Protestantism and Catholicity

But is it true that religious institutions are as contemptible as they have been represented? is it true that they do not even deserve attention, and that all the questions relating to them can be solved by merely pronouncing the word fanaticism? Does not the man of observation, the real philosopher, find in them any thing worthy of attracting his attention? It is difficult to believe that such was the nullity of these institutions, whose history is so grand, and which still preserve in their existence the promise of a great future. It is difficult to believe that such institutions are not worthy of attention in the highest degree, and that their study is wholly devoid of lively interest and solid profit. We see them appear at every epoch of Church history; their memorials and monuments are found every moment under our feet; they are preserved in the regions of Asia, in the sands of Africa, in the cities and solitudes of America; in fine, when, after so much adversity, we see them more or less prosperous in the various countries of Europe, sending forth again fresh shoots in those lands where their roots had been the most deeply torn up, there naturally arises in the mind a spirit of curiosity to examine this phenomenon, to inquire what is the origin, the genius, and the character of these institutions. Those who love to descend into the heart of philosophical questions discover, at first sight, that there must be there an abundant mine of the most precious information for the science of religion, of society, and of man. He who has read the lives of the ancient fathers of the desert without being touched, without feeling profound admiration, and being filled with grave and lofty thoughts; he who, treading under his feet with indifference the ruins of an ancient abbey, has not called up in fancy the shades of the cenobites who lived and died there; he who passes coldly through the corridors and cells of convents half-demolished, and feels no recollections, and not even the curiosity to examine, – he may close the annals of history, and may cease to study the beautiful and the sublime. There exist for him no historical phenomena, no beauty, no sublimity; his mind is in darkness, his heart is in the dust.

With the intention of hiding the intimate connection which subsists between religious institutions and religion herself, it has been said that she can exist without them. This is an incontrovertible truth, but abstract and wholly useless – a barren and isolated assertion, which can throw no light upon science, nor serve as any practical guide – an insidious truth, which only tends entirely to change the whole state of the question, and persuade men that when religious institutions are concerned, religion has nothing to do with the matter. There is here a gross sophism, which is too much employed, not only on this question, but on many others. This consists in replying to all difficulties by a proposition perfectly true in itself, but which has nothing to do with the question. By this means, attention is turned another way; the palpable truth which is presented to the mind makes men wander from the principal object, and induces them to take that for a solution which is only a distraction. With respect, for example, to the support of the clergy and divine worship, it is said, "Temporals are altogether different from spirituals." When the ministers of religion are systematically calumniated, "Religion," they say, "is one thing, and her ministers are another." If it is wished to represent the conduct of Rome for many centuries as an uninterrupted chain of injustice, of corruption, and of invasion of right, all reply is anticipated by saying, "The supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff has nothing to do with the vices of Popes or their ambition." Reflections perfectly just, and truths palpable, no doubt, which are very useful in certain cases, but which writers of bad faith cunningly employ to conceal from the reader the real object they have in view. Such are the jugglers who attract the attention of the simple multitude on one side, while their companions perform their criminal operations on the other.

Because a thing is not necessary to the existence of another, it does not follow that the first does not originate in the second, – does not find in the spirit of the latter its peculiar and permanent existence, and that a system of intimate and delicate relation does not subsist between them. The tree can subsist without flowers and fruits; these can certainly fall without destroying the trunk; but as long as the tree shall exist, will it ever cease to give proofs of its vigor and its beauty, and to offer its flowers to the eye, and its fruits to the taste? The stream may constantly flow in its crystal bed without the green margin which embellishes its sides; but while its source is not dried up – as long as the fertilizing water penetrates the ground, can its favored banks remain dry, barren, without color and ornament? Let us apply these images to our subject. It is certain that religion can exist without religious communities, and that their ruin does not necessarily entail that of religion herself. More than once it has been seen that in countries where religious institutions have been destroyed, the Catholic faith has been long preserved. But it is not less certain, that there is a necessary dependence between them and religion; that is, that she has given being to them, that she animates them with her spirit, and nourishes them with her substance: this is the reason why they immediately germinate wherever the Catholic faith takes root; and if they have been driven from a country where she continues to exist, they will reappear. Without alluding to the examples of other countries, do we not see this phenomenon take place in France in a remarkable manner? The number of convents of men and women which are again established on the French soil is already very considerable. Who would have told the men of the Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly, the Convention, that half a century should not elapse without seeing religious institutions reappear and flourish in France, in spite of all their efforts to destroy even their memory? "If that happen," they would have said, "it will be because the revolution which we are making will not be allowed to triumph – because Europe will have again imposed despotism upon us; then, and then only, will be witnessed in France – in Paris – in this capital of the Christian world – the re-establishment of religious institutions, that legacy of fanaticism and superstition, transmitted to us by the ideas and manners of an age which has passed away, never to return."

Senseless men! your revolution has triumphed; you have conquered Europe; the old principles of the French monarchy have been erased from legislation, institutions, and manners; the genius of war has led your doctrines in triumph over Europe, and they were gilded by the rays of your glory. Your principles, all your recollections have again triumphed at a recent period; they still live in all their force and pride, personified in some men who glory in being the heirs of what they call the glorious Revolution of '89; and yet, in spite of so many triumphs, although your revolution has only receded as much as was necessary the better to secure its conquests, religious institutions have again arisen – they extend, they are propagated everywhere, and they regain an important place in the annals of our times. To prevent this revival, it would have been necessary to extirpate religion; it was not enough to persecute her; faith remained like a precious germ covered by stones and thorns; Providence sends down a ray of that divine star which softens stones, and gives life and fertility; the tree rises again in all its beauty, in spite of the ruins which hindered its growth and development, and its leaves are immediately covered with charming blossoms: – behold the religious institutions which you thought were for ever annihilated!

The example which we have just mentioned clearly shows the truth of what we wish to establish, with respect to the intimate connection which exists between religion and religious institutions. Church history furnishes proofs in support of this truth. Besides, the mere knowledge of religion, and of the nature of the institutions of which we speak, would suffice to prove it to us, even if we had not history and experience in our favor.

The force of general prejudice on this subject is such, that it is necessary to descend to the root of things, to show the complete mistake of our adversaries. What are religious institutions considered generally? Putting aside the differences, the changes, the alterations necessarily produced by variety of times, countries, and other circumstances, we will say that a religious institute is a society of Christians living together, under certain rules, for the purpose of practising the Gospel precepts. We include, in this definition, even the orders which are not bound by a vow. It will be seen that we have considered the religious institution in its most general sense, laying aside all that theologians and canonists say with respect to the conditions indispensable to constitute or complete its essence. We must, moreover, observe that we ought not to exclude from the honorable denomination of religious institutes, those associations which possess all the conditions except the vows. The Catholic religion is fertile enough to produce good by means and forms widely different. In the generality of religious institutions, she has shown us what man can do by binding himself by a vow, for his whole life, to a holy abnegation of his own will; but she has also wished to show us that, while leaving him at liberty, she could attach him by a variety of ties, and make him persevere until death, as if he had been obliged by a perpetual vow. The congregation of the oratory of St. Philip Neri, which is found in this latter category, is certainly worthy of figuring among religious institutions as one of the finest monuments of the Catholic Church. I am aware that the vow is comprised in the essence of religious institutes, as they are commonly understood; but my only object now is, to vindicate this kind of association against Protestants. Now we know that they condemn indiscriminately, associations bound by vows and those which only consist of the permanent and free adhesion of the persons who compose them. All that has the form of a religious community is regarded by them with a look of anger. When they proscribed the religious orders, they included in the same fate those which had vows and those which had not. Consequently, when defending them, we must class them together. Moreover, this will not prevent our considering the vow in itself, and justifying it before the tribunal of philosophy.

I do not imagine that it is necessary to say more to show that the object of religious institutions – that is, as we have just said, the putting in practice of the Gospel counsels – is in perfect uniformity with the Gospel itself. And let us well observe that, whatever may be the name, whatever may be the form of the institutions, they have always for their object something more than the simple observance of the precepts; the idea of perfection is always included, then, either in the active or the contemplative life. To keep the Divine commandments is indispensable to all Christians who wish to possess eternal life; the religious orders attempt a more difficult path; they aim at perfection. This is the object of the men who, after having heard these words from the mouth of their Divine Master: "If you wish to be perfect, go sell all you have, and give it to the poor," have not departed sorrowful, like the young man in the Gospel, but have embraced with courage the enterprise of quitting all and following Jesus Christ.

We have now inquired whether association is the best means to carry into execution so holy an object. It would be easy for me to show this by adducing various texts of Scripture, where the true spirit of the Christian religion, and the will of our Divine Master, are clearly shown on this point; but the taste of our age, and the self-evidence even of the truths in question, warn us to avoid, as much as possible, all that savors of theological discussion. I will remove the question, then, from this level, to consider it in a light purely historical and philosophical; that is to say, without accumulating citations and texts, I will prove that religious institutes are perfectly conformable to the spirit of the Christian religion; and that consequently that spirit has been deplorably mistaken by Protestants, when they have condemned or destroyed them. If philosophers, while they do not admit the truth of religion, still avow that it is useful and beautiful, I will prove to them that they cannot condemn those institutions which are the necessary result of it. In the cradle of Christianity, when men preserved, in all their energy and purity, the sparks from the tongues of the Holy Spirit; in those times, when the words and examples of its Divine Founder were still fresh, when the number of the faithful who had had the happiness of seeing and hearing Him was still very great in the Church, we see the Christians, under the direction of the Apostles themselves, unite, have all their property in common; thus forming only one family, the Father of which was in heaven, and which had only one heart and one soul.

I will not dispute as to the extent of this primitive proceeding; I will abstain from analyzing the various circumstances which accompanied it, and from examining how far it resembled the religious institutions of latter times; it is enough to state its existence, and show therefrom what is the true spirit of religion with respect to the most proper means to realize evangelical perfection. I will only allude to the fact, that Cassian, in the description which he gives of the commencement of religious institutions, assigns as their cradle the proceeding we have just mentioned, and which is reported in the Acts of the Apostles. According to the same author, this kind of life was never wholly interrupted; so that there were always some fervent Christians who continued it; thus attaching, by a continued chain, the existence of the monks to the primitive associations of the apostolical times. After having described the kind of life of the first Christians, and traced the alterations of the times that followed, Cassian continues thus: "Those who preserved the apostolical fervor in this way, recalling primitive perfection, quitted towns, and the society of those who believed that they were allowed to live with less severity; they began to choose secret and retired places, where they could follow in private the rules which they remembered to have been appointed by the Apostles for the whole body of the Church in general. Thus commenced the formation of the discipline of those who had quitted that contagion, as they lived separate from the rest of the faithful; abstaining from marriage, and having no communication with the world, even with their own families. In the progress of time, the name of monks was given to them, in consideration of their singular and solitary life." (Collat. 18, cap. 5.)

Times of persecution immediately followed, which, with some interruptions, that may be called moments of repose, lasted till the conversion of Constantine. There were, then, during this time, some Christians who attempted to continue the mode of life of the apostolical years. Cassian clearly indicates this in the passage which we have just read. He omits to say that this primitive life was necessarily modified, in its exterior form, by the calamities with which the Church was afflicted at that period. In all that time we ought not to look for Christians living in community; we shall find them confessing Jesus Christ, with imperturbable calmness, on the rack, amid all torments, in the circus, where they were torn to pieces by wild beasts, on the scaffold, where they quietly gave up their heads to the axe of the executioner. But observe what happened even during the time of persecution; the Christians, of whom the world was not worthy, pursued in the towns like wild beasts, wandered about in solitude, seeking refuge in the deserts. The solitudes of the East, the sand and rocks of Arabia, the most inaccessible places of the Thebaïd, receive those troops of fugitives, who dwell in the abodes of wild beasts, in abandoned graves, in dried-up cisterns, in the deepest caverns, only asking for an asylum for meditation and prayer. And do you know the result of this? These deserts, in which the Christians wandered, like a few grains of sand driven by the wind, became peopled, as it were by magic, with innumerable religious communities. There they meditated, prayed, and read the Gospel; hardly had the fruitful seed touched the earth, when the precious plant arose in a moment.

Admirable are the designs of Providence! Christianity, persecuted in the towns, fertilizes and embellishes the deserts; the precious grain requires for its development neither the moisture of the earth nor the breeze of a mild atmosphere; when carried through the air on the wings of the storm, the seed loses nothing of its vitality; when thrown on a rock, it does not perish. The fury of the elements avails nothing against the work of God, who has made the north wind His courser: the rock ceases to be barren when He pleases to fertilize it. Did He not make pure water spring forth at the mysterious touch of His Prophet's rod?

When peace was given to the Church by the conqueror of Maxentius, the germs contained in the bosom of Christianity were able to develop themselves everywhere; from that moment the Church was never without religious communities. With history in our hands, we may defy the enemies of religious institutions to point out any period, however short, when these institutions had entirely disappeared. Under some form or in some country, they have always perpetuated the existence which they had received in the early ages of Christianity. The fact is certain and constant, and is found in every page of ecclesiastical history; it plays an important part in all the great events in the annals of the Church. It is found in the west and in the east, in modern and in ancient times, in the prosperity and in the adversity of the Church; when the pursuit of religious perfection was an honor in the eyes of the world, as well as when it was an object of persecution, raillery, and calumny. What clearer proof can there be that there is an intimate connection between religious institutions and religion herself? What more is required to show us that they are her spontaneous fruit? In the moral and in the physical order of things, the constant appearance of the one following the other, is regarded as a proof of the reciprocal dependence of two phenomena. If these phenomena have towards each other the relations of cause and effect – if we find in the essence of the one all the principles that are required in the production of the other, the first is called the cause and the other the effect. Wherever the religion of Jesus Christ is established, religious communities are found under some form or other; they are, therefore, its spontaneous effect. I do not know what reply can be made to so conclusive an argument.

By viewing the question in this way, the favor and protection which religious institutions always found with the Pontiff is naturally explained. It was his duty to act in conformity with the spirit which animates the Church, of which he is the chief ruler upon earth; it is certainly not the Pope who has made the regulation, that one of the means most apt to lead men to perfection is to unite themselves in associations under certain rules, in conformity with the instructions of their Divine Master. The Eternal Lord thus ruled in the secrets of His infinite wisdom, and the conduct of the Popes could not be contrary to the designs of the Most High. It has been said that interested views interposed; it has been said that the policy of the Popes found in these institutions a powerful means of sustaining and aggrandizing itself. But can you not see any thing but the sordid instruments of cunning policy in the societies of the primitive faithful, in the monasteries of the solitudes of the East, in that crowd of institutions which have had for their object only the sanctification of their own members and the amelioration of some of the great evils of humanity? A fact so general, so great, so beneficent, cannot be explained by views of interest and narrow designs; its origin is higher and nobler; and he who will not seek for it in heaven ought at least to seek for it in something greater than the projects of a man or the policy of a court; he ought to seek for lofty ideas, sublime feelings, capable, if they do not mount to heaven, at least of embracing a large part of the earth; nothing less is here required than one of those thoughts which preside over the destinies of the human race.

Some persons may be inclined to imagine private designs on the part of the Popes, because they see their authority interfere in all the foundations of later ages, and their approbation constitute the validity of the rules of religious institutions; but the course pursued in this respect by ecclesiastical discipline shows us that the most active intervention of the Popes, far from emanating from private views, has been called for by a necessity of preventing an excessive multiplication of the religious orders in consequence of an indiscreet zeal. This vigilance in preventing abuses was the origin of this supreme intervention. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the tendency to new foundations was so strong that the most serious inconveniences would have resulted from it, without a continual watchfulness on the part of the ecclesiastical authority. Thus we see the Sovereign Pontiff Innocent III. ordain, in the Council of Lateran, that whoever wished to found a new religious house shall be bound to adopt one of the approved rules and institutions.

But let us pursue our design. I can understand how those who deny the truth of the Christian religion, and turn into ridicule the counsels of the Gospel, bring themselves to deny all that is celestial and divine in the spirit of the religious communities; but the truth of religion once established, I cannot conceive how men who boast of following its laws can declare themselves the enemies of these institutions considered in themselves. How can he who admits the principle refuse the consequence? How can he who loves the cause reject the effect? They must either affect a religion hypocritically, or they profess without comprehending it.

In default of any other proof of the anti-evangelical spirit which guided the leaders of the pretended Reformation, their hatred to an institution so evidently founded on the Gospel itself should suffice. Did not these enthusiasts for reading the Bible without note or comment– they who pretend to find all its passages so clear – did they not remark the plain and easy sense of that multitude of passages which recommend self-abnegation, the renunciation of all possessions, and the privation of all pleasures? These words are plain – they cannot be taken in any other signification – they do not require for their comprehension a profound study of the sacred sciences, or that of languages; and yet they have not been heard: we should rather say, they have not been listened to. The intellect has understood, but the passions have rejected them.

As to those philosophers who have regarded religious institutions as vain and contemptible, if not dangerous, it is clear that they have meditated but little on the human mind, and on the deep feelings of our hearts, full as they are of mystery. As their hearts have felt nothing at the sight of those numbers of men and women assembled for the purpose of sanctifying themselves or others, or of relieving wants, and consoling the unfortunate, it is but too clear that their souls have been dried up by the breath of skepticism. To renounce for ever all the pleasures of life; to live in solitude, there to offer one's self, in austerity and penance, as a holocaust to the Most High: this, certainly is a matter of horror to those philosophers who have only viewed the world through their own prejudices. But humanity has other thoughts; it feels itself attracted by those objects which philosophers find so vain, so devoid of interest, so worthy of horror.

Wonderful are the secrets of our hearts! Although enervated by pleasure, and involved in the whirlwind of amusement and mirth, we cannot avoid being seized with deep emotion at the sight of austerity and recollection of soul. Solitude, and even sadness itself, exert an inexpressible influence over us. Whence comes that enthusiasm which moves a whole nation, excites and makes it follow, as if by enchantment, the steps of a man whose brow is marked by recollection, whose features display austerity of life, whose clothes and manners show freedom from all that is earthly, and forgetfulness of the world? Now, it is a fact, proved by the history both of true and of false religions; so powerful a means of attracting respect and esteem has not remained unknown to imposture: licentiousness and corruption, desirous of making their fortunes in the world, have more than once felt the imperious necessity of disguising themselves under the mantle of austerity and purity. What at first sight might appear the most opposed to our feelings, the most repugnant to our tastes – this shade of sadness diffused over the recollection and solitude of the religious life – is precisely what enchants and attracts us the most. The religious life is solitary and pensive; therefore it is beautiful, and its beauty is sublime. Nothing is more apt than this sublimity to move our hearts deeply, and make indelible impressions on them. In reality, our soul has the character of an exile; it is affected by melancholy objects only; it has not attained to that noisy joy which requires to borrow a tint of melancholy only for the sake of a happy contrast. In order to clothe beauty with its most seductive charms, it is necessary that a tear of anguish should flow from her eyes, that her forehead should assume an air of sadness, and her cheeks grow pale with a melancholy remembrance. In order that the life of a hero excite a lively interest in us, it is requisite that misfortune be his companion, lamentation his consolation – that disaster and ingratitude be the reward of his virtues. If you wish that a picture of nature or art should strongly attract our attention, take possession of and absorb the powers of our soul, it is necessary that a memorial of the nothingness of man, and an image of death, should be presented to our minds; our hearts should be appealed to by the feelings of a tranquil sadness; we desire to see sombre tints on a monument in ruins – the cross reminding us of the abode of the dead, the massive walls covered with moss, and pointing out the ancient dwelling of some powerful man, who, after having lived on earth for a short time, has disappeared.