An Apologist in Court=Dress

New Zealand Tablet, 19 January 1922, Page 19

An Apologist in Court=Dress

(By John C. Seville, S.J., in America.)

Three men, the Count de Maistre, the Viscount do Bonald, and the Abbe de Lamennais, the abbe of the years of his fidelity to Rome,, formed in France during the first quarter of the nineteenth century a Catholic triumvirate of genius and learning. Under their leadership was launched the movement sometimes known as the CounterRevolution, to combat the theories of the Encyclopedists, the Diderots, the Voltaires, and the' Rousseaus of the:® eighteenth century. These theories 'put into practice by a generation bred in Deism and atheism, had pulled down throne and altar, and deluged France with blood. In his Genie du Christionisme, Chateaubriand had attempted an apology of the old faith. Admirably suited to the times, which, strange to say, were abnormally sentimental and dreamy, the book, from the philosophic side, was undeniably weak; It dealt with Christianity almost entirely from the aesthetic point of view. Its main thesis might be summarised in the proposition: “Christianity is beautiful, it is therefore true.” De Maistre, de Bonald, and de Lamennais felt the weakness of the argument. They realised that in her armory the Church had stronger weapons with which to arm her soldiers. So in the first volume of his Essai sur V lndifference, which roused the indifferent and the unbeliever like a thunder clap, and, free from the errors which disfigured the sequel, Lamennais had indicted his generation for its contempt of religion. De Bonald, profoundly Catholic at heart in spite of philosophic errors, in his .Theorie du Pouvoir Politique et Beligieux and Legislation Primitive, endeavored to restore to an age perverted by the heresies of the eighteenth century, sound .ideas of society,- responsibility, authority, law, and liberty. In his Considerations sur la France, Soirees de St. Peiershourg, Du. Pape, De Maistre became the apologist of Providence, of the true mission of the French nation, of the spiritual and temporal sovereignty of the Vicar of Christ. Of these triumviri, the most balanced in system and thought is the Franco-Sard diplomat. It is a century since he published The Pope. Around the man and his books a storm has always brooded. Half-hearted Catholics find him too uncompromising and stern; infidels, scoffers called him reactionary, “apologist of the hangman,” propliet of the past, champion of a lost cause. But if we overlook his aristocratic hauteur, some high-handed judgments and venturesome paradoxes, and forget in the general urbanity and distinction of his style, the occasional overtones of dictatorial, even despotic verdicts, we shall easily recognise a masculine mind stored with the experiences of the past, opulent with the spoils of many literatures, observant of men and events, keenly appreciative of the motives lurking beneath the rind of fact, an analytic, philosophic mind. In De Maistre was verified the principle that men ever bear the seal stamped upon them in early years. Born in 1?54 at Chamcry under the buttresses of the Alps, at a time when the school of Voltaire and Rousseau was at its height, reared in one of those old Franco-Sard . families in which, Spartan simplicity was blended with ■ French courtesy and Italian charm, a pupil of the Jesuits,, who taught! him to love virtue more than popularity or gold, to think and , to write, Senator of the,realm in what

was but a third-rate power 7 the Sardo-Piedmontese kingdom, diplomatic representative of his almost financially ruined sovereign at Lausanne and St. Petersburg, faithful to that soverign in spite of his king’s poverty and his own penury, sacrificing for him the brilliant offers of Alexander of Russia, watching at close range the intricate workings, the cogs and gearing of world movements, tracing causes and forecasting results, he seemed Providentially destined to fight the Revolution. The infidel and atheistic brood of that grim Saturn that devours his children has never forgiven him and has in every way tried to dwarf his imposing figure. There is an admirable unity in the philosophy of the author of the Considerations sur la France, La Souverainete, Le Principe Generateur des Constitutions Politiques, and Phi Pape. De Maistre was a monarchist, a thoroughgoing anti-Revolutionist. Wherever he saw' the spirit of the anti-social, anti-religious Revolution, he attacked it, visor up, craving no quarter and giving none. He did not always sift the grain from the chaff of the new sowing and its harvest, nor discern in the follies of his opponents some noble principles, which after all were not theirs, but had been filched from the storehouse of Catholic truth. But injustice either from the Revolution or from anointed princes, was not to his liking, and whefi at the Congress of Vienna suave plenipotentiaries were toying on the chessboard of politics with peoples as pawns, he protested th%t these were sacred and were not to be dealt with as if they were bits of outworn furniture to be tossed right and left at the bidding of royal auctioneers. All power, says the statesman-author, quoting St. Paul, comes from God; constitutions elaborated by the light of reason alone can bo neither solid nor lasting; individuals and societies cannot do without God. The volumes on Sovereignty and Generative Principle of Political Constitutions are. dedicated to the evolution of these principles now sadly needed when constitutions are being framed for States born of the throes of the World War. The eighteenth century had tried to build a society without God. It succeeded in imposing upon Europe the tyrannies of the Revolution. It lifted to overlordship the spurred and booted conqueror who drove it to battle-shambles that almost bled it"'to death. False ideas of the origin and the formation of society were at the bottom of the whole perverted system. According to Rousseau’s C out rat Social, men had originally entered into society, not through any instinct,.or impulse .placed in their hearts by God, but becasue it pleased them for their mutual benefit to*frame a compact for the purpose. Hence' the compact was theirs, made on their own terms. They could thus write into it what pleased them; all sovereignty, rights, duties, obligations, sprang from them ; they could give them the meaning they chose, for these things derived from themselves alone. Not thus does the Piedmontese philosopher understand society and its origin. To him, society is necessary for the very existence and the full development of humanity. It therefore springs from man’s nature and is intended by the author of nature. Men can determine contingent facts and conditions affecting them, delegate their authority to a chosen rulei, president, or king. But in this they are chosen by God Himself as co-partners in His work. They may imagine that because they do something in the formation of society, in the framing of constitutions and laws, they are doing everything. But the social bond and relation, the very fundamentals of the social structure they are building come from God. He is the source of the authority that rules, the fountain-head of law and order that must preserve it. Take Him away and the State must crumble to pieces. These truths were exposed with a cogency of logic and a wealth of facts, an eloquence in which there is an echo of Bossuet and Pascal, while his Considerations remind us of Burke’s flections on the French Revolution. Both men had caught the “open Sesame” of a great style. Burke, like De Maistre, . was . a monarchist, a traditionalist, a loyal servant of the king, a believer in aristocracy and its privileges, not for the gratification of the few, but for the service of the many. Both had seen what they deeply reverenced swept away, and felt the ground rocking under altar, parliament, and throne. The great Celtic orator believed, like De Maistre, in a Providence governing the world. -But the tread of the Franco-Sard diplomat

♦ was steadier he had an infallible guide. In the Considerations, he lays down as a principle that “We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by. a flexible chain . which holds but does not enslave us.” In revolutionary periods, the chain and the bond' suddenly tighten; man’s action is restricted, and the designs of Providence manifest themselves more clearly. These designs, De Maistre endeavors to discover in the European upheaval of his time. With his eye upon France, with something of pardonable pride in her history and even in her misfortunes, ' France appears to him the principal instrument of Providence for good in the world; by its permission she «also is the instrument of its chastisements. Old French chroniclers wrote at the head of their story Gesf.a Dei per Francos. The Deeds of God , but through the Franks, His agents. According to him, the title was justified, and for good or for evil France has ever been a Providentially chosen instrument. But, says De Maistre, France in the eighteenth century, unfaithful to her! mission, had been driven to a species of national apostasy. She had then to be chastised. The Red Terror of 1793, Robespierre, Danton, their rivals in tyranny, had been but the instruments in God’s hands, instruments to punish crime at home and at the same time, almost in spite of themselves, the means through which France was to be saved -from the foreign yoke through the fierce spirit of nationalism which they aroused. Apologist of France in, the Considerations , he is the apologist of Providence in the Soirees de St. Petershour eleven dialogues between a count, himself no doubt, a knight and a senator, in which he “justifies the ways of God to man.” Here he studied the “riddle” of Divine power and human freedom, the problem of good and evil, the mystery of suffering innocence, the horrors of war, which he painted in a tableau scarcely surpassed by Thucydides, and to which the battle scenes of the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” of Ibanez are an Arcadian idyl. In this vindication there are paradoxes, exaggerations, regrettable lacunae, but it is none the less a masterpiece, in which he mercilessly beats down the protagonists of infidelity, colossi with feet of clay. And having thus studied the relations of Providence to humanity, he analyses in “The Pope” the relations of Christ’s Vicar on earth to the Church of which he is the infallible head, to the temporal powers with which he is brought into contact, to the civilisation and welfare of the nations and finally to the heretical and schismatical bodies which have broken away from his Divinely constituted authority. “The Pope” in an Apologia pro Sede Petri for' the doctrinal infallibility of the successor of Peter, for his spiritual and temporal power. Going straight to the heart of the question, De Maistre appeals to the safeguards which-men demand to protect them against the abuses of sovereign power. Such safeguards, he tells us, are not to be found in written charters, constiutions, in parliaments or senates, but in a power superior to all others independent and impartial, aloof from the pettinesses of ephemeral politics and passions, the champion of justice, the interpreter of moral law, the guardian of revealed tnrth, the highest tribunal on earth, the Supreme Judge between subjects and rulers, between peoples and kings. The Papacy is such a power. The functions which the author claims for it were already exercised, he tells us, in the Middle Ages, whose splendors it prepared by rescuing Europe and civilisation from barbarism. The Papacy alone can save Europe now, De Maistre concludes; the Papacy alone can protect authority and rulers against revolt, nations and peoples against autocracy and tyranny. Such is tho bare outline of a masterpiece whose arguments are admirably suited to our needs. Theologically sound with the exception of one proposition, the book is .not a theological treatise. It is a political, social, historical vindication of the Papacy, built on reason, faith and facts, tingling especially in the conclusion with a compelling eloquence. For De Maistre, the Pope is the religion of Christ rendered visible in a majestic figure, summing nip in himself all the prerogatives and the glory, the legislative and doctrinal functions, the history and the immortal destinies of the Church of which he is the head. It is’ no wonder that after the author has described all tHat the Popes have accomplished for civilisation, for the sacredness of human life, the dignity of the wife and

child, the helplessness of the slave, sciences and art, the liberties of Italy over whose destinies they so long presided, he hails the Church over which they rule, in the words Virgil addressed to Mother Italy of old: Salve , Magna Parens, Magna Virum: “Hail, Mighty Mother, Queenly Nurse of Heroes and of Men.” Among the Church’s loyal sons there is one whose name Catholics in these strenuous times gratefully recall, her apologist in court dress, Count Joseph de Maistre.