The Modern Regime Volume II Part 8

[Footnote 5271: "Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbe Elie Meric, I., 15, 17. "From 1786 onwards, plays written by the 'les philosophes,' by the 'Robertuis' and the Laon community; they were excluded from the great seminary where they ought never to have been admitted." This reform was effected by the new director, M. Emery, and met with such opposition that it almost cost him his life.]

[Footnote 5272: M. de Talleyrand, "Memoires," vol. i. (Concerning one of his gallantries.) "The superiors might have had some Suspicion,... but Abbe couturier had shown them how to shut their eyes. He had taught them not to reprove a young seminarist whom they believed destined to a high position, who might become coadjutor at Rheims, perhaps a cardinal, perhaps minister, minister de la feuille--who knows?"]

[Footnote 5273: "Diary in France," by Christopher Wordsworth, D.D. 1845.

(Weakness of the course of study at Saint-Sulpice.) "There is no regular course of lectures on ecclesiastical history."--There is still at the present day no special course of Greek for learning to read the New Testament in the original.--"Le clerge francais en 1890" (by an anonymous ecclesiastic), pp.24-38. "High and substantial service is lacking with us.... For a long time, the candidates for the episcopacy are exempt by a papal bull from the t.i.tle of doctor."--In the seminary there are discussions in barbarous Latin, antiquated subjects, with the spouting of disjointed bits of text: "They have not learned how to think. .. Their science is good for nothing; they have no means or methods even for learning.... The Testament of Christ is what they are most ignorant of.... A priest who devotes himself to study is regarded either as a pure speculator unfit for the government, or with an ambition which nothing can satisfy, or again an odd, ill-humored, ill-balanced person; we live under the empire of this stupid prejudice,... We have archeologists, a.s.syriologists, geologists, philologists and other one-sided savants. The philosophers, theologians, historians, and canonists have become rare."]

[Footnote 5274: "Journal d'un voyage en France," by Th. W. Allies, 1845, p.38. (Table of daily exercises in Saint-Sulpice furnished by Abbe Caron, former secretary to the archbishop of Paris.)--Cf. in "Volupte,"

by Saint-Beuve, the same table furnished by Lacordaire.]

[Footnote 5275: "Manreze du pretre," by the Rev. Father Caussette, I., 82.]

[Footnote 5276: Ibid., I., 48. "Out of 360 meditations made by a priest during the year, 300 of them are arid." We have the testimony of Abbe d'Astros on the efficacy of prayers committed to memory, who was in prison for three years under the first empire and without any books. "I knew the psalms by heart and, thanks to this converse with G.o.d, which escaped the jailor, I was never troubled by boredom."]

[Footnote 5277: As with the "Freres des ecoles Chretiennes," whose society has the most members.]

[Footnote 5278: "Manreze du pretre," by the Rev. Father Caussette, I., 9. The Manreze is the grotto where Saint Ignatius found the plan of his Exercitia and the three ways by which a man succeeds in detaching himself from the world, "the purgative, the illuminative and the unitive." The author says that he has brought all to the second way, as the most suitable for priests. He himself preached pastoral retreats everywhere in France, his book being a collection of rules for retreats of this kind.]

[Footnote 5279: Someone who, like me, have lived through the attempted Communist conquest of the world, in Eastern Europe, in China, Korea, Vietnam and other conquered territories, the terrible experiences of those imprisoned in re-education camps, come to mind. Did Lenin have Taine translated? Did Lenin and Stalin use this description of catholic brainwas.h.i.+ng as their model? We might never find out. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5280: One of these enduring effects is the intense faith of the prelates, who in the 18th century believed so little. At the present day, not made bishops until about fifty years of age, thirty of which have been pa.s.sed in exercises of this description, their piety has taken the Roman, positive, practical turn which terminates in devotions properly so called. M. Emery, the reformer of Saint-Sulpice, gave the impulsion in this sense. ("Histoire de M. Emery," by Abbe Elie Meric, p.

115 etc.) M. Emery addressed the seminarians thus: "Do you think that, if we pray to the Holy Virgin sixty times a day to aid us at the hour of death, she will desert us at the last moment?"--" He led us into the chapel, which he had decked with reliquaries.... He made the tour of it, kissing in turn each reliquary with respect and love, and when he found one of them out of reach for this homage, he said to us, 'Since we cannot kiss that one, let us accord it our profoundest reverence!'...

And we all three kneeled before the reliquary."--Among other episcopal lives, that of Cardinal Pie, bishop of Poitiers, presents the order of devotion in high relief. ("Histoire du cardinal Pie," by M. Bannard, II.,348 and pa.s.sim.) There was a statuette of the Virgin on his bureau.

After his death, a quant.i.ty of paper sc.r.a.ps, in Latin or French, written and placed there by him-were found, dedicating this or that action, journey or undertaking under the special patronage of the Virgin or St.

Joseph. He also possessed a statuette of Our Lady of Lourdes which never was out of his sight, day or night. "One day, having gone out of his palace, he suddenly returned, having forgotten something--he had neglected to kiss the feet of his Heavenly Mother."--Cf. "Vie de Mgr.

Dupanloup," Abbe Lagrange, I., 524. "During his mother's illness, he multiplied the novenas, visited every altar, made vows, burnt candles, for not only had he devotion, but devotions... On the 2d of January, 1849, there was fresh alarm; thereupon, a novena at Saint-Genevieve and a vow--no longer the chaplet, but the rosary. Then, as the fete of Saint Francois de Sales drew near a new novena to this great Savoyard saint; prayers to the Virgin in Saint-Sulpice; to the faithful Virgin; to the most wise Virgin, everywhere."]

[Footnote 5281: "Manreze du pretre," I., 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 91, 92, 244, 246, 247, 268.]

[Footnote 5282: Ibid. I., 279, 281, 301, 307, 308, 319.]

[Footnote 5283: Just like the believing faithful 20th century international revolutionary Marxist-communist. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5284: "Le clerge francaise en 1890" (by an anonymous ecclesiastic), p. 72. (On the smaller parishes.) "The task of the cure here is thankless if he is zealous, too easy if he has no zeal. In any event, he is an isolated man, with no resources whatever, tempted by all the demons of solitude and inactivity."--Ibid.,,92. "Our authority among the common cla.s.ses as well as among thinking people is held in check; the human mind is to-day fully emanc.i.p.ated and society secularized."-- Ibid., 15. "Indifference seems to have retired from the summits of the nation only to descend to the lower strata.... In France, the priest is the more liked the less he is seen; to efface himself, to disappear is what is first and most often demanded of him. The clergy and the nation live together side by side, scarcely in contact, through certain actions in life, and never intermingling."]

CHAPTER III THE CLERGY

I. The regular clergy.

The regular clergy.--Difference in the condition of the two clergies.--The three vows.--Rules.--Life in common.--Object of the system.--Violent suppression of the inst.i.tution and its abuses in 1790.--Spontaneous revival of the inst.i.tution free of its abuses after 1800.--Democratic and republican character of monastic const.i.tutions.--Vegetation of the old stock and multiplication of new plants,--Number of monks and nuns.--Proportion of these numbers to the total population in 1789 and 1878.--Predominance of the organizations for labor and charity.--How formed and extended.--Social instinct and contact with the mystic world.

However correct the life of a secular priest may be, he stills belongs to his century. Like a layman, he has his own domicile and fireside, his parsonage in the country with a garden, or an apartment in town--in any event, his own home and household, a servant or housekeeper, who is often either his mother or a sister; in short, a suitable enclosure set apart, where he can enjoy his domestic and private life free of the encroachments on his public and ecclesiastical life, a.n.a.logous to that of a lay functionary or a bachelor of steady habits. In effect, his expenses and income, his comforts and discomforts are about the same.

His condition, his salary,[5301] his table, clothes and furniture, his out-of-door ways and habits, give him rank in the village alongside of the schoolteacher and postmaster; in the large borough or small town, alongside of the justice of the peace and college professor; in the large towns, side by side with the head of a bureau or a chief of division; at Paris, in certain parishes, alongside of the prefect of police and the prefect of the Seine.[5302] Even in the humblest curacy, he regulates his budget monthly, spending his money without consulting anybody. When not on duty, his time is his own. He can dine out, order for himself at home a special dish, allow himself delicacies. If he does not possess every comfort, he has most of them, and thus, like a lay functionary, he may if he chooses get ahead in the world, obtain promotion to a better curacy, become irremovable, be appointed canon and sometimes mount upward, very high, to the topmost rank. Society has a hold on him through all these worldly purposes; he is too much mixed up with it to detach himself from it entirely; very often his spiritual life droops or proves abortive under so many terrestrial preoccupations.--If the Christian desires to arrive at the alibi and dwell in the life beyond, another system of existence is essential for him, entailing a protection against two temptations, that is to say the abandonment of two dangerous liberties, one consisting in the power by which, being an owner of property, he disposes as he likes of what belongs to him, and the other consisting in the power by which, being master of his acts, he arranges as he pleases his daily occupations. To this end, in addition to the vow of chast.i.ty also taken by the secular priest, the members of religious orders also take two other distinct and precise vows. By the vow of poverty he (or she) renounces all property whatever, at least that which is fully and completely his own,[5303]

the arbitrary use of possessions, the enjoyment of what belongs to him personally, which vow leads him to live like a poor man, to endure privations, to labor, and beyond this, even to fasting, to mortifications, to counteracting and deadening in himself all those instincts by which man rebels against bodily suffering and aims at physical well being. By the vow of obedience he (or she) gives himself up entirely to a double authority: one, in writing, which is discipline, and the other a living being, consisting of the superior whose business it is to interpret, apply and enforce the rule. Except in unheard-of cases, where the superior's injunctions might be expressly and directly opposed to the letter of this rule,[5304] he interdicts himself from examining, even in his own breast, the motives, propriety and occasion of the act prescribed to him; he has alienated in advance future determinations by entirely abandoning self-government; hence-forth, his internal motor is outside of himself and in another person.

Consequently, the unforeseen and spontaneous initiative of free will disappears in his conduct to give way to a predetermined, obligatory and fixed command, to a system (cadre) which envelops him and binds together in its rigid compartments the entire substance and details of his life, antic.i.p.ating the distribution of his time for a year, week by week, and for every day, hour by hour, defining imperatively and circ.u.mstantially all action or inaction, physical or mental, all work and all leisure, silence and speech, prayers and readings, abstinences and meditations, solitude and companions.h.i.+p, hours for rising and retiring, meals, quant.i.ty and quality of food, att.i.tudes, greetings, manners, tone and forms of language and, still better, mute thoughts and the deepest sentiments. Moreover, through the periodical repet.i.tion of the same acts at the same hours, lie confines himself to a cycle of habits which are forces, and which keep growing since they are ever turning the inward balance on the same side through the ever-increasing weight of his entire past. Through eating and lodging together, through a communion of prayer, through incessant contact with other brethren of the same religious observances, through the precaution taken to join with him one companion when he goes out and two companions when he lodges elsewhere, through his visits to and fro to the head establishment, he lives in a circle of souls strained to the same extent, by the same processes, to the same end as himself, and whose visible zeal maintains his own.--Grace, in this state of things, abounds. Such is the term bestowed on the silent and steady, or startling and brusque, emotion by which the Christian enters into communication with the invisible world, an aspiration and a hope, a presentiment and a divination, and even often a distinct perception. Evidently, this grace is not far off, almost within reach of the souls which, from the tenor of their whole life, strive to attain it. They have closed themselves off on the earthly side, therefore, these can no longer look or breathe otherwise than heavenward.

At the end of the eighteenth century, the monastic inst.i.tution no longer produced this effect; deformed, weakened and discredited through its abuses, especially in the convents of males, and then violently overthrown by the Revolution, it seemed to be dead. But, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, behold it springing up again spontaneously, in one direct, new, strong and active jet and higher than the old one, free of the excrescences, rottenness and parasites which, under the ancient regime, disfigured and discolored it. No more compulsory vows, no "frocked" younger sons "to make an elder," no girls immured from infancy, kept in the convent throughout their youth, led on, urged, and then driven into a corner and forced into the final engagement on becoming of age; no more aristocratic inst.i.tutions, no Order of Malta and chapters of men or of women in which n.o.ble families find careers and a receptacle for their supernumerary children. No more of those false and counterfeit vocations the real motive of which was, sometimes pride of race and the determination not to lose a social standing, sometimes the animal attractions of physical comfort, indolence and idleness. No more lazy and opulent monks, occupied, like the Carthusians of Val Saint-Pierre, in overeating, stupefied by digestion and routine, or, like the Bernardines of Granselve[5305]

turning their building into a worldly rendezvous for jovial hospitality and themselves taking part, foremost in rank, in prolonged and frequent parties, b.a.l.l.s, plays and hunting-parties; in diversions and gallantries which the annual fete of Saint Bernard, through a singular dissonance, excited and consecrated. No more over-wealthy superiors, usufructuaries of a vast abbatial revenue, suzerain and landlord seigniors, with the train, luxury and customs of their condition, with four-horse carriages, liveries, officials, antechamber, court, chancellors.h.i.+p and ministers of justice, obliging their monks to address them as "my lord," as lax as any ordinary layman, well fitted to cause scandal in their order by their liberties and to set an example of depravity. No more lay intrusions, commendatory abbes or priors, interlopers, and imposed from above; no more legislative and administrative interferences[5306] in order to bind monks and nuns down to their vows, to disqualify them and deprive them almost of citizens.h.i.+p, to exclude them from common rights, to withhold from them rights of inheritance and testamentary rights, from receiving or making donations, depriving them in advance of the means of subsistence, to confine them by force in their convents and set the patrol on their track, and, on trying to escape, to furnish their superior with secular help and keep down insubordination by physical constraint. Nothing of this subsists after the great destruction of 1790. Under the modern regime, if any one enters and remains in a convent it is because the convent is more agreeable to him than the world outside; there is no other motive no pressure or hindrance of an inferior or different kind, no direct or indirect, no domestic or legal constraint, no ambition, vanity and innate or acquired indolence, no certainty of finding satisfaction for a coa.r.s.e and concentrated sensuality. That which now operates is the awakened and persistent vocation; the man or the woman who takes vows and keeps them, enters upon and adheres to his or her engagement only through a spontaneous act deliberately and constantly renewed through their own free will.

Thus purified, the monastic inst.i.tution recovers its normal form, which is the republican and democratic form, while the impracticable Utopia which the philosophers of the eighteenth century wanted to impose on lay society now becomes the effective regime under which the religious communities are going to live. In all of them, the governors are elected by the governed; whether the suffrage is universal or qualified, one vote is as good as another; votes are counted by heads, and, at stated intervals, the sovereign majority uses its right anew; with the Carmelites, it is every three years and to elect by secret ballot, not alone one authority but all the authorities, the prior, the sub-prior and the three clavieres.[5307]--Once elected, the chief, in conformity with his mandate, remains a mandatory, that is to say a laborer a.s.signed a certain work, and not a privileged person enjoying a gratification.

His dignity is not a dispensation, but an additional burden; along with the duties of his office, he subjects himself to an observance of the rules--having become a general, he is no better off than the simple soldier; he rises as early and his daily life is no better; his cell is as bare and his personal support not more expensive. He who commands ten thousand others lives as poorly, under the same strict instructions, with as few conveniences and with less leisure than the meanest brother.[5308] Over and above the austerities of ordinary discipline this or that superior imposed on himself additional mortifications which were so great as to astonish as well as edify his monks. Such is the ideal State of the theorist, a Spartan republic, and for all, including the chiefs, an equal ration of the same black broth. There is another resemblance, still more profound. At the base of this republic lies the corner-stone designed in antic.i.p.ation by Rousseau, then hewn and employed, well or ill, in the const.i.tutions or plebiscites of the Revolution, the Consulate and the Empire, to serve as the foundation of the complete edifice. This stone is a primitive and solemn agreement by all concerned, a social contract, a pact proposed by the legislator and accepted by the citizens; except that, in the monastic pact, the will of the acceptors is unanimous, earnest, serious, deliberate and permanent, while, in the political pact, it is not so; thus, whilst the latter contract is a theoretical fiction, the former is an actual verity.

For, in the small religious cite, all precautions are taken to have the future citizen know for what and how far he engages himself. The copy of the rules which is handed to him in advance explains to him the future use of each day and of each hour, the detail in full of the regime to which he is to subject himself. Besides this, to forestall any illusion and haste on his part he is required to make trial of the confinement and discipline; he realizes through personal, sensible and prolonged experience what he must undergo; before a.s.suming the habit, he must serve a novitiate of at least one year and without interruption. Simple vows sometimes precede the more solemn vows; with the Jesuits, several novitiates, each lasting two or three years, overlie and succeed each other. Elsewhere, the perpetual engagement is taken only after several temporary engagements; up to the age of twenty-five the "Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes" take their vows for a year; at twenty-five for three years; only at twenty-eight do they take them for life. Certainly, after such trials, the postulant is fully informed; nevertheless, his superiors contribute what they know. They have watched him day after day; deep down under his superficial, actual and declared disposition they define his profound, latent, and future intention; if they deem this insufficient or doubtful, they adjourn or prevent the final profession: "My child, wait-your vocation is not yet determined," or "My friend, you were not made for the convent, return to the world!"--Never was a social contract signed more knowingly, after greater reflection on what choice to make, after such deliberate study: the conditions of human a.s.sociation demanded by the revolutionary theory are all fulfilled and the dream of the Jacobins is realized. But not where they planned it: through a strange contrast, and which seems ironical in history, this day-dream of speculative reason has produced nothing in the lay order of things but elaborate plans on paper, a deceptive and dangerous Declaration of (human) Rights, appeals to insurrection or to a dictators.h.i.+p: incoherent or still-born organizations, in short, abortions or monsters; in the religious order of things, it adds to the living world thousands of living creatures of indefinite viability. So that, among the effects of the French revolution, one of the princ.i.p.al and most enduring is the restoration of monastic inst.i.tutions....

From the Consulate down to the present day they can everywhere be seen sprouting and growing. Early, new sprouts shoot out and cover the old trunks of which the revolutionary axe had cut off the branches. In 1800, "the re-establishment of a corporation shocked current ideas."[5309] But the able administrators of the Consulate required volunteer women for service in their hospitals. In Paris, Chaptal, the minister, comes across a lady superior whom he formerly knew and enjoins her to gather together ten or a dozen of her surviving companions; he installs them in the rue Vieux-Colombier, in a building belonging to the hospitals, and which he furnishes for forty novices; at Lyons, he notices that the "Sisters" of the general hospital were obliged, that they might perform their duties, to wear a lay dress; he authorizes them to resume their costume and their crosses; he allows them two thousand francs to purchase necessaries, and, when they have donned their old uniform, he presents them to the First Consul. Such is the first sprout, very small and very feeble, that appears in the inst.i.tution of Saint-Vincent de Paule at Paris and in that of Saint-Charles at Lyons. In our days[5310](around 1885), the congregation of Saint-Charles, besides the parent-house at Lyons, has 102 others with 2,226 nuns, and the congregation of Saint-Vincent de Paule, besides the parent-house at Paris, has 88 others with 9,130 nuns. Often, the new vegetation on the trunk amputated by the Revolution is much richer than on the old one; in 1789, the inst.i.tution of the "Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes" had 800 members; in 1845, there were 4,000; in 1878, 9,818; on the 31st of December, 1888, there were 12,245. In 1789, it counted 126 houses; in 1888, there were 1,286.--Meanwhile, alongside of the old plantations, a large number of independent germs, new species and varieties, spring up spontaneously, each with its own aim, rules and special denomination.

On Good Friday, April 6, 1792, at the very date of the decree of the Legislative a.s.sembly abolis.h.i.+ng all religious communities,[5311] one is born, that of the "Soeurs de la Retraite Chretienne," at Fontenelle, and, from year to year, similar plants constantly and suddenly spring out of the ground for a century. The list is too long to be counted; a large official volume of more than four hundred pages is filled with the mere statement of their names, localities and statistics.--This volume, published in 1878, divides religious inst.i.tutions into two groups. We find in the first one, comprising the legally authorized societies, at first 5 congregations of men possessing 224 establishments with 2,418 members, and 23 a.s.sociations of men with 20,341 members and supplying 3,086 schools; next, 259 congregations of women and 644 communities which possess 3,196 establishments, supplying 16,478 schools and counting 113,750 members. In the second group, comprising unauthorized societies, we find 384 establishments of men with 7,444 members, and 602 establishments of women with 14,003 members,--in all, in both groups, 30,287 brethren and 127,753 sisters. Considering the total population, the proportion of brethren in 1789 and in our day is about the same; it is their spirit which has changed; at the present day, all desire to remain in their profession, while in 1789 two-thirds wanted to withdraw from it. As to the proportion of Sisters, it has increased beyond all calculation.[5312] Out of 10,000 women in the population, there were, in 1789, 28 Sisters; in 1866, 45; in 1878, 67.[5313]

Carmelites, Clarisses, Filles du Coeur de Jesus, Reparatrices, Soeurs du Saint-Sacrament, Visitandines, Franciscaines, Benedictines and others like these, about 4000 nuns or sisters, are contemplatists. The Carthusians, Cistercians, Trappists, and some others, about 1800 monks and brethren who, for the most part, till the ground, do not impose labor on themselves other than as an accessory exercise; their first and princ.i.p.al object is prayer, meditation and wors.h.i.+p; they, too, devote their lives to contemplation on the other world and not to the service of this one. But all the others, more than 28,000 men and more than 123,000 women, are benefactors by inst.i.tution and voluntary laborers, choosing to devote themselves to dangerous, revolting, and at least ungrateful services--missions among savages and barbarians, care of the sick, of idiots, of the insane, of the infirm, of the incurable, the support of poor old men or of abandoned children; countless charitable and educational works, primary schools, orphan asylums, houses of refuge and prisons, and all gratuitously or at the lowest wages through a reduction of bodily necessities to the lowest point, and of the personal expenditure of each brother or sister.[5314] Evidently, with these men and with these women, the ordinary balance of motives which prompt people is reversed; in the inward balance of the scale it is no longer selfishness which prevails against altruism, but the love of others which prevails against selfishness.--Let us look at one of their inst.i.tutions just at the moment of its formation and see how the preponderance pa.s.ses over from the egoistic to the social instinct.

The first thing we always find at the origin of the enterprise is compa.s.sion; a few kind hearts have been moved at the aspect of misery, degradation and misconduct; souls or bodies were in distress and there was danger of s.h.i.+pwreck; three or four saviors have come to the rescue.

At Rouen, in 1818, it is a poor girl who, by advice of her cure, brings together a few of her friends in her garret; during the day they study in a cla.s.s and at night they work for their living; today, under the t.i.tle of "Soeurs du Sacre-Coeur de Jesus," they number 800. Elsewhere, at Laval, the founder of the House of Refuge for poor repentants is a plain ironing-girl who began her "House" by charitably harboring two prost.i.tutes; these brought others, and there are now a hundred of similar inst.i.tutions. Most frequently, the founder is the desservant or vicar of the place, who, moved by local misery, fancies at first that he is doing only local work. Thus, there is born in 1806 at Rouisse-sur-Loire the congregation of "La Providence," which now has 918 "Sisters," in 193 houses; in 1817, at Lovallat, the a.s.sociation of "Les Pet.i.ts-Freres de Marie," which numbers to-day 3600 brethren; in 1840, at Saint-Servan, the inst.i.tution of "Les Pet.i.tes-Soeurs des Pauvres," who now number 2685, and, with no other help but alms-giving, feed and care for, in their 158 houses, 20,000 old men, of which 13,000 live in their 93 domiciles in France; they take their meals after the inmates, and eat only what they leave; they are prohibited from accepting any endowment whatever; by virtue of their rules they are and remain mendicants, at first, and especially, in behalf of their old men, and afterwards and as accessory, in their own behalf. Note the circ.u.mstances of the undertaking and the condition of the founders--they were two village work-women, young girls between sixteen and eighteen for whom the vicar of the parish had written short regulations (une pet.i.te regle); on Sunday, together in the cleft of a rock on the seaside, they studied and meditated over this little summary manual, performed the prescribed devotions, this or that prayer or orison at certain hours, saying their beads, the station in the church, self-examination and other ceremonies of which the daily repet.i.tion deposits and strengthens the supernatural mental conception. Such, over and above natural pity, is the superadded weight which fixes the unstable will and maintains the soul permanently in a state of abnegation.--At Paris, in the two halls of the Prefecture of Police, where prost.i.tutes and female thieves remain for a day or two in provisional confinement, the "Sisters" of "Marie-Joseph," obliged by their vows to live constantly in this sewer always full of human dregs, sometimes feel their heart failing them; fortunately, a little chapel is arranged for them in one corner where they retire to pray, and in a few minutes they return with their store of courage and gentleness again revived.--Father Etienne, superior of the "Lazarists" and of the "Filles de Saint-Vincent de Paule," with the authority of long experience, very justly observed to some foreign visitors,[5315] "I have given you the details of our life, but I have not told you the secret of it. This secret, here it is--it is Jesus Christ, known, loved, and served in the Eucharist."

II. Evolution of the Catholic Church.

The mystic faculty.--Its sources and works.--Evangelical Christianity.--Its moral object and social effect.--Roman Christianity.--Development of the Christian idea in the West.--Influence of the Roman language and law.--Roman conception of the State.--Roman conception of the Church.

In the thirteenth century, to the communicant on his knees about to receive the sacrament, the Host often faded out of sight; it disappeared, and, in its place, appeared an infant or the radiant features of the Savior and, according to the Church doctors, this was not an illusion but an illumination.[5316] The veil had lifted, and the soul found itself face to face with its object, Jesus Christ present in Eucharist. This was second sight, infinitely superior in certainty and reach to the former, a direct, full view granted by grace from above, a supernatural view.--By this example, which is an extreme case, we comprehend in what faith consists. It is an extraordinary faculty operating alongside of and often in conjunction with our natural faculties; over and above things as our observation naturally presents them to us, it reveals to us a beyond, a majestic, grandiose world, the only one truly real and of which ours is but the temporary veil. In the depths of the soul, much below the superficial crust of which we have any conscience,[5317] impressions have acc.u.mulated like subterranean waters. There, under the surging heat of innate instincts, a living spring has burst forth, growing and bubbling in the obscurity; let a shock or a fissure intervene and it suddenly sprouts up and forces its way above the surface; the man who has this within him and in whom it overflows is amazed at the inundation and no longer recognizes himself; the visible field of his conscience is completely changed and renewed; in place of his former and vacillating and scattered thoughts he finds an irresistible and coherent belief, a precise conception, and intense picture, a pa.s.sionate affirmation, sometimes even positive perceptions of a species apart and which come to him not from without but from within, not alone mere mental suggestions, like the dialogues of the "Imitation" and the "intellectual locutions" of the mystics, but veritable physical sensations like the details of the visions of Saint Theresa, the articulate voices of Joan of Arc and the bodily stigmata of Saint Francis.

In the first century, this beyond discovered by the mystic faculty was the kingdom of G.o.d, opposed to the kingdoms of this world;[5318] these kingdoms, in the eyes of those who revealed them, were worthless; through the keen insight of the moral and social instinct, these large, generous and simple hearts had divined the internal defect of all the societies or States of the century. Egoism in these was too great; there was in them a lack of charity,[5319] the faculty of loving another equally with one's self, and thus of loving, not only a few, but all men, whoever they might be, simply because they were men, and especially the meek, the humble and the poor; in other words, the voluntary repression of the appet.i.tes by which the individual makes of himself a center and subordinates other lives to himself, the renunciation of "the l.u.s.ts of the flesh, of the eyes and of vanity, the insolence of wealth and luxury, of force and of power."[5320]--Opposed to and in contrast with this human order of things, the idea of a divine order of things was born and developed itself--a Heavenly Father, his reign in heaven, and very soon, perhaps on the morrow, his reign here below; his son descending to the earth to establish his reign and dying on the cross for the salvation of men; after him, his Spirits, sent by him, the inward breath which animates his disciples and continues his work; all men brethren and beloved children of the same common father; here and there spontaneous groups who have learned "these good tidings"

and propagated them; small scattered communities which live in the expectation of an ideal order of things and yet, by antic.i.p.ation, realizing it from this time forth; "All[5321] were of one heart and one soul,... for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need," all happy in being together, in mutual love and in feeling themselves regenerate or pure.

Here is to be found in the soul a new regulator and motor, and moreover a powerful organ, appropriate and effective, obtained through internal recasting and metamorphosis, like the wings with which an insect is provided after its transformation. In every living organism, necessity, through tentative effort and selections, thus produces the possible and requisite organ. In India, five hundred years before our era, it was Buddhism; in Arabia, six hundred years after our era, it was Islam; in our western societies it is Christianity. At the present day, after eighteen centuries on both continents, from the Ural to the Rocky Mountains, amongst Russian moujiks and American settlers, it works as formerly with the fishermen of Galilee and in the same way, in such a way as to subst.i.tute for the love of self the love of others; neither in substance nor in use has any change taken place; under its Greek, Catholic or Protestant envelope, it is still, for four hundred millions of human beings, the spiritual means, the great, indispensable pair of wings by which man rises upward above himself, above his groveling existence and his limited horizons, leading him on through patience, hope and resignation to serenity, and beyond to temperance, purity, goodness, and self-devotion and self-sacrifice. Always and everywhere, for the past eighteen hundred years, as soon as these wings grow feeble or give way, public and private morals degenerate. In Italy, during the Renaissance, in England under the restoration, in France under the Convention and Directory, man becomes as pagan as in the first century; the same causes render him the same as in the times of Augustus and Tiberius, that is to say voluptuous and cruel: he abuses himself and victimizes others; a brutal, calculating egoism resumes its ascendancy, depravity and sensuality spread, and society becomes a den of cut-throats and a brothel.[5322]

After contemplating this spectacle near by, we can value the contribution to modern societies of Christianity, how much modesty, gentleness and humanity it has introduced into them, how it maintains integrity, good faith and justice. Neither philosophic reason, artistic or literary culture, or even feudal, military or chivalric honor, nor any administration or government can replace it. There is nothing else to restrain our natal bent, nothing to arrest the insensible, steady, down-hill course of our species with the whole of its original burden, ever retrograding towards the abyss. Whatever its present envelope may be, the old Gospel still serves as the best auxiliary of the social instinct.

Among its three contemporary forms, that which groups together the most men, about 180 millions of believers, is Catholicism, in other words, Roman Christianity, which two words, comprising a definition, contain a history. At the origin, on the birth of the Christian principle, it expressed itself at first in Hebrew, the language of prophets and of seers; afterwards, and very soon, in Greek, the language of the dialecticians and philosophers; at last, and very late, in Latin, the language of the jurisconsults and statesmen; then come the successive stages of dogma. All the evangelical and apostolic texts, written in Greek, all the metaphysical speculations,[5323] also in Greek, which served as commentary on these, reached the western Latins only through translations. Now, in metaphysics, Latin poorly translates the Greek[5324]; it lacks both the terms and the ideas; what the Orient says, the Occident only half comprehends; it accepts this without dispute and confidently holds it as truth.[5325] At length in its turn, in the fourth century, when, after Theodosius, the Occident breaks loose from the Orient, it intervenes, and it intervenes with its language, that is to say with the provision of ideas and words which its culture provided; it likewise had its instruments of precision, not those of Plato and Aristotle, but others, as special, forged by Ulpian, Gaius and twenty generations of jurists through the original invention and immemorial labor of Roman genius. "To say what is law," to impose rules of conduct on men, is, in abridged form, the entire practical work of the Roman people; to write this law out, to formulate and coordinate these rules, is, in abridged form, its entire scientific work, and with the Romans in the third, fourth and fifth centuries, during the decadence of other studies, the science of law was still in full force and vigor.[5326] Hence, when the Occidentals undertook the interpretation of texts and the elaboration of the Creed it was with the habits and faculties of jurisconsults, with the preoccupations and mental reservations of statesmen, with the mental and verbal instruments which they found suitable. In those days, the Greek doctors, in conflict with the monophysites and monothelites, brought out the theory of the divine essence; at the same date, the Latin doctors, opposing the Pelagians, Semi-Pelagians and Donatists, founded the theory of human obligation.[5327] Obligation, said the Roman jurists, is a lien of law"

by which we are held to doing or suffering something to free us from indebtedness. Out of this juridical conception, which is a masterpiece of Roman jurisprudence, issued, as with a bud full of sap, the new development of the Creed.--On the one hand, we are obligated towards G.o.d, for, in relation to him, we are, in legal terms, insolvent debtors, heirs of an infinite debt, incapable of paying it and of satisfying our creditor except through the interpostion of a superhuman third person[5328] who a.s.sumes our indebtedness as his own; still more precisely, we are delinquents, guilty from birth and by inheritance, condemned en ma.s.se and then pardoned en ma.s.se, but in such a way that this pardon, a pure favor, not warranted by any merit of our own, always remains continual and revocable at will; that, for a few only, it is or becomes plenary and lasting, that no one amongst us can be sure of obtaining it, and that its award, determined beforehand on high, forever remains for us a State secret. Hence the prolonged controversies on Predestination, Free-will and Original Sin, and the profound investigations on man before, during and after the Fall. Hence, also, the accepted solutions, not very conclusive and, if one pleases, contradictory, but practical, average and well calculated for maintaining mankind in faith and obedience, under the ecclesiastical and dogmatic government which, alone, is authorized to lead man on in the way of salvation.

On the other hand, we are obligated to the Church, for she is a cite, the city of G.o.d, and, following the Roman definition, the cite is not an abstract term, a collective term, but a real, positive existence, "the commonwealth" (chose publique), that is to say a distinct ent.i.ty consisting of generations which succeed each other in it, of infinite duration and of a superior kind, divine or nearly so, which does not belong to individuals but to which they belong, an organized body, with special form and structure, based on traditions, const.i.tuted by laws and ruled by a government. The absolute authority of the community over its members and the despotic leaders.h.i.+p of the community by its chiefs--such is the Roman notion of the State and, for much stronger reasons, of the Church. She, thus, is a militant, conquering, governing Rome, predestined to universal empire, a legitimate sovereign like the other one, but with a better t.i.tle, for she derives hers from G.o.d. It is G.o.d who, from the beginning, has preconceived and prepared her, who has bodied her forth in the Old Testament and announced her through the prophets; it is the Son of G.o.d who has built her up, who, to all eternity, will never fail to maintain and guide her steps, who, through his constant inspiration, ever remains present in her and active through her. He has committed to her his revelation. She alone, expressly delegated by Christ, possesses second sight, the knowledge of the invisible, the comprehension of the ideal order of things as its Founder prescribed and inst.i.tuted, and hence, accordingly, the custodians.h.i.+p and interpretation of the Scriptures, the right of framing dogmas and injunctions, of teaching and commanding, of reigning over souls and intellects, of fas.h.i.+oning belief and morals. Henceforth, the mystic faculty is to be confined within dikes. At bottom, this is the faculty for conceiving of the ideal, to obtain a vision of it, to have faith in this vision and to act upon it; the more precious it is the greater the necessity of its being under control. To preserve it from itself, to put it on guard against the arbitrariness and diversity of individual opinions, to prevent unrestrained digression, theoretically or practically, either on the side of laxity or of rigor, requires a government.--That this is a legacy of ancient Rome the Catholic Church does not dispute. She styles herself the Roman Church. She still writes and prays in Latin. Rome is always her capital; the t.i.tle of her chief is that which formerly designated the head of the pagan cult; after 1378 all the Popes except five, and since 1523 all, have been Italians; at the present day, thirty-five out of sixty-four cardinals are likewise Italians. The Roman stamp becomes still more evident on comparing the millions of Christians who are Catholics with the millions of Christians who are not. Among the primitive annexations and ulterior acquisitions of the Roman Church, several have separated from her, those of the countries whose Greek, Slavic and Germanic populations never spoke Latin and whose language is not derived from the Latin. Poland and Ireland are alone, or nearly so, the only countries which have remained loyal, because, with these, the Catholic faith, under the long pressure of public calamities, has become incorporated with national sentiment.

Elsewhere the Roman deposit is non-existent or too thin. On the contrary, all the populations that were once Latinized have at bottom remained Catholic; four centuries of imperial rule and of Roman a.s.similation have deposited in them of layers of habits, ideas and sentiments which endure.[5329] To measure the influence of this historic layer it is sufficient to note that three elements compose it, all three contemporary, of the same origin and of the same thickness, a Roman language, the civil law of Rome, and Roman Christianity; each of these elements, through its consistence, indicates the consistence of the others.

Hence the profound and established characteristics by which the Catholic branch now distinguishes itself from the other two issuing from the same Christian trunk. With the Protestants, the Bible, which is the Word of G.o.d, is the sole spiritual authority; all the others, the Doctors, Fathers, tradition, Popes and Councils, are human and, accordingly, fallible; in fact, these have repeatedly and gravely erred.[5330] The Bible, however, is a text which each reader reads with his own eyes, more or less enlightened and sensitive, with eyes which, in Luther's time, possessed the light and sensibility of the sixteenth century, and which, at the present time, read with the sensibility and light of the nineteenth century; so that, according to epochs and groups, the interpretation may vary, while authority, if not as regards the text, or at least its meaning, belongs wholly to the individual. With the Greeks and Slavs, as with the Catholics, it belongs only to the Church, that is to say to the heads of the Church, the successors of the apostles.

But with the Greeks and Slavs, since the ninth century, the Church had decreed no new dogmas; according to her, revelation had stopped; the creed was finished, final and complete, and there was nothing to do but to maintain it.--On the contrary, with the Catholics, after as before that date, the creed never ceased developing itself, always becoming more precise, and revelation kept on; the last thirteen councils were inspired like the first seven, while the first one, in which Saint Peter at Jerusalem figured, enjoyed no more prerogatives than the last one convoked by Pius IX. at the Vatican. The Church is not "a frozen corpse,"[5331] but a living body, led by an always active brain which pursues its work not only in this world but likewise in the next world, at first to define it and next to describe it and a.s.sign places in it; only yesterday she added two articles of faith to the creed, the immaculate conception of the Virgin and the infallibility of the Pope; she conferred ultra-terrestrial t.i.tles; she declared Saint Joseph patron of the universal Church; she canonized Saint Labre; she elevated Saint Francois de Sales to the rank of Doctor. But she is as conservative as she is active. She retracts nothing of her past, never rescinding any of her ancient decrees; only, with the explanations, commentaries and deductions of the jurist, she fastens these links closer together, forms an uninterrupted chain of them extending from the present time back to the New Testament and, beyond, through the Old Testament, to the origins of the world, in such a way as to coordinate around herself the entire universe and all history. Revelations and prescriptions, the doctrine thus built up is a colossal work, as comprehensive as it is precise, a.n.a.logous to the Digest but much more vast; for, besides canon law and moral theology, she includes dogmatic theology, that is to say, besides the theory of the visible world, the theory of the invisible world and its three regions, the geography of h.e.l.l, Purgatory and Paradise, immense territories of which our earth is merely the vestibule, unknown territories inaccessible to sense and reason, but whose confines, entrances, issues and subdivisions, the inhabitants and all that concerns them, their faculties and their communications, are defined, as on Peutinger's map and in the Not.i.tia imperii romani, with extraordinary clearness, minutia and exact.i.tude, through a combination of the positive spirit and the mystic spirit and by theologians who are at once Christians and administrators. In this relation, examine the "Somme"

of Saint Thomas. Still at the present day his order, the Dominican, furnishes at Rome those who are consulted on matters of dogma; or rather, in order to abridge and transcribe scholastic formula into perceptible images, read the "Divine Comedy "by Dante.[5332] It is probable that this description, as far as imagination goes, is still to-day the most exact as well as most highly-colored presentation of the human and divine world as the Catholic Church conceives it. She has charge of its keys and reigns and governs in it. The prestige of such a government over mult.i.tudes of minds and souls, susceptible to discipline, without personal initiative, and in need of firm and systematic guidance, is supreme. It is equal to or superior to that of the ancient roman State with its 120 million subjects. Outside of the Empire all seemed to these souls anarchy or barbarism; the same impression exists with the Catholics in relation to their Church.

Whether spiritual or temporal, an authority is more likely to be approved and venerated when, always visible and everywhere present, it is neither arbitrary nor capricious, but orderly, restrained by texts, traditions, legislation and jurisprudence, derived from above and from a superhuman source, consecrated by antiquity and by the continuity, coherence and grandeur of its work, in short, by that character which the Latin tongue is alone capable of expressing and which it terms majesty.

Among the acts which religious authority prescribes to its subjects, there are some which it imposes in its own name--rites, outward ceremonies and other observances--of which the princ.i.p.al ones, in the Catholic catechism, form a sequence to the "commandments of G.o.d,"

and which are ent.i.tled the "commandments of the Church."--With the Protestants, where Church authority is almost gone, rites have almost disappeared; considered in themselves, they have ceased to be regarded as obligatory or meritorious; the most important ones, the Eucharist itself, have been retained only as commemorative or as symbolic; the rest, fasts, abstinences, pilgrimages, the wors.h.i.+p of saints and the Virgin, relics of the cross, words committed to memory, genuflections and kneeling before images or altars, have been p.r.o.nounced vain; in the way of positive injunctions none remain but the reading of the Bible, while duty in outward demonstration of piety is reduced to piety within, to the moral virtues, to truthfulness, probity, temperance and steadfastness, to the energetic determination to observe the watchword received by man in two forms and which he finds in two concordant examples, in the Scriptures as interpreted by his conscience, and in his conscience as enlightened by the Scriptures. As another consequence, the Protestant priest has ceased to be a delegate from on high, the indispensable mediator between man and G.o.d, alone qualified to give absolution and to administer the rites by which salvation is obtained; he is simply a man, graver, more learned, more pious and more exemplary than other men, but, like the others, married, father of a family and entering into civil life, in short a semi-layman. The laymen whom he leads owe him deference, not obedience; he issues no orders; he sentences n.o.body; speaking from the rostrum to a gathering is his princ.i.p.al, almost unique, office, and the sole purpose of this is instruction or an exhortation.--With the Greeks and Slaves, with whom the authority of the Church is merely of a preservative nature, all the observances of the twelfth century have subsisted, as rigorously in Russia as in Asia Minor or in Greece, although fasting and Lents, which Southern stomachs can put up with, are unhealthy for the temperaments of the North. Here, likewise, these observances have a.s.sumed capital importance. The active sap, withdrawn from theology and the clergy, flows nowhere else; these, in an almost paralyzed religion, const.i.tute almost the sole vivifying organ, as vigorous and often more so, than ecclesiastical authority; in the seventeenth century, under the patriarch Nicon, thousands of "old believers," on account of slight rectifications of the liturgy, the alteration of a letter in the Russian translation of the name of Jesus, and the sign of the cross made by three instead of two fingers, separated themselves and, to-day, these dissenters, multiplied by their sects, count by millions. Defined by custom, every rite is sacred, immutable, and, when exactly fulfilled, sufficient in itself and efficacious; the priest who utters the words and makes the motions is only one piece in the mechanism, one of the instruments requisite for a magic incantation; after his instrumentation, he falls back into his human negativity; he is nothing more than an employee paid for his ministration. And this ministration is not exalted in him by an extraordinary and visible renunciation, by perpetual celibacy, by continence promised and kept; he is married,[5333] father of a family, needy, obliged to shear his flock to support himself and those belonging to him, and therefore is of little consideration; he is without moral ascendancy; he is not the pastor who is obeyed, but the official who is made use of.

The role of the priest in the Catholic Church is quite different.

Through her theory of rites she confers on him incomparable dignity and real personal power.--According to this theory, observances and ceremonies possess intrinsic and peculiar virtue; undoubtedly, these require some mental base, which is found in earnest piety; but earnest piety independent of these is not enough; it lacks its final consequence, its praiseworthy completion or "satisfaction,"[5334] the positive act by which we atone for our sins to G.o.d and demonstrate our obedience to the Church.[5335] It is the Church, the living interpreter of G.o.d's will, which prescribes these rites; she is then the mistress of these and not the servant; she is empowered to adapt their details and forms to necessities and circ.u.mstances, to lighten or simplify them according to time and place, to establish the communion in one shape, to subst.i.tute the Host in place of bread, to lessen the number and rigor of the ancient Lents, to determine the effects of diverse pious works, to apply, ascribe and transfer their salutary effects, to a.s.sign proper value and reward to each devotional act, to measure the merit derived from them, the sins they efface and the pardons these obtain not only in this world but in the next one. By virtue of her administrative habits, and with the precision of a bookkeeper, she casts up her accounts of indulgences and notes on the margin the conditions for obtaining them,--a certain prayer repeated so many times on certain days and what for, so many days less in the great penitentiary into which every Christian, however pious, is almost sure to get on dying, this or that diminution of the penalty incurred, and the faculty, if the penitent rejects this deduction for himself, of bestowing the benefit on another.

By virtue of her authoritative habits and the better to affirm her sovereignty, she regards as capital sins the omission of the rites and ceremonies she commands,--"not going to ma.s.s on Sunday or on fete-days;[5336] eating meat on Friday or Sat.u.r.day unnecessarily;" not confessing and communing at Easter, a mortal sin which "deprives one of the grace of G.o.d and merits eternal punishment" as well as "to slay and to steal something of value." For all these crimes, unforgivable in themselves, there is but one pardon, the absolution given by the priest, that is to say, confession beforehand, itself being one of the observances to which we are bound by strict obligation and at the very least once a year.