Sermon IV. The Syllabus

In the Pro-Cathedral, Kensington, Rosary Sunday, 1868.

Many of His disciples, when they heard this, said: This is a hard saying; who can hear it? ST. JOHN vi. 60.

OUR Lord is here speaking of the great mystery of His Body and His Blood, which He would give for the life of the world. Some who stood by did not understand His words. They counted it a hard saying, and went their way. So it ever has heen. The enunciation of the truth has ' always had two effects: those who helieve are strengthened, and those who will not believe stumble at the truth.

To-day we keep once more the festival of the holy Rosary; a day marked in the annals of the Church by one of the most momentous events in Christian history — the overthrow of the antichristian hosts of Mahometanism in the great battle of Lepanto. The world was then so threatened by the power of that vast infidel empire, that Christendom must have been ravaged in all its provinces, had not its fleets been utterly destroyed. We commemorate also to-day another great victory by land over the same persecuting empire. These two great blows, dealt by the Christian world against the Mahometan Antichrist, for ever broke its dominion and its strength; and to this day the Christian nations, so far from being menaced by its existence, are themselves propping it lest it should fall. These two great contests were waged under the direct sanction and guidance of the Roman Pontiffs, who, as the heads of the Christian world — the most illuminated to know its dangers, and the most powerful to avert them — combined, organised, and directed those heroic defences of Christendom, calling together the princes and chivalry of Christian Europe to fight for its very existence. The Church, therefore, year by year, on this day, ascribes these two great events to the infinite mercy and providence of our Heavenly Father, and to the prayers of our Immaculate Mother; for it was while the holy Rosary was being recited in the streets of thousands of cities, and in ten thousand sanctuaries, that those two great victories were won.

But there is another Antichrist and another menacing array which is now pressing upon the Christian world, in the face of which the Church and the Pontiff stand inflexible. For three hundred years, a power, sleepless, stealthy, organised, and malicious, has hung round about the unity of the Church, and at times has found an entrance within it, in the subtil form of intellectual error, against which Pius IX. stands now, as Pius V. stood then. These intellectual errors reach to the very basis of Christian society; they undermine the foundations of Christian civilisation; and against them the Sovereign Pontiff at this hour has dealt a blow which has been felt throughout the whole Christian world, both by those who believe, for their strength and consolation, and by those who will not believe, for their confusion and defeat — I mean the Syllabus. To be clearly intelligible, I will explain the meaning of the word and the source from which it came. In the year 1864, and on the 8th day of December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the Holy Father published two documents, the one called an Encyclical, or circular letter, addressed to all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops throughout the whole Christian world; the other called the Syllabus. Now, the word Syllabus simply means a collection or gathering together of certain propositions, which, in the eighteen years of his Pontificate, he had already published. During the preceding eighteen years, he had in numerous documents and manifold acts condemned a multitude of the intellectual errors of the day; and the Syllabus is nothing more than a collection, from all the documents and acts of those eighteen preceding years, of the chief errors which he had already condemned. That Syllabus contained eighty such errors, with their censures affixed, together with a reference to the former acts and documents in which the same condemnations had been already published. Now these eighty errors are partly in matters of faith, partly in matters of morals; in both of which, as you know, the Catholic Church, and the Head of the Catholic Church also, by Divine assistance, are infallible; that is, they are the ultimate interpreters of the faith, and the ultimate expositors of the law of God, and that not by the light of human learning only, but by the light of Divine assistance, which secures from error. Under morals are also included a number of errors relating to the political state of the world, the Church, and, its Head. I believe, if the Holy Father had confined himself simply to faith and to morality, in the ordinary and inadequate sense of the word, very little would have been heard of the Syllabus. But under the head of morals, he had — for his duty demanded it of him, as the universal teacher of the Christian world, as the pastor of the universal flock — pointed out and condemned certain errors in political philosophy which strike at the root of morals. Therefore the world has risen in uproar. Governments have declared that the Syllabus lays the axe to the root of their political society: but if it does so, it is so much the worse for those nations; for they must be constituted on an antichristian basis. Now I may be asked, Why should the Holy Father touch on any matter of politics at all? For this plain reason: because politics are a part of morals. What the moral law of the Ten Commandments is to the individual, politics are to society. Politics are nothing more than the morals of society — the collective morality of Christian men united together under social law. Men might as well say that they will permit us to instruct or censure a penitent in the confessional, but blame us for correcting and condemning the error of a congregation, as censure the Holy Father for extending those condemnations from the errors which affect the private lives of men to those which affect the public life of Christian society. Politics are morals on the widest scale.

Now, to make still more clear what is the subject-matter of the Syllabus, I will farther say that it contains ten chapters. The first four chapters are on Atheism, Pantheism, Rationalism, Socialism, and Communism. These are uncouth terms; but they describe uncouth things. Of the next three chapters the first is on the errors affecting the constitution of the Christian Church; the next on the errors affecting the relations of the Christian Church to the Christian state; the third on morals. The eighth chapter relates to the Sacrament of Matrimony, and to divorce; the ninth to the Eoman Pontiff and his jurisdiction; and the tenth to liberalism, progress, and modern civilisation. I will take only one error thus condemned, and that because it will contain in itself a complete and perfect outline of all that goes before. The last error condemned is this: it had been asserted that the Koman Pontiff can, if he will, and ought therefore, to reconcile himself and to conform himself to liberalism, progress, and modern civilisation. He condemned this assertion as false; which is, therefore, to say that the Koman Pontiff ought not, and cannot, reconcile or conform himself to liberalism, progress, and modern civilisation. A bold error, and a bold condemnation.

Like the two fleets drawn up on the waters of Lepanto front to front, we have here a long array of falsehoods, and their condemnations direct and authoritative by the Head of the Christian Church. He declares that he cannot, ought not, and will not conform himself to this world in its mutabilities and changes.

This shall be our subject. And to make the matter plain, I will recite what is contained in the Encyclical to which the Syllabus is attached, describing the nature of the modern civilisation, to the progress of which the Eoman Pontiff is invited to conform himself.

The Encyclical describes the claims of modern civilisation in the following propositions. First, the political society of men ought to be constituted entirely on the foundation of nature, without any regard to religion, or, at least, in perfect indifference to all religions. Secondly, that an unlimited freedom is possessed by every man, not only to believe as he likes, but to speak as he likes, and to write as he likes; and that, because he has the liberty to think as he likes. He may therefore publish, by writing or printing, anything he chooses on any subject, and on all subjects, and in every sense. Thirdly, that the family or the domestic life belongs to the order of nature, and therefore belongs to the state; that households and families are under the authority of the civil government in this sense-*- that the civil government has a right to determine the question of marriage and divorce, and also to control and to decide on the nature of the education of children.

Now, in order to show clearly why the Roman Pontiff — that is, the whole Church of God; for it is all contained in him, and where the Head acts, all act with him — ought not to conform himself to this liberalism and progress and modern civilisation, it will be necessary to describe in outline what are the two societies that now stand face to face — the civil society, and the Christian society of the world.

1. The civil society, or civil power, is a thing sacred in itself. It comes from God; it has God for its Author; and it must -be treated as of divine origin. It is sustained by authority, obedience, and equality — the three laws of the human family — which began with the first creation of man, namely, the authority of parents, the obedience* of sons, the equality of brethren. These three laws bind human society together. God is the Author of them. When families multiplied, and expanded into races, nations, and states, these three laws, which were domestic and private in the beginning, assumed the public and recognised character of what are called constitutions and commonwealths, from which arise monarchies, empires, and civil order throughout the world. The sovereign authority, therefore, which governs mankind, is derived not from the consent of men, bargaining and bartering, and compromising and chaffering together, as it were in a market-place; it is derived from God Himself, and is given immediately to human society. But the particular form in which society may be cast, and the particular person or prince, be it one or many, who bears the sovereign power, come not immediately from God, but mediately from society. It was of this that St. Paul spoke when he said: ' Let every soul be subject to the higher powers,' though he was then speaking of a heathen emperor; ' for every power is of God. The powers that be, are ordained of God. He that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and he that resisteth shall receive to himself damnation.' St. Paul says this of the civil society or political order of the world; of the Roman empire, persecuting and pagan as it then was. Within the sphere, therefore, of political society, there are human authorities competent to make human laws; but, as water cannot rise above its source, the natural society of the world cannot rise so high as to make laws to bind the conscience in matters of faith or religion. These thirrgs belong to God; they do not belong to man; they do not belong to human society, but to one which is neither of man nor by man, but directly from God Himself.

2. The other society is the Christian society of the world, and the beginning of that Christian society is the person of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who, when He came into the world, assembled His aposties and disciples around Him, instructed them, conformed them to His own mind and will, and gave them authority and laws. He gave them that one faith by which alone men can be united — that one supreme jurisdiction by which His Church on earth was founded and is held together. He constituted in the world His own kingdom. He ascended to His invisible throne in heaven; but He left on earth His Vicar and representative — one who should be the depository and the executor of His supreme power over the Christian society which He founded: who should be for ever the supreme and final interpreter of the faith, the supreme and 'final expositor of His law; and that society, one in its origin, one in its faith, one in its jurisdiction, one in its identity throughout the world, uniting all nations in one family, is the Holy Catholic Church. There will be those two great societies to the end of the world — the one natural, the other supernatural; the one human, the other divine; the human and the natural society perfect and complete within its own sphere and limit, but imperfect and incomplete, and that in a high degree, as regards the true perfection of man and his destiny hereafter. For this it must depend upon the Church and the laws of Jesus Christ.

3. And such was the will of God. He ordained that these two societies should be so united as in their action to become one. Just as man is perfect in his own nature, though fallen by original sin, and needs to be elevated to a supernatural order by regeneration and grace, remaining the same individual, but receiving a perfection above his nature; so it is with the natural society of the world; and when the Church of God, like the heavenly city coming down from heaven, perfect in its beauty, symmetry, splendour, and unity, descended on the face of the world, it took up into itself all the elements of human society that were pure and true, and incorporated them with itself. But before this work was done, the Koman Empire, which was spread over the nations of the world at the coming of our divine Saviour, was destroyed off the face of the earth. The races it had subdued and held in its iron hand revolted against it. They came up with their legions and their hordes; they tore from it province after province. First they devastated and desolated Italy; last of all, they sacked and ruined Borne. The whole material structure and fabric of that great empire, the greatest and most perfect human society the world had ever seen, was utterly crushed, crumbled to dust, and swept away before the winds of heaven. Then the Christian world that now is rose into existence. It was the Christian Church which created the Christian world. It had a double mission; for the Christian Church has a mission first to individuals, and then to society — first to convert and save the soul, and next to consecrate and elevate the political society of the world. As Christianity spread from household to household, each family became germs and patterns of Christian society. As cities became Christian, they were combined together under Christian laws. As kingdoms arose from age to age, they were bound together under the supreme unity of jurisdiction and in the light of the one faith. The Christian world, as we know it now, appeared. What, then, was the foundation of this Christian world? The one faith, the one baptism, the Christian Sacrament of matrimony, the supreme jurisdiction of the Head of the Christian Church: these four elements created and have sustained the Christian world.

The Roman Empire, which fell and was swept away, fell not more by the external violence which came upon it from without than from the internal corruption, intellectual and moral, which ate away its vitality within, and turned it from end to end into a heap of intellectual and moral ruin. It would be out of place, and I have not now time, to dwell on what

I say farther than this: I would ask you to take any history of Home, and read the domestic life of the Romans in the Augustan, the golden period, as it is called. The state of personal and domestic morals presents a picture of incredible and unimaginable horrors under the roof of every family. And if such was the private life of men, if such was the state of their homes, what was the state of the Commonwealth — of the empire at large, in its public morality? The human imagination cannot conceive, without the facts before it, to what a -depth of utter moral corruption that natural society of the world had fallen. The Christian society of the world came as the purifier and the corrective of the evils of personal aiid domestic immorality; and purifying the personal and domestic morality, it purified the public morality and public life of nations. And this was brought about by the faith and knowledge of God; by the laws of God; by the Sacrament of matrimony; by the union of the husband and the wife restored to its primitive unity and its indissoluble contract; by the supreme authority of the Christian Church; by that pastoral authority whereby men are retained in obedience and order: these things slowly elevated the natural society of men into the Christian world.

Then began a great conflict; the natural society of the world strove to sweep the Church of Christ out of the earth. Three hundred years of persecution followed, cind the Christian society gained, little hy little, its ascendent over the minds and wills of men, until the world was weary of persecution, and the Church entered into peace. From that time onwards the natural and supernatural societies of the world have heen at least in a state of amity, down to a time we will hereafter mark. Then Christendom or Christian Europe hegan to arise. The spiritual and civil powers stood side by side — with many jars and contentions indeed, hut nevertheless with public laws and mutual relations and duties, acting in co-operation together, so that the natural society of the world, which had taught the unlimited lawfulness of divorce, learned the absolute indissolubility of Christian marriage; the natural society, which held that fathers had power of life and death over their children, was taught that their children were the children of God — theirs in the order of nature, but not theirs in the order of grace, heirs of the kingdom of Heaven, wards committed to their guardianship, whom they were bound to bring up in the nurture of God and the knowledge of His Son Jesus Christ. They were taught also the duty of mutual charity one to another. The laws of authority and equality, as taught in the Christian Church under the supreme authority of one Head, were transcribed into the public law of nations. Such was the state of the Christian world when these two societies were in amity together — when every member of the State was a member of the Church; when the laws of the State were in conformity with the laws of the Church; when the laws of Christianity were part of the laws of the land; when men believed that human society had not its perfection in the order of nature only, to the exclusion of religion and of God, but then only when it is founded on the one only truth revealed by God, the one only way of life eternal. 4. Such was Christendom once. Such it is no longer. The amity of the natural and supernatural societies has turned into discord, and their union is dissolved. Three hundred years ago, Germany and England and the north of Europe separated themselves from the Christian Church. They broke the bands of unity, and renounced its supreme authority; they constituted themselves independent upon the basis of their own natural authority, and they went their way. And what that way was, we will endeavour to trace. There were three things in that separation. The first was schism; the second was a rejection of the divine authority of the Church; and the third was the setting in motion of that which men now call progress, the unlimited and licentious action of the human intellect and of the human will-without law and without guide. Look at the condition of Germany now. We were told the other day that it is a question whether four -fifths or three-fourths any longer believe in Christianity. I will nof determine the proportion. Look next at England, divided, subdivided, parcelled out into I know not how many sects and denominations, each man interpreting the Bible for himself, because the supreme authority of the Church had been cast off. In every country that separated itself from the unity of the Church three hundred years ago, Christian matrimony as a Sacrament was rejected by the public laws. The indissolubility of Christian marriage has been destroyed, and the law of divorce has been introduced. The foundation of the natural order of the family itself has been broken up. Wheresoever divorce enters, the authority of parents, the obedience of children, and the foundations of the family, are shaken, if not destroyed. What the effect of that change has been, I will leave those to say who have the daily reports of the tribunal, where, such cases are adjudicated, before their eyes. It has also been announced as a principle, that national education must be without religion — that the education of children belongs to the State. Within the last few months we have seen it, again and again, declared in the newspapers, which are believed to represent public opinion to a great, but I hope not to the full extent, that it was not for fathers and mothers to determine how their children should be educated; that the nature of education must be determined by the supreme authority of the State. We have been told that in the matter -of religion, it is indifferent whether men agree or not: it may be good if they can; but the State has nothing to do with it, and that every man has a perfect, unfettered, unlimited freedom, not only to think as he likes — for the State has no right over his thoughts — but to speak as he likes, and to sow broadcast with both hands errors, heresies, impieties, and blas-phemies, where he will; that there is no authority on earth to restrain the sowing of that seed of universal desolation, immorality, and unbelief, which robs posterity, children unborn, of their inheritance of truth and of salvation, to gratify the licentious liberty and the noxious freedom of each individual man. If ever there was a spirit of revolt against God, it is this; and yet this is inscribed in the public laws of what is called modern civilisation.

Here then we have the meaning of liberalism, progress, and modern civilisation. Liberality means the giving to every man his due, and giving of our own freely for his good; liberalism means giving to another that which does not belong to ourselves. The truth of God, and the laws of God, and the rights of parents — these belong to no government, and to give them away is an impiety.

What, then, is the meaning of progress? A departure from that union of the natural order and of the natural laws of States with the supernatural order and law which the providence of God has ordained for the perfection of mankind.

And what is the meaning of modern civilisation? The state of political society which lays down as principles of rational liberty and social perfection, divorce, secular education, contradictions in matters of religion, and the absolute renunciation of the supreme authority of the Christian Church.

Can it, then, be matter of wonder, that when the Eoman Pontiff published the Syllabus, all those who were in love with modern civilisation should have risen in uproar against it? Or can it be wondered at, that when the world, with great courtesy sometimes, with great superciliousness at other times, and great menace always, invites the Pontiff to reconcile himself to liberalism, progress, and modern civilisation, he should say, ' No, I will not, and I cannot. Your progress means secular education: I maintain that education is intrinsically and necessarily Christian. You maintain that it is a good thing that men should think as they like, talk as they like, preach as they like, and propagate what errors they please: I say that it is sowing error broadcast over the world. You say, I have no authority over the Christian world; that I am not the Vicar of the Good Shepherd; that I am not the supreme interpreter of the Christian faith: I am all these. You ask me to abdicate, to renounce my supreme authority. You tell me I ought to submit to the civil power; that I am the subject of the King of Italy, and from him I am to receive instructions as to the way I should exercise rny supreme power. I say I am liberated from all civil subjection; that my Lord made me the subject of no one on earth, king or otherwise; that in His right I am sovereign. I acknowledge no civil superior; I am the subject of no prince; and I claim more than this: I claim to be the supreme judge on earth, and director of the consciences of men — of the peasant that tills the field, and the prince that sits on the throne — of the household that lives in the shade of privacy, and the legislature that makes laws for king-h doms. I am the sole last supreme judge on earth of what is right and wrong. Your progress is departure from Christian civilisation; in that path you may have many companions, but me you will not find.'

The Sovereign Pontiff, even in that Syllahus, has invited those who are wandering from Christian civilisation to what they call modern civilisation to return again; to come back to Christian marriage, Christian education, Christian unity of faith and worship, and 'Christian submission to Him who is the Pastor of pastors. This is the meaning of the Syllabus. I know you who are my own flock respond with your hearts to what I have said; but I am speaking to many who are not members of my own flock, and I put it to them to judge, with that integrity, uprightness, honour, strong vigorous good sense, clear conscience, and desire to do right, which I know Englishmen to possess, longing to know the truth, and willing to follow it, whether I have indulged to-day in words of asperity or of unreason, and whether I have not pleaded calmly for the laws of the Christian world. Do you not yourselves long for the reconciling of divisions, so that we may once more be one together, and make an end of contentions and of conflicts? The Syllabus, then, is no offence; it is the word of truth and of charity — the word of the chief Christian Pastor, speaking to the Christian world, and calling it hack to the one Name under heaven given among men whereby we can be saved: to the one faith, the one baptism for the remission of sins, the one fold under one Shepherd, and to the one chief Pastor, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, whose voice of supreme authority you have heard to-day.