YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
SAMUEL W. LAMBERT, Yale '80
The Gift of his Children
Mrs. Giixet Lbfferts
Mrs. J. Ogdbn Bulkley
Samuel W. Lambert, Jr., Yale '19

LKO XIII

AND

MODERN CIVILIZATION

BY
J. BI^BKCKER NIILLER,
OF THE NEW YORK BAR.
4UTHOR OF "TRADE ORGANIZATIONS IN POLITICS, OR FEDERALISM
IN CITIES;" "TRADE ORGANIZATIONS IN RELIGION;" "DAS
ENGLISCHE RFCHT UND DAS ROMISCHE RECHT ALS
ERZEUGNISSE INDO-GERMANISCHLR VOLKER,"

NEW YORK:
THE ESKDALE PRESS.

Copyright,
J. BLEECKER MILLER,
1897.

From BISHOP POTTER :
'•Accept my thanks for your 'Leo XIII and Modem
Citnlization.' It is a very timely and suggestive book,
not merely because it traces the principles of a great
ecclesiastical policy to its pagan source, but because it
reveals the hostility of that policy to American ideals,
zvhether of the state, the family, or the freedom of the
individual. It is a book for statesmen, for workingmen,
for parents, for all loyal citizens to read and ponder; and
its temperate tone and wide range of authorities ought
to make it a handbook for all who are concerned for the
integrity of our institutions and the maintenance of our
liberties."
From BISHOP DOANE :
' 'I com-mend to the attentive study of our citizens
the startling and important facts collected in 'Leo XIII
and Modern Civilization.' "
From PROFESSOR BODY
of the General Theological Seminary ;
" I have been much interested in your work on 'Leo
XIII and Modern Civilization.'
"II places ihe reader in possession of a ¦mass of
material relative to the aims and policy of the Roman
Catholic Church, selected from original sources, of great
interest and inforfiiation to all American citizens. The
importance of the subject can hardly be overrated, and it is
treated in a way intelligible to all. I was especially struck
with the arguments on astrology as an original factor in
Roman philosophy. This opens up an apparently new
line of historical investigation well worthy of attention."

IISTDEX.

PAC-
[ntroduction  5
The Church and the State..  2S
The Church and the V/orkingman  90
The Church and the Family   in
The Church and the Individual  ... 126
The Church and Science..  155
Conclusion  186

INTRODUCTION.
While the booming cannons and pealing bells were
announcing during the past year that a quarter of a
century had fled since the defeat of the temporal
power of the Papal Government by force of arms at
the Porta Pia, is it not an appropriate time to give a
few thoughts also to the victory which the Papacy
won in that same year, in the spiritual field ?
The war concerning the prerogatives of the Pope
which was ended by this victory in favor of infalli
bility was a long one, extending over centuries, pros
ecuted on one side against enormous odds with all
the sagacity and vigor which has become identified
with the name of the Society of Jesus, and on the
other hand with all the learning and piety associated
with the name of Gallicanism.
Twenty-five years may seem perhaps too short a
time to estimate the full effect of a victory, so im
portant that men have been willing to toil through
centuries for its achievement ; but the task is light
ened by the fact that the Roman Catholic Church,
during the greater part of this time, had for its head
a pontiff of the extraordinary enterprise, vigor and
learning of Leo XIII., who has not hesitated to use
to its fullest extent what was probably the greatest
opportunity for the exercise of power ever given to
mortal man, by outlining the future of Roman Cath
olic thought, in all the chief departments of human
life.

6
As Leo XIII. possesses also the unrestricted power
of selecting the men who will nominate his successor,
and has had the similar right of nominating directly
or indirectly the bishops, clergy and teachers for the
whole Church during the long period of his pontifi
cate, it seems most improbable that any attempt to
alter the plan laid out by him for the Church's de
velopment would be made, even if the very idea of
the infallibility of its author did not negative the
possibility of a retreat or of even a criticism. More
over irresolution is certainly not a vice of the
school which has struggled so long and successfully
for papal predominance, and when we see the first
use made of this power to be in furtherance of the
primary doctrines of De Maistre, Cortes and Gous-
set, we can safely assume that this course will not be
changed until the attempt has been made to realize
in practice their ultimate conclusions.
Cortes, the revivor of Catholicism in Spain and
director of the studies of Queen Isabella of Spain,
whose " Essay on Catholicism " was translated into
French, with the approval of Pius IX., says : " Cathol
icism is a complete system of civilization. It is so
complete that in its immensity it includes every
thing — the science of God, of angels, of the universe
and of men,. Catholicism controls the body, the
senses and the souls of men. Its dogmatic theology
teaches men what they must believe ; its ethics in
struct them as to the duties of life. Without Cathol
icism there can be neither good sense among the
lower ranks nor virtue among the middle classes nor
sanctity among the eminent."

The details of this plan of civilization had not
however been authoritatively announced by the pre
decessors of Leo XIII. The controversy between
Mr. Gladstone and Cardinal Manning, which sprang
up at the time of the promulgation of the Vatican
Decrees, ended with the declaration on the part
of the Cardinal : " But what, has this to do with
Civil Allegiance? There is not a syllable on the
subject (in the Vatican Decrees) ; there is not a
proposition which can be twisted or tortured into
such a meaning. For the present it will be enough
to give the reason why the Vatican Council did
not touch the question of the relations of the Church
to the Civil Powers. The reason is simple. It
intended not to touch them until it could treat them
fully and as a whole. And it has carefully adhered
to its intention." (" Vatican Decrees," pp. 20 and 35.)
Pius IX. never attempted to supply this omission ;
his Syllabus of Errors was published long before the
Vatican Decrees, and besides, being merely in a
negative form, it was not promulgated by him as a
whole in the form of an encyclical. He was appar
ently content to supply the material — like another
David, leaving the construction of the temple to his
successor, the Solomon of the Church. The noise
less manner in which the latter has carried on his
part of the work has concealed it from public atten
tion — many would even deny that it had been begun.
How faithfully Leo XIII. has striven to carry out
this great undertaking appears from the testimony
of his most ardent admirers ; in the words of Car
dinal Satolli : " With regard to sociology, it is an-

other of the Holy Father's (Leo XIII.) glories at this
latter end of the 19th century, his Encyclicals are re
garded as so many admirable parts of a grand doc
trinal system, comprehensive and universal, embra
cing all the social sciences, beginning with the funda
mental theorems of natural law and going to the
consideration of the political constitution of States
and every economic question. " ("Loyalty to Church
and State," p. 246.)
In an article by the Rev. J. A. Zahm in the North
American Review for August, 1895, entitled 'Leo
XIII. and the Social Question " we read : " In 1891,
Leo XIII. promulgated a new economic charter —
Leo XIII. chose this prophetic hour to make known
ihe social evangel to the combatants on both sides.
As in the politico-religious order Leo XIII. has
through his Encyclical Immortale Dei, preached the
code of reconciliation, so has he in the economic
order, promulgated the charter of social harmony."
How binding on Roman Catholics these opinions
of the Pope on social and political questions are in
tended to be, appears from the Encyclical of Leo
XIII. to the Belgian Episcopate on the Social Ques
tion, dated July 10, 1895 : " Even amongst the Catho
lics of Belgium, whose zeal in carrying out teachings
of this kind (of Leo XIIL on the social question) is
most notable, this good fruit has been apparent ; not
however to such a degree as might have been ex
pected from a country and a race so well qualified to
profit by such teachings. What the obstacle has
been is well known. Differences of view, enter
tained no doubt with good intention, have been ad-

hered to and maintained in such a manner that the
full effect of our teachings could not ba felt, and
harmony could not remain complete amongst the
Catholics. In our opinion, then, the best step to
take, and one which we most strongly recommend, is
that you (the Bishops) should meet in congress with
as little delay as possible. For this social question
should not be regarded merely under one aspect. It
certainly is concerned with material welfare, but it
specially affects religion and morals, and naturally
comes into relation with the legislation of states ; so
that in a word, broadly speaking, it has to do with
the rights and duties of all classes. There can un
doubtedly be no Catholic, loving alike his religion
and his country, who will not be willing to accept
and observe your prudent decisions.
" Wherefore, venerable brethren, we desire you to
exhort and admonish the Catholics in our name in
order that henceforth, in matters of this kind,
whether in the journals, or similar publications, they
may refrain from all controversy and disputes among
themselves ; still more that they may avoid mutual
reprimands and may not presume to anticipate the
decisions of legitimate authority." (Catholic Review
for 1895, page 118).
We see, therefore, that the laity may be prohibited
from even discussing a matter of such deep ramifica
tions as the social question when once it has been
passed upon by the successor of St. Peter, but that
they must quietly " accept and observe " the decisions
of his appointees. As Professor Nitti says in his
"Catholic Socialism" (p. 381): "A Papal Encyclical

ID
bears a truly absolute character of moral obligation,
for it is the declaration of a voice which has the
weight of an absolute moral and spiritual law for
over two hundred and thirty millions of Catholics."
In the official edition of the Encyclicals, by the
Order of St. Augustine, published at Bruges, in 1887,
in the introduction they are termed " the Oracles of
the Infallible Master."
The sincere Romanist of to-day has therefore many
things to believe which were not absolutely neces
sary in the days of the Oxford movement or even in
those of the Gladstone- Manning controversy. Be
fore the declaration of the doctrine of infallibility,
there was room for various opinions as to whether
the claims for universal sovereignty of the mediae
val Popes need be accepted by the faithful ; and
even after the declaration of that doctrine, there
might still be doubt as to the exact nature of those
claims, and as to whether they were applicable to
modern nations which had thrown off all obedience
to Rome, as was so earnestly asserted by Cardinal
Manning in his answer to Mr. Gladstone (" Vatican
Decrees," p. 79). But since the encyclicals of Leo
XIII. have announced a definite scheme as to the
relation of Church and State, there can be no doubt
on this subject.
In the same way. Cardinal Manning could write
to Wilberforce in 1852 (Life of Manning, vol. IL,
page 31):
" It (the Church) has no jurisdiction in science or
philosophy. The office of the Church is Divine and
unerring within the sphere of the original revelation.

II
But ontology and metaphysics are no part of it. There
are many philosophies about ' matter ' and ' sub
stance,' etc., but none are authoritative. They are
many because no one has been defined." Since, how
ever, the philosophy of one of the Scholastic Doctors
has received the official sanction of the Infallible
Head of the Church, this uncertainty no longer
exists. As Cardinal Vaughan declares, concerning the
recent movement for a reunion of Christendom :
"The essence of the Anglican position on the
other hand, and the raison d'etre of the Anglican
Church, is the negation of the Roman claim. It de
clares (i) that the Pope has not authority by a divine
right bestowed by Christ on blessed Peter, to teach
and rule the whole Church of God ; (2) that the Pope
has no jurisdiction in England. The whole question
of reunion lies, therefore, within a nutshell. It is
not a question of examining and accepting a long
list of Catholic doctrines. It is simply a question
of the fundamental and essential constitution of the
Church. Did the Divine Founder give to His
Church a visible head upon earth, with power to
preach, define, settle controversies, and govern ? I
fail to see the use of discussing any other subject.
Settle this matter, and everything falls into its proper
place and becomes easy. Reject this, and there is no
basis on which reunion is possible, even though men
were prepared to affix their signature to every other
doctrine taught in the Creed of Pope Pius IV."
Moreover, not only has this plan of world-wide
government been annoupced, but a most active

12

propaganda has been started in its favor. Leo XIII.
and his school are perfectly sincere in their belief
that their plan will certainly make earth as nearly as
possible resemble Heaven. They throw back the
charge of ignorance and stupidity, so often hurled
against their Church, with the greatest vigor and
honesty, and have not the least fear of their victory
in an intellectual contest, if the argument be carried
to its full and fair conclusion. The new University
at Washington and the Summer Schools throughout
the country are founded for the express purpose of
spreading these theories of Church and State. As
Cardinal Satolli announced in his remarks on the
'Catholic Summer School (" Loyalty to Church and
State," p. 92) : " And I should be very much pleased
to see the Catholic Summer School incorporate with
its object another point of very great importance,
namely, the presentation to the American people of
the precise idea of the relations between the Church
and State. In this matter I find a surprising want of
knowledge in America. lam speaking about what
is commonly called Ecclesiastical Law, which pre
cisely deals with the fundamental, or rather the
essential constitution of the Church and the State,
and determines the limits of action of both author
ities in such a way as to prevent the conflicts that un
fortunately disturb the social peace and retard social
progress." In the words of Professor Nitti, whose work on
Catholic Socialism is said by Roman Catholic news
papers to have been largely consulted by the Pope
for his Encyclical on the Labor Question (p. 160):

13
" Now, it is not enough that the teachings and
examples of Christ be the foundation to our pri
vate and public life. We must strive to restore to
our public and social institutions their former Chris
tian character, raising up on the ruins of our present
pagan legislation another and better, which, like that
of Charlemagne, may merit to be called the faithful
follower of canon law, Canonum pedisequa."
The French Monsignor Mermillord in presenting
to the Pontiff the representatives of the Union Cath-
olique. d'etudes socials et economiques expressed
himself to the same effect :
" Not only does modern law make no account
whatever of the laws of the Church, but the ideas
that had their origin in these laws have been can
celled from the public spirit ; the principles bor
rowed from the Gospel, and elucidated by the doc
tors of the Church, especially St. Thomas Aquinas,
have been obscured ; all just notions in labor and
property have been forgotten, decaying, alike the
obligations of the latter and the rights conferred by
the former."
Leo XIII. is equally positive that the only true
remedy for all evils of society has been confided to
him ; thus he says in his Letter to Cardinal Ram,
poUa, dated June 15, 1887 : " The Church possesses
this great wealth, not only for the eternal salvation
of souls, which is its first work, but also for the
safety of all human society." To the same effect is
his letter of April 30, 1890, addressed to Italian
citizens, and the introductory sentences in the En-
cyclical beginning with the words " Immortale Dei."

14
Whence did Leo XIII. derive his social ideal
which is being so widely welcomed ? The answer
is indicated in the extract from the address of
Monsignor Mermillord, above set forth, where he
cites St. Thomas Aquinas as the great elucidator
of those principles whose neglect has caused all
the woes of modern society.
Leo XIII. himself has left no doubt as to whom he
considers the great teacher of the world. In the
second year of his pontificate, he issued the encyclical
beginning " .^terni Patris Filius," in which, after ex
tolling philosophy in general, he continues as follows :
" Now we say that all these admirable and wonder
ful prophecies are only to be found in a cor
rect use of that philosophy, which the scholastic
masters, after much painstaking and wise counsel,
were accustomed to adopt even in theological con
troversies  Now, as prince and master,
Thomas Aquinas far outshines every one of the
scholastic doctors  There is no part of
philosophy that he has not handled fully and thor
oughly  One can hardly imagine what
strength, light and help this philosophy can give,
especially to the study of natural sciences 
Even the Ecumenical Councils, in which shone the
most brilliant wisdom of the world, vied in doing
honor to Thomas Aquinas. In the Councils of
Lyons, Vienna, Florence, and that of the Vatican,
Thomas assisted, and you might almost say presided
at the deliberations, and decrees of the Fathers;
contending with irresistible power and happiest re
sults against the errors of Greeks, heretics and

15
rationalists. But Thomas's chiefest and special
honor, and one he shares not in common with any of
the Catholic Doctors, is, that the Tridentine Fathers,
in the midst of the conclave for order's sake, desired
to place the Summa of the Aquinate on the Altar
beside the books of Sacred Scripture and the decrees
of the Sovereign Pontiffs, that they might seek therein
counsel, guidance and light 
"Again we see the great danger which now threat
ens domestic and civil society from the plague of
perverse opinions, and how much more peaceable
and secure would either be if a sounder doctrine
were taught in the academies and schools, and one
more in conformity with the general teaching of the
Church, such as is found in the works of St. Thomas
Aquinas ; and then his treatises on the modern sys
tem of liberty, which in our time is tending to
license, on the Divine origin of authority, on the
laws and their binding force, on the fatherly, just
government of sovereign princes, on obedience to
the higher powers, on mutual charity to all ; these,
to wit, and other subjects of a like nature, treated of
by Thomas, have a great and invincible influence in
rooting out these new principles of right, which are
recognized as dangerous to order, peace and public
safety  Meantime, let the teachers intel
ligently chosen by you, study the doctrine of S.
Thomas Aquinas, with a view to gently instill it into
the minds of their pupils, and above all things to set
forth conspicuously its solidity and excellence ; and
that the academies, either now instituted or here
after to be instituted by you, defend, explain and

i6
use it in refutation of the hardiest and most wide-
spreading errors."
In the succeeding year his Holiness issued another
proclamation on the same subject, from which the
following extracts are taken : " Now, here is the chief
and summary of the reasons by which we are actu
ated : it is, that St. Thomas is the most perfect model
Catholics can propose to themselves in the various
branches of science. In him, indeed, are centered
all the lights of heart and mind which justly com
mend imitation  His learning is so vast
that, like the sea, it contains all the wisdom that
comes down from the ancients  For
these reasons, we deem the Angelic Doctor in every
respect worthy to be chosen as the patron of all
students  We have been pleased also
to ask the advice of the Sacred Congregation of
Rites upon the subject, and their unanimous opinion
being fully in accord with our wishes, by virtue of
our supreme authority, for the glory of Almighty
God and the honor of the Angelic Doctor, for the in
crease of learning and the common advantage of
human society, we declare St. Thomas the Angelic
Doctor, the Patron of Catholic Universities, Acade
mies, Faculties and Schools, and we desire that he
be by all regarded, venerated and honored as such."
The foregoing citations are taken from " Pope Leo
XIIL," by Rev. James F. Talbot of the R. C. Cathe
dral of the Holy Cross, in Boston, (published by
Garrison & Co., Boston, 1886.)
On February 20, 1880, Cardinal McCloskey of New
York, Archbishops Williams of Boston and Wood qI

17
Philadelphia, together with their fourteen suffragan
bishops, united in writing Pope Leo a letter, in which
they said, with reference to the foregoing Encyclical :
" On our part we promise to second your desires to
the best of our powers. We will see that no school
or seminary of higher studies in our dioceses shall
fail to imbue its students with the pure doctrine of
St. Thomas ; and we thank you, Most Holy Father,
for your vindication of the great Doctor of the
Church, and for your efforts to promote the true
progress of all science."
Father Beckx, the head of the Jesuits, in solemn
audience, announced the thanks and obedience of
his order.
This high appreciation of the writings of St.
Thomas Aquinas on the part of Leo XIIL, was no
new thing. As Archbishop of Perugia, in 1 872, he had
established for the study of the works of the Angelic
Doctor, an Academy which published a series of
scientific transactions. Immediately after the En
cyclical was published, by writing addressed to
Cardinal de Lucca, dated October 15, 1879, he
founded a similar institution in Rome and directed
the publication of a new edition of the writings of
St. Thomas. In all of his later writings, no chance to
praise St. Thomas is omitted.
Great as were these compliments which the infal
lible Papacy at its first opportunity showered upon
the Angel of the Schools, they were not undeserved ;
for, as this book will endeavor to show, it was he who
six centuries ago forged the weapons by which the
victory for infallibility was won and by which the

i8
Papacy hopes in the future to gain universal empire.
Whence had the Pope his admiration for the Angelic
Dcotor ?
As the learned Jesuit, Father Harper, says in his
" Metaphysics of the School " (Introduction, p.
LXX.) : " But I may not omit a special reference to
that Order to which I belong — the Society of Jesus.
It tells its members, and particularly its professors
of Scholastic Theology, that ' Ours are to follow
entirely in Scholastic Theology the teaching of St.
Thomas, and to consider him as their own Doctor ;
and they are to use their utmost exertions to render
those that follow their lectures as well disposed to
wards him as possible.' .... He who has charge
and supreme supervision in these matters is thus ad
monished : ' Let him above all things bear in mind,
that those who are not well affected towards St.
Thomas are not to be promoted to the chairs of
Theology ; and that they who are adverse to him, or
are even not sufficiently given to the study of him,
are to be debarred from the office of teaching.' "
According to Father Talbot (" Leo XIIL," p. 187),
" the ' Spiritual Exercises ' of St. Ignatius is so pene
trated with the Thomistic tradition that we may say
that without the Summa it would have been im
possible." As Leo XIII. was educated by the Jesuits, first at
Viterbo and then at the Collegio Romano in Rome
(McCarthy's " Pope Leo XIIL," p. 26), and was after
wards ordained in a Jesuit church (an honor said to
be reserved for members of that order only), his
glorification of St. Thomas was but the act of a

19
docile pupil of Ignatius Loyola. By Brief of July
13, 1886, he confirmed to the Society of Jesus all
their powers and privileges, praising them particu
larly for spreading the theological and philosophical
discipline of the Angelic Doctor.
As Leo XIII. himself declares in his Encyclical
above mentioned : " It is admitted that nearly all
the founders and lawgivers of the religious orders
have directed their subjects to study, and most con
scientiously, the doctrines of St. Thomas, and with
this warning, that no one depart with impunity one
tittle from the footsteps of so great a man. To
omit the Dominican Family, who glory in this great
master as by right their own, we find that Benedic
tines, Carmelites, Augustinians, the Society of Jesus
and many other Holy Orders are bound by this
law as their statutes prove." Nothing can exceed
the adulation which the Roman Catholic writers
apply to him ; Plassman, the learned professor in the
college in Rome, says (" Philosophy," vol. I., p. 29),
"He is the finger of God," and on page 18 id. he
asks : " Is it exaggerated to say that to defend St.
Thomas means to defend the Church ? " All of the
biographers of the Aquinate tell of the appearance
of our Saviour to him with the words : " Bene dixisii
de me, Thoma ;" of course, none of the writings of the
Bible could have a stronger confirmation.
How highly Cardinal Vaughan appreciates St.
Thomas Aquinas is shown by the following extract
from his " Life " (page 347) :
" And in fact the ruling minds at Trent were those
which had been molded by the great principles

20
embedded in the Summa. The spirit of St. Thomas
lived in its Sessions and seems to have formulated its
Decrees. . . . On the table of the Council were
placed conspicuously three books : the Holy Scrip
tures, the Decrees of the Popes and the Summa
Theologica of S. Thomas."
Cardinal Gibbons, in " Our Christian Heritage,"
says in a manner equally emphatic :
" St. Thomas Aquinas was, perhaps, the most pro
found thinker the world has produced since the
dawn of Christianity. His vast mind ranges over
the entire field of philosophy and theology."
But St. Thomas Aquinas in turn lays little claim
to originality ; he continually appeals to " the Phil
osopher," under which title the mediseval world
always understood Aristotle, as furnishing the phil
osophical groundwork to which the teachings of
the Bible must be applied. To understand the
Aquinate, and in turn Leo XIIL, it is, therefore,
necessary io begin with a study of Aristotle, and
in order to fully appreciate the latest teachings of
the Roman Pontiff we must often turn to the Prince
of Philosophers.
As Harper in his " Metaphysics of the School "
(Introduction, p. LXXII.) says : " I ought not to
omit another characteristic of St. Thomas— hi?
admiration and (it is not too much to say) his rever
ence for Aristotle as a philosopher. His moral
Theology — to repeat what I have said before — is
built upon the Ethics of the great Stagyrite ; just as
the morality of the Gospel is based on the natural
Law. He rarely, if ever, determines a problem in

21
philosophy without summoning the authority of the
Greek Philosopher to his support ; and whenever he
quotes him, it is always by the distinctive title of the
Philosopher  They stand absolutely alone ;
the one the giant of the old world, the other the
giant of the new."
As Dr. Plassman says in his first , volume (above
cited), p. 175 : " She (Aristotelian Philosophy) could
not be separated from the Summa Theologias and
the Summa Contra Gentiles of St. Thomas. Where
the theology of St. Thomas rules, there rules also
the philosophy of the Peripatetic School."
Without attempting here to enter upon the ques
tion of the merits of this particular philosophy, no
reader of Roman Catholic controversial literature
can have failed to note the great advantage which
familiarity with this philosophical system — extend
ing as it does from the mistiest metaphysics to the
most practical questions of to day — gives to the
Roman Catholic theologian in presenting his side of
the case, even when it is intrinsically weak.
The fact that the successors of the original re
formers of the sixteenth century have had compar
atively so little influence in continuing the conver
sion of Roman Catholics to Protestantism, is probably
largely due to the ignorance of these successors of
scholastic philosophy.
To appreciate the persistence and continuity
of scholastic teaching we need only remember
that the race of schoolmen originated in the schools
established by the Roman Emperors to prepare
men, fit for the service of the Roman State, Witb

22
the fall of the Empire, the control of these schools
passed into the hands of the Church, and men
were educated then to become fit for the service
of the Roman Church. The decrees of the Codex
Thedosianus (Lib. XIV., tit. 9), with its provisions
for full reports to the Emperor on each individual
student, for the universal study of Latin as the
medium of communication, etc., present a curious
parallel to the rules prevalent in the Jesuit schools
of to-day, the object of the one having been the
maintenance of the Roman Empir6, and the object
of the other the maintenance of its successor, the
Roman Church. See Hampden on the Scholastic
Philosophy of the Middle Ages.
From such schooling independent thought was of
course not to be expected ; they were trained to
'defend what the Church taught ; they may well be
described as the intellectual Praetorean Guards of
the Papacy. Archbishop Trench, in his Mediaeval
Church History, says :
(P. 273.) " The true hearted in every Christian
land were yearning more and more after a Reforma
tion of the Church in its head and in its members.
But the Schoolmen were not Reformers ; they were
and always had been defenders of that which was.
. . . There was nothing which, if it formed part
•of the Church's accepted system, they had not at
all times shown themselves ready to defend ; the
most baseless pretentions, the grossest superstition,
the abuse which was the mushroom growth of yes
terday equally with the truth which^had been once
delivered to the saints. Thet withdrawal of the cup

from the laity ; transubstantiation, simony if prac
ticed by a Pope ; purgatory ; indulgences ; the
burning of heretics . . . they found reasons, and
in some sort of fashion. Scripture for all."
Nevertheless, every one who would understand
modern philosoph}^ ought to familiarize himself
with the scholastic system. It is impossible to
understand Des Cartes and his followers, if we
have no idea of the school in which they were
brought up, or of the errors which they intended to
combat. Without understanding Des Cartes, it is in
turn impossible to understand the philosophers of
the eighteenth century and of to-day ; without a
satisfactory philosophy, it is impossible for a thought
ful man to arrive at definite conclusions on the most
essential points of his own religion or to convince
any, except the most superficial, of its truth. As
our country becomes old enough to produce a
leisure class, many will be found who will not rest
content without at least attempting to solve the great
riddles of our being which have attracted the strong
minds of all ages. The study of Roman Catholic
philosophy, therefore, even if we cannot agree with
it, will at least make us appreciate the necessity for
some philosophy and the utter inadequacy of our
Protestant teaching in this respect.
Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church is not the
only one which is infected with the philosophy of
the heathen Aristotle ; none of the churches, founded
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are free
from it, although in some respects, on this account,
it may be questioned whether Geneva be not nearer
to Rome than Canterbury.

24
The churches founded in the eighteenth century
have gone as far in the opposite direction, in con
sequence of a natural reaction, so that they, too,
may ascribe many of their defects indirectly to
the Stagirite. Hence, if we would have Christian
unity, one necessary prerequisite seems to be an
acquaintance with scholastic philosophy, as illus
trated on a few points by Fairbairn's " Unity of the
Faith." Another advantage of this study is to make one
appreciate how intelligent Roman Catholics can
honestly love their church and v/ork for its extension
from pure and unselfish motives. Their philosophy
is certainly wrong, but it is a philosophy which
does not shrink from the most difficult and funda
mental of life's problems, and therefore compares
favorably with many superficial and uncertain sys
tems, prevalent among Protestants.
The author has cited mainly Dr. Plassman's Ger
man works on the Philosophy of St. Thomas (pub
lished at Soest, in Germany, i860, by Nasse), which
have been recommended by the Rector of one of the
largest Roman Catholic parishes in this City, a
Monsignor of the Roman Court, as containing the
best summary of Thomistic doctrine, and also the
only English work on the subject, entitled " Meta
physics of the School," by the Jesuit Father Harper
(published by Macmillan, but now out of print). A
copy of this book was kindly loaned to the author
by His Grace Archbishop Corrigan of New York,
to whom the author is also indebted for the loan of
the publication containing the official texts of the

25
writings of Leo XIIL, known as " Leonis Papae
XIII. Allocutiones," published by Desclee, De Brou-
wer & Co., Bruges, Belgium. The translations of
the Encyclicals in the following chapters have been
taken, as indicated, from Roman Catholic sources,
and they have also been compared with the official
texts and found substantially correct. The Jesuit
Stonyhurst Series of books on Catholic Philosophy
(published by Benziger Brothers in New York,
Cincinnati and Chicago) to which frequent reference
is also made, is very ably written but is much more
condensed than Plassman's work. The Catholic Re
view, which is frequently cited, is stated to be " com
mended by his Holiness Leo XIIL, the Archbishop
of New York, the Bishop of Brooklyn and many other
prelates.'' The object of the author is not to attempt to con
fute the theological teachings of the Roman Catholic
Church which are not directly derived from scholas
tic philosophy, such as the doctrine of the Infallibility
of the Pope, although he can not forbear in passing to
refer any one in doubt on this subject to the immense
Ante-Nicene Literature, translated into English
within the last few years for the first time ; it is
submitted that it appears from this plainly enough
that the few passages therein contained, concern
ing pre-eminence of the See of Rome, indicate by
their context that it was a pre-eminence due to
the fact that " all roads lead to Rome," and that
hence, in the days before the Canon of the Scrip
ture was fixed, all traditions were brought to the
Capitol of the World to be sifted, compared and

26
agreed upon. Neither is it the author's intention to
attempt to set forth and refute the scholastic
philosophy as a whole. Thi? is a far greater
task than the author would prc.::i ;ic to undertake.
The object of the following chapters is to show
merely how that S3'stem affects the State by grind
ing that institution between its theories of the Church
and the Workingmen's Guild, as it v/ere an upper
and a nether mill-stone, and then repeating the pro
cess with its conceptions of the Family and the
Individual, until the State is reduced to an institution
intended only to raise taxes and execute criminals.
How successful this movement has been and how
important it promises to be.may be ascertained by
consulting Nitti's Catholic Socialism, or Nippold's
Kirchengeschicte (volume second), or Lecky 's Liberty
and Democracy.
The chapter on the Church and Science is added
for the purpose of showing the fallacy of the main
theory of the scholastic physical system, i. e., that all
motion must come from above, — from beings of a
higher order than the thing moved, — for it is by
analogy to this alleged universal principle that the
dependence of the Individual, Family, Guild, and
State (in short, of all laymen) upon the Priest-hood
and of the latter upon the Papacy, is proved.
The importance of this inquiry will be at once ap
preciated when we remember that the Supreme Pon
tiff in this country has the unlimited right of ap
pointment of all bishops, who in turn control the
teachers of all schools under Roman Catholic in
fluence, while on the continent of Europe the various

27
Concordats give the several governments more or
less control over nominations of bishops, pastors
and school teachers.
That these teachings are really believed in by all
Roman Catholic laymen or even priests, in spite of
their proclamation by the highest authority in the
Church, is not so very probable; those who were
educated in former days, when a more liberal spirit
prevailed, will give them at most only a formal
assent. But enough time has now elapsed since the
proclamation of the doctrine of the Infallibility and
of the main principles of the teachings of Leo XIII. to
allow a new generation, which has been brought
up on these doctrines, to grow up and enter our
schools as teachers, and the question becomes now
an important one, if these principles are dangerous
to our modem civilization, will Roman Catholic
schools make good citizens ?
" Who has the schools, has the future."

CHAPTER I.
the church and the state.
According to recent statements of the press, large
numbers of our citizens are enrolling themselves in
an organization, the object of which is to exclude
Roman Catholics from public offices. The fact that
the Roman Catholic press is teeming with denuncia
tions of the order, makes it very probable that the
movement is a large and growing one. A recent
article in the most conservative of Roman Catholic
magazines urged Its readers to leave one and join the
other oi the two great political parties, and Cardinal
Gibbons, in an open letter (published in the Catholic
Review for May 23, 1896), has threatened that all
Roman Catholics will take this course, unless oppo
sition to them, as such, ceases. This suggestion has
already been followed by the institution of the
Order of Catholic Americans, with the object of
questioning all candidates as to their opinions
concerning the right of Roman Catholics to hold
public office.
According to the published statement of the
leader of one of the great political parties in this
State, the recent murder at the election in Troy was
due to a feud which grew out of this antagonism.
In many cities the municipal elections were conducted
avowedly on these lines, especially where the choice
of officials having charge of public education, was
3?

29
involved ; in some States, the nominations for State
officers are made with reference to this issue, and a
presidential candidate has been denounced on ac
count of his alleged friendliness to Roman Catholics
in politics.
Has this Anti-Roman Cathohc movement any jus
tification ? Is it destined to spread and grow ? Or,
is it merely a revival of the old Know-nothing
spirit, which will shortly disappear on account of
its own folly ?
According to the statement of Roman Catholics,
there was never a time when such an attack had less
excuse. Leo XIII. is represented as being favorably
inclined to the modern liberal spirit ; in France he
has declared himself in favor of a republic, and
broken off the long-standing alliance between the
Papacy and the royal factions ; in our country his
Ablegate has consorted mainly with the priests who
represent the liberal American tendency in the
Church, and his Holiness has expressed himself as
well pleased with the course of his representative.
What, then, have the enemies of this Church to
complain of at this time ?
Has anything happened since the Know-nothing
party was laid to rest in its forgotten grave ?
Is all this show of liberalism of the present Pontiff
and his accredited representative a false pretense
and a blind, intended merely to cover up designs upon
our national institutions, so dangerous as to require
citizens to drop their former party affiliations and
range themselves in opposition to every candidate for
public office, who holds the Roman Catholic faith ?

^o

Let us glance at the principal events in the history
of the Church of Rome since the days of the Know-
nothing party.
At that time Roman Catholics could cite the
Declaration in 1826 of the Vicars Apostolic who
with Episcopal authority governed the Roman
Cathohcs of Great Britain, as follows :
" The allegiance which Catholics hold to be due
and are bound to pay to their Sovereign, and to
the civil authority of the State is perfect and un
divided. " They declare that neither the Pope, nor any other
prelate or ecclesiastical person of the Roman Catholic
Church .... has any right to interfere,
directly or indirectly, with civil government, . . .
nor to oppose in any manner the performance of the
civil duties which are due to the King."
Moreover there was the Pastoral Address of
Roman Catholic Hierarchy of the same year ; they
declared on oath their belief " that it is not an article
of the Catholic Faith, neither are they thereby re
quired to believe that the Pope is infallible."
In this country, they could also point to Keenan's
Doctrinal Catechism, approved by Bishop Hughes,
which contains the following (p. 305): " What if a
General Council or Papal Consistory should under
take to depose a king, or absolve his subjects from
their obedience ?
"Answer : No Catholic is bound to submit to such
a decree. Indeed every Catholic may renounce
upon oath any such doctrine, and this without the
least breach of Catholic principle.

31
" Question : Must not Catholics believe the Pope
in himself to be infallible?
"Answer : This is a Protestant invention, it is no
article of the Catholic faith."
Pius IX., as above set forth, published no positive
plan on the general subject of the relation of Church
and State ; the Syllabus of Errors being merely a
negation of certain doctrines, and, moreover of
uncertain authority. Has Leo XIIL, the omnipotent
superintendent of Roman Catholic schools, advanced
or receded from the position of the Irish Bishops and
Bishop Hughes ?
In the first place, what are the teachings on the
relation of Church and State of the Angel of the
Schools, St. Thomas Aquinas, whom Leo XIIL, as
-above set forth, has lauded so highly, and whose
doctrines, according to his directions, all Roman
Catholic teachers are " to gently instill into the
minds of their pupils " ?
In the passage from the Encyclical above cited, in
which St. Thomas is extolled as offering great safe
guards to the modern Family and State, particular
mention is made of his treatise "on the fatherly, just
government of sovereign princes."
The treatise " De regimine principum " is evidently
intended ; what are its teachings concerning the
science of government, and particularly on the rela
tions of Church and State ?
After setting forth the advantages which render
a monarchy the most desirable form of government
(" since states which are not ruled by one, labor under
dissentions and are tossed about without peace ")

32
he proceeds in Chapter XIV. of the First Book to
state the relation of Church and State as follows :
" If indeed men could attain this end (heaven) by
human nature, it would be necessary that it should
be the king's duty to guide men towards this
end  A government is higher in
proportion to Its aim  But since
man attains the end of divine enjoyment not
by human but by divine virtue, to guide toward
that end will be the duty not of human but of divine
government. Therefore the administration of this
government, in order that spiritual matters should
be distinct from earthly matters, is committed not to
earthly kings but to priests, and especially to the
highest priest, the successor of St. Peter, the vicar
of Christ, the Roman Pontiff,' to whom all kings of
the Christian people should be subject as to our Lord
Jesus Christ himself. For thus those who direct
towards inferior ends should be subject to him who
directs to the ultimate end. . . . Hence in the
law of Christ, kings shall be subjects to priests."
In Chapter X. of the Third Book, he treats of the
rank of dignitaries as follows : " If then our Lord
Jesus Christ is so called (priest and king) as Augustine
proves (7 de Civit. Dei) it does not appear incon
gruous so to call his successor ... In the
Supreme Pontiff is all grace, for he alone confers full
indulgence for all sins . . . This cannot be re
ferred merely to spiritual, because the corporal and
temporal depend from the spiritual and eternal,
as the operation of the body from the virtue of the soul.
As, therefore, the body has through the soul, virtue

33
and movement, as appears from the words of the
Philosopher (Aristotle) and Augustine on the Im
mortality of the Soul, so the temporal jurisdiction of
princes depends on the spiritual jurisdiction of Peter
and his successor. Which argument, indeed, we can
assume from those things which we find in the
writings and deeds of the Supreme Pontiffs and of the
Emperors, because they (the Emperors) yielded to
the latter in temporal jurisdiction. First, this ap
pears, indeed, concerning Constantine, who yielded
to Sylvester, in the Government . . . But
from the deposition of princes, made by apostolic
authority, sufficiently appears their (the Popes')
power. First, indeed, we find this power to have been
exercised by Zacharia over the King of the Franks,
since he deposed him from the throne and absolved
all his barons from the oath of fidelity.
The same we find concerning Innocent III. who
took the empire from Otto IV. And the same hap
pened to Frederick II."
These teachings are repeated in the most cele
brated work of St. Thomas, the " SummaTheologiae."
Thus he says in Summa IL, II. , q. lo, a. n : " Hu
man government is derived from divine and should
imitate it ; " and again in Summa IL, II. , q. 60, a. 6 :
" For the temporal power is subject to the spiritual as
the body to the soul, therefore it is not a usurpation of
jurisdiction if a spiritual prelate intrude himself into
temporal affairs ; " and again in Summa I., II. , q. 96, a.
4 : " And such laws (which are opposed to the divine
law) should in no way be observed."
Assuming that the foregoing extracts show suffi-

34
ciently the teachings of St. Thomas, on the manner in
which Roman Catholics should regard the relations of
the Church to the State, let us consider a few pas
sages which throw light upon the manner in which
they should treat their fellow citizens of other
religious beliefs.
Summa IL, IL, q. ii,a. 3 : " Heresy is a sin on the
part of heretics for which they deserve not only to
be separated from the Church by excommunication,
but also to hr killed . . . Although heretics on
account of their sin are not to be endured, yet until
their second relapse from the faith one should wait, in
order that they may return to the faith ; but they who
after a second relapse remain obstinate in their error,
are not only to be excommunicated, but also handed
over to the secular princes to be exterminated."
Summa II. , IL, q. 39, a. 4 : "A schismatic commits a
double sin. First because he separates himself from
communion with members of the Church, and for
this the proper punishment of schismatics is that
they should be excommunicated ; secondly, because
they refuse to be subject to the head of the Church,
and therefore because they will not be coerced by
the spiritual power of the Church, it is just that
they should be coerced by the temporal power."
Summa IL, II. , q. 10, a. 8: "And therefore
heretics are to be compelled to remain in the
faith  No one of us wishes any here
tics to perish. But the House of David did not
deserve peace unless Absalom his son was killed in
the war which he was carrying on against his father.
So the Catholic Church, if by the destruction of

35
some it collects others, heals the sorrow of its moth
erly heart by the liberation of so many people." The
last sentence is in answer to the objection : " In
Ezekiel, Chapter i8, it is said from God : I desire
not the death of a sinner. But we should conform
our will to the divine. Therefore we ought not to
wish that infidels be killed."
Summa 1 1., IL, q. lo, a. 9 : " The Church under pun
ishment, forbids the faithful to have intercourse with
infidels, who deviate from the received faith, either
by corrtipting it, as heretics do, or by completely
leaving it as apostates do."
Summa IL, IL, q. 10, a. 10: " Infidels are not to as
sume government or leadership of the faithful ; this
would be a danger and scandal to the faith ; but if
such governments exist they may be endured to
avoid scandal. . . . But such rule can justly by
the sentence or decree of the Church be ended ; be
cause infidels on account of their infidelity worthily
deserve to lose their power over the faithful, who
are the sons of God."
Summa IL, IL, q. 10, a. 11 : " Because the Jews ob
serve rites in which the truth of the faith is pre
dicted, their worship is to be tolerated. . . . The
rites of infidels which contribute something of use or
truth to the faithful are to be tolerated ; but other
rites are in no manner to be tolerated, except to
avoid scandal."
The fate of our Hebrew fellow citizens, however,
is not altogether a happy one, as appears from the
following extract from a letter of the Angelic Doctor
to the Duchess of Brabant :

36
" In the first place your Excellency inquires
whether it is lawful at any time, and if so at what
time, to make exactions from the Jews. To which
question, so absolutely proposed, one can reply that,
as the laws teach, the Jews on account of their sin
are liable to perpetual servitude and their terrestrial
-lords can take the property of the Jews as their own ;
but in this, moderation should be observed so that
the necessaries of life should not be taken from
them. . . . Lastly you inquire whether through
out your Province Jews should wear a sign by
which they could be distinguished from Christians.
To which the plain answer is that according to a
statute of a General Council, Jews of either sex in
all Christian lands and in all times ought to be dis
tinguished by some dress from the rest of the people."
Many Roman Catholics will of course say that these
doctrines of Thomas Aquinas are antiquated and
that they no longer are applicable, in this nineteenth
century. Let us consider them in turn and see if
they have not been In principle reaffirmed in our day.
To begin with the claim of St. Thomas that
Popes can depose princes : Pius IX. expressly recog
nized the right of the Popes so to do, in his address
to the Academy of the Catholic Religion, July 20,
1871 (Discorsi del Sommo Pontifici Pio IX., p. 203) :
" Among the other errors, the most malicious is that
which would attribute to it (the doctrine of infalli
bility) the right to depose sovereigns and free a
people from its oath of fidelity. This right, without
doubt, has at some times in extreme circumstances
been exercised by the sovereign Pontiffs, but this

37
has nothing to do with Papal infallibility. Nor is its
source the infallibility, but . . . the Pontifical
authority." In this declaration, the late Pontiff was only fol
lowing the leading Roman Catholic publicist of this
century, De Maistre, who in his " Du Pape " (page
176) declares: "The Sovereign Pontiff in freeing
subjects from their oath of allegiance would do
nothing against the divine law."
Let us next consider the last extract from the opin
ions of St. Thomas, showing his antipathy to the
Hebrews. That this spirit is not dead is proved by
the fact that the Anti-Semitic party in Austria is in
fact a Roman Catholic party and receives its name
only from its first demand, i. e., the restriction of
Hebrew enterprise by special laws.
The following recent Incident in the Austrian
Reichsrath is characteristic of the movement and
the statements of Dr. Lueger have not been denied
by papal authorities, although ample time to do so
has elapsed.
"One of the members, Herr Noske, said that
there were priests in Vienna who preached from
the pulpit, exciting the people against their Jewish
fellow citizens. A poor woman living in the country
had adopted a foundling from Vienna, who happened
to be a Jew. She informed the parish priest of the
circumstance, and was roundly abused by him for
bringing a Jew to the locality. The child subse
quently died. The priest refused to bury it in the
graveyard. It was consequently interred in a field,
and only transferred to the graveyard through the

38
intervention of the authorities. Herr Noske asked
when some Primate of the church would raise his
voice against such practices and preach that religion
which taught men to love their neighbors as them
selves. He reminded the House that the Prime
Minister had recently affirmed the government to be
of the opinion that true Christianity demanded toler
ance. Herr Lueger, in response, declared that not
a single bishop would be found to condemn the
Anti-Semites. He said : ' We are proud to say that
our movement has revived religious feeling in
Vienna. . . . If a bishop could be found to approve
of your party and to oppose the efforts of the Chris
tians, such an ecclesiastic would be capable of cruci
fying our Lord a second time ; he would be perpe
trating the blackest crime against religion, and
would be doing what the Pope must condemn. You
may rest assured that the Holy Father in Rome is
well enough informed as to the situation in Vienna
to know on which side are the friends of the Cath
olic religion. We are quite reassured on that score,
and are sure of the Pope. We know that he will
not desert us in the holy war which we are carrying
on in Vienna and in Austria generally.' "
Since this event. Dr. Lueger has been elected
again to the Burgomastership of Vienna, as. the
Anti-Semetic Candidate — a movement which the
Catholic Review of May 16, 1896, declares to be
"largely recruited from the Catholic party." See
also to the same affect the chapter in Professor
Nitti's " Catholic SociaHsm," entitled " Antisemitism
and Catholic Socialism in Austria."

39
Evidence that the persecuting spirit of the Church
in general still survives is given by the manner in
which Leo XIII. has condemned the Freemasons to
suffer temporal punishments for their beliefs. In
his Encyclical " Humanum genus " (cited in " Pope
Leo XIIL," compiled by Rev. James F. Talbot,
D.D., of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston,
Mass , and printed by Martin Garrison & Co., Bos
ton, 1886), the Hoi}' Father says: " The first to de
nounce this danger (Freemasonry) was Clement
XII., In the year 1738 ; and his Constitution was con
firmed and renewed by Benedict XIV.; Pius VII.
followed in the footsteps of these Pontiffs ; and Leo
XII. in his Apostolic Constitution Quo graviora,
collecting the acts and decrees on this subject of the
Popes who had gone before him, ratified and con
firmed them for all time. Pius VIIL, Gregory XVI.
and, on many occasions, Pius IX. have spoken in the
same sense. . . . Therefore, whatever the Roman
Pontiffs, our predecessors, have decreed for hindering
the undertakings and attempts of the sect of the Free
masons ; whatsoever they have sanctioned, either
for the purpose of deterring men from, or calling
them back after they have entered those societies, —
all these, each and every one, we hereby notify, and
with our apostolic authority confirm ; in which. In
deed, trusting especially to the good will of Chris
tian people, we beg each by his own salvation that
they will make it a matter of conscience not in the
smallest way to depart from the previous commands
of apostolic authority In this matter."
The following is an extract from the Apostolic

40
Constitution of Leo XII., " Quo graviora," confirmed
by Leo XIIL, as above stated : " Moreover, we will
and command that all bishops, prelates, superiors
and inquisitors of heresy give information and pro
ceed against said transgressors of whatever estate,
condition, rank or dignity they may be, that they re
press and punish them with merited punishments
as strongly suspected of heresy ; for we give to them
and each of them, the free power to inform and pro
ceed against said transgressors, to repress and punish
them with the merited punishments, in invoking
even for this purpose the help of the secular arm."
We see therefore that Leo XIII. begs all Christian
people " each by his own salvation that they will
make it a matter of conscience " to proceed against
all Freemasons, " invoking even for this purpose the
secular arm."
By consulting the Encyclical on Freemasonry,
it will also be found that Freemasons are con
demned for the reason that they form a part of
the sect of Naturalists, who are thus described : " It
is the first principle of those who call themselves
Naturalists, since by their very name they declare it,
that human nature and human reason should be In
all things the teacher and ruler ; and this laid down,
they either pay less attention to duties towards God,
or they pervert them by indefinite and erroneous
opinions. For they deny that any thing has been
revealed to us by God Himself ; they admit no dog
mas of religion — that nothing is true but what
human intelligence can understand ; that there is no
teacher whom we are to believe on account of the
authority of his office."

41
In his Encyclical on Human Liberty, dated June 20,
1888, all men who call themselves Liberals in politics
are expressly condemned as belonging to this school of
Naturalists. It follows therefore logically that all who
advocate these " liberal principles " of the Naturalists,
ought also to be handed over to " the secular arm."
How welcome are converts driven into the Church
for fear of " the secular arm." See " Armenia and
the Powers " in the Contemporary Review of May,
1896, and Nippold's " Handbuch der Neuesten
Kirchengeschichte " (published by Wiegandt and
Schotte, Berlin, 1890), second volume, p. 225.
How wide should be the separation which is to
exist between Roman Catholics and their fellow citi
zens, even in this country, is shown by the following
command of Leo XIIL, published during the past
year, with especial reference to circumstances in
America. The wide scope of this prohibition will be
better understood when we consider how broad a
field the term " correct morals'' covers in Roman
Catholic phraseology ; it is held to embrace all inten
tional human acts, as will be shown below in this
chapter, and as has been already indicated in the
above cited Encyclical to the Belgian Bishops, in
which the Social Question is declared to fall under
the head of "religion and morals," — the very two
terms used in the following letter :
" We have learned that in the United States con
ventions are sometimes held in which people assem
ble promiscuously. Catholics as well as those of other
denominations, to treat upon religious subjects as
well as upon correct morals. In this we recognize the
desire for religious things by which this people is,

42
animated more zealously from day to day, but al
though these promiscuous conventions have unto
this day been tolerated with prudent silence, it would
nevertheless seem more advisable that the Catholics
should hold their conventions separately ; and that,
lest the utility of these conventions should result
simply to their own benefit, they might be called
with the understanding that the admittance should
be open to all, including those who are outside of the
Church." It follows, therefore, that consistent
Roman Catholics should attend no meeting for
benevolent, social or polilical purposes, which is not
called and managed exclusively by Roman Catholics,
although others may be admitted.
It will, perhaps, be claimed. In spite of the forego
ing evidence of modern intolerance, that the infallible
head of the Roman Church was ignorant of these pas
sages in the writings of the Angelic Doctor as to the
relation of Church and State ; but this would be,
firstly, a grave reflection upon the theological educa
tion of his Holiness ; how important a knowledge of
scholastic literature is deemed in the church is shown
by the fact that one of the propositions condemned
by Pius IX. in his Syllabus of Errors was that " the
methods and principles by which the old Scholastic
Doctors cultivated theology are no longer suitable to
the demands of the age and the progress of science,"
and every one admits that Leo XIII. is probably
one of the best read ecclesiastics in his Church.
Moreover, if we look at the Encyclicals of Leo
XIII. we find that as becomes a faithful scholar
of the Jesuits, they breathe the very spirit of St.
Thomas, and that when speaking of the relation

43
of Church and State he takes his figures of speech
literally from that author. It may here be noted
that the obedience to God, to which his Holiness
so often refers, will be shown in a later part of
this chapter and in chapter fourth, to mean obedi
ence to the Pontifex Maximus.
In the opening sentence of the Encyclical last
above cited, he announces that Christ " left the
Church which He had founded as the supreme ruler
of all people." This idea is developed in the Ency
clical on the Christian Constitution of States, begin
ning with the words, " Immortale Dei " (translated
from Latin Text of the " Osservatore Romano " by
Rev. T. F. Mahar, D. D., Catholic Universe Pub
lishing Co., Cleveland, Ohio) :
" This society (the Church), though consisting of
men, like civil society, nevertheless on account of
its aim and the means which it uses for its purpose,
is supernatural and spiritual and, therefore, it is dis
tinct and different from civil society, and what is of
very great moment, is a perfect society in kind and
in law, since it possesses of itself by the will and
benefit of its founder, all the aids necessary to Its
security and its action. Since the aim of the
Church is by far the 'noblest, so its power is of all
the highest, and can never be considered inferior to
civil authority, or in any way subject to it. In truth
Jesus Christ gave to his Apostles free mandate as to
sacred things, adding the power of making laws in
the true sense of the word and the consequent two
fold power of judging and of punishing. The
leader of men to heavenly things is not the State

44
but the Church, and to her the charge has been as
signed, by God, that she should look to and decree
in those things that concern religion ; that she
should teach all nations ; that she should extend the
bounds of Christianity as far as possible, in short
that she should administer all Christianity freely and
readily according to her own judgment. This au
thority, absolute in itself and plainly independent,
which has long been denied by the philosophy that
flatters princes, the Church has never ceased to as
sert for herself and also to publicly exercise, first of
all the Apostles themselves asserting it, who, when
forbidden by the rulers of the synagogue to spread
the Gospel, answered with constancy, ' We ought
to obey God rather than men.' The Holy Fathers
of the Church according to opportunity labored to
establish by arguments this same power, and
the Roman Pontiffs, with unconquerable constancy,
never failed to vindicate it for themselves against
opponents. Still more, princes themselves and
Governors of States approved this power by words
and by deeds, by compacts, by transaction of affairs,
by sending and receiving ambassadors and thus
acting with the Church as with a supreme lawful
power. Nor surely is it to be held that it was with
out a special providence of God that this same
power was made secure by a civil princedom as the
best assurance of its liberty.
" Therefore God has divided the guidance of the
human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical
and the civil, the one looking to divine and the
other to human affairs. Each is greatest of its kind ;

45
each has certain bounds determined by the nature
and proximate cause of each, whence a circle, as it
were, is drawn in which each may lawfully act.
But since the power of both is over the same per
sons and hence it may happen that one and the
same thing may come, although In different ways,
under the law and judgment of both, a God of
supreme providence, who is the author of both,
must have accurately and harmoniously traced the
course of both. ' Those that are, are ordained of
God. ' Were It not so, causes of destructive conten
tion and strife would often arise and man would
frequently have to stop in doubt and hesitancy like
one with two roads before him, anxious as to what.
he should do in the presence of two conflicting au
thorities, neither of which can be conscientiously
rejected. Such a condition is in the highest degree
repugnant to the wisdom and goodness of God who
even in the physical world, though it is of far in
ferior rank, nevertheless has so disposed and har
monized natural powers and causes that one is not an
obstacle to another, and all fittingly and accurately
combine to attain the purpose of the universe.
There must be, therefore, a harmony between the
two powers and it is not unduly compared to the union
between the body and soul in man. Its character and
extent cannot be judged except by considering, as
we have said, the nature of both and taking into ac
count the excellency and nobility of their purposes ;
one having as immediate and chief aim the benefits of
mortal things, and the other aiming to provide
heavenly and eternal blessings."

46
The same figure of speech is used in the Encyclical
De Libertate Humana, dated June 20, 1888 (Leonis
Papae Allocutiones, vol. III., p. 96) : "And the concord
(of civil and religious government) not inaptly has
been compared to that which exists between soul
and body, for the benefit of both ; the division of
which is especially injurious to the body, whose life
is thereby extinguished."
It will be noted that after following the same line
of argument about the division of the guidance of
the human race between the Church and State,
the figure which Leo XIIL and Aquinas both
employ to express the relation of Church and
State is that of the soul and the body. The nature
of this relation of the soul to the body is not an
open question to Roman Catholics : the Ecumen
ical Council of Vienne (131 1) declared (Plassmann's
Psychology, p. 207) : " Quod quisquis deinceps
asserere, defendere seu tenere pertinaciter praesum-
serit, quod anima rationalis seu intellectiva non sit
forma humani corporis per se et essentia'liter, tan-
quam hereticus sit censendus " (that whosoever
shall presume to assert, defend or pertinaciously to
hold that the rational or intellectual soiil is not by
itself and essentially the form of the human body, is
to be considered a heretic). This doctrine is re
peated in the Fifth Council of the Lateran (1512).
We see therefore that it has been dogmatically de
clared that the soul is the form of the body. The
same doctrine has been repeated In the Apostolic
Letters of Pope Pius IX. to the Archbishop of
Cologne, in which the Pontiff, condemning the errors
of Guenther, declares it to be Catholic doctrine that

47
the rational soul in man is the true, per se and imme
diate form of the body ; see Liberatore on Univer-
sals (translated by Dering), page io8.
St. Thomas Aquinas develops this theory at length
in his Contra Gentiles (Lib.,II.,Cap. LVIL), following,
of course, his master Aristotle (De Anima, II. , Ch. 2),
who had declared that the soul was that by which man
lives, feels, perceives, wills, moves, and understands.
Now, what does it mean to be the form of a body,
according to Roman Catholic psychology ?
St. Thomas's teachings -on this subject are shown
by the following -extracts from his writings :
Summa I., q. 78 a. i : " For the whole bodily na
ture is subject to the soul, and stands to it in the
nature of matter and instrument." — Prologus in
12 libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis : " When
several parts are united it is necessary that one
of them should be the regulator or ruler, and the
other the regulated or ruled. This also appears in
the union of soul and body. For the soul naturally
commands and the body obeys." Summa I., q. ^6, a. i :
" But it must be considered that as the form becomes
nobler so much the more it dominates the corporal
substance . . . the human soul is the noblest of
forms." Summa L, II. q. 58 a. 2 : " The soul rules the
body with a despotic government as a master rules
a slave who has no right of contradiction." Aris
totle had taught the same in his Ethics (Book 8, ch.
13), where he declares that the relation of a tyrant,
not a king, to his subject, or an artisan to his tool, to
be the same as that of the soul to the body. In
modern Roman CathoUc philosophies this teaching

48
is, of course, repeated, as in Dr. /Plassmann's Psy
chology (p. 228), where it appears how broad and
important this doctrine is to the whole scholastic
or Aristotelian theory : " In every living being,
even when it unites all kinds of life, — as is the case in
man, — there is only one soul. This single soul per
forms all acts of life, whether it be vegetable, sensi
tive or rational."
Ignatius Loyola had evidently the same illustra
tion in view which Aristotle used, as above cited,
when he declared that his followers must be as ready
to fulfill the will of their superiors as a stick or a
corpse in the hands of a man ; and Dr. Dollinger, in
his " History," while still a Roman Catholic, used
this comparison of the relation of Church and State
to that existing between the soul and the body to
sum up the most extreme claims of the mediaeval
Papacy as declared in the bull of Boniface VIIL,
known as " Unam sanctam."
Dr. Dollinger's statement is as follows (IV. p. 91) :
" In the Church, it (the Bull ' Unum sanctam ')
says, there are two powers, a temporal and spiritual,
and as far as they are both in the Church they have
both the same end ; the temporal, the inferior, is
subject to the spiritual, the higher and more noble ;
the former must be guided and directed by the latter
as the body is by the soul; it receives from the spiritual
its consecration and its direction to its highest object,
and must, therefore, should it ever depart from its
destined path, be corrected by the spiritual power.
It is a truth of faith that all men, even kings, are
subject to the Pope,"

49
We see, therefore, that any student acquainted
with the first principles of Roman Catholic dogma and
philosophy would at once understand the declara
tion of Leo XIII. that Church and State are related
to each other as soul and body ; it means that tne
Church is all powerful, and that the State exists and
moves only thanks to the Church, and that one's
duty as a member of the State is lo be as completely
subservient to the representatives of the Church as
a member of the Jesuit Order is to his superiors,
i. e., as a stick or a corpse in the hand of a man.
The student of St. Thomas would, moreover, be
expressly taught the passage above cited, from his
De Regimine Principum (Lib. III., Cap. X.): "As,
therefore, the body has through the soul, virtue and
movement, as appears from the words of the phi
losopher (Aristotle) and Augustine on the Immor
tality of the Soul, so the temporal jurisdiction of
princes depends on the spiritual jurisdiction of Peter
and his successor."
Nor has His Holiness shrunk from using this
authority to lay under the ban as frankly as Pius
IX. did, all that modern civilization holds most
dear, as appears by the following extracts from the
Encyclical Immortale Dei (above cited) :
" But those pernicious and deplorable revolution
ary tendencies which were aroused in the i6th cen
tury, when they had once introduced confusion into
Christianity, and soon by a natural course entered
the domain of philosophy and from philosophy into
all the lines of civil society. From this source are
to be traced the more recent declarations of unbri-

50
died liberty, invented during the great upheavals of
the last century and laid down as the principles and
fundamentals of the new law, which was before un
known and is at variance on more than one score
not only with Christianity, but even with the law of
nature. Of those principles the chief is that all
men, as they are of one species, are also really equal
in practical life ; that every man is so far independ
ent as to be subject in no way to the authority of
another ; that he is free to think as he pleases, to act
as he pleases ; that the right of governing resides in
no person. In a society thus constituted, there is
no princedom except the will of the people ; the
people are in their own hands and alone rule them
selves ; they select persons to whom they entrust
themselves, in such manner, however, as not to
transfer the right to rule, but merely a charge to be
exercised in their name. Divine control is ignored,
as if there were no God at all, or he were nowise solic
itous concerning human society ; or as if men individ
ually or united together in society owed nothing to
God, or as if any princedom could be imagined
whose cause, force and authority did not reside en
tirely in God. In this way the State is nothing but
the multitude, mistress and ruler of itself, and since
the people is declared as holding within itself the
source of all rights and all power, it follows that the
State should consider itself bound by no manner of
duty to God ; that it should profess publicly no re
ligion ; that it should not seek out of many that
which alone is true, nor prefer a certain one to the
rest, nor favor one principally, but to give to each

SI
an equality before the law with the limit that public
order be not disturbed. It is in harmony with this
to leave all questions of religion to the judgment of
each individual ; to permit every one to follow such
as he pleases, or none at all if he accept none.
Hence surely arise, a conscience without law to
determine its decision, freedom of opinion as to the
worship of God, or not worshiping Him ; a boundless
license of thought and of the press.
" Having once laid down these tenets, which in our
time are highly approved, as the fundamental prin
ciples of the State, it easily appears into what and
how iniquitous a position the Church is forced.
For when the conduct of affairs is in accordance
with these doctrines Catholicity is placed on an equal
footing in the State with associations foreign to her,
or even on an inferior footing ; no account is taken of
ecclesiastical laws ; the Church which ought, accord
ing to the command and mandate of Jesus Christ, to
teach all nations, is commanded not to affect the
public character of the people. Those things which
enter into both ecclesiastical and civil law are legis
lated upon by the civil rulers according to their own
judgment, and they disregard in these matters the
most sacred laws of the Chureh. Wherefore juris
diction is usurped over Christian marriage, even the
marriage bond, the unity, the permanency of mar
riage becoming the subject of civil determination ;
the possessions of the clergy are disturbed, the
Church being denied the right of holding property.
To sum up the whole matter, they act towards the
Church as if having divested her of the character of

52
a society perfect in kind and law, she were consid
ered precisely the same as other associations which
the State contains ; and for this reason whatever
right she possesses, whatever liberty of action she
possesses, she is declared to hold by the concession
and beneficence of the civil rulers.
" In view of these dangers, no doubt, is left as to
the duty of Roman Catholics. . . .
" Therefore in the difficult course of affairs which
is pursued. Catholics, if they will listen to us as they
ought, will easily see what are their duties, both as
to opinions and as to deeds. As to forming opinions,
whatever the Roman Pontiffs have taught or shall
teach must all receive a firm assent and be openly
professed when occasion demands it. And especially
as to modern liberties Catholics must abide by the
judgment of the Apostolic See and each and every
one hold what it holds. Experience has sufficiently
taught their effect upon the State ; they have every
where produced results that are a just cause of grief
to the virtuous and wise . . . Wherefore it is
clear that Catholics have just reason to enter into
political life ; for they do not enter it, nor ought they
to enter it, for the purpose of sanctioning what in
our times is vicious in the character of public affairs;
but for the purpose of turning this very character as
far as possible into honest and genuine public profit,
having in mind the purpose of introducing the
wholesome life-bxOod of Catholic wisdom aSd virtue
into the whole system of the State. . . . All
Catholics who are worthy of the name must first of
all be and wish to appear most affectionate' children

53
of the Church ; reject unhesitatingly whatever is
Inconsistent with that encomium ; use popular insti
tutions as far as virtue permits, for the protection of
truth and justice; see that liberty of action does not
pass beyond the bounds fixed by the law of nature
and of God ; work to the end that every state be
made conformable to the Christian model we have
described. The manner of obtaining these things
cannot be determined by one fixed rule, since the
method must be suitable to times and places which
are very diverse. Nevertheless harmony of deter
mination must first of all be preserved, and unity of
work be sought. Both will be easily obtained if
everybody will consider the prescriptions of the
Apostolic See as his law of life, and will obey the
Bishops whom the " the Holy Ghost has placed to
rule the Church of God ". . . . Likewise that it
it is not lawful to follow one rule In private life, an
other in public life, namely, so that the authority of
the Church may be observed in private life, dis
regarded in public life." To the same effect, see the
Encyclicals of June 20th, 1888, and Jan. loth, 1890.
It is unnecessary to point out how the main prin
ciples of our Declaration of Independence and of the
Bills of Rights, incorporated into our National, as
well as our various State Constitutions, are directly
negatived by the foregoing declarations, as emphat
ically as they were in the Syllabus of Errors of
Pius IX.; see Hoffman's Sphere of the State.
But popular government, free speech, etc., de
nounced in this Encyclical, are by no means the
only claims of modern liberal states which are de-

54
clared null and void by the Infallible Papacy, since
the very right to enact laws as a sovereign power,
without the consent of the Church, is denied to the
State. To prove this from the Encyclical denouncing
Socialism and Communism, we cite only one sen
tence : " But if the ordinances of legislators and
princes sanction or command what is contrary to
the divine or the natural law, then the dignity of
the Christian name, our duty and the Apostolic
precept, proclaim that we must obey God rather
than man." This principle Is elaborated in the En
cyclical of Jan. loth, 1890.
How much is covered by the expression " the
divine law " is seen by turning ' again to the Ency
clical on the Christian Constitution of States :
" Whatsoever, therefore, in human affairs is in any
manner sacred ; whatsoever pertains to the salvation
of souls, or the worship of God, whether it be so in
its own nature, or 0.1 the other hand, is held to be
so for the sake of the end to which it is referred —
all this is in the power and subject to the free dis
position of the Church."
This passage has been taken for their chief au
thority by the Bishops of Quebec on the Manitoba
school question in their " United Declaration "
(Catholic Review, June 13, 1896) :
" If the bishops, whose authority springs from God
Himself, are the natural judges of a question which
involves the Christian faith, religion and morality.
If they are the recognized chiefs of a society, per
fect, sovereign, superior by its nature and by its end

55
to civil society, it belongs to them, when circum
stances demand, not only to express their views
and desires in all matters of religion, but also to
point out to the faithful, or to approve the proper
means to arrive at the spiritual end which they pro
pose to reach. This doctrine is that of the great
Pope Leo XIIL, in his encyclical Immortale Dei : —
' All that which in human things is sacred by any
title whatever, all that which touches the safety of
souls and worship of God, either by its nature or
by relation to its aim, all that is under the authority
of the Church.'
" We must briefly recall these principles, inherent
in the very constitution of the Church ; these es
sential rights of religious authority, in order to
justify the attitude taken by the members of the
hierarchy in the present school question and to make
better understood the obligations of the faithful to
follow episcopal directions.
" Please remark, our dearly beloved brethren, that
a Catholic is not permitted, let him be a journalist,
elector, candidate or member, to have two lines of
conduct in a religious point of view, one for private
life and one for public life, and to trample under
his feet in the exercise of duties not social the
obligations Imposed on him by his title of a sub
mitted son of the Church. Therefore all Catholics
should only vote for candidates who will formally
and solemnly engage themselves to vote in Parlia
ment in favor of the legislation giving to the Catho
lics of Manitoba the school laws which were rec
ognized to them by the Privy Council of England.

56
This grave duty imposes itself on all good Catholics,
and you would not be justifiable either before your
spiritual guides or before God Himself to set aside
this obligation."
Having thus seen how large a field is exempt from
the authority of the State, on account of its falling
within the province of the " divine law," let us
next inquire what is embraced by the term " natural
law," which according to the Encyclical against
Socialism, above cited, is equally out of the jurisdic
tion of the State.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the natural
law embraces all human law as shown by the fol
lowing quotations :
(Summa I., IL, q. 91 a 3) : " Besides the divine and
natural law, there is a certain human law found by
man, according to which those things which are
found in natural law are particularly ordered."
(Summa I., II. , q. 95 a 2) : " W hether all human law is
derived from natural law. ... I reply that
one must say that, as Augustine says in I. de lib. arb.
that that does not appear to be law which is un
just ; and as far as it has justice, so far it has the
strength of law ; but in human matters a thing is
said to be just because it agrees with a rule of rea
son. But the first rule of reason is the law of nature,
as has been above shown ; hence all law humanly en
acted has so much force as it is derived from the law
of nature. If, therefore, in anything it disagrees
with the law of nature, it will not be law, but a cor
ruption of law."
(Summa L, IL, q. 95 a 4) : " It is first from the es-

57
sence of human law, that it Is derived from the law
of nature ; as appears from what has been said and
according to this, positive law is divided into law of
nations (jus gentium) and civil law (jus civile) accord
ing to the two modes by which anything is derived
from the law of nature, as has been said above. For
to the law of nations pertain those things which are
derived from the law of nature, as conclusions from
principles, as that purchases and sales must be just
and other things of this kind, without which men
could not live together, which is according to the
law of nature since man is naturally a social animal,
as is shown in the first book of (Aristotle's) Politics.
Those things truly which are derived from the law
of nature by means of a particular enactment, per
tain to the civil law, according to what any particu
lar State may determine to be suitable to itself."
(Summa I., II. , q. 96, a. 4) : " Just human laws bind
men's consciences, by reason of the divine law from
which they are derived."
(Summa I., IL, q. 94, a. 3) : " Since, according to St.
Augustine in the temporal law, nothing is just or
legitimate which has not gone forth from the divine
law ; it is certain that all laws, so far as they partake
of right reason, are derived from the divine law."
From the foregoing citations it appears that human
laws are a part of both the divine law and the law
of nature, and more particularly of the latter ; but
that they can effect, not the general principles of the
law of nature which are necessary for the co-exist
ence of civilized men in states, but only the details
developed in the practical application of those prin-

58
ciples. This divine or natural law, as a work of
human reason, will hereafter be shown to be nothing
but the will of the reigning Pope. In matters
entirely independent of religion or the care of souls,
there exists, therefore, for the Roman Catholic an
unwritten constitutional law, regulating the most
important principles of social life, which legislatures
may not touch — and if they presume to do so,
their statutes are against reason and therefore no
laws. Aquinas was in this case again following in the foot
steps of " the Philosopher," although Aristotle states
the principle rather as an oratorical subterfuge
(Rhet., I., 15, 1375, a. 27 seq.): " When you have no
case according to the law of the land, appeal to the
laws of nature and quote the Antigone of Sophocles,
' Argue that an unjust lav/ is no law, etc.'"
Little did "the Philosopher " think what serious
consequences this thoughtless advice was to have, in
constituting In each individual a court of appeal
against the laws of his own country. Thus the
famous Jesuit Suraez says (De Legibus, III., c. 19):
" Lex injusta non est lex."
How utterly impossible it would be to carry on a
government on this principle is shown for example
in the chapter on " Toleration " in Ritchie's " Natural
Rights." The whole relation of natural, human and divine
law is summed up by the present Pontiff himself in
his Encyclical De Libertate Humana, dated June 20,
1888 (Leonis Papae XIIL, Allocutiones, voL III.,
p. 96) : " Therefore it follows that the law of nature

59
is the same as the eternal law placed within rational
beings, and inclining them to proper action and end.
and it IS the same as the eternal reason of the creator
and governor of the world, God. . . . What
reason and the law of nature is tor individual man,
human law does the same for man associated for the
common good (in states). ... If therefore any
thing is sanctioned by authority which differs from
the principles of right reason, and may be pernicious
to the state, it has no force of law, since it would not
be a rule of justice and would lead men astray, for
whose good society was formed."
The whole Roman Catholic doctrine of law is set
forth at length by Father Matteo Liberatore, S. J., a
favorite writer in the Roman Civilta Cattolica, in his
" Principles of Political Economy " (translated by
Edward Herneage Dering, New York, Benziger &
Co., 1891 ; p. n9):
" From this it by no means follows that the State
may suppress private property, and make itself the
proprietor of all the land, on the plea that such a
step is conducive to the common good. The
reason ¦ why this cannot justly be done, is that
the right of property arises in us as an individual
and domestic right, and therefore as substan
tially prior to civil society and independent of
it ; and as the human person and the family are
prior to civil society and independent of it.
The State has authority over the rights that
come from itself. It has no authority over
rights that come from nature — rights that preceded
the State in history and in reason. . , . Hence

6o
no State is competent to decide about that utility ;
and therefore private property cannot be abolished
by any political legislation, even if all the States in
the world, as States, agreed together to do so. Only
by the Divine Legislator could it be abolished, or
by the spontaneous renouncement of it by all men,
taken one by one. If such abolition were forcibly
imposed by the State It would be a tyrannical viola
tion of man's rights, and must as such meet with the
reprobation of the Church. ... In questions of
right we must diligently guard against attributing
too much power to' the State. There are three
things with respect to man that are of immediate Di
vine institution, and therefore have laws independ
ent of the State. These are individual personality,
the family and the universal society of all men
under the direct but invisible government of God.
. . . And indeed if the right to have property
is a dictate of reason, it may well be said to be a dic
tate of nature ; for man's reason flows from his
essence, inasmuch as the essence of man is that of a
rational animal."
It may be here remarked that the difficulty in
drawing conclusions as to the details of this so-called
law of nature, is shown for instance in this case of
private property as to which Liberatore asserts so
positively that it antedates the State ; the most recent
researches, such as those of Charles Letourneau, as
set forth in his " Property ; its Origin and Develop
ment," show that tribal ownership, /. e., a species
of communism, precedes individual ownership, as
marriage to a whole clan preceded monogamy.

6i
No book among the English Roman Catholics
stands higher than Father Rickaby's " Moral
Philosophy or Ethics and Natural Law," one of the
very able Stonyhurst Series of Catholic Philosophy ;
he says, on page 149 : " No power in heaven above,
or on earth beneath, can dispense from any portion of
the natural law  (Page 299.) Lastly it is
not true that all rights, notably rights of property,
are the creation of the State. A man is a man first
and a citizen afterwards. As a man he has certain
rights actual and political ; these the State exists,
not to create for they are prior to it in the order of
nature, but to determine them when indeterminate,
to sanction and to safeguard them. Natural rights
go before legal rights and are presupposed to them,
as the law of nature before that law which is civil
and positive. It is an ' idol of the tribe ' of lawyers
to ignore all law but that upon which their own pro
fessional action takes its stand."
Among German Roman Catholic writers, we would
cite as undoubted authority Dr. Plassman's " Die
Moral," p. 38 : " Since the constitution of society is
framed to suit moral purposes, it follows that the
science of morals Is above the science of law. In re
gard to law, we must distinguish positive law, the
law of nature and the eternal law (lex positiva,
naturalis and aeterna). The positive law must be
founded on the law of nature and this in turn on the
eternal law. ... (p. 44.) Although positive law
can and may be justified only as a part of the lex
naturalis et sterna, the chief difference is diametrical,
namely : quae juris naturae sunt, ideo sunt prascepta

62
quia bona, ideo prohibita quia mala ; quae vero juris
positivi, ideo bona, quia pr^ecepta, ideo mala, quia
prohibita. . . . The object of this paragraph is
only to show why the whole science of morals can be
treated as the summa juris naturalis."
If we consult American writers, we find the same
theories in the Latin work "De Philosophia Morali,"
by Father Russo (dedicated to Archbishop Corrigan
with the " imprimatur " of Father Preston, his Vicar
General) (p. 60) : " Hence you see that positive law
derives its validity from natural law  Natural
law on the contrary is shown by a certain natural
medium which is the light of reason  Hence
natural law is the eternal law as participated in by a
rational creature." Cardinal Satolli in his " Loyalty^
to Church and State " (p. 226) says : " Now in regard
to our youths, there are three rights which have
claims on them, viz., the right of nature, the right of
the nation, and the right of God ; that is, for domes
tic society under the rule of parents, for civil society
under the rule of due authority, and for the Church
of Christ under the sway of Divine authority. This
last is of all societies the greatest by extent, dignity
and faith."
In France, Cardinal Gousset, in his " Exposition des
Principes du Droit Canonique " declares, on p. 14:
"All who occupy themselves in theory or in practice
with questions of public or private law are in contact
with the divine and canon law and should have a
knowledge more or less exact of the laws of the
Church. In Christian societies, one has always re
garded the principles of the ecclesiastical law as the

63
basis of civil law, public and private  The
canon law, jus canonicum, is called also the divine
law, jus sacrum, the ecclesiastical law, jus ecclesias-
ticum ; the pontifical law, jus pontificium. This last
designation is not less exact than the first three ; be
sides what it has iii common with them to distinguish
the ecclesiastical law from the civil law, which is the
Caesarian law, jus C^sareum, it also perfectly ex
plains the origin and principal cause, In indicating
that the canon law emanates principally from the
Sovereign Pontiff, or that an ecclesiastical law has
no force except so far as it comes from the Pope or
is conformed to the spirit of a law sanctioned more
or less expressly by the Pope."
The object of citing these works of leading Roman
Catholic authorities in various countries is to show
the unanimity with which they adhere to the theory
of Thomas Aquinas, and that this relation of civil and
ecclesiastical law must be regarded as that enunciated
authoritatively by the Church. The entire civil law ,
as embraced within the natural and divine law must,
therefore, be understood to be claimed by Leo XIIL,
in passages above cited from the Encyclical denounc
ing Socialism, and the Encyclical on the Christian
Constitution of States, as being " in the power and
subject to the free disposition of the Church." The
theor}' of the Roman Emporers, that " quod placet
principi habet legum vigorem " has therefore been
adopted by the present would-be Ruler of the World.
For the world in general, this principle is explicitly
announced in the Encyclical De Libertate Humana
(above cited) : " Besides, it is a most true duty to

64
venerate authority and to be subject obediently to
just laws. . . . But where the right to command
is wanting, or if anything is enjoined which is con
trary to reason, the eternal law or the rule of God,
it is right not to obey men, in order that God may
be obeyed."
To the same effect is the Encyclical of January lo,
1890, beginning with the word "Sapientiae" (above
cited) : " Truly, if the laws openly differ from the
divine law, if they injure the church, or those things
which concern religion-, or the authority of Jesus
Christ in the Supreme Pontiff, then truly it is a duty
to resist, a crime to obey."
In the Encyclical of Leo XIII. to all the Bishops
of the Catholic world concerning civil government,
dated June 20, 1881 (Leonis Papae XIIL, Allocu
tiones, vol. I., p. 210), this teaching is repeated:
" There is one cause for which men should not obey,
if anything is demanded from them which openly is
opposed to natural or divine law: for all things, in
which the law of nature or of God is violated, it is
equally wrong to command and to do ... . nor
does their (rulers') authority then prevail, which
where there is not justice, does not exist."
The following extract from " The Catholic Review"
of February 29, 1896, shows how these principles are
to be applied in practical politics :
" The Reverend Peter Finley, S. J., delivered an
address on ' The Church and Civil Society ' at the
Catholic Club in Dublin a few days ago. He summed
up his conclusions In these memorable words : ' First,
The object which the Church and her rulers must

65 '
ever have in view is the object which Christ lived
and died for — a spiritual one, the salvation of men's
souls. Second, There are many matters wholly
spiritual — interpretation of Scripture, mysteries of
religion. Sacraments, and the like — and these lie
evidently within the Church's jurisdiction. Third,
There may be others which have no spiritual side,
no bearing upon faith and morals, and if there be
they are no wise subject to the Church's authority.
Fourth, But there is a vast multitude of human ac
tions, which go to constitute the life of civil society,
in themselves unspiritual, without any direct and
immediate bearing on the salvation of the soul — edu
cation, poor law administration, care of the sick and
dying, reformation of the criminal. Parliamentary
legislation, exercise of the poor law, the municipal,
the Parliamentary franchise, and a thousand others
— which yet may affect spiritual interests, produce
consequences most hurtful or most helpful to souls,
and so become indirectly spiritual, and subject to
the jurisdiction of the Church. Fifth, And whether
any given action is of this nature, an object of con
scientious obligation, and so subject to interference
on the part ot Church authority, can only be 'deter
mined by the Church herself — by the Supreme
Pontiff, or by a General Council with supreme
authority, and, therefore, without appeal ; by each
Catholic Bishop m his own diocese, with an authority
which cannot be set aside by the State or by the
faithful, though it may be appealed against to the
religious authority which is supreme.' "
It will be noted that the last foregoing citation

66
from Cardinal Satolli, while it expressly mentions the
rule of parents for the Family and the Divine author
ity for the Church, specifies concerning the State
only that it is to be under " due authority."
In view of such passages are even the most
passionate declarations of so-called liberal Roman
Catholics entirely reassuring ? Take for example
the following declaration of the most patriotic of the
Hierarchy, Archbishop Ireland, which was recently
read in the United States Senate, as a complete proof
of the loyalty of Roman Catholics : " The Church
recognizes as her own sphere faith and morals ; she
possesses and claims no mission in civil and political
matter. If the Church encroaches upon the sphere
of the State, we should bid her away. If the State
enter into the sanctuary of conscience, the proper
empire of the Church, the appeal is to God, and the
State is ordered to hold off its hands. Separation of
Church and State revolving freely in their separate
and distinct spheres — Catholics fall behind none of
their fellow-citizens in admiring it and demanding
its continuance."
What are the limits of "the sanctuary of con.
science, the empire of the Church "? Has Father
Finley spoken the truth, in the last foregoing quota
tion, in saying that the Church is to define Its own
limits in all matters relating to " education, poor law
administration, care of the sick and dying, reforma
tion of the criminal. Parliamentary legislation, exer
cise of the poor law, the municipal, the Parliament
ary franchise and a thousand others " ? If so, where
does Archbishop Ireland's loyalty begin ? What

67
rights does he assign to the Church and what to the
State ?
The following quotation from the Catholic Review
shows how in France, corporations may refuse to pay
taxes on the same plea of conscience :
" The French government has passed a law taxing
religious orders. Monsignor Tirgero, Bishop of
Seez, has addressed an energetic protest to M.
Ribot, the Premier. Allow me. Monsieur le Min-
istre, to explain to you the embarrassing position in
which I am placed by your law. Ought I to advise
the religious communities in my diocese to offer
resistance or to be submissive ? If I advise resist
ance, it will be said that I have no respect for the
law. If I counsel submission, my Indignant con
science will cry : ' Anathema ! to the prevaricator
of justice, to the contemner of his duty.' You can
not but be aware that the law of the empire ends where
that of the conscience commences."
Are Protestants also to be allowed to set up the
claim for "the sanctuary of conscience "?
The following article from " Church Progress " on
the grievances of Protestants in Peru, Bolivia and
Ecuador, where their public worship is restricted,
their marriages not recognized, &c., speaks for itself :
" The only real disability under which Protestant
ism labors in these countries is that it is not a legal
ized form of religion, and of this it has not the
slightest right to complain. It forgets that it is an
impudent intruder amongst a Catholic population in
possession of the entire deposit of faith, that It is a
religious system, both in method and in doctrine.

68
odious and repugnant to the people of those coun.
tries, an insult to their intelligence and their hearts,
propagated as it is, as a reform of their own faith,
which the preachers revile with contempt and cal
umny. It has not the slightest justification for its
presence here, and yet is accorded every toleration
except actual legalization as a religion by law estab
lished." In fact, no Roman Catholic ought to appeal for
anything on the plea of conscience, for, as will be
shown in the chapter on the Church and the Indi
vidual, conscience is for them no independent God-
given guide, but only a sub-department of man's
reason, guided by the Pope. The only correct posi
tion for them is that of Father Rickeby, S. J., in his
" Moral Philosophy ": " But if the State is sincerely
convinced that the convictions openly professed and
propagated by some of its subjects are subversive of
social order and public morality, whose sincere con
viction is it that must carry the day in practice ? It
is of the essence of government that the convictions,
sincere or otherwise, of the governed shall on certain
practical issues be waived in external observance in
favor of the convictions of the ruling power. After
all, this talk of conscience and sincere convictions is
but the canting phrase of the day, according to
which conscience means mere wild humor and
headstrong self-will " (page 368). To the same effect
is the Encyclical on Human Liberty and the Letter
to the Emperor of Brazil by Leo XIII.
These full-blown Roman Catholic doctrines are
taught also in the text-books used in our American

69
schools and colleges, although the Latin language is
expected to keep them somewhat from profane eyes.
The whole subject is summed up by the " Elementa
PhilosophlEe Moralis " (Benziger Brothers, New
York, 1886), of Father Jouin, S. J., Professor at St.
John's College, Fordham, New York (p. 371) : " The
Church is a visible society . ... it is independ
ent from the political society ; because she was in
stituted by God himself, from whom she received
proper authority to order all things which pertain
to the object of this society beside those laws which
were given by God himself, and because her object
is not only distinct from that of civil society, but far
excells it. For this (civil society) looks only to the
external temporary order; but that (the Church)
looks to the ultimate object. And all things should
be subject to the ultimate object. Therefore, the
object of civil society is subordinate to that of the
Church and not conversely. Therefore it is Impos
sible that the religious society or Church should
depend on civil society  Wherefore civil
authority cannot decree anything which is contrary
to the doctrines of the Church, and it ought to
watch over and protect the rights of the Church and
its members, and if anything is defined as evil by the
Church, that also it should hold as such and so far
as possible proscribe  For the Church
is independent of civil authority, because the civil
authority did not receive the duty of directing the
minds and wills of men to their ultimate end, and
itself (the civil authority) is subject to the authority
of the Church in all things which concern the object

70
of the Church. Therefore the civil authority has no
right to oppose itself to legislation of the Church. .
" The Church was instituted by God that she should
be the infallible teacher of truth in those matters
v/hich concern faith and morals, because she must
direct the minds and wills to their ultimate object.
Therefore she must with authority teach those things
which are to be believed and done that eternal life
may be obtained. Therefore she ought not only to
propose truth, but also to prevent, so far as possible,
that the faithful should not be led into error in matters
of faith and morals  The Church is a
spiritual society from its object, but it is composed
not of spirits but of men ; hence external punishments
are necessary. It is not necessary that this punish
ment should be imprisonment, because there are also
other external punishments which can be applied.
But in itself it is not repugnant that the Church
should be able to decree such punishment. The
political power can punish external crimes ; but it is
absurd to oblige the Church always to recur to this
power, because in that way it would make her in a
certain way dependent on the civil power. As to
the question, whether the Church has the right to-
condemn any one, to death, one can reply that the
Church as a religious society has never exercised
this power, but always has been opposed to inflicting
the death penalty  But many approved
authors also assert that the Church has the power of
inflicting even the death penalty."
Is not the teaching of such doctrine within the
State of New York a justification in certain cases of

71
what our Penal Code declares to be false imprison
ment and murder? No dependence of these doc
trines on recognition of such ecclesiastical power by
the State appears in this text-book. It follows,
therefore, that the teaching of Father Liberatore in
his Chiesa e Stato (p. 'jj') applies, that wherever the
State has apostacized " there arises in society a neces
sary disorder, namely, the existence of a legitimate'
power, which is independent of the public deposi
tory of force."
Must not the fruit of such teaching be treason ?
The source of this natural law Is indicated in the
Encyclical on Human Liberty as follows : " Reason
certainly prescribes to the will what to seek and
what to avoid. This decree of reason is called law.
. . . Such Is the beginning of all natural law,
which is written and engraved in the minds of all
individual men, for It is 'human reason itself which
commands to do right and forbids to do wrong."
As Aquinas says in Summa, I., IL, q. 95, a. 2, " the
first rule of reason is the law of nature." This state
ment will be found repeated again and again, down to
the Encyclical of Leo XIII. on the Condition of Labor
(above cited) : " For laws only bind when they are
in accordance Avith right reason."
If law is then a work of human reason it is a
human act and therefore it follows according to St.
Thomas Aquinas, as shown by the following quota
tions, that it Is a moral act (Summa, I., IL, q. i, a. 3),
" Moral acts and human acts are the same."
" There begins the rule of morals, where first the
rule of the will begins " (in 2 D., 24, q. 3, a. 2).

72
"Our acts, are to be called moral, so far as they
proceed from reason and are free" (Q. 2 de Malo,
Z.6 et passim). In the first seventeen questions ot his
Summa, I., IL, he treats of physical acts of man and
in the remainder of that work he sets out his moral
acts which are all those of which good or bad can be
predicated (Summa, I., IL, q. 19, a. i ad 3 and id. q. 18,
a. 5), — or of which it can be said that they are guided
by reason. Thus St. Thomas says in his- Proem,
Ethic. : " Morality is the order which reason makes in
human acts by ordering them in accordance with the
rules of morals;" see Byrne's Catholic Doctrine of
Faith and Morals (p. 84).
Moreover in his definition of moral philosophy he
includes all intentional human acts, whether they are
done by men as individuals or as members of an
economic group or members of the State ; see Comm.
in lib. Ethic. Arist., lect. i. i. i. : " Et inde est, quod
moralis philosophia in tres partes divldatur. Quarum
prima considerat operationes unius hominis ordi-
nates ad finem, quae vocatur monastica. Secunda
autem considerat operationes multitudinls domes-
ticae, quas vocatur oeconomlca. Tertia autem con
siderat operationes multitudinls civllls quae vocatur
politica." All of the modern leading Roman
Catholic writers on morals adopt the same broad
definition. Thus Dr. Plassman says in his work
on " Morals " (page 29) : " The definition of the
formal object (of the science of morals) is a human
action, done intentionally with knowledge of its
consequences." And In a passage above cited he
says : " The whole science of morals can be treated

73
as the summa juris naturalis." Father Rickaby says
in his " Moral Philosophy " (p. 2) : " Moral philos
ophy is divided Into ethics and natural law."
Father Russo, in the introduction to his " Moral
Philosophy," above cited, defines moral philosophy
as " a practical science derived from the principles
of reason, directing human acts to honesty."
Bearing then in mind that every human act,
guided by reason, is a moral act, let us now turn to
the decree of the last Vatican Council, where we
find it to be declared that the Pope Is infallible In all
matters relating to faith or morals ("de fide vel
moribus ") ; as set out in Life of Cardinal Manning
(vol. II. p. 450), the text is as follows : " Romanum
Pontificem, cum ex cathedra loquitur. . . doctrinam
de fide vel moribus ab universa ecclesi§, tenendam
definit ; per assistentiam divinam, ipsi in beato Petro
promissam, ea infallibilltate poUere qui, divinus
Redemptor ecclesian suam in definienda doctrina de
fide vel moribus instructam esse volent."
The conclusion seems, therefore, inevitable that
according to Roman Catholic theory, the Pope
is not only the source of all law and has power to
dispense with any law, but can direct every human
intentional or rational act, including, of course, the
casting of a ballot.
As the Pope can therefore direct every act of
reason, he controls the source of natural law which,
as we have seen, is above civil law.
Thus Leo XIII. himself declares in his Encyclical
concerning the principal duties of Christian citizens,
dated January 10, 1890 (Leonis Papae XIIL Alloca-
tiones, Vol. IV., p. 15): " As the concord of minds

74
requires perfect consent in matters of faith, so it also
demands wills perfectly subject and obedient to the
Church and to the Roman Pontiff as to God. . . .
But this must also be placed among the duties of
Christians (besides a belief in all the dogmas of the
faith) that they allow themselves to be ruled and
governed by the power and authority of the Bishops
and especially of the Apostolic Seat " (Rome).
For practical applications of this teaching, one has
not far to seek.
The " New World " (cited in the Catholic Review),
speaks more plainly : " We hold that, where a Cath
olic is nominated for an important public office, if he
be In every respect as well qualified for that office as
his opponent. Catholics are justified in taking into
account the fact of his being a Catholic in deciding
how they will vote."
As Cardinal Logue, the Primate of all Ireland,
words it In his letter to the Irish Bishops (" Catholic
Review," July 13, 1895): " A control (over educa
tion) which the Church has not from any department
of the State nor from the delegation of the people, but
from her divine right to teach and safeguard the
faith and morals of all her members, especially the
young." The negative proposition also foDows, as the
" Catholic Review " states in an editorial of Novem
ber 24, 1895 : " They (the opponents of State aid to
Roman Catholic schools) have no right to make the
State the supreme arbiter in morals."
It would seem, therefore, that all the powers of
the State are enjoyed on sufferance of the Church

75
for their relation — to repeat the comparison ~ of Leo
XIII. and Thomas Aquinas — is that of dependence,
i. e., as the body depends on the soul.
P. Matteo Liberatore, in his Chiesa 6 Stato (above
cited), says : " The State must understand itself to
be a subordinate sovereignty exercising ministerial
functions under a superior sovereignty and govern
ing the people conformably to the will of that lord
to whom it is subject." In his Encyclical concerning
the duties of citizens, dated January lo, 1890, Lea
XIII. says: "Thesame (the Church) is not only a.
perfect society, but even superior to any human
society." A similar declaration is In the Encyclical
on Marriage and Divorce.
What were the authorities of St. Thomas Aquinas
for this theory of the relation of Church and State ?
In the passage from De Regimine Principum above
cited (Lib. III., Chapter X.), St. Thomas mentions
the two principal authorities for his opinions on the
relation of Church and State, namely, the Philo
sopher, Aristotle, from whom he derived his philo
sophical theory, and the writings of the Supreme
Pontiffs and of the Emperors, from which he derived
his historical facts. Among the latter were included
the forged Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, in which
he implicitly beUeved, although no Roman Catholic
writer of this century ventures to defend their au
thenticity ; see Pope and Council by Janus. In the
next sentence (Lib. III., Chap. X. of De Regimine
Principum), in the extract above given, he cites the
cession of Constantine to Sylvester, which fiction
was a part of this most gigantic swindle ; and in his

1^
book against the Greek Church, he relies completely
on the forged passages from Cyril, to sustain his
argument for the sovereignty of the Pope. No one
would cite these writings as authorities to-day and
yet the Infallible Head of the Roman Catholic
Church utters no word of warning when recommend
ing the Angel of the Schools with such elaborate
praise, as the Patron of all institutions of learning.
If we consider the source of his political theories,
is that entitled to any greater respect ? Aristotle was
the tutor and pensioner of Alexander the Great, who
was the destroyer of Greek republics and the first uni
versal monarch ; " the Philosopher " was filled with
contempt for the democracy of Athens, which natur
ally returned the feeling, and on the death of Alexan
der, he had to flee from that city. How great was
his contempt for the masses, may be seen by the fol
lowing two quotations (Politics, III., 5, 5) : " For no'
man can practice virtue who is living the life of a
mechanic ; " {id.^l., 4, 12) : " There is no room for
moral excellence in any of their employments
whether they be mechanics or traders or laborers."
In his Politics, he has given us a picture of the ab
solute sovereignty of a Greek city, in which every
thing that we consider individual liberty is sacrificed
to the Government ; he intimates, however, that an
absolute monarchy was his actual ideal, and evidently
expected this from Alexander. His theories more
over were intended only for the small city-states of
his day, as he expressly says (Politics, VI I. , 6) that
no state should have more than 100,000 inhabitants.
Aquinas entertained the same opinion, as appears

from his De Regimine Principum, where he com
pares the relation of a ruler to his people to that of
a captain to his crew (Lib. I., Cap. XIV.), and in his
" Contra Gentiles " (Lib. IV., Cap. LXXVL), where
he expresses himself as follows : " But the best gov
ernment of a multitude is that it be governed by
one ; this appears from the end of government,
which is peace ; for peace and the unity of the sub
jects is the aim of a ruler ; but one Is more likely to
produce unity than many. It is manifest, therefore,
that the government of the Church has been so ar
ranged that one presides over the whole Churqh."
The same idea remained in the Church and in mod
ern times is voiced by Joseph de Maistre in his " Du
Pape " (p. i6) : " It is the same with the Church : in
one way or the other it must be governed like every
other association, otherwise there would be no ag
gregation, no assembly, no unity. That government
is then in its nature infallible, that is absolute ; other
wise it would no longer govern ... (p. i66). No
sovereign, without a nation, as no nation without a
sovereign." The Encyclical of Leo XIII. on Church Unity, an
abstract of which, made by Cardinal Gibbons, is pub
lished In the daily press of June 30, 1896, is substan
tially a repetition of this idea :
"As no true and perfect human society can be
conceived which is not governed by some supreme
authority, so Christ of necessity gave to His Church
a supreme authority to which all Christians must be
obedient. For the preservation of unity there must
be unity of government jure divino, and men may be

78
placed outside the one fold by schism as well as by
heresy." This argument in favor of the Papacy would be '
conclusive if all societies must be absolute mon
archies ; to us, living for over a century in a federal
republic, without king or emperor, this argument has
no force. A cursory glance at the v,-rit'ngs of Ante-
Nicene Fathers shows that the early Church was or
ganized not as an absolute monarchy, but as a group
of federal States. As Canon Gore v/ell states In his
Roman Catholic Claims (p. 124) : " The original idea
of the Episcopate would have secured for the Church
a duly representative government, and would have
provided, by the confederation of relatively in
dependent churches, a system of checks upon one
sided local tendencies. The Papacy represents the
triumph of imperial absolutism over represejitative,
constitutional authority, and of centralization over
consentient witness and cooperation." For us re
publicans, who do not believe that the rule of one Is
the best, but that a representative, constitutional
government is to be preferred, does it not follow, ac
cording to the reasoning of St. Thomas, last above
cited, that God must have intended His Church to
have a representative, constitutional government, in
stead of an absolute monarchy ?
Aristotle also believed in the division of citizens
into castes (" Politics," Book 7, Ch. 9), which idea
was probably derived from Egyptian precedent, and
among republics he considered the aristocratic Lace-
daemon to be the model. Thomas Aquinas, in his
Summa, I., IL, q. 95, a. 4, refers to the different laws

79
applicable to various classes, as to priests who pray
for the people and to warriors who fight for the
people. Froude's Council of Trent gives a correct picture
of the result of these teachings : (p. 8.) " There is a
maxim now that every one is equal before the law.
From the twelfth to the sixteenth century the
clergy were a separate caste. They made and ad
ministered their own laws. They could neither
sue or be sued in any secular court.
(p. II.) " But if the clergy were exempt from lay
jurisdiction, the laity were not exempt from the
jurisdiction of the clergy. The law of the land
might deal with common rights and obligations de
finable by statute or precedent. The clergy as the
spiritual fathers of the people, were the guardians
of morality. They had courts of their own, con
ducted upon their own principles, before which
clergy and laity were alike bound to appear 
Morality was a word of widest latitude  The
spiritual law extended to sins, and not to notori
ous moral offenses only, but to everything which
could be construed into sin by the Church's inter
pretation. (p. 4.) " The original reformation was a revolt of the
laity against the clergy, a revolt against a compli
cated and all-embracing practical tyranny, the most
intolerable that the world has ever seen. It was
embraced on an assumption, no longer seriously held
even by Catholics themselves, that the Church was
the source of all authority, secular as well as
spiritual.

8o
(p. 174.) " The laity of Germany, the laity of Eng
land, had risen against ecclesiastical supremacy in
all its forms. The Church's doctrines had only been
offensive so far as they symbolized the usurpation of
an overbearing and self-indulgent hierarchy."
In " Kirche und Kirchen," written by Dr. Dollin
ger while still a Roman Catholic, we see how the
Church continued to assert its claims for the priest
hood as a privileged caste in the Papal States
even into this century, so far as it had the power
so to do.
(p. 534.) "As the priests constituted a class with
privileges such as could exist in no other country of
the world, the two classes were divided by a wide
and deep gulf , and the laity was filled with a jealousy
against the priesthood, which often went over into
decided hate  (p. 580.) The clergy had its
privileged court, so that when a priest and a layman
were both guilty of the same crime, they were tried
before different courts. But also the penalties were
different. Priests had the privilege of lighter pun
ishments." (p. 612.) "All higher offices are filled by priests, and
laymen cannot fill them  (p. 614.) The de
mand is, therefore, not the exclusion of priests from
holding public office, but the termination of a rule
of caste, the introduction of the principle of equality
in civil affairs, the participation of the people in its
own government  (p. 615.) The dissatisfac
tion is caused by the great inequality of social posi
tion which makes the priests always the rulers, and
the laymen always the servants, which in every pub-

lie or private contest between layman and priest all
the advantages are in the hands of the latter and
makes the defeat of the former almost certain."
How wide the gulf between the Roman Catholic
clergy and laity still is, even in England, is shown
by a letter of Mgr. Talbot, in the Life of Cardinal
Manning (Vol. II. , P. 318) :
" They (the laity) are now beginning to show the
cloven foot, which I have seen the existence of for
a long time. They are only putting into practice
the doctrine taught by Dr. Newman in his " Ram
bler." . . . What is the province of the laity ?
To hunt, to shoot, to entertain. These matters they
understand ; but to meddle with ecclesiastical mat
ters they have no right at all."
Cardinal Manning lamented that this spirit still
existed even in England (Cardinal Manning's Life,
p. 783) : " I have often said that our priests are al-
Avays booted and spurred like cavalry officers in
time of peace."
This castelike division of classes Ignatius Loyola
had done his part to complete, by supplying the
highest priestly or ruling class. How strictly he
bound his order to follow Thomas on every point,
we have heard in the Encyclical above cited, and
his pupil, Leo XIIL, has shown us. The absolute
subj jction in the Jesuit order of the individual to
the whole, is therefore a result of the same theories
which produced in Greece the blind obedience of the
Lacedaemonians to their laws, with its total eradica
tion of the spirit of individualism and progress.
How strongly Leo XIII. believes in this castelike

82
division is shown by the epistle concerning the obedi
ence due by laymen to bishops, dated December 17,
1888 (Leonis Papae XIIL, p. 183): " It is plain that
there are in the Church two orders of men, one dis
tinct by nature from the other, shepherds and flock,
that is, rulers and masses. The duty of the first
order is to teach, to govern, to moderate the discipline
of life, to give precepts ; the duty of the other is to
be subject, to obey, to follow precepts, to give honor."
The express recognition of the principle of relig
ious persecution is, moreover, an echo of the old
Greek city constitution, which could not allow
within its narrow borders any who did not recog
nize the city's gods : not to swear by them was the
sign of a traitor. "Rome was in theory never any
thing more than a magnified city-state and when
the cloak of the Caesars fell on the shoulders of the
Pontifex Maximus rather than on those of the Ger
man rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, the refusal
of heretics to recognize the Pope was punished in
much of the same spirit as the refusal of early
Christians to offer incense to the Roman Emperors ;
Torquemada was acting for the successor of Diocle
tian. Christianity has, therefore, in this, as in so
many other points, been forced to bear the blame
for acts which were the consequences of following
too closely the teachings of the ancient heathen
civilizations, instead of tliose of the Gospel.
No greater contrast than that between our Ger
manic Federal Constitii'^ion, as outlined in the
" Federalist," with its resoect for the individual and
its limited organizations for the government ot local,

83
state and national affairs, and the inorganic, abso
lute government of a Greek city can be imagined;
see the author's " Trade Organizations in Politics
or Federalism in Cities." The " Ancien Regime "
of France, which was overthrown by the Revolu
tion, based its pretensions on the theories of Aristotle
and Aquinas. " L'etat, c'est moi " of Louis XIV. is
of the same ancestry as " L'eglise, c'est moi," or
rather " La monde, c'est moi " of Leo XIII.
As the Most Reverend Dr. Sheehan, Bishop of
Waterford, at the Mayrooth Centenary declared,
in the presence of the whole English and Irish
hierarchy (Catholic Review of July 20, 1895) : " For
us and for all Cathohcs he (Leo XIII.) is the vicar
of Christ, the divinely appointed Head of the
Church and the leader and ruler of nations." The
echo of the cry urbi et orbi for universal dominion
has not yet died out among the Seven Hills.
But right or wrong in theory, have we Americans
not had enough of sovereignties within our federal
constitution that we should now accept a sover
eignty (for that is what Leo XIII.'s " perfect society"
under the Sovereign Pontiff amounts to) above our
Constitution ? How can we reconcile such theories
with our principle of the separation of State and
Church, which leaves to the latter to insure obedi
ence to its commands only appeals to the love of
God and man, residing in each of us, as set out for
example in Seabury's " Introduction to the Study of
Ecclesiastical Polity " ? How are such theories com
patible with a government " of the people, by the
people, for the people " ?

84
The Rt. Rev. Abbott Snow, O. S. B., recognizes
the incompatibility frankly in " The Catholic
Times" of August lo, 1894: "All authority and
power (it is said) must be derived from the people,
be exercised in their name, and be terminable at
their will. In such a state what place is there for
ecclesiastical authority ? Religion supposes an au
thority derived from God to regulate a system for
the worship of God. The Catholic Church has a
hierarchy of officials — Pope, Bishops and Clergy —
with authority to command the obedience of the
people independent of the State. These officials
cannot rule at the will of the State nor can their
authority be derived from it." As Justin McCarthy
says in his Leo XIII. (p. 85) : " The empire of the
Pope is not merely greater than any other empire.
It folds in all the empires and all the monarchies and
all the republics in the world."
The negative declarations of the Syllabus, which
caused so much alarm to Mr. Gladstone, have been
developed and put into the form of positive, univer
sal commands by Leo XIIL; he has completed the
scheme which Aquinas planned and of which Loyola
commenced the execution ; its aim is in the dominion
of the world under a caste of priests ruled by a
supreme Pontiff. In short, the Roman Catholic
Church has been Jesuitized and now it would
Jesuitize the world, through this apt pupil of the
Jesuits, Leo XIII. Nippold's Kirchengeschichte
(second volume) shows how the study of St. Thomas
has always preceded ultra-montanism and a Jesuit
invasion.

85
But even if we succeed in resisting the active
assertion of the Papal claims as to the respective
domains of Church and State, is not the very idea of
the complete separation of the religious from the
national life of a people, negatively, a mistake ? Kidd,
in his Social Evolution, has shown that the real prin
ciple of life in a nation is Its religion ; it is this super
natural sanction which makes men ready to sacrifice
their selfish individual Instinct for the good of the
whole, for the benefit of generations yet unborn.
He says (p. in): "A religion is a form of belief
providing an ultra-rational sanction for that large
class of conduct in the individual where his interests
and the interest of the social organism are antag
onistic, and by which the former are rendered subor
dinate to the latter in the general interests of the
evolution which the race is undergoing."
The nations with national religions like Russia and
England have certainly in this century taken a
decided lead in progress of every kind before Roman
Catholic countries, like France and Austria. Is not
a certain connection between the nation and a
national church desirable and theoretically cor
rect, so that the idea of an In ernatlonal ^church
organization is in Itself to be rejected? If all the
men of a certain race have once become convinced
sincerely of the truth of Christianity, and become
enlightened by the gift of God's Holy, Spirit speak
ing to their consciences, v/hy should they not meet
to consult and determine what Is best for the spirit
ual welfare of all the race and In what form they can
best worship their Creator? As Westcott says in

86
his " Social Aspects of Christianity " (p. 76) : " A
national church alone can consecrate the whole life
of a people."
If the theory advanced in the fourth chapter of
this book is correct, that the Holy Spirit was prom
ised not only to the priesthood, but to all laymen
who would avail themselves of God's holy ordinances,
does it not also follow that on all men devolves
directly the duty of making the State as nearly as
possible what God has willed that His kingdom on
earth should be, and that therefore the laity are not
bound to wait (as the Belgians have been required
by the Pope to do) for a Congress of Bishops to di
rect them as to the proper health, labor and poor
laws which they should enact ? The old contest of
the Reformation, of the laity against the caste of
priests, of the light of grace against the light of
nature, is therefore not ended.
The nearest approach to the realization of this
ideal relation of Church and State, has. been in the
colonies of Portugal and Spain ; from such a govern
ment — Good Lord deliver us !
Under how many reservations in favor of the
eternal and natural law and of the directions of the
infallible Roman guide in morals, must not a sincere
Roman Catholic take the oath of allegiance ? Is not
his conception of the State necessarily very far from
that of a brot,herhood of men, working out God's
will according to Hght of their consciences, and
willing to sacrifice everything " one for all and all
for one,'' — to carry out the spirit of the cry " E pluri-
bu5 unum"? The oath of allegiance of a faith-

87
ful Roman Catholic must read ' about as follows :
" I solemnly swear that I will support the Constitu
tion of the United States, except where it is contrary
to the pontifical or natural or eternal law, and that I
renounce allegiance and fidelity to all foreign sov
ereigns, except that in all rational or intentional acts
I will obey the infallible direction of the Pontiff of
Rome." The following lines from Doctor (now, the author
believes. Cardinal) Hergenroether, in his Catholic
Church and Christian State, seem worthy of " a
Daniel come to justice " : " No State can be re
quired to permit what will endanger its own
existence and destroy the foundations of all social
order. Yet there are sects and religions which
would do this  Who would dream of
requiring that these sects should be tolerated or
recognized by the State, or deny that the State
not only might but ought to resist them by all the
means at its disposal ? No liberty is granted to doc
trines . . . Avhich threaten the constitution of
the State and the observance of the civil laws."
To cure this attachment of Roman Catholics to a
foreign potentate but two remedies suggest them
selves : One is to inculcate the theory that, al
though the Pope controls reason and consequently
conscience, still, on questions relating to the State,
the reason or conscience is not to be exercised.
This teaching results, of course, in complete obedi
ence of the subject to the ruler ; it can only be justi
fied through the argument that the Crown is as
truly a divine institution as the Papacy. The Di-

88
vine Right of Kings is therefore directly due to the
Divine Right of Popes ; it v/as the only possible
antidote to the latter; see "The Divine Right of
Kings," by J. N. Figgis (Macmillan & Co., Ncav
York, 1896). It is therefore perfectly natural to find
many Jesuit writers asserting the rights of the
People as against the Crown, but by " the People "
was always understood a " Pope-guided people."
The partiality of Leo XIIL for Democracies is there
fore easily understood ; with the Divine Right of
Kings disappears his chief and only rival. A De
mocracy has no such dangerous enemy , the idea of
popular sovereignty can never take the place of a
personal sovereign ; moreover, the Pope, as guide
of the human conscience or reason, can interfere
whenever he pleases in the formation of this popu
lar idol. An independent republic and Roman
Catholicism are therefore, from their very nature,
incompatible. The only other remedy is, there
fore, to convince our Roman Catholic fellow-citi
zens of the truth of the proposition set forth be
low, in the chapter on the Church and Individual,
in which It is shown that on no questions has a per
son the right to exile his reason or conscience, and
place it, gagged and bound, in foreign hands ; but
that, on the contrary, it is his most important duty
to develop this talent to the utmost, through God's
most holy ordinances, and to obey implicitly the
warnings of this inspired monitor. No State has
anything to fear from an appeal to man's conscience,
in direct communion, without human mediation,
with God the Holy Ghost.

89
If this second remedy is not applied thoroughly
and speedily, then, as the author believes, is
the prospect dark indeed. Then must echo the
streets again with the cries, " Hi, Guelph ! " " Hi,
Ghibelline ! " Then must ring the pulpits again
with denunciations of the Divine Right of Popes,
as in the days of Elizabeth and James, and with
praise for its only possible substitute, the Divine
Right of Kings.
The contest would be for the right to follow the
inner light, to listen to the small, still voice, — for
which' Socrates drank his cup of hemlock.

CHAPTER II.
the church and the workingman.
From the prominence which the labor question
bears in modern life, it was not to be expected that
Leo XIII. would overlook it ; in fact, in the first
year of his reign, he wrote denouncing socialism and
communism, and in 1891 he issued his famous Ency
clical "Novarum rerum," in which he undertook to
provide remedies for the distressing conditions of
the laboring classes of the world. How strongly he
felt this to be his duty and privilege the Encyclical
expressly shows : " It (the condition of labor) is a
matter which we have touched once or twice already.
But in this letter the responsibility of the Apostolic
offices urges us to treat the question expressly and
at length, in order that there may be no mistake as
to the principles which truth and justice dictate for
its settlement. . . . We approach the subject
with confidence and in the exercise of the rights
which belong to us ; for no practical solution for
this question will ever be found without the assist
ance of religion and of the Church. It is we who are
the chief guardians of religion and the chief dis
penser of what belongs to the church, and we must
not by silence neglect the duty which lies upon us."
In the Encyclical to the Belgian Bishops (above
cited) the social question is expressly claimed for
90

91
the Church as falling within the domain of religion
and morals.
Nor is this view peculiar to Leo XIII. ; under the
definition of morals as explained in a former chapter,
the whole social system Is included and the ordinary
Roman Catholic text-books on Morality include chap
ters on all important social questions ; for example,
the above cited work on Moral Philosophy by Father
Russo, Father Rickaby's Moral Philosophy, F.
Costa Rossetti's Institutiones Ethicae et Juris
Naturse. How imperative and final the plan is to be regarded
by Roman Catholics, is shown also by the same
Encyclical to the Belgian Bishops, cited in the Intro
duction, in which he prohibits the laity from discus
sing the social question in that country and summons
a council of Bishops to consider it. How implicitly
this infallible voice is followed also In these matters,
appears from the unconditional acceptance of its
teachings, even by Roman Catholic writers who had
previously entertained most opposite views, such as
M. Charles Revin, who, in his L'economie politique
d'apres I'Encyclique (Paris, 1891), referring to this
Encyclical, declares, on page 21 : " The Church, be
hold our guide, our true master for the social ques
tion ; let us follow her and no one else. Let us have
no other political economy than that which flows
from her teachings on the labor question."
Father Zahm, in his article on " Leo XIII. and
the Social Question," in the North American Re
view for August, 189s, says: "We recognize in the
earnest but tender words of the Pontiff, the divine

92
perfume of the Master, the precise lessons of the
Fathers of the Church, and the carefully pondered
and soundly democratic teachings of the Doctors of
the Middle Ages."
To understand the scheme of the Holy Father
aright, we must bear in mind one sentence of this
Encyclical : " Let us now, therefore, inquire what
part the State should play in the v/ork of remedy
and relief. By the State we here understand, not
the particular form of government v/hlch prevails
in this or that nation, but the State as rightly under
stood ; that is to say any government conformable in
its institutions to right reason and natural law, and
to those dictates of the Divine Wisdom which we
have expounded in the Encyclical on the Christian
Constitution of the State."
To fill in any lacking details of the plan pro
posed, we must therefore suppose that before it can
be carried out completely, the State must have been
reorganized according to the principles laid down in
the foregoing chapter, so that the relation of Church
and State shall have become like that of the soul
and body, and the Church would then of course be
able to supply in its good judgment all that might
be necessary to this scheme of social reform.
One passage from this Encyclical is worth citing
at this point to remind us of the superiority of the
soul : " It is the soul which is made after the image
and likeness of God ; it is in the soul that sover
eignty resides, in virtue of which man is commanded
to rule the creatures below him, and to use all the
earth and the ocean for his profit and advantage,"

93
The plan of, the Encyclical, to state it in a few
words, agrees substantially with the teachings of the
State-socialists, laying special stress on the develop
ment of trades unions. But these organizations
must consist exclusively of Roman Catholics ; he
says : " But there is a good deal of evidence which
goes to prove that many of these societies are in the
hands of invisible leaders and are managed on prin
ciples far from compatible with Christianity and the
public well-being ; and that they do their best to get
into their hands the whole field of labor and to force
workmen either to join them or to starve. Under
these circumstances Christain workmen must do
one of two things ; either join associations in which
their religion will be exposed to peril, or form asso
ciations among themselves — unite their forces and
courageously shake off the yoke of an unjust and
intolerable oppression. No one who does not wish
to expose man's chief good to extreme danger will
hesitate to say that the second alternative must by
all means be adopted. . . . It is clear that they
(workingmen's association) must pay special and
principal attention to piety and morality . . . Let our
associations then look first and before all to God ;
let religious instruction have therein a foremost
place, each one being carefully taught what is his
duty to God, what to believe, what to hope for and
how to work out his salvation . . . Let him learn to
reverence and to love mother Church, the common
mother of us all . . . Such mutual associations
among Catholics are certain to be productive in no
small degree of prosperity to the State."

94
Moreover these organizations must be as inde
pendent as possible from the State : " Particular
societies, then, although they exist within the State,
and are each a part of the State, nevertheless cannot
be prohibited by the State absolutely and as such.
For to enter into ' society ' of this kind is the natural
right of man ; and the State must protect natural
rights, not destroy them ; and if it forbids its citizens
to form associations, it contradicts the very prin
ciple of its own existence ; for both they and it exist
in virtue of the same principles, viz.: the natural
propensity of man to live in society . . . But every
precaution should be taken not to violate the rights
of individuals and not to make unreasonable regula
tions under the pretense of public benefit. For laws
only bind when they are in accordance with right
reason and therefore with the eternal law of God. . .
Let the State watch over these societies of citizens
united together in the exercise of their right ; but
let it not thrust itself into their peculiar concerns
and their organization.''
In a previous passage of the Encyclical, after re
commending a minimum wage, he proceeds : " In
these and similar questions, however, such as, for
example, the hours of labor in different trades, the
sanitary precautions to be observed in factories and
work shops, etc., in order to supersede undue inter
ference on the part of the State, especially as circum
stances, times and localities differ so widely, it is ad
visable that recourse be had to societies or boards
such as we shall mention presently, or to some other
method of safe guarding the interests of wage

95
earners ; the State to be asked for approval and pro
tection." . Each association is to consist of employers as
well as employed. " If it should happen that either
a master or a workman deemed himself injured,
nothing would be more desirable than that there
should be a committee composed of honest and
capable men of the association itself, whose duty it
should be, by the laws of the association, to decide
the dispute. Among the purposes of a society
should be to try to arrange for a continuous supply
of work at all times and seasons ; and to create a
fund from which the members may be helped in
their necessities, not only in cases of accident, but
also in sickness, old age and misfortune.'*
From the foregoing extract it is evident that the
Infallible Head of the Roman Church has decided in
favor of that school of political economy which in
Germany is represented by Abb6 Schings, the
director of the Christlich Sociale Blatter, and in
France by L6on Harmel, the proprietor of the great
factory at Val-des-Bois ; both of these writers repre
sent the free guild system as opposed to the plan of
compulsory guilds, under the superintendence of the
State ; the latter plan is advocated In Germany by
Baron Hitze and in France by the Count de Mun.
If we therefore turn to the Avrifers first mentioned
we find a plainer and bolder picture of the plan
which Leo XIIL evidently had in his mind and of
which he drew the cSutline in his Encyclical. Thus
Schings writes: "The old corporations (guilds)
wea-e- created by the Church. And It wa«- because

96
they were religious associations and maintained their
character as such that they preserved their vigor
and stability. . . . The Christian spirit is a family
tie, uniting together masters, fellow workmen and
apprentices, and the destruction of this spirit by the
Renaissance and the Reformation was the death
blow to the corporations. How then can these new
compulsory corporations, which must necessarily
comprise all workmen without any distinction of
creed — how then can they be expected to produce the
same beneficial results ? How then can you expect to
find a family spirit in the workshop where the master
is a Protestant, the foreman a Jew, the apprentice a
Catholic, or vice versa} A guild composed of
Catholics and Protestants could have no real con
sistence and would merely have an external appear
ance of union maintained perhaps by the police."
To the same effect speaks Leon Harmel in the As
sociation Catholique des Patrons du Nord : " We
will not upon any account accept the compulsory
guilds because the combining of unequal and fre
quently opposed elements can only, from the moral
point of view, produce disastrous effects. Those
who would build in company must first speak the
same language; now. Catholics and free thinkers
have an entirely different language: the first call
honor that which the others deem cowardice, the
second call liberty what the others consider as
slavery ; the former are ready to give their hfe for
their duty, while the latter hold rebellion as the
first of duties. On all arguments concerning virtue,
probity, disinterestedness, the origin and aim of life,

97
they each speak a separate language. How then
could they act in concert in re-constructing a moral
fabric which demands unity and community of
effort ? "
Father Liberatore in his Principles of Political
Economy, which is supposed to have served as a
suggestion for the Papal Encyclical, speaks to the
same effect (page 289): " Clearly corporations ought
to be founded on religion. . . . Here the Austrian
corporations are wide of the mark, being compelled
to admit ' oves et boves universas, insuper et pecora
campi.' Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and even
atheists are indiscriminately brought together there
in ; so that the basis of these societies is not relig
ious, but purely economic. This is the result of the
compulsory system, which Is also against harmony
of thought and feeling. . . . The danger of in
timacy between people of different religions may be
much obviated by instituting for the Catholics, pious
congregations to serve as an antidote and bind them
together as a separate unity. Thus whereas in
former days Corporations arose out of Confraterna-
ties, Confraternities would now come out of Corpor
ations . . . (page 293): The Christian Corpor
ation, so far as its organizing and its internal admin
istration are concerned, should be formed and main
tained independently of the State. This is essential ;
for the State, separated from the Church and from
God, would influence it badly. A Christian Corpor
ation should be professedly and thoroughly religious,
faithfully keep the laws of the Church, and obey de
voutly the Vicar of Jesus Christ. How then can it

98
accept the interference of governments that are
either hostile to the Catholic religion or at least in
different to it ? The Corporation must keep clear
of rulers whose touch defiles. ' May God preserve
us,^ says Claude Janet, 'from seeing the modern
State add this social policy to its other numerous
invasions of the rights of the individual and of the
family.' "
In the Encyclical of Leo XIII. addressed to the
Anaerican Bishops, d^ted Jan. 6th, 1895, and beginning
with the word " Longinqua," there are several sen
tences which add a few touches to the sketch con
tained in the Encyclical on Labor, showing still
more plainly that the plan of the writer last above
cited is the one he bears in mind : " But it is very
important to take heed with whom they (Roman
Catholic workingmen) are to associate, else, while
seeking aids for the improvement of their condition,
they may be imperilling far weighter interests.
. . . Nay, rather, unless forced by necessity
to do otherwise, Catholics ought to prefer to
associate with Catholics, a course which would be
very conducive to the safe guarding of their faith.
As president of Societies thus formed among them
selves, it would be well to appoint either priests or
upright laymen of weight and character, guided by
whose councils they should endeavor peacefully
to adopt and carry into effect such measures as
may seem most advantageous to their interests,
keeping in view the rules laid down by us in our
Encyclical Rerum Novarum."
As Father Zahm says in the North American

99
Review of August, 189S : " The Encyclical Longin
qua Oceani Spatia recently issued is, in a measure
but a supplement of Rerum Novarum."
How important a part the priestly president of
such a society would play will be plain when we re
member that both employers and employed are to
be members, as in the so-called mixed syndicates of
France, and that the priest would have to act the
part of mediator or umpire between them. Father
Liberatore, in his above cited work, seems to have
again been followed on this point : " The mixed Syndi
cate is the only sound one. By uniting masters and
workmen it paves the way for a true Corporation.
, . . (Page 294) : This (government of Christian
corporation), however, must be understood in a
hierarchical manner ; so that the highest places be
filled by the masters, who are superiors born of the
Corporation ; the next by the principal and best
workmen, the lowest by the whole multitude as hav
ing the right to select their representatives, and thus
by means of them watch over the management and
distribution of what is owned in common."
In an earlier Encyclical entitled Humanum Genus,
in 1884, Leo XIII. had already said : "In the third
place there are certain institutions wisely estab
lished by our forefathers, and which in the course of
time have been dropped,^ which may become at the
present time the type and model, as it were, of sim
ilar institutions. We speak of those guilds or asso
ciations of workingmen which aim at protecting,
with the guidance of religion, their worldly inter
ests and morality. And if our ancestors, after the
experience of ages, appreciated so fully the utility

100
of such institutions, our age values it even more
highly on account of the peculiar power they afford
of crushing the strength of the sects. . . . For
these reasons and for the common welfare we fer
vently wish to see these guilds, so suited to the
time, re-established under the auspices and patron
age of the Bishops." (" Leo XIIL," by Rev. James
F. Talbot, D. D., page 338.) The term "sects"
does not refer to religious bodies, but includes all
who are known as Naturalists in philosophy or
Liberals in politics, as was shown in the first chapter.
No modern student of political economy will doubt
that Leo XIII. was right in assigning the most im
portant place in the solution of the social question to
labor organizations. But the question is submitted,
if the papal plan to form trade organizations consist
ing exclusively of Roman Catholics and formed
expressly for the purpose of "crushing the sects"
under the leadership of the priest, succeeds, what
will be the fate of other workingmen ? In his Labor
Encyclical, above cited, Leo XIII. has already de
clared that unorganized labor in competition with
labor unions will be driven to starvation. As Pro
testants are not to be admitted to these Roman
Catholic organizations, what is left to them but to
form organizations of their own or be persecuted as
" scabs ?"
Is it not a plan to grind the State between the
Church as an upper and the Trade Organization as a
lower millstone ? How can the State surrender in
effect the whole control of its industry and the whole
field of labor to this papal, international organization
of priests?

toi
What an important part such priest-guided labor
organizations would play in politics is evident
enough. Man}' recognize that the political units of
the future in great cities will be, not the sub-divisions
of the city according to geographical lines, but the
groups of men organized according to their trades
and professions ; the author would refer on this
point to " Trade Unions," by William Trant, and
to the author's " Trade Unions In Politics.'' No
one, then, can charge the Papal Church with lack
of foresight, in endeavoring to keep these future
powers under her control and " clear of rulers
whose touch defiles." In Germany, the hundred
thousand members of the Catholic Labor Unions take
part in politics most actively as such, whenever a
question arises in which the Church is interested.
The argument of the Holy Father in his Labor
Encyclical to prove this independence of the trade-
unions from the State is as follows : " These lesser
societies and the society which constitute the State
differ in many things, because their immediate
purpose and end is different. Civil society exists for
the common good, and therefore is concerned with
the interests of all in general, and with individual
interest in their due place and proportion. Hence,
it is called public society, because by its means, as
St. Thomas of Aquinas says, men communicate with
one another in the setting up of a commonwealth.
But the societies which are formed in the bosom of
the State are called private, and justly so, because
their immediate purpose is the private advantage of
the associates. Now a private society, says St.

I02

Thomas again, is one which is formed for the purpose
of carrying out private business, as when two or
three enter into a partnership with a view of trading
in conjunction."
To class trade organizations with business part
nerships and to say that because the one is a private
organization and independent of the State, therefore
the other ought also to be so, is not very convincing.
The history of the Middle Ages is one long story of
the struggle of the trade organizations to take part
in the government ; it is the glory of Germanic laws
to have afforded scope for this desire, instead of
crushing it, as did the Roman law, which latter law
the Roman Catholic socialists are generally so fond
of denouncing. See Beseler " Deutsches Privat-
recht," p. 251.
If we turn now from this particular scheme of
Roman Catholic trade unions, to the general teach
ings of the Church on social questions, how are they
adapted to our modern civilization? It is sub
mitted that the modern communism, against which
Leo XIII. so frequently inveighs under the name of
Socialism, is practically identical in its fundamental
principles with teachings of the Church, except that
it disregards the sovereignty of the successors of
St. Peter.
St. Thomas Aquinas had before him the ideals of
Plato and Aristotle and accepted their Utopias in
principle without reserve ; thus he says, in De
Regimine Principum (lib. IV., Cap. X.) : " He (Plato)
divided his state into five classes of men, viz.: princes,
.counsellors, warriors, mechanics and farmers. This
division seems sufficient for the protection of the

I03
State, since it comprises all varieties of men neces
sary to a political government." He makes substan
tially the same division in the Summa (I., IL, 9, 95,
a. 4) : " Human law can be divided according to the
difference of those who devote themselves especially
to the common weal, as priests who pray for the
people to God, princes who rule the people and
soldiers who fight for the safety of the people and
therefore to these men certain especial rights are
due." This whole system of special rights or privileges was
known as " justitia distributativa '' as opposed to the
other great division of law "justitia commutativa"
which concerns the legal relation of individuals to
each other. The definition of distributive justice,
with which no communist would quarrel in Sumfiia
IL, II. , q. 96, I a. I, IS as follows : " Or again we have
the relation of the whole to the part ; and such is the
relation of the community to the individual, which
relation is presided over by distributive justice or
the justice that distributes the goods of the co'mmon stock
according to proportion. '
The authority for this whole system of distribu
tive or class justice is the philosopher Aristotle,
who is continually cited. How Aristotle regarded
this class system can be seen "from the following
extract from his Politics (Book VII., Chap. 9):
" Now, since we are here speaking of the best form
of government and that under which the State will
be most happy, it clearly follows that in the State
which is best governed the citizens who are abso
lutely and merely relatively just men must not lead

I04
the life of mechanics or tradesmen, for such a life
is ignoble and inimical to virtue. Neither must
they be husbandmen, since leisure is necessary
both for the development of virtue and the per
formance of political duties. Again, there is in a
State a class of warriors and another of counsellors
who advise about the expedient and determine mat
ters of law, and these seem in an especial manner
parts of a State . . . whereas mechanics or any
other class whose art excludes the art of virtue have
no other share in the State. . . . The husbandmen
will of necessity be slaves or barbarians or Perioeci.
" Of the classes enumerated there remains only the
priests, and the manner in which their office is to be
regulated is obvious. No husbandman or mechanic
should be appointed to it. Now since the body of
the citizens is divided into two classes, the warriors
and the counsellors, to the old men of these two clas
ses should be assigned the duties of the priesthood
— husbandmen, craftsmen and laborers of all kinds
are necessary to the existence of states, but the parts
of the State are the warriors and counsellors. And
these are distinguished severally from one another,
the distinction being in some cases permanent, in
others not."
Plato, in his Republic, as is well known, gave the
masses no share in the government and considered
th,em unworthy of the slightest attention, and made
a similar division of ruling, classes, who constituted
the actual state.
In reading these lines of Aristotle, do we not seem
to hear the very words of some grand seigneur or of

105
some aristocratic abbe of the Ancien Regime which,
under the rule of the Eldest Son of the Church in
France, had developed so successfully the doctrine of
several estates, with their caste-like divisions of the
people ? No wonder the Roman Catholics are loud
in their denunciations of the work of the French
Revolution and lavish with their glowing pictures
of the "good old times."
Our legal system, with its doctrine of equality of
all before the law, has no place for " Distributive
Justice." Is it not then apparent that the French
Communists were orthodox theologians? They
wanted merely a share of " the goods of the com
mon stock,'' and only differed with the First and
Second Estates as to the proportion which each
should receive.
How conversant Leo XIII. was with this principle
of division of a people into classes and distributive
justice appears by the following extract from the
Labor Encyclical, in which he cites the chapter
of the Summa last above mentioned : " To cite the
wise words of St. Thomas of Aquin : As the part
and the whole are in a certain sense identical, the
part may in some sense claim what belongs to
the whole. Among the many and grave duties of
rulers who would do their best for the people,
the first and chief is to act with strict justice — with
that justice which is called in the schools distribu
tive — toward each and every class."
This idea of a central government to which all
classes look for their support is irradicably ingrained
in the Roman Catholic mediaeval system which con-

io6
sidered the particular government of the " Holy
Roman Empire," as directly instituted by God, being
symbolized in the coronation of the Emperor by the
Pope as vicar of Jesus Christ ; and under the Em
peror every official held office by Divine Right.
The individual was consequently absorbed in the
whole; as St. Thomas Aquinas says in Summa II.,II.,
q. 58, a. 5: " All who are comprised in a community
stand to the community as parts to the v/hole ; now
all that the part is, belongs to the whole ; hence
everything good in the part is ref errable to the good
of the whole ; " and he continues in the same chapter,
article ninth ; " the common good is the aim of all
individuals existing in a community, as the good of
the whole is the object of all the parts." He also
frequently reiterates that the individual exists for
the good of the species.
Is not this doctrine the same as that of the most
radical Socialist, who, flying to the opposite ex
treme from individualism, would merge the citizen
completely in the State, and treat him only as a cell
in an organism, ignoring his personality and direct
responsibility to a Heavenly Power? Is not this
system the extreme of paternalism and centralization,
with its inevitable deadening of all individual effort,
from which our government is supposed to be a di
rect revolt ?
All Catholic Socialists unite in denouncing Liber
alism and in repeating the boast that the subjection
of rulers and nations to the Papacy would result in
the attainment of all that the French Revolution
vainly demanded.

I07
When the Count de Mun, the leader of one of the
wings of French Catholic Sociahsts, introduced a
bill regulating labor, into the French Parliament in
1890, Ferroul, the Socialist Deputy, exclaimed : "I
have read M. de Mun's declarations, and together
with my friends cannot but commend them ; his de
mands are in reality identical with those formulated
by the Socialist Congresses."
On the other hand. Baron von Vogelsang, the
leader of the Austrian Catholic Socialists, laments
that the French Revolution overthrew the old social
order which rested on the fundamental principles
that all property should be as a part of the common
fortune of the nation, granted for private enjoyment
in exchange for services rendered to the community.
(See the Association Catholique, May, 1888.)
Nitti in his Catholic Socialism (p. 29) states cor
rectly : " All the great Catholic economists, as Von
Ketteler, Hitze, Weiss, De Mun, De Curtins, hold
that so-called economic liberty is an iniquitous
principle, contrary to all the laws of Christianity."
The greatest Roman Catholic publicist of this
century, De Maistre following Aquinas and Aristotle,
(in his " Essai sur le principe generateur and Soirees
de St. Petersburg "), claimed that the nobility as a
separate class with all its privileges, was a divine
institution with which it was impious to interfere.
One of the main causes of the dissatisfaction
among the subjects of the Pope, while he still had
temporal power, was that the priests constituted a
privileged caste ; see the citation from Dr. Doll
inger's description of the Papal State, in the first

io8
chapter of this book. In the Province of Quebec in
Canada, ever since the " Customs of Paris " were re
stored in 1774, the class distinctions and extensive
legal privileges of the clergy, which existed in
France before the Revolution, have been continued.
The many bloody revolutions in Mexico were only
struggles to overcome the tyranny of the priests
and soldiers, whose claims to be tried in special
courts of their own, composed exclusively of either
clergy or officers, was most strongly supported by
the Church ; see the article in the North American
Review for January. 1896, by the Mexican Minister
at Washington, on the " Philosophy of Mexican
Revolutions.' All therefore who believe that society exists for
men, and not men for society, and in the equality of
all before the law should oppose this Church Social
ism, which calls upon the Fourth Estate to undo the
work of the Third Estate in the French Revolution,
not only that it may introduce a rigid mediaeval
communism, but also that it may restore the First
and Second Estates to their former positions.
There is another objection to Roman Catholic
Socialism which will be better understood after a
perusal of the chapter on the Church and the Indi
vidual, in its denial of the existence of the spiritual
part of man's nature. The consequence is that even
while men remain good Roman Catholics and under
the guidance of the Church, they are thrown too
much for the satisfaction of the Avants of their entire
being upon the physical and intellectual treasures of
this world, and when once they throw off the control

109
of the Church, as has been the case in all countries
with the spread of education, they become too eager
in the pursuit of that which will please their senses,
regardless of the claims of their higher or spiritual
nature. Over thirty years ago. Bishop Ketteler declared
from his cathedral at Mayence : " The Social Ques,
tion is a stomach question " (Nitti, Catholic Social
ism, p. 355). The teachings of Roman Catholic
philosophy are, as will be shoAvn hereafter, that men
are simply physical and sentient organisms, and the
result of such teachings is always practically a
materialism, identical with that of the extreme com
munist. The eagerness with which that part of the
Roman Catholic clergy which was least bound by
the Papal authority, took up the Henry George
movement and defended it on theological grounds,
may serve as an example to show how naturally
Roman Catholics become communists, so soon as
the restraint from above is relaxed. Mr. George's
book, by the way, has never been put upon the
Index. The most extreme and dangerous com
munists are the products of Roman Catholic
countries ; see Flint's Socialism (p. 449).
If Leo XIII. is right in the statement which he
lays down in the Encyclical on Labor (above cited)
that " the first and chief duty " of a ruler is " dis
tributive justice," — /. e., the distribution of the
goods which constitute the common stock, to the
various classes, how does he differ in principle from
St. Simon or any other communist, except that in
his trade unions "no Protestant need apply"? Is

no
not this exclusive spirit the severest charge against
the A. P. A.? In brief, his plan is a priest-ruled com
munism ; of which good practical illustrations are
found in the history of the Jesuit colony of Para
guay or of the Missions of Mexico ; their civilization
consisted of priests and peons.
If the priest, will but, like the cobbler, " stick to
his last" and attend to the development of man's
spiritual nature, instead of attempting the direct
government of the world, in its minutest details,
the germ of sympathy in the heart of every man
would blossom out into such love of neighbor that
organizations of employers and employees acting
together in harmony (as set out in the author's
" Trade Organizations in Religion ") would make us
soon forget that there had ever been a social
question.

CHAPTER III.
the church and the family.
Having shown in the preceding chapters how the
rights of the State would be ground down between
the Church and the Workingmen's Guild, acting like
an upper and nether millstone, let us now consider
whether there is a third institution Avhich would
still further lessen these rights.
The following extract from the Encyclical of Leo
XIIL on Labor speaks for itself : " A family, no
less than a State, is, as v/e have said, a true society
governed by a power within itself, that is to say by
the Father. Wherefore, provided the limits be not
transgressed which are prescribed by the very pur
poses for which it exists, the Famll}' has at least
equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit
of those things which are needful to Its preservation
and its just liberty. We say, at least equal rights ;
for since the domestic household is anterior both in
idea and fact to the gathering of men into a common
wealth, the former must necessarily have rights and
duties which are prior to those of the latter, and
which rest more immediately on nature. If the
citizens of a State, that is to say, the Families on en
tering into association and fellowship, experienced
at the hands of the State hindrance instead of help,
and found their rights attacked instead of being pro
tected, such association was rather to be repudiated

112
than sought after. The idea then, that the civil
government should, at its own discretion, penetrate
and pervade the Family -and the household, is a
great and pernicious mistake and to speak v/ith strict
ness, the child takes its place in civil society not in
its own right, but in its quality as a member of the
Family in Avhich it is begotten. And it is for the
very reason that ' The child belongs to the Father,'
that, as St. Thomas of Aquin says : ' Before it at
tains the use of free will, it is in the power and care
of its parents ' (St. Thomas's Summa Theologiae^
IL, II. , q. IO, a. 12)."
The theory of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Family
is set out more at length in the Summa I., IL, q 105, a.
4, where his conclusion is as follows : " Concerning
domestic persons which are either servant and mas
ter, or man and wife, or finally father and child,
the Old Testament gave precepts, rightly and con
veniently for the preservation of human life."
The important part Avhich the Family and Tribe
played in Jewish history, preceding the organization
of the State, is well known ; and in most of the Greek
cities, men bound together by ties of blood, were
important political factors in their early history. See
Aristotle's Politics I., 2. It is therefore not to be
wondered at that St. Thomas should place the
Family as a society on an equality with the State,
as he does in Comm. in Lib. Ethic. Aristot., Lect. I.,
L. I., making the State, the Family, and the Indi
vidual the three subdivisions of moral philosophy.
He concludes: "And hence it is that moral philos
ophy is divided into three parts. Of which one

"3
treats of the intentional acts of a single man, which
is called monastica; but the second considers the
operation of a domestic group, Avhich is called oecono-
mica ; but the third considers the operations of a
civil group, which is cdW&A. politica."
As the Supreme Pontiff is the infallible guide in
all matters of morals, it is really unnecessary to say
anything more to show that in all matters relating
to family life, as a part of the domain of morals, the
Church has the deciding voice and the State can act
only on sufferance ; particularly is this plainly de
clared with regard to the marriage relation, which
is the foundation of family life. In the Encyclical of
Leo XIIL, issued February loth, 1880, on Marriage
and Divorce (printed in the London Tablet), he says :
" Then, to make sure that such singular blessings
should remain on earth as long as mankind itself,
He established the Church as the Dispenser of His
gifts, and, foreseeing the future He ordained that
she should regulate all disturbances in human socie
ty, and reestablish whatever might fall into decay.
. . . Jesus Christ, then, when he had again restored
marriage to such great perfection, remitted and
entrusteditsentire disposition to the Church. The
Church, in fact, exercised this power over the
marriages of Christians, in all times and in all places ;
she exercised it in such a manner that it could easily
be seen that this power was her own ; that it did not
come to her through the consent of men, but that
she had come by it by the divine will of her
Author. . . .
" It was then with full jurisdiction that the Council

114
of Trent defined that it is in the power of the Church
to establish invalidating impediments and that matri
monial causes should come under the jurisdiction
of ecclesiastical tribunals.
" Nor must any one allow himself to be moved by
that distinction, or rather sundering, proclaimed by
royal civilians, which consists in separating the
nuptial contract from the Sacrament, leaving the
Sacrament to the Church, and giving the contract
over to temporal princes.
" Therefore neither does reason prove, 'nor does
history, which is the witness of the times, give testi
mony that authority over Christain marriage has
ever been given over to temporal princes. And if
the rights of any one have been violated in this
manner, no one can ever say that the Church violated
them. " It cannot be doubted that Jesus Christ, the Foun
der of the Church, desired the religious authority
to be distinct from the civil authority, and that each,
be free in the fulfilment of its mission ; it must,
however, be added, that it is useful to both, as it is
to the interest of all men, that union and concord
exist between them and that in such questions as
from divers reasons, are common to the laws and
jurisdictions of both, the one to whom human affairs
have been entrusted should justly and reasonably
depend upon the one having the guardianship of
heavenly things. By this arrangament and agree
ment not only is a perfect organization of each
power arrived at, but also the most opportune and
the most efficacious means of securing the happiness

115
of the human race in regard to our conduct in this
life and to the hope of eternal salvation.
" Devote your zeal and your energies that the
people may abundantly receive the precepts of
Christian wisdom and that they may ever bear In
mind that marriage was established not by the will
of men but by authority of God, and that its funda
mental law Is to unite one Avith one only, that Christ
the Author of the new Alliance, transformed into a
Sacrament that which was merely an act of nature,
and in so much as concerns the bond, he has trans
mitted to his Church the- power of legislating and
passing judgment upon it. It is necessary to be very
watchful on this point, and to see that minds be not
misled into error by the deceitful theories of enemies
who seek to rob the Church of this power."
It will be noted that the Encyclical is quite vague
in stating the ground for Its claim of authority in
favor of the Church in matrimonial matters as in
fact none can be found ; but His Holiness insists
that the State must prove its title to such right, and
should depend upon the Church in such matters,
as in all others which are subject to the jurisdiction
of both.
How faithfully and boldly these doctrines are
taught, even in this country, may appear from the
following extract from two leading Roman Catholic
writers. Thus Father Jouin, S. J., Professor at St.
John's College, Fordham, writes in his " Elementa
Philosophiae Moralis ' (p. i8i): " Matrimonial society
was instituted by God and its nature was determined
by him ; therefore, it does not depend on civil soci-

ii6
ety. Matrimonial society antedates civil society ;
since civil society grew from the union of families
into one community, and the whole human race
traces its origin from one family. Therefore, nature
and the rights of matrimonial society were already
existing before civil society existed. Therefore, so
far as the nature of matrimonial society and its prin
cipal rights are concerned, the civil authority can
establish nothing. Moreover, the family fully con
stituted and endowed into all its rights, enters civil
society ; therefore, civil society is to protect the
rights of the family, not to create or change them. . .
The right of contracting marriage is derived by
man from nature, independently of the civil authority.
Therefore, the right cannot be taken away by the
civil authority. But it is taken away if impediments
to marriage are created by the civil authorities ;
therefore, the latter cannot create impediments to
marriage . . . matrimony is a Sacrament in the
New Testament. The Church in the Sacrament can
change nothing which pertains to the subject of the
Sacrament, since the Sacraments were instituted by
our Lord Jesus Christ ; but it has the power of de
creeing those things Avhich are necessary to rightly
receiving and administrating the Sacrament. If,
therefore, the Church decrees that certain persons in
certain cases are not proper to partake of the Sacra
ment, then their marriage is not valid ; for according
to the New Testament there is no marriage where
there is no Sacrament. Marriages, therefore, which
are not recognized by the Church are null and void
before God, although the civil law declares them

117
valid. On the contrary, if a marriage is recognized
by the Church, although the civil laAV declares it in
valid, it Is and remains vahd in spite of the civil
law." The independence of the Family of the State is
declared with equal courage by Father Nicolaus
Russo, S. J., in his " De Philosophia Morali Preelec-
tiones," printed AvIth the approbation of the Vicar-
General of this diocese in 1890 (p. 216) : " If, there
fore, it is unlawful to bring civil authority into any
marriage — in regard to the Christian marriage, this
must be, called not only illegal but impious." On
page 236, he also declares that one cannot doubt
that persons, not separate, but as families entered
society, and that it is absurd to consider the State as
a source of all rights (p. 215); here the author is of
course again foUoAving Aristotle (Politics, I., 2).
In the relation of parent and child, the Church
draws a conclusion of no less practical importance
than that above advanced on the marriage relation,
from the alleged independence of the Family of the
State; ?'. e., the right of the parent to direct the edu
cation of his children, free from the control of the
State. T'nis claim rests ultimately on the theory of
St. Thomas Aquinas, announced in Summa IL, II. q.
10, a. 12 (above cited), that the law of the Old Testa
ment still governs the family life ; thus he says in
Summa L, IL, q. 105, a. 4 : " Concerning sons, it (the
Old Testament) instituted that fathers should teach
them, by instructing them in the faith ; whence it
is said in Exodus 12 : ' When your sons shall say to
you, what is this service ? You shall say to them :

Ii8
it is the sacrifice of the passover of the Lord. And
also that they should instruct them in morals.'
Father Jouin, of St. Johns College, m his Elementa
Philosophiae Moralis argues in the same spirit (p.
314) : " The right of educating the youth belongs to
the parent, who, since they give being to it must
also perfect it. But the duty of educating the youth
and the rights of parent are independent ot civil
society (citing the passage above quoted from the
same book). Therefore parents cannot be deprived
of this right by the civil authority."
Father Russo, in his De Philosophiae Morali Prae-
lectiones (above cited), following the same theory of
the independence of the Family, on page 221 sums
up as follows : " The duty and consequently the
right of educating the youth (i) rests on the parent.
Therefore (2) the State cannot claim this right ; and
much less (3) compel parents to send their children
to so-called public schools."
Of course this right of the parent is claimed only
for the purpose of asserting that the parent can
delegate it to the Church and exclude the State from
even such control as Is required to see that the child
is brought up with the knowledge which is neces
sary to make it a useful and patriotic citizen , see
the article by Dr. Lyman Abbott in the Century
Magazine of April, 1895. Where the Church is not
yet all powerful, it is true that to the State is con
ceded some supervision, but this decreases as the
power of the Church increases, until to the State is
left only the duty of collecting the taxes to pay the
clerical instructors.

119
Into the merits of Roman Catholic education it is
unnecessary here to enter ; according to the Encyclo
paedia Brittanica, in Spain there are 82 schools to
every 1,000 inhabitants, and yet 72 per cent, of the
population can neither read or write. According to
the same authority, in Italy, in 1861, before the
invasion of the Piedmontese Robber, nearly 80 per
cent, were " analphabetes." Any one who has trav
eled In Roman Catholic countries needs no statistics
to tell him of the alarming Illiteracy there prevailing.
When the author was at Bolsano, near Rome, the
richest man in the place, the innkeeper, told him that
his daughter had completed her education at a
neighboring convent, but no attempt was made to
teach her to read or write.
The most popular Lenten preacher at Rome in
the chief Jesuit Church very recently declared that
women ought not to be taught to read or write, be
cause they would only use this knowledge to write
letters to their lovers after they were married.
How easily any supervision, even when the right
to prescribe the text books to be used is expressly
reserved to the State, can be rendered nugatory, is
frankly stated by Cardinal Satolli in the " North
American Review" for December, 1894, in an article
entitled " The Catholic School System in Rome ":
" It (the Directive Council appointed by the Pope
to supervise Roman Catholic education In Rome)
therefore selects the text books with the greatest
circumspection, and when it has been compelled by
law to adopt any one which is erroneous or lack
ing in principle, it has strictly enjoined the pro-

I20
fessors to make the necessary corrections and obser
vations when explaining the same. For example, in
the official text-books of national history no reference
is made to the gigantic and magnanimous struggle
sustained by Christian society in honor and defence
of religion and of the Roman Pontiff as well as in
defence of the Fatherland and of Italian culture. . . .
Catholic Teaching modifies and corrects errors and
opinion in such a way that the historic truth may
stand out with the utmost clearness. For the Church
fears only error."
Verily, the end justifies the means !
How far one may go in distorting history and
SiUppressing facts, to gain control of schools, is
shown by a Review of the Manitoba School Ques
tion, published by the Winnipeg Tribune, entitled
"Is Manitoba Right?"
That so important a claim as that to the whole
secular education should be based today ultimately
upon the command given by God to the Children
of Israel when about to journey through the Desert,
on one point of ceremonical law, seems a little extra-
ordinarj'- ; but no less extraordinary is this whole
claim for the independence of the Family from the
State. Certainly no one can glance at our state or
federal Constitutions without perceiving that our gov
ernments were in no v/ay formed by families, and that
the Family, as such, possesses no rights or privileges.
Our legislature is supposed to be all powerful, ex
cept so far as expressly limited by our state or
national constitutions. As Justice Ward, of the Su
preme Court of this State, expressly decided in the

121
case of St. Adelbert's Church (as cited In the Catholic
Union and Times of July i8th, 1895): "Independent
of statutory requirements, the canon law of the
Roman Church is Avithout force or authority in this
country." If the Family is of such great importance to the
State, as it undoubtedly is, can the State be entirely
indifferent to It ?
It is moreover hard to understand how a consistent
Roman Catholic can reconcile his duty as laid down
by the above cited papal decrees with the allegiance
which he swears to the law of the State. Is he to
recognize a marriage which has been lawfully
entered into according to the laws of the State, but
not according to the rules of the Church ?
Nor is it to be presumed that his fellow citizens
of other beliefs will look kindly upon teachings
which echo the words of Pius IX., pronounced before
the Apostolic Chancery (Discorsi del sommo Pontifici
Pius IX., p. 193): "But, thanks to God, the mar
riage celebrated only by the civil authorities, with
out the intervention of the Church, is held for what
it truly is, a mere concubinage (uno pretto con-
cubinato)." If we turn to the third family relation, that of
master and servant, we find that St. Thomas expressly
recognizes the propriety of slavery as it existed
under the Old Testament dispensation ; he par
ticularly discusses. In the article above cited (Summa
I., IL, q. 105, a. 4), whether any penalty should be
inflicted upon a master who punishes his man or
maid servant so severely that he or she dies within

122
a few days after receiving the chastisement and
comes to a negative conclusion.
The Angelic Doctor recognizes slavery as a natural
institution in many other places, such as Summa, II. ,
IL, q. 57, a. 3, where he cites Aristotle's Politics as
authority for the proposition that it is useful for a
man to be the slave of one Avho is wiser. Aristotle's
opinion was expressed In full as follows (I. Politics,
c. S) : " It is clear then, that some men are by nature
free, and others sla\'es, and that for these latter
slavery is both expedient and right." We need
not, therefore, be surprised that Father Jouin, of St.
John's College, in his Elementa Philosophiae Moralis,
makes an elaborate defense of slavery (pp. 195 to
203). Thus he says in paragraph 25 : " Therefore
the duty of giving all of one's exterior work to
another is not against natural law. . . . There
fore slavery, properly so called, is not against natural
law." It is curious to consider whether, il one institu
tion of natural law is as holy and as little to be
interfered with by the State as another, all the
anethemas which have been leveled against those
who dared to Interfere with the relation of parent
and child and husband and wife, as sanctioned by
natural law, do not apply with equal force to those
who have abolished the institution of master and
slave which has at least an equal sanction of levitioal
and natural law.
The connection between "Romanism" and "Re
bellion " would therefore not seem so incredible.
If on the other hand slavery, though justified hy

123
natural law, could be destroyed, may not the State
interfere Avith other institutions which are alleged to
have the same high sanction, such as the Family and
the Guild, when they have become oppressive and
unsuited to the times ?
How little the Church itself regards the Family,
when it is to the Church's interest so to do, appears
for example, in the Regulations concerning the
Third Order of St. Francis, laid down by Leo XIII.
(Leonis Papae XIII. Allocutiones, vol. I., p. 13),
which provide that wives may be admitted to that
order, even against the will of the husbands, if their
confessors consent. How can the Christian ideal,
that " the husband is the head of the wife, even as
Christ is the head of the Church " (Ephesians, v. 23),
be carried into effect if every moral, i. e., intentional
or rational act of the wife is subject to the control
of another ? Do the hybrid populations of Central
and South America, where the Church has had full
control of the marriage relation, or the decadent
royal families of the Bourbons, Wittelsbachs or
Hapsburgs speak so well for its practical manage
ment of this relation ?
In short, should not the priesthood, especially a
celibate priesthood, keep its hands off the Family,
as well as off the State, and even in matters of educa
tion should it not remember that its first duty is to
educate the spirit or conscience, and only when that
is accomplished, should it devote its surplus energy
to the education of the intellect ?
May it not be that this ill success is in part due to
the philosophy of Aquinas and Aristotle which, as set

124
forth in the next chapter, holds that individuals are
composed merely of body and intellect ? This theory
denies to women the possession of those intuitive or
spiritual faculties, in which she surpasses man and
by which she is intended to develop and expand also
in him the same organs, from their natural rudimen
tary condition to a growth and strength comparable
to her own. To deny to women the possession of
these faculties is to rob her of her chief glory and
individuality, and to justify the mercenary contracts
of marriage, so prevalent in southern Europe, where
the property of the parties is considered of so much
more importance than their personal qualifications
and inclinations. It is submitted that the union of
this spiritual part of man and woman constitutes the
main object of matrimony, and that, Ayhen this union
of spirits IS blessed and invigorated by God's Holy
Spirit, it becomes a new entity as really one,
as the asexual monad with which, according to
the Darwinian theory, animal life began ; so that
the cycle of development which commences with
physical unity and continues through generations
of beings, sexually differentiated, is concluded in the
Christian era, by a spiritual union, guided and blessed
by the Holy Ghost and intended for eternity.
The light condemnation of sexual sins, so often
urged against the Jesuits and other Thomists, may
also be charged to the philosophic disregard of this
spiritual part of men _,and women, with which the
Holy Ghost may directly communicate. Aquinas
was confined In his argument for sexual purity to the
claim that the offspring of illicit unions would not

125
be properly cared for, and he expressly declares that
illicit intercourse is a carnal and not a spiritual sin,
and not a sin directly against God(Summa,II., IL, q.
154, a. 3), thereby putting violations of the law of
sexual purity— that law which constitutes the great
cornerstone of happy martrimony — among the
lightest offences and in no way as a sin particularly
against the Holy Spirit. And yet Chapter VI. of
St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, of
which Aquinas considered several verses in the
article last above cited, closes with the emphatic
lines, as given in the Douay version : " Or know you
not, that your members are the temple of the Holy
Ghost, who is in you, whom you have from God and
you are not your own ? For you are bought with a
great price. Glorify and bear God in your body."

CHAPTER IV.
THE church and THE INDIVIDUAL.
In order to understand the relation of the Church
to the Individual, we must first consider the Roman
Catholic definition of the latter.
In the 'Encyclical of Leo XIIL, in honor of St.
Thomas Aquinas, he praises particularly the latter's
treatment " of man and the senses, of human acts
and their principles." Turning then to the works
of the Patron Saint of all Roman Catholic Schools
and Colleges, we find, as already set forth in
the first chapter, that the soul is the form of a
man (Summa I., q. 76, a. 4), i. e., that by which a
human being is, moves and exists. This human
form reasons and is, therefore, distinguished as
forma rationalis from the form of plants, which is
called forma vegetativa, and from the form of animals,
which is called forma sensitiva. In fact, the Council
of Vienne, as set forth in the first chapter, has raised
this scholastic definition to a matter of faith, by con
demning as a heretic any one who should deny that
" the rational or intellectual soul is not the form of
a human body."
This definition, as is well known, was only follow
ing Aristotle's teaching, e. g., in his PoHtics I., 5 ;
Boethius had already repeated it, by calling a person
" an individual substance of a rational nature ; "
it reappears in the CEcumenical Council of the

127
Lateran V. (15 12), " anima rationalis est pars et forma
substantialis hominis, radix omnium proprietatum,
ominum operationum, ex qua et corpore constitutum
substantia humana."
This definition, it will be found, has been adhered
to with customary fidelity by the writers on psychol
ogy of the now ruling Jesuit School in the Roman
Catholic Church. Thus Dr. Plassman, the Theo
logical Lecturer in Rome, In his Psychology (p. 207),
says : " For the rational soul is in fact the sub
stantial form of man and the human body. . . .
The substantial form is the radical principle of being
and consequently of action." Father Maher, S. J., in
the Psychology of the Stonyhurst series of Catholic
Manuals of Philosophy (p. 521), declares: "A person
may accordingly be defined In scholastic language
as a supposltum of a rational nature or an individual
substance of a rational nature." This theory Is
defended with his customary vigor by Liberatore in
his work on Universals (translated by Dering), page
108, where the statement of the same doctrine by
Pius IX. is set forth.
Into the merits of this definition It is not neces
sary here to enter ; the citations are given merely
to show that the reasoning soul is the form of man
and consequently that there can be according to
their teachings, nothing in man except the body and
the reasoning soul. The slightest acquaintance with
scholastic philosophy avIU teach one that there can
only be one form in a being and St. Thomas Aquinas
devotes a chapter to the question (Summa I., q. "6,
a. 4): "Whether in man there can be another form

128
beside the reasoning soul." He answers it of course
in the negative, declaring it to be impossible, unless
we erroneously assume as the Platonists did, that
the soul merely moved the body.
Leo XIII. adopts the same theory of the all
powerful reasoning soul In man, to which the
will is only the minister, In his Encyclical on St.
Thomas Aquinas (above cited) and says : " For since
it is innate in the nature of man to follow^ reason
as his guide, if his intellect is In anything, his will
yields thereto." And again in the Encyclical of
January lo, 1890, he says : " The mind is the be
ginning of action."
The next point which should be observed is that
according to the Peripatetic School and the School
men, this rational soul of man has no innate ideas,
but receives all that It knows through the senses,
St. Thomas Aquinas accepts absolutely the famous
saying of Aristotle : " Nihil In Intellectu nisi in sen-
slbus," i. e., " Nothing is in the mind except through
the senses." Thus Aquinas says in his Contra Gen
tiles (Lib. IV., c. 41) : " Our intellect understands
nothing except through appearances "(phantasmata),
and again in Lib. I., c. 3 : " Our intellect takes knowL
edge from sense," and again in Summa I., IL, q. 51,
a. I : "And therefore Aristotle shows that the knowl
edge of principles comes to us through the senses."
In Summa, L, q. 79, a. 2, he says that the intellect
is at first a " tabula rasa."
As Harper says in his Metaphysics of the
School (vol. I., p. 450) ; " In the origin of human
thought, the senses stand midway between the In
tellect and Being ; so that the saying is trv^e—Thtre

129
is nothing in the intellect, that has not first passed
through the senses."
It is true that Aquinas also recognizes the exis
tence in man of an "abstractive virtue" by which
the intellect can sequester the object recognized by
the senses from the material conditions which bound
it and consider it in its " quiddity " ; but all this has
nothing to do with innate ideas of right or wrong.
As St. Thomas briefly expresses It : " Sensus est de
particulari, intellectus de universall " (Plassmann's
First Volume of Philosophy, p. 334) ; see also Lib
eratore on Universals (translated by Dering), page
167 and Soirees de Saint Petersbourg by De Maistre,
page 140.
Leo XIII. in his Encyclical on St. Thomas em
phatically commends this theory in its extreme form,
saying : " As soon as the Scholastics, adopting the
system of the earlier Fathers, found in their studies
on anthropology that it is only through the medium of
sensible things that the human intelligence is led to the
knowledge of things without body and -matter, this at
once was understood that nothing was more useful
to the philosopher than a careful investigation of
the secrets of nature." And again he says in his
Encyclical on Church Unity (The Tablet of July 4,
1896) : " But It is obvious that nothing can be com
municated amongst men save by means of external '
things which the senses can perceive. Jesus Christ
commanded His Apostles and their successors to
the end of time to teach and rule the nations. He
ordered the nations to accept their teaching and
obey their authority. But this correlation of rights

I30
and duties in the Christian commonwealth not only
could not have been made permanent but could not
even have been initiated except through the senses,
which are of all things the messengers and inter
preters." Following this principle, Aristotle taught that man
can know nothing except through that which he
already knows. Dr. Plassmann, in the introductory
volume of his Philosophy (p. 256),, as a faithful fol
lower of the Peripatetic School, even claims that all
the grand and beautiful thoughts of the heathen were
traditions derived through the Jews from Revelation,
For a full statement of all the evil consequences
of this Peripatetic sensualism, reference is made to
Cousin's Elements of Psychology, especially pp,
386-387. We see therefore that there is in Roman Catholic
philosophy no room in man for anything except body
and reason, and that therefore there is in him no
spirit or conscience, distinct from reason,
St. Thomas considered the question whether syn-
deresis or conscience are powers and answers in the
negative (Summa I., q. 79, a. 12 and a. 13), declaring
conscience to be an act of reason and of nothing
higher than reason, applied to moral questions, follow
ing Aristotle's Ethics, Book VI., Chapter 6. And
again in Summa, I., IL, q. 19, a. 5, he says : " Since
conscience is a dictate of reason, for it is an applica
tion of knowledge to action, it is the same to ask
whether a will, opposed to a mistaken reason is evil,
as to ask whether an erring conscience is binding."
He is followed of course in turn by such writers <Sf

131
the Stonyhurst School as Father Rickaby in his
Moral Philosophy (pp. 135-137). The latter writes:
" What then is conscience ? It is not a faculty, not
a habit ; it is an act, it is a practical judgment of the
understanding. . . . There is a hot controversy
as to how these primary moral judgments arise in
the mind. The coals of dispute are kindled by the
assumption, that these moral judgments must needs
have a totally other origin and birth in the mind
than speculative first principles, as, that the whole is
greater than the part, that two and two are four,
that things which are equal to the same thing are
equal to one another. The assumption is specious
but unfounded."
To the same effect writes Father Maher in his
Psychology (p. 322) : " The assumption of an addi
tional new faculty (conscience) is gratuitous. The
intellect or reason which perceives the self-evident
necessary truth that ' Equals added to equals give
equals,' is the same power which cognizes the
validity of the self-evident axiom that ' We should
do as we believe we ought to be done by.' "
From this theory that conscience is a sub-depart
ment of reason arises the whole learning of " prob-
abilism," as set out for example in Gury's Cases
of Conscience, so strange to one acquainted only
with the Christianity of the New Testament.
It follows, therefore, that the Roman Catholics are
necessarily dichotomists or believers in the twofold
division of man's personality into body and soul (or
intellect) as opposed to the school of trichotomists
who maintain with St. Paul that man has a tripartite

132
nature, viz., body, soul and spirit, as set forth, for ex
ample, in Heard's Tripartite Nature of Man (p. 83) :
" To sum up our remarks, then, on the contrast
between psyche and pneuma in the five passages of
New Testament (I. Thes. v. 23 ; Heb., iv 12; I. Cor.
ii. II ; James iii. 15 ; Jude 19) which we have con
sidered at length, we gather the following distinction
from Scripture. The psyche is the life of man in its
widest and most inclusive sense, embracing not only
the animal, but also the Intellectual and moral facul
ties in so far as their exercise has not been depraved
by the fall. In this sense Aristotle's generalization
of the psyche is not wide of the Scriptural meaning.
The soul, he says, is that by which we live, feel, or
perceive, will, move and understand. . . . Were
man made up of body and soul only, then the
psychology of Scripture would be identical with
that of Aristotle and a controversy of long standing
might be set at rest at once and forever. But it is
exactly where Aristotle leaves off that Scripture
begins to treat of human nature, and tells us of a
faculty — let us call it God-consciousness — which is
dead or dormant in a great degree since the fall, and
which it is the work and office of the Holy Ghost first
to quicken and then to direct, sanctify, and govern.
This faculty to which Scripture gives the name of
Ruach or Pneuma, is altogether ignored by Aristotle,
and confounded by Plato with the intellectual Nous.
. . . He (Aristotle) was profoundly and we be
lieve sincerely unconscious of the divine faculty in
man, for the reason given by the apostle that the
psychical man perceives not the things of the Spirit

133
of God. He knew not of the Spirit's work, because
he was ' dead,' as all men by nature are to divine
things." Among the early Christian Fathers Justin Martyr,
Clement of Alexandria, Gregory Nyssen and Basil
maintained the threefold nature of man, i. e. body,
soul and spirit. Thus Irenaeus says in his Fifth
Book against Heresies, chap, six : " For that flesh
which has been molded is not a perfect man in
itself, but the body of a man ; neither Is the soul
itself, considered a part by itself, the man, but
it is the soul of a man and part of a man. Neither
is the spirit a man, for it is called the spirit
and not a man ; but the commingling and union
of all these constitutes the perfect man. And
for this cause does the Apostle, explaining himself,
make it clear that the saved man is a complete man
as well as a spiritual ; saying thus in the first Epistle
of Thessalonians, ' Now the God of peace sanctify
you perfect ; and may your spirit, soul and body be
preserved whole without complaint to the coming of
the Lord Jesus Christ.' "
Tatian, in his Address to the Greeks, Chap. XII,
(a. D. 1 10-172) declares "We recognize two varieties
of spirit one of which is called the soul {ij^vxv) but
the other is greater than the soul, an image and like
ness of God.''
Among modern writers the matter is succinctly
stated in Blunt's Theological Dictionary :
" But the ' soul ' of St.Paul's system is not the mere
animal principle of Aristotle's system. It is, rather,
an union of the vov? and the '/'f^'?, of the reasoning

134
faculty and the animating life ; the TtvBVjxa being a
divine principle belonging to a new creation of su
pernatural being, Avhich sprung from the incarnation
of Diety (Mediation) and was the gift bestowed in
the new birth of human nature (Spirit). This trichot
omy is the only psychological system which is rec
oncilable with the general statements of holy Scrip
ture respecting the soul."
The practical difference which results from the
adoption of one or the other of these theories is
immense. According to the latter, the Christian
needs no written code, " long as the moral law."
Love is the moral law to guide him in every circum
stance of life. Christ's promise that the Comforter
would come after His departure is held good for all
time. If men will but follow Christ's precepts and
thus avail themselves of the means of grace which
He provides, " The Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver
of Life " will still speak directly to men's individual
consciences, obliterating selfishness, the root of all
evil, and substituting self sacrifice, love of God and
the brethren; how much higher this is than knowledge
as knowledge is above sensual pleasures, is beauti
fully set out in the closing chapters of " God in His
World." This was the Spirit which animated the
Christians of the days described in the Acts of the
Apostles, Epistles and the Ante-Nicene Fathers,
entering into man's spirit and making it cry " Abba,
Father," as described so fully in the eighth chapter of
the Epistle to the Romans, and endowing all men with
an identical spirit of right and wrong, more or less
developed, as they avail themselves of the means of
grace, prescribed by Christ himselL

135
According to the former theory, as there was
nothing in man except body and intellect, there was
no conscience, no almftst superhuman faculty, to
which the Holy Ghost could speak. It follows,
therefore, that the Holy Spirit was promised only
to the Apostles and to the successors of one of them
as bishops of Rome, to whom was thus committed
the " magisterlum " or power to guide the intellects
of all people, as claimed in the Encyclical on Chris
tian Unity.
The evidence for the first part of this proposition
is" found in the words of our Lord as addressed to
his Apostles, before His crucifixion, in which He
promised to them the coming of the Holy Ghost.
The evidence in favor of the second part of the prop
osition is found in the logical argument that God
must have intended unity in the Church as a perfect
society in order to preserve the unity of the faith,
and that such unity is impossible without an abso
lute, infallible head. As Leo XIII. says in the En
cyclical last above cited : " Indeed, no true and per
fect society can be conceived which is not governed
by some supreme authority. Christ, therefore, must
have given to His Church a supreme authority to
which all Christians must render obedience. For
this reason, as the unity of the faith is of necessity
required for the unity of the Church, unity of gov
ernment is necessary, jure divino. But since He
willed that His Kingdom should be visible. He was
obliged, when He ascended into Heaven, to desig
nate a Vice- Regent on earth."
This argument is almost a literal translation of the

136
following passage from St. Thomas Aquinas in his
Contra Gentiles (Lib. IV., c. 76), which chapter Leo
XIII. also cites immediately afterwards :
" To the unity of the Church it is requisite that all
the faithful should agree as to- the faith. But con
cerning those things which are of faith, it will hap
pen that questions will be raised ; but by differences
of opinion the Church is divided, unless it is pre
served in unity by the opinion of one. Therefore it
is necessary for preserving the unity of the Church
that there should be one to preside over the Church.
But it is manifest that Christ does not fail to provide
necessaries for his Church. ... It is, therefore,
not to be doubted that one presides over the whole
Church by the ordination of Christ."
It Is submitted that a study of the Summa shows
that St. Thomas Aquinas believed the philosophical
system of Aristotle to be correct, that men consisted
only of body and the intellectual soul, and adapted
the teachings of Christianity to it, merely substitut
ing for public opinion, or for the opinion of the most
eminent men, which Avas Aristotle's arbiter of right
and wrong, the opinion of the most eminent of the
Apostles, St. Peter, and his successors in office,
which Avas to enlighten and guide all intellects.
It is true that in the writings of St. Thomas are
to be found passages which refer to the action of
angels and of the Holy Ghost on the minds of men ;
but these remnants of the older and purer theology
are absolutely incompatible Avith the Aristotelian
theory of body and soul. This appeared in the con
test which occurred within the Roman Catholic

137
Church in the last centurj- over Jansenism, and
which is so eloquently described in the Provincial
Letters of Pascal. The contest ended in the utter
discomfiture of the Anti-aristotelians, and the accept
ance of the Jesuit theory that all men are born with
sufficient grace, and hence logically need no help
from the Holy Ghost.
By the declaration of the papal infallibility in all
questions of morals, this system has been completed ;
for, as shown aboA^e in the first chapter, the word
" morals " includes all human Intentional acts. As
St. Thomas says in Summa, I., IL, q. i, a. 3 : " Moral
acts and human acts are the same." What human
acts of the slightest importance can there be for
which an infallible rule cannot be obtained from
Rome ? What need is there, then, of a Holy Ghost ?
In the Encyclical concerning the principal duties
of Christian citizens, dated January 10, 1890 (Leonis
Papae XIII. Allocutiones, Vol. IV., p. 15), His HoU
ness demands " wills perfectly subject and obedient
. . . to the Roman Pontiff as to God."
In a letter to Cardinal Nina, Pontifical Secretary
of State, dated August 27, 1878 (Leonis Papae Allo
cutiones, Vol. I., p. 39), he claims to be "the Master
of the faith and the Ruler of the consciences " of all
Catholics. Justin McCarthy in his Leo XIII. (p. 89)
calls him " the ruler over consciences."
The logical consequence of this Roraaa Catholic
teaching is the rule of the Jesuits, in their Constitu
tions (VI., i) : " Let every one believe firmly that
those who live under obedience should let them
selves be guided and governed by their superiors

138
exactly as though they were corpses which let them
selves be turned in every direction and treated in
any manner ; or like the staff in the hands of an aged
man, which serves him who holds it in his hand for
all purposes and in all purposes."
Among the general public this doctrine has been
inculcated under the guise of " probabalism " which
allows a man to act in accordance with the sayings
or writings of some one in authority, disregarding
the promptings of his conscience ; for the general
public, one author of "exceptional authority" will
do — even if the act be with fear of one's conscience
that the opposite course is correct; see Gury's
Compendium of Moral Theology, I., p. 36, cap. 4 De
Consc. Prob.
The practical elimination of the Third Person of
the Blessed Trinity from popular modern Roman
Catholic Theology, which necessarily follows this
denial of conscience, is therefore not to be wondered
at. In the City of Rome, with its hundreds of
Churches, not one is dedicated to the Holy Ghost.
As Mgr. Talbot, private chamberlain of Pius IX.,
writes to Cardinal Manning in " Life of Cardinal
Manning " (Vol. 1 1., p. 155, note) :
" What a beautiful sermon Father Faber preached
on the Feast of Pentecost ! 1 read it with great inter
est, and I have had it translated into Italian, as I think
it quite as applicable to the Romans and Italians
as it is to the English. Really, one of the great
characteristics of the age is to ignore the existence
of the Holy Ghost in the Church."
To one acquainted with Cardinal Manning's

V 139
strong devotion to the Holy Ghost, his constant
contest with the Jesuit faction of the Roman Catholic
Church, so often mentioned in his " Life," was a
foregone conclusion. In all the voluminous writings
of Leo XIIL, the author does not recollect seeing
more than one or two references to the Holy Ghost,
except in formal invocations of the Blessed Trinity,
or Avhere he is shown as speaking to the Apostles or
their successors ; certainly there is no recognition of
the Holy Spirit as a teacher of all Christians, speak
ing directly to the souls of men.
In the Encyclical De vita sancta instituenda
(Leonis Papae XIII. Allocutiones, Vol. III., p. 190),
there is no mention of the Third Person of the
Blessed Trinity as influencing man's spirit.
The burning question during the early Reformation
was whether laymen should be allowed to sit in the
Council, which all agreed should be called, for the
reformation of morals ; Pope Paul IV., in his com
munication to Charles V., asserted that the guidance
of the Holy Spirit had been promised only to the
clergy (Froude's Council of Trent, p. 125).
Does this Roman Catholic condition not suggest
the state of mind of the men at Ephesus, referred to
by St. Paul in the nineteenth chapter of Acts, who
said : " We have not so much as heard whether
there be any Holy Ghost." Might It not even be
that this is the " sin against the Holy Ghost "?
This is still the real battleground between Protest
ants and Roman Catholics.
The answer to this Roman Catholic th'oOry
is of course that according to the New Testa-

140
ment, especially the Acts and Epistles, there is over
whelming evidence of the mission of the Holy Ghost
to the individual consciences of all Christians, with
ample power to guide them to all truth, so far as
they avail themselves of the means of grace.
This theory disregards utterly such texts as the
two following : i Cor., 6, 19. " What ? know ye not
that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost
whicli is in you, which ye have of God and ye are
not your own ? "
I Cor., 3, 16.
" Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and
that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? "
It substitutes for the divine guidance of the Spirit,
a blind obedience to others and an utter failure to
develop our inborn tendencies to act honestly,
benevolently, etc., of our own accord, even in cases
where no rule has been laid down for us by
authority ; it teaches us that such a development
is impossible, because there is no such thing in us
as a spirit or conscience, in the true sense of the
word, to develop.
It is submitted moreover that this system of
dichotomy crushes the most important part of a
man's personality, that it dries up and destroys
that very part of his nature to develop which
Christ came to earth, that it strikes at the very root
of all independent healthy development of character.
As Fairbairn says in his " Morality " :
" Religious education must educe and bring into
conscious operation the perception of truth and the
practice of truth. The soul must know the truth by
its ow» operations and it must learn to abhor falser

141
hood and hypocrisy. It does not educe and bring
into operation the moral powers by merely putting
into the mind a knowledge of what truth is. Chris
tian education brings into operation the conscience.
. . . . This is where Christian education may
exercise its functions in bringing into operation the
higher parts of our nature, and In making them the
rulers and guides of human action. It is thus that
benevolence, justice, truth, purity and order become
the characteristic virtues of life." See also " Lux
Mundi " (page 396) and Richmond's " Christian
Economics " (page 7).
Nor does this destruction of conscience as an inde,
pendent poAver within us affect only our ideas of right
and wrong ; it tears up the roots from which spring
all our most beautiful ideals which Ave long to express
in art ; it deprives us of that discontent and enter
prise, the mother of Invention, which is ever driv
ing the individual to improve his condition, to do his
duty In that state of life in which it has pleased God
to call him, better and more expeditiously, and thus
creates one main difference between progressive na
tions and those which remain waiting patiently until
some one from above shall teach them Avhat to do.
The importance of the cultivation of this spiritual
faculty, even from a mere worldly point of view,
is Avell shown in Hudson's " Laws of Psychic
Phenomena," where the power of this part of man
over the physical Avorld is fully dr: rribed.
The neighboring races of French Canadians and
NcAV England Protestants are good examples of the
practical effects of these doctrines; committees of

142
priests haAre recently been appointed to teach the
" Habitans " of Canada some of the modern improve
ments in agriculture.
A characteristic story was related by the author's
father, who was educated at the Jesuit College in
Montreal : one day in replying to a question put by
the priest, he gave the answer as it appeared " in
the book, and then continued, " therefore so-and-so
is so-and-so " ; the priest immediately interrupted
him with the words : " See that boy who sayS
'therefore'! What has he to do with 'therefore'?
Let him answer the question as it stands in the book
and nothing more ! "
May not a Roman Catholic country be called a
land where there is for laymen no " therefore " ?
As William Arthur says in his " Popes, Kings
and People " (p. 458) :
" But when men have once really believed in a God
who leaves the rule over His redeemed offspring to
a vicar, and have believed in man as a creature
whose conscience another man is to keep, it is hard
to find in them foothold for Christian convictions.
They are kneaded to the hand of the priest."
How subservient to papal authority individuals
become even in the United States, and even among a
class generally so independent as newspaper editors,
may be shown by the following extract which
appeared in the daily press, from an address to the
Pope recently forwarded through Cardinal Satolli :
"To His Holiness Pope Leo XIIL :
Most Holy Father— Prostrate at the feet of Your
Holiness we, the editors of the Catholic Press of 'the

143
United States of America, taking the occasion of the
presence of your Apostolic Delegate whose resi
dence we regard as a special mark of your favor, beg
to present through him, the expression of our filial
devotion and steadfast loyalty to the person and pol
icy of the Sovereign Pontiff, the Vicar of Christ
upon earth, and at the same time profess ourselves
filled with a determination, not only to vindicate the
inalienable rights of the See of Peter, but to advance,
as far as in us lies, the welfare ot the Holy Church
in the United States."
But even these editors " prostrate at the feet of
Your Holiness " are apparently not subservient
enough to suit the Hierarchy of this country, for
two days after the editors had determined on this
address, the Archbishops published the following
proclamation : " And lest the present evil, a daily
growing source of scandal to Catholics and others,
should continue to flourish, we judge well to meet
it, not by cautions and advices merely, but also by
ecclesiastical penalties. Wherefore, for the future,
laymen or clerics who through themselves or
through others, associated or encouraged by them,
in public print assail by wanton words, ill-natured
utterance, railleries, those In authority, much more if
they presume to carp at or condemn a bishop's
method of administration, all those, principals, part
ners, and abettors, disturbers, contemners, and ene
mies of the ecclesiastical discipline, as they are, we
declare guilty of gravest scandal, and thereby, their
fault being proved, deserving of censure."
For practical effect in charitable work compare

144
the Teachings on the Mount or the spirit which
breathes in the Epistles of the New Testament or in
the Ante-Nicene Fathers with the cold and elaborate
dissertations of St. Thomas Aquinas, on Morality,
balancing one excess against the other, in very much
the same language which Aristotle had used three
hundred years before Christ's coming !
The Ethics as the work of the heathen Aristotle is
doubtless much to be admired ; he knew of no con
science, speaking with authority from the Holy
Ghost ; the best ethical rule he could imagine (Book
II. , Chapter 9) was the opinion of those among man
kind who are most honored by their fellows ; his
highest ideal (Book X., Chapter 8) was a selfish
ness consisting in the gratification not of the senses,
but of the intellect, attainable by a few at the expense
of the toil and degradation of the many. His
exaltation of the contemplative life, undisturbed
by emotions 'whether right or wrong, above the life
of action as being more continuous, more inde
pendent, more reposeful, more final, is evidently an
echo of the Nirvana doctrine of the Buddhists of
India, brought back by the army of Alexander. St.
Thomas says in Summa, I., II. , q. 3, a. 5 : " Happi
ness consists more in the work of the speculative
than of the practical intellect " ; and again he says
in Summa I., IL, q. 3, a. 8 : " The last and perfect
happiness cannot be, except in the contemplation of
the divine essence."
In comparing the active and contemplative life,
the difference is stated in question three, article five
(above cited), as follows : " In contemplative life, man

145
communicates with his superiors, that is with God
and the angels, with whom by happiness he is
assimilated ; but in those things which pertain to
active life, even other animals have something in
common with man, although imperfectly."
This conclusion, which is reached only after an
elaborate consideration of all the various human
capacities, is the same as that of Aristotle who, in
his Ethics (Book X., Chapter 8) says : " It follows
that the activity of God being preeminently blissful
will be speculative, and if so then the human activity
which is most nearly related to it, will be most cap
able of happiness. We conclude then that happiness
is co-extensive with speculation."
The teaching of Aristotle and St. Thomas, by
which the life of contemplation Is exalted above
the life of action, is certainly largely responsible for
the state of facts which Cardinal Manning laments
in his " Life " (Vol. IL, p. 781) : " And further all the
great works of charity in England have had their
beginning out of the (Roman Catholic) Church — for
instance, the abolition of the slave trade and slavery ;
and the persevering protest of the Anti-Slavery
Society. Not a Catholic name, so far as I know,
shared in this. France, Portugal and Brazil have
been secretly, or openly, slave trading, or, till now,
even, slave-holding. The whole temperance move
ment — it was a Quaker that made F. Mathew a
total abstainer. Catholic Ireland and the Catholics
of England, until now, have done little for temper
ance. The Anglican and dissenting ministers are far
more numerously total abstainers than our priests.

I4C>
The Act of Parliament to protect animals from
cruelty was carried by a non-Catholic Irishman ; the
Anti-Vivisection Act also. Both are derided, to my
knowledge, among Catholics. The acts to protect
children from cruelty were the work of Dissenters.
On these three societies there is hardly a Catholic
name ; on the last, mine was for long the only one.
So again in the uprising against the horrible de
pravity which destroys young girls — multitudes of
ours — I was literally denounced by Catholics ; not
one came forward. If it was ill done, why did no
body try to mend it ? I might go on. There are
endless works for the protection of shop assistants,
overworked railway and train men, women and
children ground down by sweaters, and driven by
starvation wages upon the streets. Not one of the
works in their behalf was started by us, hardly a
Catholic name is to be found on their reports. Surely
we are in the Sacristy. It is not that our Catholics
deliberately refuse, but partly they do not take the
pains to know, partly they are prejudiced. 'Can
any good thing come out of Nazareth ? ' Partly they
are suspicious ; ' who knows it is not a proselytising
affair ? ' And finally they live on easily, unconscious
that Lazarus lies at their gate full oif sores." The
predecessor of Cardinal Manning, Cardinal Wise
man, had made a complaint in the same spirit against
the Monastic Orders for their lack of participation
in strictly spiritual work among the poor (Life of
Cardinal Manning, Vol. IL, p. 4) : " Now look at
the position in which I am. Having believed, having
preached, having assured bishops and clergy, that

147
in no great city could the salvation of multitudes be
carried out by the limited parochial clergy, but that
religious communities alone can and will undertake
the huge work of converting and preserving the
corrupted masses. I have acted on this conviction.
I have introduced, or greatly encouraged, the estab
lishment of five religious congregations in my diocese ;
and I am just (for the great work) where I first
began ! Not one of them can (for it cannot be want
of Avill) undertake it. It comes within the purpose
of none of them to try. Souls are perishing around
them, but they are prevented by their Rules, given
by Saints, from helping to save them, at least in any
but a particular and definite way. . . . Almost every
religious community has no end of dispensations,
some from fasting and abstinence, some from choir,
all from the habit, some have female servants, etc ,
etc. If you ask them Avhy all these exceptions, you
are told the circumstances of the country require
them. But Avho thinks of recurring to the same
dispensing power of the Holy See for exemption
and liberation from provisions as much intended for
different countries as these, from restrictions on the
power of doing good in the way that the country
requires it ? "
The ethics of the Jesuits, so severely criticised, for
example in Pascal's " Provincial Letters," or Bun-
sen's " Zeichen der Zeit," find ample authority in
Aristotle, if not in the New Testament. Cardinal
Gibbons in a public letter, containing a threat that
Roman Catholics would leave one political party
(published in the Catholic Review of May 23, 1896),

148
declares : " Patience is a virtue, but it is not the
only virtue ; when pushed too far it may degenerate
into pusilanimity." It is submitted that His Emi
nence would find difficulty in citing a text of the
Sermon on the Mount in support of this principle,
that patience has its limits — but he Avould find
numerous authorities to that effect in the writings
of the Prince of Philosophers ; as for example in his
" Ethics," Book IV., Chapter 5 : " It is like a slave to
endure insults offered to one's self." As Father
Harper declares in his Metaphysics of the School
(Introduction, p. LXXII.): "His (St. Thomas
Aquinas') moral Theology — to repeat what I have
said before — is built upon the Ethics of the great
Stagyrite." Is it then to be wondered at that the Jesuits, be
lieving that there is in man no divine spiritual part
which, at the touch of the Holy Ghost, is ready to
flame heavenward, should build all their churches,
not in Gothic architecture in which the spirit is ever
striving upward to throw off the weight of inert
matter, but in the Grecian style, expressive of pagan
contentment with the earthly, sensual beauty of this
world, and that, in accordance with the same taste,
every piece of Christian Gothic architecture has been
eliminated from modern Rome ?
The answer of Christianity to Aristotelianism is
therefore also its answer to the Roman Catholic
Scholasticism. To any one familiar with the writings of the
Aquinate the following extract from "Aristote
lianism," by Rev. I. Gregory' Smith might be sup
posed to be written with reference to St, Tboraas ;

149
(P. 28). " There is not indeed the unhesitating and
unequivocal enunciation of self-knoAvledge, self-
acquittal, self-condemnation, which is the inheritance
of Chri,stian ethics.
" The Avord (conscience), Avhich the New Testament
has made familiar for this moral introspection, is not
in Aristotle. As Ave have seen, he makes the reason
the judge, presiding over this court ever in session
within the man, rather than the advocate laying his
case before the avIU, Avhose verdict is final. Above
all, apart from any deficiencies in the character of
the morality, Aviiich it inculcates, the great defect in
the Aristotelian conception of conscience is the want
of authority. Conscience with Aristotle Is not the
voice of God. So long as conscience is supported
by no sanction higher than man himself can give, so
long as conscience can appeal only to the general
consent of mankind, to the intelligent approval of
those who are esteemed above their fellows, to the
legislative enactments of the State, to considerations,
however obvious of expediency, conscience cannot
dictate, can only expostulate and remonstrate, often
like Cassandra, in vain. Without a sanction more
permanent, more comprehensive, more unquestion
ably obligatory than human enforcements, singly or
collectively, can supply, conscience cannot claim
obedience as a due, which must be rendered, come
Avhat may."
(P. 46). " Virtue is instrumental in regulating the
passions, which would otherwise frustrate the pursuit
of happiness by their infatuation. Be good that ye
may be happy is the key-note of his philosophy.

150
Self is the center of his system ; regard for self shapes
and colors it from first to last. The ' Ethics ' are
Aristotle's answer to the question, ' How is man to be
happy ? '
" It is a lofty selfishness. There is nothing sordid,
nothing gross about it. It marks, as by a highwater
line, how high ideal selfishness can be raised. But it
is genuine unalloyed selfishness, and this lies at the
very core of the philosophy. ... It is, in a word,
the unruffled serenity, inseparable from virtue.
Where could there be a more beautiful ideal of life,
if the culture of self, the beautification of self, were
all in all ? Even when, leaving sublunary things,
Aristotle soars upwards into the life contemplative,
self clings to him. He places contemplation above
action as more continuous, more independent, more
reposeful, more final. . . . Emotion disturbs it.
Therefore emotions rightly directed or not, must be
hushed into absolute stillness. This is a glorious
ideal, so far as it represents the supremacy of reason
over passion. But it is a selfish glory after all ; even
as the devout raptures of the monk in his cell are
selfish, so far as they are purchased by the soldier's
abandonment of his post in the turmoil and peril ot
life. The contemplative life is a refined selfishness,
the selfish enjoyment of a transcendental bliss incom
municable to mankind generally. The happiness
which Aristotle proposes as the end of being is not
something which all have a title to share in ; it is the
privilege of a few. He rejects the hedonism or utili
tarianism of the vulgar, only to substitute the same
thing in disguise."

151
Another doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, derived
as usual from Aristotle, which has helped greatly
to destroy individual initiative in Roman Catholic
countries is that all movement comes from above,
and, therefore, above everything moved must stand
one Avho moves it, God alone is not moved by any
one. (De Regimine Principum, Lib. III., cap. i to
3, and Contra Gentiles, Lib. L, cap. 13).
The connection of this doctrine with astrology
will be shown in the last chapter.
A further Aristotelian teaching which St. Thomas
adopted and which has had a most far-reaching con
sequence is that of the " Final Cause," from which
every action must be judged. Thus he says in
Summa I., IL, q. i, a. 3 : " According as the end is
praiseworthy or to be blamed, our works should be
praised or blamed," and id. q. 18, a. 4 : " Human ac
tions depend from their ends . . . from their ends
they take the quality of good or evil . . . whose
end is good, he is good, and whose end is bad, he is
bad." The notorious use which the Jesuits have
made of this principle by claiming that their organi
zation had the very highest end and justified any
action, need not here be commented on. To quote
again Mgr. Talbot (Life of Cardinal Manning, IL, p.
388) : " The motto of the Jesuits ought to be changed
from ad majorem Dei gloriam to ad majorem Socie-
tatis gloriam."
This doctrine, that the end justifies the means, for
which the Jesuits have been most strongly blamed
and which even they have feared to defend, is one
of the foundation stones of the philosophy of him

152
who, by the Paladin of the Jesuits, has been declared
the Patron of all Roman Catholic schools and col
leges. Moreover, this theory of dichotomy strikes at the
root of the importance of the Lord's Supper ; if we .
adopt the theory of transubstantiation, Ave must first
believe that our Lord, in common with all men,
possessed a substantial form which takes the place
of the substantial form of the bread in the Blessed
Sacrament ; but if all men possess a substantial form,
i. e., a reasoning soul, which, together with the
, physical body, constitutes the individual, it follows
that the body of our Lord must feed and nourish
either this reasoning soul (or intellect) or the body of
the communicant. Now it is generally agreed that
it does neither. What permanent benefit can then
be derived by the participant in a Mass ? If man, on
the other hand, has a spiritual, as well as an in
tellectual and physical part to his nature, the w^hole
divine mystery becomes as intelligible as we mortals
need expect ; Christ is spiritually taken and received
by the faithful in the Lord's Supper, to the rencAval
and regeneration of their spirits.
Another closely related evil of scholastic theology
may be mentioned here : the minimizing of the human
element in our Saviour. Aquinas on this point
followed the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite, with his Neo-Platonic teachings, with
Saints to satisfy man's craving for a human mediator.
This is fully set out in Canon Gore's " Dissertations
on Subjects connected with the Incarnation" (p.
206).

153
Leo XIII. closes his Encyclicals with appeals to
the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and other Saints for in
tercession Avith God, — but he rarely. If ever, appeals
Christ as the Great Intercessor, although we have
His express promise that whatsoever we should ask
in His name we shall receive. (Gospel of St. John
XVL, 24.)
Need Ave wonder that in a religion which recog
nizes in man only a rational soul, (as it does in plants
a vegetable soul and in animals a sensitive soul,) the
divine lineaments of the Saviour are fading aAvay, as
it were, in a dissolving view, to be replaced by the
sharp, cold features of " the Philosopher," and that
the Holy Spirit comes only — as Avas said at the Coun
cil of Trent — In the mail-bags from the Vatican, and
that even the Avorship of God the Father Is being re
duced to a faint Deism by the hero-worship of a
croAvd of dei minores ? What chance has the patient
Avhen the physician not only ignores the only possible
remedy but even denies the existence of the one
organ through which the remedy could be taken
into the system ?
Why should we be surprised at the slow progress
of Christianity under Roman Catholic guidance any
more than we should wonder at the slow progress of
an ocean steamship, whose captain was ignorant of, or
denied the existence of the great engine beneath his
deck, and insisted on propelling his ship only by the
methods and rules, in vogue three hundred years
before the Day of Pentecost ?
The Church herself, through the exaltation of
reason and the degradation of conscience, has raised

154
that mighty brood of Rationalists or Naturalists, such
as Grotius, Hobbes, Puffendorf and Rousseau, Avho
noAv threaten to devour her ; see the chapter on the
history of the Social Contract Theory, In the author's
"Trade Organizations in Politics."
Was it not natural that when the forged bands of
the False Decretals, Avhich bound St. Thomas, and,
as he thought, all human reason to the Chair of St.
Peter, were proven by history to be but shams and
illusions that man should fall back to the position
of Aristotle, with reason, deprived of all divine aid,
as his only guide ?
In vain would the Church hand over all such
Naturalists or Rationalists " to the secular arm " !
There is but one remedy : Let it assist In replacing
conscience on the throne of human nature, but pros
trate, with imploring arms, without any human inter
mediary, at the foot-stool of God, the Holy Ghost.
As Maurice says In " The Conscience," p. 83 :
"There is that in me Avhich asks for the Right, for
that which ought to have dominion OA'cr me ; there
is that in me AvhIch says emphaticall)^, ' This is not
that Right, this ought not to have dominion OA^er
me ! ' I may be long In learning Avhat the Right is ;
I may make a thousand confused efforts to grasp it ;
I may try to make it for myself; I may let others
make it for me. But ahvays there will be a Avitness
in me that what I have made or anyone has made,
is not what I ought to serve ; that is not the right,
not what I am seeking for, not what is seeking me."

CHAPTER V.
THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE.
Leo XIIL, in his Encyclical on St. Thomas
Aquinas, above cited, declares : " So, too, the phys
ical sciences, so much in vogue now, and which by
their ingeniously contrived inventions have every-
Avhere excited so much merited attention, will have
not only nothing to lose, but much to gain by the
restoration of the ancient philosophy. For in their
use and improvement, the mere consideration of
facts and study of nature is not enough ; but after
the facts are established, it is needful to go a step
higher, and sedulously employ every means in find
ing out the nature of corporeal things, investigating
the lawd and principles by Avhich they are governed,
and by tracing up their system, their unity and va
riety, and their mutual affinity in diversity. To all
these investigations scholastic philosophy, if handled
with skillfulness, will bring power and light and em
pire — v/e most earnestly beseech you, venerable
brethren, to restore and extend far and wide the
golden wisdom of St. Thomas  for the
improvement of all the sciences."
What is " the golden wisdom " of St. Thomas as to
the physical world ?
The importance of this question will at once be rec
ognized when we remember that one merit of schol
astic philosophy which no one can dispute, is the

156
logical unity and consistency with which it proceeds
from the most fundamental principles of metaphysics
to the most practical acts of every day life ; and
moreover that one of the most Important teachings of
the Roman Church, the doctrine of transubstantia
tion, is bound up with and depends upon its Avell
defined, closely argued theory of the physical world.
It is submitted that the so-called science of astrol
ogy formed an essential part of the theory of St.
Thomas, as to the constitution of the physical world,
and that with the elimination of that belief the main
spring of his entire cosmic theory "was removed and
the fragmentary remains of the system are unintelli
gible, and tend only to clog the progress of true
science. To prove this assertion it is necessary only to con
sider the following citations from the second largest
work of St. Thomas, known as the Contra Gentiles
or Summa Philosophica, in Avhich the Angelic Doctor
sets forth his philosophical system, as he did after
wards his theology in the Summa Theologiae.
In brief, following Aristotle, his theory is that
everything in the world, except to a certain extent
the soul of man, receives its original motive poAver
{i. e., its substantial form), by which it exists as such
or such a being, from the stars, and that each of the
stars is in turn guided by an intelligent spirit (not
an angel) ; so that the whole creation is a hierarchy
working together for the glory of God. It follows
that if this iiiotive power from the stars does not
exist, the whole system falls to pieces, and the terms
such as '" substance " and " accident " are as useless

157
and worthless as the wheels and levers of a perpetual
motion machine ; a chain is no stronger than its
weakest link !
St. Thomas could as little imagine the physical
v/orld Avithout this hierarchical system as he could
imagine the Church with an organization as simple
as that of the Society of Friends, or the State, as a
democracy with universal suffrage ; and to endeavor,
therefore, to force modern science to adapt itself to
the terms and requirements of scholastic philosophy
is as sensible as it would be to educate the future
citizens of a republic, Avith universal suffrage, on the
precepts of some writer on Feudal Law.
In fact, the fall of the Feudal System as well as
that of the hierarchical medieval Church is closely
connected with the discrediting of astrology ; it is,
therefore, easy to understand the hate of the Church
against Galileo, and hoAv Descartes trembled at pub
lishing his theories of the heavenly bodies even as an
hypothesis. Only when this baneful influence was
removed, could a man stand up and say : " Cogito,
ergo sum."
The following quotations from the third book of
St. Thomas's Contra Gentiles will, it is believed,
justify the foregoing assertions, even to persons
who have not made a study of scholasticism, and to
whom, therefore, many of the terms will seem
strange. The quotations are given somewhat in full
because the book " Contra Gentiles " is not generally
attainable. Chapter XXII. : " The celestial bodies truly move
and are moved. . . . in so far as they move by moving.

the object of their movement isto obtain a likeness
to Deity, in that they are the cause of other objects.
But they are the cause of other objects by this, that
they cause the coming into existence and cessation
of existence, and other movements in these inferior
objects. The movements of heavenly bodies, there
fore, so far as they move is intended for the coming
into existence and the cessation of existence, which
is in those inferior objects. . . . But in thesame way
the heavenly bodies although they are more worthy
than the inferior bodies, yet do not intend to bring
the latter into existence and to give them forms as
an ultimate end ; but in this they (the heavenly
bodies) aim at an ultimate end in that they are the
cause of others. . . .
" If, therefore, the movement of heaven itself is in
tended for the purpose of bringing things into ex
istence, but the existence of all things is intended for
man as the ultimate end, it is plain that the move
ment of the heaven is intended to have man for its
object and as the ultimate end of things that are
generated and moved.
" Hence it is said that God made celestial bodies for
the service of all races (Deut. 4-19),"
Chapter XXIII. — " From the foregoing also it can
be shown that the first movement of heaven is intel
lectual, for nothing acting according to its own
species intends to produce a higher form than
its own ; for everything which acts intends some
thing like itself. But a heavenly body, since it acts
by its own movement, is intended for the highest
form which is the human intellect : which indeed is

159
higher than any other form as appears from the fore-
going(Chap. XXII.). A heavenly body therefore does
not act for producing a body according to its own
species as a principal agent, but according to the
species of some superior intellectual agent, to which
the heavenly body bears itself as the instrument to
the principal agent. But a heavenly body acts in
bringing into existence as it is moved, therefore the
heavenly body is moved by some Intellectual sub
stance. Moreover, everything that is moved must
be moved by something, as was proved above (Lib. I.,
Cap. XIL). A heavenly body therefore is moved by
something. This other is either separated from it or
united to it, so that the composite body is said to move
itself, in so far as one part of it is moved and the
other the mover. But if this latter is the case (since
everything Avhich moves itself is alive and animated)
it follows that the heavenly body is alive and
animated. But it can be animated by no soul except
an intellectual one — it follows therefore that it Is
moved by an intellectual soul. But if it is moved by
an external motor, the latter is either corporeal or
incorporeal ; and if it is corporeal it does not move,
unless it is moved, as appears from the foregoing
(Lib. I., Cap. XIIL); it is necessary therefore that it
should be moved by another ; but as one must not
resort to the theory of an infinite number of bodies,
one will and must come to a first incorporeal mover,
but Avhat Is separated from a body must be intel
lectual as is shown above (Lib. I., Cap. XLIV.),
Therefore the movement of a heavenly body which
is the first of bodies, is by an intellectual substance."

i6o
Chapter XXIV.—" But if a heavenly body is
moved by an intellectual substance, as has been shown
(Chap. XXIIL), and the movement of a heavenly body
is intended to bring into existence inferior bodies, it
folloAvs that the coming into existence and move
ments of these inferior bodies proceeds from the in
tention of an intelligent substance. Therefore the
forms and movements of Inferior bodies are caused
and intended by an inteUigent substance as the prin
cipal agent, but by a heavenl}' body as the instru
ment. But It is necessary that the species of those
that are caused and intended to exist by an intel
lectual agent, preexist in the intellect of that agent, ^
as the forms created by artificers preexist in the
intellect of the artificer and from them are brought
into effect. Therefore all forms which are in these
inferior bodies and all their movements are deter
mined by the intellectual forms which are In the
intellect of one of these substances or of several of
them. And on account of this Boetius says (De
Trinlt., C. 3) that the forms which are in matter come
from forms that are without matter, and in so far,
the statement of Plato is verified that separate forms
are the origin of material forms, although he claim.s
that they exist by themselves and immediately cause
perceptible forms ; but we place them as existing in
the intellect and causing inferior forms by the move
ment of the heaven. Since truly everything Avhich
is moved by another per se and not by accident, is
directed by it to the end of its movement, but a
heavenly body is moved by an intellectual substance
and causes by its movement all movements in these

i6i
inferior bodies, it is necessary that a celestial
body is directed towards its end by an intellectual
substance, and consequently inferior bodies are
directed in the same way to their various ends.
" So therefore it is not difficult to see how natural
bodies without sense are moved and act toward an
end. For they tend to an end as directed by an
intelligent substance, as an arroAv tends to the mark
directed by the archer ; for as an arrow follows its
inclination to a mark or the end determined by the
force of the archer, so natural bodies foUoAv the
inclination to natural ends from natural movers, from
which proceed their forms and virtues and move
ments. Hence also it appears that every work of
nature is the work of an intelligent substance ; for
the principal effect is attributed to the first mover,
directing toward an end rather than to the instru
ments by which he directs ; and on account of this
the works of nature are found to proceed orderly to
an end as the Avorks of a wise man. It is plain there
fore that also those Avho lack sense can act for an
end and seek a good by natural appetite and the
divme likeness and its proper perfection — hence it
appears that all things seek the divme likeness as
their ultimate end."
Chapter XXVIII. — " All things are governed by
God through the mediation of intellectual creatures.
Since it pertains to divine Providence that order
should be preserved In things, but a proper order is
one which descends from the highest to the lowest
proportionately, it is necessary that divine Provi
dence should extend b^' some proportion even to the

l62_
lowest things. But this proportion is that the high
est beings are under God and governed by him, so
inferior creatures should be under higher ones and
governed by them. But among all creatures the
highest are the intellectual ones, as appears from the
foregoing (Chap. XLIX.). The reason of divine
Providence, therefore, demands that other creatures
should be ruled by rational creatures 
Moreover, what exists by itself is the cause of that
which exists by something els*^. But only intel
lectual creatures operate by themselves, as if they
were masters of their own acts by their free will ;
but other creatures operate from the necessity of,
nature ; as if moved by another. Therefore intel
lectual creatures by their work are the movers and
rulers of other creatures.
Chapter LXXXII. — " Inferior bodies are ruled by
God through superior bodies.
" Since intellectual substances are superior and in
ferior, so also in corporeal substances. But intel
lectual substances are ruled by the superior ones, as
the disposition of divine Providence descends pro
portionally even to the lowest, as shown above (Cap.
LXX. et seq.). Therefore, by equal reason, inferior
bodies are governed by superior bodies.
" Moreover, so much as one body is higher in its
place than another, so much more perfect is it found
to be in its form ; for water is of better form than
the earth, and air Is of better form than water, and
fire is of better form than air. But the heavenly
bodies are in place higher than all the bodies. They
are therefore of better form than all other bodies ;

i63
therefore more active. Therefore they act on infe
rior bodies, and thus by them inferior bodies are ruled.
" Also what is in its nature perfect and without
contradiction is of more universal virtue than that
which in its nature does not exist without its con
trary  But celestial bodies in their nature
are without opposite qualities ; for they are not
light nor heavy, nor hot nor cold ; but inferior
bodies are not completed in their nature without
some contrary quality ; and this even their move
ment shows ; for in the circular movement of the
heavenly bodies there Is no opposite principle, hence
there can be in them no violence ; but the move
ments of the lower bodies are in opposite directions,
as the movement up or a movement down. There
fore heavenly bodies are of more universal virtue
than lower bodies. But universal virtues are the
movers of particular virtues, as appears from what
has been said (Cap. LXX.). Therefore heavenly
bodies move and govern lower bodies.
" Moreover, it was shown above (Cap. LXXVIII.)
that all things are ruled by intellectual substances.
But heavenly bodies more nearly resemble intellect
ual substances than other bodies, in so far as they
are immutable ; they are also nearer to them, in that
they are moved directly by them, as shown above
(Lib. IL, Cap. LXX., et Lib. III., Cap. LXXX.).
Therefore by them inferior bodies are ruled. . . .
" But heavenly bodies only among corporeal bodies
are unchangeable, as is shown by their disposition,
which is always found to be the same. The heav-
eaily body is therefore the cause of every change in

164
those things which change. But change in these
inferior bodies is the beginning of all movement.
. . . . It is, therefore, necessary that the heaven
is the cause of all movement in these lower bodies.
Chapter LXXXIV.— " From the foregoing it ap
pears that in those things which concern the intel
lect, the heavenly bodies are not causes 
" But it must be known that although the heavenly
bodies cannot be directly the causes of our intellect,
yet they can indirectly affect it. For although the
intellect is not a corporeal virtue, yet it cannot ful
fil its work in us without the cooperation of cor
poreal virtues, which are imagination and the power
of memory and thought, as appears from the fore
going (chap. LXXIII. Lib. III.) ; and hence it is
when the operation of these virtues are impeded on
account of any indisposition of the body, the opera
tion of the intellect is also impeded, and on account of
this also the goodness of the disposition of the body
makes one apt to understand well . . . hence it is said
in the second book De Anima (text, comm. 94) that
' we see men Avith soft skin to have bright minds.'
But the condition of the human body is subject to the
heavenly movement . . . therefore indirectly heaven
ly bodies Avork for the goodness of the intellect ; and
so as doctors can judge of the goodness of the in
tellect from the complexion of the body, as being its
immediate cause, so the astrologer from the move
ments of the heavenly bodies can judge of the good
ness of the intellect as this movement is the remote
cause of this goodness of the intellect. And by this
way One can verify Avhat Ptolemy said in Centiloqu-

105
ium : ' When Mercury shall have been at the time of
birth of any one in any one of the houses of Saturn
... he gives an intelligence apt to penetrate things
even to the core.' "
Chapter LXXXV. " But from this it appears that
heavenly bodies are not the causes of our wills or of
our decisions . . . but yet it must be known that al
though the heavenly bodies are not the direct causes
of our decisions, as if they worked directly on our
wills, nevertheless indirectly from them some in
fluence is brought to bear on our decisions, from
their influence on our bodies ; so when by the
heavenly bodies the air is made intensely cold, we
decide to warm ourselves at the fire or do something
else which suits the season ; in another way, accord
ing as we are impressed by them there arise in us
certain passions or we are made liable to certain
passions, as choleric men are prone to anger ; or
again when their influence on our bodies causes a
certain disposition, we act accordingly, as when we
are sick and consult a doctor ; moreover even human
actions are caused by the heavenly bodies, as in so
far as any one is deprived of reason and a lunatic and
is moved by natural instinct as a brute. But it is
plain that man resists these occasions or obeys them
according to his reason ; but the greater number of
men follow such natural impulses; but few, that is
only wise men, do not follow the occasion and
natural impulses of acting badly. On account of
this Ptolemy says in the Centiloquium that ' The
wise soul helps the Avorks of the stars ; ' and that
' an astrologer could not give decisions according

i66
to the stars, unless he knows well the strength of
the mind and complexion ; ' and that ' an astrologer
should not say things specially but generally because
while the impression of the stars produces its effect
on most people because they do not resist the in
clination of their bodies, still it does not do so always
in those who strongly resist the natural inclination
by their reason.'
Chapter XCII. " How a man is called fortunate
and how he is helped by superior causes." . . .
"Since therefore a man is ordered according to
his body under heavenly bodies, according to his
intellect under angels, but according to his will under
God, something can happen outside the intention of
man but according to the order of the heavenly
bodies, or the disposition of the angels or even of
God. For although God only acts directly in the
decision of man, yet the action of angels influences
man in his decision by persuasion, and the action of
the heavenly bodies by means of affecting his dispo
sition, as bodily impressions of the heavenly bodies
on our bodies dispose men to certain elections.
When, therefore, any one from the impressions of
heavenly bodies and superior causes as above indi
cated is inclined to decisions useful to himself, Avhosc
use he does not recognize by his own reason, and
Avhen from the Ught of intellectual substances his in
tellect is illumined to understand them, and from the
divine operation his will is inclined to choose some
thing useful to himself, the reason for which he is
ignorant of, he is said to have good fortune ; and
otherAvise, he is said to have bad fortune when from

1 67
superior causes his decision is inclined to the oppo
site, as it is said of one, ' Write that man sterile, a
man who shall not prosper in his days.' Jer, 22, 30,
" . . . It is manifest that inanimate bodies
acquire certain powers and virtues from the
celestial bodies even besides those which they cer
tainly obtain from the celestial bodies as active
and passive and elementary qualities ; so the power
of the magnet to attract iron comes from the
virtue of a celestial body, and certain stones and
herbs have other occult virtues. Hence nothing
prevents that a certain man should have from the
influence of a heavenly body, capacity for certain
work which another has not, as a doctor in healing,
a farmer in planting, a soldier in conquering."
Further information concerning the " intellectual
substances " which guide the stars, showing that
they are intelligent, incorruptible, and are endowed
with free will, is found in the second book of the
¦.same Summa Contra Gentiles.
The Avhole doctrine is repeated concisely in the
¦Summa Theologiae I., q. 115, a. 3, which is entitled :
" Whether celestial bodies are the causes of those
things which here are done by inferior»bodies ? " The
answer is that "All motion proceeds from the immov
able. And, therefore, the more immovable things
are, the more are they the cause of those things
which are movable. But the heavenly bodies are
amongst bodies the most immovable. For they are
- not moved except by a local motion {i. e., they are
incorruptible). And, therefore, the movements of
these lower bodies Avhich are variable and multiform,

1 68
are referred to the motion of the celestial body
which is its cause. . . . -Active principles are not
found in these lower bodies, except the active qual
ities of the elements which are heat and cold and
things of that kind ; and if it were so that the sub
stantial forms of lower bodies do not differ except by
these accidents, it would not be necessary to place
above these loAver bodies any active principle, but
they would suffice for their action. But to those
Avho consider things rightly, it appears that acci
dents of this kind are related as material dispositions
to the substantial form of natural bodies. But matter
does not suffice for action. And, therefore, above
these material dispositions it is necessary to place
some active principle.
" Hence, the Platonists place separate species ac
cording to Avhose participation the lower bodies ac
quire substantial forms. But this does not appear to
suffice. For separate species are ahvays the same,
since they are immovable. And so it would follow
that there would be no variation in the generation
and corruption of these loAver bodies. Which is
evidently false. Hence, according to the philosopher
(Aristotle) in II. De Generatione, it is necessary to
place some active principle Avhich by its presence
and absence causes the variation of generation and
corruption in lower bodies. And of this kind are
the celestial bodies, and, therefore, whatever in these
lower bodies generates or produces one of its species,
is, as it Avere, the instrument of a celestial body. As
it, is said in II. Physic. (Aristotle) that man and the
sun produces a man."

1 69
The foregoing quotations amply prove that ac
cording to St. Thomas, the force which in this Avorld
moves and generates everything, except the soul of
man, comes from the intelligent spirits which guide
the stars ; they create the substantial forms through
which matter is differentiated into all the objects of
the material world. The stars, therefore, furnish
that without which the world cannot be imagined,
and to strike it out of the system is to remove the
motive power of the universe.
Modern Roman Catholic writers try to hide this
vital defect in their system by pretending that the
forms themselves give life and motion to matter, but
to St. Thomas this would have seemed as absurd as
if one had said that the mold, instead of the artist
made the statue.
St. Thomas could imagine no forms, except as the
expression of an intelligent being ; without the force
from the stars the world would have seemed as dead
as a steam engine would be if no steam existed. He
seems expressly to deny the possibility that sub
stance could act by itself (Summa I., q. 54, a. 1).
It is true that neither matter nor accident are
stated to be generated by the stars ; but the substan
tial form is the keystone in the arch, with matter on
one side and accident on the other, so placed that
neither of them can stand alone. As to matter, this
could be proved by many citations ; e. g., S. Thom.,
q.4, depot, a. 3 : " Matter cannot exist without form."
As to the dependence of accident on substantial
forms, the authorities are very numerous ; thus in
Summa I., q. 29, a. i ad, 3; "For accidents are the
effects of substantial forms and show them forth."

170
The doctrine is summed up in Summa, I., q. 105,
a. I.: "Plants and mineral bodies resemble the sun
and the stars, by Avhose virtue they are formed."
Leo XIII. in his Encyclical on Anglican Orders
declares that it is the form which gives character to
matter. Old Galileo in prison, with his failing eyesight,
may well have congratulated himself that in de
stroying astrology he had done a work, worthy of
a dying Samson's last revenge.
Nor can this central pillar of their system, the force
which created it, the forma substantialis, be replaced
by anything else, nor can its absence be disregarded.
The functions and powers of the spirits which guided
the stars and created these astral bodies must be dis
posed of in some manner — either they can be returned
to the Diety or they can be attributed to the Forms
themselves ; if the former plan is adopted, and God
is supposed to act directly upon matter, one falls
into the occasionalism of Mallebranche, which the
present reigning school of Jesuits has condemned
more severely even than Protestantism; and if the
latter plan is adopted, one builds up an unintelligible
system dangerously near to a materialistic panthe
ism, in which the form is supposed to create itself and
which, therefore, explains nothing.
The latter theory is the one now in vogue in Jesuit
schools, as illustrated by the following extracts from
the Metaphysics of the School by Father Harper,
S. J. (Macmillan & Co., 1884). So far as this system
is at all inteUigible, it seems to represent the sub
stantial form as emerging proprio motu like a Jack-in-

171
the-box, from imperceptible matter and then instan
taneously diving back into it again and thereby
" informing " it and rendering it appreciable by the
senses and endowing it with all its essential qualities.
It is submitted that the following extracts show that
the foregoing statement Is not exaggerated.
(Vol. II. , p. 563) "But the Form according to
its essential nature is the act of matter in such wise
that, as the Angelic Doctor repeatedly monishes, it
is not so much an entity itself, as that by Avhich
another entity (that is to say, the composite) is cons
tituted. It has no independent existence. By the
mere fact that it is, it actuates or informs matter.
It is educed out of the potentiality of matter ; and
so educed that, for so long as it exists, it essentially
exists as the Form of matter. But the actuation of
matter and the constitution of the composite are
really one and the same thing, considered from two
different points of view."
(Vol. IL, p. 504.) " For these reasons the Form
is said to be educed out of the potentiality of the
matter ; while the composite substance is said to be
created, produced, generated. Nevertheless the pro
ductive action is one and the same."
(Vol. IL, p. 386.) " The Form, then, may be said
to practically render it (matter) actual to sense."
(Vol. II. , p. 567.) "The causality of the Form is
not, strictly speaking, the union of the Form with
the matter, but the actuation of the matter by the
Form ; as will be shown in a later Thesis. Now
this information virtually contains in its concept that
the Form is educed out of the matter ; that it is

172
essentially dependent on the matter for its first
existence as well as for its continuance in being ;
and, finally, that it is the act of matter. But these
three elements equally connote the local presence of
the Form with the matter, as an integral part or at
least accompanying property of the formal causa
tion." (Vol. II. , p. 503.) " Now, to educe the Form out
of the potentiality of matter is in every way indenti-
cal with the actuation of matter. ... It needs
no distinct unitive action to compound two entities
that cannot be made to exist apart even by miracle.
Therefore the eduction of the Form is the consti
tution of the substance."
(VoL II. , p. 561.) " It (this definition) is borrowed
from Suarez. A substantial bodily Form, then, is a
simple and incomplete substance Avhich, as the act of
matter, constitutes together with the matter the
integral essence of the composite substance."
(Vol. IL, p. 520.) " From a diversity of substantial
Forms there follows a diversity of natural opera
tions." (Vol. III., p. 195.) "Substance can in a manner
produce accidents, without any change in itself, by
natural resultance ; and accidents in consequence
can be the causes of accidents."
How dangerously near to materialistic pantheism
these theories lead is apparent. St. Thomas, who
believed that the Forms were created and guided by
immaterial spirits could use such quotations as the
fbUowing in Contra Gentiles, Lib. III., Cap. XCVIL:
" Again : From the 'diversity of Forms we gather

173
the reaison of order in beings. For since the Form is
that by which an entity has being and every entity,
byVeason of its having being, approaches to the like
ness of God who is His OAvn simple Being ; it neces
sarily follows that the Form is no other than a parti
cipation of the Divine likeness in entities. Hence
in unison with this conclusion, Aristotle, in the first
Book of the Physics, speaking of Form declares that
' it is something Divine and object of desire.' "
But it means a very different thing when such
passages are repeated Avith approval by a modern
writer, such as Father Harper in his Metaphysics of
the School, Avho believes no longer wn these star-
guiding spirits, but only in Forms, continually im
mersed in matter, as the direct motive power of the
world. If there is in every particle of matter,
" something Divine and the object of desire," what
is the difference between this teaching and materi
alistic pantheism ? Such passages as the following
from Father Harper's volume II. , p. 520, which could
be multiplied indefinitely, certainly breathe such a
spirit :
" Since then, there is an essential order in material
substances ; the substantial Form, which is the
intrinsic principle of the essential nature of each, and,
in consequence, of the diversity, must likewise be
the intrinsic principle of the cosmic order."
Why blame Spinoza for Pantheism when he only
identified Deity with all-containing matter?
To find an answer to these theories, so lauded by
Leo XIIL, one must go back two centuries and take
dovffi the dusty folios which laughed scholasticism

174
into " the modest retirement in the Italian and Iber
ian Peninsulas."
The answer to the theory last referred to is well
given by Father Mallebranche, a devout believer in
all the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church of
that day, in his " Search after Truth" (Second Part,
Book VI., Chap. III.) : " Philosophers not only
speak without understanding themselves, when they
explain the effects of nature by some beings of
which they have no particular , idea ; but also
establish a principle whence very false and perni
cious consequences may directly be drawn.
" For supposing with them that there are in bodies
certain entities distinguished from matter, and hav
ing no distinct idea of those entities ; 'tis easie to
imagine that they are the real or principal causes of
the effects we see. And this is the very opinion of
the vulgar philosophers. The prime reason of their
supposing those substantial forms, real qualities,
and such like entities is to explain the effects of
nature : But when Ave come attentively to consider
the idea we have of cause or poAver of acting, we
cannot doubt but that It represents something di
vine : For the idea of a sovereign power is the
idea of a sovereign divinity ; and the idea of a
subordinate power, the idea of an inferiour divin
ity, yet a true divinity ; at least accord'ng to the
opinion of the heathens, supposing it to be the idea
of a true power or cause. And therefore we
admit something divine in all the bodies that sur
round us, when we acknowledge forms, faculties,
etc., that are capable of producing some effects by

175
the force of their nature; and thus insensibly ap
prove of the sentiments of the heathens, by too
great a deference for their philosophy. Faith in
deed corrects us ; but it may perhaps be said, that
the mind is Pagan, whilst the heart is a Christian.
" Moreover it is a hard matter to persuade our
selves that we ought neither to fear nor love true
powers and beings, that can act upon us with some
pain or reward us with some pleasure. And as love
and fear are a true adoration, it is hard again to
imagine why they must not be adored.
"There are some who affirm that the sub
stantial form produces forms ; and the accidental
form, accidents. Others say that the forms produce
both other forms and accidents. Others still, that
bare accidents are not only capable of producing ac
cidents but even forms. But it must not be imagined
that those, for instance, who say that accidents can
produce forms by virtue of the form they are joined
to, understand it the same way. For one part of them
will have accidents to be the very force or virtue of
the substantial form. Another that they imbibe into
them the influence of the form and only act so by
virtue of it, and a third, lastly, that will have them
to be but instrumental causes."
How closely the doctrine of " efficient cause " was
bound up with that of the substantial form, so that
they both must stand or fall together, appears from
the following extract from Harper's Metaphysics
of the School:
(Vol. III., p- 57-) "The difficult question that is
submitted to discussion and examination in this and

176
succeeding Theses, turns upon the nature of Efficient
Causality — or rather upon the principiants of the
Efficient Causality — by which the substantial form is
educed out of the potentiality of matter and the
composite substance generated."
(Vol. III., p. 224.) "A property flows from the
essence or substantial form, as its natural result.
That agent, therefore, which is efficient cause of the
existence of the essential nature, is ipso facto
Efficient Cause of the property resulting from this
essence. But the Efficient Cause of the essential
nature is the generator, as is clear. Therefore,
the generator is Ukewise Efficient Cause of the
property." Schopenhauer's criticism of Aristotle's " causa
efficiens," applies with equal force to the system of
St. Thomas.
On this theory too was based the Aquinate's
famous idea of the "second cause" which is the very
citadel of scholastic philosophy and theology, as
being an attempt to explain predestination ; in the
most celebrated passage (Summa, I., IL, q. 6, a. i)
the argument on free-will is drawn from the analogy
of the spirit guiding the stars.
In answer to this theory, we need only cite
Father Mallebranche in his " Concerning the
Search after Truth " (id.) :
" There are philosophers who maintain that
second causes act by their matter, figure and mo
tion, and these in one sense are right enough. Others
by their substantial form. Many by accidents "or
qualities, some by matter and form ; others by form

177
and accidents ; others still by certain virtues or
faculties distinct from all this. . . . Nor can the
philosophers compromise about the action whereby
second causes produce their effects. For some of
them pretend that causality ought not to be pro
duced, since it is this which produces. Others will
that they truly act by their own action. But they
are involved in so many labyrinths in explaining
precisely wherein this action consists, and there are
so many different opinions about it, that I cannot
find in my heart to recite them."
How Uttle there would be left of Scholastic Philo
sophy if the doctrines of the Formal Cause and the
Efficient Cause were eliminated, any one with the
slightest acquaintance with Aristotelian or Scholas
tic Philosophy will know.
Need we wonder that with such a philosophy as
that of St. Thomas, Roman Catholics worship relics ?
The utter impossibility of understanding such
modern works as " The Physical System of St.
Thomas," by Father Giovanni Maria Carnoldi, S. J.,
translated by Edward Heneage Dering (Benzinger
Bros., New York), need not be marveled at when we
remember that they dare not refer in any way to St.
Thomas' belief in astrology, and that they are in
effect trying to conceal this awful hiatus in their
system — this skeleton in the closet.
But none of these systems can be called that of
St. Thomas ; his system was at least logical, if you
granted the premises, i. e., the influence of minds rul
ing the stars and through them the physical world ;
see " New Essays concerning Human Understand
ing," by Leibnitz (Macmillan «& Co., p. 643).
The whole theory of political and social rule,

178
government from above dovvnward, was based upon
this analogy ; in De Regimine Principum, liber. III.,
cap. 1 1., St. Thomas says : " If there is order in cor
poreal movements, much more will there be in
spiritual matter. But as we see in bodies that the
lower are moved by the higher and all are re.
duced to the movement of the highest, which is
the ninth sphere according to Ptolemy in i
distinct Almagesti ; but according to Aristotle in
2 de Caelo, it is the eighth .... which move
ment indeed blessed Dionysius in lib. de divinis
Nominibus and de caelesti Hierarchia relates to us,
distinguishing in spiritual substances movement as
in bodies, that is circular, straight and oblique.
Which movements indeed are certain illuminations
which they receive from their superiors for action,
as the same Doctor explains. But among all men,
kings, princes and other rulers of the world should
be more ready to receive this illumination. . . . And
so it is manifest in considering motion, that all do
minion is from God." White's History of the War
fare of Science with Theology gives a picture of
this hierarchical organization of the heavens : " Thus
was the vast system developed by these three
leaders of mediaeval thought (the Pseudo-Dionysius,
the Areopagite Peter Lombard and St. Thomas
Aquinas) ; and now came the man who wrought it
yet more deeply into European beUef, the poet
divinely inspired who made the system part of the
world's life. Pictured by Dante, the empyrean and
the concentric heavens, paradise, purgatory and
hell, were seen of all men ; the God Triune, seated

179
on his throne upon the circle of the, heavens, as real
as the Pope seated in the chair of St. Peter ; the sera
phim, cherubim and thrones, surrounding the Al
mighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding the
Pope ; the three great orders of angels in heaven, as
real as the three great orders, bishops, priests and
deacons, on earth ; and the whole system of spheres,
each revolving Avithin the one above it, and all mov
ing about the earth, subject to the primum mobile, as
real as the feudal system of western Europe, subject
to the Emperor."
It is from this supposed analogy to the govern
ment of the physical universe by the stars, or rather
by their guiding spirits, that the Papacy was sup
posed to sanctify and justify the poAver of temporal
princes and these in turn passed down authority to
all the subordinate rulers of the people.
The practical objection to teaching this system of
physics from a scientific point of view, apart from
its theoretical absurdity, the false conclusions In
politics and religion which are drawn from it, and
the dry-rot with which it strikes all true metaphysics,
is that it gives no place for the modern doctrine of
force as distinct from or independent of matter.
Thus Father Harper says in his introduction to the
Metaphysics of the School (p. XLVIL):
" Force is often set before us as a substance, existing
of itself, and (as it were), in its own right, a concept
of it, which is consonant neither with the common
acceptation of the term, nor with the examples of it
that are subject to human observation."
By no ingenuity can the theory of the transmuta-

i8o
tion or conservation of energy as worked out by
Grove, Helmholtz, Faraday, and others be brought
under a system which recognizes the force of the
stars as a sufficient explanation for the attractiou
of iron by the magnet, and no Roman Catholic
writer, if he were bold enough to insert this modern
doctrine of force into his system, could thenceforth
claim that it was the system of St. Thomas.
To the faithful follower of the latter, the experi
ments of our distinguished countryman. Count
Rumford, whereby he proved that when fire was
applied to metal, the heat developed did not come
from the iron, do no exist ; see Dr. Plassrnan's
Psychology, page i8o.
Alchemy and astrology were the natural products
of the teachings of St. Thomas, instead of chemistry
and astronomy.
The following extract from Introduction h I'His-
toire deJ'Asie by L^on Cahun (Paris: Collin & Cie.)
shows how this philosophy affected the most ener
getic ot Asiatics, the Turks :
"While the Europeans, under the spur of Helenism,
and dazzled by the rediscovery of antiquity, were
launching boldly out towards the unknown, towards
free research, towards revolt, the Asiatics, their
equals till the fifteenth century, let themselves
docilely be brought back to the School as conceived
by the sages of the orthodox Khalif. They dis
covered as a novelty Aristotle (as deformed by the
Arabs), they returned to the ' Amalgest,' they
plunged into Avicenna, their compatriot, they began
again in Turkish the epoch of the Sassanidae ; they

i8i
'marked time,' but never advanced {ils pietin^rent sur
place). All their intellectual activity, and they had
as much as others, spent itself in scholasticism, in
jurisprudence, in rhetoric ; with great efforts they
reconstituted Euclid, Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates —
they hardly dared touch Plato ; to go further would
have been to lose themselves. Little b)' little, with
the help of the monks, they came to think only of
their salvation and to be content with the Koran."
St. Thomas frequently cites the ' Amalgest ' and
Avicenne, above referred to ; need we wonder, then,
that the Shadow of God on Earth and the Vicar of
Christ on Earth find so little difficulty in under
standing and approving each other's policy ?
Why should our school teachers be taught from
text books which cite with approval, as Dr. Plass
mann does in his Psj^chology, page 148, such sen
tences as : " The matter of all terrestrial things is the
same ; but the matter of the heavenly bodies appears
to be of a different kind than that of terrestrial
bodies"? (Summa, I. q. 66, a. 2.) The same princi
ples are taught in the Jesuit Seminary, in Woodstock,
Maryland. For them, Helmholtz has never proved,
by means of the spectrum, that the stars are com
posed of the same elements as the earth. Need we
wonder at the few practical inventions made in
Roman Catholic countries ? Aristole considered the
applied sciences, Uke the occupation by which a man
gains his living, vulgar.
That this whole scholastic physical system is of
the utmost importance to the Roman Catholic Church
^s sufficiently apparent ; the doctrjne of transub-

I82
stantiation has been formulated upon the belief that
this system was absolutely true and Avould continue
so for all time. But how can we believe that bread
has a substantial form, and that this form is gene
rated by the stars unless Ave believe in astrology?
And if we do not believe in astrology, Avhence comes
the substantial form of the bread Avhich is removed
in the Holy Eucharist at the time of consecration, to
give place to that of our Lord ? One of the argu
ments against Galileo in his days Avas that his scien
tific ideas Avere " leading to a denial of the Real
Presence in the Eucharist." (White's History of
Warfare of Science with Theology.) If, on the other
hand, Ave adopt the modern theory of atoms, Avhich
has prevailed generally in the scientific Avorld since
the time of Des Cartes, how is it possible to believe
in the doctrine of tran.substantiation ? So far as the
author knoAvs, no attempt has been made to state the
doctrine of this theory of the physical Avorld. Des
Cartes is mentioned only Avith sneers and ridicule
in modern Roman Catholic literature.
Nor would the attempt to state the doctrine on
any theory of nature in harmony with the theory of
correllation of forces and conservation of energy, be
more easy ; at all events, it Avould be as little
consonant Avith the teachings of St. Thomas as with
those of the whole medieeval Church.
In fact in every Thomistic Roman Catholic argu
ment, if carefully considered, avIU be found this same
defect, like the spot between Siegfried's shoulders,
- -only in this case it should be designated by a star,
instead of a leaf.

i83
It is therefore submitted that until it is certain that
these antiquated theories of matter, which were
evoWed from his inner consciousness by Aristotle
about three hundred years before Christ, and elabo
rated in the Dark Ages by the Aquinate, together
with the social, political and theological theories
which were based upon them, are positively repu
diated by the Church, it is no safe teacher. The at
tempt to introduce those theories again into modern
life can only be compared to the foolish sally of Don
Quixote, equipped in the armor of a past generation.
The challenge made by Father Mallebranche three
hundred years ago, in his Book IV., Chap. III., is
still unanswered and his criticisms apply as well to
the Angel of the Schools as to " the Philosopher ": " I
make no question but there are such as honestly
believe that he whom they style Prince of Philoso
phers, is guilty of no Error ; and that his works are
the magazines of true and sound philosophy. There
are men who imagine, that in the space of two
thous.and years, the time since he wrote, no man has
been able to say he has made a blot or been guilty
of a mistake ; and so making him infallible in a
manner, they can pin their faith upon him and quote
him as infallible. But 'tis not worth while to stand
to answer such gentlemen as these, because their
ignorance must needs be exceeding gross, and merit
ing more to be pitied than oppugned ; I cesire only
of them, if they know that either Aristotle or any
of his followers, have deduced any truth from the
principles peculiar to him ; or if possibly themselves
have done it, that they should declare it, explain it

184
and prove it ; and I promise them never more to
speak but to Aristotle's praise and commendation.
His principles shall no longer be calumlnated as
useless, since they have at least been serviceable to
prove one truth. But we have no reason to hope
this, for the challenge has been long since offered,
and M. Des Cartes, among the rest, has done it in
his Metaphysical Meditation almost forty years ago,
and obliged himself to demonstrate the falsehood of
that pretended truth. And there is great prob
ability that no man will ever venture to attempt
what M. Des Cartes' greatest enemies, and the most
zealous Defenders of Aristotle's Philosophy never
yet durst undertake.
" I beg leave then after this to say, that it is blind
ness, slavishness of spirit and stupidity, thus to betray
reason to the authority of Aristotle, Plato, or what
ever other Philosopher; that 'tis loss of time to
read them, out of no other design than to remember
their opinions ; and 'tis to waste that of others too,
to teach them in that manner. That the Philoso
phers cannot instruct us by their authority ; and to
pretend to is a piece of injustice : That 'tis a kind
of madness and impiety to take a solemn oath of
allegiance to them. And lastly that 'tis to detain
truth in an unjust bondage, from interest and par
tiality, to oppose the new opinions of philosophy,
that may be true, to keep up the cred't of such as
are known to be either false or useless."
Science has no conflict with religion as such — the
field of one is the intellect, the field of the other is
the spirit ; but it has a fight to the death against

185
any religion which Avould substitute logic and au
thority for investigation and experience — in short,
against any religion which Avould cast it into the
shackles of Aristotelianism — shackles rusty wifh the
blood of tne truth-seekers of a thousand years.

CONCLUSION.
kt is submitted that the foregoing chapters have
shown, firstly, that the infallible voice of Leo XIII.
has proclaimed anew the most far reaching claims of
the mediaeval Papacy on the relation of Church and
State ; secondly, that the much lauded social pro
gramme of His Holiness consists in the organization
of priest-guided labor unions, for Roman Catholics
Only ; thirdly, that the Family is to be considered as
an institution existing independently of the State, so
that the latter can do nothing concerning marriage
or the education of children, except by and with the
advice and consent of the Church ; fourthly, that the
individual must in every intentional or rational act
follow the directions which may be given him by
the Roman Pontifex Maximus, and that the very ex
istence of the independent, spiritual faculty through
which all men are to be quickened by the Holy
Ghost is denied ; lastly, the dependence of all these
propositions upon an exploded astrological concep
tion has been set forth. If these are the fair conclu
sions from the foregoing lines, does it not seem as if
the rule of the priesthood over the laity, against
which the Reformation was the protest, is to be
reestablished, that the Roman Catholic Church is
itself guilty of the sins of Intolerance which it so
loudly charges upon its opponents, and that the
complaints of the Church are in fact the cry of the
Wolf against the lamb ?

iS7
In closing, if a personal remark may be excused,
the author would say that he is not a member of the
American Protective Association, and so far as he
knows has never seen, nor received any communica
tion from any member of that Association ; neither
does he entertain any feeling of hostility to the mem
bers of the Roman Catholic Church or to that
Church as a body. On the contrary, many Roman
Catholic laymen have honored him with their friend
ship, and for the Church itself, as a branch of the
Holy Catholic Church, he entertains a profound
reverence and respect, for the centuries of noble
work which it has done for Christ and humanity,
through its long lines of consecrated priests, devoted
monks and holy nuns.
The only object of these lines has been to show
that within this glorious institution, hallowed by
so many beautiful and sacred associations, there is at
work a corrosive which cannot but in the course of
time annihilate all that has made it beautiful, glori
ous and holy. This evil which has at last, through
the success of Leo XIII. in making the text-book of
the Jesuits the text-book of the Roman Catholic
world, become dominant in the Church, can be de
scribed in two words : Aristotelian Scholasticism.
The Roman Catholic laymen are themselves the
worst sufferers under this system; they have no
more power over the affairs of their parish or dio
cese than, the Perioeci of Aristotle's Utopia, and if
the Utopia of Leo XIII. were realized, they would
have as little power over the Family, the Guild and
the State. System and discipline are beautiful and
much to be desired, but is there any teaching in the

1 88
New Testament which justifies man's putting his
greatest talent, conscience, absolutely in the hands of
another ?
Eliminate that false Aristotelian philosophy, and
who can doubt but that, under the presidency natur
ally due to the successor of St. Peter, the reunion of
Christendom might become an accomplished fact ?
For with that philosophy would go the ideas that
primacy must mean infalUble absolutism and that
membership in a political or religious corporation
involves suicide of individuaUty ; that the com
munistic Utopias of Aristotle and Plato, with their
privileged classes of priests, represent the highest
social organization; that no state can be trusted
with the education of its children or the regula
tion of its family organizations ; that the whole
world must have the unanimity necessary in a
Greek city-state of less than 100,000 inhabit
ants ; that men have no way of knowing what is
right or wrong, except by communications from
their fellows ; that reason, and not conscience, should
govern men ; that laymen have no rights which
priests are bound to respect ; that the principles of
all scientific truth were grasped by one mind, over
two thousand years ago — in short that Christianity
and all modern progress must be built upon the
quicksand of Aristotelian philosophy.
Christianity has been adapted to Aristotle, instead
of Aristotle to Christianity.
Once cast out these ideas, and again would flour
ish as a spiritual refuge for the nations, the Church,
that mighty tree under whose benignant branches

1 89
United Christendom for so many centuries sought
and found a shelter, but which is now, alas, decay
ing, — thanks to the worm eating at its heart, — a
noxious influence on all who trust themselves within
its shades — a danger to modern civilization.

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