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The LIBERAL ILLUSION - (1866)
By
LOUIS VEUILLOT ( 1813 - 1883)
Published by Angelus Press 2006 AD.
MAIN TOPICS: I. Problem is Real > Liberal Catholic : Chapters 1 – 4
> Appealing : Chapters 5 - 7
II. Remedies > Kingship of Christ: Chapters 8 – 10
> Savior: Chapters 11 – 12
III. Their Arguments > Liberty is from God: Chapters 13 – 16
> Keep up with world: Chapters 17 – 22
> Let’s compromise : Chapters 23 - 28
> Evil works: Chapters 29 - 31
> 1789 returns as foundation: Chapters 32 - 34
IV. To conclude > The gist of this topic: > Revolutionary Chapters 35 - 36
> To whom shall we go? Chapters 37 – 38
THE LIBERAL ILLUSION
By
LOUIS VEUILLOT
Biographical Intro and Translator's Preface are on the PDF only.( 20 pgs.)
Excerpts:
CHAPTER I
SMACKING of heresy . . . Some time ago I had occasion to plumb the
truth and depth of this expression, while listening to a lengthy
discourse by a man as upright as one could wish, devout, busy with
good works, learned, enthusiastic, full of beautiful illusions, but full,
alas! also of himself.
He had styled himself a “liberal” Catholic.
Asked to explain the difference between a liberal Catholic and a
Catholic pure and simple, who believes and practices what the Church
teaches, he replied: “There is no difference!” Nevertheless, he
intimated that the Catholic pure and simple is an unenlightened
Catholic. When it was objected that then, from his point of view as a
liberal Catholic, the Catholic Church herself must be unenlightened, he
met the objection by rushing into certain finical distinctions and
confusions between the Church and the Roman Curia. Apropos of briefs
— Latin letters and encyclicals published in these latter days — the
expression Curia Romana came glibly on his tongue as something right
to the point for clearing up the difficulty. However, nothing clear
resulted from it.
Urged to say a word in explanation of what he meant by
unenlightened, he began to digress on human liberty, on the changes
that have taken place in the world, on periods of transition, on the
abuses and disadvantages of repression, on the danger of enjoying
privileges and the advisability of relinquishing them. . . . In this flow of
verbiage, we could recognize various shreds and tatters of the
revolutionary doctrines that have been wrangled over or, rather, bandied about since 1830.
1
They originated with Lamennais and lasted up to the time of Proudhon. But what struck us most forcibly was the insistence with which our liberal Catholic characterized us as intolerant Catholics. Thereupon we stopped him. Forgetting, this time, about the
“Roman Curia,” he admitted that what he disliked about the Church was her intolerance. “She has always,” said he, “interfered too much with the human mind. Upon the principle of intolerance, she set up an even more oppressive secular power. This power served the Church herself more faithfully than it served the world. Catholic governments
intervened to impose the faith; this gave rise to the violent measures that have revolted the human conscience and plunged it into unbelief.
The Church is perishing by reason of the unlawful support she has seen
fit to accept from the State. The time has come for her to change her
attitude. The thing for the Church to do is to renounce all power of her
own to coerce conscience and to deny such power to governments. No
more union of Church and State: let the Church have nothing to do with
governments, and let governments have nothing to do with religions, let
them no longer meddle in each other’s affairs! The individual may
profess whatever religion he likes, according to his own personal views;
as a citizen of the State, he has no particular religion. The State
recognizes all religions, it assures them all of equal protection, it
guarantees to each of them equal liberty, this being the regime of
tolerance; and it behooves us to pronounce the latter good, excellent,
salutary, to preserve it at all costs, to spread it perseveringly. One may
say that this regime is of Divine right: God himself has established it by
creating man free; He puts it into practice by making His sun to shine
alike on the good and the wicked. As for those who disregard the truth,
God will have His day of justice, which man has no right to anticipate.
“Each religious denomination, free in a free State, will induct its own
proselytes, guide its own faithful, excommunicate its own dissenters;
the State will take no account of these matters, it will excommunicate
nobody and will never itself be excommunicated. The civil law will
recognize no such thing as an ecclesiastical immunity, religious
prohibition, or religious obligation; church edifices shall pay taxes on
their doors and windows, the theological student shall do military
service, the bishop shall serve on the jury and in the National Guard,
the priest may marry if he will, be divorced if he will, and re-marry if he
will. Neither, on the other hand, will there be disabilities or prohibitions
of a civil nature any more than there will be disqualifications or
immunities of any other sort. Every religion may preach, publish its
books, ring its bells and bury its dead according to its own fancy, and
the ministers of religion may be all that any other citizen is eligible to be.
2
Nothing, so far as the State is concerned, will stand in the way of a
bishop’s commanding his Company in the National Guard, keeping
shop, or conducting a business; neither will anything stand in the way
of his Church’s, or a Council’s or the Pope’s right to depose him from his
ecclesiastical office. The State takes cognizance of nothing else than the
facts of public order.”
CHAPTER II
Our liberal Catholic grew enthusiastic in unfolding these marvels. He
contended that no exception could be taken to his stand; that reason,
faith and the spirit of the times alike spoke in his behalf. As regards the
spirit of the times, nobody contested his assertion. When it came to
reason and faith, however, he was not let off without objections, but he
shrugged his shoulders and was never at a loss for an answer. It is true
that outrageous statements and outrageous contradictions cost him no
qualms whatever. He always started off on the same foot, protesting
that he was a Catholic, a child of the Church, an obedient child; but at
the same time a man of the world, a member of the human race arrived
now at maturity and of an age to govern itself. To the arguments taken
from history he replied that mankind, in its present state of maturity,
constituted an altogether new world, in the face of which the history of
the past proved absolutely nothing. To the words of the Fathers of the
Church he sometimes opposed other words of theirs, at other times he
said that the Fathers spoke for their own times and that we must think
and act for our times. Confronted with texts from Scripture, he would
either tear out of their context seemingly contrary texts, or devise an
interpretation calculated to support his own opinion, or, finally, he
would say that the texts in question applied only to the Jews and their
little theocracy. Nor was he embarrassed to any greater degree by the
dogmatic bulls of the “Roman Curia”: the Bull Unam Sanctam17 of
Boniface VIII caused him to smile; it had been withdrawn, he claimed,
or else revised. We pointed out that the Popes had inserted it into the
Corpus Juris Canonici and that it has always remained there. He
answered: “It is out of date and the world has changed since then!” The
Bull In Cœna Domini and all subsequent bulls he found equally out of
_____________________
17 “Urged by Faith, we are obliged to believe and to hold that the Church is one, holy,
Catholic, and also Apostolic. We firmly believe in her, and we confess absolutely that
outside of her there is neither salvation nor the remission of sins . . . Furthermore, we
declare, say, define and pronounce, that it is wholly necessary for the salvation of every
human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
3
date — they were mere disciplinary formulas, he said, made for their
times, but having no reason for existence to-day. The French Revolution
had buried these antiquated regulations along with the old world which
they formerly oppressed. Repression had been abolished; the man of today was capable of liberty and wanted no other law!
“This new order,” he went on to say, “which so disconcerts your
timidity, is for all that the very one that will save the Church and the
only one that can save her. Besides, the human race is up in arms to
impose this order, there is nothing for it but to submit, and this has
already been done. Imagine anyone daring to resist this triumphant
force! Who would even dream of doing so? Intolerant Catholics, you are
more absolute than God the Father who created man for liberty; more
Christian than God the Son who does not wish His law to be established
otherwise than by way of liberty. On this question, you are now more
Catholic than the Pope18; for the Pope, by approving of modern
constitutions — all of which are inspired and permeated by the spirit of
liberty — has given them his blessing. I say that the Pope, the Vicar of
Jesus Christ, has approved of these constitutions, because he has done
just that in permitting you to take the oath of allegiance to them, to
obey them and to defend them. Now, liberty for all religions and the
atheism of the State are part and parcel of said constitutions. You have
to overlook that point, and you do overlook it — of that there can be no
doubt.
“For the rest, why do you persist in your opposition? Your resistance
is vain; your regrets are not only senseless, they are positively criminal.
They cause the Church to be hated and they are the source of much
embarrassment to us liberal Catholics, your saviors, in that they cause
our sincerity to be suspected. Instead of drawing down on yourselves
certain and probably terrible retribution, run to the arms of Liberty,
welcome her, embrace her, love her. She will bestow upon you more
than you can ever repay. The Faith stagnates under the yoke of a
protecting authority: obliged to defend itself, it will reawaken; the heat
of controversy will rekindle its spark of life. What may we not expect the
Church to undertake, once she is free to take up anything? How can she
fail to appeal to the hearts of the people when they see her forsaken by
the mighty ones of the world — deserted by the powers that be and
forced to live exclusively by her own resources, her own genius, her own
virtues? Amid the confusion of doctrines and the corruption of morals,
she will stand out solitary — unique in her purity and unique in her affirmation of good. She will be the last refuge, the impregnable rampart of morality, of the family, of religion, of liberty!”
__________________
18 Pius IX.
4
CHAPTER III
Everything has its limits, and so the breath of our orator gave out at
last. As he had interested us, if not by the novelty of his doctrines, at
least by his frankness in expressing them, we had allowed him to talk on
without interruption. Obliged to refill his lungs with air, he interrupted
himself. Someone took advantage of the lull to point out the emptiness
of his maxims, the incoherence of his reasoning, the groundlessness of
his hopes. He listened with the air of a man who is less intent on
weighing what is said to him than on finding a way to dispute it.
I must confess that what his opponent said, though sound in reason
and full of good sense, did little to reassure me. Unquestionably, he
made some telling points that were unanswerable, and there was none
among those present who did not heartily agree that he was right. But in
spirit I enlarged the audience, so as to take in the general public, and
instantly there came upon me the sad realization of the utter
helplessness of reason in matters like the present.
For on questions such as these it is the multitude, swayed and
determined by sentiment alone, that passes final judgment. Reason is a
weight it cannot bear. The multitude obeys its passions, it loves
destruction; it applauds whenever it surmises that something is to be
torn down. And what can compare with the Church as a thing to tear
down! Herein lies the secret of the success of heresies — all of them
absurd, all of them refuted by unanswerable reasons, yet all of them
triumphant over reason for a certain period of time, which has seldom
been of short duration.
Weakened by sin, humanity is naturally inclined to error, and an
inclination to error is an inclination to death, or rather error is itself
death. This fact alone, evident on every side, proves to the hilt that the
civil power itself is under obligation to acknowledge the truth and to
defend it with the might that society places in its hands. Only on that
condition can society live; it has never so much as undertaken to live on
any other terms. No sage of paganism has ever set up as ideal head of a
State a type of ruler who was not the armed and resolute defender of
truth and justice. Jethro gave this counsel to Moses: “And provide out
of all the people able men, such as fear God, in whom there is truth, and
that hate avarice, and appoint of them rulers of thousands, and of
hundreds.” 19 Cicero, at the other end of the ancient world, writes: “A
State cannot exist any more than a home, unless the good are rewarded and the wicked punished.” 20
_________________
19 Exodus, 18: 21.
20 On the Nature of the Gods. 21 Osee, 13:11.
6
This duty to uphold justice, and by consequence to acknowledge the truth, is of the very essence of government, irrespective of all constitutions and all political forms. God
menacing the rebellious people says to them: “I will give thee a king in
my wrath, and will take him away in my indignation.” 21 All of Scripture
is full of this light. But of what avail is Divine reason and human reason,
when ignorance is in control! From the thick of the multitude there
emanates some sort of fog that obscures the mental vision of even the
more intelligent, and you meet any number of intellectuals who will
never more see clearly except by the light of incendiary fires already
broken out. When one studies this phenomenon, it appears so strange
and terrifying that one may well recognize in it something of the divine.
The divine wrath blazes forth, it triumphs, it punishes the long
contempt of truth.
CHAPTER IV
The liberal had recovered his breath, he resumed his discourse. It
was plain to see that what he had heard had made no impression on
him, if indeed he had heard it at all. He added lots of other words to
those he had already spoken in great profusion; but he said nothing
new. It was all a hotch-potch of historical arguments against history, of
biblical arguments against the Bible, of patristic arguments against
history, Bible, Fathers and even against common sense. He showed the
same disdain, I ought rather to say the same repugnance, for the bulls
of the Sovereign Pontiffs, he lost himself in the same declamations and
the same prophecies. He rehashed the same cant about the world being
new, humanity emancipated, the Church asleep but soon to wake up
and rejuvenate her creed. The dead past, the radiant future, liberty,
love, democracy, humanity were interspersed here and there like the
false brilliants that the ladies nowadays scatter through their equally
false tresses. Nothing was made more clear than the first time he said it.
He became aware of this eventually, and told us that we were separating
ourselves from the world and from the living Church, too, which would
presently repudiate us; he all but anathematized us, and left us, finally,
filled with consternation at his folly.
Everyone expressed his regret and advanced certain arguments
against the extravagances he had uttered. For my part, I too shared the
21. Osee, 13:11.
7
regret of the others, to see so fine a man embedded in so great an error.
But since that, after all, was a fact, I was not sorry to have witnessed the
spectacle and learned from it a lesson.
Up till then I had not seen the liberal Catholic except as lost in the
crowd of traditional and integral Catholics, that is to say, “intolerant”
Catholics. I had only known the official thesis, which is never complete
and which varies with every individual, presenting personal
peculiarities that his party may disavow. This enthusiast contrived to
give me the esoteric lore along with the exoteric thesis. From then on I
understood the liberal Catholic through and through. I knew by heart
his sophisms, his illusions, his fixations, his tactics. And alas! nothing of
it all was new to me. The liberal Catholic is neither Catholic nor liberal.
By that I mean — without any intention of questioning his sincerity —
that he has no more the true notion of liberty than he has the true
notion of the Church. Liberal Catholic though he fain would be, he bears
all the ear-marks of a better-known character — a type only too familiar
in the history of the Church. Everything about him betokens the
SECTARY: that is his real name.
CHAPTER V
This foe is not one to be despised, even though he be equipped with
nothing more formidable than chimeras. There are some chimeras that
reason may not safely attack single-handed; for it would be sure to be
defeated, not by the chimeras, but by the complicity of human souls.
Human souls are sick, and sick with a terrible disease: they are tired
of the truth and afraid of it! In souls that are still Christian this disease
manifests itself in a lack of horror for heresy, in a chronic state of
complacency towards error, in a certain fascination for snares, often in
a shameful eagerness to let oneself be caught. It is not an entirely
modern ailment, for it is rooted in the very heart of man. “I love to be
caught,” exclaims St. Augustine. Father Faber speaks of it as the
characteristic political physiognomy of our time. The liberal siren
conceals her poisonous locks, shows her rosy face, and holds the cross
in her hand. She easily lures victims to the brink of the abyss; she
seduces the eyes, the reason, the heart. Unless the spirit of obedience
guards us, we are taken captive. We must be eternally vigilant, in order
to remain the same, in order not to become suddenly different.
The siren’s song evokes dangerous echoes. Not a few of the so-called
liberal maxims are specious and more than embarrassing for whoever
fails to meet them with flat contradictions. Now, the Faith alone provides us with these victoriously flat contradictions.
8
There is nothing so perilous as shuffling on the matter of words. Treason in words will
soon compass the ruin of principles in a secretly tempted soul. Let us
not forget that heresy excels in pampering all weaknesses and in turning
to account all lusts. Liberal Catholicism is a very convenient garment to
wear: it makes a perfect court robe, academic robe, robe of glory; it
lends the colors of pride without transgressing the counsels of
prudence; it has entree to the Church and it is welcome in all palaces
and even in all taprooms.
Great advantages surely, and all to be had at what seems to be quite a
low price. Only a few liberal words to be accepted, only a few
“intolerant” words to be foresworn — this is all that is required; even
less than that, a hurrah for that fellow, a boo for somebody else — the
liberal church exacts no other profession of faith. But once a man
pronounces the sacramental words, he is already far on the way. This
simple shifting of words quickly brings about an enormous shifting of
ideas. Along comes a skillful propagandist who knows just how to throw
a veil over the nudities of a conscience already hankering to deceive
itself, and the liberal thesis triumphs. What is true is found to be false,
and vice versa. One can henceforth tolerate and even repeat outrageous
statements. One no longer experiences any difficulty in admitting that
from a century back everything has radically changed, not only on Earth
but even in Heaven; that there is a new humanity on Earth, a new God
in Heaven. Sure mark of heresy! For by implication, at least, if not in so
many words, every heresy has proclaimed this blasphemy. Let us pause
here for a moment......
Chapter XX
What force? Ah! — it will not be the force of barbarism or of brutality.
The force that will be lost to the world is the force by which it has
pleased God to conquer the world, and the world up to now is still
conquered by it. God triumphs through a small number of faithful; this
small number, the little flock, to whom He said: “Fear not!”; this small
number He has called the salt of the earth — If the salt lose its savor,
wherewith shall it be salted?
O prophetic wisdom of the word divine! the grain of sand is God’s
sentinel upon the strand and says to the Ocean: No further! That grain
of sand is the strength of mountains and the fertility of plains.
We turn towards the Crucified of Jerusalem, towards the Crucified of
Rome, to His truth forsaken and betrayed; we say to Him: I believe
Thee, I adore Thee, I want to be trampled under foot like Thee, turned
into an object of derision like Thee; I want to die with Thee! . . . We say
that, and the world is conquered.
In no other way will it ever be conquered, in no other way will we
ever be able to despoil it of its weapons, to the end of transfiguring
them and sanctifying them in ourselves and in their employment to
block every way of blasphemy and to level every obstacle interposed
between the little ones of this world and everlasting truth.
For it is necessary that every man should know and pronounce these
words, this Credo which alone can redeem the world, this “Thy kingdom
come” which implores eternal peace.
CHAPTER XXI
The first great word of liberty that was ever pronounced, the first
great act of liberty that mankind ever saw done, was when those two
poor Jews, Peter and John, proclaimed the duty of obeying God rather
than men, and went on teaching what error and persecution, under the
masks of justice and prudence, would have liked to suppress.31 Whoever
follows their example is free, free from false judges, free from false
thinkers; he enters into the impregnable citadel; his thought, set free
_____________
31 Acts, 4:19-20.
25
from cringing terrors, is subtracted from the empire of death; it
provides a refuge from slavery for all whom it is able to persuade.
But there are two things to be noted.
In the first place, this act of liberty which the Apostles made towards
the powers of Earth is at the same time a great homage of submission
towards God, and they were so strong against the world only because
they were obedient to God.
In a discourse held at Malines,32 an eloquent discourse, greatly
celebrated among the Liberal Catholics, liberty of conscience was traced
back to this first and famous non possumus, it was said to have been
created and promulgated then. But, quite the contrary, according to the
remark of an English publicist,33 it was that day, it was by that very non
possumus, that the human conscience recognized and accepted the curb
of an unchangeable law. It was not a principle of liberal liberty to which
St. Peter gave utterance: he proclaimed the imperishable, irrevocable
duty imposed by God who made it a matter of obligation to preach His
Revelation. He did not announce to the world the liberal emancipation
of conscience: on the contrary, he put upon conscience the glorious
burden of giving testimony to the truth; he did not emancipate men
from God. Saint Peter could, on God’s behalf, demand of the pagans
liberty for the Christians; he did not give nor did he dream of giving the
Christians the license to put error on the same footing as truth, with the
understanding that they were one day to treat both as equals, or that
truth should ever come to acknowledge error as supreme by divine right
in such and such a domain, provided truth on its part were left supreme
or tolerated in some other domain. For how could such a humiliated
and hobbled truth reply effectively to the countless sophisms of error?
In the second place, the Church alone has the mission to teach this
truth that sets free, this unique truth, and she brings conviction of it
only to souls that are full of Jesus Christ.
Wherever Jesus Christ is unknown, man obeys man and obeys him
absolutely. Wherever the knowledge of Jesus Christ is obliterated, truth
declines, liberty goes into eclipse, the old tyranny comes back and
retrieves its former frontiers.
Topic: The Liberal Illusion, by L. Veuillot. Text and PDF (Read 157 times)