By Cardinal D.J. Mercier, Archbishop of Malines.
[_Copyright by Burns & Oates, Ltd., 28 Orchard Street, London. All
rights reserved._]
Here is the celebrated Christmas pastoral letter of Cardinal
Mercier, Archbishop of Malines. It is the first authentic
translated copy of the now famous document to be received in
America. The letter has caused a worldwide sensation because
of its bold appeal to the Belgian people. Its publication
resulted in the detention of the Cardinal by the Germans in
his palace and a consequent protest by the Pope and throughout
the whole Roman Catholic world.
The first reports of the arrest of the Cardinal were denied by
the German authorities. Subsequently an official report made
to the Pope stated that 15,000 copies of the pastoral letter
were seized in Malines and destroyed, the printer being fined;
that the Cardinal was detained in his palace during all Jan.
4; that he was prevented by German officers on Jan. 3 from
presiding at a religious ceremony; that they subjected him to
interrogations and demanded of him a retraction, which he
refused to make. The English reprint of the Cardinal's letter
is copyrighted by Burns & Oates, Ltd., 28 Orchard Street,
London. THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY reproduces it by
permission.
My Very Dear Brethren: I cannot tell you how instant and how present
thought of you has been to me throughout the months of suffering and of
mourning through which we have passed. I had to leave you abruptly on
the 20th of August in order to fulfill my last duty toward the beloved
and venerated Pope whom we have lost, and in order to discharge an
obligation of the conscience from which I could not dispense myself, in
the election of the successor of Pius X., the Pontiff who now directs
the Church under the title, full of promise and of hope, of Benedict XV.
It was in Rome itself that I received the tidings--stroke after
stroke--of the partial destruction of the Cathedral Church of Louvain,
next of the burning of the library and of the scientific installations
of our great university and of the devastation of the city, and next of
the wholesale shooting of citizens, and tortures inflicted upon women
and children and upon unarmed and undefended men.
And, while I was still under the shock of these calamities, the
telegraph brought us news of the bombardment of our beautiful
metropolitan church, of the Church of Nôtre Dame au dela la Dyle, of the
episcopal palace, and of a great part of our dear City of Malines.
Afar from my diocese, without means of communication with you, I was
compelled to lock my grief within my own afflicted heart and to carry
it, with the thought of you, which never left me, to the foot of the
Crucifix.
I craved courage and light, and sought them in such thoughts as these: A
disaster has visited the world, and our beloved little Belgium, a nation
so faithful in the great mass of her population to God, so upright in
her patriotism, so noble in her King and Government, is the first
sufferer. She bleeds; her sons are stricken down within her fortresses
and upon her fields, in defense of her rights and of her territory.
Soon there will not be one Belgian family not in mourning. Why all this
sorrow, my God? Lord, Lord, hast Thou forsaken us? Then I looked upon
the Crucifix. I looked upon Jesus, most gentle and humble Lamb of God,
crushed, clothed in His blood as in a garment, and I thought I heard
from His own mouth the words which the psalmist uttered in His name: "O
God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me? O my God, I shall
cry, and Thou wilt not hear."
And forthwith the murmur died upon my lips, and I remembered what our
Divine Saviour said in His gospel: "The disciple is not above the
master, nor the servant above his lord." The Christian is the servant of
a God who became man in order to suffer and to die.
To rebel against pain, to revolt against Providence because it permits
grief and bereavement, is to forget whence we came, the school in which
we have been taught, the example that each of us carries graven in the
name of a Christian, which each of us honors at his hearth, contemplates
at the altar of his prayers, and of which he desires that his tomb, the
place of his last sleep, shall bear the sign.
My dearest brethren, I shall return by and by to the providential law of
suffering, but you will agree that since it has pleased a God-made man
who was holy, innocent, without stain, to suffer and to die for us who
are sinners, who are guilty, who are perhaps criminals, it ill becomes
us to complain whatever we may be called upon to endure. The truth is
that no disaster on earth, striking creatures only, is comparable with
that which our sins provoked and whereof God Himself chose to be the
blameless victim.
Having recalled to mind this fundamental truth, I find it easier to
summon you to face what has befallen us and to speak to you simply and
directly of what is your duty and of what may be your hope. That duty I
shall express in two words--patriotism and endurance.
My dearest brethren, I desire to utter in your name and my own the
gratitude of those whose age, vocation, and social conditions cause them
to benefit by the heroism of others without bearing in it any active
part.
When, immediately on my return from Rome, I went to Havre to greet our
Belgian, French, and English wounded; when, later, at Malines, at
Louvain, at Antwerp, it was given to me to take the hands of those brave
men who carried a bullet in their flesh, a wound on their forehead,
because they had marched to the attack of the enemy or borne the shock
of his onslaught, it was a word of gratitude to them that rose to my
lips. "O valiant friends," I said, "it was for us, it was for each one
of us, it was for me, that you risked your lives and are now in pain. I
am moved to tell you of my respect, of my thankfulness, to assure you
that the whole nation knows how much she is in debt to you."
For in truth our soldiers are our saviors.
A first time, at Liége, they saved France; a second time, in Flanders,
they arrested the advance of the enemy upon Calais. France and England
know it; and Belgium stands before them both, and before the entire
world, as a nation of heroes.
Never before in my whole life did I feel so proud to be a Belgian as
when, on the platforms of French stations, and halting a while in Paris,
and visiting London, I was witness of the enthusiastic admiration our
allies feel for the heroism of our army. Our King is, in the esteem of
all, at the very summit of the moral scale. He is doubtless the only man
who does not recognize that fact, as, simple as the simplest of his
soldiers, he stands in the trenches and puts new courage, by the
serenity of his face, into the hearts of those of whom he requires that
they shall not doubt of their country. The foremost duty of every
Belgian citizen at this hour is gratitude to the army.
If any man had rescued you from shipwreck or from a fire, you would
assuredly hold yourselves bound to him by a debt of everlasting
thankfulness. But it is not one man, it is 250,000 men who fought, who
suffered, who fell for you so that you might be free, so that Belgium
might keep her independence, her dynasty, her patriotic unity; so that
after the vicissitudes of battle she might rise nobler, purer, more
erect, and more glorious than before.
Pray daily, my brethren, for these 250,000 and for their leaders to
victory; pray for our brothers in arms; pray for the fallen; pray for
those who are still engaged; pray for the recruits who are making ready
for the fight to come.
In your name I send them the greeting of our fraternal sympathy and our
assurance that not only do we pray for the success of their arms and for
the eternal welfare of their souls, but that we also accept for their
sake all the distress, whether physical or moral, that falls to our own
share in the oppression that hourly besets us, and all that the future
may have in store for us, in humiliation for a time, in anxiety, and in
sorrow. In the day of final victory we shall all be in honor; it is just
that today we should all be in grief.
To judge by certain rumors that have reached me, I gather that from
districts that have had least to suffer some bitter words have arisen
toward our God, words which, if spoken with cold calculation, would not
be far from blasphemous.
Oh, all too easily do I understand how natural instinct rebels against
the evils that have fallen upon Catholic Belgium. The spontaneous
thought of mankind is ever that virtue should have its instantaneous
crown and injustice its immediate retribution.
But the ways of God are not our ways, the Scripture tells us. Providence
gives free course, for a time measured by Divine wisdom, to human
passions and the conflict of desires. God, being eternal, is patient.
The last word is the word of mercy, and it belongs to those who believe
in love. "Why art thou sad, O my soul? and why dost thou disquiet me?
_Quare tristis es anima, et quare conturbas me?_" Hope in God. Bless Him
always. Is He not thy Saviour and thy God? _Spera in Deo quoniam adhuc
confitebor illi, salutare vultus mei et Deus meus._
When holy Job, whom God presented as an example of constancy to the
generations to come, had been stricken, blow upon blow, by Satan, with
the loss of his children, of his goods, of his health, his enemies
approached him with provocations to discouragement; his wife urged upon
him a blasphemy and a curse. "Dost thou still continue in thy
simplicity? Curse God, and die." But the man of God was unshaken in his
confidence. "And he said to her: Thou hast spoken like one of the
foolish women: if we have received good things at the hand of God, why
should we not receive evil? _Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit; sicut
Domino placuit ita factum est. Sit nomen Domini benedictum._" And
experience proved that saintly one to be right. It pleased the Lord to
recompense, even here below, His faithful servant. "The Lord gave Job
twice as much as he had before. And for his sake God pardoned his
friends."
Better than any other man, perhaps, do I know what our unhappy country
has undergone. Nor will any Belgian, I trust, doubt of what I suffer in
my soul, as a citizen and as a Bishop, in sympathy with all this sorrow.
These last four months have seemed to me age long. By thousands have our
brave ones been mowed down. Wives, mothers are weeping for those they
shall not see again; hearths are desolate; dire poverty spreads, anguish
increases.
At Malines, at Antwerp the people of two great cities have been given
over, the one for six hours, the other for thirty-four hours, to a
continuous bombardment, to the throes of death.
I have traversed the greater part of the districts most terribly
devastated in my diocese,[4] and the ruins I beheld, and the ashes, were
more dreadful than I, prepared by the saddest of forebodings, could have
imagined.
[Footnote 4: Duffel, Lierre, Berlaer Saint Rombaut, Konings-Hoyckt,
Mortsel, Waelhem, Muysen, Wavre Sainte Caterine, Wavre Nôtre Dame,
Sempst, Weerde, Eppeghen, Hofstade, Elewyt, Rymenam, Boort-Meerbeek,
Wespelaer, Haecht, Werchter-Wackerzeel, Rotselaer, Tremeloo; Louvain and
its suburban environs, Blauwput, Kessel-Loo, Boven-Loo, Linden, Hérent,
Thildonck, Bueken, Relst, Aerschot, Wesemael, Hersselt, Diest, Schaffen,
Molenstede, Rillaer, Gelrode.]
Other parts of my diocese, which I have not had time to visit,[5] have
in like manner been laid waste. Churches, schools, asylums, hospitals,
convents in great numbers are in ruins. Entire villages have all but
disappeared. At Werchter-Wackerzeel, for instance, out of 380 homes 130
remain. At Tremeloo two-thirds of the village are overthrown. At Bueken,
out of 100 houses 20 are standing. At Schaffen, 189 houses out of 200
are destroyed; 11 still stand. At Louvain the third part of the
buildings are down; 1,074 dwellings have disappeared. On the town land
and in the suburbs 1,823 houses have been burned.
[Footnote 5: Haekendover, Roosbeek, Bautersem, Budingen, Neerlinder,
Ottignies, Mousty, Wavre, Beyghem, Capelle-au-Bois, Humbeek,
Nieuwenrode, Liezelo, Londerzeel, Heyndonck, Mariekerke, Weert,
Blaesvelt.]
In this dear City of Louvain, perpetually in my thoughts, the
magnificent Church of St. Peter will never recover its former splendor.
The ancient College of St. Ives, the art schools, the consular and
commercial schools of the university, the old markets, our rich library
with its collections, its unique and unpublished manuscripts, its
archives, its gallery of great portraits of illustrious rectors,
chancellors, professors, dating from the time of its foundation, which
preserved for masters and students alike a noble tradition, and were an
incitement in their studies, all this accumulation of intellectual, of
historic, and of artistic riches, the fruit of the labors of five
centuries--all is in the dust.
Many a parish lost its pastor. There is now sounding in my ears the
sorrowful voice of an old man, of whom I asked whether he had had mass
on Sunday in his battered church. "It is two months," he said, "since we
had a church." The parish priest and the curate had been interned in a
concentration camp.
Thousands of Belgian citizens have in like manner been deported to the
prisons of Germany, to Munsterlagen, to Celle, to Magdeburg. At
Munsterlagen alone, 3,100 civil prisoners were numbered. History will
tell of the physical and moral torments of their long martyrdom.
Hundreds of innocent men were shot. I possess no complete necrology; but
I know that there were ninety-one shot at Aerschot and that there, under
pain of death, their fellow-citizens were compelled to dig their graves.
In the Louvain group of communes 176 persons, men and women, old men and
sucklings, rich and poor, in health and sickness, were shot or burned.
In my diocese alone I know that thirteen priests or religious were put
to death.[6]
[Footnote 6: Their brothers in religion or in the priesthood will wish
to know their names. Here they are: Dupierreux of the Society of Jesus,
Brothers Sebastian and Allard of the Congregation of the Josephites,
Brother Candide of the Congregation of the Brothers of Mercy, Father
Maximin, Capuchin, and Father Vincent, Conventual; Lombaerts, parish
priest at Boven-Loo; Goris, parish priest at Autgaerden; Carette,
professor at the Episcopal College of Louvain; de Clerck, parish priest
at Bueken; Dergent, parish priest at Gelrode, and Wouters Jean, parish
priest at Pont-Buûlé. We have reason to believe that the parish priest
of Hérent, van Bladel, an old man of 71, was also killed. Until now,
however, his body has not been found.]
One of these, the parish priest of Gelrode, suffered, I believe, a
veritable martyrdom. I made a pilgrimage to his grave, and amid the
little flock which so lately he had been feeding with the zeal of an
apostle, there did I pray to him that from the height of Heaven he would
guard his parish, his diocese, his country.
We can neither number our dead nor compute the measure of our ruins. And
what would it be if we turned our sad steps toward Liége, Namur,
Audenne, Dinant, Tamines, Charleroi, and elsewhere?[7] And there, where
lives were not taken, and there, where the stones of buildings were not
thrown down, what anguish unrevealed! Families hitherto living at ease
now in bitter want; all commerce at an end, all careers ruined, industry
at a standstill, thousands upon thousands of workingmen without
employment, working women, shopgirls, humble servant girls without the
means of earning their bread, and poor souls forlorn on the bed of
sickness and fever, crying, "O Lord, how long, how long?"
[Footnote 7: I have said that thirteen ecclesiastics had been shot
within the Diocese of Malines. There were, to my own actual personal
knowledge, more than thirty in the Dioceses of Namur, Tournai, and
Liége--Schlogel, parish priest of Hastière; Gille, parish priest of
Couvin; Pieret, curate at Etalle; Alexandre, curate at Mussy-la-Ville;
Maréchal, seminarist at Maissin; the Rev. Father Gillet, Benedictine of
Maredsous; the Rev. Father Nicolas, Premonstratensian of the Abbey of
Leffe; two brothers of the same abbey; one brother of the Congregation
of Oblates; Poskin, parish priest of Surice; Hotlet, parish priest of
Les Alloux; Georges, parish priest of Tintigny; Glouden, parish priest
of Latour; Zenden, retired parish priest of Latour; Jacques, a priest;
Druet, parish priest of Acoz; Pollart, parish priest of Roselies;
Labeye, parish priest of Blegny-Trembleur; Thielen, parish priest of
Haccourt; Janssen, parish priest of Heure le Romain; Chabot, parish
priest of Forêt; Dossogne, parish priest of Hockay; Reusonnet, curate of
Olme; Bilande, chaplain of the Institute of Deaf Mutes at Bouge; Docq, a
priest, and others.]
There is nothing to reply. The reply remains the secret of God.
Yes, dearest brethren, it is the secret of God. He is the Master of
events and the Sovereign Director of the human multitude. _Domini est
terra et plenitudo ejus; orbis terrarum et universi qui habitant in eo._
The first relation between the creature and his Creator is that of
absolute dependence. The very being of the creature is dependent;
dependent are his nature, his faculties, his acts, his works.
At every passing moment that dependence is renewed, is incessantly
reasserted, inasmuch as, without the will of the Almighty, existence of
the first single instant would vanish before the next. Adoration, which
is the recognition of the sovereignty of God, is not, therefore, a
fugitive act; it is the permanent state of a being conscious of his own
origin. On every page of the Scriptures Jehovah affirms His sovereign
dominion.
The whole economy of the old law, the whole history of the chosen
people, tend to the same end--to maintain Jehovah upon His throne and to
cast idols down. "I am the first and the last. I am the Lord, and there
is none else; there is no God beside Me. I form the light and create
darkness, I make peace and create evil. Woe to him that gainsayeth his
maker, a sherd of the earthen pots. Shall the clay say to him that
fashioneth it, What art thou making, and thy work is without hands? Tell
ye, and come, and consult together. A just God and a Saviour, there is
none beside Me."
Ah, did the proud reason of mankind dream that it could dismiss our God?
Did it smile in irony when through Christ and through His Church He
pronounced the solemn words of expiation and of repentance? Vain of
fugitive successes, O light-minded man, full of pleasure and of wealth,
hast thou imagined that thou couldst suffice even to thyself?
Then was God set aside in oblivion, then was He misunderstood, then was
He blasphemed, with acclamation, and by those whose authority, whose
influence, whose power had charged them with the duty of causing His
great laws and His great order to be revered and obeyed. Anarchy then
spread among the lower ranks of mankind, and many sincere consciences
were troubled by the evil example. How long, O Lord, they wondered, how
long wilt Thou suffer the pride of this iniquity? Or wilt Thou finally
justify the impious opinion that Thou carest no more for the work of Thy
hands? A shock from a thunderbolt, and behold, all human foresight is
set at nought! Europe trembles upon the brink of destruction!
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Many are the thoughts that throng the breast of man today, and the chief
of them all is this:
God reveals Himself as the Master. The nations that made the attack, and
the nations that are warring in self-defense, alike confess themselves
to be in the hand of Him without Whom nothing is made, nothing is done.
Men long unaccustomed to prayer are turning again to God. Within the
army, within the civil world, in public, and within the individual
conscience, there is prayer. Nor is that prayer today a word learned by
rote, uttered lightly by the lip; it surges from the troubled heart, it
takes the form, at the feet of God, of the very sacrifice of life. The
being of man is a whole offering to God. This is worship, this is the
fulfillment of the primal moral and religious law--the Lord thy God
shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve.
And even those who murmur, and whose courage is not sufficient for
submission to the hand that smites us and saves us, even these
implicitly acknowledge God to be the Master, for if they blaspheme Him,
they blaspheme Him for His delay in closing with their desires.
But as for us, my brethren, we will adore Him in the integrity of our
souls. Not yet do we see in all its magnificence the revelation of His
wisdom, but our faith trusts Him with it all. Before His justice we are
humble, and in His mercy hopeful. With holy Tobias we know that because
we have sinned He has chastised us, but because He is merciful He will
save us.
It would perhaps be cruel to dwell upon our guilt now, when we are
paying so well and no nobly what we owe. But shall we not confess that
we have indeed something to expiate? He who has received much, from him
shall much be required. Now dare we say that the moral and religious
standard of our people has risen as its economic prosperity has risen?
The observance of Sunday rest, the Sunday mass, the reverence for
marriage, the restraints of modesty--what had you made of these?
What, even within Christian families, had become of the simplicity
practiced by our fathers, what of the spirit of penance, what of respect
for authority? And we, too, we priests, we religious, I, the Bishop, we
whose great mission it is to present in our lives, yet more than in our
speech, the Gospel of Christ, have we earned the right to speak to our
people the word spoken by the Apostle to the nations, "Be ye followers
of me, as I also am of Christ"?
We labor indeed, we pray indeed, but it is all too little. We should be,
by the very duty of our state, the public expiators for the sins of the
world. But which was the thing dominant in our lives--expiation or our
comfort and well-being as citizens? Alas! we have all had times in which
we, too, fell under God's reproach to His people after the escape from
Egypt: "The beloved grew fat and kicked; they have provoked me with that
which was no god, and I will provoke them with that which is no people."
Nevertheless, He will save us, for He wills not that our adversaries
should boast that they, and not the Eternal, did these things. "See ye
that I alone am, and there is no other God beside me. I will kill and I
will make to live. I will strike and I will heal."
God will save Belgium, my brethren; you cannot doubt it.
Nay, rather, He is saving her.
Across the smoke of conflagration, across the stream of blood, have you
not glimpses, do you not perceive signs of His love for us? Is there a
patriot among us who does not know that Belgium has grown great? Nay,
which of us would have the heart to cancel this last page of our
national history? Which of us does not exult in the brightness of the
glory of this shattered nation? When in her throes she brings forth
heroes, our mother country gives her own energy to the blood of those
sons of hers. Let us acknowledge that we needed a lesson in patriotism.
There were Belgians, and many such, who wasted their time and their
talents in futile quarrels of class with class, of race with race, of
passion with personal passion.
Yet when, on Aug. 2, a mighty foreign power, confident in its own
strength and defiant of the faith of treaties, dared to threaten us in
our independence, then did all Belgians, without difference of party, or
of condition, or of origin, rise up as one man, close ranged about their
own King and their own Government, and cry to the invader: "Thou shalt
not go through!"
At once, instantly, we were conscious of our own patriotism. For down
within us all is something deeper than personal interests, than personal
kinships, than party feeling, and this is the need and the will to
devote ourselves to that more general interest which Rome termed the
public thing, _Res publica_. And this profound will within us is
patriotism.
Our country is not a mere concourse of persons or of families inhabiting
the same soil, having among themselves relations more or less intimate,
of business, of neighborhood, of a community of memories happy or
unhappy.
Not so; it is an association of living souls subject to a social
organization, to be defended and safeguarded at all costs, even the cost
of blood, under the leadership of those presiding over its fortunes. And
it is because of this general spirit that the people of a country live a
common life in the present, through the past, through the aspirations,
the hopes, the confidence in a life to come, which they share together.
Patriotism, an internal principle of order and of unity, an organic bond
of the members of a nation, was placed by the finest thinkers of Greece
and Rome at the head of the natural virtues. Aristotle, the prince of
the philosophers of antiquity, held disinterested service of the
city--that is, the State--to be the very ideal of human duty.
And the religion of Christ makes of patriotism a positive law; there is
no perfect Christian who is not also a perfect patriot. For our religion
exalts the antique ideal, showing it to be realizable only in the
absolute. Whence, in truth, comes this universal, this irresistible
impulse which carries at once the will of the whole nation in one single
effort of cohesion and of resistance in face of the hostile menace
against her unity and her freedom?
Whence comes it that in an hour all interests were merged in the
interest of all, and that all lives were together offered in willing
immolation? Not that the State is worth more, essentially, than the
individual or the family, seeing that the good of the family and of the
individual is the cause and reason of the organization of the State. Not
that our country is a Moloch on whose altar lives may lawfully be
sacrificed. The rigidity of antique morals and the despotism of the
Caesars suggested the false principle--and modern militarism tends to
revive it--that the State is omnipotent, and that the discretionary
power of the State is the rule of right. Not so, replies Christian
theology; right is peace--that is, the interior order of a nation,
founded upon justice. And justice itself is absolute only because it
formulates the essential relation of man with God and of man with man.
Moreover, war for the sake of war is a crime. War is justifiable only if
it is the necessary means for securing peace. St. Augustine has said:
"Peace must not be a preparation for war. And war is not to be made
except for the attainment of peace." In the light of this teaching,
which is repeated by St. Thomas Aquinas, patriotism is seen in its
religious character.
Family interests, class interests, party interests, and the material
good of the individual take their place, in the scale of values, below
the ideal of patriotism, for that ideal is right, which is absolute.
Furthermore, that ideal is the public recognition of right in national
matters and of national honor. Now, there is no absolute except God. God
alone, by His sanctity and His sovereignty, dominates all human
interests and human wills. And to affirm the absolute necessity of the
subordination of all things to right, to justice, and to truth, is
implicitly to affirm God.
When, therefore, humble soldiers whose heroism we praise answer us with
characteristic simplicity, "We only did our duty," or "We were bound in
honor," they express the religious character of their patriotism. Which
of us does not feel that patriotism is a sacred thing, and that a
violation of national dignity is in a manner a profanation and a
sacrilege?
I was asked lately by a staff officer whether a soldier falling in a
righteous cause--and our cause is such, to demonstration--is not
veritably a martyr. Well, he is not a martyr in the rigorous theological
meaning of the word, inasmuch as he dies in arms, whereas the martyr
delivers himself, undefended and unarmed, into the hands of the
executioner; but if I am asked what I think of the eternal salvation of
a brave man who has consciously given his life in defense of his
country's honor and in vindication of violated justice, I shall not
hesitate to reply that, without any doubt whatever, Christ crowns his
military valor, and that death, accepted in this Christian spirit,
assures the safety of that man's soul. "Greater love than this no man
hath," said our Saviour, "that a man lay down his life for his friends."
And the soldier who dies to save his brothers and to defend the hearths
and altars of his country reaches this highest of all degrees of
charity. He may not have made a close analysis of the value of his
sacrifice, but must we suppose that God requires of the plain soldier in
the excitement of battle the methodical precision of the moralist or the
theologian? Can we who revere his heroism doubt that his God welcomes
him with love?
Christian mothers, be proud of your sons. Of all griefs, of all our
human sorrows, yours is perhaps the most worthy of veneration. I think I
behold you in your affliction, but erect, standing at the side of the
Mother of Sorrows, at the foot of the Cross. Suffer us to offer you not
only our condolence, but our congratulation. Not all our heroes obtain
temporal honors, but for all we expect the immortal crown of the elect.
For this is the virtue of a single act of perfect charity--it cancels a
whole lifetime of sins. It transforms a sinful man into a saint.
Assuredly a great and a Christian comfort is the thought that not only
among our own men, but in any belligerent army whatsoever, all who in
good faith submit to the discipline of their leaders in the service of a
cause they believe to be righteous are sharers in the eternal reward of
the soldier's sacrifice. And how many may there not be among these young
men of 20 who, had they survived, might possibly not have had the
resolution to live altogether well, and yet in the impulse of patriotism
had the resolution to die so well?
Is it not true, my brethren, that God has the supreme art of mingling
His mercy with His wisdom and His justice? And shall we not acknowledge
that if war is a scourge for this earthly life of ours, a scourge
whereof we cannot easily estimate the destructive force and the extent,
it is also for multitudes of souls an expiation, a purification, a force
to lift them to the pure love of their country and to perfect Christian
unselfishness?
We may now say, my brethren, without unworthy pride, that our little
Belgium has taken a foremost place in the esteem of nations. I am aware
that certain onlookers, notably in Italy and in Holland, have asked how
it could be necessary to expose this country to so immense a loss of
wealth and of life, and whether a verbal manifesto against hostile
aggression, or a single cannon shot on the frontier, would not have
served the purpose of protest. But assuredly all men of good feeling
will be with us in our rejection of these paltry counsels. Mere
utilitarianism is no sufficient rule of Christian citizenship.
On the 19th of April, 1839, a treaty was signed in London by King
Leopold, in the name of Belgium, on the one part, and by the Emperor of
Austria, the King of France, the Queen of England, the King of Prussia,
and the Emperor of Russia, on the other; and its seventh article decreed
that Belgium should form a separate and perpetually neutral State, and
should be held to the observance of this neutrality in regard to all
other States. The co-signatories promised, for themselves and their
successors, upon their oath, to fulfill and to observe that treaty in
every point and every article without contravention or tolerance of
contravention. Belgium was thus bound in honor to defend her own
independence. She kept her oath. The other powers were bound to respect
and to protect her neutrality. Germany violated her oath; England kept
hers.
These are the facts.
The laws of conscience are sovereign laws. We should have acted
unworthily had we evaded our obligation by a mere feint of resistance.
And now we would not rescind our first resolution; we exult in it. Being
called upon to write a most solemn page in the history of our country,
we resolved that it should be also a sincere, also a glorious page. And
as long as we are required to give proof of endurance, so long we shall
endure.
All classes of our citizens have devoted their sons to the cause of
their country, but the poorer part of the population have set the
noblest example, for they have suffered also privation, cold, and
famine. If I may judge of the general feeling from what I have witnessed
in the humbler quarters of Malines and in the most cruelly afflicted
districts of my diocese, the people are energetic in their endurance.
They look to be righted; they will not hear of surrender.
Affliction is, in the hand of Divine Omnipotence, a two-edged sword. It
wounds the rebellious, it sanctifies him who is willing to endure.
God proveth us, as St. James has told us, but He "is not a tempter of
evils." All that comes from Him is good, a ray of light, a pledge of
love. "But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence.... Blessed is
he that endureth temptation, for when he hath been proved he shall
receive the crown of life, which God hath promised to them that love
Him."
Truce, then, my brethren, to all murmurs of complaint. Remember St.
Paul's words to the Hebrews, and through them to all of Christ's flock,
when, referring to the bloody sacrifice of our Lord upon the cross, he
reminded them that they had not yet resisted unto blood. Not only to the
Redeemer's example shall you look, but also to that of the
30,000--perhaps 40,000--men who have already shed their life blood for
their country.
In comparison with them, what have you endured who are deprived of the
daily comforts of your lives, your newspapers, your means of travel,
communication with your families? Let the patriotism of our army, the
heroism of our King, of our beloved Queen in her magnanimity, serve to
stimulate us and support us. Let us bemoan ourselves no more. Let us
deserve the coming deliverance. Let us hasten it by our virtue even more
than by our prayers. Courage, brethren! Suffering passes away; the
crown of life for our souls, the crown of glory for our nation, shall
not pass!
I do not require of you to renounce any of your national desires. On the
contrary, I hold it as part of the obligations of my episcopal office to
instruct you, as to your duty in face of the power that has invaded our
soil and now occupies the greater part of our country. The authority of
that power is no lawful authority. Therefore in soul and conscience you
owe it neither respect nor attachment nor obedience.
The sole lawful authority in Belgium is that of our King, of our
Government, of the elected representatives of the nation. This authority
alone has a right to our affection, our submission.
Thus the invader's acts of public administration have in themselves no
authority; but legitimate authority has tacitly ratified such of those
acts as affect the general interest, and this ratification, and this
only, gives them juridic value. Occupied provinces are not conquered
provinces. Belgium is no more a German province than Galicia is a
Russian province. Nevertheless, the occupied portion of our country is
in a position it is compelled to endure. The greater part of our towns,
having surrendered to the enemy on conditions, are bound to observe
those conditions. From the outset of military operations the civil
authorities of the country urged upon all private persons the necessity
of abstention from hostile acts against the enemy's army.
That instruction remains in force. It is our army, and our army solely,
in league with the valiant troops of our allies, that has the honor and
the duty of national defense. Let us intrust the army with our final
deliverance.
Toward the persons of those who are holding dominion among us by
military force, and who assuredly cannot but be sensible of the
chivalrous energy with which we have defended and are still defending
our independence, let us conduct ourselves with all needful forbearance.
Some among them have declared themselves willing to mitigate, as far as
possible, the severity of our situation and to help us to recover some
minimum of regular civic life. Let us observe the rules they have laid
upon us so long as those rules do not violate our personal liberty, nor
our consciences as Christians, nor our duty to our country. Let us not
take bravado for courage, nor tumult for bravery.
You especially, my dearest brethren in the priesthood, be you at once
the best examples of patriotism and the best supporters of public order.
On the field of battle you have been magnificent. The King and the army
admire the intrepidity of our military chaplains in face of death, their
charity at the work of the ambulance. Your Bishops are proud of you. You
have suffered greatly. You have endured much calumny. But be patient;
history will do you justice. I today bear my witness for you.
Wherever it has been possible I have questioned our people, our clergy,
and particularly a considerable number of priests who had been deported
to German prisons, but whom a principle of humanity, to which I gladly
render homage, has since set at liberty. Well, I affirm, upon my honor,
and I am prepared to assert upon faith of my oath, that until now I have
not met a single ecclesiastic, secular or regular, who had once incited
civilians to bear arms against the enemy. All have loyally followed the
instructions of their Bishops, given in the early days of August, to the
effect that they were to use their moral influence over the civil
population so that order might be preserved and military regulations
observed.
I exhort you to persevere in this ministry of peace, which is for you
the sanest form of patriotism; to accept with all your hearts the
privations you have to endure; to simplify still further, if it is
possible, your way of life. One of you who is reduced by robbery and
pillage to a state bordering on total destitution, said to me lately: "I
am living now as I wish I had lived always."
Multiply the efforts of your charity, corporal and spiritual. Like the
great Apostle, do you endure daily the cares of your Church, so that no
man shall suffer loss and you not suffer loss, and no man fall and you
not burn with zeal for him. Make yourselves the champions of all those
virtues enjoined upon you by civic honor as well as by the Gospel of
Christ.
"Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just,
whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be
any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things." So may
the worthiness of our lives justify us, my most dear colleagues, in
repeating the noble claim of St. Paul: "The things which ye have learned
and received and heard and seen in me, these do ye, and the God of Peace
shall be with you."
Let us continue then, dearest brethren, to pray, to do penance, to
attend holy mass, and to receive holy communion for the sacred intention
of our dear country.... I recommend parish priests to hold a funeral
service on behalf of our fallen soldiers on every Saturday.
Money, I know well, is scarce with you all. Nevertheless, if you have
little, give of that little for the succor of those among your
fellow-countrymen who are without shelter, without fuel, without
sufficient bread. I have directed my parish priests to form for this
purpose in every parish a relief committee. Do you second them
charitably and convey to my hands such alms as you can save from your
superfluity, if not from your necessities, so that I may be the
distributer to the destitute who are known to me.
Our distress has moved the other nations. England, Ireland, and
Scotland, France, Holland, the United States, Canada, have vied with
each other in generosity for our relief. It is a spectacle at once most
mournful and most noble. Here again is a revelation of the Providential
wisdom which draws good from evil. In your name, my brethren, and in my
own, I offer to the Governments and the nations that have succored us
the assurance of our admiration and our gratitude.
With a touching goodness, our Holy Father Benedict XV. has been the
first to incline his heart toward us. When, a few moments after his
election, he deigned to take me in his arms, I was bold enough there to
ask that the first Pontifical benediction he spoke should be given to
Belgium, already in deep distress through the war. He eagerly closed
with my wish, which I knew would also be yours. Today, with delicate
kindness, his Holiness has decided to renounce the annual offering of
Peter's Pence from Belgium.
In a letter dated on the beautiful festival of the Immaculate Virgin,
Dec. 8, he assures us of the part he bears in our sufferings. He prays
for us, calls down upon our Belgium the protection of Heaven, and
exhorts us to hail in the then approaching advent of the Prince of Peace
the dawn of better days. Here is the text of this valued message:
_To Our Dear Son, Désiré Mercier, Cardinal Priest of the Holy
Roman Church, of the Title of St. Peter in Chains, Archbishop
of Malines, at Malines:_
Our Dear Son: Health and apostolic benediction. The fatherly
solicitude which we feel for all the faithful whom Divine
Providence has intrusted to our care causes us to share their
griefs even more fully than their joys.
Could we, then, fail to be moved by keenest sorrow at the
sight of the Belgian Nation, which we so dearly love, reduced
by a most cruel and most disastrous war to this lamentable
state?
We behold the King and his august family, the members of the
Government, the chief persons of the country, Bishops,
priests, and a whole people enduring woes which must fill with
pity all gentle hearts, and which our own soul, in the fervor
of paternal love, must be the first to compassionate. Thus,
under the burden of this distress and this mourning, we call
in our prayers for an end to such misfortunes. May the God of
mercy hasten the day.
Meanwhile we strive to mitigate, as far as in us lies, this
excessive suffering. Therefore the step taken by our dear son,
Cardinal Hartmann, Archbishop of Cologne, at whose request it
was arranged that French or Belgian priests detained in
Germany should have the treatment of officers, gave us great
satisfaction, and we have expressed our thanks to him for his
action.
As regards Belgium, we have been informed that the faithful of
that nation, so sorely tried, did not neglect, in their piety,
to turn toward us their thoughts, and that even under the blow
of so many calamities they proposed to gather this year, as in
all preceding years, the offerings to St. Peter, which supply
the necessities of the Apostolic See.
This truly incomparable proof of piety and of attachment
filled us with admiration; we accept it with all the affection
that is due from a grateful heart; but having regard to the
painful position in which our dear children are placed, we
cannot bring ourselves to favor the fulfillment of that
project, noble though it is. If any alms are to be gathered,
our wish is that the money should be entirely devoted to the
benefit of the Belgian people, who are as illustrious by
reason of their nobility and their piety as they are today
worthy of all sympathy.
Amid the difficulties and anxieties of the present hour we
would remind the sons who are so dear to us that the arm of
God is not shortened, that He is ever able to save, that His
ear is not deaf to prayer.
Let the hope of Divine aid increase with the approach of the
festival of Christmas and of the mysteries that celebrate the
birth of our Lord, and recall that peace which God proclaimed
to mankind by His angels.
May the souls of the suffering and afflicted find comfort and
consolation in the assurance of the paternal tenderness that
prompts our prayers. Yes, may God take pity upon the Belgian
people and grant them the abundance of all good.
As a pledge of these prayers and good wishes, we now grant to
all, and in the first place to you, our dear son, the
apostolic benediction.
Given in Rome, by St. Peter's, on the feast of the Immaculate
Conception of Our Lady, in the year MCMXIV., the first of our
Pontificate.
BENEDICT XV., Pope.
One last word, my dearest brethren: At the outset of these troubles I
said to you that in the day of the liberation of our territory we should
give to the Sacred Heart and to the Blessed Virgin a public testimony of
our gratitude. Since that date I have been able to consult my colleagues
in the episcopate, and, in agreement with them, I now ask you to make,
as soon as possible, a fresh effort to hasten the construction of the
national basilica, promised by Belgium in honor of the Sacred Heart.
As soon as the sun of peace shall shine upon our country we shall
redress our ruins, we shall restore shelter to those who have none, we
shall rebuild our churches, we shall reconstitute our libraries, and we
shall hope to crown this work of reconciliation by raising, upon the
heights of the capital of Belgium, free and Catholic, that national
basilica of the Sacred Heart. Furthermore, every year we shall make it
our duty to celebrate solemnly, on the Friday following Corpus Christi,
the festival of the Sacred Heart.
Lastly, in every region of the diocese the clergy will organize an
annual pilgrimage of thanksgiving to one of the privileged sanctuaries
of the Blessed Virgin in order to pay especial honor to the protectress
of our national independence and universal mediatrix of the Christian
Commonwealth.
The present letter shall be read on the following dates: On the first
day of the year and on the Sundays following the day on which it shall
severally reach you.
Accept, my dearest brethren, my wishes and prayers for you and for the
happiness of your families, and receive, I pray you, my paternal
benediction.