Was
Our Lady of Guadalupe Wrong?
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
This past
Sunday, Gaudete Sunday, was also the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe,
who is the Patroness of the Americas and of the unborn. As we approach
the days of the "O" antiphons, it is very appropriate to reflect
on the relevance of Our Lady's apparition to Saint Juan Diego to the
Americas today.
Our Lady appeared
to Saint Juan Diego as he was on his way to an offering of Holy Mass.
The only Mass offered in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church at that
time was the Immemorial Mass of Tradition. Our Lady asked Juan Diego
to beseech the local bishop to build a shrine in her honor where the
many millions of those soon to be converted to the true Faith could
worship God in the Mass that begins with a priest reciting the Judica
me at the foot of the steps leading to the altar of sacrifice and
ends with the Gospel of the Incarnation. The miraculous image Our Lady
left on Juan Diego's tilma helped to effect the conversion of over nine
million indigenous peoples of the Americas to the true Faith, almost
person for person the number of people lost to the Church as a result
of the Protestant Revolt in Europe. Our Lady's apparition to Juan Diego
thus helped to expedite the process of the Catholicization of every
single aspect of the culture of Latin America. The very process of establishing
Christendom in Europe that took centuries to realize came about with
remarkable speed in Latin America. There were thriving centers of Catholic
learning and religious life throughout the region by the end of the
Sixteenth Century into the beginning of the Seventeenth Century.
Our Lady is
the Mother of the Word Who became Flesh in her virginal and immaculate
womb by the power of the Holy Ghost. She wants every aspect of every
nation's social life to be centered around the fact of her Divine Son's
Incarnation and His Redemptive Act on the wood of the Holy Cross. She
wants every nation to frankly confess her Divine Son as its one and
only King. She wants every nation on earth to be totally subordinate
to the entirety of the Deposit of Faith her Divine Son entrusted to
Holy Mother Church. And she wants every nation on earth to recognize
her as its Immaculate Queen.
In light of
the dismissive attitude that the apologists of the errors of conciliarism,
such as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, as well as some allegedly traditionally-minded
Catholics have about the necessity of the restoration of the Social
Reign of Christ the King, a very pertinent question needs to be asked:
Was Our Lady of Guadalupe wrong to have brought about the conversion
of so many millions of people to the true Faith? Is complete and total
subordination to the true Faith necessary for personal sanctity and
thus for all social order? Is every aspect of a nation's life meant
to permeated by Catholicism without any exception whatsoever? Was the
Church wrong to have insisted in the past five centuries that the errors
of Modernity, including Protestantism and all forms of naturalism, are
incompatible with the salvation of souls and thus for the right ordering
of men in their social lives?
Some of those
who share Cardinal Ratzinger's enthusiasm for the pluralistic model
that was spawned by the American Founding have dismissed the arguments
made by critics of the Americanist heresy by saying that such critics,
including this writer, are engaging in "special pleading,"
that we are seeking to fit the facts of history to prove our prejudiced
presuppositions about the American experience. That this is not the
case is obvious to all who have the spiritual vision to see. Either
the Popes of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries were right
about their contemporary criticisms of the modern state or they were
wrong. If they were wrong, then their consistent criticism and condemnation
of religious indifferentism was wrong, thus making indifference about
the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity as Man in
Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb and the Deposit of Faith He
entrusted to His true Church a virtue that promotes both civic harmony
and religious liberty. If such indifference, though, is not problematic,
then there is nothing wrong with the spirit of Freemasonry, which contends
that religious indifferentism is indeed a social virtue as denominational
religion "divides" people, who can pursue "civic virtue"
on their own without belief in, access to and cooperation with sanctifying
grace. If the Popes of Tradition are right, the Freemasons are wrong.
If the Popes of Tradition are wrong, then the Freemasons and their conciliarist
allies are correct. There is no other way around this. The principle
of non-contradiction teaches us that two mutually contradictory statements
cannot be true simultaneously.
The Popes
of the Nineteenth Century were not the only ones who were contemporaries
of the events that were in the process of undermining Catholicism in
the United States and elsewhere in the world. A convert to the Catholic
Faith named Orestes Brownson saw the inherent problems of the American
Founding and their effects upon Catholics in the United States as early
as 1845, one year after he had converted to the Faith and fully thirty-three
years before Pope Leo XIII ascended to the Throne of Saint Peter as
the immediate successor of Pope Pius IX. Orestes Brownson saw quite
clearly that false ideas lead to bad results without exception, that
no effort to create a synthetic national regime that is premised upon
indifference to the Incarnation and to the true Faith will result in
anything other than social disaster over the course of time. Orestes
Brownson was not engaging in "special pleading." He was given
the grace from Our Lady to see where false ideas lead: barbarism.
Thus, in hopes
of encouraging all who have access to the channels of mass communication
to defend the primacy of the Catholic Faith rather than to exalt the
enemies of Christ the King, such as Thomas Jefferson, I hereby present
Orestes Brownson's October, 1845 essay, "Catholicity Necessary
to Sustain Popular Liberty."
Catholicity
Necessary to Sustain Popular Liberty
by
Orestes Brownson
By popular
liberty, we mean democracy; by democracy, we mean the democratic form
of government; by the democratic form of government, we mean that form
of government which vests the sovereignty in the people as population,
and which is administered by the people, either in person or by their
delegates. By sustaining popular liberty, we mean, not the introduction
or institution of democracy, but preserving it when and where it is
already introduced, and securing its free, orderly, and wholesome action.
By Catholicity, we mean the Roman Catholic Church, faith, morals, and
worship. The thesis we propose to maintain is, therefore, that without
the Roman Catholic religion it is impossible to preserve a democratic
government, and secure its free, orderly, and wholesome action. Infidelity,
Protestantism, heathenism may institute a democracy, but only Catholicity
can sustain it.
Our own government, in its origin and constitutional form, is not a
democracy, but, if we may use the expression, a limited elective aristocracy.
In its theory, the representative, within the limits prescribed by the
constitution, when once elected, and during the time for which he is
elected, is, in his official action, independent of his constituents,
and not responsible to them for his acts. For this reason, we call the
government an elective aristocracy. But, practically, the government
framed by our fathers no longer exists, save in name. Its original character
has disappeared, or is rapidly disappearing. The Constitution is a dead
letter, except so far as it serves to prescribe the modes of election,
the rule of the majority, the distribution and tenure of offices, and
the union and separation of the functions of government. Since 1828,
it has been becoming in practice, and is now, substantially, a pure
democracy, with no effective constitution but the will of the majority
for the time being. Whether the change has been for the better or the
worse, we need not stop to inquire. The change was inevitable, because
men are more willing to advance themselves by flattering the people
and perverting the constitution, than they are by self-denial to serve
their country. The change has been effected, and there is no return
to the original theory of the government. Any man who should plant himself
on the Constitution, and attempt to arrest the democratic tendency,
- no matter what his character, ability, virtues, services, - would
be crushed and ground to powder. Your Calhouns must give way for your
Polks and Van Burens, your Websters for your Harrisons and Tylers. No
man, who is not prepared to play the demagogue, to stoop to flatter
the people, and, in one direction or another, to exaggerate the democratic
tendency, can receive the nomination for an important office, or have
influence in public affairs. The reign of great men, of distinguished
statesmen and firm patriots, is over, and that of the demagogues has
begun. Your most important offices are hereafter to be filled by third
and fourth-rate men, - men too insignificant to excite strong opposition,
and too flexible in their principles not to be willing to take any direction
the caprices of the mob - or the interests of the wire-pullers of the
mob - may demand. Evil or no evil, such is the fact, and we must conform
to it.
Such being the fact, the question comes up, How are we to sustain popular
liberty, to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome action of our practical
democracy? The question is an important one, and cannot be blinked at
with impunity.
The theory of democracy is, Construct your government and commit it
to the people to be taken care of. Democracy is not properly a government;
but what is called the government is a huge machine contrived to be
wielded by the people as they shall think proper. In relation to it
the people are assumed to be what Almighty God is to the universe, the
first cause, the medial cause, the final cause. It emanates from them;
it is administered by them, and for them; and, moreover, they are to
keep watch and provide for its right administration.
It is a beautiful theory, and would work admirably, if it were not for
one little difficulty, namely, - the people are fallible, both individually
and collectively, and governed by their passions and interest, which
not unfrequently lead them far astray, and produce much mischief. The
government must necessarily follow their will; and whenever that will
happens to be blinded by passion, or misled by ignorance or interest,
the government must inevitably go wrong; and government can never go
wrong without doing injustice. The government may be provided for; the
people may take care of that; but who or what is to take care of people,
and assure us that they will always wield the government so as to promote
justice and equality, or maintain order and the equal rights of all,
of all classes and interests?
Do not answer by referring us to the virtue and intelligence of the
people. We are writing seriously, and have no leisure to enjoy a joke,
even if it be a good one. We have too much principle, we hope, to seek
to humbug and have had too much experience to be humbugged. We are Americans,
American born, American bred, and we love our country, and will, when
called upon, defend it, against any and every enemy, to the best of
our feeble ability; but, though we by no means rate American virtue
and intelligence so low as do those who will abuse us for not rating
it higher, we cannot consent to hoodwink ourselves, or to claim for
our countrymen a degree of virtue and intelligence they do not possess.
We are acquainted with no salutary errors, and are forbidden to seek
even a good end by any but honest means. The virtue and intelligence
of the American people are not sufficient to secure the free, orderly,
and wholesome action of the government; for they do not secure it. The
government commits, every now and then, a sad blunder, and the general
policy it adopts must prove, in the long run, suicidal. It has adopted
a most iniquitous policy, and its most unjust measures are its most
popular measures, such as it would be fatal to any man’s political
success directly and openly to oppose; and we think we hazard nothing
in saying, our free institutions cannot be sustained without an augmentation
of popular virtue and intelligence. We do not say the people are not
capable of a sufficient degree of virtue and intelligence to sustain
a democracy; all we say is, they cannot do it without virtue and intelligence,
nor without a higher degree of virtue and intelligence than they have
as yet attained to. We do not apprehend that many of our countrymen,
and we are sure no one whose own virtue and intelligence entitle his
opinion to any weight, will dispute this. Then the question of the means
of sustaining our democracy resolves itself into the question of augmenting
the virtue and intelligence of the people.
The press makes readers, but does little to make virtuous and intelligent
readers. The newspaper press is, for the most part, under the control
of men of very ordinary abilities, lax principles, and limited acquirements.
It echoes and exaggerates popular errors, and does little or nothing
to create a sound public opinion. Your popular literature caters to
popular taste, passions, prejudices, ignorance, and errors; it is by
no means above the average degree of virtue and intelligence which already
obtains, and can do nothing to create a higher standard of virtue or
tone of thought. On what, then, are we to rely?
"On Education," answer Frances Wright, Abner Kneeland, the
Hon. Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education, and the Educationists
generally. But we must remember that we must have virtue and intelligence.
Virtue without intelligence will only fit the mass to be duped by the
artful and designing; and intelligence without virtue only make one
the abler and more successful villain. Education must be of the right
sort, if it is to answer our purpose; for a bad education is worse than
none. The Mohametans are great sticklers for education, and, if we recollect
aright, it is laid down in the Koran, that every believer must at least
be taught to read; but we do not find their education does much to advance
them in virtue and intelligence. Education, moreover, demands educators,
and educators of the right sort. Where are these to be obtained? Who
is to select them, judge of their qualifications, sustain or dismiss
then? The people? Then you place education in the same category with
democracy. You make the people through their representatives the educators.
The people will select and sustain only such educators as represent
their own virtues, vices, intelligence, prejudices, and errors. Whether
they educate mediately or immediately, they can impart only what they
have and are. Consequently, with them for educators, we can, by means
even of universal education, get no increase of virtue and intelligence
to bear on the government. The people may educate, but where is that
which takes care that they educate in a proper manner? Here is the very
difficulty we began by pointing out. The people take care of the government
and education; but who or what is to take care of the people, who need
taking care of quite as much as either education or government? - for,
rightly considered, neither government nor education has any other legitimate
end than to take care of the people.
We know of but one solution of the difficulty, and that is in RELIGION.
There is no foundation for virtue but in religion, and it is only religion
that can command the degree of popular virtue and intelligence requisite
to insure to popular government the right direction and a wise and just
administration. A people without religion, however successful they may
be in throwing off old institutions, or in introducing new ones, have
no power to secure the free, orderly, and wholesome working of any institutions.
For the people can bring to the support of institutions only the degree
of virtue and intelligence they have; and we need not stop to prove
that an infidel people can have very little either of virtue or intelligence,
since, in this professedly Christian country, this will and must be
conceded us. We shall, therefore, assume, without stopping to defend
our assumption, that religion is the power or influence we need to take
care of the people, and secure the degree of virtue and intelligence
necessary to sustain popular liberty. We say, then, if democracy commits
the government of the people to be taken care of, religion is to take
care that they take proper care of the government, rightly direct and
wisely administer it.
But what religion? It must be a religion which is above the people and
controls them, or it will not answer the purpose. If it depends on the
people, if the people are to take care of it, to say what it shall be,
what it shall teach, what it shall command, what worship or discipline
it shall insist on being observed, we are back in our old difficulty.
The people take care of religion; but who or what is to take care of
the people? We repeat, then, what religion? IT cannot be Protestantism,
in all or any of its forms; for Protestantism assumes as its point of
departure that Almighty God has indeed given us a religion, but has
given it to us not to take care of us, but to be taken care of by us.
It makes religion the ward of the people; assumes it to be sent on earth
a lone and helpless orphan, to be taken in by the people, who are to
serve as its nurse.
We do not pretend that Protestants say this in just so many words; but
this, under the present point of view, is their distinguishing characteristic.
What was the assumption of the Reformer? Was it not that Almighty God
has failed to take care of his Church, that he had suffered it to become
exceedingly corrupt and corrupting, so much as to have become a very
Babylon, and to have ceased to be his Church? Was it not for this reason
that they turned reformers, separated themselves from what had been
the Church, and attempted, with such materials as they could command,
to reconstruct the Church on its primitive foundation, and after the
primitive model? Is not this what they tell us? But if they had believed
the Son of Man came to minister and not to be ministered unto, that
Almighty God had instituted his religion for the spiritual government
of men, and charge himself with the care and maintenance of it, would
they ever have dared to take upon themselves the work of reforming it?
Would they ever have fancied that either religion or the Church could
ever need reforming, or, if so, that it could ever be done by human
agency? Of course not. They would have taken religion as preserved by
the church as the standard, submitted to it as the law, and confined
themselves to the duty of obedience. It is evident, therefore, from
the fact of their assuming to be reformers that they, consciously or
unconsciously, regarded religion as committed to their care, or abandoned
to their protection. They were, at least, its guardians, and were to
govern it, instead of being governed by it.
The first stage of Protestantism was to place religion under the charge
of the civil government. The Church was condemned, among other reasons,
for the control it exercised over princes and nobles, that is, over
the temporal power; and the first effect of Protestantism was to emancipate
the government from this control, or, in other words, to free the government
from the restraints of religion, and to bring religion in subjection
to the temporal authority. The prince, by rejecting the authority of
the Church, won for himself the power to determine the faith of his
subjects, to appoint its teachers, and to remove them whenever they
should teach what he disapproved, or whenever they should cross his
ambition, defeat his oppressive policy, or interfere with his pleasures.
Thus was it and still is it with the Protestant princes in Germany,
with the temporal authority in Denmark, Sweden, England, Russia, - in
this respect also Protestant, - and originally was it the same in this
country. The supreme civil magistrate make himself sovereign pontiff,
and religion and the Church, if disobedient to his will, are to be turned
out of house and home, or dragooned into submission. Now, if we adopt
this view, and subject religion to the civil government, it will not
answer our purpose. We want religion, as we have seen, to control the
people, and through its spiritual governance to cause them to give the
temporal government always a wise and just direction. But, if the government
control the religion, it can exercise no control over the sovereign
people, for they control the government. Through the government the
people take care of religion, but who or what takes care of the people!
This would leave the people ultimate, and we have no security unless
we have something more ultimate than they, something which they cannot
control, but which they must obey.
The second stage in Protestantism is to reject, in matters of religion,
the authority of the temporal government, and to subject religion to
the control of the faithful. This is the full recognition in matters
of religion of the democratic principle. The people determine their
faith and worship, select, sustain, or dismiss their own religious teachers.
They who are to be taught judge him who is to teach, and say whether
he teaches them truth or falsehood, wholesome doctrine or unwholesome.
The patient directs the physician what to prescribe. This is the theory
adopted by Protestants generally in this country. The congregation select
their own teacher, unless it be among the Methodists, and to them the
pastor is responsible. If he teaches to suit them, well and good; if
he crosses none of their wishes, enlarges their numbers, and thus lightens
their taxes and gratifies their pride of sect, also well and good; if
not, he must seek a flock to feed somewhere else.
But this view will no more answer our purpose than the former; for it
places religion under the control of the people, and therefore in the
same category with the government itself. The people take care of religion,
but who takes care of the people?
The third and last stage of Protestantism is Individualism. This leaves
religion entirely to the control of the individual, who selects his
own creed, or makes a creed to suit himself, devises his own worship
and discipline, and submits to no restraints but such as are self-imposed.
This makes a man’s religion the effect of his virtue and intelligence,
and denies it all power to augment or to direct them. So this will not
answer. The individual takes care of his religion, but who or what takes
care of the individual? The state? But who takes care of the state?
The people? But who takes care of the people? Our old difficulty again.
It is evident from these considerations, that Protestantism is not and
cannot be the religion to sustain democracy; because, take it which
stage you will, it, like democracy itself, is subject to the control
of the people, and must command and teach what they say, and of course
must follow, instead of controlling, their passions, interest, and caprices.
Nor do we obtain this conclusion merely by reasoning. It is sustained
by facts. The Protestant religion is everywhere either an expression
of the government or of the people, and must obey either the government
or public opinion. The grand reform, if reform it was, effected by the
Protestant chiefs, consisted in bringing religious questions before
the public, and subjecting faith and worship to the decision of public
opinion, - public on a larger or smaller scale, that is, of the nation,
the province, or the sect. Protestant faith and worship tremble as readily
before the slightest breath of public sentiment, as the aspen leaf before
the gentle zephyr. The faith and discipline of a sect take any and every
direction the public opinion of that sect demand. All is loose, floating,
- is here to-day, is there tomorrow, and, next day, may be nowhere.
The holding of slaves is compatible with Christian character south of
a geographical line, and incompatible north; and Christian morals change
according to the prejudices, interests, or habits of the people, - as
evidenced by the recent divisions in our own country among the Baptists
and Methodists. The Unitarians of Savannah refuse to hear a preacher
accredited by Unitarians of Boston.
The great danger in our country is from the predominance of material
interest. Democracy has a direct tendency to favor inequality and injustice.
The government must obey the people; that is, it must follow the passions
and interests of the people, and of course the stronger passions and
interests. These with us are material, such as pertain solely to this
life and this world. What our people demand of government is, that it
adopt and sustain such measures as tend most directly to facilitate
the acquisition of wealth. It must, then follow the passion for wealth,
and labor especially to promote worldly interests.
But among these worldly interests, some are stronger than others, and
can command the government. These will take possession of the government,
and wield it for their own special advantage. They will make it the
instrument of taxing all the other interest of the country for the special
advancement of themselves. This leads to inequality and injustice, which
are incompatible with the free, orderly, and wholesome working of the
government.
Now, what is wanted is some power to prevent this, to moderate the passion
for wealth, and to inspire the people with such a true and firm-sense
of justice, as will prevent any one interest from struggling to advance
itself at the expense of another. Without this the stronger material
interests predominate, make the government the means of securing their
predominance, and of extending it by the burdens which, through the
government, they are able to impose on the weaker interests of the country.
The framers of our government foresaw this evil, and thought to guard
against it by a written Constitution. But they intrusted the preservation
of the Constitution to the care of the people, which was as wise as
to lock up your culprit in prison and intrust him with the key. The
Constitution, as a restraint on the will of the people or the governing
majority, is already a dead letter. It answers to talk about, to declaim
about, in electioneering speeches, and even as a theme of newspaper
leaders, and political essays in reviews; but its effective power is
a morning vapor after the sun is well up.
Even Mr. Calhoun’s theory of the Constitution, which regards it
not simply as the written instrument, but as the disposition or the
constitution of the people into sovereign states united in a federal
league or compact, for certain purposes which concern all the states
alike, and from which it follows that any measure unequal in its bearing,
or oppressive upon any portion of the confederacy, is ipso facto null
and void, and may be vetoed by the aggrieved state, - this theory, if
true, is yet insufficient; because, 1. It has no application within
the State governments themselves; and because, 2. It does not, as a
matter of fact, arrest what are regarded as the unequal, unjust, and
oppressive measures of the Federal government. South Carolina, in 1833,
forced a compromise, but in 1842, the obnoxious policy was revived,
is pursued now successfully, and there is no State to attempt again
the virtue of State interposition. Not even South Carolina can be brought
to do so again. The meshes of trade and commerce are so spread over
the whole land, the controlling influences of all sections have become
so united and interwoven, by means of banks, other moneyed corporations,
and the credit system, that henceforth State interposition becomes practically
impossible. The constitution is practically abolished, and our government
is virtually, to all intents and purposes, as we have said, a pure democracy,
with nothing to prevent it from obeying the interests which for the
time being can succeed in commanding it. This, as the Hon. Caleb Cushing
would say, is a "fixed fact." There is no restraint on predominating
passions and interests but in religion. This is another "fixed
fact."
Protestantism is insufficient to restrain these, for it does not do
it, and is itself carried away by them. The Protestant sect governs
its religion, instead of being governed by it. If one sect pursues,
by the influence of its chiefs, a policy in opposition to the passions
and interests of its members, or any portion of them, the disaffected,
if a majority, change its policy; if too few or too weak to do that,
they leave it an join some other sect, or form a new sect. If the minister
attempts to do his duty, reproves a practice by which his parishioners
"get gain," or insists on their practicing some real self-denial
not compensated by some self-indulgence, a few leading members will
tell him very gravely, that they hired him to preach and pray for them,
not to interfere with their business concerns and relations; and if
he does not mind his own business, they will no longer need his services.
The minister feels, perhaps, the insult; he would be faithful; but he
looks at his lovely wife, at his little ones. These to be reduced to
poverty, perhaps to beggary, - no, it must not be; one struggle, one
pang, and it is over. He will do the bidding of his masters. A zealous
minister in Boston ventured, one Sunday, to denounce the modern spirit
of trade. The next day, he was waited on by a committee of wealthy merchants
belonging to his parish, who told him he was wrong. The Sunday following,
the meek and humble minister publicly retracted, and made the amende
honorable.
Here, then, is the reason why Protestantism, though it may institute,
cannot sustain popular liberty. It is itself subject to popular control,
and must follow in all things the popular will, passion, interest, ignorance,
prejudice, or caprice. This, in reality, is its boasted virtue, and
we find it commended because under it the people have a voice in its
management. Nay, we ourselves shall be denounced, not for saying Protestantism
subjects religion to popular control, but for intimating that religion
ought not to be so subjected. A terrible cry will be raised against
us. "See, here is Mr. Brownson," it will be said, "he
would bring the people under the control of the Pope of Rome. Just as
we told you. These Papists have no respect for the people. They sneer
at the people, mock at their wisdom and virtue. Here is this unfledged
Papistling, not yet a year old, boldly contending that the control of
their religious faith and worship should be taken from the people, and
that they must believe and do just what the emissaries of Rome are pleased
to command; and all in the name of liberty too." If we only had
room, we would write out and publish what the anti-Catholic press will
say against us, and save the candid, the learned, intellectual, and
patriotic editors the trouble of doing it themselves; and we would do
it with the proper quantity of italics, small capitals, capitals, and
exclamation points. Verily, we think we could do the thing up nearly
as well as the best of them. But we have no room. Yet it is easy to
foresee what they will say. The burden of their accusation will be,
that we labor to withdraw religion from the control of the people, and
to free it form the necessity of following their will; that we seek
to make it the master, and not the slave, of the people. And this is
good proof of our position, that Protestantism cannot govern the people,
- for they govern it, - and therefore that Protestantism is not the
religion wanted; for it is precisely a religion that can and will govern
the people and be their master, that we need.
If Protestantism will not answer the purpose, what religion will? The
Roman Catholic, or none. The Roman Catholic religion assumes, as its
point of departure, that it is instituted not to be taken care of by
the people, but to take care of the people; not to be governed by them,
but to govern them. The word is harsh in democratic ears, we admit;
but it is not the office of religion to say soft or pleasing words.
It must speak the truth even in unwilling ears, and it has few truths
that are not harsh and grating to the worldly mind or the depraved heart.
The people need governing, and must be governed, or nothing but anarchy
and destruction await them. They must have a master. The word must be
spoken, but it is not our word. We have demonstrated its necessity in
showing that we have no security for popular government, unless we have
some security that their passions will be restrained, and their attachments
to worldly interests so moderated that they will never seek, through
the government, to support them at the expense of justice; and this
security we can have only in a religion that is above the people, exempt
from their control, which they cannot command, but must, on peril of
condemnation OBEY. Declaim as you will; quote our expression - THE PEOPLE
MUST HAVE A MASTER, - as you doubtless will; hold it up in glaring capitals,
to excite the unthinking and unreasoning multitude, and to doubly fortify
their prejudices against Catholicity; be mortally scandalized at the
assertion that religion ought to govern the people, and then go to work
and seek to bring it into subjection to your banks or moneyed corporations
through their passions, ignorance, and worldly interests, and in doing
so, prove what candid men, what lovers of truth, what noble defenders
of liberty, and what ardent patriots you are. We care not. You see we
understand you, and, understanding you, we repeat, the religion which
is to answer our purpose must be above the people, and able to COMMAND
them. We know the force of the word, and we mean it. The first lesson
to the child is, obey; the first and last lesson to the people, individually
or collectively is, OBEY; - and there is not obedience where there is
no authority to enjoin it.
The Roman Catholic religion, then, is necessary to sustain popular liberty,
because popular liberty can be sustained only by a religion free from
popular control, above the people, speaking from above and able to command
them, - and such a religion is the Roman Catholic. It acknowledges no
master but God, and depends only on the divine will in respect to what
it shall teach, what it shall ordain, what it shall insist upon as truth,
piety, moral and social virtue. It was made not by the people, but for
them; is administered not by the people, but for them; is accountable
not to the people, but to God. Not dependent on the people, it will
not follow their passions; not subject to their control, it will not
be their accomplice in iniquity; and speaking from God, it will teach
them the truth, and command them to practice justice. To this end the
very constitution of the Church contributes. It is Catholic, universal;
it teaches all nations, and has its center in no one. If it was a mere
national church, like the Anglican, the Russian, the Greek, or as Louis
the Fourteenth in his pride sought to make the Gallican, it would follow
the caprice or interest of that nation, and become a tool of its government
or of its predominating passion. The government, if anti-popular, would
use it to oppress the people, to favor its ambitious projects, or its
unjust and ruinous policy. Under a popular government, it would become
the slave of the people, and could place no restraint on the ruling
interest or on the majority; but would be made to sanction and consolidate
its power. But having its center in no one nation, extending over all,
it becomes independent of all, and in all can speak with the same voice
and in the same tone of authority. This the Church as always understood,
and hence the noble struggles of the many calumniated popes to sustain
the unity, Catholicity, and independence of the ecclesiastical power.
This, too, the temporal powers have always seen and felt, and hence
their readiness, even while professing the Catholic faith, to break
the unity of Catholic authority for, in doing, they could subject the
Church in their own dominions, as did Henry the Eighth, and as does
the emperor of Russia, to themselves.
But we pray our readers to understand us well. We unquestionably assert
the adequacy of Catholicity to sustain popular liberty, on the ground
of its being exempted from popular control and able to govern the people;
and its necessity, on the ground that it is the only religion, which,
in a popular government, is or can be exempted from popular control,
and able to govern the people. We say distinctly, that this is the ground
on which, reasoning as the statesmen, not as the theologian, we assert
the adequacy and necessity of Catholicity; and we object to Protestantism,
in our present argument, solely on the ground that it has no authority
over the people, is subject to them, must follow the direction they
give it, and therefore cannot restrain their passions, or so control
them as to prevent them from abusing their government. This we assert,
distinctly and intentionally, and so plainly, that what we say cannot
be mistaken.
But in what sense do we assert Catholicity to be the master of the people?
Here we demand justice. The authority of Catholicity is spiritual, and
the only sense in which we have here urged or do urge its necessity
is as the means of augmenting the virtue and intelligence of the people.
We demand it as a religious, not as a political power. We began by defining
democracy to be that form of government which vests the sovereignty
in the people. If, then, we recognize the sovereignty of the people
in matters of government, we must recognize their political right to
do what they will. The only restriction on their will we contend for
is a moral restriction; and the master we contend for is not a master
that prevents them from doing politically what they will, but who, but
his moral and spiritual influence, prevents them from willing what they
ought not to will. The only influence on the political or governmental
action of the people which we ask from Catholicity, is that which it
exerts on the mind, the heart, and the conscience; - an influence which
it exerts by enlightening the mind to see the true end of man, the relative
value of all worldly pursuits, by moderating the passions, by weaning
the affections from the world, inflaming the heart with true charity,
and by making each act in all things seriously, honestly, conscientiously.
The people will thus come to see and to will what is equitable and right,
and will give to the government a wise and just direction, and never
use it to effect any unwise or unjust measures. This is the kind of
master we demand for the people, and this is the bugbear of "Romanism"
with which miserable panders to prejudice seek to frighten old women
and children. Is there anything alarming in this? In this sense, we
wish this country to come under the Pope of Rome. As the visible head
of the Church, the spiritual authority which Almighty God has instituted
to teach and govern the nations, we assert his supremacy, and tell our
countrymen that we would have them submit to him. They may flare up
at this as much as they please, and write as many alarming and abusive
editorials as they choose or can find time or space to do, - they will
not move us, or relieve themselves of the obligation Almighty God has
placed them under of obeying the authority of the Catholic Church, Pope
and all.
If we were discussing the question before us as a theologian, we should
assign many other reasons why Catholicity is necessary to sustain popular
liberty. Where the passions are unrestrained, there is license, but
not liberty; the passions are not restrained without divine grace; and
divine grace come ordinarily only through the sacraments of the Church.
But from the point of view we are discussing the question, we are not
at liberty to press this argument, which, in itself, would be conclusive.
The Protestants have foolishly raised the question of the influence
of Catholicity on democracy, and have sought to frighten our countrymen
from embracing it by appealing to their democratic prejudices, or, if
you will, convictions. We have chosen to meet them on this question,
and to prove that democracy without Catholicity cannot be sustained.
Yet in our own minds the question is really unimportant. We have proved
the insufficiency of Protestantism to sustain democracy. What then?
Have we in so doing proved that Protestantism is not the true religion?
Not at all; for we have no infallible evidence that democracy is the
true or even the best form of government. It may be so, and the great
majority of the American people believe it is so; but they may be mistaken,
and Protestantism be true, not withstanding its incompatibility with
republican institutions. So we have proved that Catholicity is necessary
to sustain such institutions. But what then? Have we proved it to be
the true religion? Not at all. For such institutions may themselves
be false and mischievous. Nothing in this way is settled in favor of
one religion or another, because no system of politics can ever constitute
a standard by which to try a religious system. Religion is more ultimate
than politics, and you must conform your politics to your religion,
and not your religion to your politics. You must be the veriest infidels
to deny this.
This conceded, the question the Protestants raise is exceedingly insignificant.
The real question is, Which religion is from God? If it be Protestantism,
they should refuse to subject it to any human test, and should blush
to think of compelling it to conform to any thing human; for when God
speaks, man has nothing to do but to listen and obey. So, having decided
that Catholicity is from God, save in condescension to the weakness
of our Protestant brethren, we must refuse to consider it in its political
bearings. It speaks from God, and its speech overrides every other speech,
its authority every other authority. It is the sovereign of sovereigns.
He who could question this, admitting it to be from God, has yet to
obtain his first religious conception, and to take his first lesson
in religious liberty; for we are to hear God, rather than hearken unto
men. But we have met the Protestants on their own ground, because, though
in doing so we surrendered the vantage-ground we might occupy. We know
the strength of Catholicity and the weakness of Protestantism. We know
what Protestantism has done for liberty, and what it can do. It can
take off restraints, and introduce license, but it can do nothing to
sustain true liberty. Catholicity depends on no form of government;
it leaves the people to adopt such forms of government as they please,
because under any or all forms of government it can fulfill its mission
of training up souls for heaven; and the eternal salvation of one single
soul is worth more than, is a good far outweighing, the most perfect
civil liberty, nay, all the worldly prosperity and enjoyment ever obtained
or to be obtained by the whole human race.
It is, after all, in this fact, which Catholicity constantly brings
to our minds, and impresses upon our hearts, that consists its chief
power, aside from the grace of the sacraments, to sustain popular liberty.
The danger to that liberty comes from love of the world, - the ambition
for power or place, the greediness of gain or distinction. It comes
from lawless passions, from inordinate love of the goods of time and
sense. Catholicity, by showing us the vanity of all these, by pointing
us to the eternal reward that awaits the just, moderates this inordinate
love, these lawless passions, and checks the rivalries and struggles
in which popular liberty receives her death blow. Once learn that all
these things are vanity, that even civil liberty itself is no great
good, that even bodily slavery is no great evil, that the one thing
needful is a mind and heart conformed to the will of God, and you have
a disposition which will sustain a democracy wherever introduced, though
doubtless a disposition that would not lead you to introduce it where
it is not.
But this last is no objection, for the revolutionary spirit is as fatal
to democracy as to any other form of government. It is the spirit of
insubordination and of disorder. It is opposed to all fixed rule, to
all permanent order. It loosens every thing, and sets all afloat. Where
all is floating, where nothing is fixed, where nothing can be counted
on to be to-morrow what it is to-day, there is no liberty, no solid
good. The universal restlessness of Protestant nations, the universal
disposition to change, the constant movements of populations, so much
admired by shortsighted philosophers, are a sad spectacle to the sober-minded
Christian, who would, as far as possible, find in all things a type
of that eternal fixedness and repose he looks forward to as the blessed
reward of his trials and labors here. Catholicity comes here to our
relief. All else may change, but it changes not. All else may pass away,
but it remains where and what it was, a type of the immobility and immutability
of the eternal God.
An
Afterword
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
Orestes Brownson
wrote this powerful essay at a time when many, although certainly not
all, American bishops and priests were exalting the ethos of American
"freedom" that permitted the Faith to flourish unfettered
by the interference of the State. Brownson knew that the mere toleration
of the true Faith was insufficient for the maintenance of authentic
social order and that such an ethos was undermining and would continue
undermine the Catholicity of baptized Catholics.
Indeed, the
Freemasons who wrote the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 viewed
Catholicism as the enemy of "civil liberty":
When
the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have
sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole
nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their
consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign
states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every
interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood,
both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of
power, and the usual instruments of tyrants. . . .
In
this expectation they have been cruelly disappointed, inasmuch as the
Mexican nation has acquiesced in the late changes made in the government
by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who having overturned the constitution
of his country, now offers us the cruel alternative, either to abandon
our homes, acquired by so many privations, or submit to the most intolerable
of all tyranny, the combined despotism of the sword and the priesthood.
The exaltation
of "civil liberty" and the Masonic hatred of the priesthood
Our Lord instituted at the Last Supper are part and parcel of an ethos
that treats the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity
as Man in Our Lady's virginal and immaculate womb and the Deposit of
Faith entrusted to the true Church as matters that have no bearing on
social order at all. Orestes Brownson knew that it would not be too
long before Catholics themselves would come to view their Church as
an interloper in matters of a nation's social life, preferring to find
some "common ground" (conservatism, liberalism, capitalism,
socialism) to interact with fellow citizens without proclaiming the
Holy Name of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and His Holy Church as
the only means to combat social evils that have their origin in fallen
human nature and can only be ameliorated if men cooperate with the graces
made available to them by the working of the Holy Ghost in the sacraments
administered by the true Church. Brownson was not engaging in "special
pleading." Orestes Brownson was correctly assessing the state of
contemporary events and predicting what would happen in the future if
the Catholic Faith was not recognized as the only basis of personal
sanctity and hence of all social order.
It might be
politically incorrect to discuss the Social Reign of Christ the King
in "conservative" venues. However, there is no salvation in
conservatism. The evils of secularism, which are nothing other than
the rotten fruit of the all of the forces of Modernity, including Protestantism,
cannot be fought by having recourse to any philosophy or ideology that
is indifferent the Social Reign of Christ the King. The evils of secularism
can only be fought by having recourse to Catholicism. Nothing else will
suffice. Protestantism can never be a basis for personal sanctity or
social order.
Ultimately,
we must recognize that we need to give public recognition not only to
Christ the King but to His Most Blessed Mother, to whose Immaculate
Heart has been entrusted the cause of world peace. How ironic it is
that we have a Pope who is unwilling to consecrate Russia to her Immaculate
Heart with all of the world's bishops so as to fulfill her Fatima requests
while some of those who are, quite rightly, critics of Pope John Paul
II's ecumenism never once mention the necessity of honoring her publicly
as is her due. We must promote total consecration to Our Lady's Sorrowful
and Immaculate Heart in all of our public utterances, never shrinking
from returning to the woman who made possible our salvation fitting
expressions of love and filial devotion no matter what it might cost
us in terms of human respect in the not-so-enlightened circles of conservative
power brokers.
The Americas
belong to Our Lady of Guadalupe. The United States of America is part
of the Americas. Isn't it about time that we recognize that we can make
no progress in this vale of tears unless we rely upon her in our own
personal lives and are thus willing to forsake all of the honors of
the world by inviting all who listen to us or who read our words to
surrender themselves totally to her patronage and by renewing their
total consecration to her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart. She wants
Catholicism, including the entirety of the Church's Social Teaching,
to reign supreme in the United States of America. Do you?
Our Lady of
Guadalupe, pray for us.
