Chapter III

Foundation of a Literature of Reconstruction, Serial and Scholastic--The _Civiltá Cattolica_: its Views on Education and on Church and State--Tarquini's Political Principles of Pope and King--Measures Preparatory to the Syllabus.

With the year 1850 was commenced a magazine, at the instance of the Jesuits, and under their direction, bearing the title Catholic Civilization (_Civiltá Cattolica_), in opposition to modern civilization. We may here say that the daily organ of the same complexion bears the title of Catholic Unity (_Unitá Cattolica_), in opposition to Italian unity. Above one hundred volumes of the _Civiltá_ have been published; and it must ever be named in connexion with Pius IX as the intimate organ of his policy, and the most complete store of his published records. Perhaps its place in the history of literature is unique. Considering the number of books, serials, and journals, in different languages, of which it is the inspiring force, and considering the modifications it has already succeeded in bringing about in the ideas and even in the organization of the whole Catholic society, they can scarcely be charged with vain boasting who call it the most influential organ in the world. The Jesuit Fathers forming its editorial staff reside close to the Pope's palace, and work under his immediate direction. Dr. Friedrich, during the Vatican Council, told some bishops that if they would understand the Council, they must study it with the _Civiltá_ in their hands. For our part, before reading that remark we had applied the same principle to the entire movement.

The leading idea of the _Civiltá_ is expressed, says the article on the programme, in its title. _Catholic Civilization_ is flag, device, and profession of faith.[10] The substance is civilization, the quality Catholic. Civilization is not polish, but organization in community, under rule. Civilization, after the Catholic ideal, had continued steadily to grow up to the fifteenth century, but was broken in the sixteenth by Lutheranism; was again enfeebled in the seventeenth by Jansenism; yet again was it undermined in the eighteenth by Voltairianism, and now in the nineteenth it is lacerated by Socialism. The evil has actually entered Italy, and even heterodoxy itself threatens to invade the Peninsula. Heresy is, in fact, likely to become connected with that aspiration after national unity by which the people are misled. _Almost everything having been overhauled in heterodox spirit, almost everything must be reconstituted from the foundation._[11] These words express the mission of the new periodical, and of the restored Papacy. They are the original announcement of a policy ever since pursued without flagging.

To reconstitute society according to the Catholic ideal is the single object set forth. "On the brink of social dissolution," the one necessity felt, pressed, reiterated, is that of re-establishing on the Catholic ideal the notion of civilization--that is of the civil system; and of leading back the movement of civilization to that Catholic ideal from which it had been departing for three centuries.[12]

The essential point in this fabric is "the idea of authority." But the idea of authority cannot be restored except by quickening it, and reinforcing it by the Catholic conception. When the divine authority was shaken, men would no longer hear of the human (i.e. when the Papacy was rejected, civil government fell into contempt). The Catholic ideal is idly reproached with absolutism. But, among Catholics, pure monarchy, if not limited by certain conventional checks, is tempered by a higher law, not abstract, but practical, active, and operative. Absolutism in the sense of despotism is the creation of Protestantism and Voltairianism, and if it may sit on the throne of a king, it is more frequently found in constitutional chambers or democratic assemblies.[13] Therefore the one sufficing remedy is the restoration in ruler and subject of the notion of authority according to the Catholic ideal. For this the new organ calls for _a salutary conspiracy, a holy crusade_;[14] two phrases that mean all that has since taken place, and all that has yet to come.

The very first article of the _Civiltá_, after that upon the programme, is on education: "the question which holds all the future destinies of the European nations struggling within its ballot-boxes." With this appreciation of its theme, it takes ground which has since become familiar to Europe, and enunciates principles which have now frequently been reproduced in our own discussions; so that a slight sketch of its reasoning will not be without interest to English readers. The interest is increased by the fact that its aims have steadily gained ground in France. In England, some of them, if not recognized as principles, have been, to a considerable extent, practically embodied, as undetected principles are apt to be.

Beginning with the theme of Freedom of Instruction, it denounces the tyranny and monopoly of the University of France. Had not the spirit of Catholicism, it says, broken the chain, it would soon have become unlawful for one man to tell another the right road, unless he had a bachelor's degree, for doing so was a sort of instruction. The line properly limiting freedom of instruction it finds in the line which divides the truth from falsehood. They who demand liberty of instruction do so in order to teach the truth. But in excluding the teaching of lies, it may be even "necessary to protect children betrayed by the barbarous apathy of their parents."

The writer then asks, But who is to determine what is the lie? Governments? "Until a government can show itself infallible, it must renounce all pretensions to regulate instruction and opinion." The pretension on its part to do so is tyrannical, because interference here is trespassing on the sanctuary, where the truth alone bears rule.

The position that it belongs to a government to fix the limits of freedom of opinion is denounced as having originated in the Reformation, as being Protestant, and, further, as being destitute of foundation. The Church is the moderator of instruction, precisely because she is the infallible moderator of opinions in all that relates to the moral order. Consequently there is in existence a competent, effectual, and revered tribunal. Then follow taunts at journals which complain of communal authorities for giving up their educational rights to the clergy. These are succeeded by jeers at such statesmen as doubt if the liberty of communal authorities extends so far as to give them the right of surrendering their liberty.

The objection is then faced, that liberty may be as justly claimed by the non-Catholic as by the Catholic. Of course, replies the _Civiltá_, the only case in which that question can become a practical one for Catholics is where they form the majority. Is it to be supposed that a majority shall be bound, for the sake of a minority "to pass a law opening all the pits of hell for its fellow-citizens?... With Catholics the liberty of dissidents cannot be a natural right."

The position taken by statesmen, that the Church is not infallible in politics and economy, and that therefore these subjects must be under the control of the State, is first laughed at. It reminds the writer of a musketeer who should say to his general, "I see that your artillery is of no avail against these Alps; let us open upon them with our rifles." After this comes the principle. The assertion that politics and economy ought to be under the control of the State rests on one or other of three errors: (1) Politics and economy do not belong to the moral sciences; or, (2) The moral sciences are not subject to moral laws; or, (3) The Church is not the authentic exponent of moral law. The first of these errors is refuted by every university in Europe, in all of which politics and economy are classed among the moral sciences. The second is a contradiction in terms. The third is a heresy in every Catholic ear.

It will help to a clear understanding of many expressions which must occur hereafter, if the reader, at this stage, will set before his mind's eye the scope of the three principles here asserted. Phillips, a modern lay doctor, quoted by the humblest polemic and the mighty _Civiltá_, in his seven volumes on ecclesiastical law (_Kirchenrecht_), discusses the relations of Church and State at great length. He shows that the Church is supreme and the State subordinate, in all things that come under the _divine laws_. Holtgreven, a Catholic judge, and an opponent of the Falk laws, explains this clearly: "To the divine laws, in this sense, belong, not only the ten commandments, but also the canons of the Church, as the Council of Trent shows. The things subject to the divine laws include all such worldly things as are _connected_ with morality."[15]

This much is conceded by the _Civiltá_, that, if danger to the public interests should arise from false teaching of any _material_ science, the government may interfere, as it would in a case of adulteration of food. The Church is not infallible in material instruction.

The article, it will be seen, claims the right to take the teaching of the child out of the hand of the parent, and that of the subject out of the hand of the State.[16] The latter may mix itself up in the matter as to material things, not as to moral. Royal supremacy, in university, college, seminary, or primary school, must not be allowed. It has the twofold evil of setting the authority and responsibility of the parent for his child above that of the priest, and of setting the local authority of the national ruler above the all-embracing authority of the universal one. The State is not only welcome to appear in school, but ought to appear in its subordinate capacity, finding money, secular status, and instruction in _material_ things. But in all that part of schooling which may be called education in the higher sense, of a father, a Christian, or a king, the State is not to have a word to say.

It would seem difficult to ask a community to do an action involving a more serious disregard of moral considerations than to find money and power for schools and colleges, and not have a word to say as to the principles taught in them. We are far from ascribing such a disregard of moral considerations to a devout Ultramontane. On the contrary, he is persuaded that the State, in committing its money and authority to the Church, takes not only the highest human guarantee, but a truly divine one, for the protection of every moral interest. The motto of the article is a sentence intimating that, all over Europe, the question of the future must be the establishment of universities canonically instituted.[17]

In order to the _restoration of ideas_ now undertaken, as preparing the way for the _restoration of facts_, it was a practical necessity to establish an invariable association between the two ideas of the only Judge of true and false, the only Arbiter of right and wrong, and the one holy Roman Church. This association could not be established so well by any arrangement as by making each school an arena on which every day the authority of both the parent and the State should be--not pranced upon, not even trampled upon, but serenely and devoutly walked over, by what M. Veuillot calls the crushing sandals of the monk.

* * * * *

Another article in the first volume of the _Civiltá_ gives such expression to the principles which underlie the whole struggle ever since conducted, that some account of it will do more to put the reader in possession of certain of those principles than formal explanations. It is on the central question of the relations of Church and State; or, as the _Civiltá_ puts it, of the separation of Church and State--a phrase which, like almost every other, has a different meaning in its pages from what it has with us. The following headings give an idea of the drift of the article: "6. The nation is a part of the Church." "7. The part ought to be subordinate to the whole." "8. Because the Church has authority." "9. The authority of jurisdiction."[18]

_I believe in the holy Catholic Church_, in the Apostles' Creed, is thus interpreted: "I believe that every Catholic individual and nation forms a part of the Catholic society, and that only by virtue of its being a part does it partake of the benefit of the whole, through being subordinated to the laws of the whole."

On the point of jurisdiction, the writer first unearths "the serpent," which is the notion that the Church may judge about sins, virtues, doctrines, rites, and such-like, but must not touch temporal jurisdiction. This serpent he proceeds to kill. First, he solemnly appeals to the faith of the reader. "Do you believe that the Church is infallible in dogmatic Bulls, at least, unless they are formally rejected by the episcopate?" After this, he resorts to pleasantry: "Come close to me, and I will tell it in your ear. The Bull of John XXII condemned John Gianduno and Marsilius of Padua as heretics, because they denied to the Church the right of punishing by corporal pains, and it declared that she could inflict pains even unto death.[19] But I tell you this in secret, solely that you may know what is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, which you profess--doctrine put in practice through very many centuries, down to the last Council (Trent), which fulminated I know not how many penalties, and material ones, even against counts, marquises, princes, and emperors. Woe to us if they should hear us!" Thus jauntily did those who had only just been reinstated by foreign arms treat the neo-Catholic doctrine, or, as it has since been called, the Liberal Catholic one. "I tell you plainly," adds the writer, "that if the Church cannot rule her sons, even in material things, the Church is lost; at least, the Catholic Church. She might survive as that invisible Church which was discovered by Luther among the ruins of the middle ages, and, reconstructed as the _amphitherium_ and _palæotherium_, were discovered in the geological strata, and reconstructed by Cuvier."

Addressing kings, the writer solemnly counsels them to bring forth all their codes, and pass them under a careful examination. But the light by which such examination is to be conducted must be that "of pure Catholicism, to which all other legislation must be subordinated. Restore every article of your code, according to the articles of your creed, not only in what relates to the duties of subjects, but also in what would seem to diminish the rights of rulers. And that the Catholic influence, which modifies codes, may shine in all its fulness, _let it not be ministers or legists, but bishops and the Pontiff, who shall minutely search into your legislation for every anti-Catholic element_."

The theocratic Papal polity might have been almost intentionally framed to contrast with the first principles of the Mosaic theocratic polity. The latter, put in one word, seems to be this: God as the general Father is the great right-holder, and He identifies the rights of every creature with His own, identifying at the same time their welfare with His own glory. Therefore He leaves no creature to the care of a Vicar, no province to any departmental divinity. Every act done for the benefit of our fellow-creatures He reckons as a tribute to Himself. Every infringement of their rights He treats as an offence against Himself. Every man was taught to see, not an abstract principle, but a great Father standing beside the gleaning widow, the supperless hireling, the pauper forced to pawn, and having no second coat--was taught to hear this common Father saying for these to happier neighbours, "I am the Lord." Every man tempted to lie, cheat, steal, oppress, seduce, or strike, saw the same great Father rising up against him, and saying, "I am the Lord."

It was of the essence of this theocracy that all who held authority did so by and under a written law in the vulgar tongue. Of this law every father in his own house was made the guardian, and in it he was the responsible instructor of his children. Every prophet professing that he bore a fresh message was to be brought to the test of this written law. Those who were to apply the test were the men of the whole community. Every one who claimed to bear a special commission was bound first to conform to the law, and secondly, to show signs of special divine power. It was a theocracy of direct divine government, not of government by a Vicar; a theocracy of written law, not of arbitrary will styling itself authority; a theocracy of private judgment, not of a veda shut up from the low caste, to be read and interpreted only by the twice-born Brahman. Finally, it was a theocracy in which whatever came from God became its own witness by benefits to God's children not to be mistaken, and obvious to all.

The statement made in the _Civiltá_ as to the guidance under which the reactionary policy in Austria was devised, gives light upon the duties then engrossing nuncios and confessors at the various Courts where Papal influence was powerful. All that appeared to the world was, that at every one of those Courts a cold current of reaction set in and ran strong. The Jesuits took it for a tide, and the bark of St. Peter was to sail cheerily over all the shoals. But the Liberal Catholics were proportionably disquieted as to the prospects of the Church. The first days of Pius IX had fired them with hope that Rome might yet be fit to face three things of which she was shy--the Bible, History, and Freedom. But the advent of the Jesuits to power caused serious forebodings, which soon began to be realized. To quote the memorable words of Montalembert, "Who could have thought that the clergy, after crying out for liberty in Belgium, would turn round as they did in 1852, till we found them beating down all our liberties and privileges--in fact, all our ideas--as held in times preceding Napoleon III?"[20]

We now find that at the time when the Pontiff was using his clergy to help kings in taking away constitutional rights from their subjects, he was himself preparing to take from the kings what they indeed looked upon as rights, but what he regarded in the light of constitutional concessions, infringing the higher rights of their divinely appointed suzerain. When the Italian government took possession of the _Collegio Romano_, it was found that the Jesuits had left in the great library of the establishment little belonging to the present pontificate. One pamphlet is of some significance. A manuscript note on the title-page proudly tells how his Holiness wished to have it circulated as widely as possible. It also adds that on February 1, 1853, when the fathers of the _Collegio Romano_ stood before his Holiness, he singled out the author, Father Camillo Tarquini, in presence of the other Jesuits and of the Court, and addressed him thus: "Father Tarquini, I am delighted; bravo! well done! I confirm it, and confirm it with all my heart."[21] This was an early foretoken of the purple in which Tarquini died. He is the writer to whom Cardinal Manning appeals, as softening the doctrine of Bellarmine and Suarez to a temper fitter for our times. The pamphlet signalized by this display of favour aims at proving the wickedness of kings in subjecting the bulls, briefs, or any acts whatever of the Pope, to a _placet_, _exequatur_, or other form of royal assent, before recognizing them as having the force of law in their States. This is one form of the error of regalism.

The power of the Pontiff, argues Father Tarquini, is this--What he binds on earth is bound in heaven. But if the king, stepping in, says, To bind implies the force of law, and your acts shall not acquire the force of law without my _placet_, how then? Why, the Pontiff becomes the one really bound. The king refuses to allow the pontifical judgments to take effect of themselves. It is not with him "said on earth and done in heaven." His _placet_ must intervene.

It is competent, indeed, he admits to the Pontiff, to _grant_ a right of _placet_; but such a right, founded on the grace of a Pope, cannot be confounded with one inherent in the crown. We quote the following in full:--"You say that the _placet_ is a real right, demanded by justice, and essential to political government. The Church condemns it by a series of judgments, perhaps without parallel in her history, extending from her foundation down to Pius IX. She expressly defines it, with Leo X, Clement VII, Clement XI, and Benedict XIV, as opposed to all justice, as indecent, absurd, rash, scandalous, as insufferable depravity, and worthy of eternal pain. Therefore she punishes it with the greatest of penalties, the anathema.

"In this matter there is no middle course. You must either lay aside the mask of Catholicism, which no longer becomes you, and boldly avow that the Church has defined good as evil, justice as injustice, an inherent right of the crown as an absurdity and a wrong, and done so in a judgment perpetuated from her foundation to our own day; or you must, on the other hand, confess that you are in an error not to be tolerated."

Thus it seems that what with a Christian minister would only be a claim to announce the belief and the moral precepts which he found in the Holy Scriptures, becomes with the Roman Pontiff a claim to put his decree on any matter which he deems conducive to the good of "the Church" into the form of law, and to set it up without, or in spite of, but anyhow above, the national law, be it republican, royal, or imperial. This boundless pretension--for boundless it is--will often be found gently expressed as the right of the Pontiff _to communicate with the faithful_.

The writer then asks what, from his point of view, would seem to be a natural question. Would kings like the Pope to demand that his _placet_ should be required before their laws came into force?[22] He replies that some of them have so far unlearned "Christian doctrine as to say that, in case the Pope did so, he would usurp sovereign rights in their States." But such a proposition is heretical, pronounced to be so by the Holy Office in 1654, with the approbation of Innocent X.[23] By virtue of this, even our children know that the Church presided over and governed by the Vicar of Christ is a kingdom which has the ends of the earth for its bounds. Therefore it belongs to the Vicar of Christ to make laws in all parts of the world for her welfare and for her government.

Liberal Catholics trembled for the consequences to Church and State of Jesuit Court confessors and far-aiming but short-seeing plans. They knew that the devout Jesuit calls upon all to regard the Papal government as the model for the whole world; and that if statesmen and jurists could be replaced by Jesuits at the various Courts, a combination of plan and an unity of action might be secured everywhere for a great movement to establish the dominion of Christ in a higher degree than the Thirty Years' War did in Austria and Bohemia.

There is a point illustrated in this pamphlet which seems to enter into the English head more slowly than any other. We mean the conscientious view of a true Ultramontane as to what constitutes religious liberty, or violates it. Englishmen sometimes not only transfer their own views on this subject to Ultramontanes, but betray the feeling that they are generous in doing so. It is never generous, or even just, to ascribe views to a man which he religiously condemns. If the Englishman will clearly set before his mind the first postulate of the Ultramontane, that God has appointed a vicar upon earth, to whom He has committed all power, surely he will see that religious liberty must principally consist in the freedom of that vicar to do all which he conceives it to be in his province to do, and in the freedom of those who receive his commands to carry them out, exactly according to his intentions. If any king or nation limits his freedom to act and command, "the Pope becomes the one really bound." The Englishman may say that, on this principle, no guarantee is left for any liberty but that of the Pontiff, or of those who represent authority derived from him. But that is precisely what the Ultramontane does not believe.

On the contrary, he holds that the highest guarantee for all legitimate liberty lies in the complete freedom of the Pontiff. No liberty can be legitimate that consists in exemption, or assumed exemption, from divine authority. And further, the authority of the Vicar of God, being exercised under unfailing guidance, is not liable to commit violations of any right.

We thus see begun the movement for the restoration of ideas, as preparatory to the restoration of facts. Ranke has traced the course of the "ecclesiastical restoration," which was rendered necessary by the damage inflicted on Rome by the Reformation, without being careful to mark the principles or to track the processes by which "restoration" was effected in Bohemia, Austria, Spain, Italy, and France. That restoration, however, had been real and momentous. A second restoration had taken place after the wreck of the French Revolution, when the Papacy had been smitten by its own sons. It was the pride of the clergy to cite the fact that the rulers of England and Prussia had co-operated in that restoration, as proof that the Papal throne was even in Protestant eyes the central point of order. Now a third restoration was to be effected--one which would do all that had been left undone by the other two. The Pope's throne was not only to be reared up again in Rome, but was to be gradually elevated to a spiritual supremacy equal to the highest claimed in former Bulls, and to a temporal supremacy as complete as when Hildebrand triumphed at Canossa.

The first of these restorations had been fought out with the weapons of the Inquisition and the war-plots of the Jesuits. The second had been fought out with the weapons of the Liberal Catholics, borrowed from the Reformation and the Modern State. When the Jesuits had pushed, not too far, but untimely far, they were for the day disowned; not, however, as inimical to the Church, but as hateful to the nations, and as, therefore, lowering the credit of the Church with the outside world. Now had come the moment when the Liberal Catholics, having done their work, were in turn to be disowned; but on other grounds. They were to be cast out as children of the world, infected with principles subversive of the "kingdom of God," of that polity in which the priest of God is the king of men, and the affairs of an erring race are unerringly guided by consecrated hands.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: _Civiltá_, vol. 1. p. 13.]

[Footnote 11: Ibid. p. 15.]

[Footnote 12: Ibid. p. 13.]

[Footnote 13: Ibid. pp. 20, 21.]

[Footnote 14: Ibid. p. 14.]

[Footnote 15: _Holtgreven_, p. 9.]

[Footnote 16: _Civiltá_, vol. i. pp. 25-51.]

[Footnote 17: Ibid.]

[Footnote 18: Vol. i. p. 647.]

[Footnote 19: Cardinal Tarquini (_Institutiones_, p. 35, ed. 4th), whom Cardinal Manning, in his reply to Mr. Gladstone (p. 94), names as teaching differently on such points from the earlier Jesuits, Bellarmine and Suarez, quotes this case, saying that the Bull in question "more particularly attributes to the Church that which is the special property of a perfect society, the power of coercion, even to the use of material force; but Marsilius, who denied this, was on that account condemned as a heretic." His words are, "_Quod maxime proprium est societatis perfectæ, jus potestatis coactivæ etiam quoad inferendam vim materialem; Marsilius autem, qui hæc ipsa negabat damnatur eam ob rem ut hæreticus_."]

[Footnote 20: Letter quoted in _Unitá Cattolica_, March 10, 1870. _Friedbergh_, p. 120.]

[Footnote 21: _Del Regio Placet_: Dissertazione del P. Camillo Tarquini, D.C.D.G. ... Estratto dagli Annali delle Scienze Religiose, Roma, 1852. Tipografia della Rev. Cam. Apostolica.

The note in manuscript on the title-page is as follows: "S.S. Pio IX Voile che presente dissertazione si diffondesse quanto più si potea; e nel di, 1 Febbrajo, 1853, veduto l'autore dissegli alla presenza della sua corte e degli altri Padri del Collegio Romano. P. Tarquini me rallegro, bravo, bene. Confermo, e confermo di tutta volonta."]

[Footnote 22: "It would be very natural that the Church which makes laws from God Himself should demand of the State that it should make no law for her subjects to which she had not previously given her approbation."--_Phillips_, ii. 577.]

[Footnote 23: "In 1644, the Holy Office, in a decree approved by Innocent X, condemned as schismatical and heretical the proposition which asserts that, when the Pontiffs promulge their decrees in places subject to the dominion of other temporal princes, they promulge laws in territories that are not theirs."--_Civiltá_, Serie VII. vol. vi. p. 292. Tarquini says 1654 (_Inst._, p. 159), the _Civiltá_ 1644.]