Protestantism and Catholicity

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE PROGRESS OF INDIVIDUALITY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF CATHOLICITY

IF we give a just and legitimate meaning to the word individuality, taking the feeling of personal independence in an acceptation which is not repugnant to the perfection of the individual, and does not oppose the constitutive principles of all society; moreover, if we seek the various causes which have influenced the development of this feeling, without speaking of that which we have already pointed out as one of the most important, viz. the true notion of man, and his connections with his fellows, we shall find many of them which are quite worthy of attention in Catholicity. M. Guizot was greatly deceived when, putting the faithful of the Church in the same rank with the ancient Romans, he asserted that both were equally wanting in the feeling of personal independence. He describes the faithful as absorbed by the association of the Church, entirely devoted to her, ready to sacrifice themselves for her; so that, according to him, it was the interests of the association which induced them to act. There is an error here; but as this error has originated in a truth, it is our duty to distinguish the ideas and the facts with much attention.

There is no doubt that from the cradle of Christianity the faithful have had an extreme attachment to the Church, and it was always well understood among them, that they could not leave the communion of the Church without ceasing to be numbered among the true disciples of Jesus Christ. It is equally undeniable that, in the words of M. Guizot, "There prevailed in the Christian Church a feeling of strong attachment to the Christian corporation, of devotion to its laws, and an ardent desire to extend its empire;" but it is not true that the origin and source of all these feelings was the spirit of association alone, to the exclusion of all development of real individuality. The Christian belonged to an association, but that association was regarded by him as a means of obtaining eternal happiness, as the ship in which he was embarked, amid the tempests of the world, to arrive safe in the port of eternity: and although he believed it impossible to be saved out of the Church, he did not understand from that that he was devoted to the Church, but to God. The Roman was ready to sacrifice himself for his country; the Christian, for his faith. When the Roman died, he died for his country; the faithful did not die for the Church, but for God. If we open the monuments of Church history, and read the acts of the martyrs, we shall then see what passed in that terrible moment, when the Christian, fully arousing himself, showed in the presence of the instruments of torture, burning piles, and the most horrible punishments, the true principle which acted on his mind. The judge asks his name; he declares it, and adds, "I am a Christian." He is asked to sacrifice to the gods. "We only sacrifice to one God, the Creator of heaven and earth." He is reproached with the disgrace of following a man who has been nailed to the cross; for him the ignominy of the cross is a glory, and he loudly proclaims that the Crucified is his Saviour and his God. He is threatened with tortures; he despises them, for they are passing, and rejoices in being able to suffer something for his Master. The cross of punishment is already prepared, the pile is lighted before his eyes, the executioner raises the fatal axe to strike off his head; what does it matter to him? all this is but for a moment, and after that moment comes a new life of ineffable and endless happiness. We thus see what influenced his heart; it was the love of his God and the interest of his eternal happiness. Consequently, it is utterly false that the Christian, like men of the ancient republics, destroyed his individuality in the association to which he belonged, allowing himself to be absorbed in that association like a drop of water in the immensity of ocean. The Christian belonged to an association which gave him the rule of his faith and conduct; he regarded that association as founded and directed by God himself; but his mind and his heart were raised to God, and when following the voice of the Church, he believed that he was engaged with his own individual affair, which was nothing less than his eternal happiness. This distinction is quite necessary in an affair which has relations so various and delicate that the slightest confusion may produce considerable errors. Here a hidden fact reveals itself to us, which is infinitely precious, and throws much light upon the development and perfecting of the individual in Christian civilization. It is absolutely necessary that there should be a social order to which the individual must submit; but it is also proper that he should not be absorbed by society to such an extent that he cannot be conceived but as forming part of it, and remains deprived of his own sphere of action. If this were the case, never would true civilization be completely developed; as it consists in the simultaneous perfecting of the individual and of society, it is necessary, for its existence, that both should have a well determined sphere, where their peculiar and respective movements may not check and embarrass each other.

After these reflections, to which I especially call the attention of all thinking men, I will point out a thing which has, perhaps, not yet been remarked; it is, that Christianity has eminently contributed to create that individual sphere in which man, without breaking the ties which connect him with society, is free to develop all his peculiar faculties. From the mouth of an Apostle went forth that generous expression which strictly limits political power: "We ought to obey God rather than man." (Acts v. 29.) "Obedire oportet Deo magis quam hominibus." The Apostle thereby proclaims that the individual should cease to acknowledge power, when power exacts from him what he believes to be contrary to his conscience. It was among Christians that this great example was witnessed for the first time; individuals of all countries, of all ages, of both sexes, of all conditions, braving the anger of authority, and all the fury of popular passions, rather than pronounce a single word contrary to the principles which they professed in the sanctuary of conscience; and this, not with arms in their hands, in the midst of popular commotions, where their impetuous passions are excited, which communicate to the mind temporary energy, but in the solitude and obscurity of dungeons, amid the fearful calmness of the tribunals, that is, in that situation where man, alone and isolated, cannot show force and dignity without revealing the elevation of his ideas, the nobleness of his feelings, the unalterable firmness of his conscience, and the greatness of his soul. Christianity engraved this truth deeply on the heart of man, that individuals have duties to perform, even when the whole world is aroused against them; that they have an immense destiny to fulfil, and that it is entirely their own affair, the responsibility of which rests upon their own free will. This important truth, unceasingly inculcated by Christianity at all times, to both sexes, to all conditions, must have powerfully contributed to excite in man an active and ardent feeling of personality. This feeling, with all its sublimity, combining with the other inspirations of Christianity, all full of dignity and grandeur, has raised the human mind from the dust, where ignorance and rude superstitions, and systems of violence, which oppressed it on all sides, had placed and retained it. How strange and surprising to the ears of Pagans must have been those energetic words of Justin, which nevertheless expressed the disposition of mind of the majority of the faithful, when, in his Apology, addressed to Antoninus Pius, he said, "As we have not placed our hopes on present things, we contemn those who kill us, death being, moreover, a thing which cannot be avoided."

This full and entire self-consciousness, this heroic contempt of death, this calm spirit of a man who, supported by the testimony of intimate feeling, sets at defiance all the powers of earth, must have tended the more to enlarge the mind, as they did not emanate from that cold stoical impassibility, the constant effort of which was to struggle against the nature of things without any solid motive. The Christian feeling had its origin in a sublime freedom from all that is earthly, in a profound conviction of the holiness of duty, and in that undeniable maxim, that man, in spite of all the obstacles which the world places in his way, should walk with a firm step towards the destiny which is marked out for him by his Creator. These ideas and feelings together communicated to the soul a strong and vigorous temper, which, without reaching in any thing the savage harshness of the ancients, raised man to all his dignity, nobleness, and grandeur. It must be observed that these precious effects were not confined to a small number of privileged individuals, but that, in conformity with the genius of the Christian religion, they extended to all classes; for one of the noblest characters of that divine religion is the unlimited expansion which it gives to all that is good; it knows no distinction of persons, and makes its voice penetrate the obscurest places of society. It was not only to the elevated classes and philosophers, but to the generality of the faithful, that St. Cyprian, the light of Africa, addressed himself, when, summing up in a few words all the grandeur of man, he marked with a bold hand the sublime position where our soul ought to maintain itself with constancy. "Never," he says, "never will he who feels himself to be the child of God admire the words of man. He falls from his noblest state who can admire any thing but God." (De Spectaculis.) Sublime words, which make us boldly raise our heads, and fill our hearts with noble feelings; words which, diffusing themselves over all classes, like a fertilizing warmth, were capable of inspiring the humblest of men with what previously seemed exclusively reserved for the transports of the poet:

Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueriJussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere cultus.

The development of the moral life, the interior life, that life in which man, reflecting on himself, is accustomed to render a circumstantial account of all his actions, of the motives which actuate him, of the goodness or the wickedness of those motives, and the object to which they tend, is principally due to Christianity, to its unceasing influence on man in all his conditions, in all situations, in all moments of his life. Such a progress of the individual life in all that it has most intimate, most active, and most interesting for the heart of man, was incompatible with that absorption of the individual by society, with that blind self-denial, in which man forgot himself, to think only of the association of which he formed a part. This moral and interior life was unknown to the ancients, because they wanted principles for supporting, rules for guiding, and inspirations for exciting and nourishing it. Thus at Rome, where the political element tries its ascendency over minds, when enthusiasm becomes extinguished by the effect of intestine dissensions, when every generous feeling becomes stifled by the insupportable despotism which succeeds to the last agitations of the republic, we see baseness and corruption develop themselves with fearful rapidity. The activity of mind which before occupied itself in debates of the Forum and the glorious exploits of war, no longer finding food, gave itself up to sensual pleasures with an abandonment which we can hardly imagine now-a-days, in spite of the looseness of morals which we so justly deplore. Thus we see among the ancients only these two extremes, either the most exalted patriotism, or the complete prostration of the faculties of the soul, which abandons itself without reserve to the dictates of its irregular passions; there man was the slave either of his own passions, of another man, or of society.

Since the moral tie which united men to Catholic society has been broken, since religious belief has been weakened, in consequence of the individual independence which Protestantism has proclaimed in religious matters, it has unhappily become possible for us to conceive, by means of examples found in European civilization, what man still deprived of real knowledge of himself, his origin and destiny, must have been. We will indicate in another place the points of resemblance which are found between ancient and modern society in the countries where the influence of religious ideas is enfeebled. It is enough now to remark, that if Europe had completely lost Christianity, according to the insane desires of some men, a generation would not have passed away without there being revived among us the individual and society such as they were among the ancients, except the modifications which the difference of the material state of the two civilizations would necessarily produce.

The doctrine of free will, so loudly proclaimed by Catholicity, and sustained by her with such vigour, not only against the old Pagan teaching, but particularly against sectarians at all times, and especially against the founders of the pretended Reformation, has also contributed more than is imagined to develop and perfect the individual, to raise his ideas of independence, nobleness, and dignity. When man comes to consider himself as constrained by the irresistible force of destiny, and attached to a chain of events over which he has no control – when he comes to suppose that the operations of his mind, those active proofs of his freedom, are but vain illusions – he soon annihilates himself; he feels himself assimilated to the brute; he ceases to be the prince of living beings, the ruler of the earth; he is nothing more than a machine fixed in its place, which is compelled to perform its part in the great system of the universe. The social order ceases to exist; merit and demerit, praise and blame, reward and punishment, are only unmeaning words. If man enjoys or suffers, it is only in the same way as a shrub, which is sometimes breathed upon softly by the zephyrs, and sometimes blasted by the north wind. How different it is when man is conscious of his liberty! Then he is master of his destiny; good and evil, life and death, are before his eyes; he can choose, and nothing can violate the sanctuary of his conscience. There the soul is enthroned, there she is seated, full of dignity, and the whole world raging against her, the universe falling upon her fragile body, cannot force her will. The moral order is displayed before us in all its grandeur; we see good in all its beauty, and evil in all its deformity; the desire of doing well stimulates, and the fear of doing ill restrains us; the sight of the recompense which can be obtained by an effort of free will, and which appears at the end of the path of virtue, renders that path more sweet and peaceful, and communicates activity and energy to the soul. If man is free, there remains something great and terrible, even in his crime, in his punishment, and even in the despair of hell. What is man deprived of liberty and yet punished? What is the meaning of this absurd proposition, a chief dogma of the founders of Protestantism? This man is a weak and miserable victim, in whose torture a cruel omnipotence delights; a God who has created him in order to see him suffer; a tyrant with infinite power, that is, the most dreadful of monsters. But if man is free, when he suffers, he suffers because he has deserved it; and if we contemplate him in the midst of despair, plunged into an ocean of horrors, his brow furrowed by the just lightnings of the Eternal, we seem to hear him still pronounce those terrible words with a haughty bearing and proud look, non serviam, I will not obey.

In man, as in the universe, all is wonderfully united; all the faculties of man have delicate and intimate relations with each other, and the movement of one chord in the soul makes all the others vibrate. It is necessary to call attention to this reciprocal dependence of all our faculties on each other, in order to anticipate an objection which may be made. We shall be told, all that has been said only proves that Catholicity has developed the individual in a mystical sense. No, the observations which I have made show something more than this; they prove that we owe to Catholicity the clear idea and lively feeling of moral order in all its greatness and beauty; they prove that we owe her the real strength of what we call conscience, and that if the individual believes himself to be called to a mighty destiny, confided to his own free will, and the care of which belongs entirely to him, it is to Catholicity he owes that belief; they prove that Catholicity has given man the true knowledge which he has of himself, the appreciation of his dignity, the respect which is paid to him as man; they prove that she has developed in our souls the germs of the noblest and most generous feelings; for she has raised our thoughts by the loftiest conceptions, dilated our hearts by the assurance of a liberty which nothing can take away, by the promise of an infinite reward, eternal happiness, while she leaves in our hands life and death, and makes us in a certain manner the arbiters of our own destiny. In all this there is more than mere mysticism; it is nothing less than the development of the entire man; nothing less than the true, the only noble, just, and reasonable individuality; nothing less than the collected powerful impulses which urge the individual towards perfection in every sense; it is nothing less than the first, the most indispensable, the most fruitful element of real civilization.

CHAPTER XXIV.

OF THE FAMILY. – MONOGAMY. – INDISSOLUBILITY OF THE CONJUGAL TIE

WE have seen what the individual owes to Catholicity; let us now see what the family owes her. It is clear that the individual, being the first element of the family, if it is Catholicity which has tended to perfect him, the improvement of the family will thus have been very much her work; but without insisting on this inference, I wish to consider the conjugal tie in itself, for which purpose it is necessary to call attention to woman. I will not repeat here what she was among the Romans, and what she is still among the nations who are not Christians; history, and still more the literature of Greece and Rome, afford us sad or rather shameful proofs on this subject; and all the nations of the earth offer us too many evidences of the truth and exactness of the observation of Buchanan, viz. that wherever Christianity does not prevail, there is a tendency to the degradation of woman. Perhaps on this point Protestantism will be unwilling to give way to Catholicity; it will assert that in all that affects woman the Reformation has in no degree prejudiced the civilization of Europe. We will not now inquire what evils Protestantism has occasioned in this respect; this question will be discussed in another part of the work; but it cannot be doubted, that when Protestantism appeared, the Catholic religion had already completed its task as far as woman is concerned. No one, indeed, is ignorant that the respect and consideration which are given to women, and the influence which they exercise on society, date further back than the first part of the 16th century. Hence it follows that Catholicity cannot have had Protestantism as a coadjutor; it acted entirely alone in this point, one of the most important of all true civilization; and if it is generally acknowledged that Christianity has placed woman in the rank which properly belongs to her, and which is most conducive to the good of the family and of society, this is a homage paid to Catholicity; for at the time when woman was raised from abjection, when it was attempted to restore her to the rank of companion of man, as worthy of him, those dissenting sects that also called themselves Christians did not exist, and there was no other Christianity than the Catholic Church.

It has been already remarked in the course of this work, that when I give titles and honours to Catholicity, I avoid having recourse to vague generalities, and endeavour to support my assertions by facts. The reader will naturally expect me to do the same here, and to point out to him what are the means which Catholicity has employed to give respect and dignity to woman; he shall not be deceived in his expectation. First, and before descending to details, we must observe that the grand ideas of Christianity with respect to humanity must have contributed, in an extraordinary manner, to the improvement of the lot of woman. These ideas, which applied without any difference to woman as well as to man, were an energetic protest against the state of degradation in which one-half of the human race was placed. The Christian doctrine made the existing prejudices against woman vanish for ever; it made her equal to man by unity of origin and destiny, and in the participation of the heavenly gifts; it enrolled her in the universal brotherhood of man, with his fellows and with Jesus Christ; it considered her as the child of God, the coheiress of Jesus Christ; as the companion of man, and no longer as a slave and the vile instrument of pleasure. Henceforth that philosophy which had attempted to degrade her, was silenced; that unblushing literature which treated women with so much insolence found a check in the Christian precepts, and a reprimand no less eloquent than severe in the dignified manner in which all the ecclesiastical writers, in imitation of the Scriptures, expressed themselves on woman. Yet, in spite of the beneficent influence which the Christian doctrines must have exercised by themselves, the desired end would not have been completely attained, had not the Church undertaken, with the warmest energy, to accomplish a work the most necessary, the most indispensable for the good organization of the family and society, I mean the reformation of marriage. The Christian doctrine on this point is very simple: one with one exclusively, and for ever. But the doctrine would have been powerless, if the Church had not undertaken to apply it, and if she had not carried on this task with invincible firmness; for the passions, above all those of man, rebel against such a doctrine; and they would undoubtedly have trodden it under foot, if they had not met with an insurmountable barrier, which did not leave them the most distant hope of triumph. Can Protestantism, which applauded with such senseless joy the scandal of Henry VIII., and accommodated itself so basely to the desires of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, boast of having contributed to strengthen that barrier? What a surprising difference! During many centuries, amid circumstances the most various, and sometimes the most terrible, the Catholic Church struggles with intrepidity against the passions of potentates, to maintain unsullied the sanctity of marriage. Neither promises nor threats could move Rome; no means could obtain from her any thing contrary to the instructions of her Divine Master: Protestantism, at the first shock, or rather at the first shadow of the slightest embarrassment, at the mere fear of displeasing a prince who certainly was not very powerful, yields, humbles itself, consents to polygamy, betrays its own conscience, opens a wide door to the passions, and gives up to them the sanctity of marriage, the first pledge for the good of the family, the foundation-stone of true civilization.

Protestant society on this point, wiser than the miscalled reformers who attempted to guide it, with admirable good sense repudiated the consequences of the conduct of its chiefs; although it did not preserve the doctrines of Catholicity, it at least followed the salutary impulse which it had received from them, and polygamy was not established in Europe. But history records facts which show the weakness of the pretended reformation, and the vivifying power of Catholicity. It tells us to whom it is owing that the law of marriage, that palladium of society, was not falsified, perverted, destroyed, amid the barbarous ages, amid the most fearful corruption, violence, and ferocity, which prevailed everywhere, as well at the time when invading nations passed pell-mell over Europe, as in that of feudality, and when the power of kings had already been preponderant, – history will tell what tutelary force prevented the torrent of sensuality from overflowing with all its violence, with all its caprices, from bringing about the most profound disorganization, from corrupting the character of European civilization, and precipitating it into that fearful abyss in which the nations of Asia have been for so many centuries.