Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism

Front matter

ESSAY

ON

CATHOLICISM

Introduction

NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR.

John Donoso Cortès was born at Valdegamas, the sixth of May, 1809. At five years of age he entered a primary school, and at eleven he had finished the humanities; at twelve he entered the University of Salamanca, in order to study law; and at sixteen, like Leibnitz, he was prepared, had he not been too young, to receive his degree of Bachelor. In the mean time he devoted all his energies to the study of philosophy, history, and Belles-lettres, under that able and philosophical writer, Emanuel Quintana. From Quintana he received the current ideas of the day: an admiration of French authors, a contempt for those of Spain, in a word, that learned incredulity which prevailed among the last generation.

For more than two centuries Jansenism and philosophism had corrupted the land of Pelagio and the Cid. D'Aranda and Pombal had dared to attack those very laws, proclaimed by the Council of Toledo, which had shown the magnificent influence of the Church in the maintenance of liberty and justice. Spain was no longer distinguished above others as the Catholic nation, the nation of profound and heartfelt convictions; the traditional grandeur of her faith had taken the place of the reality; and faith, instead of being an absolute necessity, had degenerated into a mere habit.

Donoso was affected by the spirit of the age in which he lived, and was in his earlier youth, like the greater number of those around him, a philosophist. This is evident in his first works, which he always held in slight estimation on that account. He afterward courageously renounced many of his early opinions, others were changed, and he had need to be ashamed of none, for his faith became firm, and was boldly defended. When he was only nineteen years of age, Quintana, surprised at his great talents, proposed to him to accept the professorship he was about to vacate. When any encomium was bestowed upon the youth, Quintana would always say, "Donoso is a diamond;" and he fully justified this eulogium. The result more than satisfied the general expectation, and it was admitted by all that he might accomplish still greater things in an enlarged sphere of action. Among those who always attended his lectures was a young girl. Her black eyes were continually fixed upon the animated countenance of the orator; and she regarded his every movement with the most intense admiration. Their hearts were touched, and they were married. Scarcely had Donoso enjoyed "the only true felicity of life," and it seemed as if his happiness was assured, when the two beings who had reconsecrated to him their lives, a beloved wife and infant daughter, were both laid in the tomb; as if he was only permitted this affection in order to make an offering of it to God.

He did not endure this first misfortune with resignation, and it was therefore terrible. Educated in an age which, if not altogether infidel, was at least so in ideas, he had imbibed that indifference, which is the greatest scourge of modern times. Although he was a philosophist from his earliest years, yet he was never irreligious; but divine love and a pious fervor were wanting; and religion is not an effect of human reason, but must come from the heart, which receives it through faith. Custom alone, not conscience, held him in union with the Church, and caused him to practice its duties, from which he was soon to experience such great blessings. Notwithstanding this religious apathy, he always continued to fulfill his obligations as a Catholic; nor had he any painful recollections to lament, nor need to blush on account of a single action, which could embitter the present or darken the future.

When Ferdinand VII., replaced upon the throne by a foreign army, wished, to the prejudice of the heir-apparent, Don Carlos, to favor his daughter Isabella, who, by the Salic law of Philip V., could not have succeeded him, Donoso caused a learned and eloquent memorial to be presented to the king, in which he sustained the cause of the Infanta, and appealed to the love of a husband and father. The king wished to recompense him, and in 1832 conferred upon him a distinguished place in the ministry of "Grace and Justice." He was in this way, at twenty-three years of age, thrown into political life, which he was destined never to abandon.

Ferdinand VII. died, but Donoso continued to support Isabella and her mother, Maria Christina. Spain loved her queens, and the memory of Isabella the Catholic, "the most illustrious being who had ever reigned over men," was affectionately cherished in popular traditions. Donoso considered that this sentiment was alone capable of saving his country, of delivering it from anarchy, of securing to it, not merely the order established in a beleaguered city, but the assured tranquillity of laws and of a just moderation. About this time he was elected a deputy to the Cortes, and afterward Secretary of the Council of the Ministry, under the presidency of the famous Mendizabal, the chief of the party of reform. Donoso soon resigned this office, as he remained firm in his principles, which were not those of the ministry; so that he took no part whatever in the confiscation of the property of the Church, in the suppression of religious orders, or in any of those sacrilegious excesses which seemed to renew the times of Charles III.

The tribune and the press still remained open to him, and sometimes by means of the one, sometimes of the other, he continued, as a citizen, courageously to persevere in the vindication of the opinions he had at first embraced. L'Avvenire, a journal established by him, the Pilota, the Corriere Nazionale, and especially the Rivista di Madrid, of which he was one of the editors, attest his activity and the superiority of his talents. He had already published his "Essay on European Diplomacy, from the Revolution of June to the Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance," a work which reflected great honor on his country, and in which the wide scope of his observation is equal to the truth of his applications. It was at that time that he delivered a course of lectures on international law, in the Atheneum at Madrid, a course so much the more useful, as there no longer existed a just public opinion, and no one attempted to strengthen or confirm these languishing sentiments.

In the mean time, Espartero, emboldened by his decisive victory over the Carlists, not only deprived Maria Christina of the regency, but also of the guardianship of her children. Donoso did not change with this mutation of fortune, but continued unceasingly to defend her, if not as widow and regent, at least as mother and queen. His efforts were unsuccessful, and he had reason to esteem himself fortunate that this civic courage was not punished by death, as was that of his friend, Montes de Oca. Maria Christina appointed him her secretary, and in this capacity he shared her exile, and made known to all Europe the ingratitude and cruelty of the Duke of Victoria. Candidly, I do not know, all things considered, whether these representations were just or not. In 1843, when the Marshal Narvaez established a conservative policy, relying upon the protection of France, (an aid always injurious to the independence of a people,) Donoso succeeded in returning to his country, and changed his position of secretary of the queen for that of secretary and director of the studies of Queen Isabella, whose majority had recently been declared. He was, moreover, proffered a place in the ministry, which he refused. He was a man whose convictions were too profound to permit him to alter them when placed in power; and men who are incapable of change cannot long exercise an influence over a mutable society.

At this juncture, Louis Philippe made him Grand-officer of the Legion of Honor, and the States of Castile conferred upon him a title, by erecting his estate of Valdegamas into a marquisate. He afterward entered upon the diplomatic career, having been nominated minister plenipotentiary of Spain near Berlin, where he was surprised by the revolution of February, or, to speak more correctly, by the great European catastrophe of 1848.

Donoso was now on the verge of that uncertain epoch of human life, having reached the midway of the term of years usually granted by God to man, when the two periods of one's existence seem to be equally balanced, and it is difficult to say whether the culminating point is still to be reached or the descent has already commenced. Solemn hour, when the light of day begins to fade, but the setting sun still preserves its radiant splendor-hour, sacred to the past and the future, when the imagination is no longer enkindled, but the poetry of the heart remains. If our faith has, until then, been rather an act of the understanding than of the affections, and we meet with some disaster in such an hour, we find ourselves suddenly changed, a heavenly unction penetrates our souls, and we approach the end of life with an increase of strength and fervor.

At thirty, Chateaubriand wept and believed; in the death of two beloved objects he gained life, and from their graves ascended those pious desires, through which he acquired the gift of faith. Donoso loved at forty, and was converted. His brother died. He never alluded to this loss without weeping, and writing about him to an intimate friend, Mr. Rio, he said that he ought to ask pardon of God for having so entirely loved a human creature. At the bedside of his dying brother he studied religion, and he there found in it a virtue superior to all others, the virtue of piety. Thenceforward his life was one of faith, love, and expiation; of devotion to the memory of his brother, and of prayer for the repose of his soul. Donoso wept and believed.

In reply to those who attributed this conversion to his own merits before God, he said: I cannot remember to have merited anything; but a certain feeling may have caused me cheerfully to return to God, for I can never behold a poor man at my door without thinking that I see in him a brother. He thus expresses himself, in a letter to Mr. Alberico de Blanche-Ruffin: "As you see, neither my understanding nor my reason have had any part whatever in my conversion. Had I depended upon my limited talents or my miserable reason, I should have descended into the tomb without coming to the knowledge of the true faith. The mystery of my conversion (for in every conversion a mystery is always involved) is a mystery of love. I did not love God; he wished me to love him, and I loved him, and was converted through love."

Notwithstanding his learning, Donoso, when converted, entered upon the path of Christian ignorance, and commenced to become sublime, by learning to be as a simple child, and, like the pilot of Homer, who at times watched the stars, and at times the sea, Donoso was not so entirely absorbed in celestial contemplations as to neglect mundane affairs: but, what is more meritorious, he considered this life as a necessary trial. We now behold him in full possession of truth and virtue, without being subjected to incessant contests, to harassing doubts, to cruel solicitude, to all of which had been added the difficulty of preserving the propensities of such a temperament as his in perfect equipoise. The works of St. Teresa and those of Father Lewis of Grenada, "the first mystic in the world," afforded nutriment to his own religious en- thusiasm, for the activity of his exterior life did not indicate how great was his love of meditation. About this time he wrote from Dombenito: "I have never accomplished anything, I accomplish nothing, nor shall I ever, in all my life. I am a perfect example of those men who do nothing; I am always reading, I propose to act, and then I never commence. Sometimes I imagine myself standing before God, and God demanding of me, What hast thou done? and I tremble with excessive fear. I then think that perhaps I was destined for a contemplative life; but these are dangerous illusions presented to my mind. The truth is, that I am a man who has done nothing." The simplicity of his faith equaled that of the most humble countryman. Having learned that a relic of our Lord was preserved in the Church of Argenteuil, he wished to make a pilgrimage thither, in order to obtain of divine mercy the cure of one of his brothers, who was sick. There is such a fullness of affection in those souls who are inspired by divine love, that they desire every act and thought should correspond to this love, and they make of life a continual sacrifice; and yet the world considers them as objects of insult, and takes pleasure in calling them guelfi da campanile; so that, in consequence of a contempt for their example, truth is lost and the practice of virtue discontinued.

I will only say a few words respecting the political opinions of Donoso. "The Christian monarchy, which existed before the absolute monarchy caused the suppression of deliberative assemblies, placed a real and not a revolutionary limit to the royal will;" and then the government was the only social form that was deemed necessary, the only expression of that authority which proceeded from God. In this appeal to the middle ages, to this high Catholic arbitrament, to the feudal and aristocratic power, all the illustrious men of the theological school concur with Cortès, from De Maistre to Balmes, from Bonald to Canuta. It is a general complaint, the want of an age in which faith existed and was potent for good, "and in which the rewards and punishments of a future life governed society." But what is the true Christian monarchy, the true Christian republic? Perhaps it is the monarchy of Gregory VII., that greatest representative of liberalism! But Donoso Cortès does not seem to think so, and in this matter many of the theological school to which he belongs disagree with him, and justly so.

Donoso had the consolation in his dying moments to reflect that "he had never failed to defend society, so cruelly assailed; and that he had never injured any one."

Book 1, Chapter 1

ESSAY

ON

CATHOLICISM, LIBERALISM, AND SOCIALISM.

BOOK I.

How every great political question always involves a great theological question.

Mr. Proudhon, in his Confessions of a Revolutionist, has written these remarkable words: "It is surprising to observe how constantly we find all our political questions complicated with theological questions." There is nothing in this to cause surprise, except it be the surprise of Mr. Proudhon. Theology being the science of God, is the ocean which contains and embraces all the sciences, as God is the ocean in which all things are contained. All things existed, both prior to and after their creation, in the divine mind; because as God made them out of nothing, so did he form them according to a model which existed in himself from eternity. All things are in God in the profound manner in which effects are in their causes, consequences in their principles, reflections in light, and forms in their eternal exemplars. In Him are united the vastness of the sea, the glory of the fields, the harmony of the spheres, the grandeur of the universe, the splendor of the stars, and the magnificence of the heavens. In Him are the measure, weight, and number of all things, and all things proceed from Him with number, weight, and measure. In Him are the inviolable and sacred laws of being, and every being has its particular law. All that lives, finds in Him the laws of life; all that vegetates, the laws of vegetation; all that moves, the laws of motion; all that has feeling, the law of sensation; all that has understanding, the law of intelligence; and all that has liberty, the law of freedom. It may in this sense be affirmed, without falling into Pantheism, that all things are in God, and God is in all things. This will serve to explain how in proportion as faith is impaired in this world, truth is weakened, and how the society that turns its back upon God, will find its horizon quickly enveloped in frightful obscurity. For this reason religion has been considered by all men, and in all ages, as the indestructible foundation of human society. Omnis humanæ societatis fundamentum convellit qui religionem convellit, says Plato in book 10 of his laws. According to Xenophon, (on Socrates,) "the most pious cities and nations have always been the most durable, and the wisest." Plutarch affirms (contra Colotes) "that it is easier to build a city in the air than to establish society without a belief in the gods." Rousseau, in his Social Contract, book iv., ch. viii., observes, "that a State was never established without religion as a foundation." Voltaire says, in his Treatise on Toleration, ch. xx., "that religion is, on all accounts, necessary wherever society exists." All the legislation of the ancients rests upon a fear of the gods. Polybius declares that this holy fear is always more requisite in a free people than in others. That Rome might be the eternal city, Numa made it the holy city. Among the nations of antiquity the Roman was the greatest, precisely because it was the most religious. Cesar having one day uttered certain words, in open Senate, against the existence of the gods, Cato and Cicero arose from their seats and accused the irreverent youth of having spoken words fatal to the Republic. It is related of Fabricius, a Roman captain, that having heard the philosopher Cineas ridicule the Divinity in presence of Pyrrhus, he pronounced these memorable words: "May it please the gods, that our enemies follow this doctrine when they make war against the Republic."

The decline of faith that produces the decline of truth does not necessarily cripple, but certainly misleads the human mind. God, who is both compassionate and just, denies truth to guilty souls, but does not deprive them of life. He condemns them to error, but not to death. As an evidence of this, every one has witnessed those periods of prodigious incredulity and of highest culture that have shone in history with a phosphorescent light, leaving more of a burning than a luminous track behind them. If we carefully contemplate these ages, we shall see that their splendor is only the inflamed glare of the lightning's flash. It is evident that their brightness is the sudden explosion of their obscure but combustible materials, rather than the calm light proceeding from purest regions, and serenely spread over heaven's vault by the divine pencil of the sovereign painter.

What is here said of ages may also be said of men. The absence or the possession of faith, the denial of God or the abandonment of truth, neither gives them under- standing nor deprives them of it. That of the unbeliever may be of the highest order, and that of the believer very limited; but the greatness of the first is that of an abyss, while the second has the holiness of a tabernacle. In the first dwells error, in the second truth. In the abyss with error is death, in the tabernacle with truth is life. Consequently there can be no hope whatever for those communities that renounce the austere worship of truth for the idolatry of the intellect. Sophisms produce revolutions, and sophists are succeeded by hangmen.

He possesses political truth who understands the laws to which governments are amenable; and he possesses soclal truth who comprehends the laws to which human societies are answerable. He who knows God, knows these laws; and he knows God who listens to what He affirms of Himself, and believes the same. Theology is the science which has for its object these affirmations. Whence it follows that every affirmation respecting society or government, supposes an affirmation relative to God; or, what is the same thing, that every political or social truth necessarily resolves itself into a theological truth.

If everything is intelligible in God and through God, and theology is the science of God, in whom and by whom everything is elucidated, theology is the universal science. Such being the case, there is nothing not comprised in this science, which has no plural; because totality, which constitutes it, has it not. Political and social sciences have no existence except as arbitrary classifications of the human mind. Man in his feebleness classifies that which in God is characterized by the most simple unity. Thus, he distinguishes political from social and religious affirmations; while in God there is but one affirmation, indivisible and supreme. He who speaks explicitly of what thing soever, and is ignorant that he implicitly speaks of God; and who does not know when he discusses explicitly any science whatever, that he implicitly illustrates theology, has received from God simply the necessary amount of intelligence to constitute him a man. Theology, then, considered in its highest acceptation, is the perpetual object of all the sciences, even as God is the perpetual object of human speculations.

Every word that a man utters is a recognition of the Deity, even that which curses or denies God. He who rebels against God, and frantically exclaims, "I abhor thee; thou art not!" illustrates a complete system of theology; as he does who raises to Him a contrite heart, and says, "Lord, have mercy on thy servant, who adores thee." The first blasphemes Him to His face, the second prays at His feet, yet both acknowledge Him, each in his own way; for both pronounce His incommunicable name.

In the manner of pronouncing this name rests the solution of the most profound enigmas; the vocation of races, the providential mission of nations, the great vicissitudes of history, the rise and fall of the most famous empires, their wars and their conquests, the different character of peoples, the physiognomy of nations, and their various fortunes. Where God is considered as the all-pervading essence, man, abandoned to silent contemplation, shuts out the senses and lives as it were in a dream, fanned by fragrant and enervating breezes. The adorer of the infinite substance is condemned to a perpetual slavery and unlimited indolence. For him the desert has something divine which he finds not in the city, because it is more silent, more solitary, and more vast; and yet he will not adore it as his God, because the desert is not infinite. The ocean would become his divinity, because it absorbs all things, if it were not for its strange commotions and noise. The sun which illuminates the universe would be worthy of his worship, if they eye of man did not embrace its resplendent disk. The firmament would be his god, if it were not dotted by the sparkling luminaries; or night would be his god but for its mysterious sounds. His god is all these things united—immensity, obscurity, immobility, silence. There we behold suddenly arise, through the hidden impulsion of a powerful growth, colossal and barbarous empires, that as suddenly fall with a crash, overwhelmed by the weight of other empires more gigantic, and leaving no trace either of their rise or fall. Their armies are undisciplined and the people unintelligent. The army is chiefly characterized by the number of men that compose it. There war has less for its aim to prove the heroism of a nation than its populousness, and even victory would not establish a legal title, except that victory supposes strength, and strength is considered an attribute of the divinity.

Thus we see that the Hindoo theology and history are identical. Turning our eyes westward we behold, at the very portals, a region which ushers in a new world in politics, morals, and theology. The Oriental deity of infinitude is here decomposed, and loses its formidable and austere characteristics: its unity is multitude. There the deity was motionless; here multitude displays an unceasing activity. There silence reigned; here everything is sound, cadence, and har- mony. The god of the East extended through all time and filled all space; here the family of divinities has its genealogical tree, and is confined to the summit of mountain. The deity of the East dwells in an eternal peace; while here, in the seat of the gods, all is war, tumult, and confusion.

The political unity of these nations undergoes the same vicissitudes as the religious unity: here each city forms an empire; while there all the communities combined to form one. Among the Orientals we find one God and one King; while in the West we find a republic of Deities and a republic of Cities. In this multitude of divinities and cities all is disorder and confusion. To men is imputed something of the heroic and heavenly, and to the gods something of the human and terrestrial. The gods accord to men the intelligence of great things, and the perception of the beautiful, and receive in turn from them their discords and their vices. They have illustrious and virtuous men, and incestuous and adulterous gods. This people, impressionable and ardent, is distinguished for its poets and artists, and is an object of wonder to the world. Life has no charms for it, except as it reflects the light of glory; nor is death terrible, except in the oblivion that follows it. Utterly sensual, it values in life only its pleasures; and it considers death as happy, when it comes crowned with flowers. Familiarity and affinity with its gods, make it vain, capricious, and petulant. Without a due respect for the gods, it lacks dignity in its designs, fixedness of purpose, and stability of resolve. It regards the Oriental World as a region overspread with darkness, and peopled with statues; while the Orientals, contemplating the ephemeral life, premature death, and brief glory of this people, consider it as a nation of pigmies. For the one, greatness consists in duration; for the other, it is action. Thus Grecian theology, Grecian history, and Grecian character are one and the same.

This phenomenon is conspicuous in the history of the Roman people. Their principal gods, of Etruscan origin, were Grecian in their quality of deities, and Oriental in so far as Etruscan. They were numerous as the gods of Greece, and at the same time austere and somber as the gods of the East. Rome combines the East and the West, both in politics and in religion. It is a city like that of Theseus, and an empire like that of Cyrus. Rome is a type of Janus, being two-faced, and each visage bearing a different aspect. One symbolizes Oriental duration, and the other Grecian activity; possessing a mobility so great as to reach the confines of the earth, and so prolonged in duration that the world proclaims it eternal. Chosen by the divine counsel to prepare the way for Him who was to come, its providential mission was to assimilate to itself all theologies, and to rule over all nations. In obedience to a mysterious influence, all the gods find a place in the Roman Capitol, and the awed nations, overcome with terror, lie humbled and prostrate under the Roman yoke. All the cities are successively despoiled of their gods, and all the gods are one after the other despoiled of their temples and cities. This vast empire holds as its own the Oriental legitimacy—multitude and strength; and the legitimacy of the West—intelligence and discipline. For this reason it subjects all, and none resist it, or complain of its crushing force. In the same way that its theology differs from, and yet has something in common with, all theologies, so has Rome also much that is peculiar to herself, and much in common with all the cities conquered by her arms, or obscured by her glory. She has the Spartan severity, the Attic culture, the pomp of Memphis, and the grandeur of Babylon and Nineveh. In order to make a succinct proposition, we may indicate the Orient as the thesis, the West as the antithesis, and Rome as the synthesis. The Roman Empire represents the absorption of the Oriental thesis and the Western antithesis in the Roman synthesis. Let us, then, resolve this potent synthesis into its constituent elements, and it will be seen that there can be no synthesis in the political and social order, without a corresponding condition in the religious order. Both among the Oriental nations, the republics of Greece, and in the Roman Empire, theological systems serve to elucidate the political. Theology is the light of history.

The Roman Capitol could not be despoiled of its magnificence, except through the destruction of the means which had enabled it to attain its culminating point. No one could establish his power in Rome without the permission of the gods, and no one could obtain possession of the Capitol without first displacing the supreme god, Jupiter Optimus Mazimus. The ancients, who had a confused idea of the vital power inherent in all religious systems, believed that no city could be conquered so long as it was not abandoned by the national deities. Consequently, in all the wars of city against city, nation against nation, and race against race, a spiritual and religious controversy accompanied the material and political struggle. The besieged, while making an armed resistance, implored their gods not to forsake them. The besiegers, in their turn, conjured the gods, with mysterious imprecations, to desert the city. Woe to that city wherein resounds the fearful cry, "The gods have fled—the gods have abandoned us!" The people of Israel were invincible so long as Moses held uplifted hands toward God, and could no longer conquer when these fell powerless. Moses is a type of the human race, proclaiming through all ages, though under various and diverse forms, the omnipotence of God and man's dependence, the power of religion, and the efficacy of prayer.