Part 2

In holding this language in his very first work, the Abbé de la Mennais was already forgetting that he was a Christian and a Catholic. When a man demands here below an infallible authority, he must not seek it from any human source. The reason of all? (That is, the reason of the majority of men in all the ages of the world, for the reason of _all_ is a fallacy.) What is such reason, but the sovereignty of superior numbers in the spiritual order? Having fixed his principle, the Abbé de la Mennais kept it in sight everywhere. After having established an infallible authority in the name of the reason of all, he proclaimed the absolute sovereignty in the name of universal suffrage. {28} But this apostle of universal reason was at the same time the proudest worshiper of his own reason. Under the pressure of events without, and of an ardent controversy, a transformation took place in him, marked at once by its logical deductions and its moral inconsistency: he changed his camp without changing his principles; in the attempt to lead the supreme authority of his Church to admit his principles he had failed; and from that instant the very spirit of revolt that he had so severely rebuked broke loose in his soul and in his writings, finding expression at one time in an indignation full of hatred leveled at the powerful, the rich, and the fortunate ones of the world; at another time in a tender sympathy for the miseries of humanity. The "Words of a Believer" are the eloquent outburst of this tumult in his soul. Plunged in the chaos of sentiments the most contradictory, and yet claiming to be always consistent with himself, the champion of authority became in the State the most baited of democrats, and in the Church the haughtiest of rebels.

{29}

It is not without sorrow that I thus express my unreserved opinion of a man of superior talent--mind lofty, soul intense; a man in the sequel profoundly sad himself, although haughty in his very fall. One cannot read in their stormy succession the numerous writings of the Abbé de la Mennais without recognizing in them traces, I will not say of his intellectual perplexities--his pride did not feel them--but of the sufferings of his soul, whether for good or for evil. A noble nature, but full of exaggeration in his opinions, of fanatical arrogance, and of angry asperity in his polemics. One title to our gratitude remains to the Abbé de la Mennais--he thundered to purpose against the gross and vulgar forgetfulness of the great moral interests of humanity. His essay on indifference in religious questions inflicted a rude blow upon that vice of the time, and recalled men's souls to regions above. {30} And thus it was that he, too, rendered service to the great movement and awakening of Christians in the nineteenth century, and that he merits his place in that movement although he deserted it. [Footnote 5]

[Footnote 5: The principal works of the Abbé de la Mennais are:

1. L'Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, avec la défense de l'Essai. 5 vols. 8vo. The first volume appeared in 1817.

2. De la Religion considérée dans ses rapports avec l'ordre civil et politique. 1 vol. 8vo. 1825.

3. Les Paroles d'un Croyant. 8vo. 1834.

4. Les Affaires de Rome. 8vo. 1836.

5. Esquisse d'une philosophic. 4 vols. 8vo. 1841-1846. All his works, including numerous pamphlets and articles published in religious and political journals, have been collected in two editions: one in 12 vols. 8vo., 1836-1837; the other in 11 vols. 8vo., 1844 and following years. Besides the above, there are his Posthumous Works, 2 vols. 8vo., 1856, and his Correspondence, 2 vols. 8vo., 1858.]

At the same time that great minds were thus at work in order to restore to the belief in Christianity and the belief in Catholicism its honor and its authority, another influence was operating in the same direction, with less notoriety but no less effect. {31} The Jesuits were re-establishing themselves in France--were founding houses of education and noviciates for their order--were opening chapels, preaching, teaching, careless of the existence in France of laws proscribing them; occupying themselves solely with fulfilling what they regarded as a duty, and a duty, too, springing from a right believed by them to be superior to the laws. That duty for them was to uphold the Church of Rome; that right was the right of preaching and teaching, according to the faith of the Church. The Jesuits have also been considered and represented as politicians in the garb of monks, rather than genuine members of the monastic orders. Often, in effect, in their acts and in their words, they have appeared as politicians, and politicians, too, with a certain indulgence for the world and the world's masters; but, at bottom, they have been and they are essentially monastic--an order perhaps the most ardent of all, for they are of all orders the order most completely devoted to the cause of religious authority.

{32}

There are commonplaces that have to be continually repeated, so apt are men to forget them. In religions society, as well as in civil society, there are two great moral forces--Authority and Liberty; these coexist of necessity--have dominion turn by turn, and have alternately their heroes and their martyrs. Regarded either with respect to its political or religious constitution, society cannot long dispense with either Authority or with Liberty; and each of these two forces is liable to abuse its influence, and to lose it by the very abuse.

When Authority has had a long dominion, and its abuse too has been long, a reaction occurs: Liberty has her revenge; but in her turn is prone to compromise her interests by abuses and by excess. It is the history of all human society; facts prove it quite as much as common sense foretells it. In the bosom of this general fact it is the peculiar character, as it is the glory, of Christianity that it has fully accepted these two rival forces; and the one in the face of the other--authority and liberty--both of divine origin. {33} Christianity has constantly accounted them for such as they are--the one the revealed law of God, the other the innate right of man, whom God created free and responsible. The history of the Jews is only that of the intimate and continued relations between God as sovereign and man as free agent; God uttering and giving the law, man using his liberty at one time to fulfill, at another to reject, the law of God. When the great day of humanity dawned and Jesus came, it was in liberty's name, and in claiming the right of the soul to obey the divine law according to its convictions, that Christianity engaged in its primitive struggle of three centuries. Under this banner, too, it conquered, and under it religious society and civil society combined without becoming identical. The tempestuous and painful fecundity of the middle ages succeeded to the tyrannical unity of the Roman empire, so sterile in result. {34} Hence principles the most inconsistent, issues the most contradictory--the power of religion and the power of the state--popes and kings now supporting, now combating each other's ambitious purposes, and thwarting each other's measures, without any regard to law or right; liberty sometimes suffering cruelly by their alliance, sometimes happily profiting by their dissensions; on some occasions popes, on others monarchs protecting liberty against their reciprocal pretensions and excesses. Spiritual and temporal princes still wavered in their maxims and in their policy, and did not during the middle ages systematically and on all occasions form coalitions, of which liberty was to pay the cost. Liberty, on the contrary, continued to subsist and to grow in the midst of their rivalries and of her own sufferings. But these rivalries and these sufferings produced a chaos which recurred incessantly, and became ever more and more intolerable, precisely on account of the progress still made, and which no effort could stifle. {35} The great body of Christians at last demanded some issue from this chaos; then those who wielded the religious power and the civil power, now separately, now in concert, endeavored to satisfy the craving of the world; and by their councils, pragmatic sanctions, encyclical letters and concordats, sought to reform the abuses and the grievances which, as men loudly proclaimed, existed, if not in the Church itself, at least in the relations of the Church with the State. Whether from want of wisdom, virtue, courage, or sagacity in their authors, or from their measures being too superficial, or meeting with too much opposition, those attempts failed; and the reform that was to have proceeded from Authority herself remained without accomplishment. Then came the reform by insurrection, in the name of Faith and Liberty; and as happens in similar crises, whether of the Church or the State, the supreme authority of Romanism was attacked, not only in its abuses and its vices, but in its principle and its very existence. {36} Rome then committed the fault almost always committed by Power when seriously menaced--it defended itself by pushing its principle and its right to the extreme, without holding account of any other principle or of any other right. In the name of Unity and Infallibility in matters of faith, the supreme power in the Church of Rome allied itself with the absolute power in the State, and supported the latter in its resistance to liberty. Under the inspiration of their founder and hero, Loyola, whose genius was that of a fanatic and a mystic, but who was adroit in organizing and realizing his design, the order of the Jesuits sprung into existence. This order was born of this war and for this war--a chosen troop, charged in the name of the faith to be the uncompromising defenders of authority in Church and in State.

{37}

Since that epoch three centuries have passed, and the fourth is in its turn sweeping by us; neither times nor chances have been wanting to causes to produce their effects, nor to men to accomplish their designs; principles and events have received their development over a vast space; and in the light of heaven the different systems have been put to the test of successes and of reverses. Absolutism has had its triumphs and its victories; more than once the faults of its adversaries have played into its hands, and it has found able and glorious champions. It has not succeeded in arresting the course of a civilization full of liberty and yet still greedy to have more. It has taken its place in the midst of liberty as a temporary necessity, never as a preponderating tendency. More than this, even in the epochs when its influence was its height, and its splendor the greatest, Absolutism has often served the cause hostile to its own. Louis XIV. seconded the movement of mind and the people's progress; Napoleon sowed in every direction the germs of social advancement or innovation. {38} And now, even there, where liberty does not exist, Absolutism does not avow itself; it furls its banner, and admits institutions contrary to its principles, reserving to itself the right to elude, or to render them powerless. Experience has pronounced its judgment; whatever the problems that the future will have to solve, or the trials which the future will have to encounter, the cause of Absolutism is a lost cause throughout Christendom.

At the commencement of this century, the Jesuits, unfortunately for them, and yet very naturally, were regarded as devoted to that cause. After having served it in the eighteenth century, they had been the first victims of its decline; the papal and the monarchical sovereignty had sacrificed them to the new opinions, just as mariners in a tempest throw overboard their heavy ordnance. When the nineteenth century opened, all was greatly changed; the Revolution was not only victorious, but earnestly engaged in conciliating parties by disavowing and making amends for its excesses. After the commission of so many follies and crimes in the pursuit of liberty, France submitted once more with the greatest satisfaction to the voice of authority.

{39}

How would they then reconstruct that French policy that had been at once so overthrown and so regenerated? By what means would they conciliate new and ancient ideas, new and ancient interests? Upon what terms would Authority and Liberty consent to be reconciled, and to live henceforth side by side--Authority soaring triumphant after her fall, Liberty embarrassed with her recent excesses; and yet both of them more than ever necessary to society, if society was to be healthy and strong? This was evidently the vital question of the new century. God placed its solution at first in the hands of Napoleon, the crown and the scourge of the Revolution, the most remarkable example at once of reaction and of progress recorded in the history of the world.

{40}

In this condition, so new to France, the situation of the Jesuits was embarrassing and perilous. Napoleon was again re-establishing the Church of Rome, and at the same time enforcing the maxims of Absolutism--a double title to their sympathy. On the other hand, he was consolidating the Revolution, and maintaining and putting into practice some of its essential principles, among others, that of freedom of conscience. Napoleon arrogated also to himself the right of dictating and acting as master in the Church as in the State, at Rome as at Paris; he was neither a serious believer in the faith of Christ nor a sure friend of the Papacy. In this twofold aspect, the Jesuits could not but regard him with distrust. The distrust was mutual: for if Napoleon was for the Jesuits a too faithful and too ambitious heir of the Revolution, the Jesuits were for him Catholics too independent and too devoted to their Church and to its chief. As far back as 1804, their establishments, scarcely disguised under different names, had been a source of disquietude to Napoleon. {41} He directed them to be closed, enforced the laws which denied to religious corporations an independent existence, and founded the University, which at the same time he invested with the privilege of teaching. This system was not abolished at the Restoration. The Jesuits then entered into the simultaneous possession of two forces novel to them--the one sprang from the support of power, the other was derived from the progress of liberty. They had the favor of the court, and might wield as their own arms, and in their own interests, the liberal principles that were dear to the people. A position excellent, had they known how to restrict themselves to their religious mission, keep aloof from political contests, and devote themselves exclusively to the task of awakening the faith of Christians, and arousing them to a Christian life! Their action upon the soul might have extended their influence beyond their peculiar sphere to the world without. Had they not then a striking instance of such an influence even in their own order? {42} To what cause, thirty years ago, did the Père Ravignan owe the respect and moral authority with which he was surrounded, not only by members of his own Church, but by men not remarkable for their faith? Far less to his talent as an orator, than to the thorough sincerity and disinterestedness of his religious character. He was a believer, a pious Christian, and a stranger to every mental reservation; neither was he a partisan, but solely occupied with the service of God, of his Church, and of his order, at the same time that he was propagating the faith and enforcing piety. He declared himself aloud a Jesuit, but the declaration excited no distrust even in his adversaries. If his order had imitated his example, it would have obtained a similar success. Nor was the instance new. In the seventeenth century, at the court of Louis XIV., Bourdaloue displayed the same virtues as the Père Ravignan in our own days; and, in all certitude, did more honor and rendered more service to his Church and order than had ever been done or rendered by Père la Chaise.

{43}

I shall not attempt to examine how far the Jesuits in effect were really engaged, or what was the degree of their direct agency in the intrigues of the retrograde party who were seeking to repossess themselves of the relics of the ancient institutions, in the idle hope of reconstructing the social edifice upon those ruined foundations. I am convinced that France felt at this epoch far too much alarm for this party and its allies, Jesuits or no Jesuits, just as the Monarchy itself felt too much apprehension of the Revolutionists. No graver fault can be committed by nations or by governments than to give way to fears out of proportion with the dangers which they encounter. France had no reason under the Restoration to dread either the triumph of Theocracy or of Absolutism; and yet she was alarmed at both, and the people persisted in believing that the Jesuits were serving this double cause--that of the ancient régime of the Papacy, and of the ancient régime of the Monarchy. {44} The Jesuits had then to struggle at once against the ideas and the passions of modern society, and the traditions and maxims of ancient France herself; they had for adversaries, the laity, the bar, and the liberals, respectively represented by M. de Montlosier, M. Benjamin Constant, and M. Dupin. The odds against them were too great; even the Monarchy itself, however well disposed toward them, was carried away by the movement which attacked them, and Charles X. did not think his own position strong enough to dispense with treating them, by his ordonnances of the 21st June, 1828, as Napoleon had done by his decree of the 22d June, 1804. Throughout this whole period the conduct of the Jesuits was feebler than their cause. Sworn and devoted to the defense of Authority, they had not foresight enough to perceive by what means and on what conditions Authority might raise and consolidate itself. {45} Haunted by the traditions of past times, and having the history of their own order continually before their minds, they no longer regarded the future boldly or confidently; they failed to appreciate justly the present; they did not believe sufficiently in the power of Christ's faith, and they believed too implicitly in the efficiency of worldly policy. By this vulgar blunder they compromised, in the case of many Christians, the full effect of that great stirring movement of Christianity, at the very time that, with respect to others, they aided it materially.

The Revolution of 1830 inflicted a rude blow upon these retrograde tendencies, and a new element started up in the bosom of the Church of Rome. In the midst of the grand manifestation and progress of liberty now realizing itself in the State, Catholics, genuine and ardent too, conceived the hope of turning both to the profit of the Church of Rome, and of at last setting Catholicism at peace and in harmony with the new social institutions of France. {46} Then the group, I will not say the party, formed itself of men at once generous and hardy, who did not hesitate to declare themselves Ultramontanists, like the Père de Ravignan, Liberals like M. de la Fayette. It consisted of priests and laymen, of men of mature years and men in the spring-time of life--the Abbé Lacordaire, Abbe Gerbet, M. de Montalembert, and M. de Coux: I confine myself to the names that at the outset gleamed on their banners. They founded an _agency_ for the defense of the liberties of religion, and a journal, the _Avenir_, to develop its principles and its constitution. But the association was born under an unlucky star; for its little army had for its declared chief, and the object of its passionate reverence, the Abbe de la Mennais. In the more intimate and unrestricted relations of life this great man appears to have exercised extraordinarily attractive power over his friends and disciples. {47} Cited jointly with him on the 31st January, 1831, before the Cour d'Assises of Paris to answer for the appearance of two articles in the _Avenir_, the Abbé Lacordaire said, "I stand here near the man who began the reconciliation of Catholicism with the world. Let me tell him how affected I am by the part that God has made for me in giving me him as my master and my father. Suffer these words of filial piety to penetrate to the heart of one so long misunderstood; suffer me to exclaim with the poet:

"L'amitié d'un grand homme est un bienfait des dieux." [Footnote 6]

[Footnote 6: "A great man's friendship, blessed gift of Heaven."]

The Abbé Lacordaire had soon to feel the danger and to repel with sorrow the yoke of this seductive friendship. The errors and the evil passions of the Abbé de la Mennais were not long in exploding; his was a mind lofty and powerful, but without grasp, without foresight, without moderation, and without equity; incapable of discerning the different sides of a subject and of embracing all the elements of the problem demanding solution, he was a haughty slave to the truth that he served but partially, and the somber enemy of every one who wounded his pride by contesting his opinions. {48} He gave to the _Avenir_ a character at once democratic and theocratic, imperious and revolutionary. All the ideas contrary to his own, all the institutions, all the governments, that stood in his way, were attacked by him with a degree of vehemence, insult, and menace never surpassed by any political partisan, however violent. The maxims of the Gallican Church were, to cite his words, "an object of disgust and horror; opinions as odious as they were base, which, while rendering even the conscience the accomplice of tyranny, make servility a duty and brute force an independent and just right." He demanded the separation of Church and State as a necessity absolute and urgent; "for," said he, "we regard as abolished and of no effect every particular law which contradicts the Charter, and is incompatible with the liberties that _it_ proclaims. {49} In the event of such law, we believe that it becomes immediately and without delay the duty of government to come to an understanding with the pope, and to rescind the Concordat, which lost all the means of being executed from the instant when, thank God, the Catholic religion ceased to be a state religion." Four months had scarcely elapsed since the birth of the government of July, and because the liberty of teaching promised by the Charter of 1830 was not already in vigor, the Abbé de la Mennais said to the Catholics: "Whence comes the oppression that weighs upon us? Either, in what concerns us, the government cannot or it will not keep its promises. If it cannot, what is this mockery of a sovereignty, this miserable phantom of government, and what have we to do with it? It is as far as we are concerned as if it were _not_, and nothing remains to us but to forget it, and seek our safety in ourselves. {50} Let us proclaim aloud who the powers are that are hostile to us; whose servants seek only to satisfy blindly their thirst for persecution." What attacks leveled at a government were ever more precipitate, more violent, and showed a less just appreciation of facts? What revolutionary party ever proclaimed with greater audacity disobedience to the laws, and insurrection as the first of rights and of duties?