VI.

With the assistance of the clergy, everything in matters of social reforms is easy: without such page 57 help, or in spite of it, all is difficult and at times impossible. See how this holds with reference to primary instruction.

Enact compulsory education with the co-operation of the minister, as among Protestant countries, you will accomplish your end. But if, on the contrary, the priest is hostile or indifferent, as in Catholic countries, the law is not observed. You need only refer to the statistics of schools in Italy. If the priest be allowed to enter the school by virtue of his office, as in Belgium, he prepares the triumph of theocracy. If he be expelled, he destroys the school, for he causes it to be deserted. Moreover, in your normal schools, will you infuse a spirit of resistance and of hostility to the clergy into your teachers in order that they may transmit it to their pupils? You will inevitably destroy the religious sentiment, and create an atheistic people. Logic drives, and "free-thought" invites you to it. Are you prepared for this? In Protestant countries, in America and in Holland, you have non-sectarian lay schools, but they are entirely penetrated by the Christian spirit. In a Catholic country, lay schools will only be able to exist by dint of a violent struggle with the clergy, who will wish to destroy them; they must therefore inevitably be anti-religious.

As for the formidable social questions, which produce conflict between the working classes and the capitalists, Christianity provides us with their solu- page 58 tion, for, by means of the brotherhood and self-denial which it advocates, it leads mankind to the reign of justice. Between really Christian masters and men no difficulty could arise, for equity would preside over the division of profits. We feel but too keenly the frightful void caused by the weakening of religious sentiment, which results from the forced opposition to the only form of worship which we knew.

In Protestant countries, on the contrary, the ministers of public worship are highly esteemed among all classes of society, and through their mediation, and the Christian influences of which they are the respected organs, strifes lose some of their bitterness.

In his fine work on the French Revolution, Quinet proves that if this colossal effort of emancipation has not been successful, it has been in consequence of religious opposition, and hence he concludes it to be impossible thoroughly to reform the civil and political constitution of a country without also reforming its public worship. The reason is that civil and political society tends to take the forms of religious society.

The priest has so great a hold on souls that he imposes his ideal on them, unless you root out the religious sentiment by means of which he governs them. Now, in such an attempt as this, nations run the risk of perishing.

Steady progress is very difficult in Catholic coun- page 59 tries, because the Church, aiming at establishing her dominion throughout, the living energies of the nation are almost exclusively employed in repelling the pretensions of the clergy. See what is taking place in Belgium. All party efforts are concentrated on this one question, and other interests, even those of our national defences and of our independent existence, are subordinated to it. The struggle is so keen that we have twice already been on the eve of a violent commotion, and it is due only to the wisdom of the Sovereign that we have twice escaped the danger. The forces employed in struggling against the clerical party are forces lost to progress, for even when they prevail, the victory has no other result but that of preventing us from falling under the yoke of the bishops.

The celibacy of the priests, the absolute submission of all the ecclesiastical hierarchy to one single will, and the multiplication of monastic orders, constitute among Catholics a danger unknown to Protestant countries.

I admire a man who, in order to devote himself to his fellow-men and to truth, renounces the joys of family life. St. Paul is right: he who has a difficult mission to fulfil should not marry. But, when all priests are bound to celibacy, a great danger accrues to the State, in addition to that which threatens morals. These priests form a caste, having a special interest differing from that of the nation.

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The true home of the Catholic clergy is Rome—as they themselves announce. They will therefore sacrifice their country, if need be, to the welfare or to the dominion of the Pope, the infallible head of their religion and the representative of God upon earth. First Catholic, then, if the good of Catholicism permit it, Belgian, French, or German; this is the only patriotism from a Catholic point of view.

When the Liberal party was in power in Belgium, and Napoleon III., before the Italian war, assumed the attitude of defender of the Church, I was told by more than one of the Flemish priests, "Deliverance will come from the South." At the present day the German Ultramontanes openly profess that, in the interest of the Church, they would betray Germany. Has not a Bavarian deputy said in open Parliament, "In vain you raise new regiments; if they are Catholic they will pass over to the enemy!"

The monk acknowledges a country still less than the priest. Slave to the Papacy, detached from local ties, he lives only in the Church, which is universal, and he has no other prospect but that of her rule, which will also be his. How shall the State preserve its independence in presence of the clergy and of the monks, both of whom wish to have the upper hand, and who hold the masses in subjection by the most powerful and irresistible means of action? In Protestant countries the clergy are married, and have children; they have thus the same interests page 61 and the same mode of life as other citizens. They are divided into a great number of sects; therefore they do not obey the same word of command. They are not hierarchically subject to the will of a foreign chief who is pursuing the dream of universal dominion. They are national, because their Church is a national Church. They are independent of the State as in America, subject to the State as in England; but they do not aim at being masters of the State, as in France or in Belgium,

Separation of Church and State is a principle which it is universally sought to establish. In Protestant countries this may succeed, as we see in America, because the clergy submit to it. But in Catholic countries it will be vain to enact it. The Church, asserting as she does that temporal things should be subject to spiritual, as the body is to the soul, will only accept this system of separation so far as she can profit by it in order to attain her end. This separation will therefore be either a snare or a fraud. You cannot, in the same man, separate the believer from the citizen, and it is usually the sentiments of the former which influence the actions of the latter. The ministers of public worship exert a much greater authority than the representative ministers of the State, over those who believe them to be the interpreters of the Deity; for the priest promises eternal happiness, and threatens never-ending hell-torments, while the layman disposes only of earthly and page 62 temporary punishments and rewards. Through the confessional the priest has in his power the Sovereign, the magistrates, and through the electors, the Houses of Parliament. As long as he dispenses the sacraments, the separation of Church and State is therefore only a dangerous illusion.

To govern with the clergy is to subject the nation to their dominion, and to govern in opposition to them is to imperil all authority. To govern side by side, while ignoring them, would be the wisest course; but that they will not permit. He who is not for me is against me, they say. It is necessary, therefore, to resign oneself either to obey or to resist them, and I do not know which of the two is the safer course.

The Catholic nations of the Continent have borrowed principles and institutions from England and America, which, having sprung from Protestantism, lead under its influence to good results. But on the Continent we already begin to see whither they tend, when they are opposed or turned to account by an Ultramontane clergy. They end in disorder, when the masses lose their faith, as in Spain or in France, or in the reign of episcopacy, when they retain it, as in Belgium.

The attentive and disinterested study of contemporary facts seems then to lead us to the dreary conclusion, that Catholic nations will not succeed in preserving the liberties which sprang from Pro- page 63 testantism. In submitting to the absolute dominion of the Church, they might perhaps, if they were isolated, enjoy a peaceful kind of happiness and a life of gentle mediocrity. But a danger from without seems to threaten them, and that soon, unless they refuse to obey episcopal commands.

Buckle considers indifferentism to be one of the merits of our age, inasmuch as it preserves us from religious wars. This advantage, if it be one, our epoch is not likely long to maintain. Everything seems to be leading up to a great conflict, of which religion will be one of the chief causes. Already, in the year 1870, Ultramontanism has declared war on Germany. If Henry V. or Napoleon IV. ever reach the throne, it will be with the concurrence of the clergy, who will push on a new crusade in order to deliver their persecuted brethren beyond the Rhine, on whose future assistance they will reckon. The States in which the clerical party will prevail will probably be dragged into the religious war. This is the policy which is preached in France by L' Univers, and elsewhere by the other organs of the Roman Curia. The restoration of the legitimate sovereigns in the three Latin countries, Spain, Italy, and France; Protestant Prussia crushed in the dust; Germany given over to Austria; Rome restored to the Pope, and supreme power to the Church; the return to the tine principles of Government, that is to say, to those proclaimed page 64 by the Syllabus and by Catholic tradition—this is the grand scheme, the realisation of which is everywhere in preparation by the Ultramontanes. Will they succeed? Who can say? But, if they fail in this assault against Germanic Protestantism, what will be the fate of the vanquished? We may tremble when we reflect on the calamities in store for Europe through the dream of the restoration of universal dominion to the Church, which at this moment she claims with greater audacity and obstinacy than ever.