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CATHOLIC REFORM,

CATHOLIC REFORM.

LETTERS, FRAGMENTS, DISCOURSES,

FATHER HYACINTHE.

TRANSLATED BY
MADAME HYACINTHE-LOYSON.

WITH A PREFACE
BY
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY,
DEAN OF WESTMINSTER.

* For a priest, there is nothing so dangerous before God, nothing so shameful before man, as
not to speak out his convictions freely." — Saint Ambrose.

MACMILLAN AND CO.
1874.

LONDON :
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.

PREFACE.

In fulfilling a request to introduce to the English
public the English translation of the addresses and
letters of the distinguished French preacher, M, Hya-
cinthe Loyson, still beat known by his former name of
Pere Hyacinthe, I have thought that it might be well
to give a general view of the grounds on which even
those who may differ from many of the expressions
and statements herein contained ought to feel an in
terest in the movement of which he is, if not the most
influential, yet the best known and the most popular
representative.^ That universal ground of interest consists in the deep
religious principle which is involved in the Old Catholic
struggle. It is this. That the chief call of those in
any Church, who disagree with the dominant party, or
with any of its specific doctrines or institutions, is not
to desert such a Church, but to strive, openly and
1 The substance of this Preface is contained, more or less, in an address
published in 1873 in the Contemporary Review.

PREFACE.

honourably, to realise within it their own ideal of
Christianity. There are two other courses, but only two other
courses, open in such cases. One is that each dissentient
should found a sect of his own. For educated men —
for those who take a serious view of the whole position
of Christendom at this time — it is probable that there
are few to whom such a step will commend itself
Another course would be i that of complete individual
isolation from all ecclesiastical organizations whatever.
This may possibly be the ultimate issue to which the
world is tending. But there are many reasons for re
garding such an issue as far distant. And, therefore,
in the meantime, the principle on which the Liberal
or Old Catholics profess to act has a paramount claim
on all reflecting men, and it may be useful to show
that their confession of it is not new or solitary.
The struggle of the Old Catholics against the Ultra-
montanes is virtually the same which in different
degrees is maintained against what may be called the
Ultramontanes in each of the churches of Christendom,
Catholic or Protestant, Conforming or Nonconforming.
It is perhaps necessary, in speaking of Ultramon-
1 I have not here spoken of the alternative of the dissatisfied members'
passing over to some other existing Church, which no doubt may in some
cases be the easiest solution. But in every mixed Church (aud all existing
Churches are more or less mixed) occur the same difficulties arising from
partial disagreement, as are involved in the case of the Old Catholics^

PREFACE.

tanes in this general sense, to make two remarks by
way of explanation. The word, as is well known,
has now entirely lost its geographical sense, and is
used in the Roman Church for those, whether north
or south ^ of the Alps, who attach an exclusive and
excessive value to the judgment of the Roman Court.
But this special application has itself become absorbed
in the more general meaning which is symbolized by it,
and which may perhaps be rendered (making allowance
for the epigrammatic form of the phrase) by a defini
tion given in a recent Parliamentary debate by Dr.
Lyon Playfair. " The Ultramontanes are the Ecclesi
astical Communists. Communism is the reduction of
property to a common level. Ultramontanism is the
reduction of religions spirit and intellectual thougJit to
a common level." But, in using the word in this sense,
and whilst lamenting the mischievous effect of this
tendency on the Church at large, we would gladly
acknowledge the many excellent graces that adorn the
characters of those who may thus be designated in
these several churches. For many of them we ought
to entertain a profound respect and regard — and we
-do not doubt that they perform a useful function, so
long as they are not the exclusive rulers.
1 In earlier times, the word was used from the Italian or southern point
of vie-vv— and thus in a reverse sense to the modern. Lord Bacon, in
speaking of what he calls " Papable persons," says that "not more than
one Ultramontane [i.e , not more than one of the Norlhern as opposed

PREFACE.

Thus the struggle of the Old Catholics is in itself the
same struggle which has been maintained in the Church
of England by those who, from the time of Lord Falk
land down to the present day, have endeavoured to set
forth more reasonable views of religion, in distinction
from the hierarchical or Puritan views which have alter
nately been upheld by the fashion of the day or the
domination of party.^ It is the same struggle 'which,
under a somewhat different guise, was sustained by
John Wesley. " I vary," he said, " from the Church
of England, but I will never leave it." It is also the
same principle, under yet another form, which is main
tained by what are called the " Liberal Protestants "
in the National Protestant Church of France. It is
the same principle which is or which might be main
tained in each of the Nonconformist communities. It
was the struggle of John Bunyan and of Robert Hall
in favour of open communion against the rigid rule of
the Baptists. It was the struggle of Dr. Davidson
against the rulers of the Independents. It is the
struggle of those noble-m.inded Nonconformists who
maintain their protest against the watchwords which
often govern their churches ; who resist the reduc-
t o the Southern nations) has been appointed for the last forty years "
Aud in Brande's " Ecclesiastical Dictionary " the word is explained to
mean, " those who are least favourable to the Papal supremacy."
' See Principal Tulloch's excellent work on " Rational Theolo-v in
England." "'

PREFACE.

tion of all ecclesiastical institutions to the common
level of a uniform sectarianism ; who know that the
Church cannot wholly be separated from the Chris
tian world, nor religion from the national education of
the country., It is the struggle of all those members
of the Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, whether
Established, Free, or " United Presbyterian," who,
in the presence of the old Calvinistic standards
of their Church, maintain what Norman Macleod
used to call " the magnificent ' Nevertheless ' of Dr.
Chalmers." In all these cases, the cry of the dominant party is
the same — not always the same in form, not always
couched in the same imperious tone, but the same in
substance : — "We do not wish to keep you — you are not
of us — we anathematize you — you are traitors within
the camp — if you leave us, we will respect you — so long
as you remain with us, we hate you, we despise you."
The counter-cry of the Old Catholics ; of the Anglican
representatives of Chillingworth and Tillotson ; of the
old French Huguenots of the pre-Methodist epoch ;
of the Open-communion Baptists ; of the followers
of the fine old Nonconformists of the type of Baxter
or Wesley or Robert Hall ; of the larger-minded Pres
byterians of Scotland ; either is, or would be, if they
were pushed to extremities, the same also :— " We have
no wish to leave you; we maintain our position as

PREFACE.

legitimate in the Catholic, the Anglican, the Huguenot,
the Presbyterian, the Nonconformist Churches respec
tively ; we value the advantages, not only temporal
but spiritual, which the connection with a wider body
gives us ; we consider our existence within that body
an advantage to it ; we refuse to regard ourselves as
outcasts ; we maintain that we represent not the only,
but some of the best elements of perpetuity and life
in the Church ; we claim to be lineally descended in
spirit, though sometimes not in letter, from those who
are acknowledged to be the best and wisest leaders of
the Church in ancient times ; we regard the exclusive
possession of the Church by the dominant school of
the day as alike injurious to the Church itself and
personally unjust to ourselves ; we maintain that
our variations from the constitution, the doctrine,
or the discipline of the Church are not greater than
yours." Take, for example, in the Roman Catholic Church,
the celibacy of the clergy, or the dogma of the Pope's
Infallibility. " We maintain " (the Old Catholics might
and do say) "that the variation from the established
usage of the modern Roman Catholic Church in these
respects is not greater than the defiance which well-
known highly-favoured Roman Catholics offer to
ecclesiastical or Papal decrees which forbid them
to have money in the bank, which forbid them to

PREFACE.

have intercourse with heretics, which fprbid them to
possess and read books which are placed on the
' Index,' which command them to believe in the Ptole
maic system of astronomy, in the supreme and un
erring authority of the Vulgate translation, in the
reality of witchcraft and demonology. Such deviations
are one and all irreconcilable with the strict letter of
Catholic orthodoxy." " We contend " (in like manner it
may be said by the English Latitudinarians or Puritans)
"that we do not vary from the law or doctrine of
the Church of England more than those who justify
their position by the strained interpretations of Tract
90 ; who maintain the infallibility of General Councils,,
which the Articles declare to be fallible ; who despise
the Royal Supremacy, which runs through the whole
framework of our Constitution ; who have difficulty in
accepting the Calvinistic or Lutheran statements re
specting Justification and Predestination ; who adopt
only one form of expression and reject the others which
are contained in the Anglican formularies respecting the
Sacraments ; and who undervalue if they do not deny
the supreme importance attached in all parts of these
formularies (with a single exception), to Christian life
and morality over form or opinion." " We claim also "
(this may be said by the Liberal Protestants of France)
"to be as true descendants of the ancient leaders of
French Protestantism as you, the ruling party, who re-

PREFACE.

ject the Confession of La Rochelle.'' "We maintain"
(so it may be said by those Nonconformists in England
or those Free Churchmen in Scotland who decline to
regard an Established Church or an endowed Church
as a deadly evil) " that we have as much right to
our Nonconformist positions as you, who enter
without scruple into Parliament, who enjoy endowed
Professorships, who have Trust-deeds which bring
you directly under the Civil Courts." " We main
tain" (so may the higher spirits of all the Scottish
Churches assert) " that if we depart from the letter
of the Westminster Confession and Directory in some
respects, so do even the strictest advocates of Cove
nanting theology depart not less completely in other
respects." And not only so, but in these several cases the dis
agreeing party have often a right to regard themselves,
rather than those who would exclude them, as constitu
ting the real representatives of the Church to which
they belong. As the French Liberal Protestants cer
tainly move more in the general spirit of Antoine Court,
the second founder of the Huguenot Church, than do
their so-called "orthodox" opponents— as the English
Latitudinarians certainly approach more nearly to the
spirit of the first Reformers, like Erasmus and Colet,
T.yndale, and Cranmer, and also to the Church of Til
lotson, Butler, and Paley, and to the mass of educated

PREFACE.

lay Churchmen of the present and of former genera
tions, than do their opponents — as the defenders of
Establishments amongst Nonconformists may fairly say
that they are more truly the sons of the Westminster
Assembly, of Wesley and of Chalmers, than the exclu
sive adherents of modern " Voluntaryism " — as the old
"Revolution settlement" of the Church of Scotland is
more faithfully exhibited in the " moderate " and philo
sophical and practical genius which has never wholly
departed from it, than in its purely Calvinistic or
Covenanting elements — so also the "Old Catholics''
may fairly say that they more justly claim that name
than those Ultramontanes who, even by Montalembert,
were called the " Neo-Catholics " of the nineteenth
century. In outward profession and speech they may
be a minority, but in inward sentiment they represent
the silent majority of educated Roman Catholics
throughout Europe. They also, much more than
their opponents, represent the moderation of ancient
Gallicanism — of Bossuet and Fdnelon and Huet ;
the glories of Port Royal, who are the glories of the
Church of France — Nicole, Fleury, Pascal. The sub
mission of the Bishops to the Pope's Infallibility is
directly in violation of their own oaths of consecration
to admit no interpretations but such as have the
general consent of the Fathers. Dr. Lyon Playfair
urged, with perfect justice, in the debate to which we

PREFACE.

have already referred on the Irish University, that it
was the modern Roman Catholic hierarchy of Ireland,
who had departed from the standard of education in
the Catholic Church before the Reformation ; that
they and not their opponents are the dissentients from
the principle of free teaching laid down by Pope
Clement V. and Chancellor Gerson. Henry IV., the
most beneficent and beloved of modern French kings,
combined the Protestant and Catholic elements of
Christianity to an extent now rarely seen. We have
only to read the speech of his in announcing the
Edict of Nantes to see, in the most important re
spects, its complete divergence from modern Ultra
montanism, its complete identity with Old Catholicism.
The extreme principle of the modern Legitimists is
often now regarded as the main representative of the
prevailing principles of the French Church. The
powerful protests against Papal Infallibility and Jesuit
theology in the Memoirs of S. Simon are what the
ruling party of the present Roman Church denounce
as anti-Christian or infidel. But it was truly remarked
(after one of the numerous manifestos of the .Legiti
mist Chief), by one well qualified to judge — doubt
less with the examples of S. Louis before his mind
— " The Comte de Chambord keeps his eye steadily
fixed on the Vatican, as did his ancestors; but the
difference is that he looks at the Vatican to admire

PREFACE.

or imitate its excesses, whereas his ancestors looked
at it to guard against its exaggerations or to protect
the liberties of their own Church and nation from
its tyranny."
On all these points it may be truly urged that the
Ultramontanes of the various churches are as really
nonconforming members of the Church to which they
belong, as those who are often represented as traitors
or rebels. And the advantage which accrues, in all
these cases, to the Church from, the co-existence of these
diverse tendencies, is similar. The Ultramontane Catho
lics, once freed from the presence of the element which
the Old Catholics represent, would be left to drag down
the venerable institution to which they belong, into a
state of degradation which must ultimately lead to its
total destruction. The Liberal Catholics, parted from
the general stream of historical and national tradition
in the Catholic Church, would probably become a bitter
antagonistic sect, which, if it continued at all, would
maintain itself in a stunted, one-sided, polemical posi
tion, hardly worth contending for. The English Lati
tudinarians, by the very nature of the case, neither
in the time of Lord Falkland, nor in the time of the
Cambridge Platonists, nor in the time of Bishop But
ler, could have thought it worth while to occupy one
amongst many of the questionable positions claimed
by the different English sects. The "Liberal Protest-

PREFACE.

ants " of France, already suffering from the narrowness
and limitation produced partly by the violence of the
French party, partly by the smallness of the circles
in which French Protestantism exists, would feel this
more and more in proportion as they became alto
gether a distinct body ; whilst on the other hand
the Puritan section of their Church would lose the
stimulating influences which now, through contact
with such men as Colani, Coquerel, and Fontan^s,
they are enabled in some degree to absorb, and, so far
as the tendency of their opponents is evil, to neutralize
it. Wesleyans, who maintain the great principles of
Catholic charity and of attachment to the Church of
England, laid down by their founder, had far better
continue their protest within the Methodist commu
nion, than form a new and small section outside of it.
And it should be observed that this claim to be
long to the larger body, though disagreeing from it, is
sometimes put forward by the Ultramontane sections
themselves. It is the claim which, whenever in a
state of depression, as for example, 'when attacked
by the Pope for their conduct in China, or when
suppressed by Clement XIV, the Jesuits endeavoured
to maintain in the Roman Church. It is the position
vindicated by a venerable representative of the ex-
tremest section of the French Ultramontanes, whom
his adversaries assert to have been condemned by the

PREFACE.

Vatican Council, whilst he in return taunts them
with having suppressed a counter-decree, by which
his views, as he alleges, were sanctioned.^ It was the
position also, to a certain extent, claimed by the Puri
tan section of the Church of Geneva, which at the
beginning of this century terminated in the unfortunate
schism which has been perpetuated. It is the claim,
justly put forward, in the moments when they have
been unduly depressed, by the hierarchical school in
the Church of England, in virtue of the germs or
fragments of sacerdotal or sacramental teaching em
bedded in the English formularies.
Every Church has at least two tendencies at work
which together form the current of its existence.
A favourite weapon of attack on the Church of Eng
land, is the allegation that it is impossible to defend
the maintenance of a Church which includes divergent
views of Christian theology. If this impossibility were
once admitted, there is not a Church in Christendom
that could hold its ground for a year. It is as a pro
test against any such necessity of uniformity that the
wide rent disclosed in the Roman Church by the
division between the supporters and deniers of the
Pope's fallibility becomes so interesting. Even before
the Reformation there were parties and sects analogous
1 See the curious controversy on " Traditionalism " in the " Annates de
Philosophie Chretienne," 6th series, vol. v. pp. 35-42- b

PREFACE.

to those in the Reformed Churches.' The services,
the creeds, the traditions, the decisions of the Catholic
Church, are fraught with contradictions as irreconcil
able as those which exist in the liturgies and con
fessions of England, Augsburg, or Geneva. The
Church or Churches in communion with the see of
Rome are now rent from top to bottom by a division
deeper in principle than any amongst Protestants.
This is a decisive proof that the Roman Church has
no peculiar claim to unity — no special exemption
from the ordinary laws of human society. But this is
not in itself a reproach. It is the glory or the in
firmity which the Church of Rome shares in common
with all civilized Churches. Its humiliation and shame
consists in the unworthy and futile endeavour to con
ceal or deny it.
If it be said that there is and ought to be no halt
ing-place anywhere except in the extreme consequence
of our opinions, and that this is the especial weakness
of the Old Catholic agitation, it may be replied first
that this is an inconsistency which applies to every
serious religious movement and to every great religi
ous institution throughout the world. No doubt, there
is a limit to such variations, and compromise may go
1 See Erasmus's " Enchiridion," Preface, p. 8, where he speaks of the
quarrels between the difl'erent orders and schools in the Catholic Church
exactly as modern Roman Catholics speak of the divisions of Protestants. '

PREFACE.

too far. But the fact remains. Christianity itself, as
it now exists, is a compromise between the religion
of the first and the religion of the nineteenth century,
and it is the wisdom and policy alike of individuals
and of communities to blend and to bear with the
conflicting elements as best they can. The Roman
Church, with all its sacerdotal pretensions, has deep
seated in its vitals the original taint — shall we not
say the original splendour .' — of that Protestant free
dom, which it contracted when it broke away from
the Holy Orthodox Church of the East, and on
what would now be called rational, or sceptical,
grounds, abolished the ancient Catholic practice of
Infant Communion, and the still more venerable and
once indispensable practice of Baptism by Immer
sion. The narrowest sect — the very " dissidence of
dissent" — has wrapt up amongst the household gods
which it carried from the burning of Babylon, the
germs of the rigid sacerdotal theory, which it only
needs a return towards the barbarism of pure sec
tarianism to foster into gigantic proportions.
And, secondly, there is in this alleged inconsistency
something even of an excellence. A Scottish Episco
palian, of much humour and genius, once said to an
Englishman whom he was taking to a Presbyterian
church, and speaking of two common friends, "He
is a Presbyterian by mistake, and he (the other) is
b2

PREFACE.

an Episcopalian by mistake. But these kipd of mis
taken Churchmen are the very salt of their respective
Churches." And so in the very dubiousness and cre
puscular character of the Old Catholic movement Hes
one of its main interests. " What is halfness .' what
are half measures ? what is inconsistency .-" " asked Pro
fessor Hiiber in the conference of the Old Catholics
at Cologne. " It is to be on the road, and not yet to
have reached the goal. It is the necessary character
istic of every true development. Every mortal man is
in this sense but half himself. But in the only meaning
in which the charge would be a reproach, we are not
half-hearted — for we wish the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth ; we are engaged in a vast
process of historical revision — in an endeavour to distin
guish the eternal from the temporary, the essential from
the non-essential in Christianity, and it is the thorough
ness and earnestness with which this process is con
ducted that is thrown in our teeth."
There are, besides this general ground of interest in
the Old Catholic movement, some of a more special
kind. But before entering on these, it would be well
to anticipate an objection which may be brought both
against the general attitude here ascribed to it, and
also against some of the specific points which shall
be alleged.

PREFACE.

It is sometimes urged as a reason against the possi
bility of any sympathy between the Liberal Catholics
in the Roman Church and the Liberal Protestants of
the Protestant Churches, that the theological position
of many of the Old Catholics resembles that of those
who in the Church of England or of Germany occupy
the position which is often, and not improperly, called
Ultramontane in the more general sense. But when,
in two Churches, one section of each is gradually
approaching towards the other, there must be a point
of intersection where the advancing and receding com
panies- meet each other, and yet their faces may be
set in totally opposite directions. When Don Ulloa
visited Quito, half way up the Andes, he found there
travellers of whom, whilst some had descended from
the summit of the mountain, some had ascended from
the burning plains below. These travellers were all,
for the moment, in the same inn, but whereas those
who had descended were perspiring with the heat of
the warmer atmosphere which encountered them on
their descent from the snows above, the others were
freezing with cold in recollection of the plains which
they had left behind them. The feeling of those two
sets of travellers was not more unlike than that of
those who have been sometimes brought together in
the flux or reflux of theological thought. V\^hen we
remember the way in which Dr. Dollinger spoke of

PREFACE.

Luther as the Titan genius of the sixteenth cen
tury, and compare with this the uniformly disparaging
tone adopted towards the great Reformer by the Ox
ford school, from Dr. Newman downwards ; when we
remember how the Catholic Professor of Munich
pronounced that the Protestant theology of Germany
contained six times the value of the works produced
by the Catholic Church in Germany during the same
period, and contrast this with the usual expressions
adopted by that same school in England towards
German theology (with the single exception of the
excellent but now unfortunately repudiated and for
gotten book of Dr. Pusey), it is impossible not to
infer the difference of the aspirations which respectively
animate the two classes of minds towards their
desired goals.
But not the less ought we to hail the approximation
of the English High Churchmen towards the Old
Catholics as indications of an unconscious olive branch
held out by them towards principles and persons that
elsewhere provoke in them sentiments of so much
hostility and suspicion. Even amongst the most ex
clusive schools there is in the "Anima naturaliter
Christiana," a desire for Christian sympathy- with
others not of our own fold which cannot be alto
gether restrained. " Naturam expellas furcd; tamen
usque recurretr The pent-up feeling has found its

PREFACE.

vent Tiere, and we need not grudge it. There is some
thing to hope from finding that those who are at home
so fearful of every approach to our Nonconforming
brethren — who dread every expression of inquiry or of
freedom — are not averse to contact with men like
Schulte, like Reinkens, like Dollinger, whose estimate
of these matters in Germany amounts to, a solution
which, if adopted in England, would solve and sweeten
half the difficulties which perplex our course.
And now let us ask what light is thrown on the
^ecific agitations of our time by this movement .''
I. The question which is often asked, " What is
authority 1 " has been answered by the Old Catholics
in a sense which, so far as it goes, admits of no mistake.
They have, no doubt, a profound, perhaps exaggerated,
respect for the continuous historical traditions of Chris
tendom, and they have shown themselves naturally un
willing to break with the old ecclesiastical organization
of their Church. But in the last resort they have indi
cated clearly that when the choice was to be made
between the authority of science and history on the one
side, and official ecclesiastical authority on the other
side, they have preferred the former. The Bishops are
clearly not to them the successors of the Apostles, in
any sense which confers an authority in the way of
teaching. Nine hundred Bishops— the largest number
ever assembled in the world— have (with one possible

PREFACE.

exception) in spite of the expressed convictions of
many of them that they knew the Pope's infallibility
to be a fable, accepted it not only as true, but as
part of the eternal truth of Christianity. When, with
a culpable indifference the governments of Europe
declined to support them, the ecclesiastical oracles of
Christendom abdicated their spiritual independence, and
submitted at once to the pressure of the Roman court.
This all but unanimous consent of the Bishops has
been absolutely repudiated by the Old Catholics, as it
is also by all who sympathise with them. Such a
repudiation is a decisive declaration that the exclusive
right of spiritual discernment and teaching is not
bound up with the Episcopal succession. The Epis
copate, indeed, has a magnificent mission in Chris
tendom whenever and wherever Bishops make use of
their grand historical position to speak their convic
tions, instead of concealing them — to develop and im
prove, instead of obstructing — to guide and to bring
together, instead of putting asunder. It has a mag
nificent mission in England now — and some of our
Bishops well discharge it. It had a magnificent
opportunity in the Vatican Council. But even in the
judgment of those who accepted the result that oppor
tunity was totally and hopelessly lost.
2. Again, the Old Catholics have made a step at
least towards solving the question of the grounds of

PREFACE.

Christian union. The Old Catholics have shown them
selves to be capable of exalting the moral truths of
our common Christianity to a height far above that
of the opinions of the fourth, fifth, seventh, thirteenth,
and sixteenth centuries. When their leaders met, on the
platform at Cologne, Greek priests, Anglican Bishops,
and Protestant pastors of every shade with hearty
welcome, that was the proclamation of an eternal
truth, or if we like so to call it, an eternal dogma,
which dwarfed and put to flight the fleeting opinions
of Fathers and Schoolmen, and Popes and Councils, to
which in these later years the name of " dogma " has
been almost exclusively applied. Nothing could be
more widely different than the attitude of the Old
Catholics on this point, and that of the Ultramontane
party, which considers that there is no salvation out
side of the pale of particular churches, or outside of
the form of particular creeds. All their expressions
breathed the most fraternal spirit, not only to mem
bers of the Anglican and Oriental Churches, but to
the Lutheran and Reformed Churches of Germany.
It was no new sentiment in their school. When
Dollinger laid down in his Lectures that all Pro
testants by virtue of their baptism belonged to the
Catholic Church, he went a long way towards rechurch-
ing those whom so many ecclesiastical authorities of his
Church and others had for so long unchurched. When

PREFACE.

he stated in his oration at Munich many years ago,
that it is as heretical to make an article of faith that
which is not an article of faith as it is to make that
which is an article of faith not an article ; when he
declared that union was not to be looked for in organic,
immediate combination, not in an absorption of one
Church by the other, but in a process of purification
needful for all alike in a mutual filling up of the
defects and onesidedness of each, — he adopted a posi
tion which would reduce to their proper proportions
the Ultramontane claims of every Church, whether
Roman, or Anglican, or Puritan. Professor Bluntschli,
who at Cologne represented the Protestant Churches of
Germany, laid down the position that " whereas in
former ecclesiastical conflicts, every Church had laid
claim to the possession of absolute truth, it must be
the principle of the Church of the future that .eyery
formulization of truth is not absolute but relative. The
principle of mutual oppression and absorption was over
— the principle of the moral union of Churches was to
begin." Professor Michelis described how thirty years
ago he had, as a student, seen the magnificent cathe
dral of Cologne unfinished, ruined ; its towers parted
from its nave, its nave from its choir, — and how now
he found it rapidly advancing towards completion —
choir and nave united in one— its stately proportions
restored, its original plan carried out. "In this out-

PREFACE.

ward fact, I see," he said, "what may yet be in store
for the divided, ruined Church of Christ, once more
to be united and brought together in its several
parts. And the parable," he added, "derives a further
significance from the fact that the restoration of this
Catholic cathedral was set on foot by a Protestant
king ; it is only with the help of Protestantism that
Catholicism can be united and regenerated." Pro
fessor Reinkens, since chosen as the Bishop of the
new community, devoted the whole of an affecting and
powerful speech to setting forth that the new hope of
unity consisted in the growing belief that it was not
to be found in uniformity, and in the suppression of
national peculiarities — not in ^immobility, but in free
development — not in the efforts of official authorities,
but of individual Christians. This (far more than in
the .ingenious manipulation, instructive as it has been,
of the detailed differences of the various Churches)
is the permanent benefit of the late Conference at
Bonn. This, too, we are convinced, is the true policy,
is the avowed desire of the nobler and gentler spirits
of the Eastern Church, who bring with them to such
considerations a pacific and healing spirit all their
own. 3. Again, the Old Catholic movement is a proof that
the worid has not wholly fallen under the sway of the
modern fancy, shared by all the Ultramontanes, whether

PREFACE.

in Italy, France, or England, of the independence of
the clergy from the State. The Old Catholics, in Ger
many and Switzerland, have seen through the fiction
of "a free church in a free state." No doubt the re
lations of a government to a Church, where the feelings
of antagonism and indifference have taken deep root,
are fraught with difficulties of which the present con
flicts in Prussia and in Geneva have given ample ex
perience. But in principle the appeal to Czesar, with
the Old Catholics, as with St. Paul, is an Erastianism
of which they are not ashamed, because it is not only
a vindication of their national rights, but because it is
an appeal to the most intelligent, the most patriotic,
the most loyal part of the nation. They know how
slight would have been the progress of the Refor
mation if Frederick the Wise of Saxony, and the Pro
testant Princes at Spires, and Elizabeth of England,
and Coligny and Conde in France had stood aloof
from the movement. They know that a wholesome
condition of religious Hfe is not to be found where
the culture and social life of the nation are kept apart
from it.
4. There are no doubt many weaknesses in the Old
Catholic movement, as in all movements of the kind.
There are the logical inconsistencies of which we have
before spoken. There are the complicated diflficulties
attendant on their organization. There are, in some

PREFACE.

of its leaders, what may seem to us too hard, too
dry, too austere a temper in weighing the faults and
even the virtues of the great and famous Church
under whose yoke they have been oppressed. There
may have been in some too little consciousness of
the advantages which the historical development of
Christianity has brought with it — in others, too rigid
an adherence to the outward form of the crude
Christianity of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries.
There is what is the inherent weakness, as it also is
the latent strength, of a cause which depends for its
support on the educated laity, who are either too indif
ferent or too timid to express the sympathy which they
know to be its due. There is the impatience of the great
outside world, which demands immediate results, and
will not turn aside even to look at a phenomenon which
is attached by no visible links with the party politics of
the day. There are the dissensions inevitably arising
in all such independent uprisings of intellect or con
science — not only from the various shades of opinion
which these uprisings foster and must include, but from
the recriminations which are naturally but not justly
thrown out by the followers who charge the leaders
with unworthy caution, and the leaders who charge
the followers with unwise precipitation.
From these and a hundred other causes it is only
too easy to join in the prediction which is often uttered

PREFACE.

in Germany as elsewhere, that " the movement will lose
itself in the sands." But the true answer to this pre
diction is that which was given at Cologne by the elo
quent orator who has since become the official chief of
the community, who, after looking full in the face all the
hindrances by which the movement was beset, added,
with a proud appeal to the local and patriotic feelings
of his audience : — " Yes ! it may lose itself in the sands,
as the German Rhine loses itself in the sands on the
shores of the ocean — but not the less has it in its upper
course created glorious lakes, formed a highway of civi
lization, and brought fertility and life to the valleys
which it waters." So no doubt it may be with this
movement. It may totally fail of producing any visible
results. But the excellence of a struggle of this kind
does not depend on its worldly or its immediate success.
We do not speak here of the testimony borne by those
who have been present at the various meetings of the
Old Catholic body. The most permanent claim of
the Old Catholic movement on our interest, is the
witness v.'hich it has borne to the force of independent
and honest conviction against tremendous odds. It is
this open and manly expression of dissent, this free
and firm demand for reform, much more than the
particular objects against which or for which the pro
test is made, that constitutes the value, and that justi
fies the experiment, of such a reforming school within

PREFACE.

the Church, wherever it be, that is the scene of the
struggle. Many, doubtless, in the Roman Catholic
Church, both laity and clergy, hold the same opinions
as the Old Catholics, but few have spoken ; and
whereas the reticence of the many is the canker and
misery of the whole Church to which they belong, the
utterance of the few is the sole condition of their re
maining lawfully and with a good conscience within
the pale of a Church to which they can only adhere
in the hope of eliminating its worse and developing
its better elements.
Amongst these few, two names still remain conspicu
ous. One is that of the venerable Professor at Munich,
who has again this year given proof of his unshaken
independence and youthful energy of purpose. Of all
the claims of Dollinger to our veneration and admi
ration, the one which will shine out most brightly
for after times is that he, in his declining years, and
with his cautious, retiring temperament, should on the
simple ground of historical truth have stood out alike
against solicitation and intimidation. " I am an old
man," he said, " and I cannot go before the judgment-
seat of God with a lie in my right hand."
And still more may this be said of the yet more
solitary witness to the need of a free and unfettered
protestation apart from the reticence and subterfuges
of woridly policy— whose Fragments, Letters, and Dis-

PREFACE.

courses are here given to the world — Father Hya
cinthe. They would be rash diviners who in the pre
sence of so many dangers to the right hand and to the
left, with the recollection of so many who have fallen
under the terrors or the seductions of the great party
which assumes to itself the name of "the Catholic
Church," — we may add, under the fascination, no less
formidable, of the violent reactions against it, — amidst
the difficulties, no less trying, of friends who cannot
be controlled, and disciples who outrun their leaders, —
should venture to predict that he will walk erect where
so many have stumbled, that he will go firmly forward
to the end, when so many have been led astray into
tortuous bypaths and safe hiding-places. They would
be rash who would maintain that in his perilous course
he has been able to avoid the weaknesses and the snares
which beset the career of everyone who advocates the
cause of Reform without Revolution, of Faith without
Fanaticism; who would deny that in the rough path
which belongs no less to ecclesiastical than political
warfare, he may have mistaken temporary difficulties
for permanent obstacles, and suffered from the de
fects of an education not best fitted to promote a
practical and wide survey of history and human life.
But not the less interesting and instructive will it be
to have a record of struggles sustained with a rare
sincerity, consistency, and humility.

PREFACE.

Such a record is contained in the following fragments
of Letters and Addresses, delivered at intervals in
France, America, Italy, England, and Switzerland.
It will be obvious to the reader, that no translation —
not even when inspired by the most intimate knowledge
and appreciation of the original writer— can do justice
to the burning rhetoric and the delicate turns of
French oratory. And doubtless many expressions will
be found open to criticism,, whether from the side of
history or theology. But it is believed that this col
lection will give a faithful indication of. the various
experiences by which Father Hyacinthe has arrived at
his present position, and which he has shared more
or less with the other leaders of the Old Catholic
movement. Nor will the record be less important
if it shows (in the extracts from writings previous to
his rupture with the Roman authorities in 1869) the
continuity of his past and present existence, or (in such
views as those expressed in the Address on the Franco-
German war in 1870) the independence of his views
on other than ecclesiastical subjects. And, under any
circumstances, it is hoped that even to those who may
take but little concern in the special subject discussed,
there may be an interest in. the spectacle of one who,
with a character of so much simplicity and tenderness,
remained firm when so many around him gave way,
and step by step strove, however imperfectly, to follow

PREFACE.

out the dictates of an independent conscience, and to
act on the convictions which he had slowly and surely
formed. In a time when so many, whether within or
without the Roman Church, seek amidst its conflicting
and contradictory elements only or chiefly to revive
whatever there is of local and material, of superstitious
credulity, or of anti-social exclusiveness, it may be
edifying to watch the course of one who with such
tender affection towards the Church of his fathers has
laboured to insist on whatever elements exist in it
or can be breathed into it of the spiritual life, of
domestic and national sentiment, of the love of truth
and freedom, such as have found their chief homes
in the churches and nations of the Reformation.
Arthur P, Stanley.
November 5, 1874.

TO
CHARLES THEODORE BAUDRY,
PRIEST OF ST. SULPICE,
WHO DIED BISHOP OF PERIGUEUX,
BUT LIVES IN CHRIST.
I BEHOLD you still in that dear cell of the Seminary
of St. Sulpice in which, at the close of one of our days
of study and prayer, I so loved to come and rest beside
you. You were a priest, I a Levite ; you the master, I the
scholar. In age we were separated by only ten years ;
in heart we were joined by a peculiar friendship. That
was twenty-four years ago. Then, as now, the cannon
of civil war had been thundering in Paris, and the blood
of a martyr-archbishop was reeking on its pavements.
You spoke to me of the Word by whom the world was
made, by whom society is to be restored. You taught
me that when He kindled for the soul of man the
1 [Monseigneur Affre, who was shot on the barricades in Paris
in 1848. Tr.1 C 2

DEDICA TION.

noonday brightness of faith, He did not mean thereby
to obscure the dawning light of reason. And you told
me His name, the name which He took when He was
made man, and keeps throughout eternity, and it was
the same name which I learned to bless upon my
mother's knee — the name of Jesus.
While you spoke of these things my heart burned
within me, and the ardour of my youth laid hold of
the invisible but real beauty which you unveiled before
it, and to whose service I consecrated myself till death
and for the life beyond.
Dear teacher of .my youth, to you, under God, I owe
it that I am a priest.
Years have passed. You have returned to heaven,
which had but lent you to us for a season ; I remain
upon the earth, which grows sadder every day. I have
dwelt in solitude ; I have walked amid hindrances and
deceptions without number; I have toiled on towards
that sublime ideal which men will none of. For that,
I renounced the happiness of a home, I consented to
have no pillow on which to rest my head, no hearth
to welcome me with its warmth in winter, its cheerful
ness in summer. But I did wish at least a Church
and a country — those two homes of the soul. Both
have been torn from me, at one and the same time.
What can I do for France in ruins .' And is it not be
cause I am a priest that all means of rendering my

DEDICATION.

country any useful service are taken from me by a
blind and unpitying prejudice .' Is it not because I am
a priest, that I am impotent to do anything for the
Church which is tottering on the verge of the precipice 1
Is it not just because I took in serious earnest the
priesthood as you taught it me, O true priest of Jesus
Christ — because I believed in the two holiest liberties
of the soul, the liberty of conscience and the liberty
of speech — that I am repelled from the pulpit where
I have declared the Gospel of Christ, and the altar
where I have accomplished His mystery ?
And yet, dear friend and counsellor of my early
years, I do not reproach you — nay, I bless you. You
told me nothing but the truth, you did me nothing but
good. The calling of the priest was my calling, and
no earthly power can forbid me its exercise. For the
duty of the priesthood is to bear witness to the Truth ;
and its reward in this life is to suffer for the Truth—
sometimes to die for it.
Hyacinthe,
Paris, June lifh, 1872.
The twenty-first anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood.

TO THE READER.
The detached pages herewith presented to the public
have as little of literary unity as of literary value.
But considered from a moral point of view I believe
that they possess a real unity and value; and this is
the main point in an age in which there is such abund
ance of books and such lack of deeds. Every one of
these pages is the act of a conscience subjected to
the most formidable trial which the soul of man can
experience — a trial which is all the more worthy of
attention in that it is intimately and immediately con
nected with that which the Church itself is undergoing
at this moment.
I may be deceived ; in fact, many a time in my life I
have been deceived ; but I have never been a deceiver.
Absolute sincerity, above all in matters of religion, has
been the invariable rule of my speech and writing.
Sincerity towards others, and sometimes towards itself,
is the thing most lacking to the conscience of our day ;
and this lack, I am convinced, is one of the principal
causes of the evil from which we are suffering, and of
which we shall certainly die, if nothing is done besides
pointing it out, without making any effort to cure it.

TO THE READER.

Whoever shall be willing to follow me through these
fugitive pages and disconnected fragments, can at least
be assured that he is reading my inmost soul, and
observing, unobscured by any precaution of worldly
prudence, or even of ecclesiastical policy, the authen
tic results of a life entirely devoted to the study and
practice of religion. They will see how, as I conceive,
one can and ought to remain Catholic, and even recog
nize, in their legitimate exercise, the constituted au
thorities of the Church, while at the same time openly
and energetically resisting them in their abuse of the
" authority which is given them, not for destruction but
for edification,"! and in their seeming forgetfulness that
" they can do nothing against the truth." ^
Neither slaves nor rebels : let this be the motto of
those who are now-a-days called Old Catholics. They
must remain on this ground in order to organize and ex
tend their work ; and out of their action, combined with
the events which God is preparing, there will, at no
distant day, come forth great results. It was but lately
that this was acknowledged by rationalism itself, through
one of its most distinguished representatives : " The
horizon of Catholicism, now so contracted, may open
and give glimpses of depths hitherto unknown." ^
1 2 Corinthians x. 8. 2 2 Corinthians xiii. 8.
' M. Ernest Renan : "La Refonne Intellectuelle et Morale."

PREFATORY LETTER OF FATHER
HYACINTHE TO SOME OF THE DISCOURSES
PUBLISHED IN AMERICA.
To the Rev. Leonard Woolsey Bacon, Brooklyn.
Reverend Sir, —
I AM as much gratified as surprised at the
honour you are disposed to do to the few discourses
I have published in Europe. Some of them are
actually the production of my pen ; but these are
very few, and relate to circumstances of time and
place which I fear will have no interest for Ameri
can readers. The others, more important in their
object, since they are part of the course of Con
ferences instituted at Notre Dame by the Archbishop
of Paris, are extant only in detached parts, taken
down hastily in short-hand, and the gaps filled by an
imperfect summary.
I should have been glad, I acknowledge, if I could
have brought to America something less unworthy of
the sympathy with which I have been welcomed here.

xlii PRE FA TOR Y LE TTER
and which I shall always reckon among the greatest
honours and the purest joys of my life.
Such as they are, however, I commit these rude pro
ductions to the indulgence of your readers. Frenchman
and Catholic as I am, I present them, through your
hands, to that great American republic of which you
are a citizen, to those numerous and flourishing Pro
testant churches of which you are a minister.
I am proud of my France, but I deem it one of its
most solid glories to have contributed to the independ
ence of this noble country, which it has never ceased to
love, and which it shall some day learn to imitate ;— a
people with which liberty is something else than a
barren theory or a blood-stained experiment ; with
which the cause of labour is never confounded with
that of revolution, and never divorced from that of
religion; and which, rearing under all forms and de
nominations its houses of prayer amid its houses of
commerce and finance, crowns its busy and productive
week with the sweetness and majesty of its Lord's Day.
"And on the seventh day it ends the work which it
has made, and rests the seventh day from all its work
which it has made." ^
I remain faithful to my Church ; and if I have lifted
up my protest against the excesses which dishonour it
and seem bent upon its ruin, you may measure the in-
^ Genesis ii. 2.

FROM FATHER HYACINTHE.

tensity of my love for it by the bitterness of my lamen
tation. When He who is in all things our Master and
our Example armed Himself with the scourge against
the profaners of the Temple, His disciples remembered
that it was written, " The zeal of Thy house hath eaten
me up." I remain faithful to my Church ; but I am
none the less sensible of the interest which will be taken
in other Churches in what I may say or do within the
pale of Catholicism. And on the other hand, I have
never deemed that the Christian communions separated
from Rome were disinherited of the Holy Ghost, and
without a part in the immense work of the preparation
of the kingdom of God. In my intercourse with some
of the most pious and learned of their members, I have
experienced, in those depths of the soul where illusion
is impossible, the unutterable blessing of the communion
of saints. Whatever divides us externally in space and
time, vanishes like a dream before that which unites
us within, — the grace of the same God, the blood of
the same Redeemer, the hopes of the same eternity.
Whatever our prejudices, our alienations, or our irrita
tions, under the eye of God, who seeth what we cannot
see, — under His hand, which leadeth us whither we
would not go, — we are all labouring in common for
the upbuilding of that Church of the Future which
shall be the Church of the Past in its original purity
and beauty ; but shall have gathered to itself, besides.

xliv PREFA TOR Y LETTER
the depth of its analyses, the breadth of its syntheses,
the experience of its toils, its struggles, and its griefs
through all these centuries.
In the sad days of schism and captivity, the word
of the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel, saying,
" Thou son of man, take thee one stick and write
upon it, 'For Judah, and for the children of Israel his
companions ;' then take another stick, and write upon
it, ' For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and all the
house of Israel his companions ; ' and join them one
to another into one stick, and they shall become one
in thy hand." i
To me, likewise, who am the least of Christians, in
those spiritual visions which are ever vouchsafed to
longing souls, the Lord hath spoken. He hath placed in
my hand these two sundered and withered branches —
Rome and the children of Israel who follow her; the
Churches of the Reformation and the nations that are
with them. I have pressed them together on my
heart, and under fhe outpouring of my tears and
prayers I have so joined them that henceforth they
might make but one tree. But men have laughed to
scorn my effort, seemingly so mad, and have asked
of me, as of that ancient seer, "Wilt thou not show
us what thou meanest by these things } " ^ And while
I gaze upon that trunk so bare and mutilated, even
^ Ezekiel xxxvii. r6, 17. s ibid. 18.

FR OM FA THER HYA CINTHE. xl v
now I seem to see the brilliant blossom and the
savoury fruit.
" One God, one faith, one baptism."
"And there shall be one flock and one shepherd."
Brother Hyacinthe.

Highland Falls, All-Souls' Day,
Nov. 2, 1869.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
I. — Letters  3
II. — Fragments  S3
III.— Discourses  129
Appendix  191

L

LETTERS,

CATHOLIC REFORM.

I.— LETTERS,
To the General of the Barefooted Carmelites,
Rome.
Paris — Passy, Seftember 20, 1869.
Very Reverend Father,
For the five years of my ministry at Notre Dame
de Paris, in spite of the open attacks and secret accu
sations of which I have been the object, your esteem
and confidence have never for one moment failed me.
I retain numerous testimonials of this in your own
handwriting, which relate as well to my preaching as
to myself. Whatever may occur, I shall hold this in
grateful remembrance.
Now, however, by a sudden shift, the cause of which
I do not look for in your heart, but in the intrigues of
a party omnipotent at Rome, you find fault with what
you have encouraged, blame what you have approved,
and require me to use such language or maintain such
B 2

CATHOLIC REFORM.

silence as would no longer be the full and loyal ex
pression of my conscience.
I do not hesitate a moment. With speech falsified
by official orders, or mutilated by enforced reticences,
I could not again enter the pulpit of Notre Dame. I
express my regret for this to the intelligent and
courageous bishop who has placed and kept me there
in face of the ill-will of the men of whom I have been
speaking. I express my regret for it to the imposing
audience which there surrounded me with its attention,
its sympathies, I had almost said, its friendship. I
should be worthy neither of the audience, nor of the
bishop, nor of my conscience, nor of God, if I could
consent to play such a part in their presence.
At the same time I withdraw from my convent, which,
in the new circumstances that are imposed upon me,
has become to me a prison of the soul. In so doing
I am not unfaithful to my vows. I have promised
monastic obedience, but within the limits of an honest
conscience, and of the dignity of my person and
ministry. I have promised it under favour of that
higher law of justice, the " royal law of liberty," which,
according to the apostle James, is the proper law of the
Christian. The most untrammeled enjoyment of this holy liberty
is what I came to seek in the cloister now more than
ten years ago, under the impulse of an enthusiasm pure

LETTERS.

from all worldly calculation : I dare not add, free from
all youthful illusion. If, in exchange for my sacrifices,
I am now offered chains, it is not merely my right, it
is my duty to reject them.
This is a solemn hour. The Church is passing through
one of the most violent crises, one of the darkest and
most decisive of its earthly existence. For the first
time in three hundred years an Ecumenical Council is
not only summoned but declared necessary — this is the
language of the Holy Father. It is not at such a
moment that a preacher of the Gospel, were he the
least among them all, can consent to hold his peace
like the " dumb dogs " of Israel, faithless guardians
whom the prophet reproaches because " they could not
bark." Canes muti, non valentes latrare.
The saints are never dumb. I am not one of thetn ;
and yet I know that I am come of that stock— filii
sanctorum sttmus — and it has ever been my ambition to
place my steps, my tears, if need were my blood, in the
footprints where they have left theirs.
I lift up, then, before the Holy Father and before the
Council, my protest as a Christian and a priest against
those doctrines and practices which call themselves
Roman, but are not Christian, and which, making
encroachments ever bolder and more deadly, tend to
change the constitution of the Church, the substance as
well as the fol-m of its teaching, and even the spirit

CATHOLIC REFORM.

of its piety. I protest against the divorce, as impious
as it is mad, which men are striving to accomplish
between the Church, our mother for eternity, and the
society of the nineteenth century, whose sons we are for
time, and toward which we have also both duties and
affections. I protest against that opposition, still more
radical and appalling, which sets itself against human
nature, attacked and revolted by these false teachers in
its holiest and most indestructible aspirations. I protest,
above all, against the sacrilegious perversion of the
Gospel of the Son of God Himself, the letter and
the spirit of which are alike trodden under foot by
the Pharisaism of the new law.
It is my most profound conviction that if France in
particular, and the Latin races in general, are given
over to anarchy, social, moral, and religious, the chief
cause of it is to be found, not, certainly, in Catholicism
itself, but in the way in which Catholicism has for a
long time past been understood and practised.
I appeal to the Council now about to assemble to
seek remedies for our excessive evils, and to apply them
gently but boldly. But if fears, which I am loth to
share, should come to be realized — if that auo-ust fc>
assembly should have no more liberty in its dehbera-
tions than it has thus far had in its preparations— if, m
a word, it should be stripped of the essential character
istics of an Ecumenical Council, I would lift up my

LETTERS. '7

voice to God and man to demand another really as
sembled in the Holy Spirit, not in the spirit of party
— really representing the universal Church, not the
silence of some and the constraint of others. " For the
hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt ; I cry
out in my trouble ; astonishment hath taken hold on
me. Is there no balm in Gilead .-' Is there no physician
there .' Why then is not the health of the daughter
of my people recovered .' " ^
Finally, I appeal to thy bar, O Lord Jesus. Ad tuum,
Domine Jesu, tribunal appello. It is in Thy presence
that I write these lines. It is at Thy feet, after much
prayer, much reflection, much suffering, and long wait
ing — at Thy feet that I subscribe them. I have this
confidence concerning them, that though men may con
demn them on earth. Thou wilt approve them in heaven.
Living or dying, this is enough for me.
Brother Hyacinthe,
Superior of tlie Barefooted Carmelites of Paris,
Second Definitor of the Order in the Province of Avignon.
Letter of Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of
Orleans. OrlMns, September 25, 1869.
My dear Brother,
As soon as I heard from Paris what you were
on the point of doing, I left no effort untried, as you
^ Jeremiah viii. 21, 22.

CATHOLIC REFORM.

know, to save you from what would be to yourself so
great a fault and misfortune, and at the same time so
great a sorrow to the Church. I sent off at once,
and at night, your friend and old fellow-student, to
prevent you if possible. But it was too late ; the scandal
was accomplished, and henceforth you can measure
the mischief which you have wrought by the grief of
all the friends of the Church, and the joy of all its
enemies. And now there is nothing I can do but pray God
and appeal to yourself, that you may pause on this
descent, which leads to depths which the perturbed eye
of your soul has not seen.
I know that you have suffered. But let me tell
you, I know that Father Lacordaire and Father de
Ravignan suffered more than you, and rose higher in
patience and strength through love of the Church and
of Jesus Christ.
How could you but perceive the wrong you were
doing the Church, your mother, by these reproachful
anticipations .' and the wrong you were doing Jesus
Christ, in thus placing yourself before Him alone, to the
scorn of his Church t
But I will and do hope. It will be but a momen
tary error.
Come back to. us again. You have given the
Catholic world this affliction ; give it now a great
comfort and a great example. Cast yourself at the
feet of the Holy Father. His arms will be open to
you, and pressing you to his fatherly heart, he will
restore peace to your conscience, and hohour to
your life.
Accept from him who was once your bishop, and who

LETTERS.

will never cease to love your soul, this testimony and
counsel of a true and religious affection.^
^ Felix,
Bishop of Orlians.
Reply to Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of
Orleans.
Monseigneur,
I am deeply touched with the feeling which dic
tated the letter which you have done me the honour to
write me, and very grateful for the prayers which you
would offer in my behalf; but I cannot accept either the
reproaches or the counsels which you address to me.
What you call a great fault committed, I call a great
duty done.
Accept, Monseigneur, the tribute of respect with which
I remain, in Jesus Christ and His Church, your very
humble and obedient servant, tt
1 On the subject of this letter, published in the newspapers at the same
time that it was addressed to me, M. de Montalembert wrote to me from
La Roche-en-Breny, December 4, 1869: "The Bishop of Orleans passed
two days here on his way to Rome. He loves you ever. I did not hide
from him that you were much displeased with the publicity given to the
letter which he wrote you. He replied, ' I am perfectly aware of it, but I
could not do otherwise. ' " '
The Archbishop of Paris, who ¦was far more concerned in the matter
than the Bishop of Orleans, thought it not only possible, but right, to "do
othenvise." I shall never forget the words which he said to me at the
time, and which I here repeat as a tribute to his memory: "They want
me to write against you. I tell them, ' Father Hyacinthe has a great deal
to suffer just now. It is not good to trample on a suffering man. I would
not do it in any man's case ; least of all in his, with whom I desire to
maintain affectionate relations.' "

CA THOLIC REFORM.

Letter of MONSEIGNEUR Darboy, Archbishop of Paris,
to the Reverend the General of the Barefooted Carme
lites at Rome. Paris, December 15, 1864.
Reverend Father,
I learn with astonishment and pain, that accusa
tions of the most unpleasant character have been carried
all the way to Rome against Father Hyacinthe, preacher
of the Advent Season, at Notre Dame de Paris, and that
he has been presented as under suspicion, or perhaps
even as guilty of heterodoxy.^ I regard it as a duty to
undertake the defence of this excellent monk, who is
labouring in my diocese, and who is consequently
entitled to my protection.
Not only have I no reproach to make against Father
Hyacinthe, but I have the best reason to congratulate
myself on his apostolic labours. By his talents he has
at once created for himself an audience of about three
thousand men, whom he holds attentive to his words,
and whom he is well qualified to bring back to sound
views, or confirm them therein. This, it must be ac
knowledged, is the cause of the annoyances to which he
is subjected. He would not have been denounced if he
had not been successful.
I intend writing of this to the Holy Father, who has
perhaps already been approached with representations to
the prejudice of this distinguished and deserving monk.
But I authorize you, meanwhile, to present this letter to
him, in order, if necessary, to reassure him. You may
1 The anonymous accusers who attacked me, as the date of this letter
shows, from the very beginning of my preaching at Notre Dame de Paris,
allowed me no truce during the whole five years that I occupied that pulpit.

LETTERS.

even say to his Holiness that, if I may but know the
names of Father Hyacinthe's accusers, I do not despair
of confounding them. I know that breed — brave in the
dark, and cowards in the light.
I am happy, Reverend Father, to have this occasion
of recommending myself to your prayers and those of
your good brethren, and I tender. you the assurance of
my most devoted sentiments.
^ George,
Archbishop of Paris.

Letter of MONSEIGNEUR Darboy, Archbishop of Paris.
Rome, February 9, 1870.
My dear Father Hyacinthe, — (for I cannot give
up my habit of calling you by a name which you
have made illustrious), —
I thank you for your thought that you would
do me a pleasure in announcing to me your return to
Paris. You would have gratified me very much if you
had been able to tell me something of your plans for
the future. An expectant position is not quite what your
friends would wish for you. I know that a revolution,
such as that which has been effected in your inward
and outward life, must leave in the inmost soul im
pressions of various sorts which need to abate before
¦one can distinctly see what course to take; and I con
fess that this is no case for sudden or abrupt dealing.
But I have perhaps a better reason than some others
for wishing soon to know what you mean to do. There
is nothing but sympathy in this earnest desire and
expectation, and the obliging words with which your

CATHOLIC REFORM.

letter closes, show that you are convinced of this
yourself. Do not doubt, dear Father Hyacinthe, the continu
ance of the sentiments which you so well describe, and
of my strong desire to serve you ; and accept the new
assurance of my devoted affection.
^ George,
Archbishop of Paris.
Answer to MONSEIGNEUR Darboy, Archbishop of
Paris. Paris, February 25, 1870.
Monseigneur,
I am deeply affected by the letter which you
have done me the honour and the kindness to write to
me. It draws closer than I can express the bonds of
respectful gratitude and affection which bind me to you
for life.
My plans for the future,. if I had any, would be no
secret to you, Monseigneur. I should feel not only the
duty, but the need of communicating them to you.
But after having made my situation to depend, as I
have, on the issue of the Council, what plans can I have
for the present .-' Events have done only too much to
justify what the Bishop of Orleans called the " reproach
ful anticipations," expressed in my letter of the 20th
of last September. The Council is no more free in its
deliberations than it was in its preparation, and under
the pressure of the blind and headstrong party which
controls it, everything seems to go on towards the

LETTERS. 13

wished-for result. Then will begin for the Catholic
Church a crisis of which no man can foresee the cha
racter, the duration, or the event, but which will bef as
fruitful as it will be terrible. It is for this hour, now so
nigh at hand, that I deem it my duty to hold myself in
reserve, abiding, meanwhile, in the silence of reflection
,and prayer. I have no other ambition than to serve
the Church in its solemn crisis, by all the means that
Providence shall place in my power "through evil re
port and good report," with that disinterested and self-
sacrificing love towards her which God has implanted
in my heart.
This is all, Monseigneur, which I can possibly say at
present On your return to Paris — not far distant, as
you lead us to hope — I shall gladly open my heart to
you with that simple and entire confidence with which
you have always inspired me.
Accept, Monseigneur, with the expression of my
gratitude, that of my deepest respect, affection, and
devotion. Protest against the Definition of Papal
Infallibility. Paris, July 30, 1870.
Henceforth a grave question is put to all Catholics.
Must they adhere to the definition of the infallibility
of the Pope, or are they free to refuse their submission
to it .' Doubtless the proper character of our Church.

1 4 CA THOLIC REFORM.
and the governing principle of our faith, is authority.
But for that reason it is important to distinguish be
tween an apparent and a real authority — between a
blind submission and a reasonable and reflecting sub
mission — a " reasonable service."
The question, then, may be thus defined : — Is the
authority of the Vatican Council legitimate .? or, in other
words, does the Council now sitting possess the essential
characteristics of an Ecumenical Council .?
The first of these characteristics is liberty. Now, in
spite of the secresy in which it has been attempted to
bury the inner working of the Council, as if it were one
of those operations of which the Gospel speaks, which
have a natural affinity with darkness, and flee the light
for fear of being judged,— the light has broken in upon
it, and is going to break more clearly still. We know
the repeated protests of so many illustrious bishops,
representing the most important and enlightened por
tions of the Catholic world, and that recent letter, at
once so respectful and so firm, by which, insisting on
their negative vote, they have announced the reasons
of their retreat from that dishonoured battle-field. The
worid can no longer be ignorant with what want of
dignity or even seriousness the great interests of its
faith have been treated by a majority whose factitious
and illusory composition, and whose audacious tyranny
would have been alike intolerable in the ancient Councils.

LETTERS. 15

Another condition, not less important to the ecume
nicity of a Council, is that it be recognized as ecumenical
by the Church. The mission of a Council, in fact, is not
to impose on the faithful new beliefs, but to maintain,
and, if need be, define, the ancient beliefs. The bishops,
first of all, are witnesses of the traditional and historic
faith of their respective Churches, and of the Church
universal ; and their judicial sentence, limited in advance
by the nature of this testimony, can be exercised only
in case of truths which have been believed from the
beginning, everywhere and always, as truths of revela
tion. Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. If,
then, they exceed their powers, the Church would not
recognize its faith in the arbitrary work which they
might have accomplished, and the Council would remain
without authority.
Crises like these are not unexampled. To cite but
one, history has recorded the names of Seleucia and
Rimini, and that almost universal defection in which, to
use the language of St. Jerome, the world groaned with
astonishment to find itself Arian. The peril is not less
at this hour, and if we may believe one of the most
important prelates in the Council, Archbishop Kenrick,
the Church has nevgr known a greater danger.^
1 "Rem Ecclesias in maximum ex quo orta sit discrimen adduxerunt. "
Concio Petri Ricardi Kenrick, archi-episcopi S. Ludovici in Statibus
Fpederatis Americse Septentrionalis, in Concilio Vaticano habenda, at non
habita. [This remarkable speech, 'reprinted from the edition printed at

i6 CA THOLIC REFORM.
At such moments it is the duty of the humblest
Christian to lift up his voice in defence of his own faith,
and the faith of the whole Church. P'or my own part,
I feel myself urged from within to fulfil this duty, and,
as the prophet says, to deliver my soul.
I protest, then, against the dogma of Papal Infalli
bility, as it is contained in the decree of the Council
of Rome. It is because I am a Catholic, and will con
tinue such, that I refuse to admit as obligatory upon
the faith of believers a doctrine unknown to all eccle
siastical antiquity, contested even now by numerous
and eminent theologians, and which implies, not a
regular development, but a radical change in the con
stitution of the Church, and the immutable rule of its
faith. " It is because I am a Christian, and will continue
such, that I react with my whole soul against this
apotheosis decreed to a man who is presented to our
faith, I had almost said to our worship, as uniting in
his person both the domination which is repugnant to
the spirit of the Gospel of which he is a minister,
and the infallibility which is incompatible with the clay
of which he is moulded like ourselves. One of the
Naples, 1870, for private circulation among the meinbers of the Council,
is contained in Friedricli's "Documenta ad illustrandum Concilium Vati-
canum ;" a close translation of it into English is given in full in "An
Inside View of the Vatican Council," published by the American Tract
Society, 1871.]

LETTERS. 17

most illustrious predecessors of Pius IX., Saint Gregory
the Great, rejected as a sign of Antichrist the title of
" universal bishop " which had been offered to him.
What would he say to-day in presence of this very title,
aggravated by the addition of that of infallible pontiff ! ^
On the 20th of September of last year I wrote the
following lines on the subject of the Council then about
to assemble : — " If fears which I do not wish to share
should come to be realized, — if the august assembly
should have no more liberty in its deliberations than
it now has in its preparation ; — ^if, in a word, it should
be deprived of the characteristics essential to an Ecu
menical Council, I would lift up my cry before God
and man to demand another Council, assembled really
in the Holy Spirit, and not in the spirit of party ;
representing really the Church universal, and not the
silence of some and the oppression of others."
This is the cry which I this day put forth. I appeal
to a Council truly free and ecumenical.
And above all, now as then, I appeal to God. Men
have been impotent to secure the triumph of truth and
righteousness. Lo, God arises to take in hand Plis own
cause,:agnd bring forth judgment 1 The Council, which
should have been a work of light and peace, has but
1 " For my own part, I say, vidthout the slightest hesitation, that whoso
ever calls himself, or desires to be called, by the title of universal bishop, is,
in his pride, the precursor of Antichrist, because he pretends thus to put
himself above the rest."— Lib. vii. ep. 33, edit. Benedict. C

1 8 CA THOLIC REFORM.
made the darkness deeper, and let loose discord in
the religious world. In the social world it is answered
back by war, like an awful echo. War is a scourge of
God ; but while it brings the chastisement, it will, I con
fidently trust, prepare the remedy. While it sweeps
away the ancient structure, it will clear the ground
on which the divine Bridegroom of the Church shall
build the new Jerusalem !

To SiGNOR Giuseppe Massari, Member of the Italian
Chamber of Deputies. Paris, July i8, 1870.
Mv dear P"RIEND,
This is the day on which they are completing, at
the Vatican, the great folly, and I ought to say, only
that they know not what they are doing — the great
crime. At the hour of my writing, the party which so
dominates at Rome that it imagines itself to be Rome,
has doubtless achieved that triumph which Father
Lacordaire called in advance a supreme insult to Jesus
Christ, and which I may stigmatize as also a supreme
insult to the conscience of mankind.
Is there not, then, to be awakened any energetic pro
test, any effective resistance, either among the bishops
and clergy, or in the ranks of those of the laity who
care for the safety of their religion and of their country 1

LETTERS. 19

Is it left for us, in these strange and evil days, to wit
ness the collapse, I do not say of the Catholic Church,
for that is immortal, but of the form which the Catholic
Church has borne in our times .-'
I do not know ; but despite the multitude of frightful
miscalculations, and sinister forebodings, I cherish in my
own heart an unconquerable hope. If men have found
no way of bearing testimony to truth and righteousness,
lo ! God will arise to take in hand His cause and ours.
Unforeseen events are arising — political events of im
mense import, the indirect results of which will be felt
in the sphere of religion. Supremely to be regretted in
itself, war is coming at this juncture, in the designs
of Providence, that Europe may be relieved, even with
violence, from the false position in which it has been
placed — from the unhealthy state from which it naci
no power of self-recovery. Out of terrible but salutary
convulsions is to come forth, as I confidently believe,
a new adjustment of the balance between power and
liberty. The era of great reforms is about to dawn.
The temporal power of the Popes, that generous illusion
of the Liberal Catholics of France, that blind passion of
the Ultramontane Catholics of every land, that secret
cause — no ! that manifest, palpable, acknowledged
cause — of all these recent transactions at Rome, — the
temporal power will be destroyed or profoundly trans
formed. C 2

CATHOLIC REFORM.

The important point is not that the flag of Italy
should float over the Capitol ; but that the spirit of
Italy should penetrate into the Vatican. To Italy the
glorious mission seems to be more especially reserved
of reconciling the papacy with modern society. As to
the far more difficult and necessary task of reconciling
the Roman Curia with the Gospel, God will take care of
that. His Spirit has not abandoned the successors of
the Galilean fisherman ; among them, and around about
them, He has not ceased to raise up faithful prophets.
What may we not expect, when that Spirit shall have
burst asunder the bonds in which man has but too often
confined it .'
Pardon me this overflow of feeling. You asked me
for some word of light and strength. I have given you
the same answer which I give myself in those hours of
anguish which we have alike to endure. I never have
had so much to suffer, but, I repeat itV I have never had
so much to hope.^
1 Some months after it was written, this letter was read almost entire, in
the Italian Parliament, by Signor Massari himself, who considered it, " on
account of its date, as a sort of prophecy " (Speech on the Bill for the
Pontifical Guarantees). In asking, in his own name and in that of my
illustrious friend the Duke of Sermoneta, for permission to make my letter
public, Signor Massari gave me no hint of the undeserved honour which he
was reserving for it.

LETTERS.

To Monseigneur de Meirode, at the Vatican.
Rome, April zb, 1871.
Monseigneur, The remembrance of the extreme kindness which
you have manifested towards me under other circum
stances, makes me hope that you will be willing to
render a service which is of very great importance
to me.
I wish to have a private audience with the Holy
Father, in order that I may open my heart entirely to
him. My soul has suffered deeply, and it belongs to
the flock of which the care has been confided to the
Pope by the Supreme Master ; by both these rights I
am entitled to a kindly reception by him.
The line of action that I have believed it my duty
to follow in the crisis through which the Church is
passing has doubtless afflicted the Holy Father; but
it cannot take away all his interest for one whom he
has heretofore honoured by the testimonials of his
kindness, and who has not ceased to regard himself
as one of his children,
I pray you, Monseigneur, to excuse the liberty I take,
and permit me — in awaiting your reply — to renew
the assurances of my most respectful and distinguished
consideration.

CATHOLIC REFORM.

[The reply of Monseigneur de M^rode having been
in the negative, I wrote him these few lines.]
Rome, April 30, 1871.
Of old, the good Shepherd ran after the straying
sheep, and brought it back tenderly on his shoulders.
Now, the straying sheep (since you think me such)
seeks the Shepherd, and you drive it away.
What a distance between the Gospel and the
Vatican 1
To Professor Dollinger, Munich.
Rome, April, 1871.
Dear and Illustrious Friend,
Your most masterly letter to the Archbishop of
Munich has produced a great impression at Rome, and
those who pretend to be very little affected by it are
the very persons who best understand its importance.
But the passion which possesses them is so violent, the
declivity down which they are tending is so irresistible,
that this great testimony of Christian learning and
conscience will not stop them. We have the proof
of this already in your excommunication, which
was resolved on here before it was pronounced at
Munich. The party which at this moment controls
both the episcopate and the papacy has" not shrunk
from a step calculated to revolt all honourable minds :
by this stigma, as impotent as it is iniquitous, that

LETTERS.

23

party has shown its gratitude towards the old champion
of the Catholic Faith for fifty years of toil and conflict
against Protestantism, constrained, in spite of itself, to
admiration and respect of its antagonist. But that party
has failed in its aim, and only completed your glory in
attempting to obscure it. To suffer for the Church, at
the hands of the Church, while still remaining in the
Church, is the most cruel of martyrdoms, but it is also
the most splendid and the most effectual !
As you admirably expressed it in one of your recent
letters to me, "the fact which most significantly indi
cates the present condition of the Church is this, that
a man gets himself excommunicated as a heretic for
preserving the deposit of the Faith and continuing to
believe and teach what he has believed and taught his
whole life long." This is the point to which we have
been brought by the manoeuvres of this party — this
sect, if I may boldly say what I think of them — whose
audacity, long indulged and ever growing, has reached
the point of trying to establish a new Catholicism.
I hear talk of the dangers of a schism in the nearer
or remoter future. The schism is in the present. It
exists now under form.s and in proportions hitherto
unknown ; and, what is most appalling, it has its roots
in the very institution which ought to be the bond of
Unity. Therefore it is that the time for talking seems to me

24 CATHOLIC REFORM.
to have pa.ssed, and the time of action to have come.
You might make whole libraries out of the books that
have been written against the exorbitant pretensions of
the Roman Curia, and yet these pretensions have never
ceased to grow. Against a system like thi.s, the de
monstrations of learning and the protests of conscience
are alike in vain. The men who represent it do not
understand the language of truth and righteousness, —
or rather, by a blindness which is something more than
human, they conceive that they have rights both over
morality and over history, and undertake to reconstruct
both these in the likeness of their own infallibility.
Their eyes will never be opened until they come to
find themselves in collision with events that are
stronger than they are. This, if I mistake not, is the
terrible punishment that God has in reserve for them ;
and this is at the same time the unlooked-for salvation
which He is preparing for His Church. "It is time," as
the apostle Peter says, " for judgment to begin at the
house of God."
Be of good cheer, then, great and noble soul ! May
God bless you for having "willingly offered yourself"
to peril for the house of Israel. ' The mighty have
ceased from amongst us, and have fallen asleep, — ces-
saverunt fortes in Isj'ael et quieverunt; but Jehovah
has raised you up in your old age for new conflicts and
new victories !

LETTERS. 25
\_Extract from the Funeral Oration upon MONSEIGNEUR
Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, pronounced in the
Church of Notre Dame, July 18, 1871, by the Rev.
Father Adolphe Perraud, of the Oratory.
"Archbishop Darboy resolved to re-establish the
Advent Conferences, which had been long suspended.
"With what eagerness his eloquent appeal of 1864
was listened to, what multitudes thronged again into
this basilica — themselves a striking testimony in favour
of religion ; with what gratitude to God we hailed the
dawn of an apostolate which gave promise of the richest
harvests ; none of us, gentlemen, has forgotten. Alas !
for the sudden and terrible storm that dashed these
hopes ! Why is it that we can no longer recall these
memories, except with consternation .^
" But while our hearts are bleeding, charity forbids us
to despair. O brother ! behold the bloody breach which
persecution has made in our ranks. Come back and
take thy place ! Come back to fight with us under the
flag of Jesus Christ and of the unity of the Holy
Church ! And if my voice is too weak to reach thee,
hear, I adjure thee, the blood of this murdered pontiff.
He it is that is crying to thee, with more authority now
than ever before, as of old, David cried to his erring
child : My son ! my son 1 my son ! fili mi (2 Samuel,
xviii. 33)."
To the Reverend Adolphe Perraud, of the Oratory,
Professor at the Sorbonne.
Reverend Father, Paris, August 20, 1871.
I have just read the eloquent pages of the
Funeral Oration upon Archbishop Darboy, pronounced

26 CATHOLIC REFORM.
by you in the Church of Notre Dame ; but it is not
without painful surprise that I come upon the passage
in which j^ou have thought it your duty to speak of
me. The sentiment which inspires you affects me
more than I can venture to express to you. Unfortu
nately, the idea of it is erroneous, and implies, without
any such intention on your part, a reproach which I
cannot accept.
No, Reverend Father, I have never been, for the
Archbishop of Paris, what Absalom, to whom you
compare me, was toward the King of Israel, — an un
grateful and rebellious son. Neither has the Archbishop
ever uttered to me anything resembling the complaints
and reproaches which you ascribe to him. It is easy
to put words into the mouth of the dead. For my
part, I shall respect the silence of that tomb so recently
and sadly closed, and shall not counteract the imaginary
words which you evoke from it with real words and
real letters. Doubtless Monseigneur Darboy had never
in any degree approved the attitude in which I have
been standing for now nearly two years ; but he knew
that it was imposed upon me by my conscience, and in
this point of view I do not hesitate to say that he has
always respected it. If the letters which I have from
him are some day published, they will show how far
this great bishop was removed from the shallow and
shameful confusion into which people fall now-a-days,

LETTERS. 27
between the military orders addressed to the external,
I had almost said the mechanical, obedience of the
soldier, and the free and thoughtful adhesion which
the Church demands of the intelligent Catholic for its
authentic decrees.
As for yourself, Reverend Father, you deal very
hardly with me. You have thought good to refer to
that career in Notre Dame which I renounced only at
the cost of such bitter suffering ; and you never dream
that in view of the oppression which bore down heavier
and heavier every day upon my preaching, my only
choice was between blind submission and the shrewd
veiling of my convictions — two things of which I was
equally incapable. You point me to the bloody
breach which persecution has made in the ranks of
the clergy, and exhort me to come back and resume
my place. You forget that I have never deserted it.
There is other blood than that of the veins, "the
blood of the soul," that St. Augustine speaks of,
sanguis quidam animce. This it is which I am shed
ding, drop by drop, in silence, through fidelity to that
Catholic priesthood which you accuse me of despising,
and under the strokes of this persecution from within,
not less cruel, and far more fatal to the Church than
that which comes from without. I am fighting, what
ever you may say of it, under the flag of Jesus
Christ, against the errors by which His Gospel is

28 CATHOLIC REFORM.
dishonoured. I am striving for the unity of His Holy
Church against the fanaticism which seeks to reduce it
to a party in politics and a sect in religion !
The isolation in which I find myself in the midst
of my former friends proves nothing against me ; but
it sadly justifies the remark of another of our illus
trious departed, whom we have both of us admired
and loved, and whose memory you, more favoured
than myself, have eloquently and bravely vindicated.
"The self-styled Liberal Catholics of France," wrote
the Count de Montalembert to me a few weeks before
his death, — "the self-styled Liberal Catholics of France
are, in my eyes, as well as in yours, prevaricators."
That prevarication is now complete, and unhappily
is to be imputed to something more than a small
group of French Catholics. At the very moment of
writing these lines, I learn by the Semaine Religieuse,
of Paris, that the Chapter of the metropolitan Church
has thought fit to write to the Pope, over the very
coffin of its Archbishop, not simply to make its sub
mission to the Vatican Council, but to extol as "a
special blessing of Providence and an opportune measure
befitting the wants of the time," the proclamation of
the dogma which that archbishop had so energetically
resisted. In return for these absolutely new sentiments,
the authors of the pontifical brief reproduced by the
Semaine Religieuse promise on the Pope's part, to the

LETTERS. 29
Church of Paris, "a tenderer love, and a greater
kindness ; " they exhort it to " wipe away every trace
of mourning and defilement " (the Latin word, chosen
doubtless with design, is equally susceptible of the two
senses : Omni squalore absterso), and, " under a new
pastor," to enter upon days of happiness and glory.
To such a pass the Church of Paris is reduced ! And
I may well add — to such a pass is the whole Church
of France reduced ! The old Church of St. Bernard,
of Gerson, and of Bossuet, is constrained to abjure,
in an hour of darkness and distraction, the traditions
which for so many centuries had placed it at the head
of Christendom ; and it must needs be for the Germans,
victorious in this field by the courage of the Catholic
faith and the superiority of religious learning, to enter
into possession of our most sacred birthright.
These are too many griefs and humiliations for a
single year. You will pardon me, Reverend Father,
for saying in my turn that I am "appalled." Leave
aside, I beg you, my poor person, which is nothing in
this great debate ; and let us open our eyes to the
disasters of our unhappy country, invaded and ruined
by the Ultramontanes, as it has been by the Prussians ;
subjugated ecclesiastically by the Court of Rome, as it
had been humbled politically by the Court of Berlin!
Ah ! doubtless our maladies are extreme, but if we will
but observe them, they are not yet incurable. For

30 CATHOLIC REFORM.
Christians and for Frenchmen, all may be saved when
all is lost !
Accept, Reverend Father, the assurance of my sor
rowful regret.
To Father Gratry, after his submission.
[I think it necessary, that my own letter may be
better understood, to insert here the letter of Father
Gratry to Monseigneur Guibert, Archbishop of Paris,
with the reply of the latter.]
MoNTREUX, Canton de Vaud (Switzerland),
November 25, 1871.
Monseigneur,
If I were not very ill and unable to write a letter,
I should already have written to you many days since,
to signify my respects and congratulations on your
accession. For the present, Monseigneur, I wish at least to say
to you simply, what seems to me quite unnecessary to
have said, to wit, that I accept, with all my brethren
in the priesthood, the decrees of the Vatican Council.
Whatever, previously to the decision, I may have written
contrary to the decrees, I efface.
Deign, Monseigneur, to send me your blessing.
A. Gratry,
Priest of the Diocese of Paris.
Archiepiscopal Residence, Paris,
•UT . , December %, i%Ti.
My dear Abb^,
The brief but significant letter which you have
addressed to me frpm your bed of suffering is the source

LETTERS. 31
of great edification and comfort to me. I know you so
well that I have never doubted your entire docility
towards the decisions of the Church. This submission is
the glory and true grec^tness of the priest and the bishop.
It is also the sole security of the conscience.
You have written much for the defence of the truth.
But you render to the Church a greater service in
" effacing " the last pages traced by your hand than
when with the same hand you were writing those most
useful and eloquent books which have strengthened the
faith of so many souls.
By such examples of nobleness and generosity we put
our conduct in accord with our convictions, and prove to
the world that we are sincere in maintaining that the
light of faith is superior to that of our weak and
vacillating reason.
My ardent hopes go forth for the recovery of your
health, so that you may continue to defend the cause of
religion with the ability for which you are distinguished,
and the new authority which you acquire through the
honourable act of submission just accomplished.
With all my heart I bless you,- my dear Abbe, and
renew to you the expression of my most affectionate
regard. ?J« J. HiPPOLYTE, Archbishop of Paris.
Munich, December 23, 1871.
My very dear Father,
Be:fore learning of it by public report, I had been
apprised by yourself of your adhesion to the ' Vatican
Council. Non privatd audacia sed publico- auctoritate
procedendum est (we must act, not by personal auda-

32 CATHOLIC REFORM.
city, but by public authority) ; so you wrote me, in the
words of St. Thomas Aquinas. You sent me at the
same time an indirect exhortation to follow your ex
ample, and added these affectionate words, for which I
thank you : " I shall never cease to pray for you and
love you."
Be assured, my Father, it would be no trial to me to
submit outwardly, if I were able inwardly to believe ;
nor to acknowledge my error before the world, if I
could acknowledge it to my own conscience. I have
never been a believer in my own personal infallibility,
and I have not tried to persuade others of it. I do not
even understand how it can be so difficult, as vulgar
minds say it is, to acknowledge that one has been
honestly mistaken. I am convinced that by so doing
a sincere .and earnest man always rises in the esteem
of the only public whose opinion need be considered.
And yet suffer me to say, that, after having written
such telling pages as those of your late letters, one is
hardly free to say blandly " I efface them." To do this
one would need the power of effacing the luminous
and painful traces which they have left -in the souls
of men. What ! it is but a few months, my Father,
since you rose up like a prophet in the confusion of
Israel, and assured us that you "had commands laid
on you of God, and that to fulfil them you were ready
to suffer whatever might be needful ! " You wrote that

LETTERS. 33

demonstration, not less logical than eloquent, which
it has been found easy to insult, but not easy to an
swer, and after proving by facts that the question of
infallibility was a " gangrened " question^ — it is your
own expression — you lifted up, in your holy indignation,
that cry which has not^ yet ceased to ring : " Does God
need your falsehoods f " Numquid Deus indiget men-
dacio vestro f
And yet now, in face of so many consciences that
you have disturbed and left in suspense, you content
yourself with writing to your bishop in an easy, simple
way, such as at once surprises and saddens : — " I wish,
Monseigneur, simply to say what seems to me quite
unnecessary to have said, to wit, that I accept, with
all my brethren of the priesthood, the decrees of the
Vatican Council. Whatever, previously to the decision,
I may have written contrary to the decrees, / efface."
And is it thus that henceforth the interests of the
truth and of human souls are to be treated in the
Church of Jesus Christ .'
When St. Augustine wrote that noble book of Re
tractations which is so often cited without any compre
hension of the nature and scope of it, he took pains
to settle the points in which he believed himself to
have erred, and to exhibit the reasons which led him
to this belief. It is just this which gives so much of
sincerity, dignity, and usefulness to those admirable D

34 CATHOLIC REFORM.
confessions of his views. It is this which makes his-
very errors serviceable to the triumph and confirmatioa' t
of the truth. Imitate this noble soul, my Father, and
in refuting yourself you will help to enlighten and
tranquillize us.
If you have ceased to see in the Vatican Council an
assembly without liberty, and therefore without autho
rity, say so plainly. But do not rest satisfied with
saying so ; show us the proofs by which your opinions
have been decided, and indicate to us the signs by
which henceforth we are to be able to distinguish
a pseudo Council from a legitimate and Ecumenical
Council. If you admit the two- pretended dogmas of the
personal and separate infallibility of the Pope, "of him
self, not by the consent of the Church," ex sese, non
autem ex consensu ecclesice, and of his universal epi
scopal jurisdiction, do not try to give them an interr
pretation contrary to the natural, evident sense of the
decrees — the only sehse which the authority of Rome
accepts or imposes — but show us how this sense accords
with the facts of history which you have so learnedly
established and discussed.
Then, dear Father, and not till then, will you have
" put your conduct in accord with your convictions,'' as
the Archbishop of Paris writes to you, and will have
"acquired new authority for defending the cause of

LETTERS. 35

religion," now so unhappily compromised. For my own
part, my chief fear for religion is not the undisguised
and honest scepticism of the foes of revelation ; it is
the unconscious scepticism of those who set false autho
rity and false unity aboVe the truth. The former con
solidates the sacred, edifice by the very attacks which
it makes upon it from without ; the second mines it
silently from within, until the two foundation-stones
are shaken on which the whole structure rests — sincerity
of faith and integrity of conscience !
I beg you, my dear Father, to accept the aissurance
of my sentiments of deep respect and sorrow, and to
suffer me, in my turn, to say that I shall never cease
to pray for you and love you.

The Submission of Father GrItry,
Rome, February 25, 1872,
Father Gratry was for me not only what he is
for all — one of the noblest spirits of this age ; he
was one of my most deafly cherished friends ; and,
nevertheless, I found myself under the necessity of
giving him pain. It has not been permitted me to
kneel by his grave, but I must shed a tear to his
memory, and God knows how full it is at once of
bitterness and sweetness,
D 2

36 CATHOLIC REFORM.
It is for others to speak of the eminent place held
by Father Gratry in the world of letters ; I bethink
myself now only of the place which he held in the
world of souls. Admirable as a writer, thoroughly
original as a philosopher, he was, above all these, an
eminent believer. The excellences as well as the
faults of his style of writing and thinking had theii
origin in this character of his soul. His prose was
an almost continual song, which rose sometimes to so
high a strain, that we seemed to hear in it something
of the sound of harpers harping with their harps —
something of the burden of the prophets and the
ardour of the saints. His reasoning led him swiftly
to affirmation, and, better yet, to contemplation. More
than once he has acknowledged it himself. "I know
a great, geometer," said he, "one of the most illustriou.<!
in the world, who laughs at round-about processes of
algebra and endless chains of equations. ' If you will
but gaze,' he tells me, ' with the naked reason, and
the collected understanding into the depth of facts
and data, you will come more rapidly and profoundly
to discoveries than by all these machines and all their
operations.' It is in this way that my own mind is now
accustomed to work, in every branch of learning and on
all questions." ^ And he had the same feeling with
regard to words as with regard to ideas. "Words
* " De la cemiaissance de I'ame. Lamort." P. 442.

LETTERS. 37
grow transparent to me ; I see through them all the
way down to things — sometimes all the ' way up to
God."^ There was in him something of a woman's
nature, in depth and tenderness of feeling, and some
thing of an angel's in directness of intuition, and in
a sort of ecstasy of reasoning which had grown to be
the habit of his mind. Father Gratry was preemi
nently a mystic, taking the word in its high and
noble acceptation ; no greater, I am bold to say, has
the Christian Church produced in our century.
At this point of view, which constitutes the unity
of his life, his work seems to me to concentrate about
three points, answering precisely to the three great
Christian virtues; faith in the living God and the
immortal soul; unconquerable hope in the progress
of the world, especially its moral and religious pro
gress ; and finally that charity as well of the intellect
as of the heart, with which he embraced in their full
extent humanity, notwithstanding its errors ; and the
Church, notwithstanding its divisions.
Certain it is that in his magnificent affirmations
of God, the soul, the life to come, Father Gratry
touched the very heart of the religious question of
our times. For it must be owned that we incline
rather by far to the side of atheism, or at least of
scepticism, than to that of natural religion. It is true
1 " De la connaissance de I'ame. Lamort.'' P. 442.

38 CATHOLIC REFORM.
that in their conflict with the radical, but honest and
scientific negations of the human mind, put forward
by such men as Vacherot and Littr^ Catholic apolo
gists have not always conceded to their antagonists
the calm attention and the relative justice to which
they were entitled. But while yielding to the pre
vailing current, the author of the Sophistique Con-
temporaine, constrained men to forget his fault by
the sincerity and enthusiasm of his indignation.
His hope was as staunch as his faith. In a time
when this virtue is not less difficult than necessary,
our friend preached it in his books, and practised it
in his life with a heroism which made people talk of
him as a Utopian and a visionary. It may be said
of him as of the patriarch, that "against hope he
believed in hope." The only confession which the
trials of these latter years have been able to extort
from him has been this, which I take from one
of his latest letters : " My hopes are deferred for two
or three centuries, but they still subsist." I remember
the childlike and sublime consolation which he brought
us one evening, during the Council, at the table of a
venerable priest, whose memory I love to link with
his, and who, youthful still in mind and heart under
his white hairs, shared to the very end our convic
tions and our indignations — I mean the abb^ Martin
de Noiriieu, pur^ of Saint-Louis d'Antin. The con-

LETTERS. 39
solation which he brought was a recent discovery of
science on the duration of the habitability of planets,
according to which our race, still so undeveloped, is
only at the first stage of its existence and progress.
That was Father Gratry, to the life!
"The greatest of these is charity," says .Saint Paul.
The charity of Father Gratry did not suffer him to
shut himself up within the visible limits of the Church
in which he was born, and to which he would fain have
drawn all men. It found the place too strait for
itself, and cried with the prophet, " Enlarge the place
of thy tent, and give me room that I may dwell ;" and
ascending from the body of the Church to its soul —
less obvious to men's knowledge, but not less real, it
assembled therein all the dispersed of Israel in that
great unity which exists already before God, in spite
of the separations and anathemas of men. Our friend
was ever a peace-maker. He sought for that which
unites, in preference to that which divides. He strove
to dissipate misunderstandings— to efface, or at least to
mitigate the secondary differences which still separate
the children of God, and which others, alas ! labour
to increase and multiply. He was one of the most
active servants, one of the mightiest prophets, of that
Church of the Future which our children or our
children's children are surely to behold. "With a
great soul he beheld the last things, and comforted

40 CATHOLIC REFORM.
them that mourned in Zion." ^ Therefore he is lamented
as he was beloved, not only by the members of his
own communion, but by many true Christians who
called him their father, in the Oriental and the Pro
testant Churches. I myself have just been witness of
some of those tears, "not metaphorical, but real, the
abundance of which would astonish those who know
nothing of the friendships formed and maintained by
communion in divine things."^
I will add nothing to what I have already said of
his adhesion to the decrees of the Vatican. I have
heard the announcement of a paper, soon to be pub
lished, in which he has defined the reasons and limits
of this submission. The letter which I wrote to him
was unhappily only too true, and yet the burden of it
weighs on me at this hour like a remorse. I certainly
should not have written it to him if, at this distance,
I could have known the gravity of his illness. But it
is nothing surprising that a nature so sensitive and
nervous as his should have given way, on a bed of
anguish, before a struggle which, as I have had some
reason to know, has crushed younger and more vigo
rous men than he.
However this may be, he had none of that im-
1 Ecclesiasticus xlviii. 27.
'^ Address at the grave of Father Gratry by M. Desire Nisai'd, Director
of the French Academy.

LETTERS.

41

petuous, not to say bitter zeal, manifested to their
late friends by some of the new converts to 'infalli
bility. To Dr. Dollinger, who had not written to him
since his retractation, he addressed of his own accord
the following lines, which it seems right to insert
here : — MONTREUX (Switzerland), January 9, 1872.
Dear "worthy and honoured Friend,
/ know profoundly what I am doing and I
worship the truth alone.
I beg you to be absolutely convinced of that., I
would prove it in the most telling manner if I were
able to write. But this note almost exhausts my
strength for the whole day. Tell this to Father
Hyacinthe. I repeat it proudly : servant and wor
shipper of the truth alone — that is what I have been
from my childhood to this day.
I send you my cordial sa,lutations. A. Gratry.

Let me cite also, and above all, the admirable
answer made to a common friend who, like me, had
reproached him — but with a woman's tact and feeling
— with his submission to the error which he had
combatted.

42 CATHOLIC REFORM.
MoNTREUX, January 20, 1872.
O Friend and Sister, what joy your letter gives
me ! Thank God I have found you once more. I
feared lest I should find you severe and unrelenting.
This is the reason why, for a month past, I have
refrained from writing to you. God be praised that
I find you as ever, child of heaven !
I had not heard of your illness. Alas! alas! as
for myself there is a possibility of my recovery. But
I do not count much upon it, I suffer cruelly.
But I trust that you will live.
Live, and know this well, and hold it fast. No one
knows how deeply true it is. I am from my childhood
upwards, the scrupulous worshipper of the truth alone,
and this I shall be to my dying day. Know this
well, and take comfort.
I profoundly know what I am doing, and I adore
my holy bride, the Truth.
I have not been fatally wounded through my moral
nature.! In that, through peace, serenity, and learning,
I have an enormous power of resistance. The fall of
France, without and within, has indeed caused me
immense pain. But the things of the Church are what
I have expected froni my youth ; and I distinguish
1 I think that on this point Father Gratry misjudged himself. His
friends recall what he said in the days of his brave letters ; " They will
condemn me, and it will kill me,"

LETTERS. 43
between what must be maintained, and what God will
utterly destroy.^
I bless you with all my heart. We shall meet
again, at least in heaven.
A. Gratry.
By an unaccountable delay of the mail, these lines
did not reach Rome until a day or two after the death
of the writer. Coming to me through the medium of
one whom he had certainly loved among the dearest
of his earthly friends, and whose acquaintance he owed
to me, I accepted them as bringing an implied pardon,
full of delicacy and gentleness, which he who is now
resting in the truth, confirms to me from on high.
To the Reverend Leonard Woolsey Bacon, Pastor
of a Congregational Church, Brooklyn, New York?
Reverend Sir,
I am no less surprised than gratified at the
honour which you are disposed to do to the few dis
courses which I have published in Europe. Some of
these are the work of my own pen, but not many of
^ Father Gratry has repeatedly declared to me that on the day of his
ordination to the priesthood he had a sort of prophetic intuition of a speedy
but transitory triumph of Pharisaism in the Catholic Church.
2 This letter is prefixed to a translation of my discourses published
during my visit to the United States.

44 CATHOLIC REFORM.
them, and these are connected with circumstances of
time and place which, I fear, will have little interest
for American readers. Others are of higher import
ance in their object, constituting, as they do, parts of
the course of Conferences instituted by the Archbishop
of Paris, but these exist only in detached scraps, set
down by a hasty stenography, and joined together by
an imperfect analysis.
I should have been glad, I own, to bring to America
something less unworthy of the sympathies which I
shall always count among the highest honours and the
purest joys of my life.
Such as they are, however, I deliver these sketches
to the indulgence of your readers. Frenchman and
Catholic as I am, I present them by your hands to
the great American Republic, of which you are a
citizen — to the numerous and flourishing Protestant
Churches among which you are a minister.
I am proud of my France. But I consider it one
of her most solid glories to have contributed to the
independence of this noble country, which it has never
ceased to love, and which it will learn some day to
imitate — this people for whom liberty is something
else than a fruitless theory or a bloody practice ; with
whom the cause of labour is never confounded with
that of revolution, and never separated from that of
religion, and which, rearing under all forms and de-

LETTERS. 45

nominations, its houses of prayer amid its warehouses
and banks, crowns its noisy and productive week with
the sweetness and majesty of its Sabbath. "And on
the seventh day he ended his work which he had
made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his
work which he had made.''^
I remain faithful to my Church, and if I have pro
tested against the excesses which dishonour and seek
to ruin it, you may measure by my cry of grief the
intensity of my love. When the Master and Exemplar
of us all armed himself with the scourge against the
profaners of the temple, his disciples remembered that
it was written " the zeal of thy house hath eaten me
up." I remain faithful to ray Church; but I am none
•the less touched at the interest which is taken in
various Churches in what I may say or do in the
Catholic Church. I have never deemed that the
Christian communions separate from Rome are disin
herited of the Holy Ghost, and without a part in the
immense work of the preparation of the kingdom of
God. In my relations with some of the most pious
and learned of their members, I have experienced in
those depths of the soul where illusion is impossible,
the unspeakable blessing of the communion of saints —
whatever outwardly divides, in space and time, vanish
ing like a dream before that which inwardly unites,
' Genesis ii. 2.

46 CATHOLIC REFORM.
the grace of the same God, the blood of the same
Christ, the hopes of the same Eternity !
Whatever our prejudices, our alienations, or our in
dignations, under the eye of God, which seeth what
we cannot see, under his hand, which leadeth whither
we would not go, we are all labouring in common for
the upbuilding of that Church of the Future which is
to be the Church of the Past in its original purity
and beauty, but adding to these the depth of its
analyses, the breath of its syntheses, the experience of
its toils, its struggles and its sufferings, through all
the centuries.
In the sad days of schism and captivity, the word
of the Lord came to the prophet Ezekiel : " Son of
man," said he, "take thee one stick and write upon
it. For Judah and for the children of Israel his com
panions. Then take another stick and write upon it,
For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim and for all the house
of Israel his companions; and join them one to
another into one stick ; and they shall become one in
thine hand."i To me also, the least of Christians, in
those visions of the soul which are never refused to
longing hearts, the Lord has spoken. He has placed
in my hands these rent and sundered boughs, Rome
and the children of Israel who follow her, the Churches
of the Reformation and the people who are with
^ Ezekiel xxxvii. i6, 17.

LETTERS. 47
them. I have pressed them to my heart, and under
the outpouring of my tears and prayers, I have
brought them together that they might be no more
twain but one. But men have laughed at my en
deavour, seemingly so foolish, and have asked, as of
the ancient seer, "Wilt thou not show us what thou
meanest by these things ? " ^ Yet on that tree which
seemed so mutilated and so barren, already I behold
the brilliant blossom and the savoury fi"uit !
" One God, one faith, one baptism ! "
" There shall be one flock, and one Shepherd ! "
Highland Falls, All Souls' Day.
November 2, 1869.
To His Holiness Pope Pius IX.
London, August 25, 1872.
Most Holy Father,
When I left the Convent of Barefooted Carmelites
of Paris, nearly three years ago, I had no intention of
withdrawing from the authority with which you are
invested, as Bishop of Rome and Primate of the Uni
versal Church. On the contrary, I have always openly
declared that I recognized the Primacy as necessary and
legitimate, and if I have opposed the errors and abuses
that are presented in its name, I have done so, I trust,
in the same spirit which animated St. Paul, when, with-
^ Ezekiel xxxvii. 18.

48 CATHOLIC REFORM.
out separating himself from St. Peter, he "withstood him
to the face because he was to be blamed."
And now. Most Holy Father, at the moment when I
am about to take a step that may seem to be in viola
tion of the vows of the priest and monk, but which the
voice of God, long and humbly listened to in my con
science, commands or at least counsels me to take, I
come to express to your Holiness my regret in not
being able to act, under such grave circumstances, with
your full authorization, and paternal benediction. No
cost would have seemed too dear by which to obtain —
I will not say the peace, for that I have already — but
the joy of my soul ; and by which to avert from a greater
number of my brethren in the faith an offence for which
I can never cease to feel inconsolable regret.
Anathematized for the marriage which I am about
to contract, as I was for my protest kgainst the coup
d '^tat of the Vatican, I shall remain none the less faithful
to a Church whose light has always shone out again
after the nights which have darkened but never extin
guished it. I shall continue to be what I am by virtue of
a power higher than that of man : — a Christian, by virtue
of the water and the Spirit of my baptism ; a Catholic
by the faith of my fathers ; and by the unction and the
indelible character of my ordination, a priest. Absolved,
or rather blest, by God himself in the sanctuary of my
own conscience for what men will call my crime, I shall

LETTERS. 49

await with confidence from the successors to your
Holiness in the indefectible see of the primacy, the re
traction, or at least the explanation of the dogmas
which in their present form are contrary to truth and
to tradition, and the abolition or transformation of the
laws which set the discipline of the Latin Church into
antagonism with the moral nature of mankind, and at
the same time with the liberty of the Gospel.
I pray you. Most Holy Father, to pardon the severe
sincerity with which I have ventured to address you,
and to deign notwithstanding to accept the assurance
of the deepest respect and affection in which I remain
Your Holiness' most unworthy, but very faithful servant
and son,
Hyacinthe Loyson.

FRAGMENTS.

II.— FRAGMENTS. ¦
My Position and my Conscience.
Rome, June 17, 1871.
I have no answer to make to the insults and calum
nies that have been heaped upon me for nearly two
years. But I owe an explanation to upright and devout
souls who are afflicted at seeing me persevere in what
they have been told is my double apostasy: — my
apostasy from the Carmelite order, to which I am
bound by my monastic vows, and my apostasy from
the Catholic Church, to which I belong by the faith
of my baptism.
There have been no such apostasies.

To begin with, so far as concerns the monastic state,
all canonists acknowledge that a monk does not become
apostate by the mere fact of quitting for a time, or even
for ever, the habit and residence of his order. It is
enough for him, in order to do this legitimately, to

54 CA THOLIC REFORM.
have obtained authority from his superiors; and it is
well known on what easy terms the Roman Curia
now-a-days grants these " secularizations " which re
open to the dweller in a cloister, weary of its regula
tions or of its loneliness, the entrance to a world which
he had renounced. Still less is one guilty of apostasy
for the fact that in a time of universal trouble and
confusion, he retires from the cloister in order to escape
being subjected, under the show of duty, to one of those
oppressions which attack at once the purity of the faith
and the integrity of the conscience, and inflict upon
the ministry of the priest that which Saint Ambrose
deemed the greatest of all dishonours : " Nothing," said'
the. sainted bishop, "nothing is so dangerous before God
for. a priest, nothing so shameful before men, as not to
speak out his convictions ' freely.' "
I mean to give some day, not for my personal justi
fication, which is of small account, but in order to throw
light on the crisis through which the Church is passing,
and to help consciences that are suffering as my own has
suffered, the story of the facts which brought about and
followed upon my protest of September 20th, 1869. For
the present I confine myself to the most essential points.
The two following letters, which it seems proper to
give to the public, will define the real position which I
have taken with reference to the Order of Barefooted
Carmelites : —

FRAGMENTS. 55

To Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris.
Paris — P.vssy, September 20, 1869.
Monseigneur, The state of actual oppression in which I am
placed at this moment in my order, has led me to two
very serious resolutions. I have deliberately pondered
them before my own conscience and at the foot of the
cross, and I come to communicate them to your grace,
with regret at causing you pain, which I would gladly
have spared you.
The first of these resolutions is not to preach the
next course of Advent Conferences at Notre Dame.
Since my speech can no longer be the sincere expression
of my thought, and is led captive by the exigencies of a
party, it has nothing to do but retire into silence as
toward men, and to betake itself toward heaven, trans
formed to prayer.
My second determination is to retire until the Ecume
nical Council, from the convents of my Order, which
have become no less prejudicial to my health than to
the repose of my mind. In the peculiar circumstances
which are imposed upon me, I cannot have recourse to
the Holy See to obtain justice, for it is under the
pressure of men all-powerful at Rome that my own
Order has abruptly changed its attitude toward me.
The only door open to me is that through which I am
about to pass.

 ^^
56 CATHOLIC REFORM.
And yet, Monseigneur, as my conduct- — completely
justified and even required as it is, in the eyes of my
conscience, by a higher law — will appear to some to be
contrary to the canons of the Church, I hasten to assure
your grace that until my position has been rest-ored to
entire regularity, I shall abstain from wearing either the
monastic or the ecclesiastical habit, and from fulfilling
any function whatever of the ministry. I shall not
willingly be an occasion -of scandal to my brethren. I
shall not, by any fault of mine, give pain to the heart
of the bishop who for five years of difficult labour has
been, without one moment of failure or vacillation, a
father, and I might almost venture to say a friend.
I beg you to accept, Monseigneur, the expression of
my painful regret, but also of my undying gratitude and
my profound veneration.
Brother Hyacinthe,
Barefooted Carmelite.
To the Reverend Father Definitor, acting General
of the Barefooted Carmelites, Rome.
.Paris, Augmt^, 1870.
Very Reverend Father,
Last year, on the eve of the Vatican Council, in
view of the extreme peril to which the Church was
exposed, and of the fatal illusions prevailing as to the
extent of the danger, and the practical means of pre-

FRAGMENTS. 57

venting it, I felt it my imperative duty to lift up my
voice. I could not do this while remaining under the
monastic discipline ; more especially as the Reverend
General of our Order had just inflicted a general cen
sure on my preaching, and in order to prevent me
" from meddling with questions on which Catholics are
at variance " had ordered me, under the severe penalties
of the formal precept, "to print no more letters nor
¦ discourses." In this state of things I did not hesitate to
leave my convent at once. My intention in so doing
was not to trample under foot my monastic vows, nor to
break violently -with the life of the cloister, but only to
discharge an obligation which I deemed more pressing
and more sacred. This is the reason why I have never
considered myself as affected by the excommunication
which falls on the head of the apostate monk.
I believe that I have now fulfilled this grave and
painful duty. The Council, too, though not officially
prorogued, is practically suspended, and war imposes
silence on all religious discussions.
I come then to express to you, Very Reverend Father,
my sincere willingness and ardent desire to resume the
practice of the life of Carmel. You will find in me, I
trust, a docile spirit in all that concerns the religious
state. I only beg you not to demand of me, in another
order of ideas, what my conscience would not suffer me
to accord — I mean the retraction of my two letters of

58 CATHOLIC REFORM.
-  %  ,
September 20, 1869, and July 30, 1870, and the aban
donment of convictions which are dearer to me than
life, and on which a Council really ecumenical has not
yet pronounced.
Painful as is the present state of the Church, I will
not despair but that there may be found some possible
reconciliation between the diverse obligations which
weigh upon my conscience, and I venture to rely on
your fatherly wisdom and kindness to help me to
realize it.
Brother Hyacinthe,
Barefooted Carmelite.
This last letter has never been answered.
I trust that I am understood. The monastic ideal
retains for me all its sublimity, but I am no longer
under any illusion as to its practical realization. The
experiment of the cloister, pursued, I make bold to say,
with the utmost earnestness and zeal for more than ten
years, enables me to lay my finger on the incurable
malady of the monastic orders under their present form,
and I am convinced that a change in the very conditions
of their existence is the only thing that can recover
them from this decline. Ideas like this began to dawii
in me from the earliest years of my hfe as a Carmelite;
but I never thought that of themselves they sufficed to
release me from the sacred obhgations which I had
contracted. I would advise no person to enter the

FRAGMENTS. 59

convents, such as, for the most part, they now are. I
am ready to shut myself up again in one of them, if
they will but consent to respect that voice of my con
science, for the sake of which I have sacrificed the first
audience in the world, the dearest friendships, and, I
could almost say, the honour of my name and the
repose of my life. n.
As for my second apostasy, by which, as it is alleged,
I have abandoned the Church, I am well aware that
it is the decisive argument — I ought perhaps to add
the malicious delight — of those who have never forgiven
me for refusing to identify Catholicism with their sect.
Let me repeat, it is not to them that I am speaking ;
but, to those on whom they impose, I would say, that
two things only can really separate one from the
Church — excommunication, justly incurred, and heresy,
formally and obstinately professed.
According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the majority
of theologians, an unjust excommunication is ipso facto
invalid, and has no force either in foro publico or inforo
conscientiae — before man or before God. Furthermore,^
I have never been personally excommunicated, either
by the Pope or by a bishop. Only the superiors of my
order have warned' me by an official act that I had
incurred the greater excommunication, pronounced ipso

Co CA THOLIC REFORM.

facto against apostate monks. What I have just said of
the motives of my leaving the convent at Paris is suffi
cient to show them their mistake. Since that time, I
have never failed to find priests intelligent enough to
absolve me in confession. This very year, at Easter, I
received the communion at St. Peter's Church.
I am no more heretical than I am excommunicated.
If I have spoken or written a single word against the
pure and genuine doctrines of the Catholic Church, it
has been done unwittingly and by_ inadvertence. I re
tract it humbly, fervently, with my whole soul. I am
determined to persevere in that holy faith imbibed with
my mother's milk, sealed upon my heart with my dying
father's benediction — the faith which I have preached to
the world, and which by God's grace I shall carry with
me to the grave. Whatever the sympathies that flow out
to me from the direction of the churches separated from
the centre of unity, whatever the sentiments of esteem
and the ties of affection which bind me to some of their
most illustrious and pious representatives, I have always
declared that I distinguished between Protestantism
considered as such, and the Gospel truths or the Chris
tian souls which it includes — just as I have always distin
guished between Catholicism and the errors and abuses
which are too often put forward in its name. In a
letter which was written in America less than two
months after my protest of September 20th, 1869, and

FRAGMENTS. 6i

which was printed at the time in the newspapers, I said,
" I continue faithful to my Church ; and if I have lifted
up my voice against the excesses which dishonour and
seek to ruin it, you may measure the intensity of my
love by the cry of my distress. When the Master and
Exemplar of us all armed Himself with the scourge
against the profaners of the Temple, His disciples re
membered that it was written, ' the zeal of thy house
hath eaten me up.' "
Amid the woes that have befallen my country, hin
dered, by the trying condition to which I am con
demned, from rendering her any service, I have come
to Rome to seek the only consolation which I can
now appreciate — to Rome, which now more than ever
I feel to be my second country, and in one sense my
first — " the city of my soul." I have tried to see
the Holy Father ; for I would have him read my
whole heart. I acknowledge his authority, notwith
standing his abuse of it ; I respect his white hairs, his
sorrows, and even his faults, for they have their
origin in pious illusions.
But because I am resolved to abide faithful to the
unchangeable faith of the Catholic Church, and the
primitive faith of the Church of Rome, I cannot adhere
to the new dogma of papal infallibility, in which I see
the most dangerous of errors and the most incurable of
schisms. I cannot recognize as truly free and legitimate

62 CATHOLIC REFORM.

a Council of which history will say that " it' began with
an ambuscade, and ended with a coup d'etat 1"
And I conclude this declaration with the words which,
in the first ages of the Church's liberty and purity, a
bishop. Saint Polycrates of Ephesus, addressed to Pope
Saint Victor, who threatened him with excommunica
tion in order to compel him to celebrate Easter accord
ing to the Western usage : " I am not afraid of threats,"
answered the disciple of Polycarp and Saint John, " for
there are greater than I who have said, ' It is good to
obey God rather than men.' "
Men pass away, and their works with them ; but the
truth of the Lord abideth for ever !
Declaration ofT}^. Dollinger and his Adherents.
In view of the administrative measures and the
manifestoes of the German bishops in support of the
Vatican decrees, the undersigned deem it necessary by
the present declaration to define their position, and, so
far as in them lies, to relieve the uneasiness from which
men's consciences are suffering.
I. Faithful to the inviolable duty incumbent on every
Catholic Christian, to hold fast by the old faith, and
reject every new doctrine, even though it were preached
by an angel from heaven — a duty not denied either by
the Pope or by the bishops— we persist in rejecting the
Vatican dogmas. Down to this time it has never been'
required that either in Church doctrine or in Catholic
faith every Christian should recognize in the Pope a

FRAGMENTS.

master and absolute sovereign, to whom he is directly
and immediately subject, and to whose envoys and
delegates he owes unconditional obedience in everything
touching religious faith, or relating to what is enjoined
or forbidden in morals. In like manner, it is notorious,
that down to the present day it has never been the
teaching of the Church that the gift of infallibility is
granted to a man- — -that is, to the Pope for the time
being — in the definitions which he addresses to the
whole Church, on points of faith, and on human rights
and duties. On the contrary, these propositions,
although greatly encouraged by Rome, and fostered by
all the means at the disposal of a dominant power, have
continued hitherto to be simple scholastic opinions,
'vhich the most renowned theologians have been free to
oppose and reject without thereby subjecting themselves
to censure. It is notorious (and if the German bishops
do not know it, they ought to) that these doctrines owe
their origin to forgery, and their diffusion to violence.
These doctrines, as they have been proclaimed by the
Pope in the Vatican decrees, strip the fellowship of
believers of its essential rights, deny all value to its
testimony, destroy the authority of tradition and the
fundamental principle of the Catholic faith, according to
which Christians are bound to the belief of nothing but
what has been taught and believed always, everywhere
and by all : Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.
When, now, in their recent pastoral, the German bishops
declare that it is Peter who has spoken by the mouth of
the Pope, proclaiming himself infaUible, it becomes our
duty to repudiate such a claim as blasphemy. Peter
speaks clearly and intelhgibly to us all, in his acts and
words reported in the Holy Scriptures, and in his

64 CATHOLIC REFORM.
Epistles, which are addressed to us as well as to the
primitive Christians. These acts, words, and letters, are
animated by a totally different spirit, and contain teach
ings far other than that which it is now attefhpted to
impose upon us.
The attempt has been made, it is true, to soften these
new doctrines, which in their crudity and their enormous
sweep of application are an offence to all the feelings of
a Christian ; and it is sought to persuade the people
that they have always been believed, and that there is
no snare hidden beneath them. In the recent pastoral,
as in other circumstances, great pains have been taken
to represent the infallibility spoken of in the new
decrees as a prerogative belonging in common to the
magisterium of the Church, composed of the Pope and
the bishops. But this interpretation is in contradiction
to the clear and literal sense of these decrees, according
to which the Pope is exclusively and by himself alone
infallible ; it is he that receives the aid of the Holy
Spirit, and remains completely independent, in his deci
sions, of the judgment of the bishops, whose assent to
every papal decision whatever is henceforth obligatory.
If the German bishops maintain that the "plenitude
of power" with which the Pope is invested according
to the Vatican decrees, is not to be considered as un
limited power, extending to everything, because the
exercise of it is restricted by the revealed doctrine and
the divine constitution of the Church, they might just
as reasonably hold that there is no such thing on earth
as unlimited and despotic power, even among the
Mohammedans, for the Sultan and the Shah of Persia
themselves recognize that their power has limits in the
jus divinum and the dogmas of the Koran. By the

FRAGMENTS. 65

new decrees, the pope is not only invested with the
power of dominating the entire field of morals, but it
is for him, by himself, and with infallible magisterial
authority, to determine what belongs to this domain,
what principles are of divine authority, as well as the
interpretation and application which are to be given
to them in particular cases. In the exercise of this
authority the pope is not bound to have the consent of
any person but himself, he is not accountable to any
person on earth, and no one can venture to oppose him.
Every man, prince or day-labourer, bishop or layman,
is required to render submission without condition, and
obedience without contradiction, to every one of his
commands. If such a power is not unlimited and
despotic, there never was, never will be, an unlimited
and despotic power on the face of the earth.
II. We persist in our profound conviction that the
Vatican decrees constitute a serious peril for the State
and for society — that they are utterly incompatible with
the laws and institutions of modern States— and that in
accepting them we should be entering into a conflict
that could never be settled with our political duties and
oaths. It is in vain for the bishops to try, by affecting
to ignore them, or by attempting to interpret them after
their own fashion, to destroy the incontestable fact of
the existence of pontifical bulls and decision.s, which
would subject all earthly powers to the will of the
apostolic see, and which condemn in the most absolute
manner the laws most indispensable to the organization
of modern society. The bishops know very well that
by virtue of the Vatican decrees, they have no right to
restrict pontifical decisions, whether ancient or recent,
by artificial interpretations, and that the contrary ex-
F

66 CATHOLIC REFORM.
planation of a single Jesuit will outweigh that of a
hundred bishops. In this very thing, the interpretations
of the German bishops are contradicted by that of other
prelates, and in particular of the Archbishop of West
minster, Dr. Manning, who gives to papal infallibility
the widest imaginable extent. Consequently, notwith
standing the reproaches aimed at us by the bishops, we
consider ourselves fully warranted in saying that an
infallibility ascribed to the pope, and to him alone,
without the concurrence of any other, must be called
personal. The expression so applied is precisely ac
curate, and in accordance with the usage of language
by which we are accustomed to describe z.s personal, the
power which a monarch possesses and exercises inde
pendently of the other authorities of the State. It is
right, then, to call an official prerogative /^nr(7««/ when
it is so closely and inseparably attached to a person
that he can neither divest himself of it nor delegate it
to others. If we compare (as the German bishops have
failed to do) the condemnations of the Syllabus, which
has now become a decree invested with the papal infal
libility, the solemn condemnation inflicted by the pope
on the Austrian constitution, the simultaneous publica
tions of the Jesuits of Laach, Vienna and Rome, who
are far better advised than the German bishops of the
meaning ofthe Roman Curia; if, I say, we compare all
these with the Vatican decrees, we must be wilfully
blind not to see a well-contrived plan for the universal
monarchy of the popes. Our governments, our laws,
our political constitutions, everything which pertains to
morals — the actions of each private individual — every
thing henceforth will have to be submitted to the
Roman Curia, its organs and its delegates, whether

FRAGMENTS. 67

fixed or itinerant, whether bishops or Jesuits. Sole
legislator in matters of faith, discipline, and morals,
supreme judge, irresponsible sovereign, and executor of
his own sentences, the pope, by virtue of the new doc
trine, possesses such plenary power that the most ardent
imagination cannot conceive a greater. The German
bishops would do well to lay to heart the golden words
pronounced at Munich by the Franciscan Occam, in a
situation analogous to our own. " If," said he, " the
bishop of Rome possessed such plenary power as the
popes unjustifiably arrogate to themselves, and as
many, through mistake or by way of flattery, concede
to them, all men would be slaves — which is plainly
contrary to the liberty of the Gospel law."
III. We appeal to the testimony which the German
bishops themselves involuntarily render to the justice of
our cause. If we openly and flatly reject the new doc
trine which makes the pope universal bishop and abso
lute master of every Christian in the whole domain of
morals — that is to say, in respect to everything which
ought to be done or not done — the bishops, on their
part, prove by the different and contradictory interpre
tations of their pastoral letters, that they perceive per
fectly well the novelty of this doctrine and the repug
nance which it excites, and give evidence that when we
come down to its real sense they arc ashamed of it them
selves. No one of them has been able to bring himself
to follow the example of Manning and the Jesuits, and
give to the Vatican decrees their simple and natural
sense. They forget that if upon matters of faith we
were to apply to other decrees, efforts resembling those
put forth in their pastorals to extenuate the meaning of
these decrees, the solidity and unity of doctrine would
F 2

68 CATHOLIC REFORM.
soon be shaken, and general. insecurity and uncertainty
would be produced throughout the whole domain of
faith. In fact, what certainty and safety would be left
in the decisions of the Church, old or new, if they we're
all to be subjected to the method used in the late pas
torals for the interpretation of the Bull of Boniface VIII.,
and if we were to indulge ourselves in such direct con
tradictions with the literal sense and manifest intention
of decisions, as has been used in the case of that one .'
We deplore such use of the teaching authority of
bishops ; we deplore more profoundly still, that these
bishops have not been ashamed, in a pastoral addressed
to the Catholic people, to answer the outcry of the
conscience of their flocks by insults to reason and learn
ing. In fact, when from these men who seem to know
on higher duty than that of blind obedience, we look
back towards their venerable predecessors in the Epis
copate—the Cyprians, the Athanasius', the Augustines —
We feel that we have better cause than Saint Bernard to
utter that cry of pain : Quis nobis dabit videre Ecclesiam
sicut erat in diebus antiquis f — " Who will let us see the
Church as she was in the early days .' "
IV. We reject the threats of the bishops as unjust,
and their despotic measures as invalid. In other days,
the maxim was held in great esteem throughout the
Church, that if we can point out the time when a doc
trine first begins to appear, that is a sure proof that it is
false. Now this is precisely the case '\vith the new doc
trine of papal infallibility. We can fix precisely the
date of its first appearance, the persons who conceived
it and the interests it was to serve. In former times,
when the pope and the bishops excluded from the com
munion of the Church the authors ard abettors of an

FRAGMENTS. 69

anti-Catholic doctrine, they appealed mainly to its
novelty and its opposition to the old traditional faith.
And by this manifest and demonstrable fact, that their
opinion had not been previously accepted as part of the
divine revelation, it was possible to convince the excom
municated teachers of the justice of the Church's sen
tence. In our days, on the contrary, we find for the
first time (history shows no other example of it in the
course of eighteen centuries) that excommunication is
thundered against men, not for maintaining and propa
gating a new doctrine, but for seeking to preserve the
old faith as they received it from their parents and
teachers in school and Church, and for not being willing
to receive a different doctrine, nor to change their faith
as they change their garments. It is the general teach
ing of the Fathers of the Church that an unjust excom
munication hurts not the man against whom, but the
man by whom it is pronounced, and that God changes
rather into a source of grace the sufferings of those who
are persecuted for righteousness' sake. We know that
such condemnations are as void of binding force as
they are unjust, and that consequently they cannot
deprive believers of their just right to the means of
grace instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ, nor take
from priests the right to dispense them. We are re
solved, then, not to be robbed of our rights by censures
inflicted in the interest of false doctrines.
V. We live in the hope that the struggle which has
broken out will be, under the leading of Providence, a
means of effecting the reformation, so long desired, and
now become inevitable, of the affairs of the Church, both
in its constitution and in its life. As we look towards
the future, we are cheered and comforted amid the bitter

70 CATHOLIC REFORM.
trials of the present confusion. If now we find on all
sides in the Church unbounded abuses, which, confirmed
and made incurable by the triumph of the Vatican
dogmas, might come at last to the point of extinguish
ing all Christian life ; if we perceive with pain the
tendency towards a centralization palsying to the mind,
and towards a mechanical uniformity ; if we consider
the constantly increasing incapacity of the hierarchy,
which knows no other policy but to oppose the immense
intellectual movement of the ages with conventional
phrases and impotent imprecations : — on the other hand,
our courage revives at the recollection of better days,
and we put our trust in the Divine Head of the Church.
Looking both to the past and to the future, we have in
view the vision of the regeneration of the Church re
stored to its true idea — that is, of a state of things in
which every civilized people of the Catholic confession
shall, without impairing its union with the Church
universal, and yet without bondage to the yoke of an
arbitrary domination, order and perfect its ecclesiastical
constitution according to its particular character, and in
harmony with its special mission in the work of civiliza
tion, through the concurrence and agreement of clergy
and laity ; and in which all Catholic Christendom shall
be under the guidance of a primate and an episcopate,
which, by means of learning, and by taking active part
in the life of society, shall acquire the knowledge and
capacity necessary to recover, and firmly to secure, for
the Church the sole place that is worthy of her, and
which is hers by right, at the head of universal civiliza
tion. By this way alone, and not by the decrees of the
Vatican, we shall draw near the supreme end assigned
to Christian development, the re-union of other Christian

FRAGMENTS. 71

Confessions now separated from us — a re-union desired
and promised by the Founder of the Church, and longed
for and prayed for with daily growing fervour by count
less believers, both in Germany and elsewhere. May
God grant it to us !
(Signed)
Ignatz Von Dollinger.
Professor Von SCHULTE, Prague.
Professor REINKENS, Breslau.
Professor KnooDT, Bonn.
Professor MiCHELIS, Braunsberg.
Professor Dr. J. HiJBER, Munich.
Professor CORNELIUS.
Professor Friedrich.,
[And twenty-one others.]
Munich, June, 1871.
Adhesion.
I give to the Declaration signed at Munich, by Pro
fessor Dollinger and his friends, my most entire and
explicit adhesion.
I have confidence that this great act of faith, learn
ing and conscience, will be the starting-point of that
movement of reformation which alone can save the
Catholic Church, and which will save it.
Hyacinthe.
Rome, July 7, 1871.

72 CATHOLIC REFORM.

Letter to a Friend, Prefixed to "An Appeal to the
Catholic Bishops^
To Monsieur  .

London, January i6, 1871.
My dear Friend, —
I am deeply touched by learning the steps you
have taken on my behalf during your recent visit to
Rome. You are not the first who have endeavoured
to restore me — I do not say to my Church, for from
that I have never separated myself — but to the Ministry,
which for nearly twenty years I have exercised in her
name, but which, in the new conditions that have been
imposed upon me, I did not believe that I could
honestly continue.
I desire to avoid henceforward, for my friends as
for myself, the misunderstandings attending on such
steps when they are not taken in the broad light of
day. I wish, further, to contribute, as far as in me
lies, to the restoration, in ecclesiastical matters, of that
publicity which is the only worthy and the only effi
cacious policy. It is for this reason that I determine,
after mature consideration, to publish the " Appeal to
the Catholic Bishops," which I had written on the
25th of last December. In the midst of the trials of
my afflicted country, which I have come to serve on

FRAGMENTS. 73

this friendly shore, more usefully than it was possible
for me to do on my native soil, I should not have
raised my voice on a personal question, if the question
had not been one which concerned my conscience in
the highest degree ; and if it were not connected
with interests which ought to take precedence of all
others, even and above all in France, — the interests of
Religion.Appeal to the Bispiops of Catholic Christendom.
Rome, Absent in Body, Present in Spirit,
Christmas Day, 1870.
When the war broke out, like the thunderbolt which
burst over the Vatican in reply to the promulgation of
the impious dogma, I hastened to utter a brief pro
test, and having accomplished this duty, I remained
silent. I watched the disappearance, as of the chaff
carried away before the whirlwind, of the two des
potisms, sometimes allied, sometimes hostile, which
have pressed so heavily on the Church and on the
world, the empire of the Napoleons and the temporal
power of the Popes. The partisans of infallibility have
not understood the religious silence into which so
many souls have withdrawn, and which more than all
others they themselves ought to have observed; in
pursuance of the audacious pohcy which has been at

74 CATHOLIC REFORM.
once their triumph and their ruin, they indulge in noisy
speculations on the reserve more or less prudent of
some,, on the adhesion more or less constrained of
others. Such a misapprehension cannot be allowed to
continue, and a heavy guilt would be incurred by neg
lecting to dispel an illusion 'which would end in estab
lishing falsehood by prescriptive right.
The political catastrophe which, especially for
Frenchmen, might seem at first sight a reason for
silence, becomes, when truly understood, an urgent
motive for speaking and for acting. The question, I
do not hesitate to say, which ought, even at this
moment, to take precedence of all others in France, is
the question of religion. France cannot dispense with
Christianity ; and yet she cannot accept it under the
oppressive and corrupted forms in which it has been
clothed. This is the reason why, even more than the
other Latin races, she is forced to remain without
religion, and consequently without a constraining
morality, between Ultramontanism and Infidelity, two
enemies of which she takes not sufficient account, and
which she ought to combat with an energy equal at
least to that with which she combats those who have
invaded her soil alone.
Let me, then, be permitted, in the presence of the
misfortunes of my country and the misfortunes of the
Church, to address myself to the Catholic Bishops

FRAGMENTS. 75

throughout the world — to those especially who see
the situation as I see it myself, and who are, I well
know, not a few. I am nothing that I should speak
to them so freely. But was it not the bold saying
of the illustrious Gerson, that in times of crisis, even
the humblest peasant may convoke a General Council
and save the universal Church 1 It is this right which
I use ; it is this duty which I discharge in conjuring
the Bishops to put an end to the latent .schism which
divides us down to a depth all the more formidable
by as much as it is less acknowledged.
Before all else, we require them to tell us whether
the decrees of the recent Council are or are not
binding on our faith. In an assembly in which the
first conditions ought to be -entire freedom of discus
sion, and the moral unanimity of the votes, it is well
known that Bishops, considerable by their numbers, by
the authority of their learning and their character,
have complained loudly and repeatedly of restrictions
of every kind imposed on their liberty, and have re
fused to take part in the final decision. Is it possible
that on returning to their dioceses, as if awaking from
a long dream, they have acquired a retrospective cer
tainty of having actually enjoyed, during their sojourn
at Rome, a moral independence of which at the time
they were not conscious .? The very supposition is an
insult. There is no question here of a mystery above

76 CA THOLIC REFORM.
human reason, but simply of a fact of personal ex
perience ; and to change opinion in such a case is not
to submit reason to authority, but to sacrifice con
science itself.
If it be so, we remain free, after as before the
Council, to reject the infallibility of the Pope as a
doctrine unknown to ecclesiastical antiquity and rest
ing only on apocryphal writings, concerning which
criticism has pronounced its final judgment.
We remain free to declare openly and loyally that
we decline to accept the recent Encyclical Letters,
and the Syllabus which their most intelligent
champions are constrained to interpret in opposition
to their natural sense, and to the well-known inten
tion of their author, and of which the result, if these
documents were treated seriously, would be to estab
lish a radical incompatibility between the duty of a
faithful Catholic and the duty of an impartial student
and of a free citizen.
Such are the most salient points on which the
schism exists. Every Catholic who has regard for
th,e integrity and dignity of his faith — every priest
who has at heart the honesty of his profession— has
the right to interrogate the Bishops on these points ;
and the Bishops are bound to answer, without reti
cence and without subterfuge.
It is this reticence and these subterfuges which

FRAGMENTS. 77

have been our ruin ; and the time is come to restore
to our Church the antique sincerity of early faith,
which in these later days has lost its vigour.
But it must be observed that the facts and the
doctrine which I here indicate are ramifications of a
vast system, and that in order to reach each part the
remedy must embrace the whole. The question is
enlarged by the very excesses of Ultramontanism ; and
henceforward it concerns us to know whether the
nineteenth century shall have its Catholic Reforma
tion as the sixteenth had its Protestant Reformation.
Behold, ye Bishops 1 the Bride of Jesus Christ, who
is also yours, the Holy Church pierced, like Him, by
five wounds !
The first wound, which we may call that of the
right hand, the hand which carries the light, is the
darkening of the Word of God. The sacred volume,
open to the world to enlighten and to fertilize it,
why is it shut up in the obscurity of the dead lan
guages, and under the seal of the most severe prohi
bitions .? — The bread of doctrine and of life which
God had prepared for the little ones as well as for
the learned, how has it been withdrawn from them 1
It is vain to urge as a pretext the abuses of heresy
and of uribeUef. Place the Bible in its true relation
to science by an intelligent exegesis, and neither will
have any cause to fear the other : place it in its own

78 CA THOLIC REFORM.
true relation towards the people by a religious education
worthy of it and of them, and it will become the surest
guide of the life of the people, the healthiest inspiration
of their worship.
The wound of the other hand is the oppression of
the intellect and the conscience by the abuse of
hierarchical power. Doubtless Jesus Christ said to his
Apostles, " Go and teach all nations," but He said to
them no less, "The Kings of the nations exercise
authority over them ; let it not be so amongst you."
Successors of the Apostles, hasten to remove frora
our shoulders the burden which neither we nor our
fathers have been able to bear, and restore to us that
light and easy yoke to which the love of our Redeemer
has called us !
What shall we say of the wound of the heart.' I
will venture to call it by its name, because those
who suffer most by it are those who dare the least to
speak of it : it is the celibacy of the clergy. I do not
speak of a voluntary celibacy, the more agreeable to
God in proportion as it is free and joyous as the love
which inspires it, the lot of a few souls who are called
to it and maintained in it by an exceptional grace.
But when it is extended without discrimination to
natures the most diverse and the least prepared;
when it is imposed as an external vow on their in
experience and on their enthusiasm, celibacy becomes

FRAGMENTS. yg

an institution merciless and too often immoral. Na
tions who believe that they see in it the exclusive
ideal of perfection, fail to recognise the sanctity of
domestic life, and, degrading the family, in the interest
of the cloister, make these the refuge of common-place
or, at least, of earthborn souls, and thus the hearth
and the home cease to be the altars of God !
And now come the last wounds of the Church with
which her feet are crippled, that she cannot stand
firmly upon the earth : I mean worldly policy and
superstitious devotion. It is true that the Church
must have a policy, because she is of necessity in
relation with the powers of this world, but its most
complete expression is in the words of her Master,
" When I shall be lifted above the earth, I will draw
all men to myself." Is this that policy of a temporal
power and of a secular arm which regards the posses
sion of certain provinces in Italy and certain privileges
in Europe as the essential condition of the empire of
souls and as the pivot of the whole spiritual struc
ture .'' A policy as disastrous to the Church and to
the world as the Revolution which she does but pro
mote while seeking to combat it, a policy the impo
tent and blind persistence in which it is now attempted
to erect into a dogma ! And yet there is no lack of
spiritual force in the Catholicism of our days ; it counts
by thousands devoted souls, and it sees flourishing in

8o ¦ CATHOLIC REFORM.
its bosom the most admirable virtues and the noblest
works. Why is this piety, so touching and so true, too-
often delivered over to the seductions of a mysticism
without depth, and an asceticism without austerity,
very different from those which made the greatness of
the old ages of Christendom .? External, I had almost
said material, devotions are multiplied without measure;
the veneration of Saints, especially of the Blessed
Virgin, is developed in a proportion foreign to the true
sentiment of Catholicism, and 'with a character still
more alien to it ; and we feel amongst us the diminu
tion of that worship of the Father in spirit and in
truth which Jesus has made the soul of His religion.
This is the condition into which our sins have reduced
the body of Christ upon earth ; the sins of the clergj-
as much and even more than the sins of the people.
Bishops of the Church, have you no pity.' Will you
not apply an effectual remedy .' " Is there, then, no
balm in Gilead, and is there no physician there ? "
I pause. My heart is too heavy to proceed. I
know not what will come of my feeble words in the
midst of the shock of empires and of the voice of
blood which cries aloud from the fields of carnage.
But this I do know, that, if my words are not suffi
ciently strong to hasten the accomplishment of the
design of Providence, they are sufficiently true to an
nounce it.

FRAGMENTS. 8i

This also I know, that I am not separating myself
from the holy Catholic faith, nor from the Church of
my baptism and of my priesthood. If the venerated
heads of the Church receive my humble appeal, I
will resume in obedience, and at the same time in
honour and loyalty, a ministry which has been the
one passion of my youth, the one ambition of my life,
and which my conscience alone has forced me reluc-'
tantly to abandon. If, on the contrary, they reply to
me only by their condemnation or their silence, I shall
not be disturbed in my affection for a Church greater
than those who govern it, stronger than those who de
fend it ; and — retaining the heritage which has been
bequeathed, to me by my fathers, and which cannot be
torn from me by excommunications which, being un
just, are therefore invalid — I shall strive to bring to
the preparation of the kingdom of God upon earth the
individual and independent action which is the common
privilege of all true Christians,
Hyacinthe,

The foregoing Appeal to Catholic Bishops, on its publication in
La Liberth, a conservative paper of Rome, was suppressed by an order of
the Procurator of the King. This seizure, which there was nothing in the
article to justify, happened by a curious coincidence the day after the
Honourable Signor Massari, secretary of the House of Representatives of
Italy, and member of the conservative party, did me the unexpected honour
of reading before the Italian Parliament the letter I had addressed him
from Paris, the i8th of July, 1870. (See p. 18.) The strange measure of
which my Appeal was the object raised a protest throughout the press, and
G

82 CATHOLIC REFORM.
even in Parliament, which was occupied at that moment upon the Pontifical
Guaranty Bill. The two following letters were called forth by this
occasion : —
To SiGNOR Joseph Massari, Member of the Italian
House of Representatives. London, February 12, 1871.
Dear Sir and Friend,
You have given to my letter of the 19th of last
July an honour which it did not merit. In complying
with your solicitation, and that of the excellent Duke
of Sermoneta, I never thought that its pubUcity was
to be that of the national tribunal. I will venture
to say, however, that the rigorous measure to which
my Appeal to the Bishops was subjected at almost the
same moment was still less merited. Notwithstanding
the rude contradictions of the times in which we live,
I did not look for such an occurrence.
It would certainly be in vain to seek in that paper
for anything which could justify the act by which I
am placed, in some sort, in the same category with
the vilest pamphleteers of impiety and anarchy. I
find nothing in the article seized by the Procurator
of the King in Rome but the same ideas, and almost
the same words, with which only the day before you
had drawn forth the applause of the Parliament at
Florence. In the "Appeal" I speak of the pretended dogma
of personal infallibility of the Pope as "impious." In

FRAGMENTS. 83

my letter to you I call it criminal — the dogma which
bestows upon a man one of the most incommunicable
attributes of the Godhead. I address myself to the
Bishops, and especially to those of them who have
seen in this dogma one of the greatest perils for the
Church, and in the Council which proclaimed it, an
assembly without liberty and consequently without
authority ; I beg them to put an end to the trouble
of conscience which they themselves have had a part
in creating, and I entreat them to indicate to me,
personally, under what conditions I shall be permitted
to resume the exercise of a ministry for which I have
always required entire freedom and absolute loyalty.
If these are the insults complained of under Article
185 of the Penal Code, I must confess that I do not
understand human language. Insult has never been
habitual to me, either in speech or in writing. I leave
the sad monopoly of it to certain organs of Ultra
montanism and demagogy. But if I could so far forget
myself as to descend to the use of it, it would not be
to turn it into a weapon against the Faith which I
inherit from my fathers, against the Church which
blessed my cradle, nor against Him of whom it is
written, "thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of
thy people."
Yes, doubtless, it is necessary that the Pope should
be independent and respected. No man declares this
G 2

84 CATHOLIC REFORM.
with greater emphasis than I. But it is necessary that
conscience should be independent and respected also. '
Both Pope and conscience have rights equally sacred,
which ought not to be sacrificed one to the other, but
which must be reconciled at Rome as in the rest of
the world. Had I contested some one of the teach
ings of the Catholic religion, the civil power would
have had nothing to do with it. I should have been
responsible for it only to the censure of the Church
and the judgment of God. All the more had I the
right to demand the reforms that do not touch doc
trines, but discipline and policy. I had the right to
affirm that to the submission of the priest as well as
of the layman there are limits which no enlightened
conscience will ever consent to overstep ; and when we
are thrust by force beyond these limits, it is my right,
it is my duty, to reply to the authority thus perverted,
were it the highest upon earth, "We ought to obey
God rather than man."
Forgive the emotion with which I write you, my dear
Signor Massari, but the matter at issue is the liberty
of conscience, of which you are one of the most earnest
and eloquent defenders. This is the cause to which I
have sacrificed my life, and it is precisely this that
constitutes the most serious and vital complication in
the Roman Question. It will never be solved by petty
and evasive expedients, but only by the loyal applica-

FRAGMENTS. 85
tion of principles which belong at the same time to
modern law and to the ancient Church : " Render unto
Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the
things that are God's."
To Sir James Lacaita.
Boulogne-on-the-Sea, February 15, 1871.
Sir, The arbitrary suppression at Rome which has
just befallen my "Appeal to the Catholic Bishops,"
derives special importance from the political circum
stances in which it has occurred. I am not alone in
seeing therein a preliminary application, by way of
experiment, of those legal guarantees which are going
to replace and outdo the prerogatives of the Temporal
Power. I am well aware that you are not one of those who
misapprehend the import of the Roman Question, and
only see therein the political possession of a city and
territory necessary for the integrity and splendour of
Italy. If the Roman Question was only that, it would
not have held public opinion in suspense and European
politics in check for more than twenty years, not to say
three-quarters of a century,— it would not at this present
time be distracting men's minds from the German revo
lution—an event as great and decisive, in some sense,
as the French revolution ; in short, it would not be one

S6 CATHOLIC REFORM.
of the two or three supreme questions of the age in
which we live. Vulgar politics occupies itself with the
question, how the Pope and the King of Italy can
manage to live together within the limits of the same
capital, or at least within the frontiers of the same
country ; but far-seeing minds understand that it con
cerns, above all, the reconciliation of two powers not
less exalted — and often, alas ! not less hostile — the
Church and the conscience.
This indispensable reconciliation of the spiritual
authority of the Church with the legitimate liberty of
the conscience, can only be realized by a sincere appli
cation of the principles of ordinary justice. Any other
course is an indirect return to the Temporal Power
and to the secular arm. For my part, I cannot ex
press my astonishment that so many Catholics find
no security for the head of the Church except in pre
rogatives of this nature, and no way of detaching him
from the earth except by binding him down to it.
Do they not then understand, that if there be political
influences that can be exercised upon the Pope as a
subject, there are others, no less numerous and no less
formidable, which cannot act upon him except in his
capacity as King .¦' In any case do they not perceive
that they do the Pope the crudest injury in supposing
him so accessible to these kinds of influence in the
exercise of his spiritual ministry, and that their theories,

FRAGMENTS. 87

if one takes them in earnest, would lead to the con
clusion that God should have built him a city in the
clouds ?
No ! The true protection for the conscience of the
Pope in the government of the Church is that which
protects the conscience of the Bishop in the govern
ment of his own diocese — which protects the conscience
of every honest man in the government of his own
life— ^the sense of duty and the help of God !
I repeat it. To suppose that it is necessary to the
independence and dignity of the Pope, that in the
absence of a temporal power, upheld by the bayonets
of Austria or France, an officer of the King of Italy
should mount guard to keep Rome clear of all religious
discussion except such as can show a permit from him,
is to inflict upon the Pope and the Church a gratuitous
insult, which, if accepted, would humble them to the
lowest point in the estimation of the world.
The newspapers called religious could not understand how, being in
London when I published my Appeal to Bishops, I could desire that it
should appear in Rome. This appeal for a Catholic reform coming from
the very centre of unity, and clothed in language, firm, and at the same
time respectful, was nothing less in their eyes than an inspiration of hate.
Judging my own feelings, doubtless, by theirs, they cried out in then-
habitual style of speech, "The apostate has pitched upon Rome as the
scene of his hydrophobic attacks." ^ M. Louis Veuillot, with a fanatical
burlesque of exaggeration such as he has at his command, even claimed
that this act of mine constituted one of those national sins, evei-y one of

1 The Osservatore Romano, the official organ of the Vatican.

88 CATHOLIC REFORM.
which had been punished, according to him, in the course of our unhappy
war, by some reverse or humiliation of France.
For a long time it has been a matter of principle with me to take no
notice of the allegations of a class of papers which are wanting in common
sense even when they are not wanting in common honesty.

The Catastrophe of Paris.
Rome, May 29, 1871,
The Government and Parliament of Italy have just
testified their sympathy to France in noble language,
I am not surprised at it ; but my heart is moved, and
I feel that I must express my gratitude. In a time
when blinded minds are busy in propagating falsehood
and stirring up evil passions, with sowing discord
between sister nations, it is the duty of all clear and
honest minds to draw closer the ties which unite France
and Italy, If the Latin races would maintain, I do
not say their independence alone, but their dignity in
presence of the menacing preponderance of the Ger
manic and Slavic races, personified in Prussia and
Russia, it is of prime importance to them to remain
united. It is only thus that they will be able to con
tinue the traditions of that civilization of the 'West
the destinies of which are bound up with those of the
Catholic Church, and which needs nothing for the
renewal of its ancient splendour but to extinguish
within its own bosom the two enemies which grapple

FRAGMENTS. 89

there in such fatal conflict — revolution and absolutism,
superstition and impiety.
Furthermore, at the present time, France, in defend
ing her own cause is defending that of society every
where. The dignity of human nature, order and liberty,
the civilization of two hemispheres — these it is that
have been outraged, beaten, trampled under foot in the
bloody streets and among the blazing piles of Paris.
It is vain for the men of the i8th of March to claim
to be the representatives of two political ideas that
would be just if they were confined within their true
Hmits — the idea of the self-governed Commune, to which
Bismarck himself has just done homage,^ and that of the
material and moral regeneration of the working classes.
They have compromised these two causes by pushing
them to intolerable excess, and sustaining them by the
most outrageous means. They tried to secure their
triumph at the expense of national unity and over the
ruins of social and religious order. It was the party
of assassins, incendiaries, and atheists, and this party
magnified to the point where it became a nation, or at
least the semblance of one.

1 ""We grant to Alsace and Lorraine more communal and individual
liberty than the French do. Substantially the present communists of Paris
(I do not mean the Internationals, who are for war at any price, but only
the central and reasonable nucleus ofthe movement)— these communists, I
say, are fighting for nothing but what is granted by the Prussian municipal
system." (Reichstag, Session of May 2, 1871.)

90 CATHOLIC REFORM.
What, then, is a nation without God .' Philosophers
have attempted to depict it, but facts have now revealed
it in a reality which beggars all language to describe.
The demonstration of Social Atheism is complete.
Providence left it, for an hour, the grandest theatre
in the world, the most unbridled orgies, the most
terrible of dramas I
And yet is this people the only guilty party in the
case, and is the cannon the only cure 1 Far be from
us the easy and fatal illusion which would cheat us
of the fruit of this frightful lesson !
Mr. Gladstone once said, "The nineteenth century
is the working-man's century." The Labour Question
is the question which engages the attention of the
statesman and the man of science, and there will be
no peace to society until it is settled. The Second
Empire gave no small attention to the question, but
it was too much in the line of the traditions of the
Roman Caesars — panein atque circenses. It had nothing
in view but material ameliorations, and even for these
it did not employ the right means ; as, for example, in
the excessive public works in great cities, especially
Paris, which while stripping the country provinces of
the workmen which they needed, heaped together a
continually increasing population, severed from the
normal conditions of family life, of rehgious influence,
and consequently of morality. They should have

FRAGMENTS.

91

thought of that universal, popular instruction which
is found among our neighbours across the Rhine, and
which constitutes the power of Germany quite as much
as does her military organization. They should have
gone to work to heal those two ulcers, that aggravate
each other and which are eating out the vitals of our
population — the protracted celibacy of soldiers and the
legalized prostitution of women. Above all, they .should
have offered from the higher ranks of society some
better example to the common people than those of
luxury and corruption.
And as to the Church, it has equally failed of doing
what it ought to have done for the practical solution
of the tremendous problem. The temporal power and
infallibility of the Pope had absorbed the thoughts and
labours of those who are presiding over its destinies at
this unparalleled crisis of its history. Instead of the
promises and teachings of the Gospel to the poor of
this world, it gave them, through the noisy echoes of
the press, and sometimes even in the voices of the
Bishops, exasperated discussions on the Pope- King, the
elevation of intolerance into a dogma, and the canoniza
tion of the Inquisition. I am not slandering the poli
tical and religious regime which we have endured for
more than twenty years, and which is summed up in
these two words — scepticism at Paris, fanaticism at
Rome.

92 CA THOLIC REFORM.
It is not calumny — it is not accusation, even — it is
simple history.
But this, I say, is the lesson of the present
hour: shall we, or shall we not, persist in these fatal
blunders .' This is the question. Looking upon the
Paris where I dwelt, to which I preached, whose
history I know — Paris in ashes — I have a right to
lift up this bitter cry of a grief the depth of which
God only knows.
Such is the work of a people that has forgotten God \
And such is the work of those who make it impos
sible for the people to believe in their God, and above
all to love Him !
P.S. — Just as I am finishing these lines, the telegraph
announces that the Archbishop of Paris has been
shot ! This horrible crime is in confirmation of the
mysterious law by which the innocent suffer for the
guilty. Archbishop Darboy was one of those who
understand and desire the alliance of the Church with
modern society. If he did not reahze all his concep
tions, it was because the fatality of the times was
stronger than he was. Yet he had no illusions, and
he awaited death with that cool enthusiasm which
characterized him in the gravest moments. I seem
still to hear his voice as he said to me, at the last
interview which I had with him, at the moment of
my starting for Rome, "If they kill me, they will

FRAGMENTS. 93

only magnify the principle which I represent." And
I shall never forget the tone with which he added,
" We shall see each other again, if not in this world,
then in another!"

The Petition of the Five French Bishops to
THE National Assembly.
" The Church abhors blood." — Canon-law tnaxim.
Rome, June 22, 1871.
His Eminence Cardinal Bonnechose has sent to the
National Assembly a petition, protracted in its pre
ambles but vague in its terms, in favour of the Tem
poral Power. It is signed by the Suffragan Bishops of
the province of Rouen, and it is not without a painful
surprise that I find among them the name of one of
my oldest friends, the Right Reverend Bishop Hugonin
of Bayeux.
I have unbounded respect for the authority of the
Bishops, and I am convinced that the ills of the Church
proceed, in great measure, from belittling it. I would
not willingly contribute to the further depreciation of
it; but the most imperative of duties at this hour is
to withstand the propagation of error in a country
which error has ruined and which nothing but the
truth can save.

94 CA THOLIC REFORM.

To begin with — let me say it plainly — it is painfully
mortifying to see a French Cardinal, but lately a
Senator of the Empire, appealing to the Government
of his own country only as a second thought after he
has appealed to its invaders. The line of conduct
which Cardinal Bonnechose proposes now to exhausted
France, by my knowledge was first tendered by him
in that very city of Versailles to victorious Prussia,
and Prussia would none of it.
It is true that for lack of an armed intervention,
which had been hoped for from Prussia, they would
have been content with a diplomatic protest on the
part of France — so, at least, the journals of that party
declare. But how can they help seeing that behind
this protest there must be either impotence or blood.'
When a great nation protests against what it deems
the violation of law or of honour, it has to be ready
to draw the sword, even were that sword nothing
more than the broken but glorious stump of a blade!
If France does not do this, she dishonours herself;
if she does do it, she plunges head-foremost and eyes
shut into a terrible and futile war. I say a terrible
war ; standing here, as I do, I know whereof I speak.
We should be rousing against us the patriotism and
the despair of a whole people, and, victorious or van
quished, we should have poured out blood in streams.
I add, a futile war. If we could succeed in conquering

FRAGMENTS. 95

Italy, we could never succeed in subjugating her. We
might perhaps have power to create here a seething
chaos, but we should be powerless to lay upon it the
foundations of lasting order.
We shudder at such a prospect, and ask ourselves
with amazement how it is possible that French Bishops
can be found ready to push their own country to the edge
of such a gulf. But that pitifully famous saying, " My
clergy is a regiment, and it has to march," ^ has its
application in the very region where it originated. In
every case of importance, there goes forth from Rome
a word of command which is sure to be obeyed, and
which produces a unity of action most imposing to
those who do not understand the secret of it, not only
on the part of the self-styled "religious" press and the
population whom it stirs up to fanaticism, but on the
part of the most enlightened and the best disposed
Bishops. " France raised again to life, and, as we hope,
reconverted to Christianity" (so, a few weeks since,
wrote the organ of the Jesuits and the Roman Curia),
" will not have far to seek for an enterprise well worthy
of herself. God has made it ready for her according
to His own purpose — not so much that she should
reckon 'with the disloyalty, the outrage, and the in
gratitude with which she has been repaid by those
1 The expression was used by Cardinal Bishop de Bonnechose, in a
speech in the French Senate.

CATHOLIC REFORM.

who owed her everything, as that she should re'sume
her post of honour in the van of the Catholic nations,
by squaring accounts, to begin with, with those who
. insolently trample on the rights conferred upon the
Church by Pepin and Charlemagne." ^
I am too well convinced of the good sense of France
to think her capable of being seduced into any such
scheme as this. As the Journal des Debats very aptly
said, the Government that would adopt such a project
had better engage rooms in advance at Bedlam. The
very distant allusion made to it by the late manifesto
of the Count of Chambord was enough to alienate the
best men from him. But, after all, we are passing
through a crisis, in which, in some giddy moment, any
thing is possible. The excesses of the Commune at
Paris show us what in another direction might be the
excesses not less transient, but not less fatal, of the
Ultramontane reaction.
This is the reason why it is needful to show the
country that the restoration of the Temporal Power,
even were it less an impossibility than it is, would still
be useless, and fatal to the Church in its results.
Count Montalembert, who on his death-bed was dis
abused of many an illusion, but was more admirable
than ever in his faith, and in his love to the Church,
acknowledged to me that the Roman Question had been
1 Rev. Father Curci, in the Civiltk CattolUa.

FRAGMENTS. g-j

misunderstood. I go further than he, and say that it
has been falsified. The experiment that has been in
progress here for nearly a year, has demonstrated to
minds capable of impartial attention, the weakness of
the thesis maintained so eloquently and so sincerely by
the most illustrious of French Catholics. Facts have
established the uselessness of the temporal sovereignty
of the Pope to the free exercise of his spiritual
authority. The imprisonment of Pius IX. at the Vatican is a
myth which no one here takes in earnest, unless it is
the one who is the victim of it, and in whose eyes it has
been successfully made to appear as a duty. This
prisoner, who may look out every evening from the
windows of his palace and see crowds of priests and
monks walking peacefully in the streets, himself prac
tises dealings towards the government of Italy which
no other government in Europe would tolerate within
its dominions. He excommunicates, with the Univer
sity professors who cannot beheve in his infallibility,
the army officers who choose to be faithful to their
flag. He forbids students to attend the lessons of
their teachers, and commands soldiers to desert the ser
vice of their King, A few days ago, one of the most
respected parish-priests in Rome, the Abbe Caffiero,
was deprived of the pastoral office simply because
he had, according to custom, received the oath of the
H

98 CATHOLIC REFORM.

bersaglieri ; and even while I write, a force of geiis-
darmes'is required to liberate from the Hou.se of Cate
chumens, a young Jewess — a girl of sixteen years,
detained there against the will of her parents. I should
never finish, if I were to collect all the facts which prove
the exercise, and sometimes the abuse, of the Pope's
liberty. The Jubilee which we have just celebrated at Rome
with not less of demonstration, although with greater
calmness than in other countries, is itself an unanswer
able demonstration. It is necessary to come here, after
having read the correspondence of the Ultramontane
newspapers, to get an idea of the systematic lying by
which it is undertaken from day to day to keep Europe--
in delusion and agitation. Father Gratry has elo
quently denounced this system in its application to
the history of the past. But I would never have
believed that it could be used so audaciously and so
successfully to distort the history of our own times, under
our own eyes, and almost in our own hands, as if we
were not ourselves eye-witnesses and actors of it ! God
has no need of falsehood ; but falsehood very often has
need of God, and it is never so potent as when it is set
forth in His name.
I have said that the restoration of the temporal power,
if it were not impossible, would be fatal to the cause for
which it is declared to be necessary. This is not my

FR.4GMENTS. ¦ 99

conviction only. I hear it every day at Rome, from the
hps of the most intelligent laymen, and of eminent
priests and monks who cannot speak openly, but whom
I manage to see, in spite of the secret police of the
Cardinal Vicar — for I am bound in truth to declare that
it is not the Pope's authority which is in peril here, it is
private life, which is neither free nor respected. " Since
you have rejected the gag with which our lips are
muzzled "-^so said one of these venerable men to me —
"speak out to your countrymen, and tell them that they
are deceived, and that the root of almost all the calami
ties of the Church is this temporal power which has
been represented to them as the indispensable condition
of its independence and prosperity ! "
I would say further to my country that she is imposed
upon no less perilously when she is exhorted, in the
name of her offended honour, to attack Italy, or at least
to threaten her. From of old, I am a friend of .the
Latin races, and particularly of Italy ; but I have no
disposition to be her blind eulogist ; and I acknowledge
that she has not been sparing of faults in her work of
restoring unity. To cite but two examples : she would
have done better not to enter Rome immediately after
our reverses, September 20, 1870 ; and she made a great
mistake, September 15, 1864, in signing a humiliating
treaty which it was impossible to keep. Nevertheless,
behind these mistakes of politicians, we ought to be
H 2

CATHOLIC REFORM.

able to see the legitimate sentiments and the irresistible
development of a great nation ; and since I am a Chri.s-
tian, I do not fear to add that we ought to be able, in all
this, to adore the noblest of the attributes of Provi
dence, which makes evil itself help forward the coming
of the good and the accomplishment of eternal designs.
Suffer me in one concluding reflection. France can
never forget that it was the cannon of Areola that
awoke Italy from the sleep of ages in which she had
lain under the yoke of the foreigner, in scepticism and
corruption, the constant twin-companions of slavery,
She can never forget that it was the cannon of Solferino
which consummated the work of her deliverance, and
commenced that of her unity. It is true that this work
is not only the work of France, but at the same time that
of the two Napoleons ; but when was it that in breaking '¦
with the fatal traditions of the Empire we resolved to
repudiate its real glories .' • The Vandals of the Com
mune have flung down the Venddme Column, Let us
not imitate their criminal folly by attempting to over
throw this monument, more glorious than the battle-
sculptured bronze, — the unity of a great people enfran
chised — I had almost said created — by the power of
France !
Hyacinthe.

Rome, June 22, 1871.

FRAGMENTS. loi

The Sorbonne and the Council.
Rome, February 2, 1872.
One drop was yet wanting to my cup, and it was not
the least bitter of them. It remained for me to see my
own brother, without any provocation on my part,
making a direct and public attack upon me.^ If he
found it necessary to separate his cause from mine, that
had just been accomplished by his giving in, with the
rest of the Sorbonne, his solemn adhesion to the Vatican
Council. He has thought it his duty to go beyond this.
I am sorry for it, and I forgive him, for I know that he
will suffer from it more than he deserves. I shall not
engage in the controversy which he offers me ; but
banished henceforth from the family fireside, where I
have become " a grief to the family," I will meditate in
my exile and my sadness on the words of the Master :
" I am come, not to bring peace but a sv/ord, and a
man's foes shall be they of his own house." ^
And yet the cause to which I have sacrificed everything
does not suffer me to keep absolute silence. And since
it is in the direction of the Sorbonne that defections and
aggressions multiply, I am entitled to address my words
^ Le Schisme de Munich ; a Lecture by the Abbe Jules Theodore Loyson,
at the Sorbonne. (Revue des Cours litteraires, 2nd Series, No. 30.)
2 Matt. X. -^

CATHOLIC REFORM.

to the mani who represented that institution in the
Vatican Council, with a learning and courage which no
one has forgotten except himself. I do this with deep
and sincere respect, and at the same time with perfect
freedom. I never have learned that boasted skill in the
management of language and action which have helped
to ruin the Church of France and France itself ; and now
more than ever I shrink from any complicity with it.
When Monseigneur Maret was writing his book, he
did me the honour to consult me. The proof-sheets of
the work were shown me, and I read them with the
most earnest attention. Nevertheless, Bishop Maret
must remember that I never got to the end of the read
ing. For in a time when words are nothing unless they
are supported by deeds, I foresaw that this most tem
perate and conclusive book would be disavowed by its
author, and suppressed without being refuted. But
what I did not foresee was the anathema which the
illustrious theologian would presently be hurling at such
of his friends as should abide faithfully by his own
principles. At the present time, we— Dr. Dollinger and myself—
are to him, just as absolutely as to M. Veuillot, nothing
but schismatics and neo-Protestants. And why.' Be
cause we cannot recognize as Ecumenical a Council
' Monseigneur Maret, Dean of the Theological Faculty ofthe Sorbonne,
Paris.

FRAGMENTS. 103

which he himself contested up to the last moment. This
it is which they call "' openly proclaiming the very prin
ciple of Protestantism — the superiority of the indivi
dual judgment to the judgment of the Catholic hier
archy." ^ But it is the proper duty of the individual, at
least when he is sufficiently instructed (and this is to be
presumed in the case of a priest and a theologian), before
submitting himself, to prove the validity of the judg
ments uttered in the name of the Church ; and for this
task there have always been sure signs for distinguishing
between the authentic judgments of the Church and
the unauthentic.
Two of these distinguishing signs, so far as Councils
are concerned, are perfect liberty of discussion and
moral unanimity in voting. The world is well aware
that both of these have been lacking in the Council of
the Vatican. The Bishops of the minority complained
of it at the time, not only in books ^ and in newspapers,^
inspired or patronized by themselves, but in solemn
manifestoes, which will be an everiasting honour to their

1 The Abbe Jules Th. Loyson, loc. cit.
2 See, particularly, the two publications, "Ce qui se passe au Concile,"
and " La Perniere Heure du Concile."
3 I may refer to the correspondence of the Moniteur Universel, the
Gazette de France, the Franfais, and the Concorde. In relation to the last-
named journal, in which I preferred to take no part, Bishop Maret wrote
to me : " Do not cease to encourage your brother [the editor], and let the
new joumal become really a power. Events may give it a great position,
and a great part to play."

104 CATHOLIC REFORM.
memory, and an everlasting reproach. In a letter which
he wrote me from Rome at this time. Bishop Maret
himself marked out conditions limiting the authority of
the future decrees : " May God give us the light, the
courage, and the perseverance needful to clear up this
immense controversy, and to inspire at least a doubt in
the minds of those of our colleagues who are bent upon
a partisan course. Will they leave us the needful
liberty .' There is reason to doubt it, since they have
imposed on us a new system of rules which puts the fate
of the discussion into the hands of ten members and of
a numerical majority very skilfully organized. If our
liberty is not perfect, if even discussion is impossible in
the hall in which we meet, what shall we do .' This
is a weighty question, and full of perplexity for our
colleagues." ^
From that time on, instead of being withdrawn, the
oppressive system of rules was still further aggravated,
and it became perfectly clear that the policy had been
resolved upon, of depriving the bishops of what they
had the assurance to call " the liberty of doing wrong."
Accordingly, when it came to the final vote, a great
nnmber of bishops, and the most important of them
(Bishop Maret himself was of the number), refused to
vote, and gave the reasons of their absence in an
address to the Pope. It is true that subsequently the
' Letter of Bishop Maret, March 12, 1870.

FRAGMENTS.

IGS

greater part of these prelates have sent their adhesion
to Rome ; but to say nothing of the fact that this
adhesion has been, in most cases, extorted by a pres
sure which it is easy to understand, it does not amount
to a judgment of council, and can have no retro
spective bearing on the facts which have invalidated
the Vatican Council.-^
In relation to the chief of these facts — the absence
of liberty in the Council — the Abbe Meric, Professor
at the Sorbonne, says, with childish simplicity, that we
ought to refer to the testimony of the bishops, who
on returning to their dioceses declare that they have
1 I record here for the benefit of history the exact words which Mon
seigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, said to myself a short tirae after his
adhesion, and a very few days before his 'glorious martyrdom: — "This
dogma has no such importance as you attach to it. It really settles nothing.
I was opposed to it, not as i theologian, for it is not false, but as a man,
because it is nonsense (inepte). They set us at Rome to playing the part of so
many sacristans ; but for all that there were at least two hundred of us who
were capable of something better.'' I do not think that it is any indiscretion
to quote these words, which were not spoken to me in confidence, but as an
answer to Dr. Dollinger, who had just written to me to inquire about the
Archbishop's position. And I certainly do not feel that I am doing any
wrong to a memory that is dear to me. On the contrary, I feel that I am
honouring this memory by showing that while he never ceased to be a
Catholic, Archbishop Darboy never became an Ultramontane. And that
if he did at last reconcile himself — v/rongly, as I think— to a formula which
he deemed vague enough and flexible enough not to be false, he by no
means disavowed the doctrines defended by him with so mucli force and
clearness in the Vatican Council at the session of May 20, 1870, the
authentic report of which ought to be read in the Documenta ad illustrandum
Concilium Vaticanum, published by Professor Friedrich, 2 vols. 8vo.,
Nbrdlingen. I delivered Dr. Dollinger's letter to the Archbishop, March
22, 1871 ; two days after, the 24th, I called to recover it. It was the last
time I was to see him in this world !

io6 CATHOLIC REFORM.

been sufficiently free. But while they were at Rome,
as we have just seen, these bishops declared the con
trary. To which of these two testimonies ought I to
give credence .' Is it not pertinent to recall those harsh
but well-merited words which the Pope directed to the
prelates absent from the public session of July iSth:
" Have you then two consciences and two wills .' "
Sunt-ne ducB conscientice f Stint-ne ducevoluntates ?
Here is the point which divides us ; and it is in
vain to attempt imposing upon the public, even if you
can impose on your own conscience. The question in
hand is not on one of those mysteries impenetrable
to human reason, before which faith bows in adora
tion, but simply on a fact of contemporary history.
Was the gathering of the Vatican a genuine Ecu
menical Council, binding the faith of CathoHcs under
the sanction of everlasting life or death ; or rather — if
I may make use of the expression which I take from
the lips of an illustrious priest, who was then in the
opposition but has since submitted — was it not merely
"an ambuscade followed up with a coup d'etat f"
III.
I shall not take the pains to follow the Professors
of the Sorbonne into the Byzantine discussions into
which they enter on the merits of the pretended dogma,
following in the train of the German bishops to prove

FRAGMENTS. 107

that the Pope's infallibility is not a personal infalli
bility. If we must go to Germany for our arguments,
I prefer, for my part, the honest and courageous
learning of its universities to the official recantations
of its bishops.
No matter what you call it, personal or impersonal,
infallibility is henceforth so attached to the person of
the Pope, that it depends on him (and the organs of
Ultramontanism vaunt it every day as a new and ne
cessary triumph of the principle of authority in the
Church) — it depends solely on him, I say, to decide the
gravest questions without the concurrence, or at least
without the judgment, of the Episcopate. It is enough
for him to declare that he intends to pronounce a de
finition ex cathedra, or in other terms, it is enough
for him to will to be infallible.
It is of no avail to say that this infallibility is re
stricted to the domain of faith and morals. How long
is it since these regions of faith and morals have ceased
to be the innermost and most sacred of our being, —
the very ones which it behoves us to guard with a sort
of divine jealousy against every illegitimate intrusion
on the part of man, and in which we have a supreme
need, when acknowledging doctrinal authority, of
every safeguard for the hberty and dignity of our
souls, while insuring the absolute certainty of our
consciences ?

io8 CA THOLIC REFORM.
I am astounded at seeing priests and bishops who
know all the worth of faith, and who, I doubt- not,
would be ready, at need, to die for it, — abandon it
with a mystical recklessness to the irresponsible de
cisions and volitions of a single man, and comfort
themselves for this amazing abdication with the notion
that they are going to find some remains of independ
ence left to them, within the boundaries of science and
politics ! It is one of those humiliating and pitiable
contradictions in which our nature abounds. Un
happily for the self-styled Liberal Catholics, in the
eyes of the Ultramontanes who rule the Church, and
in the practice of the Roman Curia, all science de
pends on faith. When, two centuries ago, Rome con
demned the astronomy of Galileo, it did this in the
name of the Bible ; and at the present day it acts in
just the same fashion when it proscribes the best
founded systems of philosophy, the best settled facts
of history, the most unquestionable methods of the
natural sciences. And as for morality, it surely
deserves the honour which Leibnitz rendered to it
when he exclaimed that morality penetrates every
where. The individual, the family, the state, gravitate
within its sphere, and the entire system of human
affairs, in its humblest details as in its majestic com
pleteness, abides under its empire. It is difficult to
understand how any could seriously have imagined

FRAGMENTS.

109

that they were restricting papal infallibility in assign
ing to it such vast frontiers. Innocent III. was more
logical or more sincere, when he justified his inter
ferences with the politics of his time, by those famous
words : " I am not deciding about the fief, I am de
ciding about the sin." Non sum judex de fendo, sed
sum judex de peccato.
And what is the advantage of remembering, with the
Swiss bishops, that " the Pope is neither infallible nor
impeccable in his life and conduct, in his political views,
in his relations with temporal princes and governments,
nor even in the government of the Church in general ; "
for after laying down these excellent rules, we are
obliged in particular, as a consequence of this duality
— I was going to say this duplicity — of doctrine,
which is at once the vice of Ultramontanism and its
best weapon, we are obliged to defend all the
usurpations of the Roman pontiffs, through all the
ages, as the exercise of so many sacred rights.^ How,
1 The proposition condemned by Pius IX. in his Syllabus, is well
Imown : — " Romani Pontifices et Concilia cecumenica cl limitibus sues potest-
atis recesserunt, jura Principum usurparunt." (" The Roman Pontiffs and
Ecumenical Councils have overstepped the limit of their power, and
have usitrped the rights of rulers.") I content myself with setting it over
ngainst these solemn words of Gregory VII. to the seventh Roman
Council : — " Agile nunc qncsso, Patres ac Principes sanctissimi, ut omnis
mundus intelligat et cognoscat quia si potestis in ccelo ligare et solvere, potestis
in terra Imperia, Regna, Principatus, Ducatus, Marchios, Comitatus et
omnium hominum possessiones tollere unicuique, et concedere." ("Act now,
I entreat you, most holy Fathers and Princes, so that the whole world may
understand and know that if you have power to bind and loose in heaven.

CATHOLIC REFORM.

indeed, could we forget, that it is precisely "in their
capacity as supreme teachers of the Church, and when
they were making, upon points of faith and morals,
decisions which were to be received and held as binding
by all the faithful," that the Roman pontiffs have com
mitted and sanctioned the most of these abuses of
power .'
Was it not by one of this sort of decisions, the Bull
Unam Sanctam, that Boniface VIII. defined the sub
jection of the civil authority to the ecclesiastical, and
launched against the kingdom and Church of France
excommunications and interdicts, before which our
fathers never quailed .' Is it not by solemn bulls,
and, alas ! in the domain of morals, that other Popes
have promulgated that legislation of the " Holy Roman
and Universal Inquisition," which has turned over to
the prison and the stake thousands of men denounced
for heresy or witchcraft, and which has stained the
immaculate robe of the Church with blood which
will continue to cry for vengeance until it has been
disavowed .'
Excuse — for well you may — excuse the heads of the
Church because of the prejudices and the barbarity of
the time ; but do not try to prove that their errors and
you also have power on earth to give or take away from any person what
ever, empires, kingdoms, principalities, duchies, marquisates, earldoms, and
the possessions of all men."

FRAGMENTS.

their crimes are aught else than crimes and errors, or
that their infallibility is not involved in acts so solemn
and official .'
The heart swells with indignation and grief in pre
sence of the system of falsehood which prevails in the
Church, and of the duphcity of language to which the
most upright minds are abandoning themselves. Great
God ! whither are we tending ! and what are Thy judg
ments upon Thy heritage !
Each day my conviction grows deeper that the salva
tion of France can come only from Christianity ; but I
am no less convinced that she will never accept Chris
tianity under such forms, and I will add, that she never
ought. As for myself, standing immovable in the
faith and love which I have preached to the world,
Catholic and priest, and resolved by God's grace to
continue such to my latest breath, I feel myself utterly
incapable of exercising the ministry of the Church in
the ranks of a clergy which possesses so many just
claims to respect, but which has been carried out of its
course by a system for which it was not made ; — this
grand clergy of France, which at an unparalleled crisis
of history sums up its plan for the restoration of our
ruined country in these three points : to accept the
infallibility of the Pope, to reestablish his temporal
power, and to perpetuate the ignorance of the people I
Such a programme as this is not for me. It would not

CA THOLIC REFORM.

be honest — it would be a lie to men and to my own
conscience, if I were to suffer it to be written upon my
banner.
Programme of the Committee of Old Catholics
of Rome.
The Committee established at Rome for the defence
of the Catholic faith against the innovations of these
latter day.s, and for the promotion of a reformation
of discipline and morals in the Church, feel it im
portant to declare distinctly that they mean to build
their work upon the divine foundation of Jesus Christ
In their view, all attempts at religious reformation
that are inspired by any other spirit are impotent.
They therefore confess the Christ, the Son of the
Living God, the sole Redeemer of men and of nations,
and await from Him alone the regeneration of which
the world is in need.
Firmly attached to the faith established in the
Church by Christ and His apostles, we accept, with the
Holy Scriptures, all traditions of divine origin, and all
legitimate decrees of the Catholic Church. But we
reject absolutely the human traditions which have been
mingled with the deposit of Revelation, and the abuses
of authority by which it has been attempted to main
tain and enforce them. We reject, in particular, the

FRAGMENTS. 113

Council of the Vatican, as wanting in liberty and
ecumenicity, and we reject the dogmas which it pro
mulgated, as being the consecration of all the errors
and abuses previously introduced into Catholicism.
We demand, like our fathers in the faith, a reform
of the Catholic Church in the pastors and the flock.
We believe this reform more necessary and urgent
now than ever, by reason of the obstinate refusal to
undertake it, and because of the intolerable excess
which our evils have reached.
Without denying the salutary developments which
have been produced in' later ages, we deem it essential
to an effective reform, to go back to the period which
preceded the separation of the East and West. It
is upon the basis of the first eight centuries that the
longed-for re-union of the various Christian commu
nions is to be first prepared and then accomplished.
We are not willing, at any price, to separate our
selves from the Catholic Church to form a new sect.
We acknowledge the legitimate authorities which re
present the Church; but at the same time, we affirm
our right and our duty to resist such requirements as
are merely arbitrary, much more those which are ini
quitous, and which can in no wise bind the conscience
of a Christian.
In the violent and necessarily transitional state of
the Catholic Church at this time, the different com-
I

114 CATHOLIC REFORM.

mittees organized in various parts of it ought to have
some common understanding, in order to give unity of
direction to the movement of resistance and reforma
tion, and to prepare for the assembling of a council
really free and ecumenical, and the choice of pastors
who are faithful to the primitive faith and to the
spirit of charity and liberty which should reign in the
Church of Jesus Christ.
(Signed)
Hyacinthe,
Honorary President.
Era Andrea d'Altagene,
Capuchin, President.
Rome, May 1872.

Concerning my Marriage.
" And now behold I go bound in the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the
things that shall befall me there. Save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth
from city to city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But none
of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so
that I might finish my course with joy, and the necessity which I have
received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God ! "—
Acts XX. 22 — 24. Paris, August 1872.
The determination at which I have arrived belongs
of its own nature to the privacy of individual life, and
relates to that which is most intimate, dearest, and
most sacred in human existence.

FRAGMENTS.

"S

The character of a priest, which I have no intention
and no wish to renounce, impresses on this act, in spite
of myself, a startling publicity, I might almost say a
terrible solemnity. If marriage were for me merely a
personal satisfaction, I should not think of it for a
moment. I know too well that the pure and humble
home which I create will be insulted by some, deserted
by others, and that it must embrace within its circle
anguish and happiness together.
My principal grief is that I shall have afflicted many
souls, that I shall have scandalized, certainly against
my will, but no less certainly, some of those little
ones who believe in Christ and for whom I would gladly
die. I give to the wicked and to the frivolous — two
classes all too numerous, and who have a fatal facility
for leading mankind — a new and powerful weapon, not
only against myself, but against my cause. " He
wished to marry " will be the cry from all sides, " and
he had not the courage to say so." " He spake of
infallibility, and it was but a pretext; this high-
sounding drama ends in an every-day comedy."
Determined beforehand to remain silent in face of
the attacks which will be levelled at me, I desire once
for all to give to the thoughtful, and more especially
to the Christian public, explanations which bear un
avoidably a personal character ; and this appears to
me to be a duty I owe to the consciences which
I 2

ii6 CATHOLIC REFORM.
my example must of necessity either perplex or
enlighten. If I had left my convent for the purpose of marrying
— which was not the case — I would not hesitate to
admit it ; for I should have done nothing which could
not be openly avowed before those who place the
natural law of God, with its inalienable rights and
duties, above human laws, and especially above con
ventional engagements. That which is really a matter
of guilt and blame is to drag on without conviction,
and too often without morality, the chains of obligations
which have ceased to bind, save only out of deference
to the prejudices of the world and the calculations of
individual interest. That which ought to excite re
probation, that which, for my part, I have always
looked upon with horror, is not marriage, but sin ! Un
swervingly faithful to the principles of the Catholic
Church, I feel myself in no manner bound by its
abuses ; and I am profoundly convinced that amongst
the most fatal of these abuses are perpetual vows.
The fault of Luther lay not in that pure and pious
marriage in which his example ought to be followed
by the larger number of those who load him with
maledictions ; it was solely in his rupture with the legiti
mate traditions of the necessary unity of the Church.
I repeat, then, if I had quitted my convent in order to
marry, if I had sacrificed the glorious pulpit of Notre

FRAGMENTS. 117

Dame de Paris to a great and legitimate attachment,
it may be, to a conscientious duty, I should not feel
that, in doing so, I had done anything which needed
apology. But, if I had not had sufficient frankness
and courage, if for the sake of better preparing any
secret designs I had concealed them under the veil of
dogmatic controversies, I should have been guilty,
deeply guilty, and should have deserved to find myself
disavowed and scorned by all honest hearts.
Only, if I may be allowed to say so, this mean
calculation would have been no less absurd than un
worthy. In the presence of the deeply-rooted and
all-powerful prejudice which has prevailed for ages
amongst the Latin nations, and especially among the
French, I could never have been simple enough to
hope that a few utterances against Papal Infahibility
and against compulsory celibacy would change, as by
enchantment, the whole current of opinion. In making
the declaration which I have never for one moment
ceased to make, and which I now once more repeat,
that I intend to remain a Catholic and a priest, I
should not have practically amehorated in any degree
my position in regard to marriage. I should, on the
contrary, have aggravated it ; and I should have created
for myself, in a certain sense wilfully, a situation which
to most would have appeared illogical, insupportable,
and without solution.

iiS CATHOLIC REFORM.
— If I could have so trifled with my conscience, with
the consciences of others, if for me the most formidable
problems of reHgion had been but pretexts for my in
terests or my passions, it would have been more easy for
me to have accomplished my object by inflicting on
Protestantism an insult which it does not deserve, and
deceiving the high-minded friends whom I number in its
ranks. I could have found among them, by entering
their communion, the justification which I should have
sought for in vain under the banner of the Catholic
opposition to the Council and the new dogma.
No, my marriage has no connection with any reli
gious convictions, nor with my act of the 20th of Sep
tember, 1869 — or, rather, let me say, it is most intimately
connected with them, but in that large and general
sense which binds together all the steps achieved by a
soul in progress towards light and hberty. I will ex
press my meaning with entire openness. I owe to the
rule of religious celibacy some of the most exquisite
joys, some of the most profound and decisive experi
ences of my existence. From the age of eighteen, when
I chose it, I have observed it with a fidelity for which I
give glory to God. If now, at the age of forty-five— in
the calmness as well as in the maturity of my judg
ment, of my heart, of my conscience, in a word, of my
whole being— I believe myself bound to renounce it, it
is that marriage comes home to me as one of those laws

FRAGMENTS. 119

of the moral government of the world which cannot be
set aside without overturning the fabric of life and with
out running counter to the will of God. I did not say
that this law comes home to all. I believe that celibacy
may be a holy and glorious exception. I only say that
this law presents itself unmistakably to me. When a
man has received in his heart, as another exception no
less rare, holy and glorious, that pure and lofty love in
which the world does not believe because it is not
worthy of it, such a man, be he priest or be he monk,
has the most absolute proof that he is not of the number
of those self-dedicated victims of whom the Gospel speaks.
Such a man am I ; and here once more I give glory to
God for what He has wrought in me. Such workings
of His Spirit may appear contradictory ; but their true
harmony is known to Him. At the very moment when
I seemed to be abandoned, renounced by my friends
and by my kinsmen, exiled by blow upon blow from my
Church, from my country, from my family, He sent on
my solitary and desolate path a noble and holy affec
tion, a sublime devotion, poor in this world's goods, rich
in the gifts of intellect and of heart ; and, when all had
crumbled away, alone, or almost alone, this support re
mained to me. Surely this support would not be what
it ought to be, I should not recognize the blessing
which God has given me, were I to hesitate in seeking
for it the consecration of marriage.

CATHOLIC REFORM.

And why should it be otherwise .' I see no reasons
which make marriage unlawful to me ; for I cannot
admit as such the law of any ecclesiastical system, and
still less the prejudices of my fellow-countrymen.
I will ever submit myself to the laws of the Church
when I am not called upon to recognize as such what
Jesus Christ, speaking to the Pharisees of the ancient
people, already designated as "the commandments of
men which made of no effect the commandments of
God " (Matt. XV. 6—9). It is fully admitted that celibacy
is not an article of faith ; it ought to be acknowledged
that it is not even a Catholic discipline, but merely of
the discipline of the Latin Church. Even at this hour,
in the East, the Catholic clergy are married, with the
full approbation of the Holy See. It is true that such
marriages must precede and not follow ordination ; but
this restriction, besides being full of objections, is without
meaning in the eyes of sound judgment, and does not
the less establish in all its strength the principle that, in
the mind of the Church, there exists no real incompati
bility between the two great sacraments of ordination
and marriage.
The countervailing prejudice belongs to a perversion
of moral ideas, which one has a right to marvel at find
ing amongst Christian nations. How have they come
to degrade marriage to this base and unworthy concep
tion of it, which is as repugnant to the delicate and

FRAGMENTS.

generous instincts of the heart as to the teachings of
Revelation .' Truly, if marriage is but a concession to
the infirmity or even to the passions of our nature, I
admit that it is for the priest a degradation and defile
ment. But I am then equally at a loss to see how it can
be reconciled with the dignity conferred by Christian bap
tism, with the holiness which our Christian profession
demands ; and, to be logical, it would be necessary,
with Tertullian, to forbid it to true Christians every
where. Christian marriage — the only marriage of which
I speak — is not a concession to our weakness, it is not
even a mere means for perpetuating our race ; it is, if I
may be allowed to quote myself, " the most complete,
the most intimate, and the most holy union that can
exist between two human beings." It is thus that I
defined it only five years ago, in the pulpit of Notre
Dame ; and I added, with St. Paul and the whole
Catholic tradition, that it has been since the Gospel the
mysterious and the radiant likeness of the union of the
Divine Word with human flesh — of the union of Christ
with the Church — " Sacramentum hoc magnum est, ego
autem dico in Christo et in Ecclesia" (Eph. v. 32). It is
because we no longer understand the doctrine of the
Apostles, nor the examples of the .first Christians, that
we have ceased to see in the union of husband and wife
" the estate of marriage honourable in all " (Heb.xin.4) ;
that we have come to regard it as incompatible with the

CA THOLIC REFORM.

condition of the perfect life ; and that we shudder to
think of the proximity of the altar of God to the family
hearth, which also ought to be a sanctuary, and in one
sense the first of all sanctuaries !
Another error, not less fatal and not less widely
spread, consists in regarding the state of celibacy as
capable of being made the subject of a perpetual en
gagement. Precisely because it relates to what is most
personal, most delicate, and, I ought to add, most
perilous in the relations of the soul with God, ceHbacy
ought to remain at each moment of its duration the
work of grace and of liberty. Only to the Holy Spirit of
God does it belong to attract toward it and to maintain
in it the small number of exceptional beings whom He has
rendered capable. But no human authority, neither the
authority of councils nor of Popes, can impose as a com
mandment, and especially as an eternal commandment,
that concerning which Jesus Christ Himself only spoke
a word of counsel, " to those who are able to receive it."
" Now concerning the unmarried," wrote the Apostle
St. Paul to the Corinthians, " I have received no com
mandment of the Lord ; but I give my council " (i Cor.
yii. 25). This counsel it is the mission ofthe Church to
transmit to all through the course of ages, but without
imposing it on anyone ; and, if I may here speak my
whole mind, there is not a single case in which the
Church should prohibit marriage to its pastors ; but

FRAGMENTS. 123

there are a thousand where it ought to command them
to marry.
The individual himself has not the power of making
an absolute surrender of a right which at any moment
and in so many ways is liable to be changed into a
duty.r In answer to my question on the liberty of the
clergy, whether secular or regular, with regard to ' mar
riage, one of the most learned and most pious bishops
of the Roman Church (it will be easily understood that
I do not feel justified in giving his name) wrote to me
these words : " Such a step is always permissible, often
necessary, and sometimes a sacred duty." Similar con
victions exist in the most enhghtened minds, amongst
those especially who possess the light of experience and
who know the state of the clergy and the practical con
dition of human life ; and, if such convictions are not
expressed freely, it is the fault of the iron yoke which
weighs upon the bishops as well as upon the priests, no
less than the culpable connivance of public opinion.
I have just named public opinion. As much as I re
spect this in its legitimate expressions and requirements,
in that same proportion do I despise it when it rests
only on prejudice. To recoil before a prejudice is to
recoil before that which has no real existence ; and is
even to give by that means a body and a force to this
empty phantom. Is not this, however, what is done
every day, through a mixture of puerile fear and hypo-

124 CA THOLIC REFORM.
critical subserviency by the minds most capable of
counteracting the errors of their time .' Fatal power of
falsehood, which has ruined and which still ruins our
unfortunate country ! It is this which obliges me at
this moment to seek on a foreign soil the consecration
which the law, or at least the legal authorities of
France, would refuse to my marriage, because I have at
the same time the honour and the misfortune to be a
priest. But I will make no further concession to this
false spirit. I shall return, keeping my head erect and
my heart calm, without fear, as without anger; and
nothing shall hinder me from inhabiting that country
and breathing that air which are mine, and which shall
remain dear to me in spite of the iniquities by which
they have been profaned. Nothing shall hinder me
from claiming for each one of my brethren in the priest
hood the legal right of marriage, the violation of which,
not only in a whole class of citizens, but even in the
person of a single man, should suffice to place the legis
lation of a people under the ban of truly civilized
nations. Yes, I am convinced that France, no less than the
Church, needs the example which I give, and of which
the fruits shall be reaped by the future, even should
they fail in the present. I know well the true state of
my country; and, whilst it was still willing to hear
my voice, I never failed to preach to it that its regene-

FRAGMENTS. 125
ration must come through the life of the family. I
tore aside without mercy the veil of its sumptuous
and deceptive prosperity ; and I laid bare the two
sores which waste it and which mutually envenom one
another — " marriage without love and love without
marriage — that is to say, marriage and love without
Christianity." ( " Conferences sur la Famille," 1866.) I
know well also the true state of our clergy, and
know all the devotion and virtue that is to be found
in its ranks; but I am not ignorant of how much it
needs in a vast proportion of its members to be recon
ciled with the interest, the affections, and the duties
of human nature and of civil society. It is only by
breaking with the traditions of a blind asceticism, and
of a theocracy which is, in fact, more political than
religious, that the priest, become once more a man and
a citizen, should at the same time find himself more
truly a priest. " That he rule well his own house,"
says St. Paul, " having his children in a subjection with
all gravity ; for, if a man know not how to rule his own
house, how shall he take care of the Church of God .' "
(i Timothy iii. 4—5.)
Such is the reform without which all others will
be illusory and sterile. Let us bow to the will of
God, if we beheve in the power of His Spirit to main
tain in the midst of us a chosen band of priests and
daughters of charity whose celibacy, always free and

126 CATHOLIC REFORM.
always voluntary, shall be truly a state of purity, a
state of joy, or, at least, of peace, in sacrifice ; but, at
the same time, let us hasten the moment when the law
of the Church and the law of France shall constitute
in liberty, in purity, in dignity, the marriage of the
clergy — that is to say, the concentration of all the
influences of family and religion in the model of a
Christian home.
I am nothing, O my God ; but I feel myself called
by Thee to break the chains which Thou hast not
made, and. which weigh so heavily, often alas ! so
shamefully on the holy tribe of Thy priesthood. I
am a frail and fallible man ; but, nevertheless. Thy
grace hath made me strong to brave the tyranny of
opinion, to refuse to bow before the prejudices of my
time and country, and hath made me stedfast to act
as though there were in the world naught save my
conscience and Thee.
Hyacinthe Loyson.

Ill,

DISCOURSES.

Ill,— DISCOURSES.
MUNICH CONFERENCES.!
True and False Catholicism.
As I rise to address you in a language which though
familiar to you is yet a foreign language, and find
myself standing in a place which ought to be, and I
trust is to be, occupied by the great teachers whose
instruction I have come hither to seek, I have need
to remember all the kindness with which you have
already twice received me. Cicero says that the
orator is what his audience makes him. I rely much
upon you this evening, and also upon the subject of
our common meditations — a subject which may well
provoke to eloquence, for it is worthy to lead to
martyrdom. In the religious crisis through which we
are passing, two things are supremely necessary, —
sincerity and logic. I shall try to turn both of them
^ Of the series of five conferences given at the Mwccum of Munich,
dur;ng the autumn and winter of 1871, this, and the " Priesthood of the
Family," are the only ones that have been preserved. K

130 CATHOLIC REFORM.
to use in defining the true position of those who reject
the infahibility of the Pope, and the system to which
this doctrine is linked.
The question is asked. What are you, and where
are you going .' I answer. We are Catholics, arid we
are not going anywhere. We are going to stay in
the Church from which such futile but malicious
attempts are made to drive us out. If we were Pro
testants, or if we were going towards Protestantism,
I should say so frankly.
And seeing that I shall have occasion here more
than once to speak of Protestantism, I beg leave to
speak as freely as I do respectfully and kindly. There
are in Protestantism serious defects, and — to speak, my
whole mind about it — serious errors. But I am well
aware, also, that it retains Christian truths and Chris
tian virtues, and upright and noble souls. In its ranks,
both in Europe and in America, I reckon some of my
dearest friends. I would not willingly speak a word
or cherish a thought which could give them pain.
Having said this, once for all, I repeat that as for
us, we are Catholics, and intend to remain such, and
that in the terrible conflict in which our Church is
divided, it is we that are standing for its traditional
principle, in the double point of view of truth and
unity; truth absolute and consequently immutable,
unity perfect and in one sense exclusive — these are

DISCOURSES. 131

the two distinctive marks of Catholicism : and they
have for guarantees, the first, the rule of faith summed
up, for substance, in the constant and universal witness
of the Church ; the second, the constitution of the hier
archy and especially the central institution of the Papacy.
Let us study these two points in succession, and we
shall be convinced of the co-existence and the an
tagonism of two irreconcilable Catholicisms, the old
and the new, the true and the false.

The Catholic Rule of Faith, and the Infal-
LiBiLisT Rule of Faith.
Three great principles, or, if you prefer the expres
sion, three great methods, in our time, are disputing
among themselves the empire of the soul — Rationalism,
Protestantism, Catholicism.
Rationalism suppresses Revelation. Lowering the Bible
to the level of a merely human production, the prophets
and Christ Himself to the rank of heroes and sages, it
undertakes to derive all religion from the depths of our
own nature and the light of our own reason. 'You
perceive that I am here speaking only of religious
Rationalism, ordinarily called Deism.
Protestantism maintains Revelation, but mutilates it ;
and in effect, while extolling the Bible, separates it from
K 2

132 CATHOLIC REFORM.
the living tradition which is its complement and ex
planation, and substitutes the individual faith of the
Christian for the collective faith of the Church.
Catholicism alone abides faithful to the whole revela
tion, written and spoken — spoken before it was written,
and so written, I repeat, that it ever stands in need of
being completed and illustrated by speech ; only this
speech is not that of an individual conscience, of an
isolated person, but the universal and constant teaching
of the Church — in those masterly words of Vincent of
Lerins, " what has been believed by all, always, every
where." Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.
Doubtless the faith of the intelligent Catholic is pro
foundly personal, but it has for its basis and its guide
the collective faith of the Church.
These three methods may be summed up in three
words : — the abstract idea in Rationalism, the dead
letter in Protestantism, the living word in Catholicism.
But there is a fourth system, which having been
hitherto included among contested opinions, now un
dertakes to impose itself upon our faith. It is Ul
tramontanism, — more properly called Papism, or, when
carried to its logical conclusion, Infallibilism. The
partisans of this system have, nowadays, the effrontery
to put it forth as the only Catholic system. Its adver
saries often make the mistake of controverting it as an
exaggerated Catholicism. For my part, I declare it to

DISCOURSES. 133

be the very antipodes of Catholicism. According to
the Ultramontanes, the Church is not infallible, but
only the Pope ; and the infallibility of the Church
(since it is necessary to keep up at least the name of
it) is only a derivation from that of the Pope — the
passive infallibility of a pupil who says over the les
sons of an infallible teacher. Henceforth, there is no
need of inquiring what has been beheved in the
Church of all lands and ages. It is enough to in
terrogate the oracle that speaks at the Vatican.
I would not be wanting in respect for Pius IX. I
have said before that I honour his grey hairs, his mis
fortunes, even his faults, for they originate in his pious
illusions. Four times in my life I have conversed with
him in private, and while I could not but perceive his
infirmities of intellect and will, I have recognized his
excellent qualities of heart. I will not say, then,
that he is personally guilty, but his words are guilty
beyond all my power of expression, when he does not
fear to proclaim himself to be both tradition and the
Church. " lo sono la tradizione ; io sono la Chiesa."
This is the complete reverse of the Catholic faith.
It is an odd way of going back, under the form of
authority and mysticism, to the Protestant principle of
individuahsm— the private inquiry and private judg
ment of an individual who puts himself in the place
of the inquiry and judgment of the universal Church.

134 CATHOLIC REFORM.
For my part, I frankly own that I would prefer the
method of Protestantism to that of Ultramontanism —
the state of mind implied by the former, to the state
of mind produced by the latter. If we were shut up
to choose between these two errors, my choice would
be in favour of the perilous emancipation of each man's
conscience in the light of the Bible and of Christ, and
against the prostration of all consciences, wrested
from the Bible and the living Christ, and brought into
bondage, without the right of question or discussion,
to the dictum of a man who might be John XII. or
Alexander VI. ! A system like this is no more
Protestantism than it is Catholicism. Its real kindred
is with the religion of Buddha.
I do not exaggerate. I have tried breathing in that
air, and I know what it contains.
But history shows, beyond all room for doubt, that
the teaching of the Popes and that of the Church are
not the same. Bossuet has written the history of the
variations of the Protestant Churches. It would be
possible to write a history of the variations of the
Popes. At the further extreme of Protestantism, with
its changes and uncertainties, Catholic controversialists
have pointed out to logical minds the gulf of scep
ticism. Not less devouring, not less inexorable, it
yawns at the logical terminus of the other subjectivism
— that of Rome. In one case as in the other, I know

DISCOURSES. 135

but one means of escaping it without leaving the system
that leads to it ; and that means is blind in duty. Stet
pro ratione voluntas.
The hidden conflict which has been going on for
so many centuries between the Catholic principle and
the Infallibilist principle is nearing its end, at last.
You remember how the patriarch's wife bore within
her womb the struggling and contentious twins. So
has it been with the Catholic Church ; and to her
groans, as to the groans of the daughter of Bethuel, we
might have made answer — " Two nations are in thy
womb ; the time shall come that they shall be separated,
and the stronger shall be subject to the weaker." ^
July 18, 1870. Fatal and yet auspicious date ! It
marks the enfranchisement of the Church's faith, too
long held captive and oppressed under the personal
teaching of the Popes. Till then, the two positions
were not clear and definite. Alike restrained by fear of
consequences, the Ultramontanes were not prepared to
go to the full length of their claims, nor the Galileans
to the full length of their resistance. Now, compromise
has become impossible ; reticence and misunderstand
ing have come to an end. We are compelled to make
our choice between the faith of the Pope and the faith
of the Church.
Well, then, my choice is made. Suffer me to say, in
^ Genesis xxv. 23.

136 CA THOLIC REFORM.
the words of one of the most learned Catholics of
Germany : " If the Pope and all the hierarchy become
heretical, the Church does not go with the Pope and
the bishops. It remains with the faith." ^
IL
The Ancient Primacy and the Modern Papacy.
The great mistake, I will not say the crime, of those
bishops who were once in opposition but have now sub
mitted, has been that of sacrificing truth to unity.
Are we about to rush to the opposite extreme, and
sacrifice unity to truth .' But what a question is this .'
Is it to be presumed that these two things, equally
necessary to the soul, are to be found mutually incom
patible and destructive in the Church founded by Him
who is at once the supreme Truth and the supreme
Unity .' God be thanked that we are not condemned to
any such fatal antagonism ! The true unity is that
which is founded upon the truth, as the complete and
effectual truth is that which is centred in unity.
As the atoning sacrifice of the cross drew near, on the
evening of the first eucharistic supper, at that divine
and fraternal feast at which was sealed the compact of
the new covenant, the Saviour hfted up to His Father
this great prayer, " That they may be one, even as we
' Speech of Professor Maassen before the University of Vienna.

DISCOURSES.

137

are one ; that they may be made perfect in one, that the
world may know that Thou hast sent me, and hast loved
them as Thou hast loved me." ^
This prayer is what established the unity of the
Church — established it in that very bond in which the
Father and the Son are One, I mean in the Holy Spirit.
After what manner is it that in the mystery of the
divine substance, the unity of the Father and the Son
are made " perfect in one " .' In that they are united
with one and the same mutual love, which is the Holy
Spirit, After what manner, in the recesses of sanctified
souls, is the Church " made perfect in one " .' In that
they have one faith and one hope, in one love — that
they receive the same breath of inspiration from on
high, and taste the same joy of the life of God com
municated to man. " The love of God has been shed
abroad in our hearts by the Floly Ghost which is given
to us." ^ Therefore it was that " the multitude of the be
lievers were of one heart and one soul." Such was their
unity, in the exuberance of their early fervour, that it
carried them to the point of making common property
of their goods. " None of them said that aught of the
things which he possessed was his own ; but they had all
things in common." *
The unity of the Church is, then, primarily an inward
unity, of which the Holy Spirit is the author. But the
1 John xvii. 22, 23. = Romans v. 5. ^ Acts iv. 32.

138 CATHOLIC REFORM.
Church, hke mankind, out of whom it is constituted, is
a body as well as a soul. It has need, therefore, of an
outward organism, such as may be at once the expres
sion and the defence of its unity of love. This organism
is the priesthood, the fulness of which resides in the
episcopate. The episcopate was instituted by Jesus
Christ and confirmed by the apostles, whose mission it
takes up and carries forward. But it answered to so
deep-seated a want of the Christian community that even
if it had not been given from above it would have had
to be created from within. This, in fact, is what may be
seen taking place within those primitive communities
that have received the fulness of the Holy Ghost, often
with outward signs, and that are, as we may say, in
toxicated with this new life. The dominating sentiment
among them is that of unity in love, " that they may be
made perfect in one!' They feel themselves irresistibly
drawn together, soul to soul, and as if impelled by the
action of some unknown force, they look for some out
ward and visible representative, who shall be at the
same time a guardian of that life of paradise which they
iiave within them. This symbol of the Church's love
and guardian of the Church's unity is the bishop. The
election of the Christian people designates the worthiest
in their own ranks. The apostle of Jesus Christ, or
if none be present a bishop acting in his name, gives
to the elect the heavenly consecration and commission.

DISCOURSES. 139

The Church exists in its normal form — Plebs adimata
sacerdoti. But a particular community is not the universal com
munity. There are churches, and there is The Church.
That which has just taken place among the various
members of a local church, now takes place among the
various churches which constitute the Church universal.
They look upon each other across intervening space —
what power has matter to put asunder spirit .' — they
recognize each other as sisters, they feel that it is but
one blood of the soul that circulates in all their veins
and stirs the pulses of their hearts, and that they all are
but one Church — the great Church of God and of
humanity. And here again is demanded an outward
and visible institution to answer to this inward craving.
The outward embodiment of love for the universal
Church, and, if I may be allowed so bold an expression,
the substantial and living impersonation of the whole of
Catholic humanity, is the Primate— the Pope. " Simon,
son of Jonas, lovest thou me ? Lovest thou me more
than all these others .'—Yea, Master, thou knowest that
I love thee. — Feed thou my sheep ; feed my lambs." ^
Be thou supreme shepherd of the boundless flock. This
is the origin of the Papacy.^
1 John xxi. 15—17.
2 The Primacy of St. Peter is certainly of divine origin, and like every
thing pertaining to the constitution of the Church, was intended to survive
the age of the apostles. But the fixing of the Primacy at a certain see

I40 CATHOLIC REFORM.
It is impossible to say anything too great of this
salutary and necessary institution, so long as its nature
is not changed, and a royalty made to take the place
of a ministry. In the person of Peter the unity of the
Church finds its sensible image and its effective instru
ment. Instead of an abstract idea (for such, in a certain
sense, it originally was), it becomes a living reality.
Unity speaks by this mouth, acts by this hand ; but
only on this condition, that Peter shall continue to be
the humble and faithful organ of the Church. It was
not a solitary man, says St. Augustine, it was the
united Church to whom the keys of the kingdom of
heaven were given. " Claves non unus homo, sed unitas
accepit Ecclesics" ^ Peter personified the universal Church.
" Figurata generalitate gestabat personam Ecclesice!'
Nothing is more expressly condemned by the Gospel
than the lifting up of one above the rest. When the
apostles, full of the Judaic notions which have long
survived them, were disputing among themselves about
the primacy, the divine Master said to them, " Ye know
that the princes of the nations exercise dominion over
them ; but it shall not be so among you, but whosoever
will be greatest among you let him be your minister,
could be nothing but an ecclesiastical institution. Before it ever was at
Rome, the central church was at Jerusalem, and the great Cardinal Nicholas
da Cusa did not fear to teach at Rome itself, in the midst of the fifteenth
century, that the Primacy could be transferred from the Bishop of Rome lo
the Bishop of Treves. i Sermon 195.

DISCOURSES.

141

and whosoever will be chief among you let him be your
slave." ! Doubtless the Church is a kingdom — regnum
Dei — but it has but one king, Jesus Christ. Peter is
only the president of the college of apostles, as
after him the Primate — the Pope — should be only the
president of the college of bishops, whether assembled
in council or dispersed over the. globe. Peter has the
right to speak and act in the name of the college of
apostles, but he possesses no other apostolate than
theirs ; he exercises over his colleagues no other autho
rity than this presidency. He appears in the second
rank when circumstances require, as at the Council of
Jerusalem, which was presided over by James, the apostle
resident in the holy city. In common with John he
receives a commission from the body of the apostles :
"When the apostles heard that Samaria had received
the Word of God, they sent to them Peter and John." ^
What would be said nowadays of an assembly of bishops
who should venture to send the Pope on a mission with
one of themselves .' And what would be said of a bishop
who should rebuke the Pope in public, as Paul, the
latest of all the apostles— the abortion (born out of due
time), as he styled himself— boldly took Peter to task
at Antioch .' " I withstood him to the face, because he
was to be blamed."^
As I pointed out in the first place the vital, radical,
^ Matthew XX. 25. ^ Acts viii. 14. ^ Galatians ii. 11 el seq.

142 CATHOLIC REFORM.
irreconcilable difference between the Catholic and the
Infallibilist rule of faith, I have now laid my finger on
the difference, not less vital, not less radical, not less
irreconcilable, between the Catholic and the Ultramon
tane constitution of the Church ; between the Primacy
of Peter, as it appears to us in the light of the Gospel,
and the Papacy of Gregory VII., as it emerges from
the darkness aqd violence of the Middle Ages. The
Primacy is unity in love, the Papacy is servitude under
domination ! These are two opposite conceptions — the
worldly idea, the pagan or Judaic idea on the one hand,
and the Christian idea on the other.
The Primate, as the name itself indicates, is only the
first of the bishops — primus inter pares. The Pope, as
he has been made by the forged Decretals and the
Vatican Councils, is in fact the sole bishop — the bishop
ofthe Catholic Church, as he signs himself — Episcopus
EcclesicB catholicce. " Univers'al bishop ! " cried Pope St
Gregory the Great, " God forbid that that blasphemous
title — nomen istud blasphemice —should ever enter into a
Christian's mind ! He who should usurp it would rob
all other pontiffs of their dignity !"
The mischief is done. The successor of St. Gregory
the Great has usurped " that name of blasphemy," the
other pontiffs standing by with applause, or at least with
silence. But, for this mischief what is the remedy.'
Not where it is sought for by the Protestants, in the de^

DISCOURSES.

143

struction of the Primacy itself. Luther has fallen into the
same mistake with Loyola, both for lack of learning and
moderation, one in the ardour of his hatred, the other
in the transports of his affection, — both have confounded
the excesses of the Papacy with the very institution of
the Primacy. One has attacked everything ; the other
has defended everything. It is for us to seek some
wholly different way. We must make distinctions in
theory, in order that we may thus come to distinguish
in the reality of facts between these two mingled but
contradictory elements — the ancient Primacy and the
modern Papacy.
How is this to be done .' The secret lies with God.
It is possible for him to raise up a great Pope, great in ,
courage as well as genius, who shall confess openly,
before. God and man, the sins and errors of the Papacy,
and restore in its gentle and mighty completeness the
Primacy of the early ages. " Et tu aliquando conversus!' ^
Or, on the other hand, the Church, rallying its energies
in the excess of its woes, flinging off " the bridle in its
jaws causing it to err," 2 — the Church will protest
against the oppression imposed upon it in the name
of God. It will undertake this "Reform in Head
and Members," which it has always asked, but always
asked in vain. At the Council of Constance it deposed
1 "Thou (Peter), when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren."
—Luke xxii. 32. ^ Isaiah xxx. 28.

144

CA THOLIC REFORM.

three Popes ; it surely will not be incompetent to
depose one !
I believe that I have proved, clearly and irrefragably,
that both with respect to the constitution of the Church
and with respect to the rule of faith, it is we who re
present the Catholic principle. I do not say that we
alone are Catholics, for we do not answer anathema by
anathema, and our only reply to those who are trying
to drive us out of the Church is to stay in the Church
with them. I simply say that we are the only Catholics
who are faithful to the methods and traditions of the
Church — the only logical and consistent Catholics.
"But" (so we are told) "you are but a handful of
men, in face of the acclamations, or at least the submis
sions, of all this multitude."
In that " upper chamber," which was the cradle of
the Christian Church at Jerusalem, there were but a
hundred and twenty men, and these under the ban of
the priests and rulers of the day, and excommunicated
from the synagogue. But the future was with them, for
with them was He who said " I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world." ^
Let us be there with the six-score men ! Let us be of
the little flock to whom the Father hath promised the
victory and the kingdom.^
What do I say .' Were there but one alone — for
^ Matthew xxviii. 20. ' Luke xii. 32.

DISCOURSES. 145
God's ways are not as our ways, and there are moments
when the salvation of the world turns on the faithful
ness of a single conscience — were there but one alone,
it would be his to say, and say again — I am not afraid,
the truth will conquer !

The Priesthood of the Family.^
" Volo autem vos scire quod omnis viri caput , Christus est ; caput autem
mulieris, vir ; caput vera Christi, Deus."
" But I would have you know that the head o'f every man is Christ ; and
the head of the woman is the man ; and the head of Christ is God. " —
I Corinthians xi. 3.
What I have to say to you will be nothing more than
a commentary on this profound text. For this reason I
place it at the beginning of this discourse.^
The Church of the Patriarchs was not buried with
them in the cave of Mamre. It survived them ; it sur
vived itself in the strongly-marked organization of the
Jewish family under the law of Moses, in the stronger
and purer constitution of the Christian family under
the grace of Jesus Christ. It is not in vain that
Jehovah said : " I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac,
1 The subject of this discourse, given at Munich in 1871, had already
been treated, -with slight variations, at Notre Dame de Paris in 1868. The
report here given is from the short-hand notes taken down at that time. I
find nothing to alter now in what I said then.
' In conferences, as distinguished from sermons, it is not usual, in the
Catholic pulpit, to speak from a particular text.

146 CATHOLIC REFORM.
and of Jacob ; this is my name for ever!' Hoc est
nomen meum in ceternum}
This is why we do not so easily quit this Church of
the Fathers, and often having followed it^ under the
tents where it has so long wandered, we sit down with
it now by the settled fireside of the Christian family.
The Supreme Artist does not destroy the studies,
by which, so to speak, He tries his powers, prepara
tory to His great work. He takes them up, one by
one, and works them into the composition of His final
masterpiece, harmonising and subordinating them in a
marvellous unity. This masterpiece is the Catholic
Church — that is to say, religious society realized in its
most spiritual and comprehensive form, superior to all
the bonds of flesh and blood, transcending all divisions
of race and language. But, far from excluding the
two lower forms of religion which have preceded it,
the Catholic Church includes within- its vast sphere —
extending them to all families and to aU nations — the
Family Church of the Patriarchs and the National
Church of the Hebrews, as it is written : — " Ah kin
dreds and nations shall come and worship before Thee."
I have spoken a great deal of the Family, but I have
not said enough. Above all, I have not sufficiently

1 Exodus iii. 15
» In tlie series of conferences on the Church, in which this was originally
pronounced.

DISCOURSES. 147

considered it in its directly religious aspect, inasmuch
as it is a religious society, a Church, and the first of
all Churches — that which I have named (borrowing a
phrase from St. Paul) " the church in the house " — the
domestic Church. It is from this supremely important
point of view that I consider it to-day ; and as the
formative element of a Church is in its priesthood, I
shall demonstrate successively the reality of the family
priesthood and the nature of its relation with the
priesthood of the Church at large. The conclusion
that I shall draw will be a practical one. Neither
you nor I have come hither, my friends, for feats of
rhetoric. I am not capable of them, and you would
not be satisfied with them. You are not here to in
spire nor I to compose an oration or an essay ; we
have other business in hand for such a time as this.
When families and empires are crumbling, when the
Church is shaken on its foundations, it is no time for
fine words, but for facts. And the fact which we
would accomplish is the restoration of the family
priesthood where it is fallen, and its reconciliation
with the Catholic priesthood, where they have been
at variance. I.
I declare, then, that there is indeed such a thing as
a priesthood of the family, and, in a still more
general sense, a priesthood of the laity. I am not
T. 2

CATHOLIC REFORM.

ignorant of the abuse that has been made of the
word and the thing, but I hold fast to the tradition
of my fathers when I maintain that by his baptism
every Christian is made indeed a priest. A drop of
that unction which was poured upon the Christ has fallen
upon us. Like Him, and through Him, we too have
been made priests and kings. "Ye are a chosen
generation — a royal priesthood ; " ^ so St. Peter to all
the faithful without distinction. The most ancient of
the fathers, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, to name no
more, have shown the reality of this priesthood. The
Greek Church, separated from us, but faithful to the
same teachings, recognizes in its profession of faith the
coexistence of the two priesthoods — the spiritual or
mystical priesthood, appertaining to all Christians ; and
the sacramental, reserved to the ministers of the Word
and of worship. In almost the sarae terms, and in
quite the same sense, the Council of Trent, in view of
the innovations of the sixteenth century, maintained the
traditional distinction between the internal and the
external priesthood. The error of the Protestants lay
not, in fact, in affirming the universal priesthood of
Christians, but in denying the ministerial priesthood of
the clergy.
The priesthood of the Christian is in its nature in
dividual, but it becomes social by the sacraments of
^ I Peter ii. o.

DISCOURSES. 149

marriage and of orders ; by the first of which the
exercise of it is extended to the family, and by the
second to the Church. The father and the priest —
these are the two pontiffs of Christian society — one
according to the order of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ;
the other according to the order of Melchizedek — both
according to the order and the grace of Jesus Christ.
Doubtless the husband and wife are invested in com
mon with the priesthood of the family in the sacrament
of marriage : — " Neither is the raan without the woman,
nor the woman without the man, in the Lord," saith
St. Paul.! They are themselves the ministers of this
sacrament, and nought is needed but the power of their
own mutual agreement to constitute and bless its sacred
bond. But the fulness of this priesthood resides espe
cially in the husband and father. " The head of the
woman is the man, as the head of man is Christ."
"The man was not created for the woman, but the
woman for the man." ^
If you will follow me in the rapid examination of the
three principal functions of the priesthood, you will find
them alike in the sanctuary of the family and of the
Church. The power of religious teaching, of the direc
tion of the conscience, and of the ministration of wor
ship—such is the threefold power of the Catholic priest,
such the threefold power of the household priest.
1 I Corinthians xi. II. '^ I Corinthians xi. 3, 9.

ISO CATHOLIC REFORM. '
First we will consider the power of ReligioiHi'
Teaching. I have formerly had occasion to observe that the
power possessed by the father of the family for moral
and religious teaching has its roots outside of Chris-.
tianity, in the very fact of fatherhood. But when father
hood is lifted up by baptism and Christian marriage to
the grandeur and majesty of the supernatural order, it
acquires a new title to teach — a title more immediately
divine. The father receives from God and His Holy
Spirit comraission to expound to his children not only
the morality and religion graven by Nature on all honest
hearts, but those which have been brought down from
heaven by Jesus Christ.
The father's authority is subordinate, I know, and am
not afraid to proclaim, to the authority of the Church
and its constituted priesthood ; but it is not to be
weakened nor over-sloughed by thera. Not the priest,
not even the raother, but the father is the principal
religious educator of his children. Ah, I have not
forgotten what I have rayself said of the great mission
of the raother; how, in the living cradle of her arms
and caresses, under the heavenly glory of her looks and
smiles, she is the first that names to her child the name
of God, the God of love and purity. This is the milk
of her pious tenderness that she pours into the hps of
its soul as into its bodily lips she yields the milk of her

DISCOURSES. 151
pure bosora. But watch well, O father: the tirae has
now corae for you ! The child has left his mother's
knee ; he stands erect beside you. And it is for you to
break to hira the bread of life and understanding, and
give hira the water, colder, but not less wholesome, of
your reason — cibabit ilium pane vitce et intellect's, et aqua
sapienticB salutaris potabit ilium} But this is not all.
If we would be faithful to the spirit of Christian tra
dition, we raust recognize that the raother and wife
shares with her children the father's wholesome teach
ing in the Christian horae. This I learn frora St.
Paul ; and who would dispute the authority of the
apostle of the Gentiles .' St. Paul utters these stern
words : — " Let the woraen keep silence in the churches ;
for it is not perraitted them to speak, but to be subject,
as also saith the law." But if they have not understood
what the minister has said, what raust they do .' Will
you leave them in their ignorance, O great apostle .' or
will you refer them to the bishop, or to the particular
pastors .' No, he answers. " Let them ask their hus
bands at horae " — domi viros suos interrogent? If they
have not understood in the public sanctuary, let thera
ask in the private sanctuary ; if they have not under
stood the minister who speaks to all, let them ask of
the minister who speaks only to thera, hstening in silence
' Ecclesiasticus xv. 3.
2 I Corinthians xiv. 34, 35.

152 CA THOLIC REFORM.
and with submission — mulier in silentio discat cum omni
subjectione} It is as much as to say that all outward teaching,
however authoritative, has need of an interpreter. What
more authoritative than the Bible — the words directly
inspired of God in prophets and apostles .' And yet
with all its clearness, its beauty, and its richness, the
Bible calls for an interpreter, and that interpreter is the
Church. But the Church, like the Bible, is an external
and general authority ; it formulates its interpretations
in human language, subject to the uncertainties of
language, and liable to the discussions of raan.
And here let me say, in passing, that nothing can
be more vain than that hope of chimerical minds who
would seek, by pushing the doctrinal teachings of the
Church to extreme limits, to bring about in Christianity
a sort of vulgar preciseness, a kind of tyrannical uni
formity that never were conteraplated in the divine
plans. By reason, then, of the multitude of its teachings,
varying with the ages, soraetiraes seemingly contra
dictory, like the circumstances which gave them birth,
the Church itself has need of interpreters. It is the
theologian in his book or in his school, the bishop in his
diocese, the pastor in his city or village pulpit. But
these interpreters themselves speak in far too general a
^ I Timothy ii. ii.

DISCOURSES.

153

way. They need, in their turn, to be explained in the
privacy of each home by the father of the family.
Doubtless he is no more at liberty to change the teach
ing of the Church than the Church is to change the
teaching of the Bible. He has only the right and the
duty to comraent upon it. But it belongs to him to
explain the true raeaning of Christian doctrines to his
children and his wife, and to apply thera to the state of
mind and the special wants of each soul confided to his
care and direction. If they have not understood in the
public teraple, let thera "ask at horae and learn in
silence." This, then, is the function, so wide and so legitimate,
that the Church has always assigned to true lay teach
ing — not that noisy and passionate teaching that tries to
make itself heard in a higher tone and a different sense
frora the Church, but the hurable, wise, practical teach
ing which repeats at the fireside the echo of the temple.
I turn to the subject of the Direction of the Conscience
This is a matter which belongs to the Church and to
the priesthood in which the authority of the Church is
embodied. But let us not be exclusive. Since the
world of nature is so rich in laws which seem contra
dictory, but are in reality harmonious, let us not refuse
to admit diversity and harmony in the supernatural
worid, that is, in Christianity. Over against the direction
of the conscience by the priest is the direction of the

154 CATHOLIC REFORM.
conscience by the head of the faraily. To question this
is to lose sight of the very nature of education. The
education of man is not like the training of the animal ;
it does not stop with the outward act, but enters deep
within, to the very conscience ; it reaches to the thought
and desire, rectifies the intention, and forras the convic
tion. Thus it is that the parents, and especially the
father, in the sense in which I have already explained it,
are the first religious and raoral teachers — the first con
fessors of their children.
I go further, in a sense certainly rauch narrower, but
still in a real and important sense. I subject the con
science of the wife to that of her husband. Nay, I am
wrong. It is not I that subject her — it is nature on one
hand and grace on the other that have done this before
me. Nature, by the age of the wife — her ordinary age
at the time of her raarriage — also by her sex, makes
her the daughter of the man as well as wife. The old
biblical history is not a fable but a type : in the ecstasy
of love and pain Eve came forth frora the torn side of
Adara, and it is because she is bone of his bone, flesh of
his flesh, that he recognizes in her his companion, and
that he finds in her the completion of his life. And I
say to you raen who listen to rae, that young girl who,
frora the arras of her mother, is given over into yours
without knowledge of the world, without experience of
life, and, I raight add, without consciousness of herself,

DISCOURSES.

'55

it devolves on you to make a woman of her — what the
Scripture calls " the virtuous woman." ^ There be few
virtuous woraen nowadays of the style described by
Soloraon. Is it not because there are few virtuous
men to form and train them .' Your breast raay not be
riven like that of Adara, but let your heart be torn, if
need be, in striving against the hindrances which she
puts in the way of that higher education which it is for
you to bestow upon her. Without dwarfing her own
personality, irapress upon it the stamp of your own.
First let her becorae the child of your own conscience, in
order that so she may be the companion of your life
and the raother of your children !
Such is the law of nature. Such, too, is the grace of
Christianity. St. Paul — whom I always quote, because
he has truly written the law of Christian raarriage —
St. Paul tells us that the wife should be subject in all
things to the husband as the Church is subject to Christ,
and if in ordinary matters much more in the affairs of
morality and religion.^ This is the reason why the
Catholic theology teaches, through its weightiest ex
ponents, that the spiritual authority of the husband
extends even to dispensation from vows. Most cer
tainly he cannot do this without reasons. There is no
more right to arbitrary power in the husband than in
the priest or bishop. But he is himself the judge of his
1 Proverbs xxxi. lo. " Ephesians v. 24.

156 CATHOLIC REFORM.
reasons, and can, of his own authority, without recourse
to priest or bishop, dispense his wife from all vows she
has made without his consent since their marriage.
What is raore sacred than a vow ? What raore solemn
than the proraise of a living soul to the living God .'
And must there not be a real priesthood to dare come
in between such contracting parties .'
It is this sarae priesthood that presides in the worship
of the faraily. Speaking of individual worship, Jesus
Christ says to each of us, " When ye pray, be not as the
hypocrites, that love to stand and pray in the synagogues
and corners of the streets ; but thou, when thou prayest,
enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut the door,
pray to thy Father who seeth in secret." ^ This is perhaps
the sweetest, the raost coraforting of all prayers.
And yet it is not enough. Frora the beginning
of Christianity, St, Paul exhorted the faithful to
asserable to sing spiritual songs together and to par
take with each other the Lord's Supper. Midway
between the individual worship in the secret cham
ber and public worship in the grand basilica comes
Family Worship. When the close of day is come, each
one returns to the home raore or less wearied with
the burden of the heart. The cares and duties of the
day have left their dregs at the bottora of the cup —
often bitter, soraetiraes sweet, but always hard to bear —
^ Matthew vi. 5, 6.

DISCOURSES. 157
and we yearn to pour thera out in prayer as a libation
before God. The evening star is lighted up as it were
a mystic lamp. The firmament ^f the day gives place
to the firmaraent of night, more divine because it is
more profound, raore transparent — and because behind
the splendour of the stars we raay the better discern
Him whose light is darkness and whose darkness light.
Then it is, before they retire to the repose of the night,
that the father of the faraily bares his reverend head.
He kneels : and, oh, how grand, how royal, he is upon
his knees ! Beside hira is the raother, and about thera
the children like the young shoots of the fruitful olive
of which the Psalraist sings ; then in the second circle
the domestics; neither slaves nor raere hirelings, but
the coraplement of the Christian faraily. " Our Father
who art in heaven " — so speaks, in the narae of all, the
father who is on earth. The alliance — I had almost
said the kindred — between these two fatherhoods is
manifested in its august and loving mystery: — in that
family, the kingdom of God is reahzed, and His will is
done on earth as it is in heaven ! Give ear to them, O
Lord! Father, that seest in secret, grant them each
day the bread of the body that springeth from the
earth, and the bread of the soul that coraeth down from
Heaven. Forgive them their offences as they forgive
to each other those by which they have been injured—
the husband to the wife, the wife to the husband, the

158 CATHOLIC REFORM.
parents to the children, and sometimes, too, the child
ren to the parents — each to all, all to each. And the
voices of the little innocents respond Amen! And
in the depths of the world unseen another chorus
responds Am,en !
There is another prayer which I raay not omit alto
gether to mention : it is that prayer which goes directly
up from the soul to God, without passing by the hps,
which sometimes unites the entire faraily under its holy
spell, but is oftener the privilege of the Christian
husband and wife. I speak of mental prayer.
Do you remeraber, my friends, that page in the Con
fessions of St. Augustine, that page raore beautiful than
all the rest .' It was not husband and wife indeed, but
mother and son : it matters little what they were — they
were two souls wedded in tenderness and in purity.
Some days before the death of Monica, Augustine was
with her at Ostia. They stood together, leaning against
the window, looking out at the sky, the sea, the Cam-
pagna — that Roman landscape so melancholy yet so
beautiful, and so suggestive of the infinite ! They were
lifted up in silent prayer — for they spoke not, or at least
but little — they were lifted up to things invisible, to
ideas, to moral sentiments, to the eternal types of the
true and the beautiful, to that Soul which is the abode
of all these great things, to God the Original and End
of all. There came a raoment when they attained to

DISCOURSES. 159
God hiraself — ictu oculi, ictu cordis, says the admirable
saint, "with one outstroke of the intellect and heart,"
like those barques which strike the shore before they
are able to land ; so they, at last, had struck the shore
of the Infinite ! It was a moment fleeting as Time, but
full as Eternity!
That which happened to Monica and Augustine is but
the history of mental prayer in the Christian family.
It is the history of religious love between husband and
wife, the truest, the most lasting and sweetest of all loves.
Yes: when husband and wife have made comraon
property not only of their hearts but also of their con
sciences and their understandings — and I cannot con
ceive of raarriage without this comraunity — when this
wife, who thinks with her husband, when this husband,
who feels with his wife, read together the raasterpieces
of huraan genius — as Plato, Dante, Shakespeare ; or far
above these, the raasterpieces of Divine inspiration —
Moses and the Evangelists ; when they gaze on the
scenes of Nature, now grand, now beautiful ; when they
experience together those vicissitudes of family life that
group theraselves about the three great centres-
birth, love, death ; like the ancient statue in the desert
that answered back with an harmonious murmur the
sun's earliest beams, their soul responds to the beams
of Nature, art, home, revealed faith, celestial love-
beams all divine, since emanating all from God.

1 6o CA THOLIC REFORM.
The souls of the twain are fused and mingled in one
prayer ; and of this voiceless prayer — this love which
is prayer, this prayer which is love — the husband, the
head of the wife, is the ministering priest.
Ah ! that man has never known what it is to love
— he has talked of love, he has not understood it—
who has not known these hidden things of God in love
and love in God. In these hours we feel God, we gaze
on Him, we at least have some glimpse of Him, and,
brushing away the tear, we exclaim, " It is enough,.
Lord, — enough for this earth!"
In such raoraents the ancient curse is suspended ; as
it were, the keenest of life's sorrows has ceased, and
those two flowers, united of old in Eden, but separated
ever since, have mingled their beauty and their perfume
on the stem of human life, the flower of love and the
flower of purity ! Chaste consorts ! wedded in virginal
purity ! God is in their love, and their love is in
God. So, then, the father of the faraily is priest, as teacher
of the household, as director of their conscience and
will ; as praying in the midst of his own with his lips,
and with his heart and soul in their soul and heart.
Such is the priesthood of the family. " I am the
God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob ; " the God of
Sarah, of Rebekah, and of Rachel. And "this is my
name for ever!"

DISCOURSES. i6i

II.

Speaking as I do of the priesthood of the household,
and its harmony with that of the Church, I hear a voice
from beyond the circle that I address — a voice borne
to rae by all the echoes of the present age ; a cry sorae
tiraes of lamentation and soraetiraes of denunciation,
sometimes hypocritical, but often too indignantly earnest
not to be sincere. I listen to it with the respectful
attention that is due to every deep utterance of huraan
feeling, and I beg of you to listen with rae for a
moment. " What ! " cries this voice, " and so it is you. Catholic
priest, who establish in the name of Christ and His
apostle, in the name of the Gospel and of the Church,
the moral and religious authority of the husband over
the wife, of the father over the children ! You ! You
are the last person to speak of these great and sublime
things, for it is you who, by raeans of the confessional,
have destroyed them. Ah ! yes : the fellowship of con
science, the strong and sweet fusion of two souls, two
lives, into one, 'the comraunion of things divine and
human' (to borrow a phrase of pagan wisdom)- yes,
it was the ideal of the Christian family, and even of
the raere huraan faraily ; but it is you, raiserable raan,
who have disregarded, profaned, ruined this ideal ! And
M

1 62 CATHOLIC REFORM.
now, in your satisfied ambition, or in your triumphant
fanaticism — destroyer of the family, creator of domestic
anarchy, despiser of fatherhood, you have no right left
you but the right to hold your peace, as the bird of
prey, glutted with blood in his eyrie, gazes dumb upon
the quivering members that he has torn and defiled !"
"You come home" (I quote the language of one of
these writers — a thoughtful, aggrieved mind, full of in
dignation and at the same time of tenderness) — "you
come home at evening longing for a free mutual out
pouring of the soul, and you are allowed to speak only
of the news of the day and other indifferent subjects;
if you would touch upon raatters that concern the soul,
your mother shakes her head, your daughter remains
silent or disapproves, your wife contradicts you. They
are on one side the family table, you alone on the
other, and onp might well say that between them and
you there is an invisible being making war between
you." . . . And he concludes — " Young man, mark well
my words ; to marry a woman whose soul is in the
keeping of another — is to marry divorce !" ^
This is the objection to ray doctrine stated to you
in all fairness and in its fullest force.
Now, it is evident that if no answer could be given
to this objection, there would be but one course left
me — to leave this pulpit ; or, rather, to remain here
1 " The Priest, the "WMfe, and the Family," by M. Michelet.

DISCOURSES. 163
and say, " I was mistaken ! I have hitherto believed
sincerely in the divine mission of the Catholic priest,
and in the salutary effect of that sacrament of confes
sion which I myself have administered to the faithful
for twenty years ; but I was mistaken ! A dishonest
ministry cannot be of God."
But, as I ara certain there is an answer to this objec
tion, I shall endeavour to find it, and to show at the
same time — for that is my theme — the normal relations
which should exist between the priesthood of the hus
band and father and that of the Catholic priest. The
first thing is to examine whether the alleged fact upon
which the objection rests, is real. Is it really true that
the spiritual government of the family has been taken
away from the hands of the father ; and has it passed
wholly or mainly into the hands of the priest .'
I confess that it is true. Thank God, there are
exceptions, important in number and more iraportant
still in quality ; but as a general rule, particularly in
the towns and among the cultivated classes, two ten
dencies have been observed bearing a startling pro
portion to each other — the diminution of the authority
of the father and the aggrandizement of that of the
priest. I ara speaking obviously only of those families
who have preserved the Catholic faith. Among those
who have lost that faith, the paternal authority, when
it has disappeared, has not been replaced. On one
M 2

1 64 CA THOLIC REFORM.
side anarchy, on the other dictatorship — nowhere legi
timate authority.
The fact, then, exists ; but what is the cause of it .'
Here is the heart of the difficulty, on which we must
manage to get some light before we separate. One
of two things must be true : either we have usurped,
or you have abdicated. In such an important case
there is certainly a guilty party, that ought to be
convicted at any cost. Which is it .' You, or we .'
Is it we then, we ask first, that have usurped the
authority of the family ? If the question was on par
ticular facts showing a lack of wisdora or integrity on
the part of individual priests of the Catholic Church,
I should not hesitate to acknowledge that in more
than one instance we have usurped. Let us have
done with all dishonest apology and all false history
for the Church, both for the present and for the past ;
let us not take up, on our side of the question, the
exploded tactics of the school of Voltaire — "Keep on
lying ; sorae of it will stick." Falsehood is never so
odious and so fatal as when it pretends to be used in
the service of the truth. It is infinitely better for the
Church to be attacked by falsehood than to be de
fended by it. Let us acknowledge it boldly, that at
all times, in the past as in the present, laymen, priests,
and pontiffs, we are all fallible and peccable. Christ
alone is holy, tu solus sanctus ; and the Church, taken

DISCOURSES. 165
in its universality as a divine institution, — I believe in
as a holy Church : — Credo sanctam- ecclesiam. But each
one of us, in our person and in our acts, when we
measure ourselves by the divine idea, when we take
the Christian institution as it actually is — ^we are full
of ignorance and infirmity, full sometimes even of
error and crime.
But the question is not of individual abuses, it
relates to a condition of things which threatens to
becorae general, and which is alleged to be the direct
consequence of the intervention of the priest in the
family, especially by raeans of the confessional. On
this ground I aver that the intervention of the priest
in the faraily is not an intrusion, and his office in the
confessional is not an usurpation. Considered as insti
tutions, the priesthood and the confessional are not
at fault.
We have not usurped, but we have faithfully fulfilled
our coramission. Jesus Christ has comraanded us, in
the person of the apostle, to go and preach the Gospel
to every creature. He has overthrown beneath our
feet the ancient barriers of faraily and nation ; and for
us, as for St. Paul, there exists neither Greek nor
Barbarian, master nor slave, male nor feraale, but one
humanity in Jesus Christ. He breathed upon us in
that upper chamber, saying to us, "Receive ye the
Holy Ghost. Whose sins you shall forgive, they are

1 66 CA THOLIC REFORM. ¦
forgiven them, and whose sins you shall retain, they
are retained." ^
What astounding words ! Yet they are the words
of Jesus Christ ! And, with awestruck yet joyful
hearts, we have obeyed them ; and we have repeated
down through all the Christian centuries: "I beheve
in the remission of sins." If this is our crime, dare
you condemn us .'
But you fathers, priests of the household, you can
not realize in all its fulness and efficacy the remission
of sins. You can forgive in the name of the family
and by virtue of your fatherly authority, but not in the
name of the great Christian family and by direct com
mission from Christ. We come, then, to aid you, to
supply your lack. After having preached the Gospel
in the publicity of the congregation, we repeat it in
the secrecy of the conscience. We have prepared by
our exhortations the interior conditions of pardon —
•humility, repentance, trust ; trust unbounded, not in
man's acts which are nought, but in God's mercy and
Christ's blood which are all-sufficient. Slowly but
surely the call frora on high lifts up the sinner; we
pray with hira, and when the soleran raoment comes
we call to raind that the " Son of Man has power on
earth to forgive sins ; " and in His name, in the name of
His Church, we tender that absolution which signifies
' St, John XX. 22, 23.

DISCOURSES. 167

and at the same time effects, the release of the
soul. This is what we have done, and we have well done !
And to do this, we have given ear to confessions that
could never have been raade to you. Let me say to
you, that there are confessions which should be made
to the husband and father ; and there are those which
it is neither wise nor right, nor even possible, to confide
to him. There are confessions which, instead of re
conciling, would alienate for ever, which would raise
up mountains and open gulfs of separation between
the foolish soul that should utter them and the foolish
soul that should listen to them. In the sanctity, in
the austerity, in the majesty of the sacrament, we,
sinners like you, but ministers of Christ, hear these
fearful secrets confided to us by penitent souls, not
only because God prescribes it as a duty, but because
their nature imposes it as a necessity. We have
listened through their tears and groanings, but we
have not spoken, and we have saved where you would
have lost.
This is what we have done, and we have well
done !
We have not usurped !
But you, why have you abdicated .' Why is it, that
while we are bending under the load of a ministry all
too heavy for us to bear, you have discharged your own

1 68 CATHOLIC REFORM.
burden upon us .' Why do you force upon us the most
formidable accumulation of duties and responsibilities .'
Forgetting what we are by office, the public hierarchic
priests of ah the families, why will you make of us what
we cannot be, the household priests of your wife and
your children .' Herein lies the most vital, perhaps, of
all the mischiefs that infest the family and society — in
what I do not hesitate to call the raadness and crime
of your abdication !
Yes : you have abdicated ; for you have renounced
the practice of Christianity. Is there anything remain
ing in your home of religious teaching or family wor
ship .' At evening, when they meet for prayer, is not
your place vacant, or at least your voice silent ? Is
it not your wife that ministers in that desolate sanc
tuary, as if before God she were already a widow and
your children orphans .' Does she not appear alone
with the younger children in the house of God, and sit
down, deserted by you and the elder children, at the
table of the Lord, at that divine repast which divides
those whora it should unite .'
But it is worse than this, O husbands I O fathers ! for
in abandoning prayer you have too often forsaken the
faith of the Gospel. You have ceased to believe in
Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour of the world. To
you. He is a myth in the remote perspective of history,
or at best a mere man. But when at Christmas-tide all

DISCOURSES. 169

the little fireside Churches are keeping holiday ; when
beside the manger-cradle ^ the children and the women
are giving thanks, with sweet carols and happy tears
" that unto us a Child is born," as it was foretold so
many ages before by the great prophet of Judea ; ^ you
stand aloof and alone, asking coldly and sadly what is
that strange law, half psychologic, half physiologic,
which makes such joys possible and such myths neces
sary to more than half the huraan race !
But, why do I speak of Christ, when it is of God
hiraself that you doubt ! The God of Abraham and
Moses, the personal and living God, yoU have ceased
to worship ; you have supplanted^Him, by some sort of
vague, cold, dead abstraction ! And why speak of the
doctrines of the Gospel, when you have forsaken even
its precepts.' With other behefs you have contrived
another code of morals, which, in the innocence of their
tender age, the children do not perceive, but which the
wife suspects and, perhaps, is obliged to suffer. And it
is you — you, that are complaining that you are no longer
the pontiffs of your own families !
Alarmed by the absence of examples and teachings
which you no longer give ; more alarmed still, perhaps,
at those which you do give, powerless to struggle alone
against your criminal neglect and against your yet
1 It is usual on Christmas, in Catholic churches, to exhibit the infant
Saviour in the manger, in memory of His birth. ^ Isaiah ix. 6.

170 CATHOLIC REFORM.
more criminal action, your wife has taken a heroic reso
lution : she seizes her children's cradle in her trembling
arms ; in it beside her little ones she has placed her
soul, her conscience, and from the profaned sanctuary
of your roof she has gone forth to bear>these sad and
cherished treasures to the foot of our altars, and adjures
the minister of Jesus Christ to guide her and save her
children. Ah, you thought to drive God from your house, but
you have driven thence your wife and your children,
and have walled yourself up in your own independence
and own domain ; and " behold, your house is left unto
you desolate." The |souls have gone forth from it, and
there is left you nought but the bodies. Or if they
return, it is to bring back with them, and against you,
the priest, who henceforth is the controlling power !
There must be in every family a door open for
religion, and among civilized people who know what
they believe, and who " know what they worship," this
door is open to Christianity and to its ministers.
Should the Catholic priest not be there, let the Pro
testant pastor, that other representative of the Gospel,
come in by this door, and restore to the domestic hearth
that religious influence which the infidel or indifferent
father has failed to exercise. This door, or rather these
two doors, are the education of the children and con
science of the wife.

DISCOURSES.

171

The nature of woman is essentially religious, in propor
tion as it is essentially a loving and essentially a suffer
ing nature ; and anyone who has meditated upon moral
subjects knows what near relation love and suffering
have with the living God. When, like Hagar, she sits
alone in the desert of her soul, and beside her well of
tears, the woman speaks heart to heart with God as the
man has never done. She sees Hira through her tears,
and through her sobbing she calls the name of the Lord
that speaks to her — Thou God seest me}
Biit, with all this power of reaching God, by the intui
tion of the heart more directly and profoundly than by
mental reasoning, she has this weakness, that she cannot
long reraain alone in her religion. She feels the need of
man's society and man's influence. Arid nowhere so
much as here does she aspire naturally toward that
head in which God ordained that she should be com
plete. Man is the head of the woman, as Christ him
self is the head of the man. The mother's religion
would often degenerate into superstition or dreamy
sentiment, it would fail to satisfy her own wants, still
less her children's, but for some other influence, de
scending, as it were, frora the head of the raan upon the
heart of the woraan.
Oh, fathers, husbands, this was to have been your
mission. But you have abdicated it, to your own
^ Genesis xvi. 13.

172 CATHOLIC REFORM.
sorrow and to ours, and, above all, to the sorrow of
domestic society and of the Church.
You have abdicated — we have not usurped. But for
all that. Christian marriage is destroyed. The priest
possesses the soul — the husband keeps only the body !

IH.

Is there then no remedy .' O God of our Salvation !
wilt Thou not revisit Thy people .' and wilt Thou not
rebuild our ruins ?
It depends upon you, O fathers, to prepare this
future for the whole world. It depends upon you to
realize it under your own roof. Have wisdom to
resolve upon it ; know how to be in the full sense
of the words fathers of your own families, masters in
your own houses. Remand us, we entreat you, re-
raand us priests back to the proper liraits of our
work in the exercise of our priesthood, and to this
end resume the duties of your own.
I remeraber that eighteen Centuries ago twelve
young men, gathered together by Jesus from the vil
lages of Galilee, from the fishing-boats of the sea of
Tiberius — twelve young men were constituted Apostles
and regenerated the world.
Bear in raind, my friends, my brethren, young men

DISCOURSES. 173
who hear me — bear in mind the work of the apostles,
and at the sarae that of the patriarchs. O that ray
words might be blessed to-day, and that among you
that hear them might be found twelve that should feel
yourselves called of God to be true husbands and
fathers ! If this raay be, they shall have done far more
for France, and for the Church, than all the political
and religious parties that divide and rend them !
Ah, my friends, if each of you could say — " Yes, there
" is a priesthood which has perished in the world ; it is
" the most ancient, and, in one sense, the most neces-
" sary of all — the priesthood of the husband and the
" father, and I will, in my own person, restore it to
" the world and to the Church. Henceforth, I put far
" away from me the speculative seductions, still more
" the practical seductions, of materialisra. I will hold
" fast my purity, and keep myself worthy to receive
" some day the gift of love, and when that day shall
" come, I will take from the hands of God my bride,
" the wife of my youth ; I will clasp her in ray arms,
" I will bind her to my heart as to an altar ; and min-
" gling ray soul with hers in one hyran, one flarae, one
" cloud of incense, I will offer her up before the Lord
" as a victim, a glorious sacrifice of tenderness and
" purity. I will love her as Christ loved the Church.
" I will give myself in sacrifice for her as Christ gave
" Himsdf for the Church, making it glorious, pure.

174 CATHOLIC REFORM.
" Spotless, by the virtue of His love.^ I shall be the
" priest of the loving communion of our conscience
" and our prayer. I shall be the priest of a loving
" fatherhood ; for God must bless the parent no less
" than the husband. Oh, unhappy degenerate races
" that are only born of flesh and blood ! Unhappy the
" races who have no other origin but the gross will of
" the animal man ! But happy the sons who are born
" of God at the same time that they are born of man !
" Happy those who are begotten of the soul of their
" fathers, and who are stamped with the divine seal
" of righteousness and piety ! "
" This," says the young Christian : " This is what I
will do ; this is what I will be. I will be husband
and father; I will know in this world, from which all
faith in such love seems to have perished, what it is
to love a woman ' in the Lord,' what it is to be the
father of children in the Lord and for the Lord. Not
only will I be husband and fath.er, but I will be
priest ! And may the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and
of Jacob bless me ! "
Thus it is, ray friends, that the old patriarchal
priesthood shall rise again frora its ruins, and join
hands with the priesthood of the apostles. And when
these two hands are clasped in brotherhood over
every family, the hand of the priest of the Church and
^ Ephesians v. 25 — 27.

DISCOURSES. 175

the hand of the priest of the household, the hand of
the father of the faraily, respected in his independence
and in his governraent of hearts and consciences, and
the hand of the priest of the Church called with
sincerity, with loyalty, to aid and coraplete the work
of the minister of the family — -then will the world be
saved, and not till then.
The Lessons of the Bible.
Speech at the Inauguration of the Bible Society at
Rome, March 4, 1872.
It is but a few days since Pius IX. took the initia
tive in a genuine movement of religious progress, when,
in this city of Rome, where hitherto rehgious beliefs
were imposed, but never discussed, he gave his authori
zation — I may venture to say his benediction — to a
solemn discussion, between Protestant ministers and
Catholic priests, on the common ground of charity
and learning.^ The proceedings were opened with a
prayer in common, and closed, not with a hurhng of
anathemas, but with an interchange of friendly greeting.
This fact, which passes into a precedent for the future,
has encouraged me to accept the invitation, kindly ex
tended by the members of the Italian Bible Society.
1 Reference is here made to the conferences that had just been held on
the question — 'Was St. Peter ever in Rome ?

176 CATHOLIC REFORM.
I could not become a member of the Bible Society,
and I am not called upon to endorse its constitution ;
but I have been not only honoured but deeply affected
by the invitation presented to me by these respected
gentlemen— let me say, these brethren in Christ and the
Gospel. (Applause!) They invite me as a Catholic
priest, and I come as a Catholic priest. Consequently,
there is no occasion for Catholics to be astonished
at seeing me here, nor for Protestants at hearing
me declare the principles of my Church and faith.
[Applause!) Before entering into the argument which I will briefly
develop, let me address myself more directly to my
fellow-Catholics ; and while recognizing the literary
and Scriptural value of the fine translation of the
Bible by Diodati, I nevertheless recommend to them,
in the name of the Catholic Church, the translation,
also excellent, of Martini, the learned Archbishop of
Florence. I wish that I could quote here the eulogistic
brief addressed to him by Pope Pius VI., which contains
such an urgent exhortation to the reading of the Holy
Scriptures.^

^ " Optime sentis si Christi fideles ad lectionem divinarum htterarum
magnopere excitandos existimas. Illi enim sunt fontes uberrimi, qui cuique
patere debent ad hauriendam et morum et doctrinse sanctitatem, depulsis
erroribus, qui his corruptis temporibus late disseminantur." — "You are
fully in the right in thinking that Christian believers ought to be urgently
stimulated to the reading of the Holy Scriptures. For they are overflowing

DISCOURSES. 177

I will indulge rayself only in the expression of two
wishes. The first is that the Cathohcs of Rome may
imitate the example of their brethren of Northern Italy,
and circulate here in Rome a popular edition of Mar
tini's Bible, so that the desire of Pius VI. may not be
altogether fruitless.
The second of my wishes is, that some Catholic
scholar, or coramittee of Catholic scholars, may under
take a translation better yet than that of Martini, in
respect both to the beauty of its Italian style, and to
its fidehty to the original text.
And now I look forth upon this asserably impressed
with its aspect, at once so strange and so full of con
solation. Catholics and Protestants, but all Christians,
here we are assembled in this city by which we once
were separated. We have drawn near to God in one
prayer, and we hold in our hands one book. It is a
book which reconciles and consoles us, but at the same
time it more or less condemns us all. It is well for
Catholic priests and Protestant ministers to raeet and
discuss certain texts and facts of the Bible ; but it is
better still for them to listen together to the stern
lessons addressed to them by the book of inspiration.
Cathohcs and Protestants, the Bible tells us that we
fountains, which ought to be free to every man, from which to drink
holiness of life and doctrine ; the errors so widely disseminated in these
corrupt times being driven far s.yj2q."— Brief of Pius VL N

178 CATHOLIC REFORM.
are its children, but children fallen, divided, impotent :
— fallen from the eternal destiny of all our Churches;
divided from the grand unity in which we ought to be
gathered together ; impotent against the double in
fidelity by which we are flooded both within and
without the pale of Christian civilization. Let us Hft
ourselves up again by raeans of the Bible, for the
Bible is the Word of God and the power of God.
We shall be strong when we are united ; we shall be
united when we are brought up again to the plane
from which we are fallen.
For, I repeat it, we are all fallen, more or less. Look
at the general condition of Christianity in the world —
look at it thoroughly and impartially — and we must
every one of us confess, like the prophets of Israel, not
only his own personal sins, but what is more difficult
and more necessary, in a sense, the sins of his own
Church. When every Christian shall confess sincerely
the sins of his own Church, and all these voices shall
join in the harmony of justice and humanity, then this
tone will be heard predominating through the whole :
the Church of Christ entire has fallen from the purity,
the truth, the charity of the Gospel! "Jerusalem hath
sinned exceedingly, therefore hath she become weak.
All they that glorified her put her to scorn, because
they have seen her shame." ^ We are faUen — and why ?
' Lamentations of Jeremiah, i. 8.

DISCOURSES. 179

Because we have not drawn our life enough from its
source — ^that is the Bible, which Protestants have not
always read aright, and Catholics have scarcely read at
all. The life of the Church is not a political life, but
a spiritual — the life of the soul in Christ and the life
of Christ in the soul. Now, like all life, this spiritual
life has its proper aliment — a twofold aliment — an
aliment of light, the word of Christ in the Bible ; and
an aliment of love, the body of Christ in the Eucharist.
What God hath joined, let us not put asunder — the
Bible and the Eucharist, — the word of faith giving its
true meaning to the work of love; the work of love
giving its reality and its body to the mystery of faith !
How fully was this apprehended by the greatest of the
ascetics of the raiddle ages, the profound and loving
monk who wrote the "Imitation of Christ." "I feel," said
he, " that in this life two things are supremely necessary
to rae — ^without thera I could not live : the Word of
God, which is the light of the soul, and Thy Sacraraent,
which is the bread of life." ^ In the days of the
Primitive Church, our true mother, side by side upon
that altar of Christ where the martyrs prayed before
being crushed " like grains of God's wheat between the
teeth of the lions," ^ were preserved and venerated those
two treasures of equal price, the Bible and the Eucharist.
1 "Imitation of Jesus Christ," Book IV. chap. xi.
' Epistle of Ignatius.
N 2

1 8o CA THOLIC REFORM.
Later on, in this very city of Rome, St. Jerorae founded
for woraen a school of Biblical interpretation where one
might have seen the descendants of the .^mihi and
the Fabii seated at the feet of the rude Illyrian to
decipher with hira these letters-patent of Christian
nobility and divine adoption. Scholars hke these be
came teachers in their turn. They were consulted by
the greatest doctors of the Church, and far from being
a book exclusively reserved for the priest, the Bible
was then the woman's book — the household book.^
Let us come back to the Bible, and we shall find
in it the healing of our souls and of society. In this
imraediate and living intercourse with God's Word,
we shall restore to religious life that personal cha
racter without which it ceases to be itself; we shall
save true Christianity from the attacks of scepticism
and superstition, frora raan's false affirmations, not less
perilous than his false negations. The Word of the
Lord is a pure and burning Word — the silver seven times
tried in the furnace.^ Let us put the Bible in contact
with the family. Let it be read in all our homes, and
preached in all our churches. From this contact will
come forth the regeneration of religious society. . . .
and also, suffer me to say, the regeneration of civil
1 Down to the fifth century, the Holy Scriptures were in the hands of all
the faithful, and the object of their constant study.
2 " Eloquia Domini eloquia casta : argentum igne examinatum, prohatum
terrse purgatum septuplum. " — Psalm xi. 7.

DISCOURSES.

society. I ara not here to talk politics, but great
social questions border close upon great religious
questions. I applauded, with all ray raind and heart,
the noble representatives of England and Araerica,
who have just spoken before rae, when they said
that the greatness of these two nations is the work of
the Bible. Yes, at the foundations of England there
is soraething finer than Magna Charta, there is the
Bible! In order to build an Italy that shall last,
you must go down to the same foundations. I am
a friend of Italy, but I am not her flatterer — for, by
the grace of God, and somewhat, too, by the grace
of my nature, I am no one's flatterer. While yet a
youth, I learned to love Italy in the books of Balbo,
of Rosmini, of Gioberti. At that time, according to
the sneer of a scornful diplomatist, Italy was only a
geographical expression. Now, certainly, it is a diplo
matic expression; but it does not yet possess that
which makes a nation— the fusion into a single soul
of the sentiment of patriotism and the sentiraent of
rdigion. If Italy has brought with her to Rome no
great religious thought,— if she has come hither with
scepticism for her doctrine and expediency for her
politics,— she has come hither to find her grave, and
the most miserable of all graves, a grave of ridicule ;
for upon the base that was reared by giants, she will
have placed a superstructqre of dwarfs !

CATHOLIC REFORM.

If the Bible is to lift us up from our downfall, it is
also to draw us forth from our divisions. We are not
only fallen, we are divided ; and this division is the most
striking proof and the most disastrous effect of our fall.
Jesus Christ surely wished to establish unity upon
the earth, for it was His wish to establish truth and
charity. He prayed to His Father " that they may be
one, as we are one ! " ^ And He said to His brethren,
" By this shall men know that ye are ray disciples, if
ye love one another." ^ And yet Christians are divided
frora each other, — and not only divided, they hate,
they detest each other. I adrait that there may be
legitimate divisions, for I have too high a sense of my
own freedom to disparage that of my brethren ; and I
am aware that there are very various ways of looking
at the sarae religious truth. Leibnitz has showed that
there are not in the world any two drops of water
exactly alike. I raay add, that there is not in any two
raen the same way of looking at the same drop of
water. These differences are the work of nature, and
consequently they are the will of God. Let us hold
fast to a great hberty in our religious opinions, but do
not let us divide upon the essential — upon faith and
charity. The Pagan world was much less divided— it
never knew the asperity of our religious controversies.
We have awakened upon the earth malignant passions
1 John xvii. 22. " John xiii. 35.

DISCOURSES. 183
such as, but for us, the earth would never have known.
Catholics and Protestants, we have butchered each
other on battle-field and scaffold ; and when civil laws,
grown more Christian than ourselves, have arrested our
madness — ^when the theological beast has been rauzzled
— it has kept on raving still, and we have glared at
each other with looks such as hell itself would rot
have blushed to own.
Well, then, let us read the Bible, especially the Gospel
— not isolated texts, but the Gospel in its completeness
and its spirit — and we shall be condemned and healed.
We shall find freedom in truth and charity, authority in
sweetness and humihty. "The princes of the Gentiles
exercise dominion over them ; but it shall not be so
araong you ; but he that will be great araong you let
him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief araong
you, let him be your servant." ^ The greatest of all
heresies is that which our Bossuet called the heresy of
domination. Let us abolish, then, the domination of
man over raan — domination, I say, not authority — and
let us set up in the place of it the Kingdom of God ;
for it is written, "Jehovah alone shall be king in that
day," 2 and again, "They shall teach no more every
man his neighbour, saying. Know the Lord ; for they
shall all know the Lord, from the least even unto
the greatest."^
1 Matt. XX. 25, 26. '^ Isaiah ii. II. ¦* Jeremiah xxxi. 34.

1 84 CA THOLIC REFORM.
When we are united, we can do great things, we can
do everything, against the barbarism of anti-Christian
doctrine ; first, against that which hems in our civiliza
tion at every point, pressing in upon its sides like a
vast girdle of raiasraa and darkness, and wresting from
it, to this day, full two-thirds of the human race
— idolatry, fetishish, Brahminism, Buddhism, Islam.
Superficial and complaisant observers have declared
that these forms of error were ready to vanish away.
On the contrary, they are holding out ; in some cases
they are propagating themselves, as in Africa, where
Mohammedanisra seems to be in a fair way to conquer
that vast continent from idolatry. And at the same
time, within the pale of Christendom, another style of
infidehty is daily spreading, more refined, more scientific,
and therefore more formidable, and is bowing down the
choicest minds of Europe before a God who is to be
found only in Nature or in an abstract idea. You
are trying (so they say to us) you are trying to im
pose your Bible on all mankind ; whereas it is only a
local and temporary book. You are giving it out as
the final utterance in the domain of things moral and
religious, whereas it is really nothing but a confused
and childish stammering. And, in fact, to one who
has not penetrated into the heart of the book, that
is just what the Bible is— the history, the laws, the
poetry of a little Semitic tribe, whose dominion was

DISCOURSES. 185
not twenty leagues . wide, and whose mind, narrower
even than its territory, obstinately repelled all com
merce and alhance with ancient civihzation. The Jew
had little but contempt and hatred for mankind — and
mankind has well repaid it. The Gospel itself (so they
add) is but an appendix of the book of Israel, the
production of an obscure sect of pietists which grew
up within the pale of the synagogue and aspired to
transform and so perpetuate it. Yes, I acknowledge
it, if you stop at the surface — at the outward appear
ance — the Bible and the Gospel are not much more
than this.
But in this mean and narrow vessel, God, who is
Lord of His own gifts and who brings our wisdom to
confusion, God has put three treasures that can be
found nowhere else, and with which humanity cannot
dispense — the living God, the true Christ, the universal
Church !
The one personal and living God, who bears no like
ness to those material idols fashioned in the likeness
of the forms and vices of our body, nor to those idols
of the abstract reason, raade of the shadows and infir
raities of our mind ; He is the God of the Bible, the
God of the Jews, Jehovah, who said unto Moses / am
that T am} He is the God on whom Hagar called,
when she sat beside the desert spring, and called it
^ Exodus iii. 14.

1 86 CATHOLIC REFORM.
The well of Hira that liveth and seeth — Pitteus viventis
et videntis}
But to what purpose would it be to know God so
long as He abode in heaven and we upon the earth.'
For what should we bend over this fountain of the
Scriptures, unless its waters sprang up to everlasting
life .' ^ The great gulf has been passed — the two-fold
gulf which separates man from God — that of infinity,
and that of sin. For Christ is God, and has come
down from heaven ; He is man and has gone up from
earth, and filled up the distance with His Gospel and
His redemption. He that had named Himself Jehovah
has consented to be called Jesus ! One father on the
earth, Adam, the man ; one Father in heaven, Jehovah,
God ; one Saviour both on earth and in heaven, Jesus,
God and man.
Thus the Bible shows us our comraon origin and our
common end. It teaches us what all the wisdom of the
ancients never knew, what modern science still disputes ;
and it invites men of every race, colour, tongue, and
creed to that mysterious city in which the unity of
earth is to be consummated. Yes, the day is coming,
ray heart tells me it is not far off— the day cometh
when there shall be no more Roraan Cathohcs and
Greek Catholics, no raore Lutheran Protestants and
Reformed Protestants, but only true Cathohcs and
1 Genesis xvi. 14. 2 john iv. 4.

DISCOURSES. 187

ibove all true Christians. The day coraeth, I well
believe it, despite the difficulties, despite the irapos-
sibilities,. for there is one irapossibility that outweighs
all irapossibilities, and that is, that God's Word should
fail — that His plan should be abandoned. Courage,
then ! for when all is lost, then all is saved 1 Alas,
I know full well that where there was but a trench
men have opened an abyss ; that where there was a
wall they have reared a mountain. But I declare by
Him who hath sent me to you, I declare by the Lord
and by His Word, the abysses shall be filled up, the
mountains shall be overthrown and beaten into dust !
We shall pass through all huraan obstacles and enter
into the city of God ! We shaU enter therein Bible
in hand, chanting — in aU tongues and all theologies,
but in one faith and one love — the song of deliverance ;
and whatever be the visible city which shall be the
symbol and guardian of unity, be it called Rome or
Jerusalem, it shall be the city of righteousness and
peace, for it shall be the city of Truth.
For thus saith the prophet,— " Jerusalem shall be
called A city of Truth." 1
^ "Jerusalem vocabitur civitas veritatis." — Zechariah viii. 3.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

Speech before the Peace League at Paris,
July io, 1869.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have only a few words to add to the learned
and eloquent speeches to which you have been listening.
After such voices, raine can have but little weight in
these raatters. Its sole importance is, that it raore
directly represents among you the Gospel.
The Permanent International Peace League proposes
to act on public opinion by every means : and resorts
accordingly to whatever light may illuminate it, and
whatever force is competent to guide it. Among these
lights and forces it must place in the front rank the
Gospel, a light so pure, a force so potent, that not even
the feebleness of our words nor the humbleness of our
persons can weaken or obscure it.
For my part, then, I bring to the peace raoveraent
the Gospel; not that Gospel drearaed of by sectaries of
every age — as narrow as their own hearts and minds —
but the Gospel which I claim as ray own, received by
me from the Church and from Jesus Christ, a Gospel
which claims authority over everything and excludes

192 CATHOLIC REFORM.
nothing — which reiterates and fulfils the words of the
Ma.ster, "he that is not against us is for us," and
which, instead of rejecting the hand stretched out to
it, raarches forward to the van of all just ideas and
all honest souls.
Permit me, then, before exhibiting religion and virtue
as the best safeguards of peace, to recognize the services
which may be rendered to it by institutions and interests
of a more earthly sort. Institutions, interests, virtues
— these are the instruments of peace on which I would
fix your attention.
I. I have named Institutions first. Perhaps it is a
mistake ; for when we ask ourselves thoughtfully what
sort of institutions would be adapted to secure the peace
of the world, we come upon ideas so little practical that
we seem to have reached the region of chimeras. I
scarcely see any effectual institution other than that of
a sovereign international court of justice, commissioned
to adjudicate the disagreements arising among nations,
and by authoritative judgments to prevent bloody col
lision. The future, perhaps, will enjoy such an insti
tution. I am one of those who believe all the more
in progress because of the entire faith we have in the
Gospel, in redemption, in all those supernatural influences
brought into the world, directly — principally, doubtless,
to save souls, but also, as an inevitable and glorious
incident, to save nations and the whole body of
mankind. Possibly, in a future raore or less remote,
our posterity raay salute that grand Areopagus which
would realise in this part of the continent some
thing like what has been spoken of as "the United

APPENDIX.

193

States of Europe ; " but that is not to be to-day nor
to-morrow ; and consequently such an institution could
not be reckoned among the barriers which we would
oppose to war.
I recur rather to two powers now existing ; Diplomacy,
representing the governments — and Opinion, represent
ing the people. It devolves on diplomacy and on public
opinion, rising to the grandeur of that mission which
the will of God and the conscience of mankind have
appointed to them, to oppose insurmountable obstacles
to the invasion of this scourge. Let diplomacy re
nounce the spirit as well as the letter of Machiavdli, let
it reject the false science of expedients, the mean arts
of deceit, and illuminated by the grand light of prin
ciples, glowing with the flame of generous sentiments, it
will speedily have established in all the great centres
of Europe an international league, a permanent and
sovereign council of peace. By why speak of Europe
only, when from the depths of Asia, over the crumbling
battlements of the great wall, I hear that old China is
sending us the son of youthful America, and claiming,
through her representative, the honour of a place among
civilized nations. This is the sort of diplomacy which
has indeed the secret of the future !
But, after all, it is less to diplomacy than to public
opinion that we must have recourse for our projects of
peace. Pascal says, " Opinion is the queen of the world ;
Force is but its tyrant." It was but the morning twilight
of public opinion that was shining in the days of Pascal
and Louis XIV. The morning has advanced since
then ; it approaches its meridian, and everywhere, in
O

194 CATHOLIC REFORM.
the present day, it tends to put an end to the caprices
of personal government.
Personal governments have had their reason and their
uses in other ages. A child is in need of masters and
tutors standing towards him in strictly personal rela
tions ; but, as St. Paul says, speaking of regenerate
humanity, we are no longer children nor slaves ; we are
entitled to corae into possession of the inheritance. It
is no time now for personal governments. It is time
for the governraent of public opinion, for the govern
ment of the country by itself; and now that all coun
tries are calling and stretching out the hand to one
another, the hour is at hand for the government of
mankind by itself.
I put the question. What is it that the nations
demand to-day .' Is it war, or peace .' From the shores
of America to those of Europe, and from all lands of
the earth, there comes up a great cry that answers,
Peace ! Mankind (as was said in the speech to which
we have just listened), mankind to-day more than ever
feels that it is one ; faithful to its several members, to
particular countries, it sees above these countries the
universal country, that commonwealth of God and man
of which Cicero spoke : " Universus hie mundus, una
civitas communis Deorum atque homiiium." Mankind is
conscious that every war within itself is a civil war;
it has no wish to be henceforth a camp, but a forum
of civil life, a market-place of commercial and social
intercourse, and ' over these a temple, whither it may
ascend to worship God.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I had almost forgotten an

APPENDIX. 195

institution for which (as our honourable Secretary seems
disposed to remind you), I have been accused, in other
circumstances, of having had some partiality — I raean
the array. I believe that, properly restricted and pro
perly organized, the array is one of the most potent
instruments of peace. The pure type of the soldier
seeras to rae, in the epoch in which we live, almost as
necessary to civilization as that of the priest ; and I
should be extremely sorry not to do justice to it. I do
not speak of those monstrous armies born in days of
fever, under the influence of intoxicated arabition, and
which, making of peace a scourge alraost as terrible as
war itself, dig under the trarap of their ponderous bat
talions bottomless pits in the finances of the State, in
the prosperity of families, in the blood of such multi
tudes of young men made sterile or corrupt. Surely I
have no admiration for this aspect of military life ; and
when Europe wakes at last, frora this bad dream which
she has been dreaming for some years, not content with
effacing such scandals frora her laws and usages, she
will blush that she cannot also expunge thera frora her
history. What we want is the army reduced to its le
gitimate proportions ; withdrawn in time of peace from
the corrupting life of the garrison, and organized in such
wise as to find its greatest satisfaction in peace. We
havp been told of the six thousand men who constitute
the effective force of the United States. I do not think
that we are far enough advanced toward the future to be
satisfied with such modest requireraents. But we have
on the old continent other exaraples raore in correspond
ence with our social condition, which we shall do well,
O 2

CA THOLIC REFORM.

I will not say to copy, but to imitate with originality
and independence. In the better part of Europe, the
soldier is less isolated than with us from family and
country life. It is in cultivating the soil, in dwelling
by the fireside, that he learns to love them and defend
them. Pro aris et focis. But why look beyond our
selves ? . Have we forgotten the first wars of our own
republic, and those levies in mass to save the country,
and those armies of undrilled peasants, oftentimes with
out shoes and without bread, who went forth to cover
the frontier with a belt of heroic hearts, that they might
hide from the eye of the stranger the shame within—'
the scaffold and the saturnalia — and that they might
hurl back the veteran armies of all Europe in league
against us .'
II. I have a word to say concerning Interests.
Earthly interests are a great raatter — full of ideas and
virtues ; and after all, when God puts us on the earth,
it is not to dreara about heaven, but to prepare for it.
It is by the conquest of earth that man should advance
to the conquest of heaven. The Holy Book tells that
God in his wisdom has made raan to estabhsh this
world in justice and truth.^ These are words which
we cannot too often ponder ; raost of all, we cannot
too closely apply them.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the justice which man owes
the earth is agriculture, industry, coraraerce. Agricul
ture holds the foremost place. The earth lies in a
lethargic slumber till it is roused by the stout arm of
the labourer. It imbibes the sweat of man's brow, and
¦" Wisdom ix. 2, 3.

APPENDIX. 197

becomes stimulated by those bitter and sacred drops ;
it becomes disgusted at its native barbarism, and yields
itself, actively and gladly, to the transforming and ferti
lizing culture. So the earth, established in justice and
truth, becomes the fostermother of raultitudes, opening
her generous breasts to raen of every nation, and pour
ing out to thera those great streams of physical life
without which raoral life itself would .speedily die away.
The farraer with worthy pride turns over to the artisan
the product of his labour, and says, " Brother, complete
my work and begin your own ! pursue the great toil
prescribed by God to man." And the artisan takes the
fruits of agriculture, sumraons from every quarter the
hidden or refractory powers of nature, subdues the re
fractory, brings to light the hidden, and in his turn
creates those wonders which are the last utterance of
man and of raatter in the sphere of the useful, as the
fine arts are their last utterance in the sphere of the
beautiful. And when farraer and artisan have done
their work, then coramerce hfts her broad wings, her
sails fill, her engines hiss and throb, her ships plough
the sea, her fiery chariots traverse the land, the arteries
of nations open in every direction, that the blood of a
coraraon civilization, the vivifying sap of the sarae raoral
ideas and the sarae material products, may permeate
all mankind. And the word of St. Paul is fulfilled,
which was , not raade known before the coming of
Christianity, that supreme inspirer of great things,
Gentes esse cohceredes, "that the nations should be
fellow-heirs." Now, Ladies and Gentlem.en, what is it but peace,

198 CATHOLIC REFORM.
that stands, with Christianity, at the beginning and at
the end of all these things .' Peace as origin and result ;
peace always and everywhere ! Woe, woe, if the war-
trumpet sounds, if the arms of labourers in field and
workshop are turned violently frora their proper object,
if the sails of the raerchant-ships are suddenly furled,
and if, ahke by land and sea, instead of the glad din
of labour, we hear only the fearful shock of destruc
tion ! Away with these hateful iraages ! Let us
pause a raoment before two great spectacles of the
passing hour.
You are Christians. I also ara a Christian, and a
priest, and a raonk. But neither in the Christian re
ligion, nor in these glorious rags of. the raonastic habit,
nor in the seclusion of cloister and teraple, has it been
in my wish, nor in my power, to sever rayself from
interest in the things of earth ! Accordingly, Ladies
and Gentleraen, it is with genuine emotion, that in
behalf of you all, I hail these new triumphs of human
toil and genius !
I turn toward the East, whence morning by morning
comes the sun, whence carae the light of the gospel,
and at the point which once divided Europe and Asia
I see no longer division, but the signs of glorious union.
It is the admiration and advantage of the world ; but
it is the work of France. It is my own beloved France
that has wrought it ! France conceived the project ; she
raaintained it against the sneers which are the portion
of genius as well as of virtue ; she invented those pro
digious machines, and made the rocks, as the Psalmist
says, " to leap like rams," and sends gliding and spark-

APPENDIX. 199

hng through the sunshine of the desert the waters of the
canal that is to join two worlds !
I turn now to the West, This time it is the water
which divides — the vast Atlantic, rolling between
America and us. But see, from the lofty decks of the
glorious Leviathan, in our harbour of Brest— for it is
France still ! — see that gigantic cable plunging with the
noise of thunder, with the swiftness of lightning ! It
sinks into the waves, dispelling, as it goes, the monsters
of the deep, and braving the stress of storms. It
stretches from Europe to America, to carry messages,
not of war but of peace, and to fix as a reality the union
of the three nations which forra the aristocracy of the
world, and which, whenever they shall so choose, have
power to establish throughout our planet the reign of
peace — America, England, and France !
III. The Virtues. Ladies and Gentleraen, human
society rests on a deeper and more sacred basis than
mere interests, or even ideas. The raoral order is the
necessary foundation of the social order. It would be
an illusion, then, to suppose that the various forces
just enuraerated are sufficient of themselves to main
tain peace, and that they may safely cut loose from this
suprerae force — virtue. Our honourable and learned
Chairman has just described the disordered passions of
the heart as a permanent principle of war. Permit me
to reraark that I had said this very thing on the sub
ject of war in a lecture of raine, for which some of the
friends of peace have complained of me. I said, "war
is the ideal of sin, the ideal of the brute and the devil."
But it is just because it is the ideal of the brute and

CATHOLIC REFORM.

the devil, that it is, in one aspect, the ideal of man.
There is soraething of the brute and of the devil in
man. The root of war is in pride, concupiscence, re
venge — in all the bad passions that ferment within
us. It is our burden and our glory to struggle against
these ; but if we would conquer them, we must not ig
nore their existence and energy. To banish war, to say
to it what the Lord says to death — " O death, I will
be thy death" — we must make an exterminating war
on sin — sin of society as well as of the individual — sin
of peoples as well as of kings. We must record and
expound to the world, which does not understand them
as yet, those two great' books of public and private
morality, the book of the synagogue, written by Moses
with the fires of Sinai, and transraitted by the prophets
to the Christian Church ; and our own book, the book
of grace, which upholds and fulfils the law, the Gospel
of the Son of God. The Decalogue of Moses, and the
Gospel of Jesus Christ ! The Decalogue which speaks of
righteousness, while showing at the height of righteous
ness the fruit of charity; the Gospel which speaks of
charity, while showing in the roots of charity the sap of
righteousness. This is what we need to affirm by word
and by example, what we need to glorify before peoples
and kings alike !
I thank you for your applause ! It comes from your
hearts, and it is intended for the.se divine books ! In
the name of these two books, I accept it. I accept it
also in the name of those sincere men who group them
selves about these books, in Europe and America. It
is a most palpable fact that there is no room in the

AP PENT) IX. 201
dayhght of the civilized world except for these three
religious coraraunions, Catholicism, Protestantism, and
Judaism I
The want of a peace catechism has been spoken of
with regret. We have one. Something more detailed
in form, or more appropriate to our special wants, may
be desirable, but I must assert that the catechism is
already raade. You need but carry the Decalogue to
its conclusions. You need but apply to nations the
principles of individual raorality, and abolish that
refuge of lies — one rule for private life, and another for
public life.
" Thou shalt not kill," says the everlasting law. But
does it only condemn the cowardly and cruel wretch
who skulks behind his victim and plunges a dagger into
his heart, or blows out his brains with a pistol ? Is
murder no longer a crime when it is committed on a
great scale, and is the act of a prince or of a deliberative
assembly.' What! think you that without breaking
God's law, without offending human co.nscience, without
branding on your forehead the mark of Cain, without
heaping burning coals on your head — think you that
you can lay open to the gaze of history those vast fields
of carnage, and there, for the gratification of your whim
or the accoraplishraent of your design, raow down
your fellow-creatures with grape-shot by the hundred-
thousand .' O Cain ! Cain ; where is Abel thy brother .'
"Thou shalt not kill," says the law. It also says,
" Thou shalt not steal." Here is a poor raan. His wife
and children, eraaciated with want, are languishing on
foul straw in one of those penfolds that abound in great

CATHOLIC REFORM.

cities filled with luxurious palaces. In the fever of his
distress, in the delirium excited in his soul by the tears
he has seen on his wife's cheeks and by the petitions of
his little children, this man snatches a loaf of bread, or
a piece of money, and brings back, not joy, but life
into the dwelling of famine. Thither human justice pur
sues him ; it tears him from that weeping family ; it
smites him, with one blow, in his love, his honour, and
his liberty. And here, on the other hand, is a govern
ment which is meditating some straightening or other
of the frontier without — some astute diversion of public
attention within — sorae trap or other, baited with glory
to catch liberty — and while waiting for the judgment of
history, and the surer judgment of God, the public con
science will condone, perhaps will glorify, the robbery
of so raany cities or provinces, the crafty or violent an
nexation of a whole people ! For my part, as a minister
of the living God, laying my hand upon the Ten Com
mandments, I am not afraid to say : In the former case,
if there be sin, it is venial sin ; in the latter case it is
mortal sin !
" Thou shalt not covet," proceeds the book of inspi
ration. And in fact, in the judgment of the Christian
conscience, the sin is not only in the hand that acts, it
is in the longing eye, the plotting heart. O kings,
potentates, peoples — for the peoples have their times
of raadness, and democracies as well as personal govern
ments have those who flatter them to their ruin —
whoever you are, kings or peoples, ye shall not covet !
Ye shall not say. We bide our time ; and as the brigand
bides his, in the darkness of his den, ye shall not scent

APPENDIX. 203
in advance the savour of the blood ye do not dare to
shed. Ye shall not covet.
You see, Ladies and Gentleraen, what is wanted is
not to construct a catechisra, it is to reconstruct his
tory. We do not want to be taught henceforth from
the cradle upward that the greatest glory is that of
the conqueror. What you raust tell your children —
I speak to you, mothers — is that the man who makes
two blades of grass grow where one grew before
has done raore for raankind than the victor of twenty
battles ; that they should respect the independence of
nations as they respect the raodesty of women ; that it
is as cowardly and criminal to insult the independence
of a neighbouring country as to tolerate insults on the
independence of our own.
Ah ! if it were a war of independence, I would be
the first, if not to wage it, at least to preach it. If the
flag of France were at the frontier for defence and not
for attack, torn it might be by bullets, blackened with
smoke,' red with blood, but around it we would rally,
one and all, and it would not waver! Dear, glorious
flag ! if warriors' hands were lacking, the hands of our
women would grasp the staff, and it would not waver,
I have spoken of justice ; but justice alone is not
enough, whether between nations or between indi
viduals. There raust be charity with it. Why is it
that the law is so hard, so impossible to keep, until the
Spirit of grace descends into the heart .' It is because
raere justice is an irksorae thing. It hraits our rights
by the rights of others, and restricts the sphere of our
activity. But let love enter the heart and expand it

204 CATHOLIC REFORM.
until it finds its own good and its own happiness in the
happiness and good of others, and the law is no longer
hard to keep. It becoraes a necessity of the soul as
well as a duty. This is the meaning of that deep say
ing of St. Augustine, " only love, and you raay do what
you choose." But to this end, the nations, not satisfied
with being just, raust be good, kind, trustful toward
each other. The nations of Europe must maintain
among themselves dispositions like those of provinces
of the same country.
Does the prosperity of one of our provinces produce
invidious feelings in the rest .' No ; because in their
individuality — too iraperfect, in ray opinion, but real,
nevertheless — they form the grand unit, France. Well,
let each of the nations of the continent consider itself a
province of that comraonwealth of the " United States "
of Europe which, if it has not yet received its political,
yet has received its moral constitution Then, in the
superior unity which knits together their interests, and
instead of impairing, strengthens and develops them,
they will learn to trust each other ; and when, as the
result of honourable effort — of industry and virtue —
the prosperity of one of thera shall be increased, it will
not excite fear in any quarter, but pride and satisfaction
everywhere. The little States will say. We have one
protector raore. And the great States will open ranks
to welcorae a new and potent auxiliary.
But how much closer and holier this unity becomes,
when we consider it in its relations to Christianity ! I
have referred already to the wonderful teaching of St.
Paul. " The nations are fdlow-heirs, and of the same

APPENDIX. 205

body." 1 " Concorporales : " it is one of those new words
coined by Christianity to express the new ideas which it
brought into the world, the idea of true cosmopolitan
ism and humanitarianism, the idea of the city and peo
ple of God ! The nations are more than consolidated ;
they are concorporeal, because they are " partakers of
one promise," and of one divine life, " in Christ by the
gospel." Ladies and Gentlemen, I call to mind the first appear
ance of the symbol of the cross on a military standard.
A Prince, of whom I speak reservedly — for though in
certain relations he was the benefactor of the gospel, he
also, in my opinion, inflicted on it no little injury —
Constantino the Great — at that moraent he was great,
indeed, for he was struggling against the blind and
violent resistance of expiring paganisra ; in one of
those prophetic dreams which come to great men on
the eve of the great events of their lives and of the
world's life, Constantine saw the Redeemer holding in
his hands, oh wonder ! a flag of war ; but on that flag
was traced the Cross !
The Cross upon the flag ! It is first the transforma
tion of war, and then its destruction : transformation by
justice and charity, destruction by peace. No ! since
that ray of heaven marked out the Cross upon the
Labarum, there raust be no war save just war, waged
only for the defence of right against violent aggression,
and consequently against war, and in the interest of
peace. All other war than this is pagan, even though
Christians be its soldiers ; and the Cross of Jesus which
I Ephesians iii. 6.

206 CATHOLIC REFORM.
it profanes shall be avenged, in the judgment of the last
day. No ! under the standard of the Cross, no more of
hatred, revenge, cruelty I But on these fields of horror,
yet of moral beauty, the same hands which have in
flicted wounds shall corae near, trerabling with pity, I
had almost said with remorse, to staunch and heal. In
stead of that savage war-cry of antiquity, Vce victis,
"woe to the vanquished !" — there shall be seen and heard
nothing but love toward the conquered, and respect.
The day shall corae, it raay be ages from this time —
but to the thought of God, and to the life of humanity,
ages are but days — when the light of the Cross shall
shine out upon the prophetic Labarum, and the battle-
standard shall be thenceforth only the standard of the
immortal victory of peace.
In the present age of the world, universal and per
petual peace is only a chimera. In the age to come, it
will be a reality. For my part, I have always believed
— and now, in this assembly of my brethren, I do not
hesitate to tell the secret — I have always believed that
in some nearer or remoter future, mankind would come,
not to complete perfection, which does not belong to
earth, but to that relative perfection which precedes and
prepares for heaven. After the fall of Jerusalem and
Rome, and the predicted end of the ancient world, the
primitive Christians, heirs of the proraises of Jewish
prophecy, did not expect iraraediately the beginning of
the heavenly and eternal state, but a temporal reign of
Jesus Christ and His saints, a regeneration and triumph
of man upon the earth. I also look for this mysterious
millenniura, about which such errors of detail cannot

APPENDIX. 207
shake the deep, unalterable truth. I look for it, and in
the humble but faithful measure of my labours, my
words, my prayers, I strive to prepare the way for it.
I beheve that nations as well as individuals shall some
day taste the fruit of universal redemption by the Son
of God raade raan. I believe that the Law and the
Gospel shall reign over this whole planet I believe that
we — that you and I — shall see descending frora heaven
a raanhood hurabler and nobler, meeker and mightier,
purer and more loving, in a word, grander, than our
own. " And this man shall be the peace ! " Et erit
iste Pax}
Over the cradle of our Lord Jesus Christ the angels
sung, in the majestic beauty of that Christmas night,
" Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good-will to men." And over the tomb from which He
rose, the cradle of His new life, Christ says Hiraself, " I
have overcome the world ! My peace I give to you 1 "
The future shall receive that promise of the angels, and
that gift of Christ — the double hosanna of His cradle
and His tomb. The future is the inheritance, not of
the violent, but of the meek. Then shall be brought
to pass that other saying, written among the words that
shall never pass away, " Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth." 1 Micah V. 5.

2o8 CATHOLIC REFORM.

France and Germany.

A Discourse delivered in London, December 20, 1870,
for the Benefit of the French Peasants of the Provinces
desolated by the War.
For nearly five months, Europe has been witnessing
the most formidable collision of modern times ; and
every true friend of humanity, every earnest disciple of
the Gospel is anxiously asking " What can I do to hasten
the return of peace .' " Mighty as are the triumphs of
material force, they are still subordinate to moral force ;
and thus it is that, in the words of our Holy Scriptures,
the kingdom of this world belongs, in the grand result,
to God and to His Christ. Each of us is the depositary
of a part of this raoral force. When it lays siege to
God's righteousness,^ it is called prayer; when it does
battle with the unrighteousness of man, it is called
opinion ; in either case it has power to remove moun
tains. At this moment my appeal is to opinion ; and
nowhere could I better address myself to it than on
English soil. Failing to prevent this lamentable war,
England has wrought prodigies pf devotion to abate its
horrors. The wounded of the two armies, the peasants
of the ravaged provinces, have learned what may be
achieved by the charity of a great nation. But, gentle
men, your task is not yet done. The hour has come for
your country to raake its high and irapartial reason felt,
1 " The kingdom of God suffereth -violence, and the violent take it by
force." — Matt. xi. 12.

APPENDIX. 209
more potently yet, in the counsels in which peace shall
be decided.
I leave to statesmen and warriors the task of settling
the conditions which shall raake this peace a lasting one.
I mean to avoid all those matters which have only too
much irritated and aggravated the dispute. It is for
vulgar and mischievous minds to handle questions by
the sides which divide, in such wise as to retard the
settlement of them, even if they do not render it alto
gether impossible. Let us leave them to their noisy and
useless wranglings, and for our part let us rise toward
better regions, toward that land "which the lion's
whelps have not trodden, and the vulture's eye hath not
seen." ^
Is there any permanent controversy at issue between
France and Germany .' Is this one of these conflicts
the character of which is the more terrible, and their
duration the more protracted, by so much as the causes
of them lie the deeper .' Such is- the question which I
propose to treat, looking upon it from the double point
of view of the antagonism of races, and the antagonism
of religions. I.
And first, the antagonism of races. It has been said :
" This war is no ordinary war between states ; two races
are disputing between themselves the empire of Europe
— the Latin race by the sword of France, the Germanic
race by that of Prussia. It is the decisive struggle of
^ Job xxviii. 7, 8.

CATHOLIC REFORM.

two civilizations, the final shock of two worlds in col
lision ! "
I freely acknowledge that the idea of race is not with
out its importance and its rights in history. It is con
nected with another idea, that of family, which is the
principle at once of all diversity and of all unity among
men. The race is the family on a larger scale. It is
the relation of father and child raised to the highest
power, creating a new type of humanity, a characteristic
form both of physical and of moral life, and transmitting
them through the generations by the enduring plastic
influence of the same blood and the same language. It
is nothing strange, then, that a strongly marked race
should feel itself to be a sort of mankind within man
kind. This profound instinct has been approved, or
rather, has been hallowed by God Himself, who, when
He would intervene personally upon the earth, has (if
I might venture the expression) associated His own
destinies with the destinies of a family and a race — the
family of Abraham, the race of Israel,
And yet here, as everywhere, we find the two opposite
conceptions — the ancient idea and the modern — the
Pagan idea and the Christian.
According to the ancient view, the race is not only
distinct, it is isolated. It believes itself to be of superior
origin, and made for superior destinies. All blood but
its own is impure, and it loathes the idea of alliance
with it. Every language but its own is barbarous, and
sounds to its ear like a mere brute gibberish. It carries
this spirit of separation even into those things which are
most fitted to unite — into religion and morals. It re-

APPENDIX.

cognizes no duties save towards its own members ; it
worships gods that are the foes of every nation but itself,
and in the name of heaven, as well as of earth, it lives in
a state of war with the whole world. Evidently the ob
ject pursued by the race, until it learns to rise above this
gross conception, can be nothing but the exterraination
or the enslavement of the other races.
How different that new idea, dimly descried in the
future by the Hebrew prophets, and, now and then, even
by the sages of India and Greece and Rome, but which
Jesus Christ alone was able effectually to introduce into
the world ! By this, the races lose nothing of their im
portance. The Gospel comes not to destroy but to fulfil.
They retain their physiognomy, their distinctive lineage
and mission, but they are no longer enemies nor even
strangers. They are reconciled, in the discovery of their
long-forgotten mutual kindred. Henceforth there is
something more than raen or than nations ; there is
mankind, feeling itself to be one, throughout the length
and breadth of the worid, by the blood of Adam flow
ing in its veins, and by the Spirit of Christ breathing
in its soul.
I know that recent science has raised certain doubts
on the unity of our origin ; and the question may arise
whether, since science has brought us to a more just
interpretation of the Bible on the subject of the antiquity
of our planet and even of our race, it will not some day
bring us to a new explanation of the creation of our first
parents. For my part, I do not believe that this is to
be ; but if I do not believe it, neither do I dread it.
The oneness of our race is far less in the heart of Adam
P 2

CA THOLIC REFORM.

than in the heart of God — in that "tender mercy" of
our creating and redeeming God of which the Gospel
sings, " whereby the day-spring from on high hath
visited us." i Yes : even if there were different physical
sources of our blood ; even if mankind were sprung from
more than a single pair ; even if the Adam and Eve of
the Bible were but the type of many historic or rather
pre-historic Adams and Eves, neither my religious faith,
nor my faith in humanity, would thereby be shaken.
It would still and for ever be true that one Creator had
bowed Himself over the primeval clay, to quicken us
with the divine breath, that one Redeemer had restored
us all to the image and likeness which we aHin common
had received and lost. Ipsius enim et gettus sumus, as
St. Paul says : " for we are also of His race ! "^
Having then but one Father, in one God, the various
races of man are called to consider themselves as the
fraternal branches of one family, and to draw nigh to
each other in the observance of the same laws of justice
and love, in the practice of the same worsliip, the adora
tion of the Father in spirit and in truth. The true type
of their destiny is found, not now in the multitude of
those fields of battle on which they were wdnt to slay
each other in the name of their false gods, birt in the
one city and the one temple — in that mystical Zion
whither, gathering from aU the ends of the earth, they
shall go up nation by nation, to rejoin Israel, the first
born nation of Jehovah.
Tell me no more, then, of the antagonism of races.
Speaking as a Christian to Christians, I answer you with
» Luke 'i. 78. 2 Acts xvii. 28.

APPENDIX.

213

the words of St. Paul : — " By revelation he has made
known to us the mystery which in other ages was not
made known unto the sons of men, that the nations
should be joint-heirs, and parts of one and the same
body, and partakers of God's promise in Christ Jesus by
the Gospel." ^
Apply these principles to the question before us. If
there is opposition between the pretensions of Germany
and those of France, it is because these pretensions are
unjust. There is no opposition, there can be none, be
tween the real interests of two Christian- nations. These
interests, if we leave out of view certain side-questions
the importance of which is sometimes exaggerated, may
be summed up, for substance, in these words ; the Unity
of Germany, and the Integrity of France. Now, in the
first place I declare that France would have no reason
to look upon the establishment cf German unity as a
misfortune for herself. I make bold to say this, not
withstanding the prejudices of a party of my fellow-
countrymen, notwithstanding the authority of erainent
raen whose shrewd and sound judgraent on so many
other points I hold in high respect. I am the more bold
herein, as this policy is for me no makeshift of the hour.
I had no sympathy with the " patriotic angui.sh " ^ which
followed upon Sadowa, and in the pulpit of Notre Dame
at Paris, where it fell to me to touch upon these ques
tions at those lofty summits at which they themselves
: * Ephesians iii. 3, 6.
" An expression of M. Rouher, uttered in the Legislative Body, March
l6th, 1867 : "This unlikely and unexpected event" (the battle of Sadowa)
" filled the hearts of alLmeu of the government y^\\!s\ patriotic anguish^'

214 CA THOLIC REFORM.
touch upon morals and religion, I put forth every effort
to bring my country to recognize in the neighbour
countries not dangerous competitors, but peaceful rivals,
natural allies, and in many respects useful models.^ I
claim, then, that France had no occasion for agitation
when she saw established at her doors a first-class poli
tical and military power, and that she ought not to have
looked upon the unity of Germany either as a humiliation
or as a menace.
It is no humiliation. For it is with nations as with
individuals : when they are indeed great — and such is
France — they have no need to attenuate everything
about them in order to seem great. The real elements
of a nation's greatness are within itself, in the regular
and progressive development of its institutions, in the
increase of its material prosperity, and, still more, of its
intellectual and moral wealth. The greatness which is
sought abroad, by arrogant interventions in the affairs of
others, is as illusory as it is criminal. It is the policy of
envy ; and of all policies there is none more unworthy
of the glorious history and of the heroic soul of France.
Neither is the unity of Germany a menace. Had
France but spoken in that tone which is no less per
suasive on the lips of a nation than on those of an
individual — had she declared her determination to respect
the liberty of Germany in everything that concerned its
internal organization ; had she repudiated all desire of
conquering those Rhenish provinces which have no more
wish to be French than Alsace and Lorraine have, at
^ "Conferences" in Notre Dame on the "Family,'' and on "Christianity
and Civil Society," iS66 and 1867.

APPENDIX. 215
this hour, to be German ; had she refused to reach out a
hand towards that sacred river, over whose waters float
the historic and legendary traditions of the German
people ; — then France would not have had to dread a
German invasion, or, in case of that impossible aggres
sion, would have had all Europe on her side.
So then it was no more a matter of interest than of
right for us to oppose the unity of Germany. I do not
fear to add that our interest was rather to encourage it.
There are sorae results against which no opposition can
prevail, seeing that they are in the nature of things.
The aspirations of a whole people demand them ; the
logical development — I might say the fated develop
ment — of its history leads to them ; they seem to it like
the necessary condition of the fulfilment of its provi
dential destiny. An intelligent statesmanship forecasts
events like these, and far frora putting in their way im
potent obstacles, which in the long run would only work
its own harra, it lends to thera a generous and sagacious
aid by which it turns thera to its own advantage. The
Imperial government at the outset fully understood this ;
and I am glad, on this point, to do it that justice which
has been so long withheld from it. It did not allow
itself to be frightened by those two bugbears that have
scared France out of her senses — the unity of Italy and
the unity of Germany. It unfuried on the fields of
Magenta and Solferino that flag of which the Emperor
so justly said: "it is preceded by a great cause, and
followed by a great people ; " and after that thunderbolt
of the carapaign of 1866, it affirmed in a circular which
is still famous, the calmness with which France looked

2i6 CATHOLIC REFORM.
upon the establishment of a new order of things in
Europe. Unhappily the Empire became blinded by the
passion of personal government. It never understood
that which constitutes the glory and tranquillity of your
noble country — the loyal alliance between the throne
and liberty — and therefore it was, that, having resolved
to resist at every cost, in its internal policy, the real
public opinion that was urging it towards liberty, it felt
forced to yield, in its foreign policy, even to the most
unwarranted exactions of an opinion which was not
that of the country. Towards Italy, and still more
towards Prussia, it assumed that attitude of distrust
and menace which made enemies for it where it had
once had allies, and which plunged it at last into that
gulf into which it has dragged us along with it.
You see, gentlemen, that what opposed the unity of
Germany was not the real interest of France, but the
prejudices of a factitious public opinion, the passions of
a false national honour, set in operation by the most
detestable calculations of a dynastic ambition.
On the other hand, Germany had no more interest in
attacking the integrity of France, than France had in
preventing the unity of Germany. All that I have been
saying against the fatal policy that has brought us to
Sedan holds good against the not less blind nor less
guilty policy which Germany has been following from
that time onward. The Emperor Napoleon has vanished
in the storra he so raadly conjured up. His soldiers,
worthy of a better fate, but betrayed by fortune, are
fellow-captives with hira. It is the nation that is left,
alone and almost disarmed, to face this deluge of fire

APPENDIX. 217
and steel — yes, the nation, with that capital, which be
longs not only to France but to Europe, home of art and
science, too often, also, of luxury and pleasure, but
turned now into an impregnable citadel, whose every
citizen is a soldier, I had almost said, a hero — the
nation, with its homes transformed to hospitals, where
every woraan becoraes a Sister of Charity, while the
priests follow the husbands and sons to the battle-field
to pray with thera, — if need be, to die with them ! Ah,
gentlemen, this abuse of victory against such a nation,
this want of respect and pity for woes unmatched in
history, this relentless prosecution of our political anni
hilation, is it not a course as wanting in generosity
as in equity .' But more than this, considered as a
policy, it is wanting in forecast. The annihilation of
France cannot be anything more than temporary. The
greatness of Prussia dates not from Sadowa, but from
Jena ; its disasters were the beginning of its regenera
tion. Even so a new France shall date from Sedan, —
shall spring to birth, if it must needs be, from the ashes
of Paris. I have not a doubt of it. I only fear lest by
Prussia's own fault, this future France should have but
one sole passion— hatred ; but one sole aim — vengeance.
Alas ! the most fearful spectacles of war are not always
on the battle-field ! I have met with them by the fire
side. I have seen French mothers, in the transports of
their patriotism, hugging their babies to their bosoms,
and telling them in tones to raake one shudder, " Child,
hate the Prussians ! " A people nursed in sentiments
such as these is a terrible neighbour. The day might
come when the new German Empire would find this out.

2 1 8 CA THOLIC REFORM.
At all events, war would become endemic on the conti
nent, and the second half of this century, which seemed
called to inaugurate the era of peace, would pass away
amid bloodier struggles and more fatal convulsions than
those which marked its entrance, Germany, at the centre,
I might say at the heart, of Europe, instead of a new
focus of civilization, would become a focus of barbarism.
Faithless to its true vocation, to be pre-eminently an
intellectual, peaceful, liberal power, it would become a
prey to the worst of despotisms — military despotism.
It would inoculate itself with the poison which it has
extinguished in our veins, and instead of reviving the
traditions of Charlemagne, would continue those of the
Caesars and the Napoleons.
Let the statesmen of Germany heed this well. If
they should dare assume, before God and before history,
the responsibility of such a future, it is not France only
that they would injure ; it is not only Europe. They
would themselves become the most dangerous enemies
of their own country ; and I do not believe there can be
any mistake in saying that they would set themselves
in opposition to the real public sentiment of Germany,
—that sentiment which is strengthening day by day
among the enlightened classes, and which responds to
the profoundest instincts of the common people.
I have omitted all mention of Alsace and Lorraine ;
and I have done it purposely. This question, agitated
on either side so passionately, is one of those which
seem to me of secondary importance. In no respect
does it affect the substance of the debate; and the
excessive importance given to it on the part of Germany

APPENDIX. 219
as well as on the part of France, is one of the most
futile, and at the same time one of the most active of
the causes which have prolonged this aimless struggle.
No I for my part, I have too high, and I am sure, too
just an idea of my country to confound, at this point,
her moral integrity with her material integrity, or to
think that the possession of a couple of provinces is so
essential to her greatness that losing these she would be
brought down frora her present exalted rank. Your
own history, gentlemen, would re-assure me, if there
were need. When we recovered Calais, that city which
you had made (as some one said) " a loaded pistol at
the heart of France," the event was magnified in your
minds to the proportions of a public calamity, and your
Queen Mary went down in sorrow to her grave, with
that fatal name " written on her heart." But' where
to-day is the Englishman who dreams of lamenting the
loss of Calais.' Doubtless it would be just the same,
by-and-bye, if Metz and Strasburg should be rent away
frora us. The reason why we so earnestly insist upon
our claim to those two cities is not so much their
strategical importance, as the heroic fidelity which they
have manifested towards us and which we render them
in return. Alsace and Lorraine desire still to be
French. They would show it by their vote ; they have
declared it by their blood. France owes it to them
and to herself not to abandon thera.
Further, it is a raistake to say that Germany would
find the annexation of these two provinces a necessary
guarantee against the recurrence of aggression from our
side. If the new Germanic empire will but be moderate

CATHOLIC REFORM.

as well as powerful, it will have nothing to fear from
a neighbour that is at once enfeebled and grateful. I
believe, whatever men may say about it, in such a thing
as national gratitude ; and I have a very special faith
in it in the case of my own generous country. The
real, guarantees for which Germany ought to look are
in the relations of good neighbourhood, in a sincere
and lasting alliance with us. Now the best pledge of
such an alliance is the maintenance of Alsace and
Lorraine in our national unity. These provinces, per
haps you will say, belong to Germany by their history
as well as by their language. I freely acknowledge it.
But they have become penetrated with the spirit of
France, and they belong to us by the energy and the
persistence of their patriotism. Alsace and Lorraine
are the natural and vital bond between the two. great
nations. They are the hand, I might almost say the
heart, of Germany, resting fraternally in the hand and
heart of France.
Let us take a higher view yet, and as we are speak
ing of races and their antagonism, let us contemplate
France as the instrument, in the hands of Providence,
for their reconciliation. Sprung alike from Rome and
from Germany, mingling their genius in its language,
and their blood in its veins, with the genius and blood
of the ancient Celts, France is a sort of point of
contact and union between the Latin and the German
races. God, who rules in history, and who seems, to our
apprehension, to be about to give to history its final
and consummate expression in this occidental civiliza-

APPENDIX. 221
tion which we- justly call the Christian civilization, —
God has been making ready, a great way off, and each
apart from the other, the two chief dements of which
it is made up — on the one hand, in those splendid
but too often ensla-ved and corrupted southern lands,
the element of the Latin races, related, with the Greek
races, to a common type ; on the other hand, in those
forests whose history no pen has written, — say rather
those forests whose history awaited the pen of Tacitus,
— the barbarous but purer and freer element of the
Germanic races. By the splendour of their civilization,
the strength of their political organization, the institu
tions of municipal freedom and of the Roman law, the
Latin races represented more particularly the idea of
the commonwealth. The German races, on the con
trary, by that independence of which they were so
jealous, those ties of blood which were almost the sole
bond of union in their tribes, that instinctive and
religious chastity which saw in woman something more
than huraan — inesse divinum quid, says Tacitus — the
Gerraan races realised especially the idea of the family.
One other race, the Jewish, in hke seclusion, kept for
both these the higher idea of rehgion. When God
had summoned this from the hills of the East in the
apostles and the eariy Christians; when the Gospel
had appeared as the healer of all divisions, the educator
of all barbarisms, the reformer of all dvilizations, it
produced in.the wo'rid ah immense and awful collision
—thus men always begin ; but the collision ended, at
last, in a mutual and peaceful embrace, and Christendom
began to be. But God's work is not yet finished. Even

CATHOLIC REFORM.

though united, the North and the South are enemies
still, and the antagonisra of the two worlds continues,
suppressed sometimes, anon breaking forth again, from
generation to generation. In the Middle Ages it is the
Hierarchy and the Empire ; in the Sixteenth Century
it is the Protestant Reformation ; in the Nineteenth, the
French Revolution. It is time for the two worlds to
become one, and for the races of the north and those
of the south, in full reconciliation, to accomplish the
last stages of perfect civilization and of the kingdom
of God upon the earth.
Rumour ascribes to the powerful statesman who pre
sides at this moment over the destinies of Germany,
I had almost said, of Europe, the conviction that the
Latin races are exhausted. He is wrong ; they are
only impaired ; and it is the part of a humane and
far-sighted statesmanship, not to attempt their destruc
tion, but to aid in their regeneration.

II.
Do you remember, gentlemen, those old legends in
which, at the moment when two armies are grappling
in the tug of war upon the plain, there appear celestial
warriors fighting in the clouds above their heads.'
Thus it is that after having transformed this terrible
contest into a war of races, there are some who desire
to represent it as a war of religions, and behind these
two nations in arms have seen two Churches strus'elino'
for the empire of the world.

APPENDIX.

I have a distrust of these analogies, which are rather
ingenious than substantial, and in the present case I
doubt whether it is quite just to look upon France and
Germany as the official champions of the two great
forms of Christianity. Germany is divided almost
equally between Protestantism and Catholicism ; and
France, on the other hand, represents, by a great part
of herself, the most energetic, often the most excessive
re-action, not indeed, against Catholicism, but against
the excesses of the Roman system.
However this raay be, and even if it were true that
the two Churches stood confronted together with the
two nations, I do not see in this any reason for fighting,
but only for joining hands. Do you ask why .' Because
— thank God for it — the time of religious wars is past.
It is one of the noblest triumphs of the Christian spirit,
one of the most salutary and best-established benefits
of modern "civilization, to exclude the sword from the
domain of religion, — not only the sword of the magis
trate, who has no right to punish in that domain, but
the sword of the soldier, who has no mission to conquer
there. " He that takes the sword shall perish by the
sword." This word of the Saviour is fulfilled most of
all in the sphere of religion. The sword is impotent
.against that faith, true or false, which it seeks to destroy.
Commonly it succeeds only in reviving, elevating, ex-
:tending it. But it is only too potent against the in
fatuated Church which carries it. It turns against that
Church, and kills or wounds in its bosom the moral
principle which constituted its real force.
But it is not only war by fire and sword that has

224 CATHOLIC REFORM.
ceased between Churches : war by word and pen is
tending to come to an end. Theological controversies
still continue, but they no longer inflame the passions of
the people. Religious polemics have preserved, have
even aggravated, sometimes, their ancient rigidity of
gait, their ancient violence of procedure ; but they repel,
more and more, in every communion, truly pious souls,
and truly cultivated minds.
A movement immeasurable, irresistible, is mysteriously
drawing all the Churches towards each other. The
struggles of the extreme parties only prove the resist-
lessness of the current against which they strive to
swim. In all directions the Churches are being forced
out of their isolation and exclusiveness. They find that
they have been alienated through ignorance of each
other rather than by hatred ; and they try to know. each
other better in their past as well as in their present.
They bring their archives together, and fairly adjust
among themselves their several titles to glory and to
shame : — for there is no Church so perfect as not to
have its shame, forasmuch as it is of man ; there is no
Church so obscure as not to have its glories, forasmuch
as it is of God. They estimate the comparative value
of the forms under which the Gospel doctrine has been
set forth in one Church and another, the developments
of the Christian life in each. Withal, as in that transla
tion of the Holy Scriptures which I have seen in this
country in preparation under the care of ministers be
longing to all the communions, they seek together,
beneath the letter which has so long divided them,
the Spirit which begins to re-unite thera. Verily, it is

APPENDIX. 225

once more fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet,
" The Lord hath created a new thing in the earth." ^
It would be a grievous raistake to seek in religious
indifference the principle of this wonderful raovement.
Religious indifference is not the characteristic of our
age : — the faraous book of M. de Lamennais had only a
temporary and local truth. Never was a century less
indifferent than ours. I call to witness the activity of
its religious inquiries, marked by a depth and sincerity
such as former ages have not known in the same degree.
I call to witness its very doubts themselves— earnest,
burdensome doubts, with which it does not trifle, like
Voltaire, but with which it suffers, and (if I might speak
of it as embodied in some of its most illustrious repre
sentatives) of which it dies. Finally, I call to witness
its faith— a faith which grows stronger, purer, grander,
under the redoubled blows of criticism and scepticism,
and endows it with strength to live and strength to
labour for a better tirae coraing.
What then is the origin of this novel phenomenon .'
Whence comes this drawing nigh of those who had
dwelt so far asunder— this reconciliation among those
who had seemed irrecondlable .' I think we raust seek
the cause of it, at least in great part, in a juster appre
hension of the history and the present condition of
Christian society. An event has come to pass which
seemed impossible to ecclesiastical antiquity, and we
ourselves have been very long in coming to the com
prehension of its nature and consequences. The visible
unity of the Church has been broken. By the separa-
1 Jeremiah xxxi. 22.

226 CATHOLIC REFORM.

tion of East and West in the tenth century, two great
Churches were set face to face, both of thera apostolic,
both of them orthodox, both of them Catholic, and yet
enemies. In the sixteenth century carae the Protestant
Reformation, developing this fact of division in new
proportions, and more than this, in a new spirit The
primeval synthesis has broken up, in the result, into a
vast and confused analysis. Each of the Churches which
then emerged, took itself, more or less, for the Church
universal ; and claimed to possess an absolute right which
was wanting to its rivals. Each maintained that its own
theology was the complete and final statement of the
revelation in the Scriptures : that its own organization
was the faithful reproduction of the apostolic Church. I
believe I do no injustice to Protestantisra in declaring
that there was not in all its pale a sect so circumscribed
but that it shared raore or less in this strange illusion.
Happily this is no longer so. Protestant Churches are
the first to confess that in respect both to their prin
ciple and to their history, such positions are not tenable.
I am safe in adding that views analogous to these are
coming to be expressed among the most enlightened
minds in the Catholic Church. Doubtless they maintain,
as they justly may, those principles of continuity and uni
versality which are the proper character of their Church ;
but they begin to perceive that these principles have not
always had their application in the facts. The events
just transacted at Rome will serve not a little to give
definiteness and development to these views. After the
Council of the Vatican, far more than after that of
Trent, it will be difficult to help recognizing in the

APPENDIX. 227
Roman Church new elements — often defective elements
— which make of it, in certain aspects, a particular Church,
and which no longer permit it, except by a thorough and
courageous reformation, to fulfil its great mission for the
unity of the world. All the Churches are imperfect,
and consequently no one of them is sufficient to itself
All of them, in order that they may rise tov/ards the
perfect Church, have need each of the rest, while they
all have need of God.
The raovement that is drawing the rainds of men to
ward each other, has its origin in regions deeper yet. It
stands related to a raore intimate acquaintance with
the laws of human thought, and (if I might use the
expression) with the very nature of truth, so far as it is
given to man to hold the truth upon the earth. Doubt
less the truth is really contained in the human mind ;
but it is there, like a guest that is greater than the
tabernacle of his sojourn, like a Divinity more august
and holy than the temple in which it resides. Truth
cannot be narrowly defined. The raost necessary and
the most certain of all truths, religious truth, is ^t the
same time the least susceptible of precisq. definition.
It resists all formulas ; it does not suffer itself to be
shut up in our theological systems nor in our ecclesias
tical institutions, but granting to us no more of itself
than that portion needed by us for the wants of the
journey, suffering itself to "be seen, as once to Moses
and to Elijah, only "by the hinder parts," and with
flying glimpses, it draws us onward, with our thoughts
and doings, towards that higher worid which is its abode,
and is to be our own.
Q 2

2 2S CA THOLIC REFORM.
I pray you, do not misunderstand me. I do not
disparage the value of religious forms. Though im
perfect, they are legitimate, they are useful, they are
even necessary. Without them neither teaching nor
fellow.ship would be possible. But I assert that the
more deeply we enter into the truth and the life, the
less we are attached, or at least the less we are chained,
to formulas ; and, abiding faithful to the word uttered in
our ear, which is the outward organ of faith, we listen,
like St. Paul, to those secret inner words which it is
permitted to every soul to hear, which it is forbidden to
any mouth to repeat—" unspeakable words which it is
not lawful for man to utter." ^
Thus it is that there grows up, above all the Churches,
though not outside of them, a communion of those
minds and hearts furthest advanced towards the future,
while at the same time they are most loyal to the past.
To such as these, — while they wait for a completer
union, for which the present is not yet ripe, but which
it is theirs only to desire and prepare for from afar, —
that is already fulfilled of which the apostle spoke :
" The unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."
It remains for me to point out to you, in the two
countries which men represent to be the very seat of
the antagonism of the Churches, the providential raeans
of religious reconciliation.
It has been often said that France was Catholic by
the requirements of its logic and its temperament, at
least as much as by the traditions of its history. I
acknowledge it freely, and am proud of it, both, for my
¦^ 2 Corinthians xii. 4.

APPENDIX. 229

Church and for my country. But it must not be for
gotten that it is this same France which through Calvin
has given to Protestantisra its most original, perhaps its
most characteristic form, — that form which is unques
tionably the most popular with the Anglo-Saxon race.
It raust be remembered, also, that Catholic France it
self has impressed the mark of its own distinctive
genius upon its fidelity to the ancient Church, and that
in respect to religion as well as in respect to race, it has
long been a temperate zone between the south and the
north of Europe. In the person of Bossuet as well as
in that of Gerson, with mingled independence and
reverence, it has planted against the encroachments of
the central power the barriers which that power will
vainly strive to overleap. In the person of Descartes,
it has opened to free inquiry methods at once bolder
and safer than those of Luther. And in the admirable
school of Port Royal, with the learning of Arnaud, the
tenderness and purity of Racine, the austere genius of
Pascal, it has lifted up the immortal protest of the
Christian conscience against those systems by which, at
one stroke, morality is corrupted and liberty oppressed.
I have just been speaking of the protests of con
science. It was from one of these— excessive, as it
seems to me, but grand and earnest— that Protes
tantism came forth. Its native land was Germany.
" The German," wrote Charles the Fifth to the Pope,
who could not understand him, "the German is a
patient creature, who will carry anything but what
weighs on his conscience." From the burdened con
science of Luther— from his torn and burning heart—

230 CATHOLIC REFORM.
went forth the cry that woke the world, — that cry the
echo of which disturbs the world to-day. In Germany,
too. Protestantism has had its most coraplete develop
ment in the two directions necessary to every religious
movement, and which, often opposed to each other in
their progress, always end in mutual reconciliation —
I mean learning and devotion. Yes, learning in its
most advanced form, adventurous, astray sometimes, but
honest, profound, productive, has had its home in those
universities, unrivalled, I make bold to say, even in Eng
land. And devotion in its most practical and most touch
ing form, has had its sanctuary in the hearts of those
educated, simple-hearted populations, that regt from their
daily toil in peace, to read their Bible and their Schiller,
and go to battle, as in this war, singing the verses of
their old psalms under the pines of their old forests.
But alongside of this Protestantism, to which I
have wished to render all due honour, Germany has not
ceased to cherish a Catholicism not less enlightened,
not less honest, not less liberal. It manifested itself
in the Council of the Vatican by that opposition,
triumphant in its apparent defeat, to which it had given
some of its strongest supporters. But it is not in any
Bishop that this Catholicism is personified, but in a
simple priest, an old man still young in mind and heart
under the weight of years and experience, a patriarch
of German erudition, as it has so well been said, but
a patriarch of conscience, no less ; one who, not less
great in character than in intellect, compels those to
respect who have not learned to love him. I need not
say that I speak of Dollinger.

APPENDIX. 231
There is no country, it may be added, in which the
two communions have lived together in relations raore
tolerant, raore kind, I might almost say, more fraternal.
I came raysdf, last spring, upon a most touching
picture of this in the dty of Hdddberg. Side by side
in the sarae temple the two rites were celebrated, the
Lutheran hyrans raaking response to the Latin liturgy,
Cathohcism and Protestantisra scarce divided by a par
tition wall. My heart thrilled in ray bosom, and I whis
pered to rayself, "the hour coraeth when in point of
Christian faith we shall all be Catholic— when against
error and unrighteousness, we shall all be Protestant."
Thus have I set before you, gentleraen, this war —
this v/ar of destiny, as sorae have called it, — this war
into which blind or raahgnant rainds have been concen
trating whatever of hateful passion could be derived
from earth or from above the earth. We have found
excuse for its existence neither in its earthward nor in
its heavenward aspect, neither in the political interests
of the people, nor in their religious sentiments, and we
have reprobated it at once in the name of reason and in
the name of Christianity. And yet is it to have no
other result than all this streaming blood, these smoking
ruins .' Is it to stand in history a hideous inutility .'
The very thought is an insult to that all-wise and all-
merciful God whose care is over all His works, who
knows how to bring good out of evil, and never suffers
men to introduce into His universe any disorder what
ever, except that He Himself may derive frora it a raore
perfect and raore stable order.

232 CA THOLIC REFORM.
Yes ! the providential results of this guilty war
begin already to rise before ray view. Bear with me
yet a raoraent, while I bid thera welcorae, in your name
as well as my own.
And first, as affecting Germany, the result is the
creation of a political organism in harmony with her
vast intellectual and moral development Germany has
been like a great soul imprisoned in an impotent body.
This ill-assorted union is ended now, and it is because
we know the soul of Germany that we are not afraid
of what course she may pursue in time to come.
And as for France, gentlemen, it might seera that she
has gained nothing, but lost everything. Dear, dear,
unhappy France ! As we behold her stretched upon
her own soil, in the convulsions of her heroic agony, we
might be tempted to repeat, amid our tears, the word
once spoken over another victim — "Finis Polonies!"
But no ! it is not the end, it is the beginning ! Out of
calamity, beyond all our fears, comes forth deliverance
beyond all our hopes. Rescued from a government
which was bringing us to ruin, but which we ourselves
had twice sustained by acclamation, we are going now
to shake ourselves free of this alternation between
dictators and demagogues, between the Convention
and the Empire. We are going to break off from the
bad traditions of our great Revolution, and to return
to its legitimate traditions, and fulfil, under the form
of a Conservative Republic or a Limited Monarchy —
two names for the same thing — those promises so bind
ing and yet so long deferred.
In that apparent prosperity which for twenty years

APPENDIX. 233

past has sheltered so much of servitude and immorality,
France had become an evil example to other nations,
and was on the direct road to draw them along with
itself to universal perdition. It was high time for
that scandal to be taken out of the way. This was
the prayer that was going up to heaven from truly
patriotic and truly Christian hearts. Suffer me here
to remind you that I myself was more than once the
mouth-piece of it "I will lay bare" — I said these
words in the pulpit of Notre Dame — " I will lay bare
those ulcers which are so obstinately concealed. Yes,
while luxury is consuming the nation's vitals, while amifl
this increasing dissoluteness abandoned and shame
less creatures lift their heads on every side, hke worms
upon the corpse on which they are battening, there is
engendered another brood of death and corruption that
attacks not the heart but the brain— the sophists, cor
rupters at once of the public reason and of the lan
guage which is its instrument. , . . But hark, now !— the
foe is at our gates ! our honour insulted, our indepen
dence threatened ! If all this must needs be in order
to snatch us from the hands of those who are our ruin,
God will grant us even this, because He loves us and
is wiUing to save us in spite of ourselves." ^
Well, God has saved us ; and for my part, I do not
feel that I have the right to reckon with Him as to the
fearful means which He has thought best to use. Thanks
be to Thee, thou God of mercy and of righteousness !
1 The whole of the passage on the moral uses of war, from which these
sentences are quoted, is contained in the Notre Dame "Conferences,"
delivered in Notre Dame in 1867, on " Christianity and Civil Society."

234 CATHOLIC REFORM.
Thou hast given back France to herself Thou alone
couldst know what cost of tears, what cost of blood
was needfed for this great redemption !
And finally, gentlemen, Rome is free ! This also is
ray country — the country of my soul ; and the joy of
its deliverance breaks in like a ray of happy light upon
the darkness of this hour. Yes ! I have seen the Tem
poral Power too close at hand, to share these blind
regrets that follow its departure. I have done my best,
if not to love, at least to respect it I thought myself
in duty bound to do so. My conscience was stronger
than my judgraent The Teraporal Power has had its
legitimate, perhaps its necessary, place. In the ancient
order of things, it had its days of prosperity and even
of glory. But in its later form, it had ceased to be
anything but a decrepid system, destined to crumble
in ruin upon itself, the moment the outward props
should be withdrawn.
All hail, then, to Roman liberty ! Liberty, I know, is
only a means, and not an end. It may abide without
result ; it may conceive and bring forth death. But I
have faith in the use that Rome will make of liberty.
The liberty of Rome is to be the giving back of Italy,
also, to herself, that she may be mistress at last of her
own great destinies. The liberty of Rome is to be the
uplifting of the Latin races. The liberty of Rome is
to be something greater and better than all this : it is
to be the Reformation of the Church.

LONDON : H. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOK, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL.

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