The Outlook at Home and Abroad

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for October, 1874.]

   We have one grave objection to this book, that it is made up in part, by omissions and additions by Lord R. Montagu, from an Italian work by the eminent Jesuit writer, Fr. Franco, and is therefore, properly speaking, neither Fr. Franco's nor Lord R. Montagu's work. We have, moreover, no marks given us by which we can distinguish what belongs to the reverend father from what belongs to the noble lord. The book, as we have it before us, may be much improved by his lordship from what it was as Fr. Franco left it, and we have no doubt that it is so; but we hold the productions of an author sacred, and can tolerate no changes in their text, even for the better, without his knowledge and express consent.

  But passing over this objection, which is not an objection to the merits of the book, we may say we like it very much, and regard its publication as timely and highly important, even for English-speaking Catholics, among whom we have found the popular errors it points out, concerning the relation of religion and politics, hardly less rife than among non-Catholics; and the greater part of which have been noted from time to time and refuted in the Review. In our own community, the total separation of the church and state, or of religion and politics, is a "fixed idea." But this idea is not the same in all minds. The infidel understands, by the separation of religion and politics, the complete independence of the secular order, or the denial in the political order of the sovereignty of God, while many Christians only mean by it the exclusion of the clergy from all practical intermeddling in political affairs. These last are not wholly wrong; for, as a matter of fact, priests just from the seminary, or devoted to the spiritual duties of their calling, are less fitted to manage the politics of a country than intelligent laymen. Shut out in great measure from intercourse with the world during their seminarian life, they have little chance to inform thenselves of the practical bearings in the secular order of this or that political measure, and in general are obliged to rely on the lay members, usually the demagogues, of their parish and congregation. In the middle ages and later, when the leading statesmen were esslesiastics, the interests of religion were not more consulted or better protected than if the statesmen had been seculars. Churchmen, become statesmen, are very apt to leave the church behind them and consult secular interests, as we see in the case of Cardinal Beaufort, Cardinal Wolsey, Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal Mazarin, Cardinal Dubois. Even the great Cardinal Ximenes did not a little to ruinSpain politically, by his centralism. Statesmen, whether churchman or laymen, are obliged to follow the political tendencies, the public opinion, of their age and nation.

   The true mission of the clergy is, not to enter the arena of politics and to act the part of politicians, but to proclaim and enforce, with all the spiritual power they can wield, the great principles of the divine government or the kingdom of God on earth as applicable to secular affairs, and which are the law alike for individuals and nations, for rulers and ruled; and to form and sustain a public opinion that compels statesmen to confrom their secular measures, their state policy, to the law of God as declared and applied by the church, and which is universal and inflexible. Understood in this latter sense, the separation of religion and politics means political atheism, or the denial of the sovereignty of God. In the former sense, the separation is, perhaps, desirable. In the infidel sense, as understood by European democrats and revolutionists, by the Cavours, the Bismarcks, the German kaiser, and Anglican statesman generally, the separation is simply the denial of the divine sovereignty in society and the state, which is in principal and practical tendency downright atheism. We recognize a marked difference between clerocracy and theocracy. The latter we defended; for while the clergy have, in union with their chief, authority to declare the law, the spiritual or moral principles to which the secular government must conform, they have, in the practical administration of secular affairs, only the authority of seculars, are not necessarily superior, and not seldom in fact inferior to them, because not trained to practical statesmanship. It is the neglect to make this distiction nthat causes even some well-meaning people, who have not the least sympathy with political athesim, to demand the separation of religion and politics. Their error is not in their intendment, but their expression, which says more than they mean, and even what they do not mean. 

   As far as we have examined it, the book before us is an admirable resume and exposure of popular errors concerning politics and religion. But we do not count the popular demand for civil liberty, or even for republicanism or democracy, by lawful means, as a popluar error. Religion has no necessary association with monarchy; and Louis Veuillot's ideal, that of absolutism under a pious king, as a literary friend in the Tyrol expresses it, is not intrinsically more Catholic than Gambetta's ideal, the sovereignty of the people. The error of the European movement party is not in demanding it by unlawful means and on false principles, as well as in supposing it can be sustained without religion, or by atheistic or an heretical people. The spiritual order is and must be absolute, for it represents the divine sovereignty; but the absoulte sovereignty of God, with all deference to LaCivilta Cattolica and L'Univers, negatives, not affirms, the absolutism of the king or the state, and therefore blundering Protestants maintain that the church is incompatible with civil liberty or popluar government, because she asserts the divine sovereignty. They have not learned that the prime mover must itself be immovable. They, like the common herd of revolutionists, seek to establish freedom by destroying the very means and conditions of its existence. Catholic absolutists agree perfectly with them; only, while the revolutionists seek to destroy the absolute authority of God so as to be able to assert popular liberty, the Catholic absolutists deny populat liberty so as to be able to assert the absolute sovereignty of God. Both agree in this, that the divine sovereignty and poplular liberty negative each the other, and L'Univers and The Methodist play into each other's hands. Publicists whether Catholic or non-Catholic, are far from being infallible, and journalists sometimes write dogmatically on subjects of which they are profoundly ignorant.

   The pope has on several occasions severely censured so-called liberal Catholics, especially in France; yet, in no instance that we have seen, has he done so because they demand popular government, but solely because they seek to carry their liberalism into the church, that is, into the divine government and limit the divine sovereignty by the pretended rights of man. As if the creature could have any rights against the Creator, or man any rights against God! We have never heard that the people has condemned the American constitution, or that he censures the liberty it was intended to secure to American citizens. The church has never declared that the law of God commands Catholics to be monarchists, or maintained that in any country the interests of religion are bound up with absolutism under a pious king. For our part, we believe they have a far surer protection under a free, but believeing and pious people, than they have ever yet had under the most pious of kings, however absolute. The Univers and it adherents have done not less to injure the church and suppress the rights of religion in France and Europe, than have the liberal Catholics. We identify the interests of Catholicity neither with monoarchy nor with the repulicanism, neither with democracy nor with absolutism, and we venture the assertion that, till our Catholic friends in Europe learn to separate in their own minds the Catholic cause from that of political forms, they will not see Christendom restored. Louis Veuillot's advocacy of the Count de Chambord has tended only to restrict Catholicity to the legitimist party, and to pave the way for a return of the imperialists to power, or for the triumph of the communists. Neither monarchy nor Catholicity is so strong in France as either was a year and a half ago. We cannot conceive what infatuation has led some of our Catholic friends seriously to believe the restoration of the legitimists to powerpossible without a miracle. They are the most unpopular party in France, and the most impracticable.

   The popular errors treated in the volume before us, and which we have no intention of noting severally, have to a great extent undermined the faith of the old Catholic nations, broken up Christendom, and plunged Europe into her present deplorable state, hardly, if at all, above the from which the Gospel rescued her eighteen centuries ago.

   The most discouraging thing with regard to old Europe, in our judgement, is, that our Catholic friends there have the simplicity to hope for the restoration of Christendom, and the reinstatement of the Holy Father in his rights, while these same popular errors remain uncorrected with the great body of the people. They look to political combinations or changes, and rely chiefly on diplomacy. They do not or will not see that diplomacy at best can only restore the status quo, which, if restored, would only necessitate, with the present opinions, tendencies, and aspirations of the governments and people unchanged, the renewal of the same course which events have run since the revolutionary epoch began, and after a few years would place matters in the same state that they are in now. Restore the pope to his full temporal sovereignty to to-day, and the war which has sacrilegiously dispossessed him, and imprisoned him in the Vatican, would recommence to-morrow: and what is to prevent it form having the same result ? Reestablish the kings and princes of Italy in their hereditary rights, restore monarchy in France and Spain under pious and legitimate king, and the same causes that subverted the throne yesterday would subvert it again to-morrow, and bring back the anarchy that prevails to-day. The people are no longer animated by a sentiment of loyalty; they no longer care the snap of a finger for legitimacy, and would resist the most just and necessary acts of the king or authority as acts of tyranny. Rebellion and revolution would be rife again, for nations learn nothing from experience. Even the individual profits little by any experience but his own, and that comes too late.

   Formerly, there were violence and wrongs, acts of disobedience to authority great as now, perhaps greater, but they were condemned by those who committed them; people's principles were just, better than their practice; and authority, in opposing and laboring to correct the practice, found support in the principles of the people, in privateand public conscience. The authorities then, if so disposed, could protect the church, and maintain her freedom and her authority over her own children, though the majority of the nation were un-Catholic, even pagan, and often did so, as we learn for ecclesiastical history. But now the case is different. The people have conformed, not their practice to their principles, but their principles to their practice. Their principles are no better than their conduct, and their conscience will not sustain the authorities in their efforts to reform their practice. The church has less, rather than more, to hope from the sovereigns than from the people. It is idle, then, to expect to make kings and princes the instruments of restoring religion and morality, and protecting the rights of the church, that is, the rights of God.

   The public opinion of the so-called civilized world is far from condemning the usurpations of the Sardinian government, or its war against the pope and the church; and the infamous Bismarckian laws against Catholics are approved by the public opinion of Europe and America, and hardly a whisper is heard against them, except from Catholics, who no longer exercise the hegemony in the modern world so deeply corrupted by the long prevalence and widespread influence of Gallican heresy, which, though condemned and expelled from the church by the Council of the Vatican, is not yet uprooted from the mental habits of the people, and will not be during the present generation.  

   We see nothing encouraging either for religion or society in the outlook abroad, nor shall we, till we see Catholics ceasing to put their trust in princes, and find them understanding that the world has escaped them and relapsed into paganism. They must understand that their only hope, under God, is in reconverting the nations, in recovering them to the Catholic faith. In this, diplomacy will not avail them. The apostles did not resort to it : and it is their example that we must follow, if we mean to succeed, or to secure the blessing of God upon our labors. We care nothing for monarchy or democracy; but we believe that Catholics must turn to people and begin at the bottom of society. A king surrounded by a wealthy and powerful nobility may make an imposing show, but king and nobility count for less in the work now before us than the poor servant-girl, or the humble laborer and artisan. It is these who have in the country built our magnificent churches, supported our clergy, and maintained the splendor of Catholic worship. The prosperity of religion does not depend on the patronage of princes, the great, the haughty, the noble, the proud, or the wealthy, and is secured only by winning the hearts and converting the so-called lower classes of society, and building from the foundation upward. Catholics have been and still are too prone to hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ with respect of persons, and to look upon the conversion of the great, the princely, the noble, the learned, the rich, and the distinguished in the world's estimation, as of far more importance to the church than the conversion of the poor and lowly, the unlettered and undistinguished in this world. This is un-Catholic, and needs to be rebuked. Our Lord gave to St. John the Baptist, as a proof of his Messiahship, among other things, the fact that "the poor have the Gospel preached unto them." The poor are worth more to the church than the rich, and the conversion of the rich and the great is a less matter of exultation than that of the poor and lowly whom this world despises. Catholics have followed to closely the example of the world, and been too ready to judge with the world's judgment, and hence the world has been to ready to claim them as its own. How often do we find our journals citing the names of great and distinguished converts as a recommendation of the church! How differently spoke St. Paul : " For see your vocation, brethren, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; for the foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the wise ; and the weak things of the world that he may confound the strong ; and the mean things of the world, and things that are contemptible, and things are not, that he might destroy the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his sight." We fear Catholics have not always remembered this, and hence have fallen into the sad state in which we now see them.

   The evil we indicate obtains to a fearful extent even in this country. Of all people democrats are the greatest toadies, have the least respect for the poor, the least honor for the lowly, and the greatest hankering after riches, titles, and honors ; and Catholics, born, naturalized, or domiciled in the country, do not wholly escape the influence of its democratic spirit, or the contamination of the democratic habit and manners with which they come in daily and hourly contact. It was formerly objected to democracy that it tends to ochlocracy, or the government of the rabble : our American experience proves that its tendency is rather to timocracy, or the government of the rich. It really has both tendencies ; the former, in towns and manicipalities ; the latter, in the states and in the Union, if we except the reconstructed states, especially South Carolina and Louisiana, though, perhaps, we ought not to except even these states, for the rabble, --carpet-baggers, scalawags, and the freedmen, --owe their places and power, which are ruining these noble states, to the unconstitutional and unwise intermeddling in state affairs of the general government, and the fear of federal bayonets. The party controlling the general government pretends not to believe in the submission of the real people of the states lately confederated and fighting for their independence of the Union ; and, under the pretext of guarding against a possible renewal of the so-called rebellion, of which there has never been the least danger since the confederates laid down their arms and surrendered to the federal officers, has directed its legislation, its army, and its influence to prevent the real people of these states, from obtaining the power in their respective states, and to sustain the government in the hands of the ignorant and half-savage negroes, --yesterday slaves--scalawags, and greedy and unprincipled adventures from the northern states. It is very probable, if General Sherman's memorandum of agreement with General Joe Johnston had been accepted by the government and carried out in good faith, it would have saved the southern people from all the horrors of the rule of the rabble, even in spite of negro-sufferage, and long before this have obliterated all trace of the civil war. The bad policy of the Republican party has succeeded in converting the civil war into a war of races, which will not cease till the colored race is reduced to political insignificance in all states. The white race will never tamely submit to be governed and plundered by ignorant and half-savage negroes ; and the sooner the federal government ceases to act on the late Mr. Sumner's negro policy, that is, to enforce social equality between the races-- which is neither practicable nor desireable, -- the better will it be for the Union and the real interests of the freedmen themselves. We, though never an abolitionist, did as much as any other publicist in the county to bring about the emancipation of the slaves as a war measure, and no one surpassed us in loyalty to the Union, and in our efforts to save it. But when the confederates laid down their arms and manifested their desire to return to the Union, we held that they should be admitted on a footing of perfect equality with the states that did not secede, with equal rights with them to manage their own state affairs, without any intermeddling of the federal government : and we hold so still. 

   The political outlook at home is not encouraging. General Grant is talked of for a third term, and he can be elected for a third time if he wishes. Mr. Lincoln, so cruelly  assassinated, one of the shrewdest politicians that ever sat in the presidential chair, made ir possible for a president to reelect himself when he chooses. He reelected himself in 1864, and if Johnson failed in 1868, it was through his constitutional scruples, his political honesty, and his mismanagement. Grant reelected himself in 1872, and, so far as we can see, nothing hinders him from reelecting himself again in1876, if he lives. We have no very strong  objections to a third term ; we should, however, prefer that the president should be at first elected for twelve years, or, as to that matter, for life, so as to give some stability and character to the administration. Experience proves that one of the greatest and more dangerous popular delusions is, that frequent elections, except in towns and cities, are desirable. General Grant would make as good a president for three terms as for two or one. He has more ability, and, perhaps, more statesmanship, than he gets credit for ; but he is too much of a democrat, and avows he has no policy to be insisted on against the will of the people, meaning,  by the will of the people, not their will expressed offcially through the constitution and laws, but their will as collected from caucuses, the resolutions of public meetings, leading journals, and delegations of bankers, merchants, mechanics, and simple working men, which is of no authority for the government, and the very will that a president ought often to resist and defeat. The presient, in vetoing the senate financial bill, supposed to be favorable to the inflation of the currency, gainedx the good-will of bankers, capitalists, bond-holders, and the whole creditor class, by increasing the value of their securities ten or fifteen per cent., and has of course secured their supports ; and yet we approved the veto, as necessary to save the honor of the government. The error was committed by the financial policy of Mr. Chase, who unwisely listened to Messers. Jay Cooke & Co. 

   Protestantism has had here its free and full development, and has proved its incompetency to sustain wise and just government, or either private or public morality . We see this in the dishonest rings which everywhere obtain in the venality of our public men, hardly one of whom has not his price. We see it in the lack of private morality, shown by such revelations as those of Plymouth Church. Whether Henry Ward Beecher is or is not an adulterer, matters comparatively little to the public at large ; but the revelations of the state morals in Plymouth Church, the tone of religion and morals exhibited in the statements made to the public by both the accusers and the accused, prove that our Protestant society has become or is becoming rotten to the core. Protestantism has ceased to be an objective religion or a religion independent of the soul, over it, above it, commanding it, and restraining the passions and lawless tendencies of human nature, and has become in its sucessive developments purely emotional, sentimental, subjective. Beecher started with the assumption of the purity of human nature, the holiness of its instincts and tendencies, which, therefore, are to be indulged, not restrained : and Beecher is representative man, and shows us in his own teaching what is a representative man, and shows us in his own teaching what is the popular tendency of the age and country. Hence his popularity, which is immense, greater by far than that of any other Protestant preacher at home or abroad. His popularity is not due to his superior ability as a thinker, his superior erudition, diction, eloquence, or originality, for in all these he is surpassed by hundreds and thousands even among his own countrymen, but to the delicacy with which he feels the public pulse, the sagacity with which he ascertains the rising public opinion of Protestants, the fidelity with which his own mind and heart respond to the passions, emotions, sentiments, tendencies, and aspirations of his age and public, and to his unscrupulousness in yielding to and expressing them. The Beecher nature is receptive, susceptive, and sympathetic, and leads by following. In the sermons and writings of Henry Ward Beecher you see reflected, as in a mirror, the present state and development of the Protestant mind and heart, and not only what Protestantism now is, but what it is rapidly becoming. Hence he is, as we have said, a represenative man, and in the revelations of the moral state of the Plymouth Church we may see the logical results or the legitimate fruits to be expected from the Protestant spirit. Hence he and his church may be appealed to as furnishing ample proof that Protestantism is powerless to sustain wise and just government, or private and public virtue.

   Protestantism can furnish no remedy for the evils that threaten our society, and its spasmodic efforts at reform only make matters worse. Our hope for our government and society, for politics and morals, depends therefore on Catholics, for they only of all our population are placed by their religion on a plane above paganism, and have in it sound principles and the supernatural helps needed for private and public morals. This hope should be strong and consoling to the American citizen in view of the astonishing increase of Catholics in the country in numbers, wealth and influence, in the multiplication of churches, -- some of them not un-worthy of the name, -- of colleges, of academies for our daughters, and of parochial and other schools for the children of the so-called humbler classes, which, however inferior to what we could wish them, are vastly superior to any others in the country, at least in a moral and spiritual or Christian point of view ; but it is somewhat damped by the fact that we cannot measure the growth of Catholic influence by the increase of the number of Catholics, of Catholic churches, and of catholic intitutions. We fear, as we have already said, that Catholics imbible from association with non-Catholics not a few of the popular errors so prevalent in the country, and which threaten its ruin. It is only the Catholic Church that can save us ; but even she can do it only through the action and influence of Catholics, and through them only by their standing by the faith in its purity and integrity, and faithfully observing in their conduct what it requires of them. If they suffer their faith to become crusted over with the popular errors of Protestants, and in their daily conduct or practice differ hardly at all from them, their action and influence will not be Catholic, and hardly more salutary than the action and influence of non-Catholics. Such, to a great extent, we fear is the fact. In americanizing, we protestantize. We do not see that the Catholic press is much more elevated in tone and sentiment or influence, when not treating expressly of Catholic faith and morals, than the non-Catholic press. Our political Catholics do not usually act in reference to a higher standard than do Protestants. We see in them the same lack of principle, of conscientiousness, of integrity, of public spirit, and disinterestedness. When we talk with them, we find their views of political science and statesmanship as crude and as low as those of their non-Catholic fellow-citizens. Their standard of political morality is popular opinion ; and it would seem that they agree with their Protestant neighbors that vox populi est vox Dei, that what is popular must needs be right, and also that one seeks or holds office for his own private advantage. 

   A very large proportion of us are too much attached to the world, are too intent on getting up in the world, are too obsequious to the rich, and to afraid of poverty. We are by no means snobbishness. We are by no means free from snobbishness. We are too fond of show and parade, too solicitous to stand we with the enemies of our religion, and too sensitive to the opinion non-Catholics may have of us. We thus fail to exert a truely Catholic influence on our countrymen, or to do what we might and should do to save the nation from the ruin that states it in the face. Catholics abroad have forgotten the precepts of the Gospel, and God has suffered them to persecuted, to become a prey to the secret societies, and to be oppressed by the enemies of Christ, as a needed chastisement ; and we are beginning to need, and must expect ere long to recieve, a similar chastisement. We do not believe the peace, freedom, and properity we now enjoy will continue, because we are growing too worldly, and are forgetting to be faithful to our duty as Catholics in a democratic country, -- that of introducing an unworldly and spiritual element into the life of the nation which it lacks, and which Protestantism serves only to extinguish. The outlook for religion and politics is to us not encouraging, but decidedly discouraging, or at least, if we still, we hope with trembling ; and we dare not indulge in the exultations of either our Cathlic bretheren or of our non-Catholic countrymen, who believe things are going on finely. 

   The outlook abroad would be cheering, if we did not see our leading Catholics looking to political agencies to reinstate Catholics and their chief in their rights. We regard the calamities of Catholics in France and Spain, their persecution in Italy, Switzerland, and Prussia, as blessings in disguise. They were merited, and give Catholics an opportunity to expiate centuries of unfaithfulness to their religion, and to atone for their statolatry, or preference of the state to the church of God. They preferred Caesar to Peter, and Caeser is now teaching them what fools they were. No thanks are due to Caesar, for his intensions are evil, and God in due time will punish him according to his deserts ; but in his madness Caesar is teaching Catholics that their only safety is in returning to Peter, abiding by the Rock on which the church is built, and whence flow the waters of life. 

   The state can have no stability unless founded on religion, and no security where the people do not in their faith and love place the church above state. The church does not hold from the state or depend upon it ; and where the Catholic people so believe and love and obey the church for her own sake as the kingdom of God on earth, Caesar can do them no harm, snf persecutions are to be recieved with joy, and with sorrow only for the persecutors. If the Catholic nations of Europe still retain the seed of faith in their bosom, the afflictions they now suffer will cause it to germinate, spring up, blossom, and bear fruit a hundred-fold.