ill-founded, too--which misled the French clergy, betrayed them
into the commission of many faults, and checked the progress of
roused Christendom.
{76}
In the then reaction against the Revolution, ecclesiastical
ambition had its part; partisans of the Crown and of Rome--ardent
ones--some through sincere devotion, others from political
calculation, believed it to be necessary and possible to restore
to the Catholic clergy a part at least of the social position and
of the direct authority which they had possessed before 1789.
This was evincing a strange ignorance of the fundamental
character of French society, such as it has been made by its
history and by its great modern Revolution. French society is
essentially and insuperably "laic;" the separation of temporals
from spirituals, and the empire of the laity in public affairs,
are consummated and dominant facts, not to be attacked, or even
menaced, without occasioning throughout the whole framework of
society an irritation and a disquietude, perilous alike for
Church and for State. Nothing in France at the present moment is
more fatal to the influence of religion than the chance, or the
appearance even, of ecclesiastical domination.
{77}
This chance and this appearance were, under the Restoration, the
plague of the Catholic religion and of the French clergy--a
plague the grave consequences of which are the more to be
deplored as it was neither very deep-seated nor very formidable.
It is a fact too little remarked, that the clergy were not then
the principal authors of the faults which subsequently both they
and religion had such cause to rue. No doubt many inadmissible
claims, many unreasonable and offensive requirements, many rash
expectations, proceeded from the ranks of the clergy; but there
was in all this more a suggestion of their past history, or an
unmeaning vanity, than a real and ardent ambition; even the
clergy felt instinctively that political power was not now suited
to them, and that France would no longer accept at their hands as
ministers even a Cardinal Richelieu or a Cardinal Mazarin.
{78}
At first the contra-revolutionary and non-ecclesiastical party in
the Chamber of 1815, and, afterward, the blind fanatical coterie
of the Court of Charles the Tenth, hurried the clergy into their
own vortex, and compromised the cause of religion by making its
ministers instruments of their influence and auxiliaries in their
combats. The ecclesiastics had not the courage to resist; in
spite of their distaste for the new spirit which was abroad, most
of the bishops and of the priesthood, warned by their experience
in the Revolution, would have preferred to remain out of the
sphere of politics, and to confine themselves to the functions of
their religious mission, rather than to be constantly struggling
against popular opinions; so, when any opportunity presented
itself to show their sympathy, they hastened to embrace it. When,
in 1824, the bill of M. de Villèle for the conversion of the
"Rentes" created a great stir among the "Bourgeoisie" of Paris,
it was the Archbishop of Paris, M. de Quélen, who constituted
himself in the Chamber of Peers the principal organ of the
Opposition; and when, in 1828, the movement of public opinion and
of the magistracy against the religions congregations wrested
from the King (Charles the Tenth) the Ordonnances of the 21st
June, the Bishop of Beauvais, M. Feutries, at that time the
Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs, did not hesitate to
countersign them.
{79}
The members of the priesthood live in close contact with the
people, and cannot long remain in ignorance of the real state of
their opinions, or long persist in holding them lightly. The
French clergy, as a whole, were more resigned to the new state of
society than King Charles the Tenth and his intimate friends; the
false ideas and the unreasonable political pretensions of the
monarch and of the coterie which formed his court, far more than
the religious bigotry of the Church, occasioned the great faults
committed under the Restoration.
{80}
At all epochs and in all parties some man is always met with in
whom are centered and personified whatever good sense, sound
views, and wise purposes there are in the party to which he
belongs. Such a man under the Restoration and for the lay
Legitimists was M. de Villèle. True to his friends, he
nevertheless knew, or I should rather say he promptly learned in
public life to understand, what France then actually was, and
what qualities, to be successful, her government should possess.
If he had had toward his party and his king as much independence
and firmness in action as he had correct appreciation in thought,
he might perhaps have obtained a more complete and more lasting
success. The clergy on their side also had at this epoch a
faithful representative of whatever religious or political
sagacity existed in the French Church: it is here to the Abbé
Frayssinous, Bishop of Hermopolis, that the honor and the merit
belong. His task was far easier than that of M. de Villèle, for
he was never put to any trial: he had no struggle to sustain; he
remained naturally, or kept himself voluntarily, out of the arena
of events and of parties; but it was in this precisely that he
showed his good sense, and his correct appreciation of the
permanent interests and the real dispositions of the clergy of
his time.
{81}
Neither as theologian, nor as orator, nor as statesman was the
Abbé Frayssinous a man of eminence, or remarkable for power of
intellect; but in the different phases of his career, in his
personal conduct, and in his writings, he had an unerring
instinct of what was just and possible, and showed no common tact
in retiring with dignity from untenable positions, and escaping
from questions that he could not settle. Upon these occasions he
would confine himself to his mission of a priest and moralist of
the Christian religion. From 1803 to 1822 he held, suspended, and
resumed in the Church of St. Sulpice, his "conferences upon
religious subjects;" remarkable not only by a judicious defense
of the great truths of Christianity, but by a continuous,
although somewhat timorous, effort to place the doctrines of the
Church in harmony with the principles of natural justice and of
civil liberty.
{82}
He was not, like the Père Lacordaire or M. de Montalembert, a
Catholic Liberal; he was a priest--moderate and equitable, not
from luke-warmness in his faith, but from respect to legal rights
and human sentiments. Although his "conferences" had not the
success and popularity that distinguished later, in Notre-Dame,
those of the Père Lacordaire, they attracted a numerous auditory,
and exercised material influence in giving to the awakening of
Christianity a wider range and a firmer basis. [Footnote 11]
[Footnote 11: The "conferences" of the Abbé Frayssinous at
St. Sulpice have been published under this title: Defense du
Christianisme, ou conférences sur la religion. 3 vols. 8vo.
Paris: 1825. The Abbé Frayssinous published also in 1818 a
work with the following title: Les vrais principes de
l'église gallicane sur la puissance ecclesiastique, la
Papauté, les Libertés gallicanes, la Promotion des évêques,
les trois Concordats, et les Appels comme d'abus.]
{83}
In his work upon the true principles of the Gallican Church, the
Abbé Frayssinous manifested the same moderate and conciliatory
spirit--not always tracing principles to their sources, but never
pushing facts or ideas to their extreme consequences; while
remaining the faithful servant of the Church he showed himself
also rather the friend of Christian peace than the jealous
advocate of ecclesiastical power. His mode of life was as modest
as his opinions; he never made power his aim, neither did he ever
seek for honors, whether political, ecclesiastical, or academic;
he declined them even when within his reach. He joined the
Cabinet in 1824, as Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs and of
Public Instruction; he withdrew from it in 1828, when the
mounting wave of Liberalism demanded that a more vigorous policy
should be adopted against the religious congregations than the
pupil and orator of St. Sulpice was willing to sanction. He
neither had the qualities necessary for governing the French
clergy, nor did he pretend to govern them; but he represented
them, nevertheless, in all their more irreproachable and prudent
opinions.
{84}
Unfortunately, mere common sense and prudence do not suffice more
in the Church than in the State to save nations from the
consequences of their faults of omission and commission; for this
object, higher qualities are necessary as well as more rude
efforts.
It was one of the first effects of the Revolution in 1830, to
make visible to all the injury that the faults of their friends,
rather than the blows of their adversaries, had inflicted, under
the Restoration, upon the clergy, and through the clergy upon
religion. The acts of violence which, during the revolutionary
crisis from 1830 to 1832, were directed at the Churches--the
crosses thrown down, the insulting cries, and antichristian
manifestations; a little later, the riot before the church of St.
Germain l'Auxerrois, on the occasion of the service celebrated on
the anniversary of the death of the Duke de Berri--the
archiepiscopal palace ruined and pillaged--the church broken into
and closed--the menaces directed at the priests--what were all
these deplorable acts but the explosion of a popular reaction,
provoked by the share a part of the clergy had taken in favor of
a retrograde policy--of a return to the ancient régime and to
absolutism?
{85}
Violent men profited by this reaction to satisfy their impiety
and licentiousness, but they could never have excited the
movement or made it successful had they hoisted their own banner;
there must be some little truth before a populace will suffer
itself to be so misled; and the crowd who in February, 1831, so
furiously rose in insurrection before St. Germain l'Auxerrois,
would have paused in astonishment had it perceived that what it
was so brutally attacking and destroying was--not the ancient
régime, not absolutism--but religion and liberty.
To put an end to this confusion, full at once of deception and of
peril, but a single thing was required: to banish from the
Church, and from its relations with the State, worldly ambition
and influences, and to replace them by influences of a moral
description; instead of a political banner, they should have only
hoisted the banner of religious faith and liberty of conscience.
{86}
That was the great work, or, to use a better expression, the
great progress, which from 1830 to 1848 was aimed at and
accomplished.
The efforts made and the debates instituted at this epoch by the
most eminent champions of the Church are remarkable, because they
no longer proposed to restore any fragment of its ancient power,
but to insure to it its place and its share in the new public
institutions of liberty. The little militant party of Catholic
Liberals quitted the arena of the ancient political regime, and
took up their position on that of the new constitution, claiming
for the Church, for its ministers, and for its faithful subjects,
the exercise of all the rights and the free development of all
the power that, under the constitution, either belonged, or ought
to belong, to all citizens.
{87}
They made no reservation of opinion, no effort more or less
covert, in furtherance of any pretensions of bygone times,
whether dynastic, aristocratic, or theocratic; the frank
acceptance of the present age and actual society, provided that
Christian faith, Christian morals, and Christian institutions,
might have free room to work; such was, in the midst of all the
factions and political plottings of this period, the constant
attitude of the Catholic Liberal party, that is, of M. de
Montalembert, the Père Lacordaire, M. Charles Lenormant, Frederic
Ozanam, and of the friends in small number grouped around them.
Whoever feels astonished that their number was so small, shows
little acquaintance with our country or our times. The enterprise
which they undertook was singularly bold and difficult; to drag
France out of its rut of incredulity and irreligion, and at the
same time to extricate Catholicism from its rut of impolicy, its
alliance with absolutism, its timorous immobility in the presence
of liberty; to proclaim and simultaneously to defend, in
spirituals, the Christian faith, and, in temporals, the regime of
liberty.
{88}
Certainly in France, and in the 19th century, the devotion of men
to such a task supposes an enthusiasm and an energy of conviction
of which few are capable; and if the new Christian Liberals
flattered themselves that success would be easy, events must soon
have disabused them. Attacked with ardor by the opponents of all
religion, they were also assailed by Catholics devoted to the
ancient régime of the Church, and alarmed at the new system
pressed upon their acceptance. The former of these two attacks
caused the Catholic Liberals neither surprise nor embarrassment;
but the latter brought with it bitter annoyance and
disappointment, for they found directly opposed to them members
of their own faith. Soon they were to have as their adversary a
man who, by his vigorous talents--employed with equal violence
against the incredulous of all shades of opinions, and against
the Catholic Liberals--too exercised an influence upon a great
number of Catholics, whether of the laity or priesthood, and
indisposed them to any reconciliation with that modern society
which he irritated still more against them.
{89}
I knew M. Veuillot at the commencement of his literary career,
when he accompanied General Bugeaud to the seat of his government
in Algeria. At this epoch he addressed to me two memorials upon
the subject of the moral condition of the colony and of the army.
They struck me by their decided tone, and the straightforwardness
and candor with which he expressed sentiments already
distinguished by devotion. Already he regarded the religion of
his own Church, and of _it_ alone, as the sure basis of
human morality and social order; but he had not yet proclaimed as
his doctrine the deplorable error that Faith enjoins war upon
Liberty. He merited a better understanding of the cause of
Christianity; he merited to be a better advocate of the Church at
Rome than an advocate who, although one of its most devoted
defenders, has yet most injured the cause that he sought to
serve.
{90}
These political revolutions and these domestic dissensions left,
in the period that ensued after 1830, the Catholic Church in a
difficult situation, but in one salutary for it and fruitful of
consequences. The clergy no longer counted on the favor of
Government, but they had at the same time to fear from it neither
violence nor hostility. Left to themselves, they felt the
necessity of independent existence, and saw that they must
replace credit with the authorities by influence with the
country; and this influence they were likely to obtain. If they
did not possess all the privileges which they coveted, they had
enough to enable them every day to conquer additional powers,
supposing them willing and sagacious enough to take the trouble
and employ the right means.
{91}
In my opinion, they did not do at this epoch, in the interest of
religion and of the Church, all that their position permitted, or
all that their mission required at their hands; but temporal or
spiritual governors, layman or priests, who ever did, I do not
say what he ought, but what he could have done? The greater part
of the bishops and of the priests were vacillating and timorous;
the problem before them went beyond their opinions, and the
events beyond their strength; the impetuous Liberalism of M. de
Montalembert and of his friends disquieted them; they saw in him
rather a valiant champion than a representative they could rely
upon. Among those who joined with him in the struggle for the
freedom of instruction, there were some who showed, with
reference to the Government of 1830 and the University, little
fairness or prudence: these injured the cause rather than served
it. Whether from submission to orders from Rome, or from their
natural impulse, the clergy, taken as a whole, showed little
taste for liberty; even while they demanded it, they were rather
inclined to immobility than progress.
{92}
But whatever the fears and hesitations of individuals, when the
general current of ideas and of popular opinions once penetrates
to the classes least disposed to entertain them, it never fails,
whether they avow it, or whether they even know it, to swell and
to advance. Around and among the clergy themselves the spirit of
progress and of liberty gained ground, although by insensible
degrees. Here and there individual priests, like the Abbé
Bautain, formerly a student with M. Jouffroy at the École
Normale, and Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Letters at
Strasbourg, propagated in the Church the liberal movement,
forming for it in different places new centers of action. The
spirit which had awakened Christianity manifested itself, too, in
our great lay establishments for the higher course of
instruction; not always without check, but still with a success
the more conspicuous the more it was contested.
{93}
In 1846, some disturbances, occasioned by a thoughtless and
puerile intolerance, made by M. Lenormant, at that time my
substitute (suppléant) in the chair of Modern History at the
Faculty of Letters, determine to withdraw from the Sorbonne,
where he had made a courageous avowal of his faith; but M.
Ozanam, the worthy successor to the chair of M. Fauriel,
maintained in the same place the same principles with a more
successful perseverance, and with such a depth of conviction and
such a warmth of emotion that sometimes he carried the feelings
of his auditors away with him, and sometimes commanded respectful
attention even from those most confirmed in their incredulity.
And while the spirit of Christianity was thus manifesting itself
in the free Faculty of Letters, the teaching of the Faculty of
Theology attested, under that same roof, a notable progress in
knowledge and in Liberalism. The Abbé Maret, in his lectures on
the Dogmas of Religion, the Abbé Frère, in his discourses on the
Scriptures; the Abbé Dupanloup and the Abbé Gerbet, in their
lectures on Sacred Eloquence, displayed not only a firm and
active faith, but views upon philosophy, history, and literature,
necessarily implying an acquaintance with the works of human
science, and an appreciation of the rights of liberty.
{94}
Ecclesiastics and laymen, not members of the scientific
establishments of the State, published, under the name of the
"Université Catholique," a series of courses in which philosophy,
history, natural sciences, archaeology, and the arts were
explained and taught in harmony with the dogmas and sentiments of
religious men. And even far from Paris, in several great
episcopal seminaries, classical and theological studies took a
wider range, and attained a scientific value that they had not
for a long time possessed.
"Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone," says the
Apostle St. James. Christianity has borne abundant fruits since
its awakening at the commencement of this century. I have before
me the "Manual des Œuvres et institutions de charité de Paris,"
published in 1862, by order of the archbishop, M. Sibour.
{95}
Independently of the establishments under the direction of
Government, I find in it 107 charitable institutions or
associations, of every kind, originated and supported by zealous
Christians in the interval between 1820 and 1848. Of these I will
only cite some of the principal ones, to establish their
character and their progress. In the year 1822 the idea struck
two poor servants at Lyons to make the rounds of their parish and
collect weekly one sou from each person, in aid of the conversion
of infidels. This was the origin of the association called
"l'Œuvre de la propagation de la Foi," now under the direction of
two councils, composed of members of the clergy and of the laity,
having their sittings, one at Lyons, the other at Paris. The
report published by this association in June, 1824, showed for
the two years, 1823 and 1824, a receipt of 80,000 fr.,
(3200_l_.) This association received in 1864 the sum of
5,090,041 fr. 48 cent., (203,601_l_. 13_s_.
3½_d_.,) in which amount France alone figures for 3,479,290
fr. 65 cent., (139,171_l_. 12_s_. 6½_d_.,) and it
divided 4,658,672 fr. 56 cent. (186,346_l_. 18_s_.
6½_d_.) among five hundred dioceses, and appropriated those
funds to the support of the Catholic missionaries in the five
parts of the world.
{96}
It counted from the year 1852, 1,500,000 subscribers, and it
distributed 170,000 copies of its "Annals," (Annales de
propagation de la Foi,) which form a sequel to the "Lettres
édificantes," and keep the Christian world informed of their
doings. In May, 1833, eight young men, at the suggestion of
Frederic Ozanam, "wishing," said the Perè Lacordaire, "to give
one more proof of what Christianity can effect in behalf of the
poor, began to ascend to those upper stories which were the
hidden haunts of the misery of their quarter. Men saw youths in
the flower of their age and fresh from school regularly visiting,
without any feeling of repulsion, the most abject habitations,
and conveying to their unknown and suffering tenants a passing
vision of charity."
{97}
Twenty years later, in 1853, Ozanam said at Florence, when on his
death-bed: "Instead of eight only, at Paris alone we are two
thousand strong, and we visit five thousand families, that is to
say, about twenty thousand individuals, or a quarter of the poor
contained in that great city. The conferences in France alone
number five hundred, and we have them too in England, in Spain,
Belgium, America, and even in Jerusalem." Nine years afterward,
in 1862, when the Government, listening to mistaken counsels,
suppressed the General Council of the Conferences of St. Vincent
de Paul, and by doing so destroyed the central bond that kept the
society together, the latter counted more than 3000 local
conferences; it consisted of about 30,000 members, who visited in
their homes more than 100,000 indigent families, and had already
introduced into the greater part of the principal cities a system
which exercised a control over the interests of apprentices and
of prisoners.
{98}
During the course of the same epoch the Sisters of Charity, whose
number, a century after their foundation by St. Vincent de Paul,
had not exceeded 1500, already reached 18,000, of whom 16,000
were Frenchwomen; and at this moment they are plying throughout
the world their works of piety and charity. Another society, "Les
petites sœurs des pauvres," was founded in 1845, in imitation of
Jeanne Jugan, a poor servant, a native of Brittany, who had been
just crowned by the French Academy. This society receives and
succors in their establishment nearly 20,000 aged men. Another
association, "Les Frères de la doctrine Chrétienne," which had in
the year 1844, 468 schools, maintains this year (1865) 920, and
the number of the pupils has increased from 198,188 to 335,382.
State and ecclesiastical documents attest, that by concurring
causes of encouragement on the part of the State, of local
subventions and of private donations, ten thousand churches have
been, during the last fifty years, built, rebuilt, or suitably
adapted for the performance of the services of the Church of
Rome.
{99}
I might cite many similar facts. In all the directions and under
all the forms in which piety and charity manifest themselves,
faith and liberty, and faith and science have, since the
awakening of Christianity and since the cause of religion has
been separated from politics, drawn nearer to one another, and
faith and its manifestation by charity have made a simultaneous
advance and a like progress.
Had the Government of 1830 remained standing; had State and
Church each retained reciprocally the same situation and the same
attitude, the facts to which I have just alluded might have long
remained unobserved. Society does not, any more than individuals,
render an account to itself of the intimate relations of its
existence, or of the transformations to which these give rise;
but Providence has its moments when it suddenly lightens up the
stage of the world and reveals to all actors and spectators the
import and the effect of what is passing around them.
{100}
The Revolution of 1848 threw upon the progress of the Catholic
Church and its relations with French society since 1830 the clear
light of such a revelation.