Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866]

[Stone]

The Liberal Illusion
by Louis Veuillot

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. 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. 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.”