full light of truth and the grave responsibilities of knowledge; who
have not learned to distinguish what is divine from what is
human--defined dogma from the atmosphere of opinion which surrounds
it,--and who honour both with the same awful reverence. Great allowances
are also due to those who are constantly labouring to nourish the spark
of belief in minds perplexed by difficulties, or darkened by ignorance
and prejudice. These men have not always the results of research at
command; they have no time to keep abreast with the constant progress of
historical and critical science; and the solutions which they are
obliged to give are consequently often imperfect, and adapted only to
uninstructed and uncultivated minds. Their reasoning cannot be the same
as that of the scholar who has to meet error in its most vigorous,
refined, and ingenious form. As knowledge advances, it must inevitably
happen that they will find some of their hitherto accepted facts
contradicted, and some arguments overturned which have done good
service. They will find that some statements, which they have adopted
under stress of controversy, to remove prejudice and doubt, turn out to
be hasty and partial replies to the questions they were meant to answer,
and that the true solutions would require more copious explanation than
they can give. And thus will be brought home to their minds that, in the
topics upon which popular controversy chiefly turns, the conditions of
discussion and the resources of arguments are subject to gradual and
constant change.
A Review, therefore, which undertakes to investigate political and
scientific problems, without any direct subservience to the interests of
a party or a cause, but with the belief that such investigation, by its
very independence and straightforwardness, must give the most valuable
indirect assistance to religion, cannot expect to enjoy at once the
favour of those who have grown up in another school of ideas. Men who
are occupied in the special functions of ecclesiastical life, where the
Church is all-sufficient and requires no extraneous aid, will naturally
see at first in the problems of public life, the demands of modern
society, and the progress of human learning, nothing but new and
unwelcome difficulties,--trial and distraction to themselves, temptation
and danger to their flocks. In time they will learn that there is a
higher and a nobler course for Catholics than one which begins in fear
and does not lead to security. They will come to see how vast a service
they may render to the Church by vindicating for themselves a place in
every movement that promotes the study of God's works and the
advancement of mankind. They will remember that, while the office of
ecclesiastical authority is to tolerate, to warn, and to guide, that of
religious intelligence and zeal is not to leave the great work of
intellectual and social civilisation to be the monopoly and privilege of
others, but to save it from debasement by giving to it for leaders the
children, not the enemies, of the Church. And at length, in the progress
of political right and scientific knowledge, in the development of
freedom in the State and of truth in literature, they will recognise one
of the first among their human duties and the highest of their earthly
rewards.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 339: "Rome and the Catholic Episcopate. Reply of His Eminence
Cardinal Wiseman to an Address presented by the Clergy, Secular and
Regular, of the Archdiocese of Westminster, on Tuesday, the 5th of
August 1862." London: Burns and Lambert. (_Home and Foreign Review_,
1862.)]
XIII
CONFLICTS WITH ROME[340]
Among the causes which have brought dishonour on the Church in recent
years, none have had a more fatal operation than those conflicts with
science and literature which have led men to dispute the competence, or
the justice, or the wisdom, of her authorities. Rare as such conflicts
have been, they have awakened a special hostility which the defenders of
Catholicism have not succeeded in allaying. They have induced a
suspicion that the Church, in her zeal for the prevention of error,
represses that intellectual freedom which is essential to the progress
of truth; that she allows an administrative interference with
convictions to which she cannot attach the stigma of falsehood; and that
she claims a right to restrain the growth of knowledge, to justify an
acquiescence in ignorance, to promote error, and even to alter at her
arbitrary will the dogmas that are proposed to faith. There are few
faults or errors imputed to Catholicism which individual Catholics have
not committed or held, and the instances on which these particular
accusations are founded have sometimes been supplied by the acts of
authority itself. Dishonest controversy loves to confound the personal
with the spiritual element in the Church--to ignore the distinction
between the sinful agents and the divine institution. And this confusion
makes it easy to deny, what otherwise would be too evident to question,
that knowledge has a freedom in the Catholic Church which it can find in
no other religion; though there, as elsewhere, freedom degenerates
unless it has to struggle in its own defence.
Nothing can better illustrate this truth than the actual course of
events in the cases of Lamennais and Frohschammer. They are two of the
most conspicuous instances in point; and they exemplify the opposite
mistakes through which a haze of obscurity has gathered over the true
notions of authority and freedom in the Church. The correspondence of
Lamennais and the later writings of Frohschammer furnish a revelation
which ought to warn all those who, through ignorance, or timidity, or
weakness of faith, are tempted to despair of the reconciliation between
science and religion, and to acquiesce either in the subordination of
one to the other, or in their complete separation and estrangement. Of
these alternatives Lamennais chose the first, Frohschammer the second;
and the exaggeration of the claims of authority by the one and the
extreme assertion of independence by the other have led them, by
contrary paths, to nearly the same end.
When Lamennais surveyed the fluctuations of science, the multitude of
opinions, the confusion and conflict of theories, he was led to doubt
the efficacy of all human tests of truth. Science seemed to him
essentially tainted with hopeless uncertainty. In his ignorance of its
methods he fancied them incapable of attaining to anything more than a
greater or less degree of probability, and powerless to afford a strict
demonstration, or to distinguish the deposit of real knowledge amidst
the turbid current of opinion. He refused to admit that there is a
sphere within which metaphysical philosophy speaks with absolute
certainty, or that the landmarks set up by history and natural science
may be such as neither authority nor prescription, neither the doctrine
of the schools nor the interest of the Church, has the power to disturb
or the right to evade. These sciences presented to his eyes a chaos
incapable of falling into order and harmony by any internal
self-development, and requiring the action of an external director to
clear up its darkness and remove its uncertainty. He thought that no
research, however rigorous, could make sure of any fragment of knowledge
worthy the name. He admitted no certainty but that which relied on the
general tradition of mankind, recorded and sanctioned by the infallible
judgment of the Holy See. He would have all power committed, and every
question referred, to that supreme and universal authority. By its means
he would supply all the gaps in the horizon of the human intellect,
settle every controversy, solve the problems of science, and regulate
the policy of states.
The extreme Ultramontanism which seeks the safeguard of faith in the
absolutism of Rome he believed to be the keystone of the Catholic
system. In his eyes all who rejected it, the Jesuits among them, were
Gallicans; and Gallicanism was the corruption of the Christian
idea.[341] "If my principles are rejected," he wrote on the 1st of
November 1820, "I see no means of defending religion effectually, no
decisive answer to the objections of the unbelievers of our time. How
could these principles be favourable to them? they are simply the
development of the great Catholic maxim, _quod semper, quod ubique, quod
ab omnibus_." Joubert said of him, with perfect justice, that when he
destroyed all the bases of human certainty, in order to retain no
foundation but authority, he destroyed authority itself. The confidence
which led him to confound the human element with the divine in the Holy
See was destined to be tried by the severest of all tests; and his
exaggeration of the infallibility of the Pope proved fatal to his
religious faith.
In 1831 the Roman Breviary was not to be bought in Paris. We may hence
measure the amount of opposition with which Lamennais's endeavours to
exalt Rome would be met by the majority of the French bishops and
clergy, and by the school of St. Sulpice. For him, on the other hand, no
terms were too strong to express his animosity against those who
rejected his teaching and thwarted his designs. The bishops he railed
at as idiotic devotees, incredibly blind, supernaturally foolish. "The
Jesuits," he said, "were _grenadiers de la folie_, and united imbecility
with the vilest passions."[342] He fancied that in many dioceses there
was a conspiracy to destroy religion, that a schism was at hand, and
that the resistance of the clergy to his principles threatened to
destroy Catholicism in France. Rome, he was sure, would help him in his
struggle against her faithless assailants, on behalf of her authority,
and in his endeavour to make the clergy refer their disputes to her, so
as to receive from the Pope's mouth the infallible oracles of eternal
truth.[343] Whatever the Pope might decide, would, he said, be right,
for the Pope alone was infallible. Bishops might be sometimes resisted,
but the Pope never.[344] It was both absurd and blasphemous even to
advise him. "I have read in the _Diario di Roma_," he said, "the advice
of M. de Chateaubriand to the Holy Ghost. At any rate, the Holy Ghost is
fully warned; and if he makes a mistake this time, it will not be the
ambassador's fault."
Three Popes passed away, and still nothing was done against the traitors
he was for ever denouncing. This reserve astounded him. Was Rome herself
tainted with Gallicanism, and in league with those who had conspired for
her destruction? What but a schism could ensue from this inexplicable
apathy? The silence was a grievous trial to his faith. "Let us shut our
eyes," he said, "let us invoke the Holy Spirit, let us collect all the
powers of our soul, that our faith may not be shaken."[345] In his
perplexity he began to make distinctions between the Pope and the Roman
Court. The advisers of the Pope were traitors, dwellers in the outer
darkness, blind and deaf; the Pope himself and he alone was infallible,
and would never act so as to injure the faith, though meanwhile he was
not aware of the real state of things, and was evidently deceived by
false reports.[346] A few months later came the necessity for a further
distinction between the Pontiff and the Sovereign. If the doctrines of
the _Avenir_ had caused displeasure at Rome, it was only on political
grounds. If the Pope was offended, he was offended not as Vicar of
Christ, but as a temporal monarch implicated in the political system of
Europe. In his capacity of spiritual head of the Church he could not
condemn writers for sacrificing all human and political considerations
to the supreme interests of the Church, but must in reality agree with
them.[347] As the Polish Revolution brought the political questions into
greater prominence, Lamennais became more and more convinced of the
wickedness of those who surrounded Gregory XVI., and of the political
incompetence of the Pope himself. He described him as weeping and
praying, motionless, amidst the darkness which the ambitious, corrupt,
and frantic idiots around him were ever striving to thicken.[348] Still
he felt secure. When the foundations of the Church were threatened, when
an essential doctrine was at stake, though, for the first time in
eighteen centuries, the supreme authority might refuse to speak,[349] at
least it could not speak out against the truth. In this belief he made
his last journey to Rome. Then came his condemnation. The staff on which
he leaned with all his weight broke in his hands; the authority he had
so grossly exaggerated turned against him, and his faith was left
without support. His system supplied no resource for such an emergency.
He submitted, not because he was in error, but because Catholics had no
right to defend the Church against the supreme will even of an erring
Pontiff.[350] He was persuaded that his silence would injure religion,
yet he deemed it his duty to be silent and to abandon theology. He had
ceased to believe that the Pope could not err, but he still believed
that he could not lawfully be disobeyed. In the two years during which
he still remained in the Church his faith in her system fell rapidly to
pieces. Within two months after the publication of the Encyclical he
wrote that the Pope, like the other princes, seemed careful not to omit
any blunder that could secure his annihilation.[351] Three weeks
afterwards he denounced in the fiercest terms the corruption of Rome. He
predicted that the ecclesiastical hierarchy was about to depart with the
old monarchies; and, though the Church could not die, he would not
undertake to say that she would revive in her old forms.[352] The Pope,
he said, had so zealously embraced the cause of antichristian despotism
as to sacrifice to it the religion of which he was the chief. He no
longer felt it possible to distinguish what was immutable in the
external organisation of the Church. He admitted the personal
fallibility of the Pope, and declared that, though it was impossible,
without Rome, to defend Catholicism successfully, yet nothing could be
hoped for from her, and that she seemed to have condemned Catholicism to
die.[353] The Pope, he soon afterwards said, was in league with the
kings in opposition to the eternal truths of religion, the hierarchy was
out of court, and a transformation like that from which the Church and
Papacy had sprung was about to bring them both to an end, after eighteen
centuries, in Gregory XVI.[354] Before the following year was over he
had ceased to be in communion with the Catholic Church.
The fall of Lamennais, however impressive as a warning, is of no great
historical importance; for he carried no one with him, and his favourite
disciples became the ablest defenders of Catholicism in France. But it
exemplifies one of the natural consequences of dissociating secular from
religious truth, and denying that they hold in solution all the elements
necessary for their reconciliation and union. In more recent times, the
same error has led, by a contrary path, to still more lamentable
results, and scepticism on the possibility of harmonising reason and
faith has once more driven a philosopher into heresy. Between the fall
of Lamennais and the conflict with Frohschammer many metaphysical
writers among the Catholic clergy had incurred the censures of Rome. It
is enough to cite Bautain in France, Rosmini in Italy, and Guenther in
Austria. But in these cases no scandal ensued, and the decrees were
received with prompt and hearty submission. In the cases of Lamennais
and Frohschammer no speculative question was originally at issue, but
only the question of authority. A comparison between their theories will
explain the similarity in the courses of the two men, and at the same
time will account for the contrast between the isolation of Lamennais
and the influence of Frohschammer, though the one was the most eloquent
writer in France, and the head of a great school, and the other, before
the late controversy, was not a writer of much name. This contrast is
the more remarkable since religion had not revived in France when the
French philosopher wrote, while for the last quarter of a century
Bavaria has been distinguished among Catholic nations for the faith of
her people. Yet Lamennais was powerless to injure a generation of
comparatively ill-instructed Catholics, while Frohschammer, with
inferior gifts of persuasion, has won educated followers even in the
home of Ultramontanism.
The first obvious explanation of this difficulty is the narrowness of
Lamennais's philosophy. At the time of his dispute with the Holy See he
had somewhat lost sight of his traditionalist theory; and his attention,
concentrated upon politics, was directed to the problem of reconciling
religion with liberty,--a question with which the best minds in France
are still occupied. But how can a view of policy constitute a
philosophy? He began by thinking that it was expedient for the Church to
obtain the safeguards of freedom, and that she should renounce the
losing cause of the old _regime_. But this was no more philosophy than
the similar argument which had previously won her to the side of
despotism when it was the stronger cause. As Bonald, however, had
erected absolute monarchy into a dogma, so Lamennais proceeded to do
with freedom. The Church, he said, was on the side of freedom, because
it was the just side, not because it was the stronger. As De Maistre had
seen the victory of Catholic principles in the Restoration, so Lamennais
saw it in the revolution of 1830.
This was obviously too narrow and temporary a basis for a philosophy.
The Church is interested, not in the triumph of a principle or a cause
which may be dated as that of 1789, or of 1815, or of 1830, but in the
triumph of justice and the just cause, whether it be that of the people
or of the Crown, of a Catholic party or of its opponents. She admits the
tests of public law and political science. When these proclaim the
existence of the conditions which justify an insurrection or a war, she
cannot condemn that insurrection or that war. She is guided in her
judgment on these causes by criteria which are not her own, but are
borrowed from departments over which she has no supreme control. This is
as true of science as it is of law and politics. Other truths are as
certain as those which natural or positive law embraces, and other
obligations as imperative as those which regulate the relations of
subjects and authorities. The principle which places right above
expedience in the political action of the Church has an equal
application in history or in astronomy. The Church can no more identify
her cause with scientific error than with political wrong. Her interests
may be impaired by some measure of political justice, or by the
admission of some fact or document. But in neither case can she guard
her interests at the cost of denying the truth.
This is the principle which has so much difficulty in obtaining
recognition in an age when science is more or less irreligious, and when
Catholics more or less neglect its study. Political and intellectual
liberty have the same claims and the same conditions in the eyes of the
Church. The Catholic judges the measures of governments and the
discoveries of science in exactly the same manner. Public law may make
it imperative to overthrow a Catholic monarch, like James II., or to
uphold a Protestant monarch, like the King of Prussia. The
demonstrations of science may oblige us to believe that the earth
revolves round the sun, or that the _donation of Constantine_ is
spurious. The apparent interests of religion have much to say against
all this; but religion itself prevents those considerations from
prevailing. This has not been seen by those writers who have done most
in defence of the principle. They have usually considered it from the
standing ground of their own practical aims, and have therefore failed
to attain that general view which might have been suggested to them by
the pursuit of truth as a whole. French writers have done much for
political liberty, and Germans for intellectual liberty; but the
defenders of the one cause have generally had so little sympathy with
the other, that they have neglected to defend their own on the grounds
common to both. There is hardly a Catholic writer who has penetrated to
the common source from which they spring. And this is the greatest
defect in Catholic literature, even to the present day.
In the majority of those who have afforded the chief examples of this
error, and particularly in Lamennais, the weakness of faith which it
implies has been united with that looseness of thought which resolves
all knowledge into opinion, and fails to appreciate methodical
investigation or scientific evidence. But it is less easy to explain how
a priest, fortified with the armour of German science, should have
failed as completely in the same inquiry. In order to solve the
difficulty, we must go back to the time when the theory of Frohschammer
arose, and review some of the circumstances out of which it sprang.
For adjusting the relations between science and authority, the method of
Rome had long been that of economy and accommodation. In dealing with
literature, her paramount consideration was the fear of scandal. Books
were forbidden, not merely because their statements were denied, but
because they seemed injurious to morals, derogatory to authority, or
dangerous to faith. To be so, it was not necessary that they should be
untrue. For isolated truths separated from other known truths by an
interval of conjecture, in which error might find room to construct its
works, may offer perilous occasions to unprepared and unstable minds.
The policy was therefore to allow such truths to be put forward only
hypothetically, or altogether to suppress them. The latter alternative
was especially appropriated to historical investigations, because they
contained most elements of danger. In them the progress of knowledge has
been for centuries constant, rapid, and sure; every generation has
brought to light masses of information previously unknown, the
successive publication of which furnished ever new incentives, and more
and more ample means of inquiry into ecclesiastical history. This
inquiry has gradually laid bare the whole policy and process of
ecclesiastical authority, and has removed from the past that veil of
mystery wherewith, like all other authorities, it tries to surround the
present. The human element in ecclesiastical administration endeavours
to keep itself out of sight, and to deny its own existence, in order
that it may secure the unquestioning submission which authority
naturally desires, and may preserve that halo of infallibility which the
twilight of opinion enables it to assume. Now the most severe exposure
of the part played by this human element is found in histories which
show the undeniable existence of sin, error, or fraud in the high places
of the Church. Not, indeed, that any history furnishes, or can furnish,
materials for undermining the authority which the dogmas of the Church
proclaim to be necessary for her existence. But the true limits of
legitimate authority are one thing, and the area which authority may
find it expedient to attempt to occupy is another. The interests of the
Church are not necessarily identical with those of the ecclesiastical
government. A government does not desire its powers to be strictly
defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing
precision. Authority may be protected by its subjects being kept in
ignorance of its faults, and by their holding it in superstitious
admiration. But religion has no communion with any manner of error: and
the conscience can only be injured by such arts, which, in reality, give
a far more formidable measure of the influence of the human element in
ecclesiastical government than any collection of detached cases of
scandal can do. For these arts are simply those of all human governments
which possess legislative power, fear attack, deny responsibility, and
therefore shrink from scrutiny.