Chapter IV

Princes, Ministers, and their Confessors--Montalembert's part in the Revival--His Posthumous Work on Spain--Indignation against the New Assumptions--Debate of Clergy in Paris on the Lawfulness of Absolving a Liberal Prince or Minister--Wrath at Rome--True Doctrines taught to Darboy and his Clergy.

In proportion as this Popery of physical force came into view, did the mental stress of Catholics who had put their faith in finer forces increase.

Chateaubriand, who played a brilliant part in the Catholic reaction which followed the great French Revolution, especially in that phase of the movement which aimed at linking together, in the imagination, Rome and ideas and hopes now dear to mankind, left a work, at his death, which he called _Memoirs from Beyond the Grave_--_Memoires d'outre Tombe_. Montalembert, who played a still more brilliant part in the Catholic reaction which followed the Revolution of 1830, also left behind him a work, to appear after his death. In that work we can trace the pains of a representative mind, showing what must have been those of multitudes at the time of which we now write.

Montalembert saw, in "the absolutist politics, the retrospective fanaticism, the embittered hostility to all modern ideas and institutions, flaunted everywhere by the religious press,"[114] not only a blot on the cause, which had been his life-passion--a passion of feminine flame but of masculine vigour--but also a personal wound. It made his past look like a well-played hypocrisy. He had enthusiastically and victoriously argued for Catholicism under plea of liberty. "I neither can nor will," he cries, "keep silence, as to the monstrous articles published this very year (1868) by the _Civiltá Cattolica_ against liberty in general, and precisely against those Liberal Catholics who, like me, have had the _naïveté_ in the Parliamentary tribune to assert the rights of the Jesuits, and cause them to triumph in the name of liberty."[115]

On the second anniversary of that mysterious Thursday in February 1848, when King Louis Philippe, of the Tuileries, suddenly changed into Mr. Smith in a street cab on the way to exile, Montalembert and Thiers pleaded in the National Assembly for "freedom of instruction" on behalf of the Jesuits. "It was only," says our orator, "in the name of liberty, of modern constitutions, of modern liberty, of the liberty of conscience, of the Press, and of the tribune, that we made the claim." He adds that the victory was won only by Thiers brandishing the text of the Republican constitution in the face of the furious Mountain, a constitution proclaiming equal freedom of worship and association to all. The italics are his own--

"We were all wrong, it is clear. In sound theology M. Renan alone
was right--he and the like of him who maintained that Catholicism,
and above all, the Jesuits, were absolutely incompatible with
liberty. Only--we ought to have been told it _then_. It was _then_,
and not now, that they ought to have taught us that liberty was a
_plague_, instead of taking advantage of it, and that by our help,
in order, twenty years later, to come insulting and repudiating
both it and us, at one and the same time.

I have long passed the age of disappointments and passionate
emotions, but I declare on reading these bare-faced palinodes
I have reddened to the white of my eyes, and shivered to the
ends of my nails. I am no longer child enough to complain of the
inconsistencies of men in general, or of Jesuits in particular, but
I loudly say that this tone of the puppy and the pedant (_ce ton de
faquin et de pédagogue_), employed towards old defenders, all of
whom are not dead, and in respect of old struggles, which may be
renewed to-morrow, does not become either monks or reputable men.
It may be perfectly orthodox. In matters of theology I am no judge,
but I think I am a judge in a matter of honour and decency; and I
declare it is perfectly indecent."

We give but one more extract from this unconscious palinode of the high-souled Montalembert, who could not even then see that the Liberal Catholicism of his ideal was a generous phantasy, irreconcilable with the Popery of Rome, as much so as was his beloved parliamentary system in politics with the Second Empire. No more could he see that Pope and Jesuit were true to themselves in urging their old and fixed principles, and had been equally true to themselves in using instruments like him so long as they struck or stayed their hand at "the beck of the priest," and in disowning them so soon as they set up to keep a conscience for themselves, "as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up." He and his friend Lacordaire carried to Rome the large ideas of a great people, and bathed the quaint figures of the Curia, and the quaint objects of the city, in the tropical light of their own genius, just as Lamartine had done with the withered remnants of the East. After such pictures as Montalembert had drawn in his books, and his speeches, of his ideal Catholic Church, it must have been mortifying to have, in age and sickness, to write as follows--

"Certainly, a strange way has been invented of serving religion, of
making the modern world accept, comprehend, and love it. One might
say that they treat the Church like one of those wild beasts that
are carried about in menageries. Look at her, they seem to say, and
understand what she means, and what is her real nature! To-day, she
is in a cage, tamed and broken in, by force of circumstances. She
can do no harm for the present; but understand that she has paws
and tusks, and if ever she is let loose you will be made to know
it" (p. 641).

As he wrote this sad passage, in all probability there would rise before his imagination one of the most memorable scenes in the life of any orator. When glorifying the return of the Pope to Rome, restored by French force, and deprecating any attempt at a conflict with the Church, he said that from any such conflict only dishonour could result, as to a strong man would result dishonour from a combat with a woman. And then, turning upon his audience, he said, "The Church is more than a woman; the Church is a mother," with a gush and a power which produced such a scene as perhaps has hardly ever been witnessed in any parliamentary assembly. And both ideals were quite sincere. The Church of Montalembert's imagination was a mother; the Church of the _Civiltá Cattolica_ is a dam, holding to her young while they continue in sheer dependence, treating them as strangers when they can take care of themselves. His Church is the dream of an exceptional few, the Church of the _Civiltá_ is the strong reality.

The articles which called forth this protestation of Montalembert, were among the most curious even of the _Civiltá_. They dealt with France--Paris and Darboy. On February 5, 1868, the Archbishop of Paris held a conference of his clergy in the Church of Saint Rocque, and there argued the following case of conscience. By some exceptional feat of the worst of all evil genii, Publicity, the discussion, and its result, were reported in the _Patrie_; and this indiscretion caused the world for once to gain a real peep into the consultations in the judges' chambers, behind the _internal tribunal_.

"A man engaged in politics," says the case of conscience, "declares
to his confessor that he has no intention of renouncing the
doctrines which prevail among modern nations, the principal points
of which are, liberty of worship, liberty of the Press, and the
action of the State in mixed affairs. The confessor asks if he is
to grant absolution to a penitent in this state of mind, or to deny
it."--_Civiltá_, VII. ii. 151.

The reasoning ascribed to the supposed penitent is the following--

You, as my confessor, have not the right to lay on me as you
would on a private man, the duty of devoting a certain day, and
of adopting certain means for the conversion of this or that
person. Doubtless, I ought, by word and example, to lay myself out
for the conversion and edification of my neighbour; but it rests
with me as a free agent to select the means and to discern the
opportunity. In like manner, you cannot order me as politician,
legislator, or prince, to take, this very day, this or that
measure, against blasphemy for example, or Sunday labour, or the
licence of the Press. Lay it upon me to attend to the propagation
of righteousness and truth; but leave it to me to judge of the
opportunity, and to choose the means. And, I pray you, consider
the grounds of my opinions. In the first place, whenever we speak
or act, we have on one side the truth and right, which certainly
ought to be respected; but on the other side we have fitness and
opportunity, of which also we must take account, if we would speak
to good purpose. Now, in this respect, I know better than any other
what I can do, and what I cannot, in my family, or in a political
assembly, or in the nation. In the next place, perhaps you do not
see the absurdity which would follow the opposite opinion. It
would follow that you had the right to decide and _regulate all
my actions_, because into every one of them _morality may enter_;
and every one of them may be connected with religion. You would be
able to dictate my will, to tell me what vote I ought to give, to
determine whether I am to declare peace or war. Mere trifles, you
say. But what, in that case, would temporal power be, but a passive
instrument of the spiritual power, and a mere machine? These are
the reasons why I stand to my old notions on this point, and have
no thought of changing them for others.

In this case, as thus put, and in the ensuing discussion, we see the confessor of a king or minister preparing to meet his "penitent." In the language of Montalembert, we see the feeling of a politician in facing the "tribunal," under an Ultramontane confessor; and in the papers of the _Civiltá_ we see the glaring eye of Rome searching out every movement of the one and the other.

The case being thus stated, both as to its substance and as to the reasoning of the supposed penitent, the discussion began. Abbé Michaud, of the Madeleine, maintained that the confessor ought to grant absolution. Abbé G----, a Dominican, maintained that he ought not to do so. Archbishop Darboy now and then interfered, to moderate the opposition of the latter. The Abbé Falcimagne interrupted the Archbishop, declaring that he would deny the absolution, for the supposed penitent was unworthy of it. Finally, the Abbé Hamon, Curé of Saint Sulpice, read out four conclusions, which were fully accepted by the Archbishop, and which allowed the confessor to grant the absolution. The _Opinion Nationale_ and other journals said that this conclusion showed to how little the condemnations of the Syllabus amounted.

Both the conclusion and the grounds on which it was rested gave huge offence at Rome. The _Civiltá_ was not content with less than five long articles, making ninety octavo pages. It is in these that the things are set forth which fired the embers of Montalembert's true love of liberty, and damped his dying hope of ever seeing his ideal Catholicism and actual Popery seated on the same throne. We need not quote the passages which are echoed in his indignant repudiation; but we give a few others, which show that, strongly as we have seen him put the case, he was not guilty of any injustice. The Abbé Michaud said that the liberty condemned was not moderate liberty, but unbounded liberty.[116] The _Civiltá_ took it for granted that he could not have been sincere.

"Similar to liberty of worship, is that worst of liberties,
never sufficiently execrated or abhorred--liberty of the Press,
which some dare to invoke and promote with so much clamour." It
continues--"In respect of religion and the Press, it is idle to
distinguish between two sorts of liberty, one wise and the other
unbridled, as the Abbé did. In such matters, all liberty is a
delirium and a pestilence. There is no healthy man's delirium;
all delirium is that of a sick man. There is no praiseworthy and
harmless plague; every plague is deadly.... Hence, it is never a
decent thing to introduce such liberty into a civil community. It
is only permissible to tolerate it in certain cases, in the same
way that a pest is tolerated" (p. 160).

The Abbé Michaud had said that, in mixed questions, the State interfered by _the same right as the Church_! Such an utterance savoured of our bad times. It was infected with the idea of the independence of the civil power in regard to the ecclesiastical. This idea was born with Protestantism; but it has been received by some Catholics, sincere, it is true, though not discerning.

It is true that the temporal prince is invested with supreme power
and authority, in his order; but from this it follows only that
he is not subject to any other earthly power. It does not follow
that his authority, sovereign in its order, cannot be subject and
is not subject to another authority of a more perfect order; that
is, the spiritual.... It is necessary that whoever holds power,
even sovereign, for temporal rule shall be regulated by the Roman
Pontiff (pp. 161-63).

So far for the independence of the State. Now as to its right of intervention in mixed questions, and above all, as to the defining of limits between the two powers--

The State ought first to learn, from the Church, what are mixed
questions, that it may not take spiritual matters for mixed ones,
confounding both the one and the other with those which are called
temporal ones. Each separate kind of corn must be tied up into a
separate sheaf. The State ought to arrange with the Church every
time it puts a hand to what is temporal in these mixed matters, in
order that it may not violate what is spiritual.

The _Civiltá_ quotes M. Renan, where he shows how the Syllabus has proved his assertion of 1848. "The Syllabus is a luminous demonstration of the proposition I maintained, that Catholicism and liberty are two things incompatible." The _Civiltá_ adds that, in order to know this fact, M. Renan did not need to be a profound theologian, but only needed to read the works of any author sincerely Catholic. It points out that the Liberal Catholics fancy that the Popes, in condemning liberty of worship and of the Press, only spoke of part of the subject, that is, of some sorts of liberty; and that it was, therefore, some liberty, not all, that they called madness, poison, and pestilence. But the Popes, asserts the _Civiltá_, on the contrary, thought that all liberty of worship and of the Press bore those characters (p. 314).

The Abbé Falcimagne insisted (p. 316) that the supposed penitent should be at once treated as a sick man, and as being not of sound reason--

He comes to submit himself to my tribunal, and at the same time
rejects my authority. To see how far I can yield to his spiritual
infirmity I must see how far the authority of the confessor over
the penitent extends. On this point, I shall cite the words of
Domenico Soto, who, after hearing the confession of Charles
V, said, "So far, you have confessed the sins of Charles; now
confess those of the Emperor." Soto at least thought that the
actions of his penitent, although they belonged to the political
order, nevertheless came within the cognizance of his tribunal.
Our patient is of a diametrically opposite opinion. He will not
recognize in me the right of judging him in what touches doctrine
and morals indirectly. But I hold that, as confessor, I have a
right to judge my penitent, be he a legislator, or even a prelate
of the Church, in things pertaining to dogmas and morals, and
to prohibit what is contrary to either, whether directly or
indirectly. So I can command him to cease from holding presumptuous
tenets.

The Archbishop then asked the Abbé Falcimagne, requesting him to give a direct answer, if he had a right to order his penitent to leave a hundred thousand francs in his will to be distributed among the poor. To this the Abbé Falcimagne made no reply. He said the point now was to know whether the penitent, who would not renounce his modern ideas as to liberty, was or was not guilty of presumption, _temerarius_. "Guilty of presumption," replied the Archbishop, "is that confessor who lays his hands on temporal things, assessing what he has no right to assess." "But," retorted Falcimagne, "I have the right to judge my penitent as to his disposition; and if he comes to me, and says that he wishes to maintain his principles, and declares that I have not a right to judge him, I tell him that his pretensions are illegitimate; that his reason is disordered by modern principles; and that, if he will not renounce those principles, I cannot absolve him."

The _Civiltá_ thinks that, at this point, they came to the heart of the matter. On one side they began to allege that the confessor could not require his penitent to renounce his opinions unless they were heretical, or were opinions condemned by the Church. A very false doctrine! exclaims the oracle; for, in addition to heretical opinions, a true Catholic must renounce many others--those, for instance, which are proximate to heresy; those which are presumptuous, scandalous, and all indeed that are offensive to pious ears. The teaching power of our Church is not merely infallible, and not only does it define with infallibility when defining articles of faith, but also when defining any truth, scientific or practical, political or historical, which is connected, in any manner whatever, with dogma and morals; and whoever would be a sincere Catholic must conform not only in respectful silence, but with interior assent of the intellect (p. 318).

The _Civiltá_ proceeds to quote the opinions of the "good journals" of Italy, laying stress on the point that the opinions held by the supposed penitent could not be probable opinions--being in fact those which were already condemned in the Syllabus. It proceeds with great vigour to maintain that the Syllabus was the decree, not only of the Pope, but also of the five hundred bishops who had adhered to it last year (1867). Of these, the _Civiltá_ correctly says that Darboy himself was one. It next contributes an important item of information, which completes the evidence of the perfect and formal ecclesiastical authority of all the condemnations of the Syllabus, on either theory of the constitution of the Church, the Papal or the Episcopal. After the address of the five hundred bishops present in Rome, all the absent ones, asserts the _Civiltá_, sent in their adhesion by letter, which they hastened to forward to this Roman chair, where, with the living Pontiff, resides the "spirit of truth" (p. 324). Hence it draws the inference, which is a just conclusion, if we may say so, in the face of a hundred English writers who, following an old tradition, when reviewing what Dr. Newman put upon paper on this subject, called it logical.

"This penitent (says the great organ of the Vatican), openly
opposes the teaching power of the Church, whether that teaching
power is considered as being exercised by the Bishop of Rome alone,
or as being exercised by him in conjunction with all the bishops of
Christendom. That teaching power has pronounced in the one mode and
in the other, and has proscribed those opinions. In both ways has
it condemned opinions, not imaginary or belonging to bygone times,
but opinions which to-day, and under our eye, are pertinaciously
maintained and reduced to practice" (p. 324).

Returning with intense earnestness to this point, it says (p. 543)--

The universal Bishop has spoken alone, and further, he has spoken
conjointly with the bishops of the particular Churches. To
contradict after this, is in effect to separate oneself from the
whole of the pastors, and from him who is supreme among them all.

This is not enough. Some pages later, hesitation, on this question so vital to practical government, is again censured, in replying to the plea that the supposed penitent might be worthy of absolution on the ground of invincible ignorance--

We shall never tell him that ignorance consists in this, namely,
that after he has read the Encyclical and the Syllabus, and re-read
them, he could not understand that the modern opinions, which
he retained, have been truly condemned, or that they have been
condemned rightfully. This is not ignorance. It is an error and a
pertinacity proper to a man not far removed from heresy. In this
case, we once more repeat, confession is not the thing wanted. The
first elements of the faith, and of the Catholic profession, have
to be set straight in this man's head (p. 547).

It would almost seem as if Montalembert was personally pointed at in the two later articles. It is not a little curious to learn here that his bosom friend, Lacordaire, long the charm of the French pulpit, was called to Rome in 1850 to answer for his doctrine. The points on which he had to set himself right with Rome were anything but, in our sense, religious ones: (1) The coercive power of the Church; (2) The origin of sovereignty; and (3) The temporal power of the Pope. He did set himself right. Father Jandel, the General of the Dominicans, exulting over his answer on the question touching the coercive power, says, "It avenges his memory from the suspicion of complicity with certain opinions which some Catholics would fain shelter under the authority of his name."[117] Avenges his memory! It proves that whatever Lacordaire believed, he submitted to write as his own the doctrine of Rome, that the Church has power to "employ external force," and to inflict bodily pains. And so France sees the memory of her Bossuet held up to reproach, and the memory of her Lacordaire yoked by the Dominican General to his beloved Inquisition. She sees her Montalembert driven from public life, assailed, yea, reviled, while living, preparatory to being insulted when dead.

Any one acquainted with the high spirit and immense emotional force of Montalembert, can imagine his reddening and shivering at finding the following among the citations from Renan to prove that the sceptic understood the doctrine of "Catholicism" better than its professed friends in France--

The remedy applied by the Church of Rome to the liberty of worship
and liberty of thought is the Inquisition. The Councils have
established and approved the Inquisition, the Fathers and bishops
have counselled and practised it. The Inquisition is the logical
outgrowth of the whole orthodox system, and the quintessence of the
spirit of the Church.[118]

Strongly as our sympathies are with Montalembert and Darboy, we feel that, so long as the Jesuits have to prove that persecution is the doctrine and has been the practice of the Church, they have it all their own way against the Liberal Catholics, till they creep up to the early ages.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 114: _L'Espagne et la Liberté._ Bibliothèque Universelle de Lausanne, 1876, p. 626.]

[Footnote 115: Ibid. p. 635.]

[Footnote 116: _Civiltá Cattolica_, VII, ii. p. 150 ff.]

[Footnote 117: Serie VII. vol. iii. p. 65.]

[Footnote 118: Serie VII. vol. iii. p. 56.]