First Section: Ecclesiastical

I. The Fact of Religious Society.

Summary : Social organization of religions.—Hierarchical constitution of the Catholic Church.—The place and mission assigned by Catholic teaching to the Church in the world.

Ecclesiastical tolerance or intolerance presupposes a religious authority. The existence of such an authority is a fact which is necessarily recognizable by the senses. Religions, Divine or human, unlike systems of philosophy, are socially organized ; for it may be said that there is hardly any religious system elaborated by a single individual, and all social organization requires the constitution of a hierarchy.

But if the different religions spread over the globe have a priesthood and principle of authority in common with Christian bodies, nowhere does the hierarchy form such a compact and united assembly, nowhere is authority so strong and active, as in the Catholic Church. We know the famous expression of Guizot: “ The Catholic Church is the great school of reverence ; ” and Proudhon remarks : “ The Catholic Church is the one whose dogmatism, disci-pline, hierarchy, and progress, best realize the theoretical principle and type of religious society —the one, in consequence, which has the best right to the government of souls.”¹

¹ De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans l’Église, Preliminary Discourse, sec. 3, p. 24.

It is with regard to this Church that we have almost exclusively to consider the different aspects of ecclesiastical tolerance.

Now, what place, according to Catholic doctrine, has God assigned to His Church in the world ? What is the mission she has to accomplish ?

If men consent to leave us really free, if they do not wish by an odious ostracism to practise towards the millions of Catholics the same intolerance that they lay to our charge, and so make us victims and accused at the same time, how can they deny us the right to profess this doctrine, and to regulate our judgments and our acts by our own conception of the Church rather than by that of unbelievers ? And is not every impartial judge bound to consider the arguments by which she explains and justifies her action, if he wishes to form a just estimate of her conduct ?

By the side of the States which are formed and prosper or disappear according to political changes, and of those civil societies which the Author of Nature has created and sanctioned in creating the human race—or, rather, above all these—though their independence in their proper sphere is duly recognized, God has instituted, to last as long as the world shall last, a religious society which traces its origin to Jesus Christ. To that society belong the faithful custody, the infallible teaching, and the zealous propagation, of those truths which are the light and salvation of the human race. As guardian of the inviolable deposit of truth, she is bound to preserve it pure and entire at the price of her blood, and to oppose an unchanging [we cannot] to all attempts at corruption.

Constituted as a perfect society,¹ she has subjects, loyal or rebellious, to lead to a common end, and she possesses all the rights and duties necessary for that end. Called by the express will of her Founder to make spiritual conquests, she acts in constant obedience to the command, “ Going therefore, teach ye all nations.”²

¹ Juridically, a society is called “ perfect ” when, being independent of any other of the same order, it is not bound to submit to any other for the attainment of its own end, but possesses in itself, in its resources and its rights, all means necessary for that purpose. A family, a city, a parish, a religious Order, are imperfect societies. The Church and the State are perfect societies.

² St. Matt, xxviii. 19.

The Church, therefore, has an exterior policy towards the religions she wishes to supplant, or the unbelievers she desires to convert; and an interior policy in regard to those who are placed under her rule by faith and baptism. She may show herself tolerant or intolerant in her threefold mission of teaching, administering, and conquering—that is, in her magisterium, her government, and her expansion or apostolate.

II. Doctrinal Intolerance.

Summary : Definition.—The uncompromising attitude of the Church in respect of doctrine.—Why it extends to every point of faith.—What liberty of discussion exists in religious matters.

Doctrinal intolerance consists in the rigour with which a Church imposes upon its members the inward acceptance and outward profession of its Credo, or its dogmatic and moral teaching.

The Catholic Church, from its very foundation, has presented to the world an unprecedented spectacle, on the austere beauty of which Jules Simon has commented in terms of appreciative admiration.¹ In Greece and Rome there had long been an official religion, without dogma and without morality, which required only an external rite of participation. All that was necessary was to offer incense to the gods of the State, and everyone was in consequence at liberty to believe in the gods or despise them. Peace was offered to all on very easy conditions. To all ? Yes, except those who could neither lie nor sell their consciences. Christianity proclaims the inviolable sacredness of the conscience, and offers for its acceptance a positive faith ; that faith creates an uncompromising attitude, which is only a claim of liberty. The outward act of adoration which great and learned men of the world offer without scruple and without conviction is, by the authority of the Church, unlawful for those who follow Christ. The incense is refused, and the victim pays for his refusal with his blood. “ For three centuries the executioners did not cease to strike, nor the victims to suffer ; Christianity received its baptism of blood ; it gave testimony to liberty of conscience : that was its heroic age.” But to what did it owe this heroism and this glory ? To its intolerance, to the intolerance which the Church practises as guardian of the faith, in virtue of which she demands of her subjects a persevering constancy in the faith, admitting no alliance or compromise with error.

¹ See his First Lesson on Liberty of Conscience.

On the same grounds the Church requires the acceptance of all that God has revealed ; the obstinate denial of a single dogma is equivalent to heresy, and produces apostasy. Many persons profess to be astonished at the severity of laws or ecclesiastical decrees which treat the denial of a single point of faith as severely as positive infidelity. This surprise is intelligible in unbelievers, who are excusable because they discuss the faith as they would discuss some system of philosophy ; but how can we account for the same astonishment in certain Catholic writers ? They seem to forget the very nature of the act of faith, and its difference from a simply rational assent. So long as we are concerned with certainties of the same order, springing from the same principles, there may be differences of opinion on every proposition enunciated. But the certainty of reason and the certainty of faith are derived from different sources. By coming to a wrong conclusion on a question of secondary importance, reason does not give up the principles which assist it in the discovery of the more important truths. It is not so with heresy. Without in any way denying the unequal dignity of the truths which God through His Church proposes for our belief, we ought nevertheless to make the value, the merit, the very essence of the act of faith, consist in the fact of believing them all on the Word of God, and in relying more on the Divine truthfulness than on our own lights. We fail to show this confidence if we pick and choose between dogmas, admitting some and refusing to accept others, or if we obstinately reject a single one ; for by so doing we cease to take the Word of God for our guide, and rely simply on our reason. The agreement between my opinions and the dogmas that I accept is only accidental, and almost a matter of chance, like the meeting of two travellers who happen to make part of their journey together, though they are not bound for the same goal; and, because fortuitous, the agreement loses all consistency. The Protestant Churches were scarcely a year old when Bossuet found materials for writing a history of their variations. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as partial heresy, for faith is not a thing of shreds and patches.

It is only outside defined dogmas that the Church, according to the gravity and delicacy of the matter, the quality of the authors, and the circumstances of time and place, allows on sacred subjects a greater or less discussion, by reason of what might be called her tolerance ; and even then she reserves to herself the right to close the controversy by a final judgment, to which her children always willingly submit. III. Disciplinary Intolerance.

Summary : Excommunication of heretics.—In what spirit is it effected ?—Other penalties incurred by them.— Power of the Church.

The magisterium of the Church condemns all heresy. The government of the Church is concerned with heretics—that is to say, with those who, belonging to her by baptism, openly contradict her teaching ; we say openly because the secrets of the conscience are necessarily beyond the cognizance of an authority entrusted to the hands of men.¹

¹ Thus a Christian may be guilty of heresy in the sight of God without having violated any law of the Church. We do not dwell on another difference which seems to exist between guilt before God and guilt before the forum externum of the Church. Simple abstention—that is, refusal to give assent to any Divine revelation—is enough to constitute an infidelity which is insulting to God. But would a man who simply confesses his want of faith, without judging of dogmas or contradicting the Church, be liable to outward penalties ? According to some modern writers, we ought to answer in the affirmative. But such persons seem to speak of a man who lays down the law for himself, or at least follows those who do so ; we know of no case where proceedings have been taken against mere sceptics or freethinkers, so long as they have refrained from open blasphemy. We shall have occasion later to return to this subject, but we can understand how in the age of faith a heretic was considered inexcusable. By a heretic we mean a man who makes public and obstinate profession of an error contrary to faith, and rejects the teaching of the most imposing hierarchy that has ever existed. If simple doubt may seem excusable, it is the grossest presumption for any private individual to set up his own opinion against the teaching of the Church.

It is the duty of the Church to bring back her erring children first by the gentle ways of persuasion ; but if they are obstinate, she must treat them as rebellious subjects, whom, for their own good and the edification of others, she will endeavour to bring back by all the means in her power. This effort shows us a second aspect of ecclesiastical intolerance. The Church, which is the custodian and dispenser of spiritual blessings, will deprive the obstinate of those blessings, and will, in the end, exclude them from her communion. This deprivation involves spiritual penalties, which, in canonical language, are called “ censures,” and the gravest of all censures is exclusion from the Church, or excommunication, which, when solemnly pronounced, becomes an anathema. What is more natural or legitimate than to refuse the advantages of Christian unity to one who rejects its very principle, to cut off from the vine a branch which refuses to be nourished by the vine ? This expulsion, terrible in itself,¹ must have filled the souls of men with holy horror, when the Church, in the solemn assembly of her pastors, uttered those awful anathemas which defined the truth and denounced error.

¹ We know in what emphatic terms St. Paul described the effects of this penalty when he had occasion to inflict it: “I have already judged ... to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of Our Lord Jesus Christ ” (1 Cor. v. 3, 5). For having quoted these words, St. Jerome is accused by Lea (History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, vol. i., p. 214) of having advocated capital punishment. It is unnecessary to remark how impossible it is for authors like Lea to present in their true light many facts whose real meaning is necessarily not understood by non-Catholics.

There are numerous canonical texts which enjoin that obstinate heretics should be cut off from the Church. The integrity of the faith and the preservation of the faithful require this ; and it is the most effective means of bringing back to his senses an unhappy person who is hurrying to destruction. “ It is said,” says Pope Urban,¹ “ that excommunication is the plucking up of the cockle, in opposition to the parable in the Gospel; but it is not so. The Apostle tells us that the sentence of excommunication is passed in order that the guilty person may have his soul saved in the day of the Lord. Excommunication is not intended for the destruction of the offender, but for his repentance and amendment.”

¹ Or, rather, the unknown author of the Canon Notandum, 37, C. xxiv., Q. 3.

The use of spiritual sanctions, as practised² and enjoined3 by St. Paul, in order to maintain the purity of Christian faith and morals, has found favour even with liberals. “ Religious intolerance,” says Jules Simon, “ is not only reasonable, but necessary ... a religion which did not profess it would be condemned by the very fact.”⁴ And more recently Ruffini writes : “It is impossible to condemn religious intolerance when it employs its purely spiritual weapons to combat and banish all opposition to the fundamental dogmas of a religion, and all persons who contradict them.5 Moreover, in acting in this manner, the Church only does what the State is constantly doing ; she deprives the delinquents of the benefits of religious society, exactly as the State deprives of the privileges of civil life those who offend against its laws.

² In the case of the incestuous Corinthian, mentioned above. 3 Titus iii. 10.

⁴ Op. cit., p. 68. 5 La Libertà Religiosa, p. 8.

But besides these spiritual penalties, we find that heretics incur temporal penalties also, though the Church has been slow in inflicting them; for, although she legalized temporal punishments as early as the seventh century, she waited until the twelfth before inflicting them on heretics.

The twelfth century gives us an instance of a heretic condemned to suffer temporal punishment. The case was that of the notorious Eon de la Stella, who appeared in 1148 before the Council of Rheims, in which 1,600 Bishops, Abbots, and Prelates were assembled. The case was a very grave one, and Eon, a fanatical disturber of the public peace, might have expected to be treated with the utmost rigour ; but, more fortunate than some of his associates, whom the secular arm delivered to the flames, he received the benefit of episcopal clemency. The Bishop who had brought him before the Council interceded for him, and his life and limbs were spared.¹ Thus the first ecclesiastical sentence of temporal punishment inflicted for heresy was the beginning of a series of those effective intercessions which the Church recommends all her judges to make in favour of unhappy persons sentenced to death or mutilation.²

¹ See Harduin’s Concilia, vii. 308.

² Long before this (in 385) St. Martin of Tours had entreated the tyrant Maximus not to shed the blood of the Priscillianists. Unfortunately, his efforts were not successful. See Sulpicius Severus, Chronica, 1. 2, n. 50 (Corpus Scriptorum eccl. latin., t. 1, p. 103).

In the thirteenth century Innocent III. prescribed confiscation of goods as the punishment for heresy, which was denounced as an infamous crime.³ Alexander IV. extended this confiscation to the goods of a deceased heretic.⁴ The penalties pre-scribed by Boniface VIII.¹ were confiscation and legal disability for public office. The Clementine legislation² forbade excessive severity on the part of Inquisitors, and directed that prisoners should be reasonably treated. The Extravagantes Communes provided against other abuses.³ Such has been the penal legislation of the Church in the matter of heresy, and it does not go beyond the penalties we have mentioned. In the next section we shall speak of the condemnations to death and the stake, and we shall define the part of the responsibility which may have been incurred by the Church in these capital executions.

³ Notably at the Fourth Council of the Lateran, from whence comes chap. xiii., De Hæreticis (v. 7).

⁴ Chap. viii., De Hæreticis in 6°.

¹ Chaps. xv. and xix., De Hæreticis in 6°.

² Chaps. i. and ii., De Hæreticis, Clem. V. 3.

³ L. 5, t. 3, c. 1 and 3.

The excommunication of the heretic furnishes a probable explanation of the Church’s slowness in inflicting temporal punishments. As a member cut off from the Church, he ceased to be subject to her, as he ceased to receive life from her. In early times—i.e., during the first three or four centuries— the Church, so to speak, forgot the baptism of those whom she had anathematized ; she did not concern herself with them any more than with pagans.⁴ Even in the time of Bellarmine and Suarez the objection was still made that heretics were outside the Church, and that, therefore, she had no right to punish them.⁵

⁴ See Hinschius, System des Katholischen Kirchenrechts, t. 4, p. 749. St. Augustine found it necessary to show the power of the Church over baptized persons. Ep. 185, n. 23 (M.P.L., t. 33, col. 803).

⁵ Bellarmine, Controv. I., Cont. 2., De Membris Ecclesiæ, l. 3 ; De Laicis, c. 22, Art. 15. Suarez, De Fide, d. 20, s. 3, n. 20.

These temporal punishments inflicted for an offence of a spiritual nature astonish us at the present day, though they appeared very natural at a time when the social power was actually divided, according to causes and persons, between the Church and the Sovereign. And what, in fact, is more logical ? The heretic committed against the Church, to which he belonged, an offence which might lead to disastrous consequences, and the Church applied to this serious offence the penalties then in her power.¹ No one denied her the right to inflict temporal penalties, and these often had the good effect of making the condemned person understand the gravity of the anathema with which he was threatened, and of leading the way to his conversion. This result was always kept in view in the penal legislation of the Church.

¹ As to the coercive power of the Church, see the digression to which a special chapter is devoted. We reserve the discussion of the criminal character of heresy to Part III.

IV. Apostolic Tolerance or Intolerance.

Summary : Nationalism of ancient religions.—Ancient and Modern syncretism.—Lethargy of many religions.— Catholic exclusiveness.—No salvation outside the Church.—Conquest by persuasion.—Respect for the liberty of adults and fathers of families.—Merits of ecclesiastical tolerance.

We have now to consider ecclesiastical tolerance or intolerance in preaching religion and making converts. This missionary propaganda, its energy and its methods, show the attitude which every religion and every Church adopts towards other religions and their adherents.

National gods were known in ancient times, conquering or conquered with the nations whose quarrels they espoused, and there was a time when the Israelites themselves gloried in the possession of Jehovah as a national God, more powerful than the deities to which rival nations paid homage. This conception represents gods as well as nations at war with one another.

There are also religious systems which aim at making peace among the different religions ; these are the syncretist systems, and they vary in form and extent. The Persian Mani found material for his teaching in the four great religions with which he was acquainted, the Babylonian, Buddhist, Zoro- astrian, and Christian,¹ borrowing from each, under the pretext of purifying and perfecting all, and extracting their quintessence. Buddha, or, rather, the religion that bears his name, dispenses with dogmas and insists on morality only, and thus resembles the old Chinese Confucianism and the modern German system of Emmanuel Kant.²

¹ De Stoop, Essai sur la Diffusion du Manichéisme dans l’Empire Romain, Gand, 1909, p. vii.

² With this difference, that Buddhism is pantheistic, while Confucianism is neutral between the affirmation and denial of God, and a personal God is the first postulate of Kantian morality.

In the sixteenth century, Jean Bodin in France³ preached an alliance among different religions, maintaining that the differences which separated them were of little importance—of so much less importance because the true religion appeared to him incapable of demonstration. In the following century, Joseph Glanvill, an Englishman, expressed similar views in his Vanity of Dogmatising.¹ John Milton desired to unite only those Protestants who were agreed on the rule of faith.² Celsus, long before, in arguing against Christianity, had contended that the one God might be recognized in the variety of names and rites under which He was honoured. Maximus of Madaura, in his controversy with St. Augustine, insisted that all religions were mutually complementary of each other, each venerating some special aspect of the Supreme Being. Many centuries later, Bayle wrote in the same sense : “ All the religions of the world, fantastic and diverse as they may be, are not incongruous with the infinite majesty of that supremely perfect Being, Who has ordained that all things in nature should glorify Him in His character of infinite perfection.³

³ Colloquium heptaplomeres de rerum sublimium arcanis abditis (cf. pp. 129, 133, 174, 351, 354, 356, 358).

¹ Pp. 230, 231.

² Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration.

³ Commentaire philosophique sur les paroles de Jesus- Christ, Compelle intrare, in St. Luke xiv. 23, part ii., chap. vi., p. 418.

A Protestant syncretism, that of Jurieu, for example, struggled hard for some time to draw a distinction between fundamental and necessary dogmas on the one hand, and accessory dogmas, to which Christ was supposed to be indifferent, on the other. A certain school of Anglicanism divides the Catholic Church into three branches, legitimately springing from one trunk—the Anglican, the Greek, and the Roman—and so makes it a point of duty for every person to remain faithful to his own com-munion. A more radical syncretism considers nothing essential except belief in God, around which it hopes to gather all religious-minded men. This syncretism is pushed to its extreme limits in absolute Modernism.¹ Dogmas are deprived of all objective value, and become empty symbols of reality —subjective representations of an Absolute which we do not understand. Religious sentiment is identified with a vague, half-conscious yearning for the Unknowable, distinct or not distinct from ourselves, but to be attained within ourselves ; all the merit of faith is reduced to the sincerity of an attitude which pacifies the soul by satisfying its need of a hereafter. These are the means suggested for establishing a brotherly understanding, first among all believers, and then between believers and atheists, while the latter also are allowed to call themselves religious as soon as their aspirations soar beyond mere sensible phenomena.

¹ See our article on “ Modernism ” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, New York, 1911. Dargaud anticipated Modernism when he sang the praises of a religion embracing all the sects—a philosophical religion, but having its philosophy “ solidified by faith, fragrant with hope, and burning with the fire of charity,” retaining “ freely and reverently in its practices of unction and prayer the stamp of the sweet and majestic character of Christ. The sects are to this religion what vigorous but barbarous dialects are to a perfect language ” (Histoire de la liberté religieuse en France et dans ses Fondateurs, t. 1, p. 371).

These ideas of union and brotherhood are attractive enough ; but, on reflection, we are bound to see that this imaginary drawing together of men is preached at the cost of our reverence for God. By the mere fact that a religion declares itself to be truly Divine in its source, and obligatory on all, it clearly imposes upon all men the imperative duty of inquiring into this fact, the most important in history, of verifying its proofs, and, if it is found to be true, of preparing to listen to the voice of God. Certainly there is a good faith which is excusable before God and commendable in men, but a man who is really in good faith will neglect no means of knowledge, and will use all his efforts to arrive at the truth. The tendency of modernism, by the unreserved praise which it bestows upon everything that is not mere dishonest pretence, is to see no difference between a vicious and apathetic indifference and a sincere and honest search for the light; it is insulting to God and baneful to men, for it lulls them into a fatal and inexcusable lethargy.

Finally, without any thought of syncretism or higher principle, there are religions which are content to exist with no more show of life than stagnant water on an extinct volcano. Such are the sleepy religions of India and China.

This torpor and indifference are repugnant to Catholicism; the Catholic Church is essentially active and militant, and for this very reason it admits no truce or compromise with those religions that it hopes and desires to conquer.¹ Paganism insisted only on an outward rite, Buddhism on morality and respect for the Order ;¹ as we come nearer Catholicism, dogma appears—the dogma of one God and one prophet among Mahom- edans ; mutilated dogmas, only half-believed among Protestants, or, at least, among the more conservative Protestants; ancient dogmas, more completely preserved among the schismatic Christians of the East. The Catholic Church alone possesses a dogma which lives and endures, stable in itself and susceptible of development to us, studied with love and defended with jealous care as a deposit of Divine and indispensable truth left among men.

¹ Even in China Christianity in this respect contrasts with the other religions which exist within the Empire. Buddhism accommodates itself to the worship of the dead and the honours which the Taoists pay to their numerous divinities. As the proverb goes, “ San kiao-i kiao ” (The three religions form but one). Christianity refuses all alliance with these. Mahomedanism, it is true, is equally uncompromising, but to its exclusiveness it unites the hatred of the infidel. Christianity alone unites rigour and charity.

¹ The Order of Monks. See the Buddhist Catechism, published in Ceylon.

“ Outside the Church there is no salvation ” is the translation of what we have just said into ecclesiastical language. This formula scandalizes many people nowadays ; but the scandal is the effect of forgetfulness or ignorance. The formula appears presumptuous to those who forget that the Church does not present herself as a human authority, contemptuously superior to other authorities of the same order, but as the Ambassador of Christ, who said : “ My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me ” ;² and in His name she adds : “ He that believeth not shall be condemned.”³

² St. John vii. 16, xiv. 24.

³ St. Mark xvi. 16.

The formula appears hard to those who are ignorant that it is to be accepted in combination with two other Catholic dogmas: first, that a man may, by charity, belong to the soul of the Church without being in outward communion with her visible body ; and, secondly, that God never refuses His grace to the man of good-will.¹

¹ It is certain that these propositions may be reconciled, though the manner thereof is to some extent veiled in mystery. Charity, or the state of grace which gives to the Church children whom she cannot call by that name on earth, implies faith ; and that faith is a supernatural virtue by which we believe firmly, because of the supreme truthfulness of God, all that He has revealed and proposes through His Church to our belief. According to the almost universal teaching of theologians, this faith requires that certain truths shall be presented to the mind as declared by God. Consequently, though faith, which is a condition of charity, may be easy to sincere Protestants and even to Mahomedans, it does not appear to us immediately within the reach of members of other religions. God was not bound to make known to us the secret ways by which His grace operates ; it is sufficient for us to know that that grace is never refused to the man who does his best.

But this uncompromising attitude in the matter of dogma does not transform into a persecutor that Church whose first Apostles were sent as sheep in the midst of wolves. If she cannot enter into any compact with false religions, she is forbidden, on the other hand, to win any victory over them except by the weapons of that charity which becomes all things to all men.² What is the commandment she has received from Christ ? To teach, to preach, not to do violence. Thus she formally discountenances conversion by the sword. “ This society has life in itself ; in addition, it requires only liberty of expansion, to enlighten, to quicken, to regenerate the world.”³ From those who do not know her the Church asks one thing only—freedom to speak and to convince. As she has no power to compel men’s minds to submit to her, she freely admits that she has no right to exact an outward submission, which might be false and insincere, for she has learnt from her Founder that her heavenly Father seeketh true adorers who shall adore Him in spirit and in truth.¹ This tradition of conquest by persuasion is primitive and constant in the Catholic religion. Excesses may be committed through error or indeliberate impulse ; in this matter, as in all others, the perfect agreement between the principle and the application is only reached by slow stages. But the principle is unchangeable, and the persecuted Church of the Catacombs, the Church triumphant under Constantine, the Church reigning with Charlemagne, have but one voice to declare it. When the great Emperor, actuated by political motives, would have left the Saxons no option but that of baptism or death, Alcuin reminded him of this : “ Faith,” said he, following St. Augustine, “ is an affair of the will, not of compulsion. How can you force a man to believe what he does not believe ? You may drive him to baptism, but not to faith. Man, as an intelligent being, uses his reason; instruction and zealous preaching should lead him to recognize the truth of our holy faith; and, above all, prayer will bring down upon him the grace of Almighty God, for words are unavailing, unless the dew of grace softens the heart of the hearer.”² Similarly, the Popes respected, and compelled others to respect, the liberty of conscience of the Jews. Certainly, to our modern eyes, especially if we take a one-sided view, and look at the language of the laws without examining the reasons for their enactment, the legal treatment of the Jews, isolated within the narrow limits of the Ghetto, and compelled to wear distinctive clothing, will appear humiliating and vexatious ; but, considering the manners of the age, the Jews enjoyed as much liberty as was possible, and the measures taken by the Popes to insure and protect that liberty called forth demonstrations of their gratitude.¹ In our own day, also, the pioneers of the Gospel, who follow in the footsteps of St. Francis Xavier, present themselves before the petty chiefs of Indian or Congolese villages with the same deference and respect for liberty which their illustrious predecessor and patron showed at the Court of the Japanese Kings. St. Augustine says : “No one is to be brought to the faith by force ” ;² and St. Athanasius : “It is the part of religion not to compel, but to persuade.”3 The violent proceedings of the Arians drew from the great Hilary of Poitiers an indignant protest, in which he did but echo the opinion of the whole Catholic hierarchy: “ God teaches rather than compels men to know Him ; He leads men to obedience by admiration for His heavenly works, and He scorns a submission yielded only to compulsion. If we used force for the propagation of the true faith, the whole episcopate would be bound by their principles to forbid it, and would proclaim that God is the Lord of the universe, and has no need of unwilling homage ; He asks for no forced submission. We can receive none but those who wish to be received ; we can listen to none but those who ask to be heard ; we can mark with the Christian sign none but those who make profession of Christianity.”¹ The Angelic Doctor speaks in similar terms : “ Gentiles and Jews are on no account to be brought to the faith by compulsion, because believing is of the will.”² Persons of full age, who are free to embrace or reject the faith, have the same freedom to decide for their infant children, and, except in case of extreme necessity, such as danger of death, no child of a Jew or an infidel can be baptized against the will, or even without the consent, of his parents or guardians. St. Thomas declares that “ it has never been the usage of the Church to have children of Jews baptized against the will of their parents, for the practice is opposed to natural justice.”³ On February 18, 1705, the Holy Office expressly declared the illegality of baptizing the children of infidels against the will of their parents, and Bene-diet XIV. repeated the prohibition in his Encyclical Postvemo of January 28, 1747. All theologians and canonists teach the same, and the instructions of the Holy See have been so distinct that since the declaration of the Propaganda of April 17, 1777, there has been no need to return to the subject.

² “ I became all things to all men, that I might save all ” (1 Cor. ix. 22).

³ Mgr. Parisis, Instruction pastorale sur le droit Divin dans l’Église, p. 29.

¹ St. John iv. 23.

² Ep. 37., Edit. Frobenius, t. 1, p. 42. See also p. 51 (M.P.S., t. 100, cols. 194, 205).

¹ See the testimony of Dr. Grätz, Geschichte der Juden, t. 5, pp. 41, 51 ; t. 6, p. 282 ; t. 7, p. 110. “ The successors of St. Peter,” this author is compelled to admit, in spite of his prejudice against the Church, “ made it a point of honour to protect the Jews from insult” (t. 5, p. 41). Among their benefactors he specially mentions St. Gregory the Great, Alexander III.—who on his return to Rome was made the object of an enthusiastic demonstration—and Gregory IX.

² [No one is to be forced to the faith against his will] (M.P.L., t. 43, col. 415).

¹ M.P.L., t. 10, col. 561.

² Summa Theologica, 2, 2, Q. 10, Art. 8.

³ Ibid., 2, 2, Q. 10, Art. 12 ; and 3 p., Q. 68, Art. 10. See also De regimine Judæorum.

3 Θεοσεβείας ἴδιον μὴ ἀναγκάζειν, ἀλλὰ πείθειν (M.P.G., t. 25, col. 773).

We see, then, that even the moderate severity, mentioned above, of which the Church makes use against apostate heretics would be unjust and inoperative against those who have not been baptized. Lea is astonished and somewhat scandalized by the distinction which the Church makes between heretics on the one hand and Jews and infidels on the other;¹ and even M. Vacandard sees something illogical in it.2 And yet there is nothing subtle or mysterious in the distinction, which is observed every day in the civil and political order, in which subjects are not treated in the same manner as strangers. If we look at the matter from the Christian point of view, we shall see that baptism makes a man the subject of the Church, and that heresy constitutes desertion and rebellion, which is a grievous sin in the sight of God, as the result of a voluntary abuse of grace.³ On the contrary, whether guilty or not before their own consciences, infidels and Jews are not responsible to the Church for their sin, and there can be no question of compelling them to believe, or punishing them for their unbelief; the Church has the right only to defend herself against their calumnious attacks. From this point of view, Jews, whose books give testimony to the Christian faith, have been treated with consideration, as not being dangerous, or even as having rendered service to the Church. We must never forget that the wicked actions and language of Christians exercise a much stronger influence for evil. As to the question of heretics who knowingly abandon the Catholic faith, the distinction between them and infidels is quite clear. But what are we to say of those who have been brought up in schism and heresy, and have never outwardly belonged to the Church ? Are they subjects because they have been baptized, or are they strangers because, since the dawn of reason, they have not been in communion with the Church ? It cannot be denied that baptism, in giving a soul to Christ, gives it for ever in a certain sense to the Church which represents Christ and continues His work on earth. The non-Catholic Christian is therefore attached to the Church in a manner in which the infidel can never be; he is capable of receiving the other sacraments, and he has a claim to a special care on the part of the Church. The proper answer to this question seems to be that, while they are subjects of the Church, entitled to the benefit of certain favours and privileges, and also of a special solicitude, they are, in consequence of the error of their parents, incapable of contumacy against her, and therefore they ought not to be persecuted or molested in their belief. In the matter of conversion to the true faith, these heretics appear to us to be in the same position as infidels.¹ It is by gentleness and persuasion, and not by compulsion, that they must be brought within the pale of the true Church.

¹ Op. cit., p. 242. 2 L’Inquisition, p. 311, n. 1.

³ In the third part we shall examine more closely the object of the sin of heresy. We cannot approve the extravagant language of Jean Jacques Rousseau : ‘‘If anyone, after having publicly acknowledged the same dogmas (of a State religion), behaves as if he did not believe them, he should be put to death, for he has committed the gravest of all crimes : he has lied before the law ” (Contrat Social, l. iv., chap. viii., t. 2, p. 187).

¹ We are glad to find our opinion corroborated by that of Father Hugueny, O.P. (see his reply to M. Turmel in the Revue du Clergé Français, 1907, t. 50, p. 315).

What we say of adults we think we ought to say of children also ; they belong to their parents, and must ordinarily receive from them the direction they cannot give to themselves. Such is the awful authority with which God has invested parents, and which He leaves to them so long as they are not manifestly unworthy of it.

To sum up : Ecclesiastical tolerance or intolerance is the act of religious authority ; it is shown in doctrine, direction, and propagation of the faith— in other words, in the strictness or latitude with which the religious authority teaches and requires adhesion to its faith, punishes or overlooks differences of opinion, and consents or refuses to enter into any compact with other religions or their professors.

Put away all hatred or contempt for the misguided followers of other religions, otherwise called “unbelievers”; “ecclesiastical intolerance” may be an unpopular expression, but the reality is in sympathy with all that is most lofty and generous within us. It means assurance and confidence, while tolerance means doubt and despair; it shows strength, while tolerance implies weakness and failure ; it inspires us with a zeal for the salvation of souls, while tolerance leads to selfish indifference ; it is a firm attitude which is the logical result of Divine revelation.

The Catholic Church can neither hate anyone nor pass any sorrow by with indifference ; her principles do not allow her to neglect any person in need of help, but they forbid her equally to attempt to convert anyone by force. She is the most uncompromising, the most intolerant of Churches; but also the most loving. Her intolerance is the result of her faith, and kindles the flame of her missionary zeal. In the words of a French Archbishop, the Catholic Church has the intolerance which comes of truth and charity, and that intolerance has produced the purest of all her glories during the whole course of her history—her martyrs, whose blood has empurpled the banner of true liberty of conscience, while they have died for their Saviour and their God.