Protestant and Catholic civilization compared. The future of Catholic peoples

Front matter

PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY PRESENTED BY

President Francis Patton June 2, 1904

Protestant and Catholic Civilization Compared.

Preface

"OELGIUM has long been a battle ground of Eu- -*-* rope. Nations have contended for its commanding position and have at last guaranteed its independence and neutrality, to prevent it falling a prize to their rivals. But there is no neutrality and no cessation in the eternal conflict bstween light and darkness, between Catholic truth and progress and anti-Catholic misrepresentation and retrogression. Hence, while the Catholic people of Belgium have, in their long peace, won nearly all the rewards which their Catholic virtues, their industry, their activity, their honesty and constant self-restraint deserved, they have had to fight, foot by foot, for the possession of the most precious of their treasures, the faith preached to them by Saint Eleutherius. The secret societies of Europe have devoted their energies to the corruption of this people and to the destruction of their faith, employing there, as elsewhere, with powerful energy, the immense power of the press to circulate errors. As may be supposed, they have not had a clear field, for Belgium is fortunate in possessing Catholic sons, of the highest talents and acquirements, and of the greatest zeal.

Among those who have already reached a foremost position in this conflict, on the side of Catholic truth, is the illustrious Baron de Haulleville, editor of the Revue Generate, of Brussels, and author of numerous iV PKEFACE.

Catholic works of great value and erudition, who has encountered, and always with success, some of the principal literary antagonists of the Church, not alone in Belgium, but in Germany and France. One of his most useful books, is that which is given to the American public in the following pages, The Future of Catholic Peoples. This was a series of essays, written originally in reply to specific allegations of M. Laveleye and to the general accusations of the universal secret society press, that human progress and the Catholic Church are so far incompatible that a Catholic people must fall in the scale of nations, and that by a kind of "survival of the fittest," the great races of the present are, and in the future will continue to be, Protestant and anti-Catholic. This calumny, so opposed to history, to common sense, and even to the teaching of an Ecumenical Council and to the Divine promises, Baron de Haulleville examined with great perspicuity, and refuted with abundant facts. At the solicitation of the Primate of Belgium, Cardinal Dechamps, Archbishop of Malines, Baron de Haulleville collected these essays in a volume. Having sent a copy of this book to the editor of The Catholic Revieiv, New York, early in the Centennial Year 1876, at a period when new opportunities were afforded for the contrast of the work of Catholic and non-Catholic races, on a quasi neutral soil, it was determined to translate it and reproduce it in the columns of The Catholic Review, for the benefit of American and English speaking readers, especially, as at that

PEEFACE.

time, through the instrumentality of Mr. Gladstone, some faint echoes of the calumnies of M. de Laveleye had reached this country. These had, however, been long familiar in other forms, and are to be met with to-day in almost every newspaper, in too many schoolbooks, and by the reader of general literature. Subsequently, by Baron de Haulleville's permission, and by arrangement with the editor of The Catholic Review, its translation, enriched with notes from the Dublin Review, from Mr. Henry Bellingham's summary of the original, and from other sources, have been republished by the present publishers. The work has met with general approval abroad, Italian, English and German versions having been called for within a few years. Cardinal Manning, Cardinal Dechamps, and our late illustrious Pope, Pius IX., have written warmly of its merits. Meeting with thoroughness many of the sinister difficulties which are daily permeating the secular and Protestant press of America, it is believed that it will win in this country the favor which it deserves.

It contains an arsenal of facts and arguments which answer the slanderers who daily point to what they call the decrepitude of Catholic peoples. It shows that the real progress of the world has been Catholic progress, and it predicts that in the approaching great age of the world Catholic principles will prevail and rule. Cardinal Dechamps, Archbishop of Malines, urging Baron de Haulleville to republish this book, wrote as

follows: ' 10„

Malines, January 10, 1876.

"What I have read of the articles you have published in the Revue Generate, on the future of Catholic peo-

VI PREFACE.

pies, impela nie to hasten to send you my felicitations. In combating for truth you have not remained simply on the defensive ; you have valiantly taken the offensive, as it is right to do when proof is clear. The highest commendation which it is possible to give to your work, is to say that it should be studied, even next to the works of Balmes on Protestantism and Catholicity in their Relations to European Civilization* Balmes demonstrated his thesis by a magnificent array of decisive facts, but the history of recent times has furnished you with a multitude of other brilliant deeds, which have added a new lustre to this already victorious discussion.

" Yes, the Catholic Church is the mother of European civilization, and those eyes must be closed against evidence which do not perceive that by her doctrine, by her action, by her trials, and by her labors, the Church has been and always remains the supreme agent of the moral, intellectual and social progress of the world. She instructs us, it is true, to seek, according to the words of Christ, 'above all things the Kingdom of God and His justice,' but that is because she teaches above all things the reign of justice and truth in the spirit which she manifests towards one and all of her institutions.

"You have closely examined the contrary assertions of a superficial science, you have convicted them of error, and you have done it outright, even coldly and mathematically; but you have not suppressed altogether a sentiment very rare in our day, that of a legitimate indignation, which every soul loving the truth should experience in the presence of an inexcusable error which takes haughty strides. This sentiment,

* This important work ought to be in the hands of every Catholic student. It can be ordered from Hickey & Co., publishers of The Vatican Library, New York (price $ 3.00).

PREFACE. Til

indeed, has not altered in you the feeling of charity towards those who are deceiving themselves, and it has supplied you, more than once, with an eloquence which you did not seek.

" Why do you not collect all these articles in a volume by itself? They would reach so much more easily many souls seduced by the every-day sophistries of the world, which no contemporary writer has criticised more severely or successfully than you.

V. A., Cardinal Dechamps,

Archbishop of Malines. "

Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster, sums up the questions described in this book, and their importance, in the following preface to Mr. Bellingham'e condensed English version :

•'The following pages contain a copious array of facts and arguments to refute the shallow but plausible fallacy against the Catholic faith derived from an alleged superiority in civilization attained by non-Catholic countries. The fallacy is plausible because it appeals to the lower and worldly notions of the day as to the nature of civilization. It is shallow, because it merely touches on the outside of the question. Nevertheless, it has been repeated incessantly in this century, but chiefly in this country; and it belongs by special right to the school of political economists, who for nearly a century have reduced all questions of civilization and progress to production, wealth, material development, which are supposed to constitute human progress.

The following facts are either studiously ignored or tacitly denied by this school of reasoners :

1. That the highest standard of material progress ever known before the action of Christianity upon the

Vlll PBEFACE.

world was that of Greece and Eome. But neither Greece nor Eome can bear comparison with the moral progress of the Hebrew Commonwealth.

2. That the civilization of both Greece and Home, in their legislation, their administration of justice, their public and their private morals, can bear no comparison with the laws, tribunals, patriotism, and domestic life cf the Jewish people.

3. That the moral condition of Greece and Eome, both in their public and private life, exhibits a corruption so universal and so intense as to demonstrate the id efficiency of the lights and the laws of the natural order to create and to sustain the civilization of the human race.

4. That the civilization of which we are the offspring is not the civilization of the old Greek or Eoman world, which was swept away before the germs of the civilization of Europe were planted.

5. That the civilization of Europe is the creation of Christianity ; that the germs of our civilization are— (1) the Christian household created by the sacrament of Christian marriage; (2) the Christian people formed by Christian education ; and (3) the Christian State elevated by the higher law of Christian morals.

G. That the highest civilization, therefore, has a twofold foundation, material and moral, and a twofold progress, likewise both material and moral.

7. That the material foundation and progress which consists in the action and development of the reason and skill of men in arts, science, industry, wealth and natural prosperity, as it existed before the moral foundation of a higher life and law was laid, so it may for a time survive the loss of that higher life. Great economical and material prosperity may be found, at least for a time, when the moral life of a people is de-

PKEFACE. IX

dining, or even low. Material progress will continue after the moral progress has been checked, at least long enough to afford a plausible argument in favor of a non-Catholic as against a Catholic people, a province or a canton.

" Such is, in fact, the fallacy of M. de Laveleye and his followers; and such is the argument which for a century has perplexed and deceived many minds.

"The Baron de Haulleville lias done good service, therefore, in treating of the future of Catholic nations. As Lord Bacon says, ' Time destroys the fictions of men, but confirms the judgments of truth.' Given time enough, and we see that the greatest material prosperity, unless supported by a higher principle, cannot endure; it carries in itself the principle of its own dissolution. Germany and France are direct examples of this truth. Mediaeval Germany was a creation of Christianity. Modern Germany, since Luther, is already divided against itself. The northern half, which Comte placed as the lowest in the scale of European civilization, is precisely that half which has forfeited its Christianity. The southern half still lives on by the principle of its own creation. The material' progress of France is greater than that of any country except our own. It is checked and endangered only in the measure of the decline of its moral progress; and its moral progress is checked only in the measure in which the infidel revolution of the last eighty years has checked it.

" The master fallacy of the arch-impostor is the assertion that Christianity — that is, the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church — are the obstacles to civilization and progress. Christianity, as the chaos and corruption of the Greek and Roman world demonstrate, and as modern Europe shows, is the productive and the sustaining principle of all civilization, and of all progress

X PREFACE.

in the higher culture of men and of nations. All things are preserved by the permanent action of the principle froin which they spring. Christendom, or modern Europe, with all its civilization of national and international law, and with all the purities and sanctities of its domestic and private life, is the offspring of the Christian faith and of the Christian Church. European civilization will survive while it is Christian. If it ever cease to be Christian it will die out — not all at once, but stealthily, steadily, surely, under a fair countenance of seeming health. Its material progress will for a generation or two deceive many, till its moral progress has been turnc d backward, and its material progress has issued in the return of the Iron Age of universal armaments, mutual destruction, and the supremacy of might and matter over the moral laws of God and the higher civilization and onward progress of mankind. Donoso Cortes was mocked as a dreamer in his day, when he said, "Christian Europe is moribund. It is dying because it is poisoned. It cannot live by matter alone, and it is poisoned by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of its philosophers." We are eye-witnesses of this dissolution. Materialists and doctrinaires, sceptics and Positivists, and the schoolmen of profit and loss, tare and tret, with their ignoble and un joyous science, have dwarfed statesmen into politicians. These are the pontiffs and the prophets who are laboring to eliminate Christianity from civilization, and to make the nations conspire against the Catholic Church, the mother of their civilization, as the enemy of their welfare and the obstacle of their progress.

"It is a sign of happy augury when we see laymen like Mr. Bellingham and the Baron de Haulleville de-

PREFACE. XI

voting their intelligence and their industry to the refutation of this great deceit.

Henry Edward, Cardinal- Archbishop of "Westminster. "

Our late illustrious Pope, Pio Nono, of blessed memory, recognizing the utility and Catholic character of Baron de Haulleville's word, honored him with the following letter :

" To our Beloved Son, the noble Baron de Haulleville, Brussels:

"Beloved son, noble sir, health and Apostolic Benediction : Nothing is more noble, nor is anything more worthy of a Christian, than the zeal you evince in the service of the Church, especially in the present state of affairs, when to attack her indiscriminately leads to glory. Therefore do we rejoice that you again wish to vindicate this Mother of ours from the iniquitous and oft-repeated calumny that she is inimical to the civil prosperity and progress of the people. All history, itself, gives the lie to this accusation. The civilization of the barbarians, the subjugation of law, the formation of civil associations, the reclaiming of marshy and uncultivated districts into fields and villages, the introduction and promotion of the arts, the preservation and diffusion of the books of ancient literature, the solicitude manifested for all human necessities, all protest against this accusation, but in vain; the same accusation is constantly renewed, and the inexperienced and ignorant multitude is constantly blinded, and driven to contemn the Church.

* f Therefore, although unable on account of the grave

Xll PREFACE.

cares of the Church to read the work on " The Future of Catholic Peoples" presented by you, in which you have gathered together the articles already published at different times in the Revue Generate, we most gladly receive it, and congratulate you for having, as you say, undertaken anew the task of refuting this obsolete calumny, repeatedly refuted by the constant and uninterupted testimony of facts. Their convincing eloquence necessarily demonstrates to a considerate mind that the Catholic Church, while instituted for the prosecution of a supernatural end, cannot but commend and foster truth and justice, establish order and refine the faculties of man; that she always was and ever will be, by her very nature, the parent and nurse of civil prosperity and true progress. Therefore does all history testify that these have flourished or languished in proportion to the many vicissitudes of religion in nations; and that religion being rejected by this one or that one, if the outward show of wealth and power does not instantly go to pieces, it is because it is sustained by some vestige of religion not yet debased. We predict, therefore, for your book that, many being awakened in it from their blindness, will be led to form a juster opinion of the Church. As a presage of the Divine favor, and as a sign of our paternal good will to you, beloved son and noble sir, we impart to you most lovingly the Apostolic Benediction.

Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, October 5th, 1876.

Of our Pontificate the thirty-first.

Prus PP. IX."

Contents

Letter of Cardinal Dechamps,— Prefatory Remarks by Cardinal Manning—Letter of Pope Pius IX iii

Chapter I. Modern Protestantism, And The Adversaries Of The Catholic Church

Lord Macaulay's Opinion on the Perpetuity of the Catholic Church- Origin of this Book— A New Apologetical Essay on Protestantism — Vague Character of this Modern Protestantism— Its Strategetical Movements against the Catholic Church— The Consequence of Applying Buckle's Method to Theo'.ogy— M. de Laveleye's Thesis is False a priori— It does not Commence by Proving the Truth of its Principles— He makes the Religious Question only the Object of a Study on Social Economy— He takes no Account of the Works of the Learned Catholics of the Present Time— The Object of the

Chapter II. The Causes Of The Civil Or Material Prosperity Of A Nation

Is it True that Protestant Communities Alone are "Progressing?"— Does the Phenomenon of the "Progress" of Protestant Nations Depend on Race ?— The English Government is a Product of the Catholic Ages— Civil Government in other Catholic Nations before the French Revolution and the Reformation— Of the Civil Energy of the Catholic Spaniards— Comparison between the Civil Liberties of the Italians and those of the Prussians before the Reformation—Comparison between the Social Condition of the Scotch and

Irish— The Swiss Catholics 23

Chapter III. Economical Comparison Of Protestant With Catholic Countries

What is meant by the words, " To be a Man of the Times ? "—The First Temporal Rule of Human Societies is, " Seek first the Kingdom of God: " Servire Deo regnare est— How a Community of

XiV CONTENTS.

Savages can be Relatively Perfect— One Thing only is Necessary for a Community, which is, the Service of God: the other things are Relative and Contingent — It is False that Protestant countries are more active, industrious, economical, and richer, than Catho. lie Countries— Error of the Abbe F. Martin on this Subject— Political Economy and Catholic3 in Prussia; in the United States; i i Canada — Protestants in France — The so-called Economical Consequences of the Edict of Nantes— The Quota of the Exchange and Catholic Countries — Catholics and the Book Trade — Catholics and Political Life in Germany— The Conclusion to be drawn from these Facts 64

Chapter IV. Catholics And Colonization

The Pretended Sterility of Catholic Communities— What is called Colonizing— Catholics in the Philippine Islands — In China— The British Colonies— The Dutch Colonies— Catholics in the United States — The Colonies of the Catholic Missionaries— Belgian Missionary Colonists 100

Chapter V. Catholics And Civil Liberty

Protestant Countries have Experienced more Revolutions than Catholic Countries— The Moral Character of the great French Revolution— Civil Liberty in Italy; in Belgium — What the Modern Protestant Liberals mean by Political Liberty— Their Object in Preaching Protestantism in Catholic Countries— Essays by MM. Quinet and Sue— A Discussion between the Liberals on Liberty 131

Chapter VI. Catholic Countries And Education

Education is not in itself a Source of Material Prosperity — False Conclusions that are often Drawn from the Condition of Public Instruction in a Country as regards Political Influence — Primary Education in Belgium; in Prussia — The Organization of Primary Education does not date from the Reformation— Free Examination

in Prussia 151

Chapter VII. Catholic Countries And Morality

Literary Corruption in France the Fruit of Anti-Catholic Doctrines — Political Absolutism the Antithesis of the Catholio Church— The Catholic Church was the First and the only one Lu History to Maintain the Absolutely Moral Character of Marriage— Morals in Spain and Italy more Pure than in Protestant Countries— Illegiti-

CONTENTS. XV

macy among the Middle Classes more Common in Protestant Countries— Immorality in the North of Europe— Comparative Statistics of Morality in England 179

Chapter VIII. The Reformation Has Not Favored The Development Of Civil Liberty

VPherever the Reformation Triumphed it set up a State Church, Destroyed Civil Liberty, and forced the Nation to Recede, instead of Advancing, in the way of Political Progress— Civil and Political Liberties have relatively Flourished only in Countries in which the Leaders of the Reformation did not Succeed in Setting up a State Church, and in which a large portion of the Nation remained Catholic, and another portion were Divided into Separate Religious Communities— In Catholic Countries Civil Liberty is Ancient; Absolutism Modern — The Catholic Church, alone, is Capable of Resisting, in the midst of a Nation that Contains the Dissolving Element, by Virtue of the Civil Liberty of expressing all imaginable Opinions, and of Practising every kind of Worship— Demonstration of these Theses by Facts 191

Conclusion

The Next Great Age will be a Catholic One 227