THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND LIBERTY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 28, 10 April 1891, Page 29

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND LIBERTY.

The following passages are taken from a lecture recently delivered in Boston by Mr. Charles Jerome Boaaparte :—: —

If we apply to the sum of American institutions tbe vague and much-abused term " liberty," a century's history proves that liberty is good for the Catholic Church ; and if it has " essentially changed the nature of Catholicism," the change h«s been but to make the Church more enterprising and aggressive, more than ever full of the missionary, proselytising spirit which marks a truly liring faith, and yet to put asleep the hatred which she once encountered here and still encounters elsewhere.

To understand why American liberty has proved thus congenial to the Church, we must first appreciate what, in its essentials, our liberty is, and how it differs from political systems abroad, which usurp and masquerade in the same name. A competent and candid observer asked to indicate the countries whose history during the present century could be read with most pleasure by devout Catholics would unhesitatingly group with tbe United States the great English colonies.

In old Catholic countries th 3 Church has too often contended with hostility and spoliation from the State ; elsewhere she has been steaJfibt under persecution from non-Catholic rulers of arbitrary power ; but among all English-speaking peoples she has gained giound, and in Canada, and Australia, and the United States her prosperity has been manifest aid her progress rapid. What suits her in our country, then, is something we shara with our Northern neighbours and our kinsmen in the great island of tbe Southern sea, and we share with them & large measure of individual freedom under a popular Government.

The genius of our common institutions is to let each citizen work out his own happiness with little hindrance aid little help from the State ; the Government protects his person and property and enforces his contract, then leaves him as neirly to himself as the exigencies of national defence and public order permit. We ask and allow our rulers to do only such work as no one else caa do for us; or if thil statement is a little too sweeping, we require clear proof that they can do it better than it will otherwise ba done before entrusting it to them. In case of any doubt, tbe presumption is in favour of private agencies ; prina facie the State's intervention is an evil, and the onus probandi rests always on its advocates, aud we at least discoinage its undertaking any business to which anybody else can and will attend.

Advocates of Communistic experiments among us are men who have not yet become, and wbo, for the most part, never will become, Americans ; for the mass of our people, theit visions of Utopia are unattractive and well-nigh unintelligible ; an omniscient and omnipotent Government, making everybody happy according to rule, is to Americans not only a dream, but a nightmare.

This spirit of self-helpfulness aud per onal independence ha been utterly wanting in tb.3 ephemeral republic* which this century has seen rise- and fall in Europe ; they may have committed the State'i authority to many hands, but have made tbat authority cve c more aud more arbitrary and far-reaching ; in such a republic

" The worst of tyrants, a usurping crowd," intrudes upon every phase of a man's life, assumes to watch over his coming in and his going out, the management of his property, the education of his children, ibe c ire of his health ; it dictates even tbe words he shall ute and the clothes he shall wear.

The legitimate outcome of the first system is complete religious liberty : to give any creed, not grossly repugnant to the accapted standard of public morals, a fair field, but no favour ; for the State to a^k only the things of C»3ar, leaving to the conscience of each citizen to care for these more lasting interests which lie beyond its humbler sphere, Tbe Bill of Bights of my native Sta'e declares :

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11 That as it is the dnty of every man to worship God in such manner •a ho thinks most acceptable to Him, all persons are equally entitled to probation in their religious liberty ; wherefore no person ought oy *ypj law to be molested in his person or estate on account of his regions persuasion or profession or for his religious practice, unless under colour of religion he shall disturb the good order, peace or safety of the State, or shall infringe the laws of morality, or injure others in their natural, civil or religious rights, nor ought any person to be compelled to frequent, or maintain, or contribute (unless on contract) to maintain any place of worship or any ministry."

This provision embodies the spirit of American law in matters of religion. In all things we strive to mtke the State's duties as few and as easy as possible, and thus we have pefect religious liberty, and y«t it mast be remembered that wa are not a nation of infidels ; on tb« contrary, we enjoy well-nigh all the political advantages which flow from a legal sanction to religious influences. We are in fact, essentially a religious people, but we do not deem the cm government competent to determine the comparative merits of different faiths. That function is reserved to the individual citizen, and wherever public opinion ceases to be practically unanimous as to questions of belief or morals, the State's province ends.

Under the second system the State becomes itself a Church ; a Church wanting, iudeed, in almost all that makes a Cburch a means of good, bat with a potent influence for evil. To be consistent, a paternal government must provide a legal religion ; it cannot, in tbe words of the great Frederick, " let its subjects go to bell by the road they like best," and under such a government the Catholic Church stands face to face with a rival. ludeed, the aim of ecclesiastical legislation in many European countries n precisely to make all places of worship public buildings, and all ministers of religion, tf whatsoever creed or order, public functionaries, controlled by the State, and maintained from the proceeds of taxation.

Our civil rulers are not anointed of the Lord; their oath of office has no quasi-sacramental efficacy to make them Providential leaders in the paths of salvation ; their concern is with the things of Cs»wr. and we have no wish that they should meddle with what concerns them not.

Here, then, the Cnurch goes her way and do^s her work without caring, almost without thinking, wnatner such rulers for the time being are witnin or without h^r fold ; there she may bi hampered in every function oE her ministry by their hostility, or more gravely embarrassed, more permanently d>scielitei by their compromising friendship. For, even if I s^anialise some worthy people by so thinking, I yet tbiDK the civil power less daugerous to the Cburch as a rival, even an oppressor, than as a patron. Ttio Church of Christ should be no hothouse plant — ' Moored in the rifted rock Proof to the tempest's shock, The firmer they root her, the harder they blow."

But when fenced about with laws, when sheltered behud piiveli^s and prescriptions, her rugged tibre grows soft and her stmtiy f rani 3 daiuty. Wben the time of trial comes — and come it will, for dynasties and their kingdoms, laws and the nations that made tbem, man and all man's works, must fcometim 33 change and pass away — when all these screens and safeguards of a day fill around her, and she faces again the whirlwind of human error and human passion, many sapped boughs shall break, ani much dead wood claim the pruning knife, It is no trick of theologians' jargon that calls the Church "militant " ; she is indeed a righting body, and her coaquests must be held, as they were mide. by valour ani discipline and well-kept arms, not by a Chinese wall ot timid isolation.

Moreover, Cssar does not work for nothing ; he must be paid for his protection ; if he m<tkes heresy treason, he asks itut she make treason heresy, and this is little less than a ruinous price for a less than doubtful service. Here the Church hires no mercenary deftnder; she guards her own by her own might; uo prince or magistrate, no parliament or judge, wielding the clumsy waapon of unconvincing force, is called on to fulfil a mission for which her clergy have never grown unworthy. Her sjidiers cinnot rust in barracks or cower behind en'renchmems ; they must miet tieir foes of to-day, as all the countless spiritual heroes of her history met and conquered theirs, iv the open field of argument and example, with the atmament of zeal and eloquence, learning, and saintly lifo. The American priesthood is no refuge for cowardice and 8lo:ti, either intellectual or physical. It baa a woik to do, a vast ani hard and endless work, which no one c se will do or pretend to do for it, and whicb»'t is well nigh a question of life or dea'h, not. merely for the Church, but for civil society as well, that some one should do an I do thoToughly.

For to my mind, at least, nothing can ba more certain than that the Churci has gieatly prospered in America precisely because America greatly needed the Church. Recruiting her hierarchy from every lank and class of men, living less with or for the rich or learned than with and for that great mass of humanity whose pasaiuns, untamed by letters, are daily goaded by physical »an'?, her influence ib mo§t salutary where "ardor ctvutm j'ravajubentium"

constitute 8 an ever-present danger. The working of American democracy has no doubt shown some a priori objections to popular government to be exaggerated or groundless, but it has also shown no less clearly that Demos, like other sovereigns, is of tea selfish, short-sighted, lazy, and misled by bad advice. He is as ready as any other ruler to grow into a tyrant, and a very bad tyrant he can be.

A f elf-governing notion, of all others, needs' the Catholic Ohurcb, She can remind the sovereign people, as one haring authority over it as over all monarchy that right and wrong are things changeless and eternal, not moulded by earthly fortune or fixed by ita or any royal pleasure; that for her "success" never " sanctifies a fraud "; that for her, as for her Founder, one man's guilt is but blackened when he finds to share il thousands of accomplices or dopes.

True, the Church has no politics ; she knows nothing of candidates or platforms, of administrations or policies, of tariffs or currencies ; she is mute on every question as to which honest men may honestly differ, and no more tells her children what ticket they shall vote than what food they shall eat or what clothes they shall wear. But as she demands that they eat with temperance, that they dress with decency, so the requires of them to vote with an unclouded judgment, with an undrngged conscience, with the good of the country as their motive, with tbe fear of God before their ayes.