to the Bishop of Quimper, and speaking in reference to the
general assembly of the Catholic Association of that diocese, the Pope
said:
"Assuredly these associations are not wanting in the obedience due to
the Church, neither on account of the writings nor the actions of those
who pursue them with invectives and abuse; but they might be pushed into
the slippery path of error by the force of those opinions called
Liberal; opinions accepted by many Catholics who are otherwise honest
and pious, and who, even by the very influence which gives them their
piety, are easily captivated and induced to profess the most pernicious
maxims. Inculcate, therefore, Venerable Brother, in the minds of this
Catholic assembly that, when we have so often rebuked the sectaries of
these Liberal opinions, we have not had in view the declared enemies of
the Church, whom it would have been idle to denounce, but rather that
those of whom we are speaking are such as secretly guard the virus of
Liberal principles which they have imbibed with their mother's milk.
They boldly inoculate this virus into the people's minds, as if it were
not impregnated with a manifest malice, and as if it were as harmless to
religion as they think. They thus propagate the seed of those troubles
which have held the world in revolution so long. Let them avoid these
ambuscades. Let them endeavor to direct their blows against this
perfidious enemy, and certainly they will merit much from their religion
and their country."
With
these utterances from the mouth of the Vicar of Jesus Christ our friends
as well as our enemies must see that the Pope has said in diverse
briefs, and particularly in the last citation, in a general way all that
can be said on this question, which we are studying in its details.
Liberalism has been condemned by the Pope in many and various documents.
From these let us select a few epithets which stigmatize it with
unsparing emphasis. They will bring out in striking relief the
perfidious character of this cunning heresy.
In his
Brief to Mgr. de Segur in regard to the latter's well-known work Hommage
Aux Catholiques Liberaux [Hommage to Liberal Catholics], the Pope calls
it a "perfidious enemy",-- in his allocution to the Bishop of Nevers,
"the present real calamity"; in his letter to the Catholic Circle of St.
Ambrose of Milan, "a compact between injustice and iniquity"; in the
same document he speaks of it as "more fatal and dangerous than a
declared enemy"; in his letter to the Bishop of Quimper, "a hidden
poison"; in the brief to the Belgians, "a crafty and insidious error";
in another brief, to Mgr. Gaume, "a most pernicious pest." All these
documents from which we quote may be found in full in Mgr. Segur's book,
Hommage Aux Catholiques Liberaux.
But
Liberalism is always strategically cunning. It rejected these very plain
condemnations on the ground that they had all been made to private
persons, that they were, therefore, of an entirely private character, by
no means ex cathedra, and, of course, not binding. Heresy is always
sophistically obstinate; it clings to the least pretext, seeks every
excuse to escape condemnation. Barricading itself behind these technical
defenses, Liberalism practically defied the authority of the Church. Its
perfidy was short-lived. A solemn official public document of a general
character and universally promulgated would sweep away the cobwebs with
which Liberal Catholics had endeavored to bind the authority of the
Sovereign Pontiff. The Church could not refuse a formal and decisive
word to relieve the anxiety of her children. That word was spoken; it
was
The Syllabus of Errors, December 8, 1864.
All
faithful Catholics hailed it with an enthusiasm only equaled in
intensity by the paroxysm of fury with which the Liberals received it.
Liberal Catholics thought it more prudent to strike at it covertly by
overwhelming it with artificial interpretations. The Liberals denounced
it with unsparing bitterness; the Liberal Catholics whittled it away by
all manner of emasculating explanations. It was a document fatal to
both; they had reason to fear it, the one execrating it, the other
seeking with desperate subtlety to parry the blow, for the Syllabus is
an official catalog of the principle errors of the day in the form of
concrete propositions placed under the formal ban of the Church. In it
will be found, succinctly formulated, the various errors which are met
within the current literature of the times. The Syllabus crystallizes
all these errors and stamps them with the seal of the explicit and
formal condemnation of the Church. Here we have in detail all the
Liberal dogmas. Although Liberalism may not be expressly named in any
one of the propositions, most of its errors are there placed in pillory.
From the condemnation of each of the Liberal errors results a
condemnation of the whole system. Let us briefly enumerate them.
Condemnation of liberty of worship (propositions 15, 77 and 78); of the
placet of governments (propositions 20 and 28); of the absolute
supremacy of the State (proposition 38); of the secularization of public
education (proposition 45, 40 and 48); of the absolute separation of
Church and State (proposition 15); of the absolute right to legislate
without regard to God (proposition 56); of the principle of
non-intervention (proposition 62); of the right of insurrection
(proposition 63); of civil marriage (proposition 73 and others); of the
liberty (license) of the press (proposition 79); of universal suffrage
as the source of authority (proposition 60); of even the name of
Liberalism (proposition 88).
There
have been books, pamphlets, and articles innumerable written on the
proper interpretation of the propositions of the Syllabus. But the most
authoritative interpretation ought to be that of its radical enemies,
not of course in the absurdities of their misunderstandings or
perversions, like Mr. Gladstone's unfortunate attempt to distort some of
its propositions into a sanction of civil disloyalty, a position from
which he has since withdrawn, we are glad to be able to say. But outside
of such patent misconstructions, we may rely upon the interpretation
given by Liberals of all shades, especially in those points wherein we
see them wince under its uncompromising phraseology. When Liberals
regard the Syllabus of Errors as their most detestable enemy, as the
complete symbol of what they term Clericalism, Ultramontanism and
Reaction, we may rest assured that it has been well interpreted in that
quarter. Satan, bad as he is, is not a fool, and sees clearly enough
where the blow falls with most effect. Thus, he has set the authority of
his seal--which after God's is most reliable--on this great work, the
seal of his inextinguishable hate. Here is an instance in which we can
believe the Father of Lies. What he most abhors and defames possesses an
unimpeachable guaranty of its truth.
To
effect a confusion of ideas is an old scheme of the devil. Not to
understand clearly and precisely is generally the source of intellectual
error. In time of schism and heresy, to cloud and distort the proper
sense of words is a fruitful artifice of Satan, and it is as easy to lay
snares for the intellectually proud as for the innocent. Every heresy in
the Church bears testimony to Satan's success in deceiving the human
intellect by obscuring and perverting the meaning of words. Arianism was
a battle of words and owed its long-continued success to its verbal
chicanery. Pelagianism and Jansenism showed the same characteristic, and
today Liberalism is as cunning and obscure as any of its heretical
predecessors.
For
some, Liberalism consists in certain political forms; for others, in a
certain tolerant and generous spirit opposed to despotism and tyranny;
for others again it means simply civil equality; for many it becomes a
vague and uncertain sentiment, which shapes itself into opposition to
all arbitrary government. Although already defined, it will not be amiss
to define Liberalism again.
In the
first place, no political form of any kind whatsoever, whether
democratic or popular, is of itself (ex se) Liberalism. Forms are mere
forms and nothing more. Forms of government do not constitute their
essence. Their forms are but their accidents. Their essence consists in
the civil authority by virtue of which they govern, whether that
authority be in form republican, democratic, aristocratic, monarchical;
it may be an elective, hereditary, mixed or absolute monarchy. These
various forms of themselves have nothing to do with Liberalism. Any one
of them may be perfectly and integrally Catholic. If they accept beyond
their own sovereignty the sovereignty of God, if they confess that they
derive their authority from Him, if they submit themselves to the
inviolable rule of the Christian law, if they hold for indisputable in
their parliaments all that is defined by this law, if they acknowledge
as the basis of public right the supreme morality of the Church and her
absolute right in all things within her own competency, they are truly
Catholic governments, whatever be their form, and the most exacting
Ultramontanism cannot reproach them.
History
offers the repeated example of republican powers which have been
fervently Catholic:
Such was
the aristocratic republic of Venice; such the merchant republic of
Genoa; such in our day are certain Swiss cantons. As examples of truly
Catholic mixed monarchies, that of Catalognia and Aragon (the most
democratic and at the same time the most Catholic of the Middle Ages),
the ancient monarchy of Castile up to the advent of the House of
Austria, the elective monarchy of Poland up to the time of the
iniquitous dismemberment of that most religious realm. To believe that
monarchies are of themselves (ex se) more religious than republics is an
ignorant prejudice. The most scandalous examples of persecution against
Catholicity in modern time have been given by monarchies; for instance,
by Russia and by Prussia.
A
government, whatever be its form, is Catholic if its constitution, its
legislation, and its politics are based on Catholic principles; it is
Liberal if it bases its constitution, its legislation, and its politics
on rationalistic principles. It is not the act of legislation--by the
king in a monarchy, by the people in a republic, or by both in a mixed
form of government--which constitutes the essential nature of its
legislation or of its constitution. What constitutes this is whether it
does or does not carry with it the immutable seal of the Faith and
whether it be or be not conformable with what the Christian law imposes
upon states as well as upon individuals. just as amongst individuals, a
king in his purple, a noble with his escutcheon or a workman in his
overalls can be truly Catholic, so states can be Catholic, whatever be
the place assigned them in the scale of governmental forms. In
consequence, the fact of being Liberal or anti-Liberal has nothing
whatever to do with the horror which everyone ought to entertain for
despotism and tyranny, nor with the desire of civil equality between all
citizens; much less with the spirit of toleration and of generosity,
which, in their proper acceptation, are Christian virtues. And yet all
this, in the language of certain people and of certain journals, is
called Liberalism. Here we have an instance of a thing which has the
appearance of Liberalism and which in reality is not Liberalism at all.
On the
other hand, there exists a thing which is really Liberalism and yet has
not the appearance of Liberalism. Let us suppose [i.e., imagine] an
absolute monarchy like that of Russia, or of Turkey, or better still,
one of the conservative governments of our times, the most conservative
imaginable; let us suppose that the constitution and the legislation of
this monarchy or of this government is based upon the principle of the
absolute and free will of the king or upon the equally unrestricted will
of the conservative majority, in place of being based on the principles
of Catholic right, on the indestructibility of the Faith, or upon a
rigorous regard of the rights of the Church; then, this monarchy and
this conservative government would be thoroughly Liberal and
anti-Catholic. Whether the free-thinker be a monarch, with his
responsible ministry, or a responsible minister, with his legislative
corps, as far as consequences are concerned, it is absolutely the same
thing. In both cases their political conduct is in the direction of
free-thought, and therefore it is Liberal. Whether or not it be the
policy of such a government to place restraints upon the freedom of the
press; whether, no matter under what pretext, it grinds its subjects and
rules with a rod of iron; a country so governed, though it will not be
free, will without doubt be Liberal. Such were the ancient Asiatic
monarchies; such are many of our modern monarchies; such was the
government of Bismarck in Germany; such is the monarchy of Spain, whose
constitution declares the king inviolable, but not God.
Here
then we have something which, without seeming to resemble Liberalism,
really is Liberalism, the more subtle and dangerous precisely because it
has not the appearance of the evil it is.
We see,
then, what care must be used in treating questions of this kind. It is
of great importance above all that the terms of the discussion be
carefully defined and that equivocations be studiously avoided which
would favor error more than the truth.
May a
good Catholic take the term "Liberalism" in good part, and may he regard
it creditable to be a Liberal? What harm, it may be urged, is there in
the usage of these terms, as long as there is no actual acceptance of
the Liberal creed. Why should not Catholics use the terms with a good
sense injected into them? Let us see if there be validity in this claim.
It is
certain that in the present age the word "Liberalism" signifies
something not entirely in accord with true Catholicity. It cannot be
said that we describe the situation in exaggerated terms. It must be
admitted that in the current acceptation of the word, Liberalism and
Catholic Liberalism have been explicitly condemned by Pius IX. Leaving
aside for the moment those who pretend to profess a certain Liberalism
without wishing it to be known as such, there is no doubt that the
Liberalist current in Europe and America is anti-Catholic and
rationalistic. Pass the world in review; what is meant by the Liberal
party in Belgium, in France, in Germany, in Holland, in Austria, in
Italy, in the South American Republics? Are they not anti-clerical,
anti-Catholic? What is meant by their current language when they speak
of the Liberal criterion: a Liberal atmosphere, Liberal thought, etc.?
Look at the leaders of these parties, both in Europe and America; do not
ninety-nine percent of them understand by Liberalism the application of
a pure and mild rationalism, at least to social science? Do they not
regard as their sole and most potent enemy what they contemptuously term
"Clericalism" "Ultramontanism" and do they not describe the Church as
medieval, reactionary, the opponent of progress and the nurse of
superstition? When then the term is so intimately associated with a
Rationalism so radically opposed to the Church, how may Catholics use it
with any hope of separating it from its current meaning?
In vain
may some half dozen people imagine that they have given a different
signification to a thing currently understood to bear the unmistakable
stamp of anti-Catholicity. Beyond all dispute, common usage, the arbiter
and judge of language, persists in regarding Liberalism as the
implacable foe of Catholicity. In spite, then, of a thousand
distinctions, exceptions and subtleties, you cannot fashion for yourself
alone a Liberalism which has nothing contrary to the Faith in the
opinion of most people, nor can you call yourself Liberal in any sense
without being classed with all the other Liberals of that great family
of Liberalism, such as the world understands it. The journal that seeks
to be Catholic and at the same time has the name or reputation of
Liberal becomes in the general opinion an ally of those who, under the
Liberal banner, combat the Church in front and rear. Vainly will the
editor of such a journal explain himself; his excuses and his
explanations grow wearisome. To profess to be Catholic and yet subscribe
himself to be Liberal is not the way to convince people of the sincerity
of his profession. The editor of a journal purporting to be Catholic
must be Catholic, not only in the profession he makes, but in spirit and
in truth. To assume to be Liberal and then to endeavor to appear
Catholic is to belie his faith; and although in his own heart he may
imagine that he is as Catholic as the Pope (as several Liberals vaunt
themselves), there is not the least doubt that his influence on current
ideas and the march of events is thrown in favor of the enemy; and, in
spite of himself, he becomes a satellite forced to move in the general
orbit described by Liberalism.
And all
this comes of a foolish desire to be estimated Liberal. Insane illusion!
The usage of the word Liberal makes the Catholic who accepts it as his
own one with all that finds shelter in its ominous shadow. Rationalism
is the toadstool that flourishes in its dark shades, and with
Rationalism does such a journalist identify himself, thus placing
himself in the ranks of the enemies of Jesus Christ!
Moreover, there is little doubt that the readers of such journals are
little prepared to distinguish the subtle limitations drawn by editors
of this character between Liberalism and Liberalism. Most readers know
the word in its common usage and class all things Liberal in a lump.
When they see an ostensibly Catholic journal practically making common
cause with the Liberal creed by sanctioning its name, they are easily
led into the dangerous belief that Liberalism has some affinity with
their faith, and this once engrafted in their minds, they become ready
adepts of Rationalism.
Let us
illustrate. There is in our day a sect which calls itself "The Old
Catholics' " Suppose that we, who are in the true sense of the word "old
Catholics" "for our Catholicity dates from Calvary and the cenacle of
Jerusalem" (which are proofs of its antiquity), suppose we should
establish a journal with the equivalent title: Review of the Old
Catholics. Could it be said that this title is a lie? No, for we are old
Catholics in the best sense of the words. But could it not be properly
objected that this is a false-sounding title, inasmuch as it is in our
day the cunning device of a schismatical sect? Certainly it would give
occasion to well-informed Catholics to believe that we were schismatic
and to the schismatics, who style themselves "Old Catholics" occasion to
welcome us as new comrades in their rebellion against the Church. Why
thus scandalize the faithful? But we use the word in a good sense. So be
it! But would it not be better altogether to avoid the use of a term in
so important a matter, which, under existing circumstances, is readily
interpreted in a bad sense?
Now this
is exactly the situation with those who consider inoffensive the term
Liberal--reprobated by the Pope. Why should they take particular pains
to employ a term requiring confusing explanations and which cannot but
excite suspicion and cause scandal? Why rank themselves, for the sake of
a term, with the enemy and carry his device--if, at bottom, they are
Catholic? But it may be said that words are of little importance--why
quibble in this way over the meaning of a term? We protest; words are of
paramount importance, especially in our own day, when intellectual
confusion so obscures fundamental truths in the modern mind. Words
represent ideas. That is their value and their use. Modern error largely
owes its success to its use of terms of an ambiguous character, or
rather, by injecting a meaning into its words which hitherto carried a
different signification. Agnosticism and Positivism have thus retained a
Christian phraseology without the Christian meaning. They speak of God
and sanctity and holiness and duty and freedom, but they have
eviscerated the Christian meaning. Still these terms, with their former
meanings, pass current in the public mind and so half-disguise the
fatalism and paganism of the agnostic and positivist schools. Socialism
has adopted the terms "liberty," "equality" and "fraternity" as its
watchwords, where in reality they mean "revolution "destruction" and
"despotism '" Yet it deceives the simple by thus disguising its real
intent.
So has
it always been. All heresies have begun in verbal disputes and ended in
sanguinary conflicts of ideas. St. Paul exhorts Timothy to be on his
guard, not only against false science ("Oppositiones falsi nominis
scientiae"), but also against profane novelties of words ("profanas
vocum novitates"). What would the Great Apostle of the nations say if
today he saw Catholics decorating themselves with the title of Liberal,
when that term stands in such violent and open antithesis to all that is
Catholic? It is not merely a question Of words, but of what words
represent. It is a question of truth and salvation. No, you cannot be a
Liberal Catholic; incompatibles cannot be reconciled. You cannot assume
this reprobated name, although you may be able by subtle sophisms to
discover some secret way of reconciling it with your faith. Christian
charity will not defend you, although you may repeatedly invoke it and
would make it synonymous with the toleration of error. The first
condition of charity is not to violate the truth, and charity cannot be
the snare with which to surprise faith into the support of error. While
we may admit the sincerity of those who are not Catholic, their error
must always be held up to reprobation. We may pity them in their
darkness, but we can never abet their error by ignoring it or tolerating
it. Beyond dispute, no Catholic can be consistently called "Liberal."
Most to
be feared, however, is not he who openly boasts his Liberalism, but he
who eschews the name and, vehemently denying it, is yet steeped to the
lips in it and continually speaks and acts under its inspiration. And if
such a man be a Catholic by profession, all the more dangerous is he to
the faith of others, for he is the hidden enemy sowing tares amidst the
wheat.
In our
day the Catholic world, with as much justice as reason, attributes
impiety as a quality of free-thought, whether in a person, a journal or
an institution. "Free-thinker" is an odious epithet which few are
willing to accept, but which many justly bear in spite of their
protestations. They chafe under the appellation of the word, but find no
inconvenience in being all that it implies. Persons, societies, books,
governments which reject, in matters of faith and morals, the only and
exclusive criterion--that of the Catholic Church--are Liberals. They
acknowledge themselves to be Liberals. They feel honored to be so
recognized and never dream of scandalizing anybody except us terrible
"irreconcilables."
Now
change the expression; instead of Liberals, call them free-thinkers.
They resent the epithet as a calumny and grow indignant at the insult,
as they term it. But why this excruciating tenderness, this delicate
sensitiveness over the variations of a simple term? Have you not, dear
friends, banished from your conscience, your books, your journals and
your society all recognition of the supreme authority of the Church?
Have you not raised up as the sole and fundamental criterion of your
conduct and your thought your own untrammeled reason?
Very
properly then do you say that you are Liberal, and no one will dispute
the title with you. But you should remember that the very principle
which makes you Liberal constitutes you free-thinkers. Every Liberal, no
matter of what degree or shade, is ipso facto a freethinker, and every
freethinker, as odious as the title may seem according to social
conventionalities, is only a logical Liberal. He is simply a Liberal
following his premises to their conclusions. This doctrine is as precise
and as exact as a mathematical proposition. It is based on the laws of
the strictest logic. It is a simple syllogism, whose premise is
Liberalism and whose conclusion is free-thought.
Let us
illustrate. You are a Catholic more or less open to false allurements,
and as a punishment for your sins, you belong to a Liberal society, say,
of a literary character. Consider a moment and ask yourself the
following question: Would I continue to belong to this atheneum if
tomorrow it should proclaim itself publicly and boldly a society of
free-thought? What response would your conscience and your shame
dictate? Would you not at once withdraw from its membership? As a
Catholic you could take no part in its proceedings. Again, you subscribe
to a journal and read it without scruple, although it bears a Liberal
title and speaks and reasons accordingly. Would you continue your
subscription if all of a sudden it should place upon its title page the
following heading: journal of Free-Thought. Well, this moderate or
violent Liberal journal has been for years nothing more nor less than a
free-thinker, and you have been imbibing its poison under the delusion
of a word.
Ah, of
how many prejudices would we rid ourselves if we only reflected a little
on the meaning of words! Every society, whether scientific, literary or
philanthropic, constituted on Liberal lines, is free-thinking. Every
government Liberally organized is free-thinking. To reject with distrust
the name and not the substance is blindness. Any institution, no matter
what be its character, established in complete independence of the
Magisterium of the Faith, is free-thinking. Catholics cannot,
consistently with their faith, belong to them. Membership there means
rebellion against the Church.
In all
such institutions Liberalism reigns and, in consequence, free-thought.
No Catholic can remain a Catholic and affiliate with them. We are
Catholics all-in-all--or not at all. We cannot dwell in an atmosphere
where God is not. There is no true spiritual life where Jesus Christ is
not, and He has given His promise to be with His Church forever. He who
abides not in Him lives in the outer darkness.
How much
do perverse Catholics serve the devil by obstinately clinging to such
associations and participating in their works! In the folly of their
ignorance, which they assert against the wisdom of the Church, they
harden their consciences to the practical guidance of the Holy See and
blindly enlist in the service of an enemy whose cunning deludes them
into the slavery of Hell--under the disguise of freedom! They forget
that the Truth alone makes them free. To know and serve God is the only
freedom, and Liberalism completely severs the bond which links man to
God. With a just and rational horror does a good Catholic regard
Liberalism. Ultramontanism will never cause you to loose your soul;
Liberalism is a broad road to the infernal abyss.
Is there
such a thing in rerum nature ["in the nature of things"] as a Liberal in
good faith? In our day it seems almost impossible to reconcile
Liberalism with good faith, which is the only thing that can give it the
shadow of excuse. It cannot, however, be denied that, absolutely
speaking, there may exist under peculiar circumstances an exceptional
case, but this will indeed be unique.
In the
history of heresy we frequently find some individuals, even many, who,
in spite of themselves, are dragged into the torrent of error for no
other reason than their supreme ignorance. But it must be admitted that,
if ever an error has been deprived of any excuse on this score, that
error is Liberalism as it exists today. Most heresies which have rent
the bosom of the Church have attempted to disguise their errors under an
exterior of affected piety. Jansenism, perhaps the most subtle of all
heresies, won over a great number of adherents by its cunning simulation
of sanctity. Its morals were rigid to the extreme; its dogmas
formidable; the exterior conduct of its promoters ascetic and apparently
enlightened. It wore the visage of a Saint, while at heart it reeked
with the corruption of pride. The majority of ancient heresies turned
upon very subtle points of doctrine, which only the skilled theologian
could discern, and upon which the ignorant multitude could give no
judgment, save such as they received in confidence from their leaders.
By a very natural consequence, when the hierarchy of a diocese fell into
error, most of his subordinates--clerics and laity full of confidence in
their pastor--fell with him. This was all the easier, owing to the
difficulty of communication with Rome in ancient times, when the
infallible voice of the Universal Pastor could not readily reach the
flock in parts remote from the Chair of Peter. The diffusion of many
ancient heresies, which were mostly purely theological, was nearly
always due to this cause. Hence we find St. Jerome crying out in the
fourth century: Ingemuit universus orbis se esse Arianum: "The whole
world groaned to find itself Arian." This also explains how in the midst
of great schisms and great heresies, such as the Greek Schism and
Anglican heresy, there may be numbers of souls in whom the roots of the
True Faith are not dead, although in its exterior profession this faith
may appear deformed and vicious. Such was the case in England for many
years after the rebellion of Henry VIII, and such, in some instances, is
the case in our own times [1886], for the ready acceptance of the True
Faith by many English converts of recent years bears ample witness to
the vitality of the Faith in souls so grossly betrayed into heresy by
apostate guides three centuries ago [i.e., in the 16th century]. Such
souls, united to the Mystical Body of the Church by Baptism, by interior
Sanctifying Grace, are able to gain eternal salvation with ourselves.
Can the
same be said of Liberalism? Liberalism first presented itself under a
political mask, but since its debut, this mask has become so transparent
that blind indeed is he who cannot divine the perversity of such a
miserable travesty. The veil of hypocrisy and pietism which some of its
panegyrists first threw around it has been stripped off. The halo in
which it was first depicted has shown itself to be, not the soft light
of Heaven, but the lurid glare of Hell. It has gathered under its banner
all the dregs of society, wherever corruption was its precursor and
promoter. The new doctrines which it preached--and which it wished to
substitute for ancient truth--had nothing abstract nor metaphysical; it
rejected everything but brutal facts, which betrayed it as the offspring
of Satan and the enemy of mankind. The terrors of the French Revolution
were the evidence of its origin, as sprung from the corruptions of a
society that had abandoned God and battened on the bestial results of
Voltarian skepticism. No wonder it avoided the abstract and the
metaphysical, to revel in the atrocious deeds of a bloody revolution
[The French Revolution, 1789-1799], which proclaimed the absolute
sovereignty of man against his Creator and the Church.
If such
were the horrors of the birth of Liberalism, what must be said of its
odious development in our own day, when its infernal principles bask in
the full light of the world's approbation? Never has an error been more
severely castigated by the condemnation of the Church; never more
accurately have those condemnations been borne out by the testimony of
experience and history. When Protestantism is fast losing its power,
sinking into the abyss out of sheer impotence, Liberalism, even more
formidable and more dangerous, fills the ranks of this decaying heresy
with enemies still more resourceful, implacable and obstinate.
Protestantism is now a dead dog; Liberalism a living lion going about
seeking whom he may devour. Its dreadful doctrine is permeating society
to the core;
It has
become the modern political creed and threatens us with a second
revolution, to turn the world over once again to paganism. Are there any
good Catholics who do not believe this? Let them but read the signs of
the times, not with the eyes of the world, but by the light of the
Faith, which Jesus Christ gave to them. "I am the way, the truth and the
life," said our Divine Lord. "He that followeth me, walketh not in
darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12). He who follows
the Church follows Him, for He Himself said to the Apostles and their
successors, "He who hears you, hears Me."
What
then is the attitude of the Church towards Liberalism? Is not its entire
hierarchy considered hostile to Liberalism? Does not Liberalism itself
bear witness to this? What does the word "Clericalism" with which the
Liberals have honored those most energetically opposed to their
doctrine, prove, if not that they regard the Church as their most
implacable adversary? How do they look upon the Pope, upon bishops,
priests, religious of all kinds, on pious people and practical
Catholics? "Clericals" "clericals" always, that is, "anti-Liberals!" How
then can we expect to find good faith on the part of a Liberal Catholic
when orthodoxy is so distinctly and completely opposed to Liberalism?
Those who are capable of comprehending the principles of the question
can readily satisfy themselves on its merits by its intrinsic reasons;
those who cannot so comprehend have an extrinsic authority [The Catholic
Church] more than sufficient to form an accurate judgment for them, such
as it should be in every good Christian in matters touching the Faith.
Light is not wanting; those who will, can see well enough. But alas!
Insubordination, illegitimate interests and the desire to take and make
things easy are abundantly at hand to prejudice and to blind. The
seduction of Liberalism is not of the kind that blinds by a false light,
but rather by the seduction which, in sullying the heart, obscures the
understanding. We may therefore justly believe, except perhaps with very
rare exception, that it requires a very vigorous effort of charity to
admit in our day, in accordance with true moral principles, the excuse
of "good faith" in a Catholic who entertains Liberal principles.
What are
the signs or symptoms by which we may distinguish what is and what is
not Liberalism in a person, a journal, a book or an institution? We are
surrounded by Liberalism in all its shapes and varieties, and it
behooves us to be on our guard against its subtle dangers. To lay down
special rules by which we may detect it in its shadings and minutiae is
neither practical nor necessary. But some general directions may be
given. Their application must be left to each one's proper discretion.
To
facilitate the matter, we will divide Liberals, whether persons or
writings, into three classes:
1)
Extreme Liberals; 2) Moderate Liberals; 3) Quasi Liberals, or those only
tainted with Liberalism.
We will
essay a description of each of these types. The study of their
physiognomy will not be without interest and profit, for in the types we
shall find a rule for our guidance in distinguishing Liberalism in its
practical details.
The
Extreme Liberal is easily recognized; he does not attempt to deny or
conceal his perversity. He is the declared enemy of the Pope, of
priests, of everything ecclesiastical; a thing has only to be sacred to
rouse his implacable wrath; "priestcraft" is his favorite shibboleth. He
subscribes to all the most violent and incendiary journals, the more
impious and blasphemous, the better to his liking. He is ready to go to
the furthermost conclusions of his baneful system. His premise of
destruction once laid down, his conclusion of nihilism is a mere matter
of logic. He would put it into practical execution with pleasure and
exultation if circumstances permitted. He is a revolutionist, socialist,
anarchist. He glories in living a life devoid of all religion. He
belongs to secret societies, dies in their embrace and is buried by
their ritual. He has always defied religion and dies in his defiance.
The
moderate Liberal is just as bad as his extreme confrere, but he takes
good care not to appear so. Social conventionalities and good manners
are everything to him; these points secured, the rest is of little
importance. Provided his iniquity is kid-gloved, it finds ready
extenuation in his own mind. The niceties of polite society preserved,
his Liberalism knows no bounds. He would not burn a convent--that would
appear too brutal, but the convent once burned, he has no scruple in
seizing upon the outraged property. The cheap impiety of a penny paper
grates on his well-bred nerves; the vulgar blasphemy of Ingersoll he
deprecates; but let the same impiety and the same blasphemy appear in
the columns of a so-called reputable journal, or be couched in the
silken phraseology of a Huxley in the name of science, and he applauds
the polished sin. It is with him a question of manner, not matter. At
the mere mention of the name of a nihilistic or socialistic club, he is
thrown into a cold sweat, for there, he declares, the masses are seduced
into principles which lead to the destruction of the foundations of
society; yet, according to him, there is no danger, no inconvenience in
a free lyceum where the same principles are elegantly debated and
sympathetically applauded; for who could dare to condemn the scientific
discussion of social problems? The moderate Liberal does not detest the
Pope; he may even express admiration for his sagacity; he only blames
certain pretensions of the Roman Curia and certain exaggerations of
Ultramontanism, which do not fall in with the trend of modern thought.
He may even like priests, above all, those who are enlightened, that is,
such as have caught the twang of modern progress; as for fanatics and
reactionaries, he simply avoids or pities them. He may even go to Church
and, stranger still, sometimes approach the Sacraments; but his maxim
is, in the Church to live as a Christian, outside of the Church to live
as the world lives, according to the times in which one is born and not
obstinately to swim against the stream. He dies with the priest on one
side, his infidel literature on the other and imagines that his Creator
will applaud his breadth of mind.
The
Catholic simply tainted with Liberalism is generally a good man and
sincerely pious; he exhales nevertheless an odor of Liberalism in
everything he says, writes, or takes up. Like Madame de Sevigne, he can
say, "I am not the rose, but standing by it, I have caught some of its
perfume" This courageous man reasons, speaks, and acts as a Liberal
without knowing it. His strong point is charity; he is charity itself.
What horror fills his soul at the exaggerations of the Ultramontane
press! To treat as a liar the man who propagates false ideas is, in the
eyes of this singular theologian, to sin against the Holy Spirit. To him
the falsifier is simply misguided; it is not the poor fellow's fault; he
has, simple soul, been misled. We ought neither to resist nor combat
him; we must strive to attract him by soft words and pretty compliments.
How the
devil must chuckle over the mushy charity held out as a bait to abet his
own cause! To smother evil under an abundance of good is the tainted
Catholic's favorite maxim, read one day by chance in Balmes, and the
only thing he has ever retained of the great Spanish philosopher. From
the Gospel he is careful to cite only those texts flavored with milk and
honey. The terrible invectives of Our Lord against Pharisaism astonish
and confound him; they seem to be an excess of language on the part of
our Divine Savior! He reserves these denunciatory texts to use against
those provoking Ultramontanes who every day compromise, by their
exaggerated and harsh language, the cause of a religion that he thinks
should be all peace and love. Against them his Liberalism, ordinarily so
sweet and gentle, grows bitter and violent. Against them his zeal flames
up, his polemics grow sharp, and his charity becomes aggressive.
In a
celebrated discourse delivered apropos certain accusations against Louis
Veuillot, Pere Felix once cried out, "Gentlemen, let us love and respect
even our friends." But no, our Catholic tainted with Liberalism will do
nothing of the kind. He saves the treasures of his tolerance and his
charity for the sworn enemies of the Faith! What is more natural? Does
not the poor man want to attract them? On the other hand, for the most
heroic defenders of the Faith, he has only sarcasm and invective.
In
short, the tainted Catholic cannot comprehend that direct opposition,
per diametrum, of which St. Ignatius speaks in his Spiritual Exercises.
He does not know how to give a direct blow. He knows no other tactics
than to attack on the flank, tactics which, in religion, may perhaps be
convenient, but are never decisive. He wants to conquer, but on the
condition of not wounding the enemy, of never disturbing his ease or his
rest. The mere mention of war painfully agitates his nerves and rouses
all his pacific dispositions. With the enemy in full assault, with the
implacable hatred and cunning of falsehood almost sweeping over him, he
would withstand the hostile charge and stem the overwhelming tide with
the paper barriers of an illusive peace.
In a
word, we may recognize the extreme and the moderate Liberal by his
bitter fruits; the tainted Catholic may be recognized by his distorted
affection for Liberalism and its works.
The
extreme Liberal roars his Liberalism; the moderate Liberal mouths it;
the tainted Catholic whispers and sighs it. All are bad enough and serve
the devil well. Nevertheless, the extreme Liberal overreaches himself by
his violence; the fecundity of the tainted Catholic is partially
sterilized by his hybrid nature; but the moderate is the real Satanic
type; his is the masked evil, which in our times is the chief cause of
the ravages of Liberalism.
Owing to
their circumstances, Catholics in this country [America] live in the
very midst of Liberalism; we are surrounded by and come into daily
contact with extreme and moderate Liberals, as well as with Catholics
tainted with its all-pervading poison. So did Catholics in the fourth
century live among Arians, those of the fifth among Pelagians, and those
of the seventeenth amongst Jansenists. It is impossible not to sustain
some relations with the Liberals who surround us; we meet them
everywhere--in our social dealings, in our business affairs, in our
amusements and pleasures, even in Church and in the family. How then
shall we comport ourselves in our unavoidable intercourse with those who
are thus spiritually diseased? How may we avoid contagion, or at least
diminish the risk to a minimum? To lay down a precise rule for every
case is a difficulty beyond human capacity, but some general rules of
guidance may be given; their application must be left to the prudence of
those who are individually concerned, according to their circumstances
and special obligations. It will be well first to distinguish, in a
general way, three possible relations between a Catholic and Liberalism,
or rather between a Catholic and Liberals: 1) Necessary relations; 2)
Useful relations; 3) Relations of pure affection or pleasure. Necessary
relations are imposed upon everyone by his station in life and his
particular position; they cannot be avoided. Such are the family
relations, the relations of inferior and superior, etc.
1. It is
evident that a son who has the misfortune to have a Liberal father
cannot on this account abandon him, nor the wife the husband, the
brother the sister, nor the parent the child, except in the case where
their Liberalism exacts from any of their respective inferiors acts
essentially opposed to religion, so as to conduce to a formal apostasy.
But, for
the taking of such a step, it will not suffice, on the part of a
Catholic, that mere restraint is put upon his liberty in the performance
of the precepts of the Church. For we must remember that the Church
places no obligation in such matters on a person who could only perform
them under grave inconvenience (sub gravi incommodo).
The
Catholic unfortunate enough to be so placed must bear with Christian
patience his painful situation and surround himself, as far as lies in
his power, with every precaution to avoid the contagion of bad example
in word or deed. Prayer should be his chief recourse, prayer for himself
and the victims of error. He should avoid, as far as possible, all
conversations on this topic, but when he finds that a controversy is
thrust upon him, let him accept it in the full confidence of the truth,
and armed with effective weapons of defense and offense. A prudent
spiritual director should be consulted in the selection of his arsenal.
As an antidote to much association with Liberals, let him frequent the
company of other persons of science and authority who are in the
constant possession of sound doctrine. Obedience to a superior in all
that is not directly or indirectly against faith and morals is his
bounden duty, but it is equally his duty to refuse obedience to anything
directly or indirectly in opposition to the integrity of his faith.
Courage he can draw only from supernatural sources; God, who sees the
struggle, will not refuse all the assistance needed.
2. There
are other relations which we have with Liberals, which are not
absolutely, but which are morally indispensable, and without which
social life, which consists in a mutual exchange of services, is
impossible. Such are the relations of commerce, trade, labor, the
professions, etc. But that strict subjection, which holds under the
necessary relations of which we have just been speaking, does not exist
here, and in consequence, one can exercise more independence. The
fundamental rule in these cases is not to enter into unnecessary
intercourse; what the gearing of the social machine demands, and no
more, is sufficient. If you are a merchant, buy and sell with Liberals
in accordance with the needs of your business; more than this, avoid; if
you are a domestic, limit your intercourse to the necessities of your
service; if you are a laborer, to giving and receiving what is due on
either part. Guided by these rules, one could live without injury to his
faith amidst a population of Jews. At the same time, it should never be
forgotten that any manifestation of weakness or compromise is never
needed. Even Liberals cannot refuse respect to the man who stands firmly
and unflinchingly in his conviction, and when the Faith is in question,
despicable in all men's eyes does he become who would sell his
birthright for a mess of pottage.
3.
Relations of pure friendship, pleasure or affectation, which we enter
into as mere matters of taste or inclination, should be eschewed and, if
once contracted, ought to be voluntarily broken off. Such relations are
a certain danger to our faith. Our Lord says that he who loves danger
shall perish in it. Is it difficult to sever such connections? What if
it is; we must burst the bonds that place us in peril. Reflect for a
moment. If your Liberal companion with whom you are constantly
associating were subject to some contagious disease, would you then
court him? If your relations with him compromised your reputation, would
you continue them? If he were to asperse [attack] your family, would you
cling to him still? Well, the honor of God and your own spiritual safety
are at stake in this matter; what human prudence would counsel you to do
for your worldly interest and human honor, surely that much at least
your spiritual interests require from you. There is but one condition
upon which intimacy with a Liberal is justifiable at all, and that is
for the purpose of converting him. For this, two dispositions are
necessary: your Liberal friend's willingness and your capacity to lead
him to the light. Even here danger is not lacking. One must be very sure
of his ground before he attempts the task.
Above
all, have a horror of heresy, and Liberalism today is the most malignant
of all heresies. Its face is absolutely set against religious faith. The
first thing to do in an infected country is to isolate oneself, and if
this is not possible, take all sanitary precautions against the deadly
germ. Spiritual health is always endangered whenever we come into
contact with Liberalism, and infection is almost certain if we neglect
those precautions which prudence suggests.
Liberalism is a system, as Catholicism is, although in a contrary sense.
It has its arts, its science, its literature, its economics, its ethics;
that is, it has an organism all its own, animated by its own spirit and
distinguishable by its own physiognomy. The most powerful heresies, for
instance, Arianism in ancient times and Jansenism in our own days,
presented like peculiarities.
Not only
are there Liberal journals, but there exists a literature in all the
shades and degrees of Liberalism; it is abundant and prolific. The
present generation draws its main intellectual nourishment from it. Our
modern literature is saturated with its sentiments, and for this reason
should we take every precaution to guard against its infections, of
which so many are the miserable victims. How is it to be avoided?
The
rules of guidance in this case are analogous to or almost identical with
the rules which should govern a Catholic in his personal relations with
Liberals, for books are after all but the representatives of their
authors, conveying by the printed, instead of the spoken word, what men
think, feel and say. Apply to books those rules of conduct which should
regulate our intercourse with persons, and we have a safeguard in
reading the literature of the day. But in this instance, the control of
the relation is practically in our own power, for it depends entirely on
ourselves whether we seek or tolerate the reading of Liberal books. They
are not apt to seek us out, and if they are thrust upon us, our consent
to their perusal is practically all our own doing. We have none but
ourselves to blame if they prove to be our own undoing.
There is
one point, however, worthy of our close consideration. It should be a
fundamental rule in a Catholic's intellectual life. It is this: Spare
your praises of Liberal books, whatever be their scientific or literary
merit, or at least praise with great reserve, never forgetting the
reprobation rightly due to a book of Liberal spirit or tendency. This is
an important point. It merits the strictest attention. Many Catholics,
by far too naive (even some engaged in Catholic journalism), are
perpetually seeking to pose as impartial and are perpetually daubing
themselves with a veneer of flattery. They lustily beat the bass drum
and blow all the trumpets of their vocabulary in praise of no matter
what work, literary or scientific, that comes from the Liberal camp.
They are fearful of being considered narrow-minded and partial if they
do not give the devil his due. In the fulsomeness of their flattery,
they hope to show that it costs a Catholic nothing to recognize merit
wherever it may be found; they imagine this to be a powerful means of
attracting the enemy. Alas, the folly of the weaklings; they play a
losing game; it is they who are insensibly attracted, not the enemy!
They simply fly at the bait held out by the cunning fisher who
satanically guides the destinies of Liberalism.
Let us
illustrate. When Arnold's Light of Asia appeared, not a few Catholics
joined in the chorus of fulsome praise which greeted it. How charming,
how beautiful, how tender, how pathetic, how humane; what lofty
morality, what exquisite sentiment! Now what was the real purport of the
book and what was its essence? To lift up Guatama, the founder of
Buddhism, at the expense of Jesus Christ, the Founder of Christianity!
The intention was to show that Guatama was equally a divine teacher with
as high an aspiration, as great a mission, as lofty a morality as our
Divine Lord Himself. This was the object of the book; what was its
essence? A falsification of history by weaving a series of poetical
legends around a character, about whose actual life practically nothing
is known. But not only this, the character was built up upon the model
of Our Lord, which the author had in his own mind as the precious
heirloom of Christianity; and his Guatama, whom he intended to stand out
as at least the divine equal of the Founder of Christianity, became in
his hands in reality a mere echo of Christ, the image of Christ, made to
rival the Word made flesh! Buddhism, in the borrowed garments of
Christianity, was thus made to appeal to the ideals of Christian
peoples, and gaining a footing in their admiration and affections, to
usurp the throne in the Christian sanctuary. Here was a work of literary
merit, although it has been greatly exaggerated in this respect, praised
extravagantly by some Catholics who, in their excessive desire to appear
impartial, failed or refused to see in Edwin Arnold's Light of Asia a
most vicious, anti-Christian book! What difference does it make whether
a book be excellent in a literary sense or not, if its effect be the
loss of souls and not their salvation? What if the weapon in the hands
of the assassin be bright or not, if it be fatal? Though spiritual
assassination be brilliant, it is nonetheless deadly.
Heresy
under a charming disguise is a thousand times more dangerous than heresy
exposed in the harsh and arid garb of the scholastic syllogism-- through
which the death's skull grins in unadorned hideousness. Arianism had its
poets to propagate its errors in popular verse. Lutheranism had its
humanists, amongst whom the elegant Erasmus shone as a brilliant writer.
Arnauld, Nicole, Pascal threw the glamour of their belles letters over
the serpentine doublings [tricks, artifices] of Jansenism. Voltaire's
wretched infidelity won its frightful popularity from the grace of his
style and the flash of his wit. Shall we, against whom they aimed the
keenest and deadliest shafts, contribute to their name and their renown!
Shall we assist them in fascinating and corrupting
youth!
Shall we crown these condemners of our faith with the laurels of our
praises and laud them for the very qualities which alone make them
dangerous! And for what purpose? That we may appear impartial? No.
Impartiality is not permissible when it is distorted to the offense of
truth, whose rights are imprescriptible [inalienable, absolute]. A woman
of bad life is infamous, be she ever so beautiful, and the more
beautiful, the more dangerous. Shall we praise Liberal books out of
gratitude? No! Follow the liberals themselves in this, who are far more
prudent than we; they do not recommend and praise our books, whatever
they be. They, with the instinct of evil, fully appreciate where the
danger lies. They either seek to discredit us or to pass us by in
silence.
Si quis
non amat Dominum Nostrum Jesum Christum, Sit anathema ["If anyone does
not love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema"], says St. Paul.
Liberal literature is the written hatred of Our Lord and His Church. If
its blasphemy were open and direct, no Catholic would tolerate it for an
instant; is it any more tolerable because, like a courtesan, it seeks to
disguise its sordid features by the artifice of paint and powder?
Narrow!
Intolerant! Uncompromising! These are the epithets of odium hurled by
Liberal votaries of all degrees at us Ultramontanes [i.e., Roman
Catholics or papists--literally: "beyond the mountains" for entrance to
Italy from the continent of Europe requires traversing the Alpine
Mountains, the highest in Europe. Thus, to Europe the Roman Catholic
Church has its government, its head, its nerve center "beyond the
mountains"]. Are not Liberals our neighbors like other men? Do we not
owe to them the same charity we apply to others? Are not your vigorous
denunciations, it is urged against us, harsh and uncharitable and in the
very teeth of the teaching of Christianity, which is essentially a
religion of love? Such is the accusation continually flung in our face.
Let us see what its value is. Let us see all that the word "Charity"
signifies.
The
Catechism [of the Council of Trent], that popular and most authoritative
epitome of Catholic theology, gives us the most complete and succinct
definition of charity; it is full of wisdom and philosophy. Charity is a
supernatural virtue which induces us to love God above all things and
our neighbors as ourselves for the love of God. Thus, after God we ought
to love our neighbor as ourselves, and this not just in any way, but for
the love of God and in obedience to His law. And now, what is it to
love? Amare est velle bonum, replies the philosopher. "To love is to
wish good to him whom we love." To whom does charity command us to wish
good? To our neighbor, that is to say, not to this or that man only, but
to everyone. What is that good which true love wishes? First of all
supernatural good, then goods of the natural order which are not
incompatible with it. All this is included in the phrase "for the love
of God."
It
follows, therefore, that we can love our neighbor when displeasing him,
when opposing him, when causing him some material injury, and even, on
certain occasions, when depriving him of life; in short, all is reduced
to this: Whether in the instance where we displease, oppose, or
humiliate him, it is or is not for his own good, or for the good of
someone whose rights are superior to his, or simply for the greater
service of God.
If it is
shown that in displeasing or offending our neighbor we act for his good,
it is evident that we love him, even when opposing or crossing him. The
physician cauterizing his patient or cutting off his gangrened limb may
nonetheless love him. When we correct the wicked by restraining or by
punishing them, we do nonetheless love them. This is charity--and
perfect charity.
It is
often necessary to displease or offend one person, not for his own good,
but to deliver another from the evil he is inflicting. It is then an
obligation of charity to repel the unjust violence of the aggressor; one
may inflict as much injury on the aggressor as is necessary for defense.
Such would be the case should one see a highwayman attacking a traveler.
In this instance, to kill, wound, or at least take such measures as to
render the aggressor impotent, would be an act of true charity.
The good
of all good is the divine Good, just as God is for all men the Neighbor
of all neighbors. In consequence, the love due to a man, inasmuch as he
is our neighbor, ought always to be subordinated to that which is due to
our common Lord. For His love and in His service we must not hesitate to
offend men. The degree of our offense towards men can only be measured
by the degree of our obligation to Him. Charity is primarily the love of
God, secondarily the love of our neighbor for God's sake. To sacrifice
the first is to abandon the latter. Therefore, to offend our neighbor
for the love of God is a true act of charity. Not to offend our neighbor
for the love of God is a sin.
Modern
Liberalism reverses this order; it imposes a false notion of charity:
our neighbor first, and, if at all, God afterwards. By its reiterated
and trite accusations toward us of intolerance, it has succeeded in
disconcerting even some staunch Catholics. But our rule is too plain and
too concrete to admit of misconception. It is this: Sovereign Catholic
inflexibility is sovereign Catholic charity. This charity is practiced
in relation to our neighbor when, in his own interest, he is crossed,
humiliated, and chastised. It is practiced in relation to a third party
when he is defended from the unjust aggression of another, as when he is
protected from the contagion of error by unmasking its authors and
abettors and showing them in their true light as iniquitous and pervert,
by holding them up to the contempt, horror, and execration of all. It is
practiced in relation to God when, for His glory and in His service, it
becomes necessary to silence all human considerations, to trample under
foot all human respect, to sacrifice all human interests--and even life
itself--to attain this highest of all ends. All this is Catholic
inflexibility and inflexible Catholicity in the practice of that pure
love which constitutes sovereign charity. The Saints are the types of
this unswerving and sovereign fidelity to God, the heroes of charity and
religion. Because in our times there are so few true inflexibles in the
love of God, so also are there few uncompromisers in the order of
charity. Liberal charity is condescending, affectionate, even tender in
appearance, but at bottom it is an essential contempt for the true good
of men, of the supreme interests of truth and [ultimately] of God. It is
human self love, usurping the throne of the Most High and demanding that
worship which belongs to God alone.
Liberalism never gives battle on solid ground; it knows too well that in
a discussion of principles it must meet with irretrievable defeat. It
prefers tactics of recrimination and, under the sting of a just
flagellation, whiningly accuses Catholics of lack of charity in their
polemics. This is also the ground which certain Catholics, tainted with
Liberalism, are in the habit of taking. Let us see what is to be said on
this score.
We
Catholics, on this point as on all others, have reason on our side;
whereas, Liberals have only its shadow. In the first place, a Catholic
can handle his Liberal adversary openly, if such he be in truth [i.e.,
openly Liberal]; no one can doubt this. If an author or a journalist
make open profession of Liberalism and does not conceal his Liberal
predilections, what injury can be done him in calling him a Liberal? Si
palam res est, repetitio injuria non est: "To say what everybody knows
is no injury." With much stronger reason, to say of our neighbor what he
every instant says of himself cannot justly offend. And yet, how many
Liberals, especially those of the easy-going and moderate type, regard
the expressions "Liberal" and "friend of Liberals" which Catholic
adversaries apply to them, as offensive and uncharitable!
Granting
that Liberalism is a bad thing, to call the public defenders and
professors of Liberalism bad is no want of charity.
The law
of justice, potent in all ages, can be applied in this case. The
Catholics of today are no innovators in this respect. We are simply
holding to the constant practice of antiquity. The propagators and
abettors of heresy, as well as its authors, have at all times been
called heretics. As the Church has always considered heresy a very grave
evil, so has she always called its adherents bad and pervert. Run over
the list of ecclesiastical writers-you will then see how the Apostles
treated the first heretics, how the Fathers and modern controversialists
and the Church herself in her official language has pursued them. There
is then no sin against charity in calling evil evil; its authors
abettors and its disciples bad; all its acts, words, and writings
iniquitous, wicked, malicious. In short, the wolf has always been called
the wolf; and in so calling it, no one ever has believed that wrong was
done to the flock and the shepherd.
If the
propagation of good and the necessity of combating evil require the
employment of terms somewhat harsh against error and its supporters,
this usage is certainly not against charity. This is a corollary or
consequence of the principle we have just demonstrated. We must render
evil odious and detestable. We cannot attain this result without
pointing out the dangers of evil, without showing how and why it is
odious, detestable and contemptible. Christian oratory of all ages has
ever employed against impiety the most vigorous and emphatic rhetoric in
the arsenal of human speech. In the writings of the great athletes of
Christianity, the usage of irony, imprecation, execration and of the
most crushing epithets is continual. Hence the only law is the
opportunity and the truth.
But
there is another justification for such usage. Popular propagation and
apologetics cannot pre-serve elegant and constrained academic forms. In
order to convince the people, we must speak to their heart and their
imagination, which can only be touched by ardent, brilliant, and
impassioned language. To be impassioned is not to be reprehensible-when
our heat is the holy ardor of truth.
The
supposed violence of modern Ultramontane journalism not only falls short
of Liberal journalism, but is amply justified by every page of the works
of our great Catholic polemists of other epochs. This is easily
verified. St. John the Baptist calls the Pharisees a "race of vipers";
Jesus Christ, Our Divine Savior, hurls at them the epithets "hypocrites,
whitened sepulchres, a per-verse and adulterous generation," without
thinking for this reason that He sullies the sanctity of His benevolent
speech. St. Paul criticizes the schismatic Cretians as "always liars,
evil beasts, slothful bellies." The same Apostle calls Elymas the
magician a "Seducer, full of guile and deceit, a child of the devil, an
enemy of all justice."
If we
open the Fathers, we find the same vigorous castigation of heresy and
heretics. St. Jerome, arguing against Vigilantius, casts in his face his
former occupation of saloon-keeper: "From your infancy," he says to him,
"you have learned other things than theology and betaken yourself to
other pursuits. To verify at the same time the value of your money
accounts and the value of Scriptural texts, to sample wines and grasp
the meaning of the prophets and apostles are certainly not occupations
which the same man can accomplish with credit." On another occasion,
attacking the same Vigilantius, who denied the excellence of virginity
and of fasting, St. Jerome, with his usual sprightliness, asks him if he
spoke thus "in order not to diminish the receipts of his saloon?"
Heavens! what an outcry would be raised if one of our Ultramontane
controversialists were to write against a Liberal critic or heretic of
our own day in this fashion!
What
shall we say of St. John Chrysostom? Is his famous invective against
Eutropius not comparable, in its personal and aggressive character, to
the cruel invectives of Cicero against Catiline and against Verres! The
gentle St. Bernard did not honey his words when he attacked the enemies
of the Faith. Addressing Arnold of Brescia, the great Liberal agitator
of his times, he calls him in all his letters, "seducer, vase of
injuries, scorpion, cruel wolf".
The
pacific St. Thomas of Aquinas forgets the calm of his cold syllogisms
when he hurls his violent apostrophe against William of St. Amour and
his disciples: "Enemies of God" he cries out, "ministers of the devil,
members of antichrist, ignorami, perverts, reprobates!" Never did the
illustrious Louis Veuillot speak so boldly. The seraphic St.
Bonaventure, so full of sweetness, overwhelms his adversary Gerard with
such epithets as "impudent, calumniator, spirit of malice, impious,
shameless, ignorant, impostor, malefactor, perfidious, ingrate!" Did St.
Francis de Sales, so delicately exquisite and tender, ever purr softly
over the heretics of his age and country? He pardoned their injuries,
heaped benefits on them even to the point of saving the lives of those
who sought to take his, but with the enemies of the Faith he preserved
neither moderation nor consideration. Asked by a Catholic, who desired
to know if it were permissible to speak evil of a heretic who propagated
false doctrines, he replied:
"Yes,
you can, on the condition that you adhere to the exact truth, to what
you know of his bad conduct, presenting that which is doubtful as
doubtful, according to the degree of doubt which you may have in this
regard." In his Introduction to the Devout Life, that precious and
popular work, he expresses himself again: "If the declared enemies of
God and of the Church ought to be blamed and censured with all possible
vigor, charity obliges us to cry wolf when the wolf slips into the midst
of the flock and in every way and place we may meet him."
But
enough. What the greatest Catholic polemists and Saints have done is
assuredly a fair example for even the humblest defenders of the Faith.
Modern Ultramontanism has never yet surpassed the vigor of their
castigation of heresy and heretics. Charity forbids us to do unto
another what we would not reasonably have them do unto ourselves. Mark
the adverb reasonably; it includes the entire substance of the question.
The
essential difference between ourselves and the Liberals on this subject
consists in this, that they look upon the apostles of error as free
citizens, simply exercising their full right to think as they please on
matters of religion. We, on the contrary, see in them the declared
enemies of the Faith, which we are obligated to defend. We do not see in
their errors simply free opinions, but culpable and formal heresies, as
the law of God teaches us they are. By virtue of the assumed freedom of
their own opinions, the Liberals are bound not only to tolerate but even
to respect ours; for since freedom of opinion is, in their eyes, the
most cardinal of virtues, no matter what the opinion be, they are bound
to respect it as the expression of man's rational freedom. It is not
what is thought, but the mere thinking that constitutes the standard of
excellence with them. To acknowledge God or deny Him is equally rational
by the standard of Liberalism, and Liberalism is grossly inconsistent
with itself when it seeks to combat Catholic truths, in the holding of
which there is as much exercise of rational freedom, in the Liberal
sense, as in rejecting them. But our Catholic standpoint is absolute;
there is but one truth, in which there is no room for opposition or
contradiction. To deny that truth is unreasonable; it is to put
falsehood on the level with truth. This is the folly and sin of
Liberalism. To denounce this sin and folly is a duty and a virtue. With
reason, therefore, does a great Catholic historian say to the enemies of
Catholicity: "You make yourselves infamous by your actions, and I will
endeavor to cover you with that infamy by my writings." In this same way
the law of the Twelve Tables of the ancient Romans ordained to the
virile generations of early Rome: Adversus bostem aeterna auctoritas
esto, which may be rendered: "To the enemy no quarter."
"It is
all well enough to make war on abstract doctrines" some may say, "but in
combating error, be it ever so evident, is it so proper to make an
attack upon the persons of those who uphold it?" We reply that very
often it is, and not only proper, but at times even indispensable and
meritorious before God and men.
The
accusation of indulging in personalities is not spared to Catholic
apologists, and when Liberals and those tainted with Liberalism have
hurled it at our heads, they imagine that we are overwhelmed by the
charge. But they deceive themselves. We are not so easily thrust into
the background. We have reason - and substantial reason - on our side.
In order to combat and discredit false ideas, we must inspire contempt
and horror in the hearts of the multitude for those who seek to seduce
and debauch them. A disease is inseparable from the persons of the
diseased.
The
cholera threatening a country comes in the persons of the infected. If
we wish to exclude it, we must exclude them. Now ideas do not in any
case go about in the abstract; they neither spread nor propagate of
themselves. Left to themselves - if it be possible to imagine them apart
from those who conceive them - they would never produce all the evil
from which society suffers. It is only in the concrete that they are
effective, when they are the personal product of those who conceive
them. They are like the arrows and the balls which would hurt no one if
they were not shot from the bow or the gun. It is the archer and the
gunner to whom we should give our first attention; save for them, the
fire would not be murderous. Any other method of warfare might be
Liberal, if you please, but it would not be common sense.
The
authors and propagators of heretical doctrines are soldiers with
poisoned weapons in their bands. Their arms are the book, the journal,
the lecture, their personal influence. Is it sufficient to dodge their
blows? Not at all; the first thing necessary is to demolish the
combatant himself. When he is hors de combat ["out of the fight"], he
can do no more mischief.
It is
therefore perfectly proper not only to discredit any book, journal or
discourse of the enemy, but it is also proper, in certain cases, even to
discredit his person; for in warfare, beyond question, the principal
element is the person engaged, as the gunner is the principal factor in
an artillery fight and not the cannon, the powder, and the bomb. It is
thus lawful, in certain cases, to expose the infamy of a Liberal
opponent, to bring his habits into contempt and to drag his name in the
mire. Yes, this is permissible, permissible in prose, in verse, in
caricature, in a serious vein or in badinage, by every means and method
within reach. The only restriction is not to employ a lie in the service
of justice. This never. Under no pretext may we sully the truth, even to
the dotting of an "i'" As a French writer says: "Truth is the only
charity allowed in history," and, we may add, in the defense of religion
and society.
The
Fathers of the Church support this thesis. The very titles of their
works clearly show that, in their contests with heresy, their first
blows were at the heresiarchs. The works of St. Augustine almost always
bear the name of the author of the heresy against which they are
written: Contra Fortunatum Manichoeum, Adversus Adamanctum, Contra
Felicem, Contra Secundinum, Quis fuerit Petiamus, De gestis Pelagii,
Quis fuerit julianus, etc. Thus, the greater part of the polemics of
this great Father and Doctor of the Church was personal, aggressive,
biographical, as well as doctrinal - a hand-to-hand struggle with
heretics, as well as with heresy. What we here say of St. Augustine we
can say of the other Fathers.
Whence
do the Liberals derive their power to impose upon us the new obligation
of fighting error only in the abstract and of lavishing smiles and
flattery upon them? We, the Ultramontanes, will fight our battles
according to Christian tradition and defend the Faith as it has always
been defended in the Church of God. When it strikes, let the sword of
the Catholic polemist wound, and when it wounds, wound mortally. This is
the only real and efficacious means of waging war.
The
Liberals tell us that our violent methods of warfare against them are
not in conformity with the Pope's counsels to moderation and charity.
Has he not exhorted Catholic writers to a love of peace and union, to
avoid harsh, aggressive and personal polemics? How then can we
Ultramontanes reconcile the Holy Father's wishes with our fierce
methods? Let us consider the force of the Liberals' objection. To whom
does the Holy Father address these repeated admonitions? Always to the
Catholic press, to Catholic journalists, to those who are supposed to be
worthy of the name. These counsels to moderation and charity, therefore,
are always addressed to Catholics, discussing with other Catholics free
questions, i.e., those not involving established principles of faith and
morality, and they do not in any sense apply to Catholics waging a
mortal combat with the declared enemies of the Faith.
There is
no doubt that the Pope here makes no allusion to the incessant battles
between Catholics and Liberals, for the simple reason that Catholicity
is truth and Liberalism heresy, between which there can be no peace, but
only war to the death. By consequence, therefore, it is certain that the
Pope intends his counsels to apply to our "family quarrels" unhappily
much too frequent, and that by no means does he seek to forbid us from
waging an unrelenting strife with the eternal enemies of the Church,
whose hands, filled with deadly weapons, are ever lifted against the
Faith and its defenders.
Therefore, there can be no contradiction between the doctrine we expound
and that of the briefs and allocutions of the Holy Father on the
subject, provided that logically both apply to the same matter under the
same respect, which holds perfectly in this instance. For how can we
interpret the words of the Holy Father in any other way? It is a rule of
sound exegesis that any passage in Holy Scripture should always be
interpreted according to the letter, unless such meaning be in
opposition to the context; we can only have recourse to a free or
figurative interpretation when this opposition is obvious. This rule
applies also to the interpretation of pontifical documents.
How
could we suppose the Pope to be in contradiction with all Catholic
tradition from Jesus?
Christ
to our own times? Is it for a moment admissible that the style and
method of most of the celebrated Catholic polemists and apologists from
St. Paul to St. Francis de Sales should be condemned by a stroke of the
pen? Clearly not, for if we were to understand the Pope's counsels to
moderation and calm in the sense in which the Liberal conclusion would
construe them, we should evidently have to answer, "Yes." Consequently,
we must conclude that the Holy Father's words are not addressed to
Catholics battling with the enemies of Catholicity, but only to
Catholics controverting on free questions amongst themselves.
Common
sense itself shows this. Imagine a general in the midst of a raging
battle, issuing an order to his soldiers not to injure the enemy too
severely! Imagine a captain rushing up and down the ranks shouting to
his soldiers, "Be careful! Don't hurt the enemy! Attention there! Don't
aim at the heart!" What more need be said! Pius IX has given us an
explanation of the proper meaning of his words. On a memorable occasion
he calls the sectaries of the Commune demons; and worse than demons the
sectaries of Liberalism. Who then need fear to thunderbolt such an enemy
with epithets too harsh and severe? In vain do the Liberals cite the
words of Leo XIII (1878-1903) in the encyclical Cum Multa [1882],
exhorting Catholics to avoid violence in the discussion of the sacred
rights of the Church, and to rely rather upon the weight of reason to
gain victory; for the words have reference to polemics between Catholics
discussing the best means to preserve their common cause, and by no
means apply as a rule to govern polemics with the sectaries of
Liberalism. The intrinsic evidence of the encyclical proves this beyond
cavil. The Pope concludes by exhorting all associations and individual
Catholics to a still closer and more intimate union, and after pointing
out the inestimable advantages of such a union, he instances, as the
means of preserving it, that moderation of language and charity of which
we are speaking. The argument is plain: the Pope recommends moderation
and charity to Catholic writers as a means of preserving peace and
mutual union. Clearly, this peace and union is between Catholics and not
between Catholics and their enemies. Therefore, the moderation and
charity recommended by the Pope to Catholic writers applies only to
Catholic polemics between Catholics on free questions. Would it not be
absurd to imagine that there could be any union between truth and error,
therefore between the advocates of truth on the one side and error on
the other? Irreconcilable opposites never unite. One or the other must
disappear.
Charity
in controversy with Liberals would be like taking a serpent to ones
bosom. It would be as if one embraced some loathsome contagious disease
with the foolish notion that to court it would secure immunity from its
fearful ravages.
Notwithstanding the plain common sense of the situation and the
memorable warning of Our Lord that he who loves the fire shall perish in
it, some foolish Catholics join with the Liberals in their cry for a
magnanimous display of charity on our part when we wage war against
them.
Lest our
competence to judge in so important a matter be called into question, we
will cite as authority on this subject the foremost religious journal of
the world, the Civilta Cattolica, founded by Pius IX himself and
confided by him to the conduct of the fathers of the Society of Jesus.
The Civilta, never suffering an instant of repose to Italian Liberalism,
has often been reproached for its want of charity towards the Liberals.
Replying to these pharisaical homilies on the measure of charity due
them, the Civilta published a delightfully humorous, and at the same
time solidly philosophical article, some passages of which we here
transcribe for the consolation of our Liberals - and those tainted
Catholics who make common cause with them - in decrying Ultramontane
methods:
"De
Maistre said that the Church and the Pope have never asked anything but
truth and justice for their cause. On the other hand, the Liberals, no
doubt on account of the horror they naturally entertain for truth, and
above all, for justice, are always demanding charity.
"For
more than a dozen years have we, on our part, been witness to this
curious spectacle given us by Italian Liberals. With tears in their
eyes, they never cease imploring our charity. Their importunities have
at last become insupportable; they have lost all sense of shame;
supplicatingly, in the press, in verse, in their brochures, in their
journals, in public and private letters - anonymous and pseudonymous -
directly or indirectly, they beg us, for the love of God, to show them
some charity. They beseech us not to give them over to the ridicule of
their neighbors, not to expose to an inspection so detailed, so minute,
their sublime writings, not to be so obstinate in subjecting their
glorious exploits to such a strong search - light, to close our eyes and
our ears to their blunders, their solecisms [inconsistencies], their
lies, their calumnies, their obscurities, in a word, to let them live in
peace.
By this
edifying conversion to the love of mendicancy, the Liberals have
imitated another not less celebrated and not less edifying conversion,
that of a rich miser to the virtue of alms-giving.
The same
miser happening to be present at a sermon which was intended to be a
very ardent exhortation to the practice of alms-giving, was so impressed
that he imagined himself to be a veritable convert. In truth he was so
touched by the sermon that, on going out of the Church, he exclaimed:
'It would be impossible for any good Christian who has heard this
discourse henceforth not to give from time to time something in
charity.' And so it is with our Liberals. After having shown (according
to the measure of their means) by their acts and their writings that
they have a love for charity equal to the devil's for holy water, when
they hear it spoken of, they suddenly remember that there exists in the
world a thing called charity, which might on certain occasions prove
very profitable to them. So they show themselves distractedly enamored
with it and vociferously demand it from Pope, bishop, clergy, religious,
journalists, and everybody, even from the editors of the Civilta. It is
curious to follow all the excellent reasons they offer in their own
favor! "To believe them, it is not in their own interest at all that
they hold such language! Heavens, no! When they speak thus, it is
entirely in the interest of our holy Religion, which they cherish in
their heart's core and which suffers so much from our very uncharitable
manner of defending it! They even speak in the interest of the
reactionaries themselves, and especially (who would believe it!) in the
interest of the editors of the Civilta Cattolica!
"'What
obliges you to enter into these quarrels?" they confidentially say to
us. 'Have you not enough enemies already? Be tolerant and your
adversaries will be so with you. What do you gain by following this
wretched occupation, like a dog spending his life barking at robbers? If
in the end you are beaten, struck down, to whom do you owe it, if not to
yourselves and that indomitable animosity of yours, which is ever
seeking the lash?' "What sage and disinterested reasoning, whose only
defect is that it singularly resembles that which the police officer
urged upon Renzo Tramaglino, in the romance The Betrothed, when he
essayed to conduct him to prison by persuasion, fearing that if he used
force, the young man would offer resistance ... The only result of these
exhortations was to confirm Renzo in his design to pursue a course just
opposite to that which the officer advised.
"This
design, to speak properly, we are strongly tempted also to form, for in
truth, we cannot persuade ourselves that the injury, great or small,
which we cause religion, matters much or little to the Liberals, nor
that they would give themselves so much trouble for our sakes. We are
persuaded, on the contrary, that if the Liberals really believed that
our manner of acting were hurtful to religion or to ourselves, they
would carefully refrain from adverting to it, but rather encourage us in
it by their applause. We even conclude that the zeal which they show in
our regard and their reiterated prayers to us to modify our style are
the surest signs that religion suffers nothing from our methods, and
moreover that our writings have some readers, which is always some
slight consolation to the writer.
"But as
many of them (the Liberals) continue to beg, and as they have recently
published a little book at Perugia entitled What Does the Catholic Party
Say? - which they devote entirely to a demand upon the Civilta Cattolica
for charity - it will be useful, in beginning this fifteenth series of
our Review, to confute once more the old objections with the old
answers. It will be in fact a great charity, not such indeed as the
Liberals beg of us, but one truly very meritorious, the charity of
listening to them with patience for the hundredth time."
Liberals
often urge as an objection to Ultramontane vigor the fact that the
Church herself enters into amicable relations with Liberal governments
and personages, or what comes to the same thing, with Liberalism itself.
If the
Church can take such a position, surely Ultramontanes, who are looked
upon as the vanguard of the Church, may find an example in this her
policy worthy of imitation.
We
reply. We are to consider these relations as official amities, and
nothing more. They by no means suppose any particular affection for the
persons who are their object, much less approbation of their actions,
and infinitely less any adhesion to their doctrines or the approval of
them.
In the
first place, we must remember that there are two ministrations in the
Church of God: one which we may call apostolic, relative to the
propagation of the Faith and the salvation of souls; the other, which we
may very properly term diplomatic, having for its subject human
relations with the powers of the world.
The
first is the most noble; properly speaking, it is the principal and
essential ministration. The second is inferior and subordinate to the
first, of which it is only the auxiliary. In the first, the Church is
intolerant and uncompromising; in this she goes straight to her end and
breaks rather than bends: frangi non flecti. Witness in this respect the
persecutions she has suffered. When it is a question of divine rights
and divine duties, neither attenuation nor compromise is possible.
In the
second ministration, the Church is condescending, benevolent and full of
patience. She discusses, she solicits, she negotiates, she praises, that
she may soften the hard; she is silent sometimes, that she may better
succeed; seems to retreat, that she may better advance and soon attain a
better vantage. In this order of relations, her motto might be: flecti
non frangi ["to bend not to break"]. When it is a question of mere human
relations, she comports herself with a certain flexibility and admits
the usage of special resources.
In this
domain, everything that is not declared bad and prohibited by the law
common to the ordinary relations of men is lawful and proper.
More
explicitly, the Church deems that she may properly make use of all the
resources of an honest diplomacy.
Who
would dare reproach her for accrediting ambassadors to bad and even
infidel governments, and on the other hand, in accepting ambassadors
from them; for honoring their noble and distinguished families by her
courtesies and enhancing their public festivities by the presence of her
legates?
"But
why," interrupt the Liberals, "should you manifest such detestation for
Liberalism and so vehemently combat Liberal governments, when the Pope
thus negotiates with them, recognizes them, and even confers
distinctions on them?" We can best answer this foolish thrust by a
comparison.
We will
suppose you are the father of a family. You have five or six daughters,
whom you have brought up in the most scrupulous and rigorous virtue.
Opposite to your house, or perhaps next door, we will imagine, dwell
some neighbors of blemished reputation. You command your daughters,
without cessation, under no circumstances to have ought to do with these
people. They obey you strictly. But suppose now that some matter should
arise relative to both you and your neighbor's interest in common, such
as the paving of a street, the laying of a water main, etc. This obliges
you to consult and advise with your neighbors as to this common
interest. In your intercourse with them, you treat them with the usual
courtesies of society and seek to conclude the business on hand in an
harmonious way. Would your daughters, therefore, be justified in
declaring that, as you their father had entered into certain relations
with these neighbors and extended to them the usual courtesies of
society, so should they be allowed to associate with them; as long as
you their father had thus entered into relation with them, so they had a
right to conclude that they were people of good morals? The Church is
the home of good people (or of those who ought to be and desire to be),
but she is surrounded by governments more or less perverted, or even
entirely perverted. She says to her children: "Detest the maxims of
these governments; combat these maxims; their doctrine is error; their
laws are iniquitous." At the same time, in questions when her own and
sometimes their interests are involved, she finds herself under the
necessity of treating with the heads or the representatives of these
governments, and in fact she does treat with them, accepts their
compliments, and employs in their regard the formula of the polished
diplomacy in usage in all countries; she negotiates with them in
relation to matters of common interest, seeking to make the best of the
situation in the midst of such neighbors. In thus acting does she do
anything wrong) By no means. Is it not ridiculous then for a Catholic,
availing himself to this example, to hold it up as a sanction of
doctrines which the Church has never ceased to condemn, and as the
approbation of a line of conduct which she has ever combatted?
Does the
Church sanction the Koran when she enters into negotiations, power to
power, with the sectaries of the Koran? Does she approve of polygamy
because she receives the presents and embassies of the Grand Turk? Well,
it is in this way that the Church approves of Liberalism when she
decorates its kings or its ministers, when she sends her benedictions,
simple formulae of Christian courtesy, which the Pope extends even to
Protestants. It is a sophism to pretend that the Church authorizes by
such acts what she has always condemned by other acts. Her diplomatic
can never frustrate her apostolic ministration, and it is in this latter
that we must seek the seeming contradictions of her diplomatic career.
Various
are the ways in which a faithful Christian is drawn into the error of
Liberalism.
Very
often corruption of heart is a consequence of errors of the intellect,
but more frequently still, errors of the intellect follow the corruption
of the heart. The history of heresies very clearly shows this fact.
Their beginnings nearly always present the same character, either
wounded self love or a grievance to be avenged; either it is a woman
that makes the heresiarch lose his head and his soul, or it is a bag of
gold for which he sells his conscience.
Error
nearly always has its origin, not in profound and laborious studies, but
in the triple-headed monster which St. John describes and calls
Concupiscentia carnis, concupiscentia oculorum, superbia vitae
'Concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes, the pride of
life." Here are the sources of all error, here are the roads to
Liberalism. Let us dwell on them for a moment. 1. Men become Liberal on
account of a natural desire for independence and for an easy life.
Liberalism is necessarily sympathetic with the depraved nature of man,
just as Catholicity is essentially opposed to it. Liberalism is
emancipation from restraint; Catholicity the curb of the passions. Now,
fallen man, by a very natural tendency, loves a system which
legitimatizes and sanctifies his pride of intellect and the license of
passion. Hence, Tertullian says, "The soul, in its noble aspirations, is
naturally Christian." Likewise may it be said that man, by the taint of
his origin, is born naturally Liberal. Logically then does he declare
himself a Liberal in due form when he discovers that Liberalism offers a
protection for his caprices and an excuse for his indulgences.
2. Men
become Liberal by the desire for advancement in life. Liberalism is
today the dominating idea; it reigns everywhere and especially in the
sphere of public life. It is therefore a sure recommendation to public
favor.
On
starting out in life, the young man looks around upon the various paths
that lead to fortune, to fame, to glory, and sees that an almost
indispensable condition of reaching the desired goal is, at least in our
times, to become Liberal.
Not to
be Liberal is to place in his way, at the outset, what appears to be an
insurmountable obstacle. He must be heroic to resist the Tempter, who
shows him, as he did Jesus Christ in the desert, a splendid future,
saying: Haec omnia tibi dabo si cadens adoraveris me: "All this will I
give thee, if, falling down, thou wilt adore me." Heroes are rare, and
it is natural that most young men beginning their career should
affiliate with Liberalism. It promises them the assistance of a powerful
press, the recommendation of powerful protectors, the potent influence
of secret societies, the patronage of distinguished men. The poor
Ultramontane requires a thousand times more merit to make himself known
and to acquire a name, and youth is ordinarily little scrupulous.
Liberalism, moreover, is essentially favorable to that public life which
this age so ardently pursues.
It holds
out as tempting baits public offices, commissions, fat positions, etc.,
which constitute the organism of the official machine. It seems an
absolute condition for political preferment. To meet an ambitious young
man who despises and detests the perfidious Corrupter is a marvel of
God's grace.
3. Men
become Liberal out of avarice, or the love of money. To get along in the
world, to succeed in business, is always a standing temptation of
Liberalism. It meets the young man at every turn. Around him in a
thousand ways does he feel the secret or open hostility of the enemies
of his faith. In mercantile life or in the professions he is passed by,
overlooked, ignored. Let him relax a little in his faith, Join a
forbidden secret society, and lo, the bolts and bars are drawn; he
possesses the "open sesame" to success! Then the invidious
discrimination against him melts in the fraternal embrace of the enemy,
who rewards his perfidy by advancing him in a thousand ways. Such a
temptation is difficult for the ambitious to withstand. Be Liberal,
admit that there is no great difference between men's creeds, that at
the bottom they are really the same after all. Proclaim your breadth of
mind by admitting that other religious beliefs are just as good for
other people as your faith is for you; they are, as far as they know,
just as right as you are; it is largely a question of education and
temperament what a man believes; and how quickly you are patted on the
back as a "broad-gauged" man who has escaped the narrow limitations of
his creed. You will be extensively patronized, for Liberalism is very
generous to a convert. "Falling down adore me, and I will give you all
these things' " says Satan yet to Jesus Christ in the desert.
Such are
the ordinary causes of perversions to Liberalism; from these all others
flow. Whoever has any experience of the world and the human heart can
easily trace the others.
Liberalism is spread around us like a network.
Its web
is being constantly spun round about us as spiders weave their meshes
for insects. Where one is brushed away, two are multiplied. What is the
reason for this?
Philosophy teaches us that the same sources which produce also preserve
and increase things.
Per quae
gignitur, per eadem et servatur et augetur.
What
then are the permanent causes of Liberalism?
1.
Corruption of morals: The theater, literature, public and private morals
are all saturated with obscenity and impurity. The result is inevitable;
a corrupt generation necessarily begets a revolutionary generation.
Liberalism is the program of naturalism. Free thought begets free
morals, or immorality - Restraint is thrown off and a free rein given
to the passions. WHOEVER THINKS WHAT HE PLEASES WILL DO WHAT HE PLEASES.
Liberalism in the intellectual order is license in the moral order.
Disorder in the intellect begets disorder in the heart, and vice-versa.
Thus does Liberalism propagate immorality, and immorality Liberalism.
2.
Journalism: Incalculable is the influence exercised without ceasing by
the numerous publications which Liberalism spreads broadcast. In spite
of themselves, by the ubiquity of the press, people are forced to live
in a Liberal atmosphere.
Commerce, the arts, literature, science, politics, domestic and foreign
news, all reach us in some way through Liberal channels and come clothed
in a Liberal dress. UNLESS ONE IS ON HIS GUARD, HE FINDS HIMSELF
THINKING, SPEAKING AND ACTING AS A LIBERAL. Such is the tainted
character of the poisoned air we breathe! Poor people, by very reason of
their simple good faith, absorb more easily the poison than anyone else;
they absorb it in prose, in verse, in pictures, in public, in private,
in the city, in the country, everywhere.
Liberal
doctrines ever pursue them and, like leeches, fasten onto them, never to
relax their hold. Its work is rendered much more harmful by the
particular condition of the disciple, as we shall see in our third
count.
3.
General ignorance in matters of religion: In weaving its meshes around
the people, Liberalism has applied itself to the task of cutting them
off from all communication with that which alone is able to lay bare its
imposture - the Church. For the past two hundred years, Liberalism has
striven to paralyze the action of the Church, to render her mute, and -
especially in the Old World - to leave her merely an official character,
so as to sever her connections with the people. The Liberals themselves
have avowed this to be their aim: to destroy the religious life, to
place every hindrance possible in the way of Catholic teaching, to
ridicule the clergy and to deprive them of their prestige. In Italy and
France today, see the thousand and one artificial arrangements thrown
around the Church to hinder and hamper her actions, to render
ineffectual her opposition to the flood of Liberalism. The concordats,
such as are observed at the present time, are so many iron collars which
Liberalism has placed around her neck to stifle her. Freemasonry in
Europe and South America are constantly seeking to bind her hand and
foot, that she may be put at its satanic mercy.
By open
and secret means, this organization has sought to undermine her
discipline in every country where it has obtained a footing. Between her
and the people, it seeks to dig a deeper and deeper abyss of hate,
prejudice and calumny. NATURALISM, THE DENIAL OF THE SUPERNATURAL, IT
INCULCATES EVERYWHERE. To divorce the entire life of the people from her
influence - by the institution of civil marriage, by civil burial and
divorce, by teaching the insidious doctrine that society as such has no
religious relations or obligations and that man as a social and civil
being is absolutely independent of God and His Church and that religion
is a mere private opinion to be entertained or not entertained, as one
pleases such is the program, such is the effect, and such, in turn, is
the cause of Liberalism. But the most pernicious - because the most
successful and lasting - propagator of Liberalism is:
4.
Secular education: To gain the child is to secure the man. To educate a
generation apart from God and the Church is to feed the fires of
Liberalism to repletion. When religion is divorced from the school,
Liberalism becomes its paramour. Secularism is naturalism, the denial of
the supernatural. When that denial is instilled into the soul of the
child, the soil of the supernatural becomes sterilized. Liberalism has
realized the terrific power of education and with satanic energy is now
striving, the world over, for the possession of the child. (With what
success we have only to look around us to realize.) In its effort to
slay Christ, it decrees the slaughter of the innocents. "Snatch the soul
of the child from the breast of its mother the Church," says Liberalism,
"and I will conquer the world." HERE IS THE REAL BATTLEGROUND BETWEEN
FAITH AND INFIDELITY. HE WHO IS VICTOR HERE IS VICTOR EVERYWHERE.
How may
Catholics, who are perpetually surrounded by the snares of Liberalism,
guard themselves securely against its dangers?
-
By the organization of all good Catholics, be
their number great or small: They should become known to each other,
meet each other, unite together in every locality - every city, town
or village, should have a nucleus of Catholic men of action. Such an
organization will attract the undecided, give courage to the
hesitating and counteract the influence of hostile or indifferent
surroundings. If you number only a dozen men of spirit, no matter.
Found societies, especially of young men. Put yourselves in
correspondence with older societies in your neighborhood, or even at
a distance. Link your associations together association with
association - as the Roman legions used to form the military
tortoise, by uniting shield with shield over their heads. Thus
united, be your number ever so small, lift on high the banner of a
sound, pure and uncompromising doctrine, without disguise, without
attenuation, yielding not an inch to the enemy. Uncompromising
courage is always noble, commands sympathy, and wins over the
chivalric. To see a man battered by the floods, yet standing firm as
a rock, upright and immovable, is an inspiring sight! Above all,
give good example, give good example always.
What you preach, do! You will soon see how easily you force people
to respect you; when you have gained their admiration, their
sympathy will soon follow. Proselytes will be forthcoming. If
Catholics only understood what a brilliant secular apostolate they
could exercise by being open, straightforward, uncompromising
practical Catholics, in word and deed, Liberalism and heresy would
die a quick death.
-
Good journals: Choose from among good journals
that which is best, the one best adapted to the needs and the
intelligence of the people who surround you. Read it; but not
content with that, give it to others to read; explain it; comment on
it, let it be your basis of operations. Busy yourself in securing
subscriptions for it. Encourage the reluctant to take it; make it
easy for those to whom it seems troublesome to send in their
subscriptions. Place it in the hands of young people who are
beginning their careers. Impress on them the necessity of reading
it; show them its merits and its value. They will begin by tasting
the sauce and will at last eat the fish. This is the way the
advocates of Liberalism and impiety work for their journals; so then
ought we to work for ours. A good Catholic journal is a peremptory
or imperative necessity in our day. Whatever be its defects or
inconveniences, its advantages and its benefits will outweigh them a
thousandfold. The Holy Father has said that "a Catholic paper is a
perpetual mission in every parish." It is ever an antidote to the
false journalism that meets you on every side. In general, do all in
your power to further the circulation of Catholic literature, be it
in the shape of book, brochure, lecture, sermon or pastoral letter.
The weapon of the crusader of our times is the printed word.
-
The Catholic school: With all your power support
the Catholic school, in deed and in word, with your whole heart and
your whole soul. The Catholic school has become in this age the only
secure bridge of the Faith from generation to generation. In our own
country, we have been compelled to establish our own schools,
unaided and alone. The prejudice and intolerance of Liberalism has
refused us common justice. While we protest against the wrong and
never cease demanding our right, our clear and peremptory duty is to
provide the best possible schools of our own, where our children may
be educated in the full and only true sense of the word. Where
Catholic schools are needed, build them, build them, build them!
Never tire in this absolutely necessary work. Bend every energy to
it. Archbishop Hughes said, "Not until I have built my school shall
one stone of my Cathedral be laid upon another' " This great prelate
fully realized what every Catholic today should take as his motto,
"The foundation of the parish church is the schoolhouse'" Be the
support of the school a burden, be it built and perpetuated at a
great sacrifice, its value is beyond estimation, the burden and the
sacrifice are featherweights in comparison to the good that arises
from the Catholic school. The spiritual life of a parish without a
school is tepid, neither hot nor cold. Let the school be the best
possible. Too much time or too much care cannot be given to it, for
Catholic education amidst the deluge of Liberalism - which has
overwhelmed the world - is the ark of salvation. Speak out
fearlessly on this matter of education. Say squarely and frankly
that irreligious education leads to the devil. An irreligious school
is the school of Satan. Danton, a celebrated French revolutionist,
continually cried, "Boldness! More boldness!" But we, for our part,
must let our constant cry be, "Frankness! Frankness! Light! Light!"
Nothing will more quickly put to flight the legions of Hell, who
seduce only under the shelter of darkness.
Qui male
agit odit lucem -- "Everyone that doth evil hateth the light" (John
3:20) -- said our Divine Lord. Iniquity works in obscurity. It is not
difficult to discover an enemy who comes to meet us in the broad
daylight, or not to recognize as Liberals those who frankly declare
themselves to be such.
But this
sort of frankness is not ordinary to the Liberal sect. On the contrary,
it is usually very clever and cautious in concealing its real meaning in
various disguises. We may add that often the eye that ought to discover
the imposture is not the clear-sighted eye of a lynx. There should
therefore be some easy and popular criterion to distinguish, at every
instant, the Catholic cry from the infernal birdcall of Liberalism.
It often
happens that some project or enterprise is put on foot, some sort of a
work is undertaken, whose bearings Catholics cannot promptly or easily
apprehend. It may appear indifferent or even innocent enough, and yet it
may have its roots in error and be a mere artifice of the enemy - flying
our colors to allure us into an ambuscade. It may speak the language of
charity, appealing to us from the tenderest side, and ask us to
associate ourselves with it in the name of a common humanity. "Sink all
differences of creed and let us fraternize on the broader plane of
brotherly love" is often its most insidious appeal. Such instances are
arising every day of our lives. "Consult the Church" some may say; "its
word is infallible and will dissipate all uncertainty." Very true, but
the authority of the Church cannot be consulted at every moment and in
every particular case. The Church has wisely laid down certain general
principles for our guidance, but it has left to the judgment and
prudence of each of us the special application of these principles to
the thousand and one concrete cases which we have to face every day. Now
a case of this kind presents itself to be determined according to our
own judgment and discretion. We are asked to give a contribution to such
and such an undertaking, to Join such and such a society, to take part
in such and such an enterprise, to subscribe to such and such a journal,
and all this may be for God or the devil; or what is worse, it may be
evil cloaked in the garb of holy things. How shall we guide ourselves in
such a labyrinth?
Here are
two very practical rules of ready service to a Catholic who is walking
on slippery ground:
1.
Observe carefully what class of people are the projectors of the affair.
Such is the first rule of prudence and common sense. It is based on that
maxim of Our Lord: "A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit."
Liberalism is naturally bound to produce writings, works and deeds
impregnated with the spirit of Liberalism, or at least tainted with it.
Therefore, we must carefully scrutinize the antecedents of the person or
persons who organize or inaugurate the work in question. If they are
such that you cannot have entire confidence in their doctrines, be on
your guard against their enterprises. Do not disapprove immediately, for
it is an axiom of theology that not all the works of infidels are
sinful, and this axiom can be applied to the works of Liberals. But be
careful not to take them immediately for good; mistrust them, submit
them to examination, await their results.
2.
Observe the kind of people who praise the work in question. This is an
even surer rule than the preceding. There are in the world two perfectly
distinct currents: the Catholic current and the Liberal current. The
first is reflected for the most part by the Catholic press; the second
is reflected by the Liberal press. Is a new book announced? Are the
beginnings of a new project published? See if the Liberal current
approves, recommends and accounts them its own. If yes, the book and the
project are judged: they belong to Liberalism.
It is
evident that Liberalism has inspired them, distinguishing immediately
what is injurious or useful to it, for Liberalism is never such a fool
as not to understand what is opposed to it or to be opposed to that
which is favorable to it. The sects, religious or infidel, have an
instinct, a particular intuition (olfactus mentis), as philosophers say,
which reveals to them a priori what is good or what is bad for them.
Repudiate, then, whatever Liberals praise or vaunt. It is evident that
they have recognized - by its nature or by its origin, or as a means or
as an end - something in the object so praised that is favorable to
Liberalism. The clairvoyant instinct of the sect cannot deceive them.
Certain scruples of charity and the habit of thinking well of our
neighbor sometimes blind good people to such an extent as to lead them
to attribute good intentions where unhappily they do not exist. This is
not the case with falsifiers.
They
always send their shot right to the center; they never credit good
intentions where there are none, or even where there are. They always
beat the bass-drum in favor of all that advances in any way their own
nefarious propaganda. Discredit, therefore, what you see your known
enemies proclaiming with hallelujahs.
It seems
to us that these two rules of common sense, which we can call rules of
good Christian sense, suffice - if not to enable us to judge
definitively every question - at least to keep us from perpetually
stumbling over the roughness of the uneven soil which we daily tread and
where the combat is always taking place. The Catholic of the age should
always bear in mind that the ground on which he walks is undermined in
every direction by secret societies, that it is these who give the
keynote to anti-Catholic polemics, that unconsciously and very often
these secret societies are served even by those who detest their
infernal work. The actual strife is principally underground and against
an invisible enemy, who rarely presents himself under his real device.
He is to be scented, rather than seen; to be divined by instinct, rather
than pointed out with the finger.
A good
scent and practical sense are more necessary here than subtle reasoning
or labored
theories.
The
press has grown so omnipresent nowadays that there is no escape from it.
It is therefore important to know exactly how to steer our course amidst
the many perils that beset Catholics on this score. How then are we to
distinguish between journals that merit or do not merit our confidence?
Or rather, what kind of journals ought to inspire us with very little
and what with no confidence? In the first place, it is clear that such
journals as boast of their Liberalism have no claim to our confidence in
matters that Liberalism touches on. These are precisely the enemies
against whom we have constantly to be on guard, against whom we have to
wage perpetual war.
This
point then is outside of our present consideration. All those who in our
times claim the title of Liberalism, in the specific sense in which we
always use the term, become our declared enemies and the enemies of the
Church of God.
But
there is another class of journals less prompt to unmask and proclaim
themselves, who love to live amidst ambiguities in an undefined and
indefinite region of compromise. They declare themselves Catholic and
aver their detestation and abhorrence of Liberalism, at least if we
credit their words. These journals are generally known as Liberal
Catholic. This is the class which we should especially mistrust, and we
should not permit ourselves to be duped by its pretended piety. When we
find journals, Catholic in name and in profession, strongly leaning to
the side of compromise and seeking to placate the enemy by concessions,
we may rest assured that they are being drawn down the Liberal current,
which is always too strong for such weak swimmers. He who places himself
in the vortex of a maelstrom is sure in the end to be engulfed in it.
The logic of the situation brings the inevitable conclusion.
The
Liberal current is easier to follow. It is largely made up of proselytes
and readily attracts the self love of the weak. The Catholic current is
apparently more difficult; it has fewer partisans and friends and
requires us constantly to row against the stream, to stem the tide of
perverse ideas and corrupt passions. With the uncertain, the vacillating
and the unwary, the Liberal current easily prevails and sweeps them away
in its fatal embrace. There is no room, therefore, for confidence in the
Liberal Catholic press, especially in cases where it is difficult to
form a judgment.
Moreover, in such cases, its policy of compromise and conciliation
hampers it from forming any decisive or absolute judgment, for the
simple reason that its judgment has nothing decisive or radical in it;
on the contrary, it is always overweighed with a preponderating
inclination towards the expedient. Opportunism is its guiding star. The
truly Catholic press is altogether Catholic, that is to say, it defends
Catholic doctrine in all its principles and applications; it opposes all
false teaching (known as such) always and entirely, opposite per
diametrum ["diametrically opposed"], as St. Ignatius says in that golden
book of his exercises. Arrayed with unceasing vigilance against error,
it places itself on the frontier, always face-to-face with the enemy. It
never bivouacs with the hostile forces, as the compromising press loves
to do.
Its
opposition is definite and determined; it is not simply opposed to
certain undeniable maneuvers of the foe, letting others escape its
vigilance, but watches, guards, and resists at every point. It
everywhere presents an unbroken front to evil, for evil is evil in
everything, even in the good which, by chance, may accompany it.
Let us
here make an observation to explain this last phrase, which may appear
startling to some, and at the same time explain a difficulty entertained
by not a few.
Bad
journals (we include doctrinally unsound journals under this head)
sometimes contain something good. What are we to think of the good thus
imbedded with the bad in them? We must think that the good in them does
not prevent them from being bad, if their doctrine or their character is
intrinsically bad. In most cases this good is a mere artifice to
recommend, or at least disguise, what in itself is essentially bad. Some
accidentally good qualities do not take away the bad character of a bad
man. An assassin and a thief are not good because they sometimes say a
prayer or give alms to a beggar. They are bad in spite of their good
works, because the general character of their acts, as well as their
habitual tendencies, is bad and if they sometimes do good in order to
cloak their malice, they are even worse than before.
On the
other hand, it sometimes happens that a good journal falls into such or
such an error or into an excess of passion in a good cause and so says
something which we cannot altogether approve. Must we for this reason
call it bad? Not at all, and for a reverse although analogous reason.
With it the evil is only accidental; the good constitutes its substance
and is its ordinary condition. One of several sins do not make a man bad
- above all, if he repent of them and make amends. That alone is bad
which is bad with full knowledge, habitually and persistently. Catholic
journalists are not angels; far from it; they too are fragile men and
sinners. To wish to condemn them for such or such a failing, for this or
that excess, is to entertain a pharisaical or jansenistic opinion of
virtue, which is not in accord with sound morality!
To
conclude, there are good and bad journals; among the latter are to be
ranked those whose doctrine is ambiguous or ill-defined. Those that are
bad are not to be accounted good because they happen to slip in
something good, and those that are good are not to be accounted bad on
account of some accidental failings.
Good
Catholics, who judge and act loyally according to these principles, will
rarely be deceived.
A
question very pertinent to our times and our surroundings is, "Should
Catholics combine with the more moderate Liberals for the common end of
resisting the advance of the revolutionists or extreme Liberals?" With
some, this is a golden dream; with others, a perfidious snare by which
they seek to paralyze our powers and divide us.
What
should we think of these would-be unionists, we who wish above all
things the wellbeing of our Holy Religion? In general, we should think
such unions are neither good nor commendable. Liberalism, let its form
be as moderated or as wheedling as possible, is by its very essence in
direct and radical opposition to Catholicity. Liberals are the born
enemies of Catholics, and it is only accidentally that both can have
interests that are truly common.
It is
possible, however, in very rare cases, that a union on the part of
Catholics with a Liberal group against the Radicals may prove useful
under given conditions. Where such a union is really opportune, it must
be established on the following basis:
-
The bond of union should never be neutrality or
the conciliation of interests and principles essentially opposed,
such as are the interests and principles of Catholics and Liberals.
This neutrality or conciliation has been condemned by the Syllabus
of Errors of Pope Pius IX and is, consequently, a false basis. Such
a union would be a betrayal, an abandonment of the Catholic camp by
those who are bound to defend it. An instance would be to compromise
Catholic education with Secularism by banishing religious
instruction and influences from the school room. The basis of such
conciliation is false, as it necessarily sacrifices Catholic
interests and principles. It concedes to Secularism what is
essential to the integrity of Catholic education, viz., the
formation of the Catholic character in children, and admits the
validity of the principle of neutrality. It can never be said, "Let
us abstract from our differences of doctrine, etc." Such a loose
abdication of principle can never obtain in the Catholic estimation.
It would be the same as to say, "In spite of the radical and
essential opposition of principles between us, we can, after all,
agree in the practical application of these principles." This is
simply an intolerable contradiction.
-
Much less could we accord to the Liberal group,
with whom a temporary and accidental alliance is formed, the honor
of enrolling ourselves under its banner. Let each party keep
distinct its own proper device, or let the Liberals in question
range themselves under our ensign, if they wish to fight with us
against a common enemy. We can never assume their emblem under any
circumstances. In other words, let them unite themselves to us; we
can never unite ourselves to them. Accustomed as they are to a
varying and motley ensign, it cannot be difficult for them to accept
our colors. For us there can be but one flag - the one emblem of the
one, unvarying Faith which we ever profess.
-
We must never consider this alliance constant and
normal. It can never be anything else than a fortuitous and
transient condition, passing away the moment the immediate exigency
of its existence ceases. There can be no constant and normal union,
except between homogeneous elements. For people of convictions who
are radically opposed, to harmonize for any length of time would
require continual acts of heroic virtue on the part of both sides.
Now heroism is no ordinary thing, nor is it of daily exercise. Such
grave incompatibility would simply expose the undertaking to
lamentable failure and would build upon contradictory opinions,
whose only accord is accidental. For a transitory act of common
defense or attack, such an attempt at a coalition of forces is
permissible - and even praiseworthy and extremely useful - provided,
however, that we never forget the conditions or rules we have
already laid down as governing the exceptional circumstances
obtaining in a given case; these rules are an imprescriptible
necessity. Outside of these conditions, not only should we hold that
such a union with any group, for any enterprise whatever, would be
unfavorable to Catholics, we should also hold that it would be
actually detrimental. Instead of augmenting our forces, as would be
the case in the union of homogeneous elements, it would paralyze and
nullify the vigor of those who would be able, if alone, to do
something for the defense of the truth. Without doubt, as the
proverb runs, "Unhappy the one who walks alone' " But there is
another proverb equally true which says, "Better seek solitude than
bad company." It was St. Thomas, we believe, who said, Bona est unio
sed potior est unitas, "Union is good, but unity is better." If we
have to sacrifice true unity for the sake of an artificial and
forced union, not only is nothing gained, but much is lost.
Experience has always shown that the result of such unions, outside of
the conditions just laid down, is barren. Their result always renders
the strife even more bitter and rancorous. There is not a single example
of such a coalition which served either to edify or consolidate.
Amongst
the illusions entertained by a certain class of Catholics, there is none
more pitiable than the notion that the truth requires a great number of
defenders and friends. To these people, numbers seem a synonym for
force. They imagine that to multiply heterogeneous quantities is to
multiply power.
Now true
force - real power, in the physical as in the moral order - consists in
intensity, rather than in extension. A greater volume of matter equally
intense evidently produces a greater effect, not by reason of the
increased volume, but by virtue of the augmented intensities contained
in it. It is therefore a rule of sound mechanics to seek to increase the
extension and number of forces, but always on the condition that the
final result be a real augmentation of their intensities. To be content
with an increase without consideration of the value of the increment is
not only to accumulate fictitious force, but to expose to paralysis the
powers which one does possess by the congestion of an unwieldy mass. The
millions of Xerxes' army constituted a force of tremendous extension,
but they were of no avail against the vigorous intensity of the Greek
three hundred at Thermopylae.
Faith
possesses a power of its own, which it communicates to its friends and
defenders. It is not they who give the truth power, but truth which
charges them with its own vigor. This on the condition that they use
that power in its defense.
If the
defender, under the pretext of better defending the truth, begins to
mutilate it, to minimize it, to attenuate it, then he is no longer
defending the truth. He is simply defending his own invention, a mere
human creation, more or less beautiful in appearance, but having no
relation to truth, which is the daughter of Heaven.
Such is
the delusion of which many of our brethren are the unconscious victims,
through a detestable contact with Liberalism.
They
imagine, with blinded good faith, that they are defending and
propagating Catholicity. But by dint of accommodating it to their own
narrow views and feeble courage, in order to make it, they say, more
acceptable to the enemy whom they wish to overcome, they do not perceive
that they are no longer defending Catholicity, but a thing of their own
manufacture, which they naively call Catholicity, but which they ought
to call by another name. Poor victims of self-deception, who at the
beginning of the battle, in order to win over the enemy, wet their own
powder and blunt the edge and the point of their swords! They do not
stop to reflect that an edgeless and pointless sword is no longer a
weapon, but a useless piece of old iron, and that wet powder cannot be
fired.
Their
journals, their books, their discourses veneered with Catholicity but
bereft of its spirit and its life - have no more value in the cause of
the Faith than the toy swords and pistols of the nursery.
To an
army of this kind, be it ten times as numerous as the multitudinous
hosts of Xerxes, a single platoon of well-armed soldiers - knowing what
they are defending, against whom they are contending, and with what arms
they fight in order to defend the truth - is preferable a thousand times
over. This is the kind of soldiers we need. This is the kind who have
always and will yet do something more for the glory of His Name. They go
into the deadly, imminent breach and never flinch.
No
compromising, no minimizing with them.
They
plant their banner on the topmost height and form a solid, invincible
phalanx around it that not all the legions of Earth and Hell combined
can budge a single inch. They make no alliance, no compromise with a foe
whose single aim, disguised or open, is the destruction of the truth.
They know that the enemy is by nature implacable and that his flag of
truce is but a cunning device of treachery.
Of this
we will become more and more convinced, if we consider that an alliance
of this kind with a false auxiliary group is not only useless to the
good Christian in the midst of the combat, but moreover, it is most of
the time an actual embarrassment to him and favorable to the enemy.
Catholic associations hampered in their onward march by such an alliance
will find themselves so impeded that free action becomes impossible.
They will end by having all their energies crushed under a deadly
inertia. To bring an enemy into the camp is to betray the citadel. It
was not until the Trojans admitted the fatal wooden horse within the
city walls that Illium [Troy] fell. This combination of the bad with the
good cannot but end in evil results. It brings disorder, confusion,
suspicion and uncertainty to distract and divide Catholics, and all this
to the benefit of the enemy and to our own disaster.
Against
such a course la Civilta Cattolica, in some remarkable articles, has
emphatically declared. Without the proper precaution, it says,
"associations of this kind (Catholic) run the certain danger, not only
of becoming a camp of scandalous discord, but also of wandering away
from their true principles, to their own ruin and to the great injury of
religion '" And this same review, whose authority is of the greatest
possible weight, in regard to the same subject, says, "With a prudent
understanding, Catholic associations ought chiefly to take care to
exclude from amongst themselves not only those who openly profess the
principles of Liberalism, but also those who have deceived themselves
into believing that a conciliation between Liberalism and Catholicism is
possible, and who are known as Liberal Catholics."
How is
one to tell on his own authority who or what is Liberal, without having
recourse to a definitive decision of the teaching Church? When a good
Catholic accuses anyone of Liberalism or attacks and unmasks Liberal
sophisms, the accused immediately seeks refuge in a challenge of the
accuser's authority: "And pray, who are you to charge me and my journal
with Liberalism? Who made you a master in Israel to declare who is or
who is not a good Catholic? And is it from you that I must take out a
patent on Catholicity?" Such is the last resort of the tainted Catholic
on finding himself pushed to the wall. How then are we to answer this
opposition? Upon this point, is the theology of Liberal Catholics sound?
That we may accuse any person or writing of Liberalism, is it necessary
to have recourse to a special judgment of the Church upon this
particular person or this particular writing? By no means.
If this
Liberal paradox were true, it would furnish Liberals with a very
efficacious weapon with which, practically speaking, to annul all the
Church's condemnations of Liberalism.
The
Church alone possesses supreme doctrinal magistery in fact and in
right,juris et facti; her sovereign authority is personified in the
Pope. To him alone belongs the right of pronouncing the final, decisive
and solemn sentence. But this does not exclude other judgments less
authoritative but very weighty, which cannot be despised and even ought
to bind the Christian conscience. Of this kind are:
-
judgments of the Bishops in their respective
dioceses.
-
judgments of pastors in their parishes.
-
judgments of directors of consciences.
-
judgments of theologians consulted by the lay
faithful.
These judgments are of course not infallible, but they are entitled
to great consideration and ought to be binding in proportion to the
authority of those who give them, in the gradation we have
mentioned. But it is not against judgments of this character that
Liberals hurl the peremptory challenge we wish particularly to
consider. There is another factor in this matter that is entitled to
respect, and that is:
-
The judgment of simple human reason, duly
enlightened.
Yes, human reason, to speak after the manner of theologians, has a
theological place in matters of religion. Faith dominates reason,
which ought to be subordinated to faith in everything. But it is
altogether false to pretend that reason can do nothing, that it has
no function at all in matters of faith; it is false to pretend that
the inferior light, illumined by God in the human understanding,
cannot shine at all because it does not shine as powerfully or as
clearly as the superior light. Yes, the faithful are permitted and
even commanded to give a reason for their faith, to draw out its
consequences, to make applications of it, to deduce parallels and
analogies from it. It is thus by use of their reason that the
faithful are enabled to suspect and measure the orthodoxy of any new
doctrine presented to them, by comparing it with a doctrine already
defined. If it be not in accord, they can combat it as bad, and
justly stigmatize as bad the book or journal which sustains it. They
cannot of course define it ex cathedra, but they can lawfully hold
it as perverse and declare it such, warn others against it, raise
the cry of alarm and strike the first blow against it. The faithful
layman can do all this, and has done it at all times with the
applause of the Church. Nor in so doing does he make himself the
pastor of the flock, nor even its humblest attendant; he simply
serves it as a watchdog who gives the alarm. Opportet allatrare
canes "It behooves watchdogs to bark," very opportunely said a great
Spanish Bishop in reference to such occasions.
Is not
perchance the part played by human reason so understood by those zealous
prelates who on a thousand occasions exhort the faithful to refrain from
the reading of bad journals and works, without specially pointing them
out? Thus do they show their conviction that reason, this natural
criterion, illumined by faith, is sufficient to enable the faithful to
apply well-known doctrines to such matters.
Does the
Index of Forbidden Books itself give the title of every forbidden book?
Do we not find under the rubric of "General Rules of the Index" certain
principles according to which good Catholics should guide themselves in
forming their judgment upon books not mentioned in the Index, but which
each reader is expected to apply at his own discretion? Of what use
would be the rule of faith and morals if in every particular case the
faithful could not of themselves make the immediate application, or if
they were constantly obliged to consult the Pope or the diocesan pastor?
just as the general rule of morality is the law in accordance with which
each one squares his own conscience (dictamen practicum - "practical
judgment") in making particular applications of this general rule
(subject to correction if erroneous), so the general rule of faith,
which is the infallible authority of the Church, is and ought to be in
consonance with every particular judgment formed in making concrete
applications - subject, of course, to correction and retraction in the
event of mistake in so applying it. It would be rendering the superior
rule of faith useless, absurd and impossible to require the supreme
authority of the Church to make its special and immediate application in
every case and upon every occasion which calls it forth.
This
would be a species of brutal and satanic Jansenism, like that of the
followers of the unhappy Bishop of Ypres, who exacted, for the reception
of the Sacraments, such dispositions as would make it impossible for men
to profit by that which was plainly intended and instituted for them by
Jesus Christ Himself.
The
legal rigorism invoked by the Liberalists in matters pertaining to faith
is as absurd as the ascetic rigorism once preached at Port Royal [the
seat of the Jansenist heresy]; it would result even more disastrously.
If you doubt this, look around you. The greatest rigorists on this point
are the most hardened sectaries of the Liberal school. But how explain
this apparent contradiction? It is easily explained, if we only reflect
that nothing could be more convenient for Liberalism than to put this
legal muzzle upon the lips and the pens of their most determined
adversaries. It would be in truth a great triumph for them, under the
pretext that no one except the Pope and the bishops could speak with the
least authority, and thus to impose silence upon the lay champions of
the Faith, such as were DeMaistre, Cortes, Veuillot, Ward, Lucas and
McMaster, who once bore, and others who now bear, the banner of the
Faith so boldly and unflinchingly against its most insidious foes.
Liberalism would like to see such crusaders disarmed and would prefer
above all to succeed in getting the Church herself to do the disarming.
Liberalism, whereas essentially one and the same everywhere, presents
various faces in different countries. In its essence, it is the denial
of the supernatural in whole or in part, but that denial takes a local
coloring from place or circumstances.
The
traditions, customs, prejudices, and idiosyncrasies of a people reflect
it at various angles. It is protean [variable] in its presentations
throughout the world, and to the casual observer, who falls to probe
below the appearances of things, it may not seem to manifest itself at
all; whereas, in reality, it exists in its subtlest and therefore most
dangerous form.
In
America it would scarcely seem to exist at all [things
have changed for the worse in this time period!], so
ingrained is it in our social conditions, so natural is it to the
prevailing modes of thought, so congenital is it with the dominant
religious notions about us - and thus providing so congenial a habitat
to the Protestant sects. Indeed it is the very constituent of the
pseudo-religious and pseudo-moral atmosphere we daily breathe. We can
hope to escape its taint only by copious and frequent draughts of
orthodox doctrine, by the strictest intellectual vigilance, fortified by
supernatural grace. Its aspect in this country is peculiar and fraught
with especial danger to those negligent either in faith or morals. Its
chief manifestation in the United States is in the form of what is
popularly called NON-SECTARIANISM. It is a current fallacy, laid down as
a fundamental truth that one religion is as good as another, that
everyone has the right to believe what be pleases, that differences in
creed are after all but differences in forms of expression, that
everyone may select his own creed or sect according to his taste - or
even altogether repudiate religious beliefs - and finally, that religion
is a thing entirely apart from civic and social life. All this of course
is SECULARISM in its various degrees - the denial of the supernatural.
In
practice, this principle ingratiates itself into social and civic life,
directly or indirectly working out to the prejudice of religion and
morality: Civil marriage and divorce, mixed marriages and the consequent
degeneration of family life, business standards and morality in general
pitched on a low key, a vicious literature, a materialistic journalism
catering to lax thinking and lax living, religion publicly mocked,
scoffed, denied or held indifferently; all these things are coldly
regarded as a matter of course, a necessary expedience, things to be
condoned and applauded, all on the ground that they are the fruit of
liberty. But the most virulent effect crops out in the prevailing
educational theory. Here Liberalism manifests itself in its most direful
and fullest effects, for it denies to religion the very sphere where it
has the strongest right and the fullest reason to use its widest and
most lasting influence, viz., upon the minds of children.
Secularism, with the instinct of a foe, has here most positively and
triumphantly asserted its claim and, under the disguise of strict
impartiality and even patriotism, has banished religion from the
schoolroom.
That
Catholics should not feel the effects of this relaxing atmosphere is
scarcely to be expected.
With the
air so strongly impregnated with poison, it would be difficult indeed to
keep the blood healthy. In not a few instances, they have fallen victims
to the plague, and if not always out-and-out corrupted, they become not
a little tainted.
Hence we
find amongst, if not a large, at least no small number, an easy
disposition to compromise or minimize their faith in points of doctrine
or practice. THE NATURAL TENDENCY IN HUMAN NATURE TO ESCAPE FRICTION AND
AVOID ANTAGONISM IS UNHAPPILY IN MOST INSTANCES A READY FACTOR IN THE
DIRECTION OF CONCESSION.
To
apologize, excuse, extenuate, soften, explain away this or that point of
faith, practice or discipline easily follows from a habit of thought
contracted from perpetual contact with Liberalists, with whom everything
takes precedence over faith and supernaturalism. This is especially true
where Liberalism eschews aggressive action and with a cunning, either
satanic or worldly wise, bases its treacherous tolerance upon a supposed
generosity of mind or breadth of view. When the supernatural is vaguely
identified with the superstitious, faith with credulity, firmness with
fanaticism, the uncompromising with the intolerant, consistency with
narrowness (for such is the current attitude of secularism around us),
in these adjuncts it requires courage, fortitude and the consolation of
the assured possession of truth to resist the insidious pressure of a
false public opinion. Unless supernaturally fortified and enlightened,
human nature under this moral oppression soon gives way to "human
respect."
Such are
our Liberal surroundings in this country. We cannot escape them. But we
are in duty bound to resist their fatal contagion with all the powers of
our soul. If we hope to preserve our faith intact, to keep it pure and
bright in our souls, to save ourselves from the malign influence of a
deadly heresy which is daily leading thousands to perdition, we must be
guarded and vigilant in its presence. Amidst a host of swarming foes,
our armor should be without flaw from greave to helmet, our weapons
well-tempered, keen, and burnished, not only to ward off the hostile
blow, but ready to deal home a telling stroke wherever the enemy's
weakness exposes him.
It is
because we live in the midst of such perplexities, where the ways are
devious and where snares are laid for our every footstep, in order to
entrap us unawares, that we require to be on our guard in a twofold way:
first, by means of a life lived in the state of grace, second, by means
of an enlightened reason, which may shine out over our path as a guide
to ourselves and a beacon to others.
In a
special manner is this a need in our country, where Liberalism pretends
to be the champion and guardian of natural reason, laying its snares to
entrap the unwary and the ignorant. Not in violence but in a treacherous
friendliness on the part of Liberalism does the danger lie. A
well-instructed Catholic - who thoroughly comprehends the rational
grounds of his faith and understands the character of Liberal tactics
under our national conditions - can alone successfully cope with the
enemy face-to-face. Ultramontanism is the only conquering legion in this
sort of warfare. It is for the vanguard of the army to surprise the
enemy at his own ambuscade, to mine against his mine and to expose him
before he has burrowed under our own camp. Ultramontanism is Catholicity
intact and armed cap-a-pie [from head to foot]. It is Catholicity
consistent in all its parts, the logical concatenation of Catholic
principles to their fullest conclusions in doctrine and practice. Hence
the fierce and unholy opposition with which it is constantly assailed.
The foe well knows that to rout the vanguard is to demoralize the entire
army; hence their rage and fury against the invincible phalanx which
always stands fully armed, sleeplessly vigilant and eternally
uncompromising.
In this
country, above all others, do Catholics need to be Watchful, constant
and unshaken in their faith, for the disease of Liberalism is virulently
endemic. Its assault is perpetual, its weapons invisible, save to the
enlightened eye of a resolute and undaunted faith. In Europe, at least
on the Continent, Liberalism is violent, aggressive, openly breathing
its hatred and opposition. There the war is open; here it is concealed.
There the battlefield is the public arena in civic and political life;
here the contest is within the social, business and even domestic
circle. There it is declared foe against declared foe; here it is friend
against friend, even brother against brother, and all the more dangerous
in results because friendly, social or domestic relations endure without
injury amidst the struggle and are dangerous to the Catholic because
these various ties are so many embarrassments to his free action, so
many bonds of affection or interest to enchain him. Therefore must be be
all vigilant; therefore should his courage be great, his attitude firm
and his stand bold, for whereas his circumstances make him friendly to
his foe, he must wage a deadly battle for his faith. His task is doubly
difficult; be must conquer an enemy who appears his dearest friend.
"Liberalism, whether in the doctrinal or practical order, is a sin. In
the doctrinal order, it is heresy, and consequently a mortal sin against
faith. In the practical order, it is a sin against the commandments of
God and of the Church, for it virtually transgresses all commandments.
To be more precise: in the doctrinal order, Liberalism strikes at the
very foundations of faith; it is heresy radical and universal, because
within it are comprehended all heresies. In the practical order it is a
radical and universal infraction of the divine law, since it sanctions
and authorizes all infractions of that law." (Ch. 3).
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