e ¦ ...'.

No. lO

April, 1905

EDUCATIONAL BRIEFS TalelM APR 3

a*»et4i

The Social State of Catholic
Countries no Prejudice to the
Sanctity of the Church *£

JOHN HENRY CARDINAL NEWMAN

PHI LA DEL P H I A
BROAD AND VINE STREETS

The Social State of Catholic
Countries no Prejudice to the
Sanctity of the Church
By John Henry Cardinal Newman.
Reprinted, with permission from Longmans,
Green & Co.
Copies may be had on application to the
Superintendent of Parish Schools
Broad and Vine Streets
Philadelphia

The Social State of Catholic
Countries no Prejudice to the
Sanctity of the Church1
¥¥¥

1HAVE been engaged in many lectures in show
ing that your place, my brethren, if you own
the principles of the movement of 1833, is nowhere
else but the Catholic Church. To this you may
answer, that, even though I had been unanswer
able, I should not have done much, for my argu
ment has, on the whole, been a negative one ; that
there are difficulties on both sides of the contro
versy; that I have been enlarging on the Prot
estant difficulty, but there are now a few Catholic
difficulties also ; that, to be sure, you are not very
happy in the Establishment, but you have serious
misgivings whether you would be happier with us.
Moreover, you might mention the following objec
tion, in particular, as prominent and very practical,
which weighs with you a great deal, and warns
you off the ground whither I am trying to lead
you. You are much offended, you would say, with

1 Reprinted by permission from Lectures on " Diffi
culties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching," delivered
in 1850. 3

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
the bad state of Catholics abroad, and their unin
teresting character everywhere, compared with
Protestants. Those countries, you say, which have
retained Catholicism, are notoriously behind the
age, — they have not kept up with the march of
civilization ; they are ignorant, and, in a measure,
barbarous; they have the faults of barbarians;
they have no self-command; they cannot be
trusted. They must be treated as slaves, or they
rebel; they emerge out of their superstitions in
order to turn infidels. They cannot combine and
coalesce in social institutions ; they want the very
faculty of citizenship. The sword, not the law, is
their ruler. They are spectacles of idleness, sloven
liness, want of spirit, disorder, dirt, and dishonesty.
There must, then, be something in their religion
to account for this; it keeps them children, and
then, being children, they. keep to it. No man in
his senses, certainly no English gentleman, would
abandon the high station which his country both
occupies and bestows on him, in the eyes of man,
to make himself the co-religionist of such slaves,
and the creature of such a creed.
I propose to make a suggestion in answer to
this objection; and, in making it, I shall consider
you, my brethren, not as unbelievers, who are care
less whether this objection strikes at Christianity
or no; nor as Protestants proper, who have no
concern about so expressing themselves, as to com
promise the first centuries of the Church ; but as
those who feel that the Catholic Church was in the
beginning founded by our Lord and His apostles ;
4

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
again, that the Establishment is not the Catholic
Church ; that nothing but the Church of Rome can
be; that, if the Church of Rome is not, then the
Catholic Church is not to be found in this age, or
in this part of the world ; for this is what I have
been proving in my preceding lectures. What,
then, you are saying comes, in fact, to this: We
would rather deny our initial principles, than accept
such a development of them as the communion of
Rome, viewed as it is; we would rather believe
Erastinism, and all its train of consequences, to be
from God, than the religion of such countries as
France and Belgium, Spain and Italy. This is
what you must mean to say, and nothing short of it.
II
I simply deny the justice of your argument, my
brethren ; and, to show you that I am not framing
a view for the occasion, and moreover, in order to
start with a principle, which, perhaps, you your
selves have before now admitted, I will quote
words which I used myself twelve years ago :
" If we were asked what was the object of Christian
preaching, teaching, and instruction; what the office of
the Church, considered as the dispenser of the word of
God, I suppose we should not all return the same answer.
Perhaps we might say that the object of Revelation was
to enlighten and enlarge the mind, to make us act by
reason, and to expand and strengthen our powers; or to
impart knowledge about religious truth, knowledge being
power directly it is given, and enabling us forthwith to
think, judge, and act for ourselves; or to make us good
members of the community, loyal subjects, orderly and
S

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
useful in our station, whatever it be; or to secure, what
otherwise would be hopeless, our leading a religious life;
the reason why persons go wrong, throw themselves
away, follow bad courses, and lose their character, being,
that they have had no education, that they are ignorant.
These and other answers might be given; some beside,
and some short of the mark. It may be useful, then, to
consider with what end, with what expectation, we preach,
teach, instruct, discuss, bear witness, praise, and blame;
what fruit the Church is right in anticipating as the
result of her ministerial labors. St. Paul gives us a
reason . . . different from any of those which I have
mentioned. He labored more than all the Apostles.
And why? Not to civilize the world, not to smoothe the
face of society, not to facilitate the movements of civil
government, not to spread abroad knowledge, not to culti
vate the reason, not for any great worldly object, but
' for the elect's sake.' . . . And such is the office of the
Church in every nation where she sojourns; she attempts
much ; she expects and promises little." *
I do not, of course, deny that the Church does
a great deal more than she promises: she fulfils
a number of secondary ends, and is the means of
numberless temporal blessings to any country
which receives her. I only say, she is not to be
estimated and measured by such effects; and if
you think she is, my brethren, then I must rank
you with such Erastians as Warburton, who, as
I have shown you in a former lecture, considered
political convenience to be the test and standard of
truth. I thus begin with a consideration which, you

1 " Parochial Sermons," vol. iv.
6

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
see, I fully recognized before I was a Catholic;
and now I proceed to another, which has been
forced on me, as a matter of fact and experience,
most powerfully ever since I was a Catholic, as it
must be forced on every one who is in the com
munion of the Church; and which, therefore, like
the former, has not at all originated in the need,
nor is put forth for the occasion to meet your diffi
culty. The Church, you know, is in warfare ; her life
here below is one long battle. But with whom is
she fighting ? For till we know her enemy we shall
not be able to estimate the skill of her tactics, the
object of her evolutions, or to the success of her
movements. We shall be like civilians, contem
plating a field of battle, and seeing much dust, and
smoke, and motion, much defiling, charging, and
manoeuvring, but quite at a loss to tell the meaning
of all, or which party is getting the better. And,
if we actually mistake the foe, we shall criticise
when we should praise, and think that all is a de
feat, when every blow is telling. In all under
takings we must ascertain the end proposed before
we can predicate their success or failure; and,
therefore, before we so freely speak against the
state of Catholic countries, and reflect upon the
Church herself in consequence, we must have a
clear view what it is the Church has proposed to
do with them and for them. We have, indeed, a
right to blame and dissent from the end which she
sets before her ; we may quarrel with the mission
she professes to have received from above; we
7

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
may dispense with Scripture, Fathers, and the con
tinuous tradition of eighteen hundred years. That
is another matter ; then, at least, we have nothing
to do with the theological movement which has
given occasion to these lectures; then we are not
in the way to join the Catholic Church; then we
must be met on our own ground. But I am speak
ing to those who go a great way with me; who
admit my principles, who almost admit my con
clusion; who are all but ready to submit to the
Church, but who are frightened by the present
state of Catholic countries. To such I say, Judge
of her fruit by her principles and her object, which
you yourselves also admit; not by those of her
enemies, which you renounce.
The world believes in the world's ends as the
greatest of goods ; it wishes society to be governed
simply and entirely for the sake of this world.
Provided it could gain one little islet in the ocean,
one foot upon the coast, if it could cheapen tea by
sixpence a pound, or make its flag respected among
the Esquimaux or Otaheitans, at the cost of a
hundred lives and a hundred souls, it would think
it a very good bargain. What does it know of hell ?
it disbelieves it; it spits upon, it abominates, it
curses its very name and notion. Next, as to the
devil, it does not believe in him either. We next
come to the flesh, and it is free to confess that it
does not think there is any great harm in follow
ing the instincts of that nature which, perhaps it
goes on to say, God has given. How could it be
otherwise? who ever heard of the world fighting
8

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
against the flesh and the devil? Well, then, what
is its notion of the evil? Evil, says the world, is
whatever is an offence to me, whatever obscures
my majesty, whatever disturbs my peace. Order,
tranquillity, popular contentment, plenty, prosper
ity, advance in arts and sciences, literature, refine
ment, splendor, this is my millennium, or rather
my elysium, my swerga ; I acknowledge no whole,
no individuality, but my own; the units which
compose me are but parts of me; they have no
perfection in themselves, no end but in me ; in my
glory is their bliss and in the hidings of my coun
tenance they come to nought. Ill
Such is the philosophy and practice of the
world. Now the Church looks and moves in a
simply opposite direction. It contemplates, not the
whole, but the parts; not a nation, but the men
who form it; not society in the first place, but in
the second place, and in the first place individuals ;
it looks, beyond the outward act, on and into the
thought, the motive, the intention, and the will;
it looks beyond the world, and detects and moves
against the devil, who is sitting in ambush behind
it. It has, then, a foe in view, nay, it has a battle
field, to which the world is blind ; its proper battle
field is the heart of the individual, and its true foe
is Satan. My dear brethren, do not think I am declaim
ing in the air, or translating the pages of some old
worm-eaten homily ; as I have already said, I bear
9

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
my own testimony to what has been brought home
to me most closely and vividly as a matter of fact
since I have been a Catholic, — viz., that that mighty
world-wide Church, like her Divine Author, re
gards, consults for, labors for the individual soul ;
she looks at the souls for whom Christ died, and
who are made over to her, and her one object, for
which everything is sacrificed — appearances, repu
tation, worldly triumph — is to acquit herself well
of this most awful responsibility. Her one duty
is to bring forward the elect to salvation, and to
make them as many as she can, — to take offences
out of their path, to warn them of sin, to rescue
them from evil, to convert them, to teach them, to
feed them, to protect them, and to perfect them.
O most tender loving Mother, ill-judged by the
world, which thinks she is, like itself, always mind
ing the main chance; on the contrary, it is her
keen view of things spiritual, and her love for the
soul, which hampers her in her negotiations and
her measures, on this hard cold earth, which is her
place of sojourning ! How easy would her course
be, at least for a while, could she give up this or
that point of faith, or connive at some innovation
or irregularity in the administration of the Sacra
ments! How much would Gregory have gained
from Russia could he have abandoned the United
Greeks ! how secure had Pius been upon his
throne, could he have allowed himself to fire on
his people !
No, my dear brethren, it is this supernatural
sight and supernatural aim, which is the folly and
10

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
the feebleness of the Church in the eyes of the
world, and would be failure but for the Providence
of God. The Church overlooks everything in com
parison of the immortal soul. Good and evil to
her are not lights and shades passing over the sur
face of society, but living powers, springing from
the depths of the heart. Actions in her sight are
not mere outward deeds and words, committed by
hand or tongue, and manifested in effects over a
range of influence wider or narrower, as the case
may be ! but they are the thoughts, the desires, the
purposes, .of the solitary responsible spirit. She
knows nothing of space or time, except as sec
ondary to will ; she knows no evil but sin, and sin
is a something personal, conscious, voluntary ; she
knows no good but grace, and grace again is some
thing personal, private, special, lodged in the soul
of the individual. . She has one and one only aim —
to purify the heart ; she recollects who it is who has
turned our thoughts from the external crime to the
inward imagination ; who said, that " unless our
justice abounded more than that of Scribes and
Pharisees, we should not enter into the kingdom of
heaven ;" and that " out of the heart proceed evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts,
false testimonies, blasphemies. These are the
things that defile a man."
Now I would have you take up the sermons of
any preacher, or any writer on moral theology, who
has a name among Catholics, and see if what I
have said is not strictly fulfilled, however little you
fancied so before you make trial. Protestants, I

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
say, think that the Church aims at appearance and
effect ; she must be splendid, and majestic, and in
fluential; fine services, music, lights, vestments,
and then again, in her dealings with others, cour
tesy, smoothness, cunning, dexterity, intrigue,
management — these, it seems, are the weapons of
the Catholic Church. Well, my brethren, she can
not help succeeding, she cannot help being strong,
she cannot help being beautiful ; it is her gift ; as
she moves, the many wonder and adore, — " Et vera
incessu patuit Dea." It cannot be otherwise, cer
tainly; but it is not her aim; she goes forth on
the one errand, as I have said, of healing the dis
eases of the soul. Look, I say, into any book of
moral theology you will; there is much there
which may startle you: you will find principles
hard to digest; explanations which seem to you
subtle; details which distress you; you will find
abundance of what will make excellent matter of
attack at Exeter Hall ; but you will find from first
to last this one idea — (nay, you will find that very
matter of attack upon her is occasioned by her
keeping it in view ; she would be saved the odium,
she would not have thus bared her side to the
sword, but for her fidelity to it) — the one idea, I
say, that sin is the enemy of the soul; and that
sin especially consists, not in overt acts, but in the
thoughts of the heart. IV
This, then, is the point I insist upon, in answer
to the objection which you have to-day urged

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
against me. The Church aims, not at making a
show, but at doing a work. She regards this world,
and all that is in it, as a mere shadow, as dust and
ashes, compared with the value of one single soul.
She holds that, unless she can, in her own way, do
good to souls, it is no use her doing anything ; she
holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop
from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the
many millions who ar.e upon it to die of starvation
in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction
goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be
lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should
tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one,
or steal one poor farthing without excuse. She
considers the action of this world and the action
of the soul simply incommensurate, viewed in their
respective spheres ; she would rather save the soul
of one single wild bandit of Calabria, or whining
beggar of Palermo, than draw a hundred lines of
railroad through the length and breadth of Italy,
or carry out a sanitary reform, in its fullest details,
in every city of Sicily, except so far as these great
national works tended to some spiritual good
beyond them.
Such is the Church, O ye men of the world, and
now you know her. Such she is, such she will be,
and though she aims at your good, it is in her own
way, — and if you oppose her, she defies you. She
has her mission, and do it she will, whether she be
in rags, or in fine linen; whether with awkward
or with refined carriage; whether by means of
uncultivated intellects, or with the grace of accom-
13

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
plishments. Not that, in fact, she is not the source
of numberless temporal and moral blessings to you
also ; the history of ages testifies it ; but she makes
no promises ; she is sent to seek the lost ; — that is
her first object, and she will fulfil it, whatever
comes of it.
And now, in saying this, I think I have gone a
great way towards suggesting one main solution of
the difficulty which I proposed to consider. The
question was this: — How is it, that at this time
Catholic countries happen to be behind Protestants
in civilization? In answer, I do not at all deter
mine how far the fact is so, or what explanation
there may be of the appearance of it ; but anyhow
the fact, granting it exists, is surely no objection
to Catholicism, unless Catholicism has professed,
or ought to have professed, directly to promote
mere civilization; — on the other hand, it has a
work of its own, and this work is, first, different
from that of the world; next, difficult of attain
ment, compared with that of the world ; and, lastly,
secret from the world in its details and conse
quences. If, then, Spain or Italy be deficient in
secular progress, if the national mind in those coun
tries be but partially formed, if it be unable to
develop into civil institutions, if it have no moral
instinct of deference to a policeman, if the national
finances be in disorder, if the people be excitable,
and open to deception from political pretenders, if
it know little or nothing of arts, sciences, and lit
erature; I repeat, of course, I do not admit all
this, except hypothetically, because it is difficult to
14

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
draw the line between what is true in it and what
is not; — then all I can say, is, that it is not won
derful that civil governments, which profess certain
objects, should succeed better than the Church,
which does not. Not till the State is blamed for
not making saints, may it fairly be laid to the
fault of the Church that she cannot invent a steam-
engine or construct a tariff. It is, in truth, merely
because she has often done so much more than she
professes, it is really in consequence of her very
exuberance of benefit to the world, that the world
is disappointed that she does not display that ex
uberance always, — like some hangers-on of the
great, who come at length to think they have a
claim on their bounty. V
Now, let me try to bring out what I mean more
in detail ; and, in doing so, I hope to be pardoned,
my brethren, if my language be now and then of a
more directly religious cast than I would willingly
admit into disquisitions such as the present;
though, speaking, as I do, in a place set apart for
religious purposes, I am not perhaps called upon
to apologize. In religious language, then, the one object of
the Church, to which every other object is second,
is that of reconciling the soul to God. She cannot
disguise from herself, that, with whatever advan
tages her children commence their course, in spite
of their baptism, in spite of their most careful edu~
cation and training, still the great multitude of
is

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
them require her present and continual succor to
keep them or rescue them from a state of mortal
sin. Taking human nature as it is, she knows well,
that, left to themselves, they would relapse into
the state of those who are not Catholics, whatever
latent principle of truth and goodness might remain
in them, and whatever consequent hope there might
be of a future revival. They may be full of ability
and energy, they may be men of genius, men of
literature and taste, poets and painters, musicians
and architects ; they may be statesmen or soldiers ;
they may be in professions or in trade; they may
be skilled in the mechanical arts; they may be a
hard-working, money-making community; they
may have great political influence ; they may pour
out a flood of population on every side ; they may
have a talent for colonization; or, on the other
hand, they may be members of a country once
glorious, whose day is passed; where luxury, or
civil discord, or want of mental force, or other
more subtle cause, is the insuperable bar in the
way of any national demonstration; or they may
be half reclaimed from barbarism ; or they may be
a simple rural population ; they may be in the cold
north, or the beautiful south; but, whatever and
wherever they are, the Church knows well, that
those vast masses of population, as viewed in the
individual units of which they are composed, are
in a state of continual lapse from the Centre of
sanctity and love, ever falling under His displeas
ure, and tending to a state of habitual alienation
from Him. Her one work towards these many
16

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
millions is, year after year, day after day, to be
raising them out of the mire, and when they sink
again to raise them again, and so to keep them
afloat, as she best may, on the surface of that
stream, which is carrying them down to eternity.
Of course, through God's mercy, there are num
bers who are exceptions to this statement, who are
living in obedience and peace, or going on to per
fection ; but the word of Christ, " Many are called,
few are chosen," is fulfilled in any extensive field
of operation which the Church is called to super
intend. Her one object, through her ten thousand
organs, by preachers and by confessors, by parish
priests and by religious communities, in missions
and in retreats, at Christmas and at Easter, by fasts
and by feasts, by confraternities and by pilgrim
ages, by devotions and by indulgences, is this un
wearied, ever-patient reconciliation of the soul to
God and obliteration of sin. Thus, in the words of
Scripture, most emphatically, she knows nought
else but " Jesus Christ and Him crucified." It is
her ordinary toil, into which her other labors re
solve themselves, or towards which they are
directed. Does she send out her missionaries?
Does she summon her doctors? Does she enlarge
or diversify her worship? Does she multiply her
religious bodies? It is all to gain souls to Christ.
And if she encourages secular enterprises, studies,
or pursuits, as she does, or the arts of civilization
generally, it is either from their indirect bearing
upon her great object, or from the spontaneous
energy which great ideas exert, and the irresistible
17

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
influence which they exercise, in matters and in
provinces not really their own.
Moreover, as sins are of unequal gravity in
God's judgment, though all of whatever kind are
offensive to Him, and incur their measure of pun
ishment, the Church's great object is to discrimi
nate between sin and sin, and to secure in indi
viduals that renunciation of evil, which is implied
in the idea of a substantial and unfeigned con
version. She has no warrant, and she has no en
couragement, to enforce upon men in general more
than those habits of virtue, the absence of which
would be tantamount to their separation from God ;
and she thinks she has done a great deal, and
exults in her success, does she proceed so far ; and
she bears as she may, what remains still to be done,
in the conviction that, did she attempt more, she
might lose all. There are sins which are simply
incompatible with contrition and absolution under
any circumstances ; there are others which are dis
orders and disfigurements of the soul. She ex
horts men against the second, she directs her
efforts against the first.
Now here at once the Church and the world
part company ; for the world, too, as is necessary,
has its scale of offences as well as the Church;
but, referring them to a contrary object, it clas
sifies them on quite a contrary principle; so that
what is heinous in the world is often regarded
patiently by the Church, and what is horrible and
ruinous in the judgment of the Church may fail to
exclude a man from the best society of the world.
18

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
And, this being so, when the world contemplates
the training of the Church and its result, it cannot,
from the nature of the case, if for no other reason,
avoid thinking very contemptuously of fruits,
which are so different from those which it makes
the standard and token of moral excellence in its
own code of right and wrong. VI
I may say the Church aims at three special
virtues, as reconciling and uniting the soul to its
Maker, — faith, purity, and charity; for two of
which the world cares little or nothing. The
world, on the other hand, puts in the foremost
place, in some states of society, certain heroic quali
ties; in others, certain virtues of a political or
mercantile character. In ruder ages, it is personal
courage, strength of purpose, magnanimity; in
more civilized, honesty, fairness, honor, truth, and
benevolence: — virtues, all of which, of course, the
teaching of the Church comprehends, all of which
she expects in their degree in all her consistent
children, and all of which she exacts in their ful
ness in her saints : but which, after all, most beau
tiful as they are, admit of being the fruit of nature
as well as of grace ; which do not necessarily imply
grace at all ; which do not reach so far as to sanc
tity, or unite the soul by any supernatural process to
the source of supernatural perfection and supernat
ural blessedness. Again, as I have already said, the
Church contemplates virtue and vice in their first
elements, as conceived and existing in thought,
19

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
desire, and will, and holds that the one or the other
may be as complete and mature, without passing
forth from the home of the secret heart, as if it
had ranged forth in profession and in deed all
over the earth. Thus, at first sight, she seems to
ignore bodies politic, and society, and temporal
interests : whereas the world, on the contrary,
talks of religion as being a matter of such private
concern, so personal, so sacred, that it has no
opinion at all about it: it praises public men, if
they are useful to itself, but simply ridicules in
quiry into their motives, thinks it impertinent in
others to attempt it, and out of taste in themselves
to invite it. All public men it considers to be
pretty much the same at bottom ; but what matter
is that to it, if they do its work? It offers high
pay, and it expects faithful service; but as to its
agents, overseers, men of business, operatives,
journeymen, figure-servants, and laborers, what
they are personally, what are their principles and
aims, what their creed, what their conversation;
where they live, how they spend their leisure time,
whither they are going, how they die, — I am
stating a simple matter of fact, I am not here
praising or blaming, I am but contrasting, — I say,
all questions implying the existence of the soul,
are as much beyond the circuit of the world's im
agination, as they are intimately and primarily
present to the apprehension of the Church.
The Church, then, considers the momentary,
fleeting act of the will, in the three subject mat-'
ters I have mentioned, to be capable of guiltiness

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
of the deadliest character, or of the most efficacious
and triumphant merit. Moreover, she holds that
a soul laden with the most enormous offence in
deed as well as thought, a savage tyrant, who de
lighted in cruelty, an habitual adulterer, a mur
derer, a blasphemer, who has scoffed at religion
through a long life, and corrupted every soul which
he could bring within his influence, who has loathed
the Sacred Name, and cursed his Saviour, — that
such a man can, under circumstances, in a moment,
by one thought of the heart, by one true act of
contrition, reconcile himself to Almighty God
(through His secret grace), without Sacrament,
without priest, and be as clean, and fair, and lovely,
as if he had never sinned. Again, she considers
that in a moment also, with eyes shut and arms
folded, a man may cut himself off from the Al
mighty by a deliberate act of the will, and cast
himself into perdition. With the world it is the
reverse; a member of society may go as near the
line of evil, as the world draws it, as he will ; but,
till he has passed it, he is safe. Again, when he
has once transgressed it, recovery is impossible;
let honor of man or woman be sullied, and to re
store its splendor is simply to undo the past ; it is
impossible. Such being the extreme difference between the
Church and the world, both as to the measure and
the scale of moral good and evil, we may be pre
pared for those vast differences in matters of de
tail, which I hardly like to mention, lest they
should be out of keeping with the gravity of the
21

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
subject, as contemplated in its broad principle.
For instance, the Church pronounces the momen
tary wish, if conscious and deliberate, that another
should be struck down dead, or suffer any other
grievous misfortune, as a blacker sin than a pas
sionate, unpremeditated attempt on the life of the
Sovereign. She considers direct, unequivocal
consent, though as quick as thought, to a single
unchaste desire as indefinitely more heinous than
any lie which can possibly be fancied, that is, when
that lie is viewed, of course, in itself, and apart
from its causes, motives, and consequences. Take
a mere beggar-woman, lazy, ragged, and filthy,
and not over-scrupulous of truth — I do not say
she has arrived at perfection — but if she is chaste,
and sober, and cheerful, and goes to her religious
duties (and I am supposing not at all an impos
sible case), she will, in the eyes of the Church,
have a prospect of heaven, which is quite closed
and refused to the State's pattern-man, the just,
the upright, the generous, the honorable, the con
scientious, if he be all this, not from a supernatu
ral power — I do not determine whether this is
likely to be the fact, but I am contrasting views
and principles — not from a supernatural power,
but from mere natural virtue. Polished, delicate-
minded ladies, with little of temptation around
them, and no self-denial to practise, in spite of
their refinement and taste, if they be nothing more,
are objects of less interest to her than many a
poor outcast who sins, repents, and is with diffi
culty kept just within the territory of grace.

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
Again, excess in drinking is one of the world's
most disgraceful offences ; odious it ever is in the
eyes of the Church, but if it does not proceed to
the loss of reason, she thinks it a far less sin than
one deliberate act of detraction, though the matter
of it be truth. And again, not unfrequently does
a priest hear a confession of thefts, which he knows
would sentence the penitent to transportation if
brought into a court of justice, but which he
knows, too, in the judgment of the Church, might
be pardoned on the man's private contrition, with
out any confession at all. Once more, the State
has the guardianship of property, as the Church
is the guardian of the faith : — in the Middle Ages,
it is often objected, the Church put to death for
heresy ; well but, on the other hand, even in recent
times, the State has put to death for forgery, nay,
I suppose, for sheep-stealing. How distinct must
be the measure of crime in Church and in State,
when so heterogeneous is the rule of punishment
in the one and in the other !
My brethren, you may think it impolitic in me
thus candidly to state what may be so strange in
the eyes of the world, — but not so, my dear
brethren, just the contrary. The world already
knows quite enough of our difference of judgment
from it on the whole; it knows that difference
also in its results; but it does not know that it
is based on principle; it taunts the Church with
that difference, as if nothing could be said for
her, — as if it were not, as it is, a mere question of a
balance of evils, — as if the Church had nothing to
23

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
show for herself, were simply ashamed of her evi
dent helplessness, and pleaded guilty to the charge
of her inferiority to the world in the moral effects of
her teaching. The world points to the children of
the Church, and asks if she acknowledges them as
her own. It dreams not that this contrast arises
out of a difference of principle, and that she claims
to act upon a principle higher than the world's.
Principle is always respectable; even a bad man
is more respected, though he may be more hated,
if he owns and justifies his actions, than if he is
wicked by accident; now the Church professes to
judge after the judgment. of the Almighty; and
it cannot be imprudent or impolitical to bring this
out clearly and boldly. His judgment is not as
man's : " I judge not according to the look of
man," He says, " for man seeth those things which
appear, but the Lord beholdeth the heart." The
Church aims at realities, the world at decencies;
she dispenses with a complete work, so she can but
make a thorough one. Provided she can do for
the soul what is necessary, if she can but pull the
brands out of the burning, if she can but extract
the poisonous root which is the death of the soul,
and expel the disease, she is content, though she
leaves in it lesser maladies, little as she sympa
thizes with them. VII
Now, were it to my present purpose to attack
the principles and proceedings of the world, of
course it would be obvious for me to retort upon
24

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
the cold, cruel, selfish system, which this supreme
worship of comfort, decency, and social order
necessarily introduces ; to show you how the many
are sacrificed to the few, the poor to the wealthy,
how an oligarchical monopoly of enjoyment is es
tablished far and wide, and the claims of want,
and pain, and sorrow, and affliction, and guilt, and
misery, are practically forgotten. But I will not
have recourse to the commonplaces of controversy
when I am on the defensive. All I would say to
the world is, — Keep your theories to yourselves,
do not inflict them upon the sons of Adam every
where ; do not measure heaven and earth by views
which are in a great degree insular, and can never
be philosophical and catholic. You do your work,
perhaps, in a more business-like way, compared
with ourselves, but we are immeasurably more
tender and gentle and angelic than you. We come
to poor human nature as the angels of God, and
you as policemen. Look at your poorhouses, hos
pitals, and prisons; how perfect are their exter
nals! what skill and ingenuity appear in their
structure, economy, and administration! they are
as decent, and bright, and calm, as what our Lord
seems to name them, — dead men's sepulchres.
Yes! they have all the world can give — all but
life; all but a heart. Yes! you can hammer up
a coffin, you can plaster a tomb ; you are nature's
undertakers; you cannot build it a home. You
cannot feed it or heal it; it lies, like Lazarus, at
your gate, full of sores. You see it gasping and
panting with privations and penalties; and you
25

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
sing to it, you dance to it, you show it your picture-
books, you let off your fire-works, you open your
menageries. Shallow philosophers! is this mode
of going on so winning and persuasive, that we
should imitate it?
Look at your conduct towards criminals, and
honestly say whether you expect a power which
claims to be divine to turn copyist of you? You
have the power of life and death committed to
you by heaven; and some wretched being is sen
tenced to fall under it for some deed of treachery
and blood. It is a righteous sentence, re-echoed
by a whole people; and you have a feeling that
the criminal himself ought to concur in it, and
sentence himself. There is an universal feeling
that he ought to resign himself to your act, and, as
it were, take part in it; in other words, there is a
sort of instinct among you that he should make
confession, and you are not content without his
doing so. So far the Church goes along with you.
So far, but no farther. To whom is he to confess ?
To me, says the priest, for he has injured the
Almighty. To me, says the world, for he has
injured me. Forgetting that the power to sen
tence is simply from God, and that the sentence,
if just, is God's sentence, the world is peremptory
that no confession shall be made by the criminal
to God, without itself being in the secret. It is
right, doubtless, that that criminal should make
reparation to man as well as to God ; but it is not
right that the world should insist on having pre
cedence of its Maker, or should prescribe that its
26

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
Maker should have no secrets apart from itself,
or that no divine ministration should relieve a
laden breast without its meddling in the act. Yet
the world rules it, that whatever is said to a min
ister of religion in religious confidence is its own
property. It considers that a clergyman who at
tends upon the culprit to be its own servant, and
by its boards of magistrates, and by its literary
organs, it insists on his revealing to its judgment-
seat what was uttered before the judgment-seat of
God. What wonder, then, if such forlorn wretches,
when thus plainly told that the world is their only
god, and knowing that they are quitting the pres
ence of that high potentate for ever, steel them
selves with obduracy, encounter it with defiance,
baffle its curiosity, and inflict on its impatience
such poor revenge as is in its power ? They come
forth into the light, and look up into the face of
day for the last time, and, amid the jests and blas
phemies of myriads, they pass from a world which
they hate into a world which they deny. Small
mercies, indeed, has this world shown them, and
they make no trial of the mercies of another !
VIII
O how contrary is the look, the bearing of the
Catholic Church to these poor outcasts of man
kind! There was a time, when one who denied
his Lord was brought to repentance by a glance ;
and such is the method which His Church teaches
to those nations who acknowledge her authority
and her sway. The civil magistrate, stern of
27

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
necessity in his function, and inexorable in his re
solve, at her bidding, gladly puts on a paternal
countenance, and takes on him an office of mercy
towards the victim of his wrath. He infuses the
ministry of life into the ministry of death; he
afflicts the body for the good of the soul, and con
verts the penalty of human law into an instrument
of everlasting bliss. It is good for human beings
to die as infants, before they have known good or
evil, if they have but received the baptism of the
Church; but next to these, who are the happiest,
who are the safest, for whose departure have we
more cause to rejoice, and be thankful, than for
theirs, who, if they live on, are so likely to relapse
into old habits of sin, but who are taken out of
this miserable world in the flower of their contri
tion, and in the freshness of their preparation, —
just at the very moment when they have perfected
themselves in good dispositions, and from their
heart have put off sin, and have come humbly for
pardon, and have received the grace of absolution,
and have been fed with the bread of Angels, and
thus, amid the prayers of all men, have departed
to their Maker and their Judge ? I say, " the
prayers of all:" for O, the difference, in this re
spect, in the execution of the extreme sentence of
the law, between a Catholic State and another!
We have all heard of the scene of impiety and
profaneness which attends on the execution of a
criminal in England ; so much so, that benevolent
and thoughtful men are perplexed between the
evil of privacy and the outrages which publicity
28

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
occasions. Well, England surpasses Rome in ten
thousand matters of this world, but never would
the Holy City tolerate an enormity which powerful
England cannot hinder. An arch-confraternity
was instituted there at the close of the fifteenth
century, under the invocation of San Giovanni
Decollato, that Holy Baptist, who lost his head by
a king's sentence, though an unjust one; and it
exercises its pious offices towards condemned
criminals even now. When a culprit is to be exe
cuted, the night preceding the fatal day, two priests
of the brotherhood, who sometimes happen to be
Bishops or persons of high authority in the city,
remain with him in prayer, attend him on the
scaffold the next morning, and assist him through
every step of the terrible ceremonial of which he
is the subject. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed
in all the churches all over the city, that the faith
ful may assist a sinner about to make a compulsory
appearance before his Judge. The crowd about
the scaffold is occupied in but one thought, whether
he has shown signs of contrition. Various reports
are in circulation, that he is obdurate, that he has
yielded, that he is obdurate still. The women cry
out that it is impossible ; Jesus and Mary will see
to it ; they will not believe that it is so ; they are
sure that he will submit himself to his God before
he enters into His presence. However, it is per
haps confirmed that the unhappy man is still
wrestling with his pride and hardness of heart;
and though he has that illumination of faith which
a Catholic cannot but possess, yet he cannot bring
29

SOCIAL STATE OF CATHOLIC COUNTRIES
himself to hate and abhor sins which, except in
their awful consequences, are, as far as their enjoy
ment, gone from him for ever. He cannot taste
again the pleasure of revenge or of forbidden in
dulgence, yet he cannot get himself to give it up,
though the world is passing from him. The excite
ment of the crowd is at its height ; an hour passes ;
the suspense is intolerable, when the news is
brought of a change ; that, before the crucifix, in
the solitude of his cell, at length, the — unhappy no
longer — the happy criminal has subdued himself;
has prayed with real self-abasement; has ex
pressed, has felt, a charitable, a tender thought,
towards those he has hated; has resigned himself
lovingly to his destiny; has blessed the hand that
smites him; has supplicated pardon; has con
fessed with all his heart, and placed himself at the
disposal of his Priest) to make such amends as he
can make in his last hour to God and man; has
even desired to submit here to indignity, to pain,
to which he is not sentenced ; has taken on himself
any length of purgatory hereafter, if thereby he
may, through God's mercy, show his sincerity, and
his desire of pardon and of gaining the lowest
place in the kingdom of heaven. The news comes ;
it is communicated through the vast multitude all
at once; and, I have heard from those who have
been present, never shall they forget the instan
taneous shout of joy which burst forth from every
tongue, and formed itself into one concordant act
of thanksgiving, in acknowledgment of the grace
vouchsafed to one so near eternity.
30

AND THE SANCTITY OF THE CHURCH
It is not wonderful then to find the holy men,
who, from time to time, have done the pious office
of preparing such criminals for death, so confident
of their salvation.
" So well convinced was Father Claver of the eternal
happiness of almost all whom he assisted," says this
saintly missionary's biographer, " that, speaking once of
some persons who had in a bad spirit delivered a criminal
into the hands of justice, he said, 'God forgive them;
but they have secured the salvation of this man at the
probable risk of their own.' Most of the criminals con
sidered it a grace to die in the hands of this holy man.
As soon as he spake to them the most savage and in
domitable became gentle as lambs; and, in place of
their ordinary imprecations, nothing was heard but sighs,
and the sound of bloody disciplines, which they took
before leaving the prison for execution."
But I must come to an end. I do not consider,
my brethren, I have said all that might be said in
answer to the difficulty which has come under our
consideration ; nor have I proposed to do so.. Such
an undertaking does not fall within the scope of
these Lectures ; it would be an inquiry into facts.
It is enough if I have suggested to you one thought
which may most materially invalidate the objec
tion. You tell me, that the political and civil state
of Catholic countries is below that of Protestant:
I answer, that, even though you prove the fact,
you have to prove something besides, if it is to be
an argument for your purpose, — viz., that the
standard of civil prosperity and political aggran
dizement is the truest test of grace and the largest
measure of salvation. 3i

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