Mennais was sincere. When an exclusive idea or passion sways a
man's mind, nothing is more unknown to him than his own future
conduct; he knows even less what he will do than what he is
doing. The Abbé de la Mennais no more suspected in 1831 what he
would say and what he would do a few years later, than the most
violent leaders of the French Revolution suspected in 1789 what
they would be and what they would do in 1793. The court at Rome
was clearer-sighted than its fanatical champion; it had been
under the influence of the charm of the first works and of the
first successes of the Abbé de la Mennais. It had not, however,
failed to perceive what pernicious and dangerous seed might
thence germinate.
{52}
The _Avenir_ occasioned it profound disquietude; the
principles and the yearnings of modern society found therein a
too ready acceptance; the régime which had governed France since
1830 was too much the object of its attacks; it demanded too much
liberty, and made too much noise in doing so; for beneath that
noise, and in the shadow of that liberty, fermented the
anarchical doctrines and tendencies which in all cases and places
it is the aim and the policy of the court of Rome to contest.
Thus the _Avenir_ and its writers placed her in a position
full of embarrassment; Rome was anxious neither in any way to
ignore the services that they had rendered and that they might
continue to render her, nor to lose sight of the perils that they
made her incur; Rome desired to preserve silence respecting these
writers--neither to avow nor disavow them--and to leave it to
time to terminate their transport and their errors. The Abbé de
la Mennais did not, however, permit this expectant policy; he
insisted absolutely that the papacy, by pronouncing upon his
doctrines and upon his attitude, should publicly either give him
her support or withdraw it from him.
{53}
All the world knows of the journey which he undertook in 1831 to
Rome to obtain this result, and of his stay there in company with
the Abbé Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert, "three obscure
Christians"--to use the words of the Abbé de la Mennais--men who
thought themselves called, according to the expression of the
Abbé Lacordaire before the Cour d'Assises at Paris, "to reconcile
Catholicism with the world." The Pope (Gregory XVI.) judged
otherwise, and by his encyclical of the 15th August, 1832, with
regret, but at the same time with as much decision as to the
substantial matters before him as tenderness to the three
pilgrims personally, condemned the _Avenir_, its doctrines,
and its tendencies. On the instant, with the concurrence of their
friends, they declared, all three, (10th September, 1832,) that,
respectfully submitting themselves to the authority of the Vicar
of Jesus Christ, they abandoned the lists in which they had
faithfully combated during the past two years; that, in
consequence, the _Avenir_, which had been provisionally
suspended ever since the 15th November previously, would no
longer appear, and that the _General Agency for the Defense of
Religious Liberty_ was dissolved.
{54}
As the first declaration of the writers of the _Avenir_,
after their acquittal by the Cour d'Assises at Paris, had been
sincere, so was also the declaration sincere which was published
by them immediately after their condemnation by the papacy; but
they promised more than they could perform. When a deep social
wound has been laid bare, and measures on a large scale have been
adopted to cure it, it is no longer in the power of any
individual to keep that wound secret, or to stifle the hope of a
remedy. How many times in the course of this century has not the
papacy, and have not the ardent champions of liberty, condemned
and combated the efforts made to reconcile Catholicism with
modern civilization, and to cause the Church to accept the
liberties of civil society, and the State to recognize the rights
of the Church?
{55}
How often has the Church by its censures signalized such efforts
as impious and suicidal? What wit, what eloquence, have not been
displayed by the Liberals to declare their vanity, their
worthlessness? To what reproaches, invectives, and sarcasms have
not their advocates had to submit? But no ecclesiastical censure,
no wrath of religion, no mockery of liberalism has arrested the
march of this great idea. It has made, and it continues every day
to force, its way in spite of condemnations, attacks, and
obstacles of every description. Why? For paramount reasons,
impossible to be lost sight of. For Christianity and modern
civilization confront each other; there exists in the public a
profound and irrepressible feeling of their reciprocal right and
strength--a profound and irrepressible feeling that their
disagreement is an immense evil for society and for men's souls;
that neither the new civil liberties nor the ancient forms of
belief and influences of Christianity can ever perish; that,
necessary, both of them, to nations and to individuals, they are
both of them destined to live, and consequently to live together.
{56}
When and in what manner will this feeling realize its object, and
when will the ancient Church and modern civilization have solved
the problem of their mutual pacification? No one can at this
moment pronounce; but in all certitude, the problem will not for
that cease to weigh upon the world, or the world to strive at its
solution. Even the men who, in a spirit of pious submission or in
a paroxysm of sadness and discouragement might wish, after having
attempted it, to renounce the work, could never remain inactive
before a necessity becoming more and more urgent; they doubtless
would not be long before they returned to the lists from which
they might have consented to withdraw.
{57}
And this is what happened to the three eminent men who had made
so precipitate a journey to Rome, and had importuned her at an
inconvenient moment, summoning her at once to solve the momentous
questions they had raised. They returned from Rome with the
intention of submitting to the decision of the Pope; but slumber
to such souls was impossible, and it was not long before men saw
them, the three, resuming, although by the most contrary paths,
all the activity of their minds and of their lives. The Abbé de
la Mennais threw himself with impetuosity into the revolt--a
revolt radical against the Church and against the State;
furiously demanding from the populace and from revolutions the
success which he could not obtain in the bosom of order, and in
concert with the authority previously so ardently defended by
him. Far from following in his new and violent course, the Abbé
Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert separated from him, and
returned each to his natural and tranquil position; the one to
that of a simple priest, almoner of the convent of the
Visitation, and preacher in the chapel of the College Stanislas;
the other to that of a young and brilliant political orator,
already a favorite in the chamber of Peers, although its members
did not always think or vote with him.
{58}
Both remained Romanists at heart; they zealously shared in the
great movement of Christianity, now roused from her slumber, but
without ceasing to be Liberals in their Catholicism, or without
arresting their efforts to reconcile the Church with the régime
of liberty.
The position of each, and the genius of each, determined the
share that he took in the duties, and the place that he selected
for the field of his action. The Abbé Lacordaire, from the pulpit
of Notre Dame, developed, or rather let me say, painted, in all
their splendor, the truths, the beauties, the moral and social
excellences of the Christian Faith and of the Catholic Church. M.
de Montalembert, in the house of Peers and in literature, was the
ardent and indefatigable champion of the Church, of its maxims,
and of its rights.
{59}
To neither was there any lack of success any more than any lack
of talent and of zeal. A numerous auditory, young and old, from
the salons and from the schools, believers and freethinkers,
flocked round the Abbé Lacordaire, all feeling the attraction,
and almost all the charm; many among them yielding to the
persuasion of that eloquence so fresh and vivid, and abundant,
and unlooked for--impetuous without rudeness, hardy yet graceful,
natural even where there was temerity of thought or of
expression, and repairing or vailing these faults by the
enchantment of candor and of originality. Different, but not
inferior, were the merits and the successes of M. de
Montalembert. He was a combatant young too, a fearless Christian,
both in the political arena and in society; and he carried with
him in his polemics to the service of the State a sincerity of
passion, a rich and mobile eloquence, piquant strokes of wit, an
outpouring of indignant conviction, all of which deeply stirred
the emotions of his auditors, whether friends or adversaries, and
left in the mind of calm spectators an impression of approving
satisfaction, however frequently a shock might be given to their
feelings of moderation and of fairness.
{60}
In the "Conferences" of the Abbé Lacordaire it cannot be denied
that many failings and many omissions are observable; although
expressed clearly and with vivacity, his thought was often
superficial; there was in turn a singular mixture of precipitate
enthusiasm and of discretion, the former displaying itself in his
exordiums, the latter at the close of his discourses. He
announced courageously his opinions, but accompanied them by more
reservations than are usually expected from one of his Church and
party: thus at the same time, that throughout all his discourses,
and in their general character, he showed himself the friend of
religious liberty, he hesitated sometimes even when the occasion
required him to proclaim its fundamental principle and to rebuke
its violations.
{61}
On his side, M. de Montalembert gave himself up entirely to the
impression and the combat of the moment; in his legitimate ardor
for free instruction, the then chosen object of his public life,
he held obstacles, however real, of no account; he ignored the
time necessary for its final triumph, as well as the real
progress, although partial, which it had obtained, from the
co-operation or the sufferance of the government of 1830; and in
his uncompromising defense of the Church, he was more violent
against the members of the executive government than his own
sentiments and his real political views would, in moments of cool
reflection, have permitted him to be. The Abbé Lacordaire did not
sound sufficiently the sources of his opinions; M. de
Montalembert did not properly measure his attacks. But in spite
of their shortcomings and of our own, of their faults and of our
own, in all the struggles that grew out of religious questions
between us, they rendered constantly faithful and powerful
services to their cause, which, notwithstanding our dissentiments
on other points, was really the cause of Christ's Faith awaking
to new birth and life on the bosom of Liberty.
{62}
It is not without well reflecting that I term that _our_
cause. When religious liberty reigns in a State, it is a great
and a too common error to believe that the statesmen charged with
its government have no religious belief whatever; that they are
careless in matters of faith because they embrace and advocate
the cause of liberty of conscience. The soul does not abdicate
the right to its proper and intimate life, because it respects in
other souls the rights of that same life; and nothing is more
logical or more legitimate than to sustain with fervor the
principle of freedom of conscience, and yet to be at the same
time a true and an earnest Christian.
{63}
I have not here to make a profession of faith for others; but I
affirm that, from 1830 to 1848, the Prince whom I had the honor
to serve, and the Cabinets to which I had the honor to belong,
not only always had at heart the maintenance, however difficult,
of the principle of religious liberty, but that they always
felicitated themselves upon the progress made by the Christian
Faith, even when the manner of that progress was for them a
source of serious embarrassment. In 1841 we were placed, in this
respect, in a most trying position. Great was the general
astonishment, and violent were the attacks made upon us, when,
with a devotedness to Catholicism even bolder than had been his
conferences at Notre Dame, the Abbé Lacordaire returned from Rome
a monk, and a monk of an order which has left more somber
memories behind it than any other, that of St. Dominic. This is
not the place to examine what the utility may be in our days to
the Catholic Church of the monastic orders, or to inquire whether
the services they are capable of rendering the Church outweigh
the objections and the feelings of repulsion and uneasiness which
they arouse.
{64}
No well-read man can deny their having, in seasons of chaotic
confusion, effectually served the cause, not only of the
Christian Faith, but of civilization, of science, and even of
liberty.
The condition of society and of the human mind is now very
different, and the monastic orders cannot take the same position
or produce the same effects. But whatever we may think of the
opportuneness of their reconstruction, of the right there can be
no doubt. Under a system sanctioning freedom of conscience and
free institutions, associations for religious purposes cannot be
worse treated than those for purposes of industry, commerce, or
literature. The State is required to exercise upon combinations
of every kind a certain degree of surveillance; but doubtless the
union of souls and of lives under one rule and in one costume,
with a view to eternal interests, is not a juster cause for
disquietude than a union of purses and of labor for the purpose
of economizing both, with a view to worldly interests.
{65}
In 1829, some young Catholic Liberals, MM. de Carné, de Cazalès,
de Champagny, de Montalembert, Foisset de Meaux, Henri Gouraud,
founded a periodical, _Le Correspondant_, devoted to the
reconciliation of Catholicism with the free social institutions
of the age. The _Correspondant_ had been suspended in 1835,
but reappeared in 1843, under the editorship of M. Charles
Lenormant, one of those friends I have lost who retain in my
memory the place they occupied in my life. In conducting this
work, he kept ever in view the principles in which it had
originated, and among other positions, he defended in 1845, with
the frank intrepidity both of a Catholic and of a Liberal, the
rights of those religious associations which were at the time the
object of violent debate. [Footnote 7]
[Footnote 7: Des associations religieuses dans le
catholicisme; de leur esprit, de leur histoire et de leur
avenir; par Charles Lenormant, de l'Institut. Paris: 1845.]
{66}
The cabinet abstained from all measures of repression, and left
the new monks freely to their chances of success or failure.
Twenty-five years have since elapsed; the Père Lacordaire mounted
once more, in his costume as a Dominican, his pulpit in
Notre-Dame; he resuscitated in France an order forgotten, or the
object of dread only; and to what trouble or embarrassment, I
ask, to what complaints even, has this resuscitation led? To what
pretensions of ambition have these monks laid claim? what
turbulent disposition have they manifested? They have paced
meekly along our streets; they have preached eloquently in our
churches; they have founded some houses of education; they have
made use of their rights as freemen, without offering in any way
to infringe the liberty of any other class of citizens. More than
all this: the sincerity of their sentiments and language has been
put to the proof; the Père Lacordaire resumed, as a Dominican, at
Paris, at Toulouse, at Nancy, at Bordeaux, the conferences and
the preaching that had rendered him popular as a simple priest;
they became, perhaps, more liberal even than they had been
originally.
{67}
When the tempest of 1848 had given birth, in the imaginations of
all men, to every kind of dream, and had opened to every ambition
every career, the Père Lacordaire was returned by the popular
suffrage as Deputy to the Constituent Assembly. For a moment he
thought a new era opening for his Church--perhaps for himself. In
this arena, upon which the passions of party were unchained amid
the general darkness resting upon society, he soon discovered
that the priest and monk of our day was not in his proper place;
he withdrew from it to resume, in his modest retreat at Sorèze,
his true mission as a Christian teacher. He afterward issued from
it, but for a moment only, to express in the French Academy his
faith as a Catholic, and his confidence in the democratic
principles of modern times. Such are the peaceable, such the only
results among us, of the re-establishment of the order of the
Dominicans and of the glory of its restorer.
{68}
Its _only_ results? Not so; if the work of the Père
Lacordaire did not exercise any important influence upon the
laity, it was attended with fruitful and salutary effects in the
Church of Rome itself. Like him, other priests had the courage to
brave the prejudices of the age respecting the religious orders;
like him, others refused to suffer themselves to be subjugated by
the alarms felt by most members of their Church at the names of
Science and of Liberty; and like him, they scrupled not to devote
themselves to a common life and a common rule, "to work
together," according to their own expressions, "to secure the
triumph of Christian truth, and its triumph by means of
Philosophy and Science." Thus was re-established, under the
direction of the pious curate of Saint-Roch, the Père Pététot,
the congregation of the Oratoire--that learned and modest society
that gave to France Malebranche and Massillon, and of which
Bossuet said, two centuries ago: "The immense love for the Church
of the Cardinal de Bérulle inspired him with the design of
forming a company, to which he desired to give no other spirit
than the very spirit of the Church, no other rule than its
canons, no other superiors than its bishops, no other goods than
its charity, no other solemn vows than those of baptism and the
priesthood. ...
{69}
There, to form true priests, they lead them to the fountain of
truth; they have always in their hands the sacred volume, to
search there unceasingly its literal sense by study, its spirit
by prayer, its depth of meaning by retreat from the world, and
its end by charity--the termination of everything and the
treasure of Christianity--'Christiani nominis thesaurus,' as
Tertullian terms it." [Footnote 8]
[Footnote 8: Bossuet, Oraison funèbre du père Bourgoing,
delivered in 1662, vol. viii, p. 271.]
{70}
Dating its restoration from only thirteen years ago, the new
congregation of the Oratoire is still not numerous, and remains
little known; it is poor, and it desires to remain so; it has
need of extension and of support, but at the very outset of its
new career it proved itself faithful to its origin and worthy of
the words of Bossuet. One of its founders, the Père Gratry, took
his place at once in the first rank of the Christian apologists,
moralists, and writers of the day: he is a man at once animated
and gentle, full of his peculiar ideas and sentiments, which he
carries to an enthusiastic height, but without pride and without
jealousy, and ardently propagating them by his books, his
lectures, and his conversation. These are all distinguished by
eloquent appeals to human sympathies, touching even where they do
not convince, and leaving the mind always in emotion at the
prospects which they open. Another member of the new Oratoire,
the Père Valvoger, has given a succinct account, in a learned
work, ("Introduction historique et critique aux livres du Nouveau
Testament,") of the Researches and Evidences of Christianity, by
the principal foreign theologians.
{71}
Under the strong influence of the opinions of its first founders,
and at the same time comprehending the mind and the requirements
of France at the present day, the rising congregation of the
Oratoire does not evade examination or discussion; it respects
science, and in the religious truths which it teaches, and its
relations with the souls that it summons to believe, it does not
shrink from accepting fearlessly the terms and the forms of
liberty.
In the midst of this great movement of men's minds in matters of
religion, what has been done since the opening of this century by
the chiefs of the Catholic Church of France, by their bishops and
by the clergy, called, by their alliance with the State and by
their own rights, to assume the education and the Christian
direction of the human soul?
They were at first and especially occupied with the real
resuscitation of that Christian religion, now returning to French
society, to its rank there and to its mission, but returning as
exiles return--ill provided, disorganized, and to a home that
seems no home.
{72}
To render back to France, now Catholic, churches for its worship,
priests for its churches, seminaries to form its priests, pupils
to people those seminaries; to assure also to the edifice thus
rising from its ruins the time for its proper establishment and
consolidation--such, under the first empire, was the dominant
thought, almost the exclusive thought, of the Episcopacy, of the
clergy instituted by the Concordat. A work great and difficult,
for which neither materials nor workmen were at hand, and which
required for its accomplishment strong support and a long period
of repose. The clergy of this epoch have been justly reproached
with their uniform obsequiousness to the Emperor Napoleon. No
doubt it was a shameful spectacle, in 1811, which those docile
bishops afforded, when they assembled in council and were never
weary of lavishing caresses upon the despot who had not only
stripped the chief of their Church, Pius VII., of his dominions,
but was then detaining him a prisoner at Savona, denying his
natural counselors, the cardinals, all access to him, refusing
him even a secretary to write his letters, and charging an
officer of the gendarmerie to watch by day and by night all his
movements.
{73}
Only a single fact explains and somewhat excuses the
pusillanimity of the clergy when confronted with this tyranny:
these bishops had seen Christianity proscribed, its churches
closed, profaned, demolished, its priests hunted and massacred,
their flocks left without any worship, any guide, any
consolation. The chance of the recurrence of such events filled
them with horror. Who could affirm that there was no such chance,
and that the reality of the eve was not the possibility of the
morrow? With such causes of apprehension a good priest might feel
his conscience profoundly troubled; and a timid priest might
regard his weakness as justified. What sacrifices were not
permissible, nay, even imperative, to prevent such disasters?
{74}
Still, the violent measures of Napoleon did not fail to
encounter, sometimes rebukes, and occasionally resistance, on the
part of the clergy; it was not only that some prelates [Footnote
9] in the council, with more courage than moderation, censured
his conduct toward the Pope: the council itself--forgetting at
last, in its anxiety to vindicate the honor of the whole body,
its long habit of obsequiousness--voted an address to the
Emperor, an act of independence which occasioned its abrupt
dissolution.
[Footnote 9: Among others M. d'Avian, Archbishop of Bordeaux,
M. de Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes, and M. de Broglie, Bishop
of Gaud.]
And of the two ecclesiastics to whose counsels, from just motives
of esteem, Napoleon showed least disinclination to give ear,
one--the Abbé Émery, "Superior General" of the Congregation of
St. Sulpice--had just previously, not long before he died,
openly, yet with dignity, resisted the Emperor; [Footnote 10] the
other, M. Duvoisin, Bishop of Nantes, dictated upon his deathbed
these powerful and affectionate lines: "I supplicate the Emperor
to restore the holy Father to liberty. His captivity troubles the
extreme moments of my life. On several occasions I had the honor
to inform the Emperor of the affliction which this captivity is
causing to the whole of Christendom, and of the inconveniences
which would attend its prolongation. The happiness of his Majesty
himself, I believe, depends upon the return of his Holiness to
Rome."
[Footnote 10: Vie de M. Émery, supérieur général du séminaire
et de la compagnie de Saint-Sulpice, t. ii, pp. 236-346.
Paris: 1862.]
{75}
Idly does Despotism excuse its arbitrary acts, as if they
resulted from the want of foresight or the servility of its
flatterers; for the blindest have their gleams of light, and even
the most timid their intrepid moments, during which they speak
the truth, although they speak it in vain.