XVI. The Catholic Church and Modern Society

(Xorth American lie view.)

1. THE object of this paper is not speculative and abstract, but strictly concrete and practical. It is to ascertain what can be, and what ought to be, the rela tions of the Church in the nineteenth century to the political society of the world in the nineteenth century.

2. These relations must be — (1) those of amity; or (2) of opposition; or (3) of a mixed character-that is, both of amity and of opposition.

I. First, let us understand what is meant by society, and then by modern society.

1. By society I mean the state of man, or of human life, in the natural order apart from faith. It has three degrees of formation or completeness, namely— (1) The domestic life; (2) the civil life; (3) the political life of a people or nation. Human society comprehends all these three stages or forms of life. They may be classed also more briefly as— (1) private life; and (2) public life: the private containing the domestic and social in its narrower sense, the public life containing the civil and political.

2. Now, neither mankind as a whole nor any integral portion of mankind, such as a people, race, or tribe, was ever yet a mere numerical multitude, without head, without social relations, or without authority. VOL. in. x

" Xos numcnis sumim, ct frugcs consamcrc nati" was never true. There were always relations of inequality, as of parentage, brotherhood, age, strength, mental and bodily, and therefore of subjection and authority, which constitute organisation.

3. Men were never all equal. The first principle of 1780 is false, and it is the fpurov -^su^og of the nineteenth century.

4. There never was, and there never could be, an " original compact." The whole theory is a " chvmc.m bombiians in vacuo."

5. Mankind was never without organisation, and, therefore, never without subjection and authority. Every generation of men reproduces both these elements in the domestic life; and no civil or political life is possible without these conditions. It would be anarchy, and anarchy cannot last. It destroys itself by reaction, which again produces order and authority.

6. Authority, therefore, in an imperishable element in the condition and history of man. Authority is not of human creation. It is in itself Divine. When S. Thomas Aquinas and others say that authority is given by God immediately to society, and mediately by society to the one or to the many who bear it, he declares authority to be faoborov— that is, from God — and in itself to be a Divine creation. This is the crux of modern society. It claims to create its own authority — that is, to be its own creator. Such also is S. Paul's declaration: "Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power but of God; and those that are, are ordained of God. Therefore, he that resisteth the power, zesisteth the ordinance of God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves dam nation" (Romans xiii. 1, 2).

7. The theory of authority, as created by H delegation from the people, is therefore false. It is a negation of the truth, and an inversion of the intellectual and moral order of mankind. The people or society of men may designate the person, or the family, or the group of persons who shall bear authority, but they cannot create it; nor can they, when it is once impersonated, revoke it at their mere will.

8. Authority, as it exists among men, has for its root either right or might. It either devolves peace fully from sire to sou, or it emerges from conflict in the hand of the strongest. Might in time becomes right, when confirmed by stability and permanence.

9. The authority of pure right is the most perfect, but perhaps it exists in unbroken devolution only in the sovereignty of the Vicar of Christ. Might is either the root or the renewal of every other authority in the world. But authority which begins in might becomes rightful in many ways, as in conquest followed by prescription, by voluntary cession, by immemorial possession, and the like.

10. But even the order which arises from might is better than anarchy. That a rightful sovereign be over turned is an evil, that society be overturned is worse. There is a time when loyalty to a dispossessed prince ceases to be a civic virtue; and when a legitimate prince cannot rightly attempt to recover his throne by force. If the attempt be easy of accomplishment, he may

T08 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND MODERN SOCIETY.

attempt it; if it be morally impossible, he ought not to attempt it; if it be both possible and probable, he and his subjects must use their prudence and self-denial; if it be pos ble but not probable, he ought not to risk civil v:ar, which, for an uncertain good, brings certain bloodshed and misery upon his people. A restoration is one more revolution, which may indeed be made for the welfare of a people, but not merely for the sake of a person. "Ilexes proptcr rcgna, non rc'ina propter rcges."

11. A revolution is a period cf anarchy which can not last. Order by right or by might will put an end to anarchy, for anarchy is intrinsically destructive to the society of mankind. It is to society, what mortal disease is to the body.

12. But society is imperishable. Given man, society by necessity exists. Man out of society is inhuman; man never so existed. Society is necessary to man, and not only to his perfection, but to his human formation and development.

13. Historians say that a people is happy which has no history; for history is the narrative of wars and revolutions — that is, of the overthrows of authority and of order, and of the perpetual restoration of both.

14. Society, then, contains all the relations, bonds, and obligations of human life, domestic, civil, and political, and all the duties and affections which arise from those relations. Even Cicero could say, " Omnes omnium charitates patria una complectitur" and S.

Thomas says that the objects of the "Donum Pietatis," or gift of piety, are " parentes ct patria," our parents and our mother country.

15. From all this I infer that it is the duty of every member of a commonwealth to use his utmost power to hinder all evil, and to do all good he can to the state or people to which he belongs. These are positive and natural duties which he cannot fail to discharge without culpable omission, or, rather, without a dereliction, and betrayal of the highest natural duties, next after those which he owes immediately to God.

So much for society, roughly and in outline.

II. Xext, few words are needed as to the Catholic Church.

1. The Catholic Church is the society of man in tho supernatural order.

2. It is a perfect society in the fullest sense and extension of the term. It has authority, subjection, inequality, equality, relations, bonds, obligations, with all the duties and affections arising from them. S. Paul's analogy of the body of a man or of the human structure, with its unity of life, its symmetry, sympathy, mutual needs, and reciprocal service of all its members, is not only a metaphor, but a philosophy. If sociology were capable of a scientific sense, it would be the philosophy of society.

3. As natural society develops man in the natural order, so the Church perfects man both in the natural and in the supernatural order.

4. But the Church not only perfects man or indi viduals, both in nature and in grace; it perfects the natural society of man also, in all its relations of public and private life.

5. The Church elevates, preserves, and perfects the domestic and public life of natural society. In Athens and in Rome, the two culminating points of natural civilisation, society had almost died out by the gangrene which had eaten away the domestic and moral life of men.

('). There is, therefore, a Divine obligation binding the Church to enter into the most intimate relations with the natural society or commonwealth of men, or, in other words, with peoples, states, and civil powers.

7. This is the principle implied in S. Paul's words in the thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Ilomans, and in his injunction to Timothy, that prayers "be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in high station, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life " (I. Timothy ii. 1, 2).

8. And this is the cause why the Church has in every age striven to direct, not the life of individual men only, but the collective life of nations in their organised forms of republics, monarchies, and empires.

9. So long as the world was heathen, it could only convert individuals and sanctify households. The State was at war with the Church; there was a conilict of laws, and an irreconcilable conflict of aims and actions. No co-operation could exist between them.

10. As soon as the society of the empire became Christian, the Church penetrated all its legislative and executive action. The temporal power of the

Pontiffs is the providential condition under which the Church has fulfilled its mission to human society.

11. The domestic, civil, and political life of man became Christian, and the Church enveloped the natural society of man in its own unity.

12. The union of the two societies was so complete that, as a whole, every member of the empire was a member of the Church, and every member of the Church was a member of the empire. They were concentric, coextensive, and coincident.

13. The civil and ecclesiastical discipline was so coincident and concurrent that a heretic was " vitandus " — to be avoided by all citizens, as by all Christians. He not only forfeited his civil rights, but was put beyond the pale and commerce of human society. He was like the leper in Israel, whom no man could touch without becoming legally unclean. No man could give to the heretic fire or water.

14. When this coincidence ceased in part to exist, Pope Martin V., in the Council of Constance, relaxed the obligations of avoiding the inevitable commerce and contact with heretics in civil and political life. It was lawful to communicate with heretics in all things except only in religion. " Communicatio in sacris " is intrinsically evil. It involves at least implicit communion in heresy. But outside of that circle, which is Divine, the faithful could, without censure, converse and co-operate with their fellow-citizens in all lawful things of the political order.

15. The Church, therefore, continued to hold rela tions with those who had departed from the faith, except when nominally excommunicated, that is, by name, in all things outside the faith itself.

16. But this divergence of the two societies was not any change on the part of the Church, which, by Divine guidance, is immutable. It was the falling away of men from the unity of the faith. And this divergence has extended itself continually for the last three hundred years.

17. Nevertheless, the Church never withdraws from the State as such, which would be to abandon the natural society of man to its own maladies and mortality.

18. It continues always to save and uphold it, and, without taking the contagion, it is in contact with its maladies, to heal them. For this cause, while it permits the sons of heretics to frequent its own schools, it, as Reiflenstuel, Ferraris, and other canonists show, forbids Catholic parents to send their sons to the schools of those who are out of the faith (Ferraris, Bib. Can. Ilarcticiis s. 19).

19. From this it is inferred:

(1) That perpetual hostility to the political order of any State is no duty of the Church, unless such political order should be intrinsically anti-Christian or anti-Catholic.

(2) That indiscriminate opposition to any political order is not lawful nor reasonable. Order as such is from God. Its disorders, revolutionary or anti-Christian, are maladies and transient conditions, which need to be opposed with a discriminating resistance, while the political order itself is respected and obeyed.

(3) That perpetual abstention from exercising the duties of citizens cannot be justified.

It is — 1. An abdication of a natural duty.

2. A virtual and inevitable separation of Church and State, which is condemned in the Syllabus, that is, the separation of the two societies which God willed should be united, for the peace of the one and for the perfection of the other.

3. Therefore, in every society or commonwealth which may be suffering from temporary anarchy, or revolution, or conquest, or usurpation, the duty of using all civil powers and privileges still within reach for the welfare of the people, for the restoration of authority, and for the maintenance of order, is a Christian and a Catholic duty.

III. We now come to define what is meant by modern society.

1. Modern society is the old society of the Christian world mutilated by the character forced upon it by the last three hundred years:

(1) First, by the so-called Reformation, which,, wheresoever it prevailed, destroyed the Catholic unity, and extinguished the Catholic mind of the Christian society.

(2) Secondly, by the principles of 1789, which were not a mere local formula of French opinion, but a dogmatic theory of revolution, promulgated by its pretentious authors for all nations. It has now, in fact, directly and indirectly pervaded the whole political society of modern Europe.

(3) Thirdly, by the recent international settlement, or law, which has admitted the kingdom of Italy, with Home as capital, and therefore with the usurpation of the rights and sovereignty of the Pontiffs, into the commonwealth of European States; and, so far as any jns gentium now survives, into the diplomacy of Europe.

2. Modern society, therefore, is not the natural society of the world before Christianity, nor is it the society of Christendom, when the two societies were in amity, and coincidence of law and of intention. It is the political society of the natural order, fallen from the unity of faith, communion, and obedience to the Divine voice of the Church, revolutionary in its political creed and practice, and either in usurpation, or in culpable connivance at the usurpation, of the sacred rights and sovereignty of the Vicar of Christ.

IV. From these premisses it follows:

1. That the Catholic Church can only partially hold political relations with such States in Europe as have departed from the Catholic unity. They have either set up regalism, as in England, Denmark, and Sweden; or Cirsarism, as in Prussia. In so far as they have departed from the jurisprudence of Catholic Christen dom, they have rendered relations of co-operation impossible. But the Church can still hold relations with the domestic, social, and civil life of those countries in all that is of the natural order of mankind.

2. That the Church can hold no relations with the revolutionary politics of France and Italy, in so far as they are founded upon the principles of 1789.

3. But that it can and ought always to hold relations with the commonwealths of those countries in all things of the natural order, and apart from their antagonism to the Divine law. In so far as these States put off their anti-Catholic and anti-Christian attitude toward the faith and the Church, in that measure they return to the state of simple natural society, with which the Church is not only able but is bound to main tain relations of amity and of co-operation.

4. It follows, further, that, in proportion as the civil powers of any State are under the dominion of an erroneous religion, or of a schism, or of an imperial despotism, or of a royal supremacy, or of a democratic despotism, or of an anti-Christian revolution, the

Church can hold no relations with them. It cannot co-operate with or condone the Lutheran or Calvinistic heresies, or the Anglican schism, or the Thirty-nine

Articles of Queen Elizabeth, or the Four Articles of

1682, or the Organic Articles of the First Napoleon, or the Kussian Holy Ecclesiastical Synod, or the Falk

Laws, and the like. But under all these there lies the commonwealth of natural society in all its domestic, social, and civil relations. With this in all the regions of its life, and conditions of its welfare, the Church sympathises and co-operates for the common good — and that because even towards such States as these the

Church has duties, such as (1) first, to guard and to conserve all of Christian faith and morals that still remains in them; (2) secondly, to minimise all the evils of their legislation or government; and (8)

thirdly, to recall them by all influences to a better

.condition.

31G THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND MODERN SOCIETY.

5. Iii proportion as the civil powers release themselves from the dominion and perversion of the influences which are antagonistic to the Church and hostile to the faith — in proportion, that is, as the State returns to its purely and simply natural order — the repulsions and harriers which made unity and co-operation impossible will cease to exist, and the Church can then draw its relations more and more closely and intimately to the national commonwealth. Such is, in the main, the condition of the Catholic Church in the United States.

f>. The best example I know of a commonwealth which has lost its Catholic perfection, without losing its traditional but imperfect Christianity, and has at the same time returned in great part to the natural order — that is, to the truths of natural religion and to the four cardinal virtues — may he said to be the British Empire, and especially in some of its more recent colonies. There exists in it nowhere at this time a penal law in matters of religion. The Catholic Church has all its spiritual liberties; no man can be molested for his faith. There exists, so far as I know, no bar to the participation of Catholics in any of the regions of national life, domestic, social, civil, and political, excepting only the Crown and the office of High Chancellor, in England. With few exceptions, such as the Divorce Court and the presentation to livings in the Established Church, and the like, there is, so far as I remember, no branch of the public life and service of our commonwealth into which a Catholic with a safe conscience cannot enter. He may sit in Parliament, lie may dispense justice in Westminster Hall, he may serve and command in the army and navy, he may hold any civil or political office under Government, he may partake in the whole world of finance and commerce. There is nothing outside of the unity of the faith and of the Church into which a Catholic in the British Empire may not be a citizen and a patriot, as there is nothing within that unity in which he can yield a hair's breadth without betraying his fidelity, and deserving the worst of names, or at least that of a liberal Catholic.

V. 1. If, then, the Church be bound by its Divine mission to conserve, to consecrate, and to co-operate with the natural society of man, then the withdrawal of Catholics from the active service of the common wealth, and the non-fulfilment of the duties of citizens and patriots, is a dereliction of duty, and unlawful in itself.

2. In England, so long as penal laws excluded Catholics from all careers of civil and political life, there was no doubt as to their duty. Catholics had only to maintain inflexibly their unity of faith. It is not, perhaps, to be wondered at that they regarded the civil powers — and the whole nation — as antagonists, with whom they could hardly hold any relations of amity or of co-operation.

3. Nor is it, perhaps, a wonder that, after the abolition of penal laws, the same antagonism should continue as a personal sentiment, and that Catholics should feel no ambition and no desire, perhaps even no willingness, to enter into the careers of civil and political life. Such is the feeling of many among the faithful i>18 THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND MODERN SOCIETY.

Irish race, who can not forget or forgive the wrongs of tluir past history. It is no wonder, but it is a disaster, for thereby the whole administration of the common wealth is left in the hands — I will not say of antagonists) but — of their non-Catholic countrymen. The penal laws have been abolished for half a century, but as yet Catholics are only entering slowly into civil careers, and no Catholic holds any political office of importance. The whole constituency of England, Scotland, and Wales does not return a single Catholic to Parliament. Twenty years ago Catholics could hardly be induced to sign a petition to Parliament, or to take part in any public movements, even of national beneficence. This was an unwise abstention, and cancelled their weight in the public action of the country. It was socially and civilly la politique <feffacementt which their enemies most desired to perpetuate.

4. In France, inasmuch as the whole population, less only about one million out of thirty-eight, is nominally Catholic, the public life of the nation is in the hands of Catholics. Nevertheless, in every political election, the abstention of a large proportion of voters, including the peaceful, the unambitious, and the retiring, who are also for the most part certainly Catholics, has left the effective government of France in the hands of the anti- clerical parties, who are also exaggerated Republicans, and without faith at least, if they be not formally anti-Christian. And this evil has been greatly aggravated by the divisions and rivalries among the sections of the Conservative party, in which, if anywhere, the sounder Catholic politicians are, or ought to be, found. The sympathies of Catholics are rather with monarch}7, Royal or Imperial, than with Republicanism; but the Imperialists and the Legitimists being divided, the whole control of the political life of France is left to the Republican party, which contains within itself an extreme section, subversive of all relations between the commonwealth of France and the Catholic Church. It must be borne in mind that the Republicanism of France is not the Republicanism of Switzerland nor of the United States. If the last outlines of the Catholic tradition of France are to be preserved in its civil and political order, it can only be done'by a complete union of all the Conservative sections against their direct and natural antagonist — namely, the anti-Christian animosity of French Republicanism. While Imperialists and Orleanists and Legitimists are contending in the vain hope of impossible restorations, the anti-clerical and anti-Christian party is becoming numerous, organised, and dominant. It is at this moment striving for the supremacy and the lead of the Republican majority in the Chamber and the Senate, and this once attained, it will dominate over all political opposition and dictate the secularisation of all education, from the universities to the primary schools, the abolition of the budget of the clergy, including the subvention to the seminaries, the withdrawal of chaplains from the army and the navy, and the complete dechristianisation of the whole civil and political order of France. The France of S. Louis would then become not the United States of America, which are just and tolerant in religion, but the France of Voltaire and Rousseau.

But into this subject, which I give only as an illustration, I will not enter further. I will conclude by reciting the teaching of Leo XIII. in the Encyclical of 1878. Leo XIII. affirms the Divine origin of authority by drawing out a beautiful analogy of the Divine monarchy in the celestial and ecclesiastical hierarchies: " It is plain the Church does wisely in impressing upon the people subject to authority the apostolic precept: ' There is no power but from God, and those that are ordained of God. Therefore, he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God, and they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation.' And again he admonishes those ' subject by necessity ' to be so ' not only for wrath, but also for conscience' sake,' and to render to all men their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour, for He who created and governs all things, has, in His wise providence, or dained that all should occupy their proper places, the lower beneath the middle, and the middle below the highest. As, therefore, in the heavenly kingdom itself He has decreed that there should be distinct orders of angels, some subject to others, and as in the Church He has instituted various orders and diversity of offices, not all being apostles, or doctors, or pastors, so also has II.- appointed thai there slmnM be i:i civil society many orders, distinguished by their rank, privileges, and power; so that the State, like the Church, should be one body, comprising many members, some more noble than others, but all mutually necessary, and all concerned for the common good."

Next he warns all Governments that their peril is in their antagonism to the tradition of Christian civilisa tion, and that their only way of safety is in renewing their relations with it: " And therefore, venerable brethren, we, upon whom the government of the whole Church rests, as at the commencement of our pontificate we pointed out to the nations and princes exposed to the fury of the tempest the place of refuge where they might best seek for safety, now again, moved by the extremity of the impending peril, raise to them once more our apostolic voice, and entreat them, for the sake of their own and their people's welfare, to hearken to and obey the Church, which has done so much to maintain the prosperity of kingdoms, reminding them that the principles of religion and of government are so identified, that anything that injures religion must needs injuriously affect the loyalty of the subject and the majesty of government. And inasmuch as they must well know that there is in the Church of Christ a power to avert the plague of socialism, which is not to be found either in human laws, or in the rigour of magistrates, or in the force of arms, we exhort them to restore the Church to that position of liberty in which she may best exercise her saving influence for the benefit of all human society.

"But this audacity of perfidious men, which threatens greater ruin to civil society, and strikes the minds of all with anxious fear, derives its cause and origin from those poisonous doctrines which, scattered in former times like corrupt seed among the peoples, have borne such pestilential fruit in their season. For

VOL. III. y yon, venerable brethren, ver> well know that the object of the war which ever since the sixteenth century has been waged by innovators against the Catholic faith, and which has every day increased in intensity down to the present time, has been that, by the setting aside of all revelation, and the subversion of every kind of supernatural order, an entrance might be cleared for the discoveries, or rather the delirious imaginations, of mere reason. This kind of error, which wrongly usurps the name of reason, as it elicits and sharpens the desire of superiority, naturally implanted in man, and gives a loose rein to desires of every kind, has spontaneously penetrated to the wildest extent not only a multitude of minds, but civil society itself. Hence it has come to pass that, by a novel impiety, unheard of even among the heathen nations, States have been constituted with out taking any account of God and of the order established by Him; it has been, moreover, declared that public authority derives neither its principle nor its power of command from God, but rather from the multitude of the people — which, thinking itself absolved from all Divine sanction, has determined to acknowledge only those laws which itself has framed according to its own good pleasure."

5. The social and political evils which are under mining the Christian society of the world culminate in one master evil, which again is prolific of all evils; an evil which reproduces and perpetuates the whole tradition of apostasy from the Christian name. The State is everywhere claiming the education and formation of men. Christianity is expelled from that formation.

Boys, youths, men, and nations will, if the Falk Laws.and the Ferry Bills prevail, hereafter grow up in Germany and France, so far as the public laws can accomplish, without Christian faith or Christian morals. This State education is the formation of men "without Christ and without God in the world." And that is the truest description of paganism. Man without God «nds in political Crcsarism and the deification of the «ivil power. On this, Leo XIII. says: " The supernatural verities of faith having been impugned and rejected as if they were inimical to reason, the Author and Redeemer Himself of the human race has been, little by little, forcibly banished from the universities, the lyceums, the gymnasiums, and from every public institution connected with the life of man. Finally, the rewards and punishments of the future and eternal life being relegated to oblivion, the ardent desire of happiness has been confined within the span of this present life. These doctrines having been disseminated far and wide, this so great license of thought and action being everywhere introduced, it is no wonder that men of the lowest class, weary of a poor home or workshop, should desire to invade the palaces and fortunes of the rich; it is no wonder that there now exists no tranquillity in public or private life, and that the human race has nearly reached its lowest depth."

In 1869 — before the opening of the Vatican Council — the following words were written. They still describe the state of Europe at this day. There is not a Government in Europe except our own which has not a social revolution at its back, urging it on toward manifest dangers, and, perhaps, towards its ruin:

" A moment's thought will be enough to explain why no civil Government was invited to attend the Council. What Government at this day professes to be Catholic? How should any Government which does not even claim to be Catholic be invited? What country in Europe at this day recognises the unity and authority of the Catholic Church as a part of its public laws? What country has not, by royal edicts, or legislative enactments, or revolutionary changes, abolished the legal status of the Catholic Church within its territory? On what plea, then, could they be invited? As Govern ments or nations they have by their own act withdrawn themselves from the unity of the Church. As moral or legal persons they are Catholic no longer. The faithful, indeed, among their subjects will be repre sented in the Council by their pastors; and their pastors are not only invited, but obliged to be present. If any separation has taken place, it is because the civil powers have separated themselves from the Church. They have created the fact; the Holy See has only recognised it. The gravity of the fact is not to be denied. It is strange that, with the immutability of the Church, and the • progress,' as it is vaunted, of society before their eyes, men should charge upon the Church the responsibility of breaking its relations with society. The Church at one and the same time is accused of immobility and of change. It is not the Church which has departed from unity, science, liberty; but society which has departed from Christianity and from faith. It is said, ' If Christian unity be destroyed, if science have separated from faith, if liberty choose to reign without religion, a terrible share of the responsibility for these evils rests upon the men who have represented in the Christian world unity, faith, and religion.' Does this mean upon the Episcopate, Councils, and Pontiffs? Who, if not these, * have represented in the Christian world unity, faith, and religion '? Have they, then, misrepresented these things to the world? If so, who shall represent them? and where, then, is the Divine office of the Church? The Pontiffs have been for generations lifting up their voices in vain to warn the Governments of Christendom of the peril of breaking the bonds which unite civil society to the faith and to the Church. They have maintained inflexibly, and at great suffering and danger, their own temporal dominion, not only for the spiritual independence of the Church, but for the consecration of civil society. But the Governments of the Christian world would not listen; and now a General Council meets, and the place where, as at the Lateran, at Florence, and at Trent, they would have sat, is empty. The tendency of civil society everywhere is to depart further and further from the Church. Progress in these days means to advance along the line of departure from the old Christian order of the world. The civil society of Christendom is the offspring of the Christian family, and the foundation of the Christian family is the Sacrament of Matrimony. From this spring domestic and public morals. Most Governments in Europe have ceased to recognise in marriage anything beyond the civil contract, and, by legalising divorce, have broken up the perpetuity of even that natural contract. With this will surely perish the morality of society and of homes. A settlement in the foundations may he slow in sinking, hut it brings down all at last. The civil and political society of Europe is steadily returning to the mere natural order. The next step in dechristianisiug the political life of nations is to establish national education without Christianity.1 This is systematically aimed at wheresoever the revolution has its way. This may, before long, be attempted among ourselves. It is already in operation elsewhere. The Church must then form its own schools; and the civil power will first refuse its aid, and soon its permission, that parents should educate their offspring except in State universities and State schools. The period and the policy of Julian are returning. All this bodes ill for the Church, but worse for the State. The depression of the moral order of right and truth is the elevation of the material order of coercion and of force. The civil powers of the world do not choose this course: they only advance in it. There is behind them a power invisible, which urges them onward in their estrangements from the Church; and that unseen power is at work everywhere. It is one, universal, invisible, but not holy — the true, natural, and implacable enemy of the one, visible, universal Church. The anti-Christian societies are one in aim and operation, even if they be not one in conscious alliance. And the Governments of the world, some consciously, others unconsciously, disbelieving the

1 Since this was written in 1868, the Empire fell. The Ferry Bill and the Act of 1870 have fulfilled the foresight.

existence of such societies, and therefore all the more surely under their influence, are being impelled toward a precipice over which monarchies and law and the civil order of the Christian society of men will go down to gether. It is the policy of the secret societies to engage Governments in quarrels with Home. The breach is made, and the revolution enters. The Catholic society of Europe has been weakened, and wounded, it maybe, unto death. The Catholic Church now stands alone, as in the beginning, in its Divine isolation: ' Et nunc re f res intelliyite; erudimini qui judicatis terrain.' There is mi abyss before you, into which thrones and laws and rights and liberties may sink together. You have to choose between the revolution and the Church of God. As you choose, so will your lot be. The General Council gives to the world one more witness for the truths, laws, and sanctities, which include all that is pure, noble, just, venerable on earth. It will be an evil day for any State in Europe if it engage in conflict with the Church of God. No weapon formed against it ever yet has prospered." ~

2 (Ecumenical Council and the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. London: Longmans, 1809.