Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

was devoutly believed by every old lady and every Sunday-school Miss, who came within the influence of a Calvinistic pulpit. No sooner, however, was it discovered, that, with the progress of our religion, our institutions for education were rapidly spreading over the land, than the tune was on a sudden changed, a note of alarm was awakened, and the public was loudly warned against our insidious attempts to monopolize education. Hence the darkly conceived projects to blacken these institutions by means of such veracious witnesses as Rebecca Reid, Maria Monk, and the band of amiable divines who went security for their virtue.

These efforts were followed by the establishment of that Protestant Association, which having its centre in a city before remarkable for its peaceful condition, was to extend its branches into every town, village and hamlet however remote. Got up, as it was, with the avowed object of hostility to the Catholic religion, its emissaries spared no pains to excite and madden their followers into open persecution. The simple, the just demand of the Catholics, that in the public schools, for the support of which they were taxed, their children might be permitted to use the Catholic version of the Holy Scriptures, where the Scriptures were to be used, was falsely interpreted into an effort on their part to exclude the Scriptures from those schools. Again, and again were our pretensions explained and justified. Again and again were we calumniated; and those sticklers for Liberty of Conscience were careful enough to allow the calumny to reach those upon whose prejudices they were operating.

The result is before us. It is written in characters of blood. It is such as all good men must deplore. It is such as to teach us, that whenever we hear of Liberty of Conscience, from the lips of actors in the tragedy, we should look upon it as a word of derision. We have seen such Liberty of Conscience as has ever been allowed by the disciples of John Calvin, whenever power was in their hands, from the days of Servetus up to this moment.

BERNARD.

From the Dublin Review.

THE RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF FRANCE.

1. L'Universitè Catholique. Tomes x. xi. xii. Paris: 1841-2. L'Union Catholique, Journal Religieux et Politique. Paris: 1842. 3. Ueber den dermaligen Zustand der Religiosen Institute in Frankreich. [On the Present State of Religious Institutes in France. An Essay in the German journal the Catholic.] Spires: 1841-2.

4. Sion, eine Religiose Zeitschrift. Augsburg: 1840-1. [Zion, a Religious Periodical. 1840-1.]

5. Le Christ devant le Siècle. Par M. Roselly de Lorgues. Paris: 1839. Cinquième édition.

6 Ueber den Zustand der Katholischen Theologie und Litteratur in Frankreich. [An Essay on the State of Catholic Theology and Literature in France.] In Der Katholik, May, 1843.

In the great catastrophe, which, towards the close of the eighteenth century subverted the French monarchy, it is singular to observe, how every class composing it, paid each in its turn the penalty of Divine justice. The crown, which had long, and more particularly since the reign of Louis XIV, usurped so many rights of the other orders of the state, found at last to its cost how slender was the foundation whereon the structure of absolute power had been raised; and the various encroachments on the privileges of the clergy, the nobility, and the commons, perpetrated by the ambition, the craftiness, or the misguided levity of some of his predecessors, was expiated on the scaffold by the most virtuous of princes. The nobility, which for a century, by the licentious conduct of many of its members, and by the encouragement others have given to an impious philosophy, had spread corruption among the inferior ranks of society, was now, in exile, in imprisonment, and on the guillotine, doomed to pay the forfeit to God's offended justice. The clergy, many of whose members had by their relaxed and worldly conduct disedified the people; others of whom had been the ardent apostles of Jansenism; and very many of whom had by dangerous doctrines weakened the ties of connection which bound the Church of France to the Holy See, was now also, in the awful persecution that overtook it, bitterly to atone for past offences, and to find the principle of future regeneration. The literati, the academicians, and the lawyers, the chief promoters and most strenuous supporters of this irreligious and anti-social Revolution, fell successively by each other's hand in that bloody arena, where guilt sat in judgment upon guilt. Lastly, the people, that, seduced by those destructive doctrines, had sought its felicity in the subversion of all religious and political power-in the levelling of all social, moral, and intellectual superiority, was now, in proscriptions-in wholesale massacres-in famine-in pestilence-in the horrors of civil conflict-in the protracted misery, hardships, and sufferings of twenty-five years of foreign warfare, to feel the chastening hand of an outraged God.

Our limits will not permit us, as we had first intended, to trace even a rapid historical sketch of the Restoration.

The great problem of the Restoration was to reconstruct a social edifice, harmoniously to combine the new with the ancient order of things, and while it religiously respected the legal interests that had grown up under the Revolution, to discountenance and reprobate the moral and political doctrines of that Revolution. Its great problem was to aid, as far as human power can aid, the return of minds from infidelity to religion-to impart freedom and dignity to the Church, and to foster and promote Christian art, science and literature.

How that problem was solved, it is not our business here to enquire. But ere we pronounce a judgment on this matter, let us bear in mind the countless difficulties that beset those, whom Divine Providence had charged with that lofty mission. Although, during this whole period, the religious regeneration remained so incomplete, and the political restoration may on the whole be considered a decided failure, (and this is not surprising when we reflect, that during more than one half of this period the men and the doctrines of the Revolution exerted full sway,) yet in this epoch, stormy as it was, were sown the seeds of a better futurity. Here the Church, rising from her ruins, first displayed those energies, which she has since never ceased to exhibit; here arose the mighty spirits, that dethroned infidelity; and here the attempt was made to restore the long-lost type of the old Christian temperate monarchy; and vicious, misguided, nay revolutionary as was the form, wherein that attempt was made, it is one that will exercise a permanent, and ultimately, we trust, a beneficial influence on the future destinies of France.

In the present article, it shall be our endeavour to give a sketch of the religious and social condition of France since the Revolution of 1830. Our information is derived from the testimony of most respectable French writers, and foreign travellers; while a long residence in that country, prior to the last Revolution, has afforded us no inconsiderable insight into the state of its religious, literary, and political parties.

We shall commence with an account of the persecution the Church of France had to endure in the stormy days of 1830 and 1831-then describe the gradual progress of religious regeneration in many classes of French society; next glance at the state of Catholic literature; and conclude with observations on the political condition and prospects of the country.

In the work that stands in the fifth place at the head of our article, "Le Christ devant le siècle," and which in a condensed form is a most able refutation of the historical and physical objections of unbelief against the Christian religion, we find the following vivid description of the evils, that after the political tempest of 1830, befel the Church.

*

This work, in the course of eight years, has gone through six editions, and it is said to be the only religious book the author of which has received a decoration from the government of Louis Philippe.

1. "Death is vociferated, says M. Roselly de Lorgues, against the princes of the Church: the asylum of indigence and grief, the hospital de la pitiè receives as a mendicant His Grace the archbishop of Paris, whose life is sought after.

"The archbishop of Besancon and the archbishop of Rheims are compelled to take flight; the bishop of Chartres seeks for shelter under a foreign roof; the bishop of Chalons conceals himself in the hospital; the bishops of Perpignan and Marseilles escape death only by quitting their sees with the utmost precipitation.

"At Saint-Sauvant, the curate is brutally torn from the altar, while celebrating mass; at Villeneuve, he is cast into prison; at Bourbon-Vendée the vicar is stoned in his bed; at Matha, he is beaten with sticks. In every department, the like acts of violence are repeated. In a single diocese, sixteen curates; in another, forty, are in imminent danger of death, and are cast out of their presbyteries.

"Religious antipathy is envenomed by political animosity. From persons the hatred extends to edifices. The church of Blois is violated; the houses of St. Esprit, St. Lazare, Mount Valerian; the seminaries of Perpignan, Metz, Nancy, Pont-á-Mousson, Verdun are gutted. At Strasburg, at Cahors, Nancy, Autun, Narbonne, Saintes, Chartes, Dijon, &c., miscreants throw down the sign of our redemption.

"According to the localities, the outrages vary. At Blois, at Niort, the crucifix carried away, is dragged like that of a malefactor, to the Hotel de Ville. At Ferté-sous-Jarre, it is torn from the church amid public hootingsit is sawed and trampled under foot. At Sarcelles the image of Christ is broken upon the cross; at Beaune, after having been outraged, it is burned; while at Montargis it is sunk in the river.

"In some cities, at Poitiers, Toulon, Riom, Nimes, Toulouse, &c., authority proceeds officially to the work of sacrilege. In other places, the miscreants seem to dread the light of day. At Bourges, Trevox, Rhodez, Grenoble, the night is chosen for these execrable sacrileges. At Carpentras, at Noyon, the native workmen refusing their aid, foreign unbelievers must be called in, or, as at Besancon, the military force employed.

"The municipal authorities arrogantly presume to usurp ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Here a major breaks open the doors of a church; there he commands the curate at what hour he shall say mass; elsewhere he causes an office of his own devising to be sung by his agents-patriotic psalms, mixed up with sanguinary versicles. At Bern, the son of the mayor reads in the sanctuary the collection of administrative acts, and prevents the catechetical instruction taken place. At Poilly, (in Yonne,) the National Guard takes the church for its arsenal, and suppresses vespers. In the great cities, especially, the breath of impiety blows up the flame of popular hatred.

"Calumny is emblazoned on the walls of the capital; the most filthy writings are put in circulation; the least disgusting are those entitled, the turpitudes of priests."-pp. 64-7.

Whilst the church, under the sanction, or at least connivance, of the authorities, was thus cruelly outraged, some of her unworthy ministers, like Chatel and his compeers, were profaning her liturgy with the most sacrilegious mummeries: the sect of St. Simonians, with this extravagant Pantheism, and its anarchical doctrines, was perverting the minds of a large portion of the French youth; and the apostate muse of Victor Hugo was polluting the theatre with the most cynical outrages against virtue. A still more illustrious poet, who had however considered Christianity too exclusively from a mere æsthetic point of view (M. de la Martine,) falls from the faith, and prostitutes to the service of a voluptuous Pantheism a noble muse, that had once been devoted to the most exalted functions. In the meantime, M. Fourier lays down principles for the formation and guidance of an atrocious and impious society, like that of Owen's Socialists-a society which even to this day exerts no inconsiderable influence in France. M. Gustave Drouineau endeavours to patch up a new sort of Christianity, adapted, as he thinks to the exigencies of the age; while many of the electics and the doctrinaries, mostly editors of a former Parisian journal, The Globe, affecting to lament the retrograde spirit of the Catholic Church, predict her speedy down fall.

While impiety is thus sharpening her tongue against the Lord, an accident suddenly enkindles the irreligious fury of the Parisian populace. A mass celebrated in the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, for the repose of the soul of an illustrious prince who fell by the dagger of an assassin, furnishes the pretext for a new revolt. In a few hours this ancient and venerable church is violated, profaned, dispoiled, and dismantled-other parish churches of the metropolis are assailed; the populace, goaded on to madness, reduces to a wreck the already defaced palace of the archbishop, and, amid imprecations of blood, hunts even under the tomb of his mother for the life of the prelate. The sacred books, the sacredotal vestments, crucifixes (some of exquisite workmanship,) are burned or thrown into the Seine. While the crosses are floating down the stream, Infidelity wags her head and exclaims, "Lo! Christianity passes away, like those crosses."

But a trial still severer was reserved for the Church of France. An illustrious writer, the most able and eloquent apologists of religion that she had produced since Bossuet, after having originally with pure intentions vainly endeavoured to engraft on Catholicism revolutionary principles, despising the salutary warnings of the successsor of Peter, threw off at last the yoke of Christ, and fell into an apostacy, which, by its suddenness as well as depth, is perhaps unparalleled in the whole history of the human mind. Oh! verily, it was in this moment that the Church of France drank the chalice of tribulation, even to its uttermost dregs.

What now will become of this poor afflicted Church, persecuted as she is, like her divine Master, by the princes of the people, insulted and outraged by the populace, and betrayed by her own disciples? Oh! slow and foolish of

« PredošláPokračovať »