neither fish nor flesh, and who subordinated the rights of God and the interests of religion to the exigencies of state policy. These are, whether nominally Catholics or not, now the men in power, and whom even Catholics intrust with the direction of public affairs. We must use all the lawful means we possess to displace them, and to put in their place only men who will subordinate state policy to the law of the Lord. We expressed last July,* some doubts in regard to the expediency of the call of the energetic and outspoken bishop of Cleveland, upon Catholics to unite and vote only for such men as will defend the rights of Catholics, especially in regard to education. We have some doubts if the doubts we expressed were well founded, and are at present disposed to retract them, and to support the policy recommended by the venerable bishop. The late elections have shown us that political parties are likely to be again in our country very nearly equally balanced, or at least the fanatical anti-Catholic, or Methodistical party, headed by President Grant and his Methodist friends and masters, has received a check, and is by no means in vulnerable. The recent election in this city shows what an honest, consistent, and capable political leader, a thorough-going Catholic, bold, energetic, yet prudent, can effect. The same man may do more yet.

But we are now speaking chiefly in reference to Catholics in the old European nations, where they are, as in France, Spain, Italy, Austria, and southern Germany, by far the numerical majority. Yet in none of these countries do we find a really Catholic statesman worthy of the name in power. Count Franz de Champagny wrote, in the Correspondant, some years back, "in Alsace and Lorraine, the two most Catholic departments of France, there is scarcely a Catholic in office, national, departmental, or communal. The offices are nearly all filled by Protestants and Jews." It was pretty much the same throughout all France. Official France has never been thoroughly Catholic since the accession of Henry IV., we might say since Louis XII., surnamed the Father of his People, and, as we said years ago, if there is Protestantism in Europe to-day, the chief responsibility rests on official France, which has never since the consolidation of the Capetian monarchy, served the church any further than it could make or hope to make her subservient to the schemes

*The Church above the State, Brownson's Works, Vol. XIII, page 438.

of political aggrandizement. Even Louis IX. was canonized, not for his royal virtues or his devotion to the Holy See, but for his virtues as a man, and his heroism in adversity, chiefly as a prisoner in Tunis. Perhaps, if we might say it with reverence, also as a stroke of policy, to some extent at least, of Boniface VIII., who was persecuted by his grandson, the really infamous Philip the Fair. That the pope is infallible, in the canonization of saints, is not, we believe, de fide. The Franks, after the half-pagan Charles Martel, were devoted to the Holy See, but we have yet to learn any disinterested support to the Holy Father by official France, since the accession of the Capetian race of kings.

In later times French Catholics have rarely insisted on true, thorough-going Catholics to represent them. If they have voted for Catholics, it has usually been for politicians who subordinate the church to the state. Over 1,700,000 out of 1,800,000 inhabitants of Paris profess to be Catholics; yet they made or submitted to the commune, and have not a single conservative in the national assembly. Even Count de Rémusat was not radical enough for the Parisian Catholic voters. In our own country rarely can a Catholic who subordinates his politics to his religion secure the votes even of his Catholic brethren, and when a Catholic is elected to an office, state, national, or municipal, it is usually one who cares little for his religion, and knows less of its real principles-a liberal Catholic, or one who holds that his "religion has nothing to do with his politics." In fact, Catholics with whom their religion is the governing principle of their lives are never office seekers, never demagogues, and seldom popular even with Catholic electors. We touch here the real discouraging fact, the fact that makes us so doubtful of the restoration of Catholic society in Europe or elsewhere. There is even among Catholics a fearful lack of Catholic principle, and it is to this lack of Catholic principle that is due the ascendency gained by the enemies of God and society. Unless this lack is supplied, and we Catholics become Catholics, heart and soul, there is no hope for the world, however many churches we may build, or pilgrimages we may make. We may have to submit to anti-Catholic governments, but never should we, by our own act, create or aid in creating them.

VOL. XVIII-36

THE OUTLOOK AT HOME AND ABROAD.*

[From Brownson's Quarterly Review for October, 1874.]

WE have one grave objection to this book, that it is made up, in part, by omissions and additions by Lord R. Montagu, from an Italian work by the eminent Jesuit writer, Fr. Franco, and is therefore, properly speaking, neither Fr. Franco's nor Lord R. Montagu's work. We have, moreover, no marks given us by which we can distinguish what belongs to the reverend father from what belongs to the noble lord. The book, as we have it before us, may be much improved by his lordship from what it was as Fr. Franco left it, and we have no doubt that it is so; but we hold the productions of an author sacred, and can tolerate no changes in their text, even for the better, without his knowledge and express consent.

But passing over this objection, which is not an objection to the merits of the book, we may say we like it very much, and regard its publication as timely and highly important, even for English-speaking Catholics, among whom we have found the popular errors it points out, concerning the relation of religion and politics, hardly less rife than among nonCatholics; and the greater part of which have been noted from time to time and refuted in the Review. In our own community, the total separation of church and state, or of religion and politics, is a "fixed idea." But this idea is not the same in all minds. The infidel understands, by the separation of religion and politics, the complete independence of the secular order, or the denial in the political order of the sovereignty of God, while many Christians only mean by it the exclusion of the clergy from all practical intermeddling in political affairs. These last are not wholly wrong; for, as a matter of fact, priests just from the seminary, or devoted to the spiritual duties of their calling, are less fitted to manage the politics of a country than intelligent laymen. Shut out in great measure from intercourse with the world during their seminarian life, they have little chance to inform themselves of the practical bearings in the secular order of this or that political measure, and in general are obliged to rely on the lay members, usually the dema

*On some Popular Errors concerning Politics and Religion, by the Right Honorable LORD ROBERT MONTAGU, M. P., London: 1874.

562

gogues, of their parish or congregation. In the middle ages and later, when the leading statesmen were ecclesiastics, the interests of religion were not more consulted or better protected than if the statesmen had been seculars. Churchmen, become statesmen, are very apt to leave the church behind them and consult only secular interests, as we see in the case of Cardinal Beaufort, Cardinal Wolsey, Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal Mazarin, Cardinal Dubois. Even the great Cardinal Ximenes did not a little to ruin Spain politically, by his centralism. Statesmen, whether churchmen or laymen, are obliged to follow the political tendencies, the public opinion, of their age and nation.

The true mission of the clergy is, not to enter the arena of politics and to act the part of politicians, but to proclaim and enforce, with all the spiritual power they can wield, the great principles of the divine government or the kingdom of God on earth as applicable to secular affairs, and which are the law alike for individuals and nations, for rulers and ruled; and to form and sustain a public opinion that compels statesmen to conform their secular measures, their state policy, to the law of God as declared and applied by the church, and which is universal and inflexible. Understood in this latter sense, the separation of religion and politics means political atheism, or the denial of the sovereignty of God. In the former sense, the separation is, perhaps, desirable. In the infidel sense, as understood by European democrats and revolutionists, by the Cavours, the Bismarcks, the German kaiser, and Anglican statesmen generally, the separation is simply the denial of the divine sovereignty in society and the state, which is in principle and practical tendency downright atheism. We recognize a marked difference between clerocracy and theocracy. The latter we defend, the former we have never defended; for while the clergy have, in union with their chief, authority to declare the law, the spiritual or moral principles to which the secular government must conform, they have, in the practical administration of secular affairs, only the authority of seculars, are,not necessarily superior, and not seldom in fact inferior to them, because not trained to practical statesmanship. It is the neglect to make this distinction that causes even some well-meaning people, who have not the least sympathy with political atheism, to demand the separation of religion and politics. Their error is not in their intendment, but in their expression, which says more than they mean, and even what they do not mean.

As far as we have examined it, the book before us is an admirable résumé and exposure of popular errors concerning politics and religion. But we do not count the popular demand for civil liberty, or even for republicanism or democracy, by lawful means, as a popular error. Religion has no necessary association with monarchy; and Louis Veuillot's ideal, that of absolutism under a pious king, as a literary friend in the Tyrol expresses it, is not intrinsically more Catholic than Gambetta's ideal, the sovereignty of the people. The error of the European movement party is not in demanding popular government, but in demanding it by unlawful means and on false principles, as well as in supposing it can be sustained without religion, or by an atheistic or an heretical people. The spiritual order is and must be absolute, for it represents the divine sovereignty; but the absolute sovereignty of God, with all deference to La Civiltà Cattolica and L'Univers, negatives, not affirms, the absolutism of the king or the state, and therefore blundering Protestants maintain that the church is incompatible with civil liberty or popular government, because she asserts the divine sovereignty. They have not learned that the prime mover must itself be immovable. They, like the common herd of revolutionists, seek to establish freedom by destroying the very means and conditions of its existence. Catholic absolutists agree perfectly with them; only, while the revolutionists seek to destroy the absolute authority of God so as to be able to assert popular liberty, the Catholic absolutists deny popular liberty so as to be able to assert the absolute sovereignty of God. Both agree in this, that the divine sovereignty and popular liberty negative each the other, and L'Univers and The Methodist play into each other's hands. Publicists, whether Catholic or non-Catholic, are far from being infallible, and journalists sometimes write dogmatically on subjects of which they are profoundly ignorant.

The pope has on several occasions severely censured socalled liberal Catholics, especially in France; yet, in no instance that we have seen, has he done so because they demand popular government, but solely because they seek to carry their liberalism into the church, that is, into the divine government and limit the divine sovereignty by the pretended rights of man. As if the creature could have any rights against the Creator, or man any rights against God! We have never heard that the pope has condemned the Ameri