Chapter IV: Civil Tolerance of the Present Day

Summary : The policy of abstract principles inaugurated by the French Revolution compels us to change the order of our argument.

No man can escape from his surroundings : the French leaders of the end of the eighteenth century could neither overrule the circumstances nor escape from their influence : though they submitted to that influence unconsciously and perhaps in spite of themselves. Imbued as they were with abstract ideas, they despised the warnings of history ; revolutionary in their ideas, they did not care to progress according to traditional methods, but to break with the past entirely, and clear the ground for the erection of a new social edifice, first for France, and then for the whole world.

Up to this time doctrines have been deduced from the facts, and have been a sort of logical repetition of the facts ; but now the doctrines are to be established first, and the facts to follow them.

It seems, therefore, more convenient this time to reverse our usual order, and give to theories precedence of facts ; instead of finding the doctrine in the facts, we shall find the facts in the doctrines.

Summary : New principle of tolerance inscribed in the declaration of the rights of man.—Real intolerance.— Its victims.

In proportion as religious discord was accentuated, and the discussion was transferred from Catholicism to Christianity, and then to all positive religions, the doctors of modern tolerance widened their conclusions, in order to give free passage to the evergrowing flood of novelties. But as they thought some kind of understanding on the subject of religion an essential condition of social cohesion, they did not relieve the governing authorities from the necessity of considering their duties towards God. They remained uncompromising Deists.

The Revolution bases its tolerance on what was not an additional concession, but a new principle, derived from the nature of man alone. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, voted on August 23, 1789, and left as a last legacy by the National Assembly in its Constitution of September 14, 1791, contains these conditions : Article 4. “ Liberty is the power of doing what we will, so long as it does not injure another ; the only limits of each man’s natural right are such as secure the same rights to others ; these limits are determinable only by the law.” Article 5. “ The law can forbid only such actions as are mischievous to society—[What the law does not forbid, it permits].” Article 10. “ No one can be molested for his religious opinions, provided they are not subversive of public order.” Article 11. “ The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man ; therefore every citizen is allowed freedom of speech, of writing, and printing, but he will have to answer for any abuse of that liberty in cases determined by the law.”

Here, then, we have free opinion, and even its public expression, always authorized in principle. Founded on human liberty,¹ on an individual liberty considered without reference to its social effects, the idea of right implies, not a man’s power to do what he will, but to think and say what he will. The vigilance of authority is restricted to the effectual preservation of exterior order ; the crime of opinion is erased from the penal code.

¹ Fouillée, L’Idée Moderne du Droit en France (Revue des Deux Mondes, February 15 and April 1, 1878).

But the spirit of intransigentism and persecution took back with usury from the Church and from Catholics all that it conceded to the individual and to heterodoxy. The National Assembly, filled with the idea of its own omnipotence, even going so far as to claim the right to change the religion of the country,² created a schism by the civil constitution of the clergy ; and in less than a year, from November 10, 1793, to May 7, 1794, they abolished Catholicism, set up a goddess of Reason, and suppressed public worship ; then there was another change, and the worship of the Supreme Being was made obligatory in France.

² A principle affirmed by the Convention.

And who can count the victims of this persecution ? Taine’s figures are sufficiently elo-quent.¹ He tells us that at the end of the Terror the list of exiles and fugitives for political or religious reasons included more than 150,000 names.2 “ Without counting more than 40,000 temporary gaols, there were 1,200 prisons full to overflowing, with more than 200 prisoners in each.”³ “ A hundred and seventy-eight tribunals, forty of them moving from department to department, were busy in all parts of the country, passing sentences of death, which were executed at once, on the spot. Children of seven years, five years, four years old, were condemned : the father was condemned for the son, and the son for the father.”4 Besides the 17,000 persons who died on the scaffold, there were more than 2,000 shot at Toulon. There were the drownings ; more than 4,800 (men, women, and children) perished at Nantes. There were the murders by the mob ; about 10,000 were killed without trial in the province of Anjou alone. Add to these details the unspeakable horrors of captivity. “ We may reasonably estimate that the number of the dead of all ages and both sexes comes very nearly to half a million.”5

¹ Taine, Révolution Française, t. 2. His figures have been disputed by M. Aulard in his work, Taine : Historien de la Révolution Française, but he gives us no estimate of his own that we can compare with Taine’s. As to M. Aulard himself, see the Correspondant of March 25 and April 10, 1909 ; the articles of M. Cochin, La Crise de l’Histoire Révolutionnaire; the Revue Pratique d’Apologétique of November 15, 1909 ; and the bibliography of Questions Actuelles, January 15, 1910. M. Cochin declares that “ Taine’s work will remain as a model of impartial history.” 2 Ibid., p. 383.

³ Ibid. 4 Ibid., pp. 388-393. 5 Ibid., p. 392.

This was the baptism which Liberty received from the French Revolution !

Article II. Doctrines since the French

Revolution.

i. Doctrines of Tolerance.

Summary : On the rights of man an attempt has been made to found an absolute tolerance, which abolishes the crime of opinion.—This theory attracts certain founders of Belgian independence and optimist Liberals like Jules Simon.—How religious liberty is understood.—Catholic Liberalism.

The French Revolution, with its contradictory theories of the individual independence of man and the universal supremacy of the State, was a school of licence and oppression. Its tolerance and its sectarianism have both found admirers and followers. Let us speak first of its tolerance.

There have been men who believed, in good faith, that the Declaration of the Rights of Man was the absolute embodiment of complete and universal tolerance. The true formula which man had vainly sought in God, society, the Church, and the State, he had found at once when he consulted his natural rights and liberty. He had within himself what he had hitherto searched for too high or too far off.

This is what men thought and wrote, and in their joy at the discovery they added : “ Henceforth there is no need to discuss the limits of tolerance or extend its boundaries ; it has no limits, its empire is infinite ; it promises liberty to every opinion, with the serene assurance of a Sovereign who has no fear of being dethroned. The community will be content with regulating outward acts, and will respect the autonomy of opinions; it will even encourage their development in the interests of intellectual progress.

This distinction between acts and opinions¹ was specially attractive to some of the founders of Belgian independence. In a pamphlet which M. Damoiseaux² calls the charter of unionist theories, De Potter declares that the intellect is essentially free, and concludes : “ Everything may be thought, or spoken, or published, or taught; but nothing may be done that the law forbids.”³

¹ M. Jordan, in his articles already quoted insists on the opposition between this modern idea and the old ; and he therefore rejects the explanation which Mgr. Douais offers of the criminal procedure in the matter of heresy (Annales de Phil. Chrét., t. 159, 1909-1910, pp. 22 sqq.).

² La Formation de la Société Politique Belge, p. 20.

³ L’Union des Catholiques et des Libéraux dans les Pays- Bas, June, 1829.

Such was also the language of optimist Liberalism ; these are the words of Jules Simon, who was one of its most distinguished representatives : “ To compel the acceptance of a doctrine by violence or undue influence is to degrade man and to disobey the will of God, who has created us intelligent and free.”⁴ “ But what I think, I have the right to say and to teach. God has given me the power of speech to express my thoughts, and has put into my mind the righteous desire to share with others the treasure of truth.”⁵

⁴ La Liberté de Conscience, Fourth Lesson, p. 254.

⁵ Ibid.

In asserting their right to think and say and write whatever they chose, even in religious matters, the tolerationists tended to substitute liberty for tolerance ; they declared themselves in favour of religious liberty without any restriction. But it must be remarked that their idea of liberty was not the liberty of a religion, but the liberty of individuals to profess any religion or none at all; to practise the religion they professed, or practically to deny the articles of its creed; to speak and work for religion, or to attack and destroy it.

Thus all alike, orthodox and heterodox, believers and unbelievers, were invited to enter into a friendly rivalry, in which truth and merit would have the opportunity to show their pre-eminence.

Dazzled by this unreal vision, struck by the force of the current which had swept away privileges, and disgusted by the annoyances to which the Church had been subjected under the old régime, Catholics also raised with confidence the standard of modern liberties. The Church was to give up her privileges in return for the liberty which was to be secured to her by the common law. This was the plan formulated by Catholic Liberalism, not as being expedient in certain countries, which would have been reasonable, but as generally good—at least, in our own time;¹ and there was its exaggeration and its mistake. One of its favourite maxims was the one which Cavour repeated as he lay dying—A free Church in a free State. We need not give here the whole gamut of its various tones from that of Lamennais, Montalembert, and Lacordaire, which was Catholic first and Liberal afterwards, to that which has so little religion left in it as to be hardly distinguishable from sceptical unbelief.

¹ See Propositions 55, 77, and 80, condemned by the Syllabus.

2. Doctrines of Intolerance.

Summary : Principle of intolerance contained in the French Revolution, and affirmed by Defacqz.—Moderate men are divided between two systems : the separatist system, favourable to the liberty of the Church ; and the jurisdictional or State system, which favours religious indifference rather than liberty of religion.— Opinions of Ruffini and Friedberg.—The sectarians take their motto from Gambetta, Le cléricalisme, voilà l’ennemi.—Meaning of this expression.—War on the Church in the name of tolerance, patriotism, and intellectual liberty.—Troops enrolled for this war.— The religion of unbelief.—Evidence of the persecuting irreligious spirit.

The very tolerance inspired by the French Revolution led to intolerance and persecution. No doubt it gave to the individual full liberty to think and say what he pleased, but that was all: beyond that it recognized nothing as sacred ; it gave up everything else to the civil law, the supreme judge of all that was demanded by the welfare of the community and the coexistence of liberties.

Defacqz said this in so many words in the National Congress of 1830 : “ It is necessary that all forms of worship should be independent, but it is necessary also that the civil law should preserve all its force— nay, more, that the temporal authority should take precedence of the spiritual authority, and to some extent absorb it, because the civil law, being made in the interests of all, must prevail over that which is for the interest of a limited number. . . . Religious liberty is the first necessity of man, but it must be restrained, like all other liberties, for the good of the community.”¹

¹ See Huyttens, Discussions du Congrès, t. 1, pp. 587 and 608.

Since religious worship is organized and practised by the community, since by universal consent the Catholic Church possesses the most admirable and most complete of all social structures, the question at once arises, What attitude will the temporal authority adopt towards religious associations, and especially towards the Church ? Will it be friendly, neutral, or hostile ?

The upholders of the dogma of tolerance are divided into two camps—that of the separatists and that of the jurisdictionals.

The separatist system, which prevails in the United States of North America, insists on separation and self-government. Leaving all religions to themselves, it gives them complete liberty of organization and expansion. As different States rule different territories, while each preserves its own independence, it permits alongside the State the independent existence of a spiritual power, which is called upon to rule in the domain of conscience, into which the secular authority has no right of entrance; and an agreement that mixed questions shall be decided by amicable arrangement appears as equitable and normal as the conclusion of international treaties to settle questions of territory or frontiers.

But the heirs of the French Revolution do not approve of this method of government, which leaves to the Church a position of independence and honour, and permits her to hope for progress, and perhaps even for the peaceful union of all classes of society at the foot of the Cross of Christ. The State, as they understand it, by an insolent assertion of its supremacy, by the arbitrary rupture of concordats, by vexatious legislation which shows contempt for Christian traditions in the matter of education and the religious life, will provoke and multiply conflicts which it will settle at its own good pleasure, always complaining that it is maligned or misunderstood. Even the protection of individual liberty which they entrust to the State leads to persecution. The State, maintaining its attitude of official indifference, will begin by refusing the least sign of sympathy or encouragement to a positive religion. “ From the cradle to the grave,” writes Friedberg, “ the private individual should be able to pass his life without any obstacle or any encouragement of a religious character coming from the State.”¹ Later on, a constant care will be exercised that there shall be no interference with the liberty of irreligion ; and among the things that are considered as interfering with it will be the success of any religious body.

¹ See Die Grenzen zwischen Staat und Kirche, und die Garantien gegen deren Verletzung, l. 3 ; Tübingen, 1872. According to Friedberg, the words express not so much a wish as a fact. Ruffini, his translator, goes farther.

Let us listen to the criticisms of M. Ruffini, whom we have often quoted, on the American separatist system. He is an Italian professor, an opponent of revolutionary violence, and a great preacher of tolerance, and he says : “ In these last years the separatist system has turned to the advantage of those Churches whose organization is the strongest, and whose propaganda is the most active ; but it has not been of so much service to the religious liberty of the individual, especially to that liberty which takes the form of unbelief. Rationalism in general, and scientific free thought in particular, are wanting in organization ; and for that very reason the separatist system is not advantageous to them, and it leaves them isolated and defenceless against the different organized religious communities, which, under the protection of the separatist system, are too well off to display their spirit of intolerance.”¹

¹ La Libertà Religiosa, pp. 17, 18.

So, then, according to these professors of tolerance, the victory of religion over unbelief, even if won by peaceful means, is an interference with the free choice to believe or not to believe, and the State is bound to maintain in its society a well- balanced mixture of believers and unbelievers.

The view of an advocate of the jurisdictional system, Dr. Emile Friedberg, who died in December, 1910,² will give us still further information on this system of tolerance. After definitely refusing to allow the liberty of the Church, as guaranteed by the Belgian Constitution, and recognizing in the law alone the right of regulating the position of the Church, he formulates the following propositions : It is the duty of the State to banish the Jesuits ; the law of marriage, the cemeteries, and the relief of the poor, should all be secularized ; foreign members of religious Orders should be expelled from the country ; others should be forbidden to teach ; no convent should be allowed to be opened without previous authorization ; the nomination of Bishops and beneficed clergy should be subject to the “ exsequatur ” of the State ; the State will punish any violent language used in preaching; it will forbid the Church to excommunicate any person ;¹ and it may require a certain standard of education among the clergy. A special organization will watch over the rights of the State, with power to inflict punishments on the clergy and withdraw their civil mission.

² Op. cit., book 3. He was professor at Tübingen when he wrote.

¹ This prohibition will appear strange. Friedberg justifies it by a reminder of the civil effects formerly attached to this ecclesiastical penalty. This aversion to ecclesiastical censures is traditional among the State jurists of Germany.

At this rate, the pretended liberty given by common law costs the Church as much or more than her ancient privileges, and the State does not even hold an equal balance between religion and unbelief ; it must take care to prevent the disappearance of the latter, but not of the former.

If the Revolution which professes tolerance does not secure to Catholics the liberty of the Church, nor, consequently, of their religion, of which the Church is an essential form, what are we to expect of a Revolution which declares its hostility to the Church ?

Since 1789 there has been a constant movement of opinion in the direction of a sectarian negation of religion ; it is made manifest in facts which leave no doubt as to its purpose.

The motto of the sect is contained in the famous declaration of Gambetta, “ Le cléricalisme, voilà l’ennemi ”; and, be it understood, this clericalism which he describes as “ the enemy ” does not mean the conduct of fanatical or encroaching clergy: it means nothing less than the Catholic Church. It is she who is to be attacked. But the name of the Church is held in affection by the people, and therefore a word is chosen which excites their aversion : the mention of the clergy serves to remind them of three unpopular things—aristocracy, privileges, and authority; and clericalism means the immoderate influence and the tyrannical rule of the clergy. Once more we realize how the art of deceiving people by a war-cry has always been familiar to the enemies of the Church.

Moreover, irreligion does not come into the lists openly and under its own name. At one time war is declared in the name of the rights of the State : the supremacy of the State must be defended against Catholics who dispute it; its independence must be protected against the threats and intrigues of the clergy. Under some such pretext as this Waldeck Rousseau attacked the religious congregations. At another time the impulse is given to the attack in the name of tolerance, which, like all idols, protects only those who worship it. “ Many have said, Tolerance is due only to the tolerant: or, Only the liberty of those is to be respected who proclaim their respect for liberty.’¹ At another time we are told that patriotism revolts against the obedience which religious promise to foreign superiors ; at another the reproach is levelled against all Catholics who acknowledge the authority of the Pope. It has even been said that national unity is alarmed by the antagonistic education given to two classes of youth. Sometimes the campaign takes the form of a war against slavery ; men’s intellects must be freed from the oppressive and ill-omened yoke of clerical servitude.

¹ Fonsegrive, Bulletin de la Semaine, December 21, 1910. Fuhrmann (De Tolerantia Religiosæ Effectibus Civilibus, c. 1 fine) had already repeated a phrase of Larræus (Hist. d’Angleterre, t. 4, p. 53) : “ The Roman religion becomes intolerable by its own intolerance.”

“And what,” say the enemies of the Church, “may we hope to gain by our action?” The triumph of the secular spirit, the consolidation of the victories of Modernism, the destruction of antiquated ideas, progress, civilization, the Republic. They have a string of high-sounding words to flatter the vanity of people who think themselves learned because they swear by science; or smart politicians because they read a newspaper ; or men of good taste because they follow the fashion; or artisans of progress because they have helped to demolish some institution of the past. In the van of the army marches a small band of noisy fanatics, followed by a crowd of weak, credulous people, easily gulled by their leaders, and allured by the hope of something new, some advantage to themselves. They have no thought but of their own interests ; many of them cynically admit it, or, at least, confess it to themselves secretly ; others put forward loftier motives, which sometimes deceive even themselves ; and thus it is that men foment tyranny, while they preach universal liberty.

But how can a thing which is entirely negative, like theistic¹ or atheistic unbelief, become a principle of intolerance ? It takes that form when it no longer denotes a state of mind, the situation of a person who has ceased to believe, but when it becomes itself a faith, the Jacobin faith, as Taine said,¹—when it excites a domineering ambition,² or when silly vanity is made the foundation of obstinate dogmatism. “ There are nowadays,” arrogantly exclaimed Auguste Comte, “ but two camps—the one retrograde and anarchist, which still retains a confused idea of the supremacy of God ; the other organic and progressive, systematically devoted to the service of Humanity.”³ In whom or in what do these people place their confidence ? Not in God, the Author of revelation, but in humanity, groping its way in the dark; not in the Master, who communicates what He sees, but in ignorant man, seeking to discover something new ; a general and indefinite confidence in movement and progress, in scientific inquiry—in short (to use a fashionable word), in evolution. For authority is substituted an arbitrary theory, which is not proved, and never can be proved : man is sufficient for himself ; there is nothing above him ; all things converge towards the great notion of humanity.⁴ This creed has but one dogma—the relativity of our knowledge and the perpetual “fieri ” of truth. It is called humanism, inasmuch as it declares itself all for man, without leaving anything to God ; it is called laicism, inasmuch as it is at war against the Church. There is only one name to describe the party that professes this faith—the anti-Church.

¹ The Proceedings of the Constituent Assembly record that the Declaration of the Rights of Man is made ‘ ‘ in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being.”

¹ La Révolution, l. 4, c. 2, i. ; t. 3, p. 393.

² M. Et. Lamy thus sums up the career of one of the revolutionaries : “ To proscribe God, because the existence of God would imply the existence of duty : that was the essential work of André Dumont ” (“ La Psychologie d’un Révolutionnaire : Le Conventionnel André Dumont,” Corre- spondant, April 25, 1910, p. 377).

³ Système de Politique Positive, t. 1, p. 398. Far from showing us progress in order and devotion, experience rather confirms the Mémoires of Barruel, who saw in Jacobinism, execrable as it was, the product of three successive sects— Les sophistes de l’incrédulité et de l’impiété, who formed les sophistes de la rébellion, to whom succeeded les sophistes de l’impiété et de l’anarchie.

⁴ Comte, Cours de Philosophie Positive, t. 6, p. 880.

This religion, which is built on very weak foundations, bolsters up its pretensions by the very audacity of its contempt for others. “ To believe in an absolute truth,” says M. Payot,¹ “ denotes an unhealthy state of mind.” The Grand Orient of France declares that “ all our religious practices are the most serious obstacle to the intellectual and moral development and perfection of humanity.”² As the Christians of the fourth and fifth centuries ridiculed pagan superstitions, so do the adherents of anti-Church turn our Christian faith to derision ; they think themselves superior in wisdom, and declare that they are certain to conquer and to accomplish the great work of society, “ the elimination of Catholicism.”³

¹ Le Volume, December 3, 1910.

² Bulletin du Grand Orient, Fifty-fifth Year, pp. 308, 309.

³ The President of the French Academy, M. Et. Lamy, in the discourse at the reception of Mgr. Duchesne (1911) expressed in these words the predominant idea of the present Government of France.

Article III. Facts since the French

Revolution.

Summary : The jurisdictional system prevails throughout the whole of Europe, except in Belgium.—Decrease of intolerance among different religious bodies.—The anti-Church party wages war against the Christian religion.—This war stealthy and often disguised, but implacable, as honest unbelievers themselves admit.

At the end of the bloody tragedy of the Terror, French Catholics at first enjoyed a certain amount of religious liberty, on which a hostile power looked with a jealous eye. Napoleon gave back to religion its churches, its ministers, and its public honours, but without recognizing the rights of the Church or giving her full liberty. Instead of this, he inaugurated the jurisdictional system, which continued to prevail in Germany, Austria, and the Latin countries. This system gives the Church some dark days and some days of comparative peace, according to the countries and the men who govern them. The civil power may be friendly and just, or it may be vexatious and unsympathetic ; it may even descend to persecution, as in the German Kulturkampf and the last years of the French Concordat. The weapon of oppression remains in the hands of the State, which makes use of it according to the necessities of politics, sometimes to divert attention from questions which might be inconvenient to the men in power. There is one country in Europe which forms an exception to this rule. The Belgian Constitution, while freely granting to its citizens all modern liberties, gives liberty also to the Church, and does not exact any servitude in return for its good-will towards religion.

During the whole of the nineteenth century the conflicts between the different Christian bodies became less bitter, and gave place to a decisive struggle between religion and unbelief. We have seen that at the close of the preceding period Protestant bigotry relaxed its severity to some extent, and Catholics were treated more equitably in non- Catholic countries. A fact unprecedented in history was the publication by Pope Leo XIII. of an Apostolic letter addressed to the Princes and people of the whole world,¹ even to non-Catholics. Catholics live in perfect content in the great North American Republic, where the separation of Church and State coexists with friendly relations and real sympathy.

¹ Letter Præclara Gratulationis, June 20, 1894. Epistola Apostolica principibus populisque universis.

But in France the anti-Church party establishes a system of persecution worthy of the days of Julian the Apostate, and employs all the resources of the State for the purposes of its campaign. Practising Catholics are systematically excluded from all employment and offices of profit; official education inculcates, if not hatred, at least indifference, or we might even say contempt, for religion. Liberty of association is legalised, and at the same time the religious congregations are dissolved : their goods are confiscated, and the sale produces less than half of the milliard promised to the working classes ; their schools are closed, and Frenchmen do not know whether to-morrow liberty of instruction will not be entirely destroyed.

The young Portuguese Republic follows the French one, or, rather, endeavours to outstrip it, in the haste with which it multiplies its laws and decrees of persecution and plunder against the Church.

In Belgium anticlericals do not hesitate to enter into alliance with republicans in their impatience to return to power ; and henceforth they claim a privileged position in the State : they are to define the schools with which Catholics must be satisfied, and they resent the idea of equality as an insult.

When the Bloc was in power in France, it could not restrain a [woe to the conquered] ; the new Government of Portugal flatters itself that under its system of laws it will have made an end of Christianity within two hundred years. This is frank ; but the leaders of the anti-Church party generally endeavour to disguise their intentions, and even when attacking the Church, they pretend to be acting on the defensive.¹ Read their newspapers, listen to their speeches ; they are continually obliged, they say, to resist the monstrous demands of Catholics,² to answer their provocations,³ to put down their treasonable campaigns ;⁴ above all, they never forget the advice of Voltaire : “ Lie always.” Excelling in the art of falsifying figures and distorting facts when they are in power, they pose as models of forbearance ; when they are not in power, as victims, weary of injustice, “ fighting against a Government of oppression in order to obtain liberty of conscience.”¹ It is painful to have to record these petty vexations, but, alas ! the mask of liberty deceives so many credulous people ; and we cannot help remembering the words of Madame Roland as she went to the guillotine : “ O Liberty ! how many crimes are committed in thy name !”

¹ Notice the artful language of M. Ed. Petit (Moïse Klein), Inspector-General of Public Instruction, in his Annual Report for 1910 : " Popular education, which ought to be a matter outside and above the strife of parties, is obliged to live in a state of armed defence, and resist the offensive war that is made upon it without any provocation, and though it maintains the neutrality which, both in the school and after the school, is imposed as a law of conscience ” (Questions Actuelles, t. 3, pp. 18, 19).

² Like that of not paying twice over for the schools : once for schools which Catholics cannot accept, and once for their own.

³ Every Catholic manifestation is a provocation.

⁴ Like the so-called campaign of the scholastic manuals.

¹ Declaration of the Liberal Left in 1911, when making an alliance with the Socialists.

Nevertheless, even among non-Catholics there are many honest and intelligent observers who see and declare plainly on which side are the victims and on which side the persecutors.

“ For thirty years,” says a syndicalist Socialist, M. G. Sorel, “ the Republican Government has been dominated by an anti-Church party, which follows a policy generally cunning,² sometimes brutal, and always fanatical in its desire to destroy Christianity in France. This anti-Church party, victorious to-day, hopes to profit by the unexpected success it has obtained since the Dreyfus campaign ; it considers that the system of indifference will be a failure so long as the Church retains any influence worth mentioning : its great desire is to abolish the regular clergy, as its leaders have reason to believe that the secular clergy will not be sufficient to maintain the Catholic religion.”¹

² “ For instance, the famous scholastic neutrality was only a trick to lull Catholic vigilance to sleep ; to-day the official representatives of the Government declare that the great end to be pursued in the primary schools is the suppression of religious faith ” (see the discourse delivered by Aristide Briand at Angers in 1906, before the League of Education).

¹ Réflexions sur la Violence, p. 398.

Article IV. Doctrines and Facts examined. Summary : Examination of the principle of absolute tolerance, founded on man.—This principle is false.— Refutation of objections.—It does not give liberty to religion.—It protects only unbelief.—The suppression of the crime of opinion is more apparent than real.—It does not seem to be final.—Testimony of V. Jacobs.—The French Revolution, fruitless for good, has seen its principle of State intolerance much more applied than its principle of individual tolerance.

The Revolution sought in the rights of the human individual the support, the chief and only foundation, of the liberties that it proclaimed. It promised on that ground absolute, universal, perpetual tolerance, and this tolerance was in practice expressed by the suppression of the crime of opinion.

These few lines sum up the philosophy and the political principles of the French Revolution—the principles, be it understood, of all its liberties ; for there remains still the principle of all its servitudes, the omnipotence of the State, the result of universal suffrage.

These principles may be examined in themselves, in their abstract truth, and then in their application and working.

“ Man has the right to think what he pleases and say what he pleases ; but he has not the right to do what he pleases.” Is this proposition true ? On what evidence is it founded ? On the physical liberty of man ? Jules Simon suggests this in the passage we have quoted above (p. 222). But man is as free to act as he is to speak and publish. Why should physical liberty give me the right to say anything I choose, while the physical liberty of my actions does not give me the right to do anything I choose ? Is it because my actions may do harm, but my words cannot ? Is this distinction sustainable ? May I not, by speaking and persuading, pervert a man’s mind, and incite him to do criminal acts ? Or even without directly inciting him to them, may I not sow the fatal seed of evil in his heart and his intellect ?¹ Is not that doing harm to a man, perhaps ruining his whole life ? Is not that an injury to society ?

¹ The annals of the Courts of Justice give many examples of this.

Is it because, in preventing what is evil, we attack the liberty of what is good, the principle of free judgment ? This fear of Fouillée² is unfounded. Since when does a good action cease to be free because a bad one is legally forbidden ? Since when does the law which punishes the thief lessen the merit of the honest man ? And once more, why should restraints on speech and the diffusion of ideas alone have inconvenient results ? Whatever any authority may say, my inward opinion remains always free, and this opinion influences my actions as well as my words. Such is the reality.

² “ The liberty of evil, misguided liberty, looked at in its results, would not deserve much attention ; but the principle of free judgment is so noble, the object it may and should attain is so sublime, that such a faculty cannot be restrained except so far as is strictly necessary to social life ” (“ L’Idée Moderne du Droit en France,” Revue des Deux Mondes, August 1, 1878 ; Summary of V. Jacobs’s article).

Can the prohibition of acts alone be justified by this other reason, that acts alone interfere with the liberty of another person ? Even this statement is incorrect, for a man may be coerced by language of ridicule or temptation, by threats and misrepresentation, as well as by physical constraint.

Can it be said that the liberty to say and teach anything whatever compensates by its social advantages for its very real disadvantages—that, like the spear of Achilles, “ liberty of opinion heals the wounds it causes ”?¹ There is nothing to prove that it possesses this remarkable virtue ; and if such is the reason, we are no longer concerned to appeal to an undeniable right of man, but to discuss the social use of a liberty. That is an old way of looking at the question, and if we take that point of view, we take away from the Revolution all credit for invention.

¹ Frère Orban, in the discussion of the law on the conferring of academical degrees (Annales Parlementaires, Chambre, 1875-1876, p. 546).

To come back to the question. Either the will of man and the liberty of man have some law, or they have none : if they have none, neither a man’s speech nor his actions can be contrary to law ; if they have a law, a man may offend against it by the manner in which he forms and expresses his opinion, as well as by the manner in which he acts. The right to think and say what is forbidden by law does not exist, any more than the right to do illegal acts.

The public authority has the power to control the expression of thoughts, like every other outward act. We shall therefore seek in vain in the human individual for any reason why speech should be free and actions restrained.

Fouillée himself has told us : “ True liberty consists, not in being able to do evil, but in being able to do good. It is not the power to fall, but the power to rise.”¹

¹ L’Idée Moderne du Droit en France (Revue des Deux Mondes, April 1, 1878).

Now how far does this pretended right of man, which does not exist in reality, operate as a safeguard of religious liberty ?

Suppose it to be unassailable in law and respected in fact. In any case, it gives liberty to the individual opinion only. Now, religions do not exist as opinions, but as Churches. The religious liberty which the Catholic claims is that of the Church, and this Catholic religion is the dominant religion of the countries which the French Revolution professed to regenerate. Then, for millions and millions of men this maxim of the Declaration of Rights of Man, already null and void as a truth, is proved to be also null and void as a guarantee of liberty.

What has it given in fact ? Some sincere Liberals attribute to it their generous optimism, and one party of the framers of the Belgian Constitution believed and professed it.² So it has not been abso-lutely inoperative. But we cannot forget that the application of this maxim has been the cause of irritating laws, oppressions of every kind, proscriptions, confiscation of goods, and judicial condemnations without number.

² De Potter, for instance. But not all. The Catholics did not base on any abstract right or natural law the religious liberty they granted. “ To grant liberty of worship is not to admit that there can be more than one true religion ; and to grant liberty of opinion is not to admit that all opinions are equally good. I will have general liberty, not as an absolute good, but as a lesser evil.” Did not these lines from the Catholique des Pays-Bas (1828), quoted by M. Damoiseaux (La Formation de la Société Belge, p. 16), foreshadow a distinction between the thesis and the hypothesis?

In reality, the maxim effectively protected the liberty of unbelief, but it did not give such religious liberty as is demanded by the conscience of believers. Before the French Revolution, favour was shown to faith and religion; now it has passed to irreligion and unbelief.

Indifference tends to become a sort of official religion, which has inherited the privileges and advantages formerly attached to the Christian religion. In the hospitals, the priest formerly offered his services to all sick persons who did not refuse to accept them ; he is now not allowed to present himself unless he is actually sent for, and the sick man who is unable to express his wishes must die without sacramental absolution and extreme unction. No religious assistance is officially given to the sailor who goes on a long voyage or the soldier who risks his life on the field of battle. The politicians who adopt the principles of the French Revolution, not content with laicizing the public services of charity and education, insist that all persons who are employed in them shall set an example of the denial of all religion. Everything in the present state of society is intended to accustom men’s minds to religious scepticism. Little by little the position of Catholics becomes worse, and greater privileges are conferred on unbelievers. The fullest measure of liberty and official patronage is given to irreligious negation, while the Church obtains only a precarious tolerance, grudgingly conceded.

May we at least believe that the crime of opinion has been struck out of our penal code ? There is nothing to guarantee this. What is meant when an opinion is made a crime ? Is it not the State’s way of showing that it is interested in the diffusion of the contrary opinion ? Has the State, then, no interest in opinions ? Is the French State indifferent to opinions when it prohibits the teaching Congregations ; when it confiscates the printing-presses of the Augustinian Fathers; when it closes 20,000 Catholic schools, attended by 1,600,000 children ;¹ when it takes upon itself to maintain the triumph of secularism, and when, in the official Gazette of Madagascar,² it describes belief in God as one of “ the beliefs of idiots, unworthy of intelligent beings ”?

¹ Piou, in the French Chamber, June 27, 1910.

² The Vaovao of December 6, 1907.

Do the acts of the Belgian Liberal party show that they do not concern themselves with opinion ? Do they not show that the party has lost all claim to be called Liberal ? Victor Jacobs wrote in 1880 : “ Fifty years’ experience has taught us that whenever the Constitution is silent, or its language is obscure or ambiguous—or, rather, whenever the text leaves an opening for evasion or equivocation—the Liberal party claims to enforce its own opinions. The spirit of the constitution may be opposed to their proceedings, yet nothing but a formal prohibition will stop them.”¹ What would this great parliamentarian have said of the thirty years that followed ?

¹ Les Droits Naturels de l’Homme (Revue Générale, 1880, p. 682).

But it is only a short step from taking a lively interest in certain opinions to giving them prevalence and proscribing the opposite opinions, and that step is soon taken by a State which has fallen into the hands of the enemies of religion. Propositions of this kind are already put forward ; threats are heard on all sides. M. Piou recently quoted the expression of M. Madier de Montjau :² “ There is no justice in politics ; you get rid of what you do not like. We are the Republic, and we alone.” Moreover, to revive the crime of opinion, an anticlerical Administration does not wait for it to be inserted in the penal code. This crime existed in Belgium when, under the two last Liberal Ministries, Catholics were practically excluded from the magistracy ; it exists now in France, where there are 800,000 public offices which are normally inaccessible to Catholics—that is to say, to those who practise their religion.

² French Chamber, June 27, 1910.

The maxim of the rights of man is not regarded when antireligious passions or personal interests are involved. When an opinion offends the citizen or affects his interests, however closely he may be attached to the principles of ’89, he endeavours to stifle that opinion, and, if he is strong enough, to proscribe it. A strike of workmen or the threat of some economic conflict, is enough to make the Liberal newspapers forget their Liberalism, and condemn not only criminal acts, but the unhealthy ideas from which they spring.

Opinion, then, has not yet acquired such an inviolable sanctity that the legislator is restrained by any respect for it. Victor Jacobs sums up his impressions in these terms : “ Real life has been a constant negation of the maxim of the French Revolution.” No security is given to anything by this theory of the rights of man, “ which no one has ever applied, which its authors were the first to contravene, and which on the least pretext is put aside altogether.”¹

¹ Op. cit., pp. 666, 681.

The French Revolution, which was so very chary of granting real liberty, showed itself much more faithful in practice to the principles of the omnipotence of the State. From the first, and whenever they could, the sons of the Revolution invoked that omnipotence in order to make war on the Church, and to violate those rights of man which they so proudly proclaimed. “ The intellectual and moral sense of this country,” wrote Leplay, “ has been perverted, in being made to believe that liberty with us dates from 1789. The more I think of it, the more firmly I am convinced that that date should rather be considered the date of the gradual disappearance of liberty.”

The absolutist principle is no more true, though it has been more enforced. The State is not all-powerful, and its rights do not result from an individual abdication sanctioned by the suffrage. We wait in vain for proof of these postulates.

There is certainly a great difference of opinion between the anticlericals and ourselves, but until they have converted us, they will be once more false to their principles if they consider them to be absolutely true, or if they try to compel us to accept them.