Chapter VII: The Search Renewed (10)

What! Are we to admit that the right and the duty of educating children sprung from society, and was originated by it? The bare thought is folly. From the first creation of the family, God willed that the infant should come into the world in feebleness and impotence; that, physically, intellectually, and morally, it should have need of a long and toilsome education before becoming a complete man. On whom was it, then, that he imposed a natural obligation of undertaking and accomplishing its education? Certainly not on society, which did not then exist. It was on the family itself, on the father especially, who is its responsible head. The power of engendering human beings includes of necessity the duty of not leaving such a work incomplete--the duty, consequently, of guiding the infant up to full manhood.

The family thus, by virtue of a law of nature, possesses the power of instructing and educating the understanding and will of the child born of it; and this power the family does not lose by being associated with others in social life. For, we repeat, the state is not instituted to absorb into its collective life all pre-existing rights. The act of union merely consecrates those rights by placing them under the protection of public authority. But when this authority, instead of protecting the rights of the family, proceeds to take possession of them, it commits an usurpation, it breaks the social pact, by making itself guilty of the very crime which it ought to prevent.

Nothing less than the utter and ruinous confusion of ideas introduced by the philosophy of the last century, and by its absurd theories about the Social Contract, could have caused principles so clear and so indisputable to be lost sight of, and all the usurpations of the liberty and rights of families and individuals by the civil power to be legitimized. But, be the errors of the time what they may, it is not fitting that we Catholics should be either their accomplices or their dupes. Enlightened by faith, our reason must hold fast those principles on which human society is based, and were we to be their only defenders, it would be to our honor to have maintained them against all the negations of the spirit of system. To judge, then, only by reason, the state has not those rights over the education of youth which a certain school ascribes to it.

We asserted, moreover, that the opinion of this school is also false in a supernatural point of view, because it separates what ought to be united, because it makes the inference the principle, and despises the one in order to attach itself exclusively to the other. And here we touch the pith of the question.

It is alleged, a public education good or bad, has very serious consequences for society. Its security or its ruin may depend on it, and, anyhow, nothing more vitally affects its peace, strength, and prosperity. The power, therefore, with which the government of a community is invested cannot be a matter of indifference in education. It ought, then, to superintend and direct it, and to place itself at its head, as it naturally does of every social function. We shall presently see how much this reasoning is worth. It includes three things--a principle, a fact, and an inference. The principle is as follows: Whatever is for society an element of strength and progress, and can cause its prosperity and decay, is within the competence of the civil authority and ought to be subject to it. The fact is affirmed in the premises of the argument, to wit, that public education, according as it is good or bad, is naturally of serious consequence to the state. Whence the inference, that it ought to be subject to the civil authority--that is, to the government.

The principle we dispute; the fact is explained and vindicated in another way, and the inference is inconsequential.

First, it is not true that whatever affects the prosperity of the state ought of necessity to belong to the jurisdiction of the civil power, and to be subject to its direction and control. Are not commerce and manufacture elements of national prosperity? Is it necessary, on that account, that the government should assume the direction of them, and that nothing should be done in those two departments of social activity except by it. No. In these the office of power is limited to causing right and justice to be respected in industrial and commercial transactions, to intervene in contentions to decide what is just, to secure the observance of positive laws enacted by it for the purpose of applying to every particular case the general principles of the natural and of the divine law. The rest is an affair of individual enterprise among citizens. Thus, in the question which engages us, that the education of youth ought to contribute much towards the prosperity of a state is not sufficient reason to induce us to resign the whole of it into the hands of the civil power. We must further inquire if there is not some one in the community authorized, by the law of nature or by divine right, to assume its direction and control. If this be so, it will not do to invest the state with a right which belongs to another.

In the second place, the happiness and prosperity of a state are certainly the result of a good education of its youth; of a complete education, that is, well conducted; such, in a word, as gives to the young man all the qualities of perfect manhood. Now, this education is, of necessity, Christian education, in which the state can do nothing--the church, and the church alone, as we have endeavored to show, everything.

What, once more, is education? We have already defined it: the work of fitting a man to fulfil his destiny; to place the faculties of man in a condition of sufficing for themselves, and of pursuing, with the help of God, the end which is allotted to them. Such, clearly, is the work of education; such the end it must of necessity propose to itself. Suppose that in educating a child this consideration of his final destiny should be neglected, that he was brought up with an eye solely to a proximate and terrestrial end, beyond which he could do nothing. Could such an education be called complete? Could it be called sufficient? Would it deserve even the name of education? Undoubtedly not. That child would not have been educated. He would never become a man, _vir_, in the full sense of that term, because the vision of his intelligence would never reach beyond the narrow horizon of this world; because his powers of well-doing would necessarily be extremely limited; because, at last, he would miss the end which every man is bound to attain, and would be compelled to remain for ever nothing but an immortal abortion.

Such is the necessity of recognizing man’s final end in education. That must be its aim, that only, under pain of compromising all the rest. Is there any need of mentioning the guarantees afforded by generations thus educated, for the peace and happiness of communities? Has not true and sincere piety, in the words of the apostle,[174] promise of this life as well as of that of eternity? Is it in any other way than in practising the virtues which make man a social being that we can hope to achieve immortality? Thus to labor to render ourselves worthy of the destiny which awaits us is, also, to prepare ourselves to become good citizens of the earthly city, is to give to society the best possible security of being useful as well as loyal to it. The greatest men of whom humanity is proud, were they not at the same time the most virtuous?

Now, we must repeat to Catholics who forget it, that there are not two last ends for man, but only one; and that is the supernatural end of which we treated at the commencement. Created by God to enjoy his glory and his happiness through eternity, in vain would man seek elsewhere the end of his efforts and of his existence. Everything in him tends towards this end. It is his perfection, and in order to exalt himself to it, he ought to give to his faculties the whole power of development of which they are capable. Woe to him, but much more woe to those who have had the responsibility of his education, if, through their fault, he does not find himself on the level of his destiny; if, instead of gravitating towards heaven in his rapid passage across life, he drags himself miserably along the ground, wallowing in selfish interests and sensual passions!

But if this be so, what can the state do to guide souls to heights which surpass itself? There is nothing to be done but to apply the principle formulated by S. Thomas: “It is his to order means to an end, in whose possession that end is”--_Illius est ordinare ad finem, cujus est proprius ille finis_.[175] The supernatural transformation of the soul into God, and eternal beatitude, which education ought invariably to propose to itself, are not the objects of human society any more than of the civil power which regulates it. That power is consequently incapable, of itself, of ordaining the means which contribute to this supernatural end. It cannot afford the very smallest assistance to education in this respect, nothing to form the man, and to adapt him to the grand designs of God in his behalf. In a word, education is not within the jurisdiction of earthly governments. It is above their competence.

What, then, is the power in the Christian communities commissioned with the sublime ministry of the education of souls? Who has received from God the divine mission of begetting them to the supernatural and divine life, rough-drawn on earth, perfected in heaven? There is, there can be, but one reply. The church! When he founded that august spiritual society, Jesus Christ assigned to it as its end, to guide men to eternal happiness; and on that account he endowed it with all the powers necessary to ordain and to put in operation the proper means for this end. Education conducted in a spirit fundamentally Christian--such is the universal, indispensable mean, over which, consequently, the church has exclusive rights.

See then, established by Jesus Christ, the great instructress of the human race--the only one which can rightfully pretend to direct public education in Christian communities! That superintendence, that direction, are an integral part of the pastoral ministry. The church cannot renounce it without prevarication.

Her reason, therefore, is obvious for insisting, with such obstinate persistency, in claiming, everywhere and always, the exercise of a right which she holds from God himself. Obvious is the reason for which the Sovereign Pontiffs have so severely condemned a doctrine which is the denial of this inalienable right for which, in the concordats concluded with Catholic powers, a special clause invariably reserves for the church the faculty of “seeing that youth receive a Christian education.”[176]

Nothing is more clear than that, when the Catholic Church, in a Christian state, claims for itself the ministry of public instruction, it is no monopoly which it seeks to grasp for the profit of its clerics. It has but one object, to wit, that instruction should have as wide a scope as possible; and for this object she appeals to all devotedness. Laymen and ecclesiastics, seculars and religious, all--all are besought to take a part in this work of instructing the peoples. Whoever offers himself with the necessary qualifications, a pure faith, Christian manners, and competent knowledge, is welcome. To such an one the church opens a free scope for his energies, to cultivate the rising generations under her shelter and in co-operation with her, in order to enable them to bring forth the fruits of knowledge and of virtue. What she does not assent to, what she cannot assent to, is that, under the pretext of liberty of instruction, the ravening wolf should introduce himself into the fold, in the person of those teachers of errors and falsehood who lay waste the flock by bringing into it discord and war; that, under the guise of science and intellectual progress, they should sap the religious belief of a people, assault Christian truth, and infect the young understanding with the deadly poison of doubt and unbelief. No, indeed! Such havoc the church can neither sanction nor allow them an opportunity to accomplish. She remembers that she has received from Christ the care of souls, that the salvation of his children has been entrusted to her keeping, and that God will demand of her an account of their blood shed--that is to say, of their eternal perdition. _Sanguinem ejus de manu tua requiram_ (Ezech. iii. 18). As a watchful sentinel she keeps guard over the flock, and so long as the criminal violence of human powers does not rob her of her rights, neither the thieves nor the assassins of souls can succeed in exercising their ravages.

By way of recapitulation we will enunciate, in five or six propositions, the whole of this doctrine of the rights of the church over education, and thus place the reader in a better position for judging of its full force and extent.

1st. The education of clerics destined to ecclesiastical functions is the exclusive right of the church. She alone regulates everything connected with it, whether the erection of seminaries, or their interior discipline, or the appointment of masters, or the instruction in letters and science, or the good education of the pupils, or their admission into the ecclesiastical body.

2d. The church implicitly respects the right of families to provide a private education for their children by whomsoever and in whatever manner they prefer. Only she imposes on the consciences of Christian parents the obligation of seeing to it that that education be religious and in conformity with the faith they profess.

3d. The superintendence and direction of the public schools, as well of those wherein the mass of the people are instructed in the rudiments of human knowledge, as of those where secondary and higher instruction are given, belong of right to the Catholic Church. She alone has the right of watching over the moral character of those schools, of approving the masters who instruct the youth therein, of controlling their teaching, and dismissing, without appeal to any other authority, those whose doctrine or manners should be contrary to the purity of Christian doctrine.

4th. Subject to the condition of being able to guarantee pure faith, irreproachable manners, and competent knowledge, entire liberty is left to private individuals, ecclesiastics and laity, seculars and religious, to devote themselves to the ministry of teaching and education of youth, to form associations for this object, to found academies and universities wherein the sciences are taught, and which govern themselves by their internal discipline, the choice of masters, and the regulation of the studies, programmes, examens, etc. The church only reserves to herself, in their case, her right of superintendence in the matters of morality and the integrity of the faith.

5th. The church not only does not refuse the co-operation of the state in education, but, on the contrary, she solicits it, whenever private enterprise and her own resources do not suffice to enable her to extend instruction as much as she would wish and as the welfare of peoples demands. She then appeals to the communes, to the provinces, to the nation, in order that everywhere the co-operation of the two powers may effect the foundation of schools, the increase of the number of masters, and may come to the aid of the indigent parents. But even in these schools established with the concurrence of the civil power, if the state may superintend the administration of material interests, the right of direction and superintendence of teaching remains with the church.

6th. Lastly, the power, nevertheless, which the church exercises over public instruction does not hinder governments, if they deem it expedient, from establishing schools where professors chosen by them may give a special training to young people who devote themselves to administrative and military careers. The administration and the army belong, in fact, exclusively to the jurisdiction of governments. It is but just, therefore, that they should be able to give to those who are to belong to them the especial knowledge required for their employment. Only, here, the civil or military authority contracts the same obligations as those which bind the consciences of individuals, to wit, to watch that there be nothing in those schools contrary to religion and to good morals.

Such is the whole doctrine of the Catholic Church with regard to the education of youth in Christian states. Is there not in this organization an ideal which one may justly long to see realized, since it would be the solution of a certain number of problems which strangely perplex our insecurely founded and badly balanced modern communities? Two authorities, each having a distinct object, but united and being mutually the complement one of the other, have the guardianship of human interests--interests of time and interests of eternity. One, the civil authority, has for its direct domain, temporal affairs. The other, the religious authority, commands and directs in all that concerns the supernatural life. The latter, having the responsibility of guiding man from his birth up to his entrance into eternity, educates him, instructs him, and transforms him into a perfect man, into a Christian worthy by his virtues of the destiny which awaits him. The former benefits generations thus formed, and out of these elements, so well prepared to fulfil all the duties of the present life, it constitutes social communities as so many provisional countries, where justice and charity, loyally practised, present an image of the true and final country--Heaven. Thus, the two powers lend to one another a mutual support; the civil power, by securing to the spiritual power a complete liberty of action; and the spiritual power, in its turn, by forming for the state honest and perfect citizens. Thus peace and concord reign throughout the entire society, interests harmonize, justice is loved, order exists everywhere from the highest to the lowest step of the social ladder, and every one, content with his position here on earth, because his hopes are on high, is more intent on making himself better than on overthrowing existing institutions that he may raise himself on their ruins.

Where is to be found, once more we demand, an ideal more grand and more true than this conception of Christian society? The middle ages were not far from realizing it. Unhappily, a work so well begun at the inspiration of the church, first legists, courtiers of the civil power, afterwards Protestantism and its direct off-shoot, rationalism, were fain to interrupt it, and gradually to throw us back into a state of things which threatens to become worse than paganism or barbarism. There is yet time to return to truth, to right and order, which are impossible to be found except in a society based on Christian principles. But will peoples and legislators have a sufficiently clear perception of their duty and their interest to stay themselves at once on the incline down which they are gliding, and dragging us with them, towards a dark and tempest-threatening future?

IV.--CONDUCT OF THE CHURCH IN NON-CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES.

In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Christianity is the divine afflatus, breathing upon human society to give it a soul and infuse life. Without her there can be in it no true nor prolific life, and every social organization which is not inspired by Christianity is, of necessity, defective and abnormal. The church cannot regard such an organization as a benefit, much less as a progress beyond Christian communities.[177] She deplores it, on the contrary, and she endeavors to persuade people that it would be better for them to submit absolutely to religion, and to take it as the guide and regulator of their social interests. Never has the church concealed her desire, not to lord it over, but to direct communities, to penetrate them with her spirit, to recover the salutary influence over them which is their due, and which they cannot reject without serious injury. The church has never made any mystery of this ambition. Her enemies themselves are witnesses to it, even when they permit themselves, as they too often do, to travesty and calumniate her motives in order to render them odious.

Lamentable, however, as may appear to her to be the inferior position which is allotted to her in modern communities, she does not abandon herself to useless regrets. Without renouncing her inalienable rights, she sets out from a fact which it is not in her power to change, and exhausts her ingenuity in making the best she can of it for the good of souls. The little liberty and influence left to her, she employs to fulfil her ministry; her zeal is inventive to supply by redoubled vigilance the want of her ordinary means in the spiritual government. Must not the work of God be accomplished on earth, in spite of the difficulties, in spite of the impediments of all kinds devised by hell?

Such, then, is the principle which regulates the conduct of the church in states where her authority is disowned. To take into consideration circumstances, established facts; to do nothing brusquely, but using whatever power still remains to her, to exert every effort to ameliorate the situation, to make herself more useful to the faithful and to society. Let us see how she applies this rule to education in non-Christian communities.

We find first the communities wherein the constitution proclaims the liberty of all worships, and their equality before the law. Here, the Catholic Church has ceased to be the religion of the state, which no longer lives in her spirit, no longer accepts her direction in matters of religion and morality, but prefers independence to all the advantages of a union with which it thinks it can dispense. How will the church act in this novel position? In the name of liberty, and of the equal protection accorded to every worship, she demands, first of all, the right of recruiting her ministers, and that of training them according to her own laws; the establishment of large and small seminaries, as well as their administration by the bishops exclusively. This is the first need to satisfy. It is her right, included in her claim to existence.

She demands, moreover, that in the public schools created or authorized by the government, religion be invariably the foundation of education; that the pupils be instructed in the verities of the faith, and that neither atheism nor religious indifferentism be taught there. She demands that at least the primary schools remain denominational--that is to say, specially appropriated to the children of every religion, and that the Catholic clergy have free admission to the schools for Catholics. The preservation of the faith in those young hearts is at stake here; for the church knows by experience the doleful effects of an early education in which religion has not had the principal part. Thus she may, with good right, claim of a government, Christian in name, that it leave to the religions protected by the law this legitimate amount of influence in the education of the people. From the same motives, the church positively rejects the system of non-denominational schools, in which eventuates a jumble of religions fatal to the faith and piety of children. Assuredly Catholics know how to recognize and respect the rights of dissenters, nor do they dream of doing violence to the conscience of any one. Is it not, then, simply common justice that no advantage should be taken of the liberty and equality of the several religions before the law, to hand over Catholic children to a manifest danger of religious perversion and moral ruin?

But this is not all. The principles on which the communities of which we speak rest, permit Catholics to require more. True liberty for a religion consists in its being able to be not only practised by its adherents, but also transmitted in its integrity to succeeding generations, with its beliefs, its precepts, its exterior forms, and, above all, its interior spirit. Now, that is only possible by means of education. It is, then, permitted to the church to demand that liberty be left to families to choose themselves masters worthy of their confidence, and whom they can trust to instruct and educate their children in the principles of the Catholic religion. When the national constitution has already embodied the liberty of instruction in every stage, Catholics make as extensive use of it as they can, and as their peculiar property, imitating in that the shipwrecked man who collects together the waifs saved from the wreck, and out of them tries to rebuild his shattered fortune. If, on the contrary, the monopoly in favor of the state should be embodied in the law, they arm themselves with maxims of natural right, at times even with the commonly accepted ideas of liberty, wherewith to beat down this scandalous monopoly. They know how to set in motion all legal means; and without having recourse, like many of their adversaries, to insurrection or corruption, they succeed, sooner or later, in bringing over public opinion to the side of justice and truth, and in recovering, thus, a portion of the rights which belong to their church, the right of making instructed and conscientious Christians. After that, the church can await from the divine benediction and her own efforts the return of a happier era, for which she exerts all the means at her disposal, by a solid Christian education given to youth, by preaching, and by good example. She will, at least, have neglected nothing to acquit herself of her mission, and to make herself useful even to the communities which repudiate her.

There remains, lastly, the third hypothesis, that of a state separated from the church--that is to say, organized wholly out of the religious idea, a “lay state,” in the full force of that phrase.

We observe, first, that there is more than one degree in this secularization of the state. The first realizes the rationalist idea, according to which governments, respectful towards religion, and allowing absolute liberty, leave the church to organize herself after her fashion, to preach in her temples, to teach in her schools, and to govern the consciences subject to her authority, whilst themselves govern according to the right of rationalism, and without asking counsel of any religious power. It is the dream of more than one liberal, simple enough to believe a perfect equilibrium of human passions to be possible in society, by the sole force of nature and reason. But experience soon dissipates the illusion of so fair a dream. All the degrees of separation between religion and society are soon traversed up to the last, wherein the state, no longer acknowledging creed, church, or religion, announces itself atheist, and forces consciences to the inflexible level of an impious legislation. From thence there is but a step to the proscription of Catholics, and to open persecution.

However, in the conditions of an existence so unpromising what is the conduct of Catholics? What can they do save invoke the common right, and turn against their adversaries the weapons by which the latter dispossessed them? The lay state proclaims liberty for all to speak, write, and teach, as seems good to them. It is in the name of this pretended principle that the church saw herself robbed of almost all her rights and driven from society. Do not imagine that she approves or that she will ever adopt so monstrous an error. But this liberty of speaking, writing, and teaching which you do not refuse to error, is it forbidden to claim it for truth? Truth! It is herself; and her right to speak to the world she holds, not from false maxims inscribed in modern constitutions, but from Jesus Christ, her divine founder. Strong in this right, superior to human constitutions, the church never hesitates to assume in communities the whole space they leave her to occupy, and to extend her action to the uttermost. If they claim to exclude her, she fashions a weapon out of common right. She summons the governments to admit her to the benefit of the universal liberty inscribed in the law, and too profusely lavished on teachers of error. What exception can be taken to this conduct, at once so loyal and so right?

But they charge it against us as an unworthy manœuvre, that we claim for ourselves, in modern communities, and in the name of their principles, a liberty we shall refuse to our adversaries the moment we regain power. In presence of this accusation, the more exalted liberals demand that preventive reprisals be employed in our regard, and that liberty be denied us. The more moderate, affecting a sort of confidence in the stability of their work--or rather, in the impossibility of modern communities ever again returning to the yoke of religion--prefer to show themselves generous, and to vote for liberty even although it be that of Catholics. Touching self-sacrifice, and which it must be owned is no longer in unison with the temperament of contemporary liberalism!

Be that as it may, the accusation is sheer calumny, as facts prove. Neither in the small Swiss cantons, nor in Belgium, where Catholics govern, are dissenters oppressed. If persecution rages anywhere in the two hemispheres, it is where liberalism has planted its banner, and against Catholics. It is something more than ignorance which can accuse us of persecuting tendencies at this time of day. The truth is that social peace has no firmer supporters than Catholics.

We have before asserted, but it is well to repeat it, that the Catholic Church professes and practises the most absolute respect for acquired rights, for conventions concluded and accepted. Thus, for the sake of peace, certain governments have felt themselves obliged to recognize the right of dissenters to live in the state, retaining their beliefs and their religious forms. Liberty of conscience has been proclaimed, the public exercise of all the worships authorized. It is, doubtless, a misfortune that religious unity in society should be broken. The church regrets this misfortune, and her most earnest desire is to see, some day, unity re-established. But is that to say that she wishes violently to change a situation imposed on her by circumstances? that she meditates seizing again, at a blow, and in contempt of acquired rights, the power she enjoyed in better times? By no means. The liberty which the various sects enjoy, for the sake of peace, the Catholic Church respects and knows how to maintain. Dissenters may continue to practise publicly their religion, provided that they trouble neither order nor the tranquillity of the state. Equality of civil and political rights is guaranteed to all citizens, Catholic or not. The same liberty is conceded to them to open schools, and to educate their children according to their beliefs. Nothing, in short, which is just and equitable among fellow-citizens is refused by Catholics to those who do not share their faith. What more do they want? And what is lacking in this conduct to constitute true toleration in mixed communities?

Of Catholics who have become the depositaries of power in these communities the church demands complete liberty to fulfil the duties with which she has been charged by Jesus Christ--the right of organizing herself according to her own laws; of recruiting the sacerdotal ministry and exercising all its functions; of watching over the good education of Catholic youth; of founding and directing schools, colleges, and universities; of having her religious congregations consecrated to prayer, preaching, or education; of being able, in short, to exercise her salutary influence in society, and of being free to devote herself to rendering the people better, better instructed in their duties, and more resolute to fulfil them. As regards non-Catholics, she demands of the government not to substitute license for liberty, but to use its utmost efforts to banish from society two things which are the most hostile to its prosperity and to its happiness: we mean immorality and irreligion. If, later on, differences disappear, if all hearts should unite in the profession of one same faith, it will then be a source of regret to no one that the church resumes her rank, and that society is once more Christian and Catholic.

ARE YOU MY WIFE?

BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.