Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

questions of Christian morality any more than on questions of Christian dogma. Both belong to the spiritual order, and therefore fall directly under the supervision of the Church. In brief, as Garcia Moreno used to say, the Christian State must be the right arm of the Church. But how can it be the right arm of the Church if the Church is represented only by an ever-increasing number of warring sects? How can it be the guardian of public morality, if the highest ecclesiastical courts return contradictory judgments as to what is moral or immoral? The civil authorities are puzzled where to draw the line, and, despite their best intentions, they run the risk of practically favoring immorality and irreligion. Thus it happens that, wherever the State does not recognize the authoritative decisions of the Catholic Church, the laws affecting public morals are becoming daily more and more relaxed. There may now and then be restraining causes which will temporarily stay the progress of the evil, but the State, as such, is utterly helpless. Separated from the Church, it has no objective standard or criterion of Christian morality, and, therefore, it cannot efficaciously enforce morality. The wider the breach between the secular and the spiritual, the more rapid will naturally be the decline of public morality and, therefore, of public peace and happiHence it is that, in many lands, there goes up from every side the wail of the Latin poet:

ness.

Sævior armis

Luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem."

Pius IX. was right, therefore, when, speaking of Catholic civil society, he condemned the following proposition: "In our age it is no longer expedient to maintain the Catholic religion as the only State religion, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship." It is scarcely necessary to remark that the word "State religion,” as here used by the Holy Father, points to a real union of Church and State in the Catholic sense, and not to a mere semblance of union, such as is still kept up in certain countries in which the State has rejected not only the authority of the Catholic Church, but Christianity itself. Yet, may not some advantages accrue to religion and to society from a purely external union between the ecclesiastical and the civil power, from diplomatic relations between their respective representatives, from concordats by means of which a modus vivendi is agreed upon, in brief, from the accidentals of union when the essentials are wanting? Many American Catholics, who judge other lands by our own, will answer emphatically: "No, there can be no advantage in such a sham union. It simply comes to this, that, for the sake of a miserable allowance, paid

by the State out of the ecclesiastical property which it has robbed, the Church is kept in perpetual bondage. The sooner she shakes off her shackles, the better it will be for her. The Holy See will then be free to promote the most worthy persons to ecclesiastical dignities; the clergy, dependent upon the faithful, instead of an infidel government, will labor zealously among them and for them; the laity, in their turn, will take an interest in Church affairs, because they have a share in them, and all will appreciate their religion the more, because it costs them something. Let Catholics abroad learn a lesson from us, and very soon religion will revive and flourish among them."

This reasoning is certainly very specious and, at first sight, appears convincing, but it proceeds on the assumption that the conditions elsewhere are the same as among us, and that what is possible here is also possible there. Now, nothing could be further from the truth. Here the faithful have long been accustomed to give generously to the Church; there, on the contrary, they have been supported by the Church. Here even the common people can easily lay by a little of their earnings; there the masses are starving for want of the necessaries of life. Here the Church is mostly composed of those whose ancestors for generations had to fight for their faith; there the Catholics have not yet learned to defend their rights. Here there is an inherited love of conservatism; there any wild theory, broached by some daring leader, carries away the crowd. Here there is a vigorous public opinion which, as a rule, makes for righteousness; there the fatherly interest of the Sovereign Pontiff seems at times to be almost the only safeguard of religion and Christian civilization.

Whether the diplomatic intervention of the Holy See will suffice for any length of time to restrain the forces of lawlessness and impiety within their present bounds, God only knows. The indications are that, in several countries, the usurpers of popular rights, who have foisted their rule upon the nation, are bent upon bringing about a complete rupture with the Church. Should they succeed in their attempt, there is no foretelling what persecutions may burst upon those unhappy lands. For human perversity has reached its climax.

The Vicar of Christ knows this full well and does his utmost to protect his flock from the ravening wolves. If he is forbearing and goes to the very limits of concession and conciliation, it is not for the sake of earthly gain, but for the sake of immortal souls which are in jeopardy. The seeming union between the Catholic Church and the infidel State, kept up by the Holy See, is meant to prevent a real union of Church and State of the Protestant type-that is, a subjection of the Church to the State. For there is no disguising the fact that

the more union of Church and State in the Catholic sense diminishes, the more union in the Protestant sense increases. "A free Church in a free State" is a figment or an imposture of infidel politicians, intended to deceive the unwary Christian. The Church and State are not like two forces moving in parallel lines without ever crossing each other's paths. They rather resemble two planets revolving in their respective orbits, but often coming within the sphere of mutual attraction. They are constantly and necessarily acting and reacting on each other. The only question is whether the spiritual shall preponderate over the material or the material over the spiritual; whether the State shall be the willing auxiliary of the Church or the Church the unwilling slave of the State.

It is not the Pope only who advocates perfect union of Church and State. The bitterest enemies of the Church are quite as pronounced as he upon the subject, only they wish to bring it about in a different manner and for a different purpose. Not to mention the Tsar of Russia, in whose hands the schismatical State-Church is nothing but a powerful political engine, it is well known that Bismarck's day-dream was the establishment of a strong StateChurch, of a great national Church, which should unify the various portions of the new empire under the "Kaiser" as pope and the Prince-Chancellor as high camerlengo. What particular set of doctrines was to be taught as of faith divine, whether that of the conservative Lutheran Church or that of the handful of apostates from the ranks of Rome, styled Old Catholics, was a secondary consideration. The main point was that everything should redound to the glory of fatherland. The cardinal principle of the national religion was to be statolatry-that is, adoration of the State, of the great and worshipful Prussian empire and of its tutelary genius, Prince Von Bismarck. "Allah is God and Mahomet is his prophet."

Whether a perfect union between Church and State, in the Catholic sense, will ever again be established, whether a full reconciliation of the secular with the spiritual will ever be effected, it is vain to inquire. "This much at least is quite certain," wrote a learned contributor to the Dublin Review years age, "that they can never come to a sincere agreement unless one or the other of the parties suffer a change of principles and becomes what Scripture calls a new creation.' The governments must submit to a baptism, or the Church, by proving unfaithful to God, must relinquish her office of teaching the truth, and, as a necessary sequel, must perish altogether. For the religion of atheism has hitherto not assumed a tangible shape. Only a complete revolution in thought and feeling can give peace to the world. Such changes we see little reason to anticipate as yet; the dawnings of

hope that we can trace in the sky are very faint; nor would we altogether trust them. It is more consonant with the tone of present literature and with social habits and tendencies to hold that a long conflict is still to be fought, and that troubles are likely to thicken in the course of the next few years. But here at all events is a master-key to the problems that so confuse our public life, if we have the skill to apply it." R. J. M.

IF

HYPOTHETICS.

F man never conceived ideas other than those forced upon him by experience, it would be difficult to understand the benefit of possessing an intellect at all. Susceptible merely of impressions from without, he would gradually accumulate a knowledge of the present and the past; but every striving after future progress would be a plunge into the dark, and any real development resulting from the effort would be the product, not of calculation, but of chance.

All there is of advancement, of civilization, all that makes human history worthy of the race, is the outcome of that form of anticipation which we call hypothesis. Without a succession of hypotheses, science would be at a standstill, literature would lose half its treasures, and even the interest of the daily press would begin to fail. We should want a new name for a world consisting solely of facts, and for a race unable to think or act outside the confines of the actual.

Hypotheses are the dolls and Noah's Ark of grown-up mankind. No observant mind can fail to recognize this. Prophecy, even as a mere exercise of imagination, lifts us above the monotony of dull present facts. Let us only imagine how things may go on in the future, and the history of times to come becomes more possible than the history of the past. Hypothesis does not claim to be prophecy, but it possesses even a greater charm.. Whole generations of boys, and men too, will be delighted with Jules Verne, because he excels in the production of a novel world by the skilful use of a hypothesis. It has become a favorite mode both of advocating and refuting socialism, to assume its universal acceptance, and picture the state of the world in a hundred years to

come. These are delightful trivialities, amusing and not useless; they serve to pass an idle hour, and may end in giving point and interest to an aimless life.

But when it comes to serious work, the use of hypothesis calls for a treatise, and the value of its product for a censorship. In Mark Twain's modernized fable of the fox and crow, the nineteenth century bird, wiser than its ancestor, firmly clutches the cheese with its claw before attempting to sing a note. Yet even in this wise, modern world we still see mouths opened to announce some revolutionizing discovery, and dropping in the act the hypothetical "if" on which the truth of that discovery depends. So long as the cheese is there not a sound can be uttered; swallow it, digest it, turn it into solid substantiality and strength, then sing your song at will. So long as the "if" is in the premise, no true find has been made. Work the "if" into a truth, and we will not wait to be revolutionized by your discoveries; we will revolutionize ourselves.

Yet, even as necessity is the mother of invention, so hypothesis is the preceptor, the tutor, the go-cart and leading strings of discovery. Necessity says you must do something. Hypothesis tells you how to set about it. Hypothesis gives no truth to its products, but it anticipates the unknown and the desirable, colors them with probability, gives goal, direction and incentive to the search. No man will begin explorations till he has some notion what he is about. He must have something definite to look for, or some definite place to look in, and in either case some consideration to make search worth his while. haystack is not so hopeless after all. looking for, and where to look for it. inkling that there is a needle there, and he must be badly in want of one before the task will be worth his while. Offer a reward of £1000 for every needle found in that situation, and, putting aside fraud, I fancy not a few needy souls would be found hanging round the farm-yards of the country, making furtive pokes into the hayricks whenever they thought themselves unseen.

To look for a needle in a The man knows what he is But he must first have an

We leave out of count discoveries made by chance. Those that come from laborious investigation need a definite starting-point and a definite direction. The starting-point must be an unsolved problem-a question asked, but not answered, or not satisfactorily answered. It must be a question worth a solution, one that the world is interested in, or will be interested in, when it hears of it. The world is interested in the question whether Mars is inhabited, whether there are new gases to be found, whether the validity of human knowledge can be rendered impregnable to doubt. Here are three types: the first supplies a definite object and a definite

« PredošláPokračovať »