FRENCH CATHOLICISM.
"rpm religious question is at the bottom of all contemporaneous
.1 problems." We sincerely rejoice at seeing, at last, this important truth authoritatively acknowledged in France. While in Protestant and politically free countries the religions question takes the harmless shape of theological discussion, and leads at the worst to the social persecution of independent divines, the whole groundwork of society is shaking where Catholicism has for centuries held unrestricted sway. In France especially, after Arany political and social revolutions, authority and progress are again face to face, and the old strife between the past and the future is reducing itself to a death -struggle between religious liberty and Catholic supremacy. The Roman difficulty, which may finally prove the stumbling-block of the Second Empire, forces that question on the attention of the most indifferent egotist ; and. the "irrepressible conflict" which an American statesman pre- dicted long ago, speaking of slavery and freedom, is near at hand, in the very heart of Europe, between conscience and clerical power.
Even under a repressive system, universal preoccupations, which not only relate to mankind in general, but concern also- the welfare of every individual, must of needs vent themselves in the press. It may, therefore, prove of interest slightly to dwell on three recent publications, exhibiting the different aspects under which the religious question presents itself to the mind and affects the heart of French Catholics. We leave for a moment out Of consideration the aggressive works published by the vehement sons of Voltaire and the Encyclopardists, who renew in our days the merciless crusade of the eighteenth century against the Church of Rome ; and we pass over in silence the pamphlets which take merely the political bearing of the subject into account. We simply intend to attract the notice of our readers to three books, written by three Catholics, differing so widely from one another that they may well represent, for our purpose, the great parties which divide their communion. These parties comprise,, first, a minority of apostles of a free church ; second, the bulk of learned but peaceful priests, who, whilst bewailing the dead indif- ferentism of the present time, which they contrast with the living faith of the past, advise the meek ways of moderation and dream of a return to mild Gallicanism ; and, third, the uncompromising, garrulous, militant adepts of Ultramontanism, whose martial ardour may well make up for the deficiency in numbers.
The banner of freedom is boldly raised by M. Albert Castelnau, an enthusiastic but sincere disciple of Auguste Comte, in a clever book, La Question reliyieuse, which contains a somewhat incon- gruous mixture of positivism and rationalistic Catholicism. His conclusions unmistakably pronounce the doom of Papal supremacy- " Since the pontiff-kings of heroic ages are no longer universally. accepted as the revealers of moral truth, a more and more complete separation has taken place between the two powers, and their irre- concilable conflict is the difficulty of our time. It is understood. that if the political sovereign assures material order in our society, the empire over the souls is not in his province. On the other hand, the spiritual power has entered upon a glaring disagreement with the modern spirit, such as our progress has constituted it.. In Rome the arms of France protect, in its last refuge, the temporal powerlessness (l impuissance temp9relle) of the papacy." Driven to extremities by the impotence of Catholicism, which he assumes perhaps too lightly as granted, M. Castelnau condemns the- Church, which haughtily rises against the very thought of reform, and invariably hurls her idle thunderbolts against science and philosophy. He rushes at once to the consequence—no official church at all. "Between hieratic authority—of which Rome is the supreme expression, and which writhes within her last bulwark —and rational authority, one compromise only is possible, namely, the absolute separation of the spiritual and the temporal, that is, freedom : the freedom of the believer paying for his worship, the in- dependence of the thinker who fights for the autonomy of reason." This bold attack finds an echo in many a breast, and already an. influential review, La Revue Germanique et Frangaise, whose ten- dencies are somewhat Protestant, advocates, as the only possible solution of the difficult problem, the absolute separation of Church and State. We must not judge too harshly of such extreme con elusions, remembering how easily a creed may become odious,: whose sectaries dolefully bewail the oppression under which they pretend to labour, whenever they are prevented from tyrannizing over others. The theme of unlimited freedom of conscience must,. as M. Castelnau remarks, "be dear to all who, above political capitulations, which are equally opposed to the living forces of the mind and the heart, place the programme summed up in the single word : SINCERITY !"
Undoubtedly, this peremptory argument is of a nature to. frighten timorous souls, who anxiously ask whether the system which is crumbling into decay will not leave a huge blank in the world, whether there might not arise an unbearable anarchy in the minds of men wavering between scepticism and the changing, indefinite forms of individual mysticism. At all great periods in. the annals of mankind, on the eve of every eventful religious re- volution, this awful question troubled the conscience of the. weak at heart, although invariably a new creed, or rather a new mani- festation of the ancient creed, proved the inanity of hareem terrors. None of us may yet be able to divine the shape:of 'the faith which will sooner or later replace thefUltramoutanarretionmt temporal power and papal infallibility, the last convnIsimukohshisils
we wanes& At all events, the remedy will not be found, we apprehend, in Father Passaglia's scheme, which strikes m as an improved edition of Machiavelli's plan to foster Italian supremacy by making the representative of spiritual power subservient to the strong arm of an encroaching kingdom. Still less can we expect a solution from the French jade-milieu clergy, who waste their time, their lungs, and their paper in barren recriminations.
M. l'Abbe Isoard, the Director of the Preparatory Diocesan School of the Carmelites, is a very favourable specimen of this class. His book, "Yesterday- and To-day in Chri-tian Society," shows him to be a man of attainments, of taste, and of moderation. But bitterly to regret what existed "yesterday," be it in most pitiful accents, will- neither mend nor defer the dangers of "to-day." The Abbe laments, with a heartfelt affliction, that even the faithful members of his Church do no longer understand, we will not say the spirit or the tenets of Christianity, but the external part of religion, the very ceremonies which ought at least to awaken curiosity by attracting the eyes and charming the ears. If this assertion be true, and we see no reason to doubt a statement coming from such a reliable source, then Catholicism has sunk much lower than we imagined in England; then the worship of the Church of Rome has really become a dry, unmeaning formalism. It seems that the language of the Church is no longer under- stood. "That language," says M. Isoard, "prepared by the work *ages, attained its last form towards the close of the seventeenth eeitury. Churchmen and mystic writes were not alone familiar With it ; spread through all classes of society, the nobility, the Magistracy, the bourgeoisie, and the people, it was perhaps the only
• flexion common to all- The letters and memoirs of the epoch,
and the great number of household words and proverbs derived fi:om the doctrine of the Church and the ceremonies of her worship, forms of speech which were almost universally in use eighty years ago, are sufficient proofs how great the knowledge of things connected with the faith was then." Alas ! well may the learned Abbe exclaim, "Noes avons change tout cela l" We say noes advisedly, for the French clergy have done more to cause the result which they deplore, than the most full-mouthed infidels. It was they who, despairing of the pure but artless attractions of faith, have made of church-going a con dition of social respectability and a source of worldly SUCCe6s. It was not a free-thinker who, in days of political trouble, cried to the alarmists, trembling for their interests and their property, "The key of your cash-box is in the tabernacle." The Catholic priests in France merely reap what they have sown. They made eternal truth subservient to the world, and the world took them at their word. Does M. Isoard really believe that he may effectually stem the current by relating unmeaning anecdotes of a beatified saint, a Carmelite moreover—St. Avertan, from Limoges, "who cried out and took to flight whenever he saw money, being frightened at the thought of the crime to which money leads !" At all events, the priests of our time are not St. .A.vertans.
We sympathize more with the Abbe Isoard, -when he laments the maudlin sentimentality which has of late attained such signal favour among the devotees. But here again, the reproach lies with the clergy, who exalted to the skies Chateaubriand and Lamartine, the wordy apostles of vague piety and undefined as- pirations. Who has made museums of churches, poems of sermons, a kind of opera of the mass, and almost a science of archteology of Roman Catholic worship? The Abbe may be right, likewise, in deploring that true cluistian humility is a scarce virtue in our
days, though we must emphatically differ with his regret, that in the inscription "Hospital for Foundlings," the word "Foundlings" has given way to "assisted children." We indulge in the belief that a Christian is bound to humble himself only, whilst here the community contrived to humiliate others,—poor little children made to suffer for misdeeds of which they were utterly
innocent. We would, for instance, feel much humbler ourselves, and prouder of our country, if that odious word Ragged Schools were to give place to a more humane and charitable appellation.
M. Isoard, though an abbe and a Carmelite, writes without the customary odium theologicum, it is true ; but his soothing and feeble
suggestions, his apologetic Gallican longings, will not, we appre- hend, deter a single votary from following M. Castelnau's unfaith- ful footsteps. We fear it the more because the Ultramontane fac-
tion, which stand at the other extremity, are deficient neither in spirit nor in audacity, and will challenge a battle. M. Veuillot, the ex-editor of the defunct Univers, the mouth-piece of the most tur- bulent section of the militant Catholic Church, loudly repudiates any compromise ; and, like a true enfant terrible, he tells the "last word" of his party in terms which strike a Protestant as supremely profane and blasphemous. "Rome does not belong to the Romans," exclaims the clerical tribune ; "it is Christ's property. I attest it ; God is here —He is here only ; and I attest, moreover, that if He allows himself to be driven from hence, He may consent to pass away, but not to settle down elsewhere. He has chosen that place ; He will no more accept another abode than his adversaries will suc- ceed in creating another God." We are unwilling to defile the ears of our reade s by another quotation from the Parfum de Rome. This wild outcry, this boisterous attempt to encompass religion into local limits will be enough, and more than enough, for us and for them. Every one can now judge by himself of the dangers to which Catholicism is exposed in France by its untimely alliance with politics, wavering as it is between the fierce extremes of Rationalism and Ultramontanism, whilst feebly upheld by the weak hands of a few well-meaning but impotent priests. Pro- testants can merely express a fervent desire that a gentler wind may come to blow, be it from heaven or from earth, and save the tossed ship from the treacherous rock and the perfidious shoals which threaten to deliver it up, broken and nnrigged, an easy prey to the waves.
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