Ecclesiastical Tolerance

General View and Divisions.

Summary : Unlike tolerance in private life, public tolerance is divided according to the matter, according to the reasons for its exercise ; dogmatic and practical tolerance; and according to the authority which tolerates, religious or civil authority.—Range of ecclesiastical tolerance.

The tolerance of private life is practised principally among equals, and is summed up in the respect which one person is bound to pay to the rights of another. This right forbids me to regulate the thoughts and speech of another by my own, or to disturb him in the liberty of opinion or worship which is granted to him by Divine or human law. Undoubtedly, when sanctioned by man, liberties may be wisely or unwisely granted, and they extend to all the circumstances of life ; but one private individual is not allowed to restrict the liberty of another, whatever be its origin or the circumstances to which it extends. So far we have treated of private tolerance, without discussing the merits of the liberties which put it to the test, and have not confined ourselves to tolerance in matters of religion, with which we are chiefly concerned.

The Sovereign, on the other hand, must concern himself with all the titles which every liberty can show to justify its existence. There are superior or necessary liberties, which even he is bound to respect; useful liberties, which he sanctions or restricts according to circumstances ; and dangerous liberties, which he grants reluctantly, because he cannot do otherwise. While the other liberties are granted as rights, the last-named are only impunities, and they alone, strictly speaking, are the object of the laws of tolerance.

Intolerance is twofold in character : it may refuse to recognize an inviolable liberty, or to grant a reasonable indulgence. Oppression or tyranny may be an abuse of power, or only an excess of severity. But tolerance is one : it permits a thing which is disapproved, or is at least looked upon unfavourably. The official grant of any liberty leads naturally to a discussion as to the nature and cause of the concession : is it a right which is intended to be permanent, or is it a necessity of fact to which the authorities think it advisable to bow ? And different questions arise according as the liberty belongs to the political, moral, or religious order.

Hence arise distinctions in respect of the source of the tolerance, its purpose, and its object.

According to its object, public tolerance is divided into as many branches as there are matters for discussion. We shall be concerned only with tolerance in religious matters.

According to the reasons on which it is founded, tolerance is dogmatic or practical. Dogmatic tolerance is a principle ; practical tolerance is an ex-pedient. The one claims liberty of opinions and worship as a right which must be respected ; the other yields to circumstances so far as is required by social conditions or the common good. To the advocates of dogmatic tolerance, the word “ tolerance ” seems improper; they would abolish it, and only use it as consecrated by ancient custom. Religious liberty signifies for them the liberty of profession of individual belief or unbelief, and sometimes also the liberty of organization granted to religious bodies. The professors of practical tolerance give the word its proper value, and, being accustomed to consider liberty as a function of truth, they define religious liberty as the liberty of the true religion.

Lastly, according to the authority which tolerates, toleration is ecclesiastical or civil. Ecclesiastical tolerance is that of religious authority or the Church ; civil tolerance is the act of the civil power or the State. We have already had occasion to state this, and also to draw attention to the following difference in the field of the two kinds of public tolerance :

Many independent States exist simultaneously, and no one questions the lawfulness of their coexistence. From this independence each State derives its sovereign right of internal administration, for which it is not obliged to give an account to any neighbouring State. Civil tolerance, therefore, is only understood as existing within the State, shown by the Sovereign to his subjects. Having no directly religious mission, the State, as such, does not enter into conflict with another State which professes another religion. But the religious society may be one, and obligatory for all : it has therefore a mission of propagation and conquest which puts it in opposition with other religions and false creeds. Hence we have to consider its possible tolerance in a new light, in the attitude which it adopts towards other religions and their adherents.

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.