Liberal Catholicism.

WE had lately to complain of the very vague and indiscriminate use which has been made by certain writers in this country of the epithet "Ultramontane," and to point out that it had frequently been applied almost simply as an abusive expletive, by no means uncommonly fastened upon opinions and parties to which in its proper controversial sense it did not belong. What was then said of the term Ultramontanism may almost be repeated of the term Liberal Catholicism. This term is certainly thrown about somewhat at random and promiscuously, it has been applied by different persons to opinions which are by no means identical, and it would not always be easy for those who use it to define its precise meaning. With some persons it is about as great a bugbear as Ultramontanism to others, and by these it is made to bear the weight of all the evils of our day; it is more hateful to them than heresy or infidelity itself, to which they can be decently courteous, while Liberal Catholicism stirs their bile and makes them wild and abusive. All the severe language on the part of authority, that can by any straining of signification be brought to bear upon it, is supposed by them to have been aimed at it as a matter of course. We cannot, however, continue the parallel by saying that Liberal Catholicism, if rightly understood, is without danger, or that it involves no consequences from which most of its adherents, if they were more clear-sighted, would shrink with fear and aversion. But it may well be worth while to point out what it really means, as far as it has any definite meaning, what are the principles upon which it is based, what also is the relation in which it stands to the vital doctrines of Catholicism and to the truths which form the foundation and the security of

VOL. XI. AUGUST, 1869.

I

Christian society, and what has been the method pursued by the best Catholic writers in meeting its dangers.

If we may begin by a similitude, we are inclined to compare Liberal Catholicism to the, sometimes, considerable surges which rock the vessels riding in security within the shelter of a land-locked harbour, while a violent storm rages without, fraught with destruction to the rash or unfortunate mariners who are exposed to its full fury on the open sea. It is the echo within the walls of the Church-drowned, it may be, in the sonorous roll of the music on which her worship soars to Heaven-of the clamours of an angry populace outside, hounded on to her destruction, without knowing what they are at, by the crafty agents of Satan. Liberal Catholicism, in short, is the result of the partial, temporary, and unconscious adoption, within the pale of the Church, of principles and maxims which are in reality not Catholic, though their opposition to Catholicism is concealed from the eyes of those who are influenced by them. At certain times, and under certain conditions of society, these principles are more mischievous than at others; and in our time, the bad principles with which the form of opinion of which we speak is more or less distantly connected have acquired a fatal prominence and threaten to be terribly influential. These are days, therefore, in which it is of the highest importance that opinions of this kind should be unmasked, that their tendencies should be plainly pointed out, and that those who are affected by them should be won back by persuasion and conviction from the dangerous position to which they have unwittingly advanced. We can see neither justice nor policy in treating them as rebels and

outcasts.

There are two ways of arriving at a safe conclusion as to the chief religious and social dangers of our time. One way is the direct investigation and philosophical study of the social phenomena around us, and of the movements in thought and popular impulse which reveal themselves either in the general tone of literature or society, or in those sudden outbursts of violent action which seem to proceed from the inner depths of nations, as the lava-stream and

the fiery shower break out from the heart of some great volcano. It requires the historian's eye and the historian's calm leisure to estimate with accuracy and patience the phenomena of our own day; and to most Catholics-we may almost say, without hesitation, to most candid and thoughtful Christians-the second way will seem both easier and safer, that is, to read the relative importance and the moral or religious character of the movements all around us by means of the light thrown upon them by the action of the Church, which never grows feeble or dimsighted, which is always young and always old, and which can discern with unerring instinct the wants and dangers of every successive age because she has lived through all ages and has the key of the future as well as the power of interpreting the past. But whichever of these two ways we may choose to adopt in our search as to the tendencies of our own century, we shall certainly come to one and the same conclusion. Philosophical reflection will find its own reasonings confirmed and sanctioned by the voice of authority. The great danger of our day is the all-invading spirit of Naturalism, and the consequent limitation or denial of the supernatural order. Naturalism infects the views of our time as to religion, as to society, as to family and civil life, as to domestic relations, and as to individual practice. The course of the three last centuries has carried it on from one important position to another. It was introduced into Christendom by the Reformers, as a principle useful for their own immediate purpose, but it was very soon to be turned against the ill-cemented fabric which they proposed to leave behind them in the place of the Catholic religion. It conquered a legal position in modern Europe by the issue of the Thirty Years' War. In the last century Rousseau and Voltaire dressed it up as a philosophy, made it the fashion of the most empty-headed society that ever professed to be intellectual, and imposed it as a law upon the literature of their own generation and the next. Then it aimed at the throne of politics, and was borne to the summit of power amid the howlings and the bloodshed of the great French Revolution. Since that time it has become the principle of Governments, though the Catholic

reaction has gained upon it in other fields, and its maxims, even in these, infect many a mind which has no more earnest desire than to be in perfect harmony with the teachings of revelation and the Christian principles on which alone human society can rest in safety, and they have influenced some of the distinguished men of our day, whose services to the Catholic cause and whose true devotion to the Church ignorance and malevolence alone can dispute. The single fault of these men is that they do not see the link which connects what appear to them to be certain indifferent points of detail with great principles of good or of evil. They have a true and loyal devotion to the great work of Christianity in the world, the Kingdom of our Lord, the exaltation of human society by means of the Church to the level of the supernatural order, whose end and scope is the possession of God hereafter, but they do not see how this or that detail of the Christian system of society is an essential part of the whole, or how this or that modern principle tends to the subversion of the whole supernatural system. No one who knows them can doubt that their affection for the faith on which their whole lives rest is far too powerful not to overwhelm at once any liking they may have imbibed for the thoughts and maxims of the day, and they have always been treated by the authorities of the Church, and by all Catholic writers really animated by her spirit, with the greatest gentleness and respect, even when it has become necessary that their mistakes should be pointed out.

What, then, is this Naturalism, which is the great heresy of our time, and which has so penetrated modern society as to infect, in some of its less immediate developments, the minds if not the hearts of some of the most devoted and eminent of the children of the Church? Naturalism is a view of man and of society based upon a falsehood concerning the origin and intention of both. As our ideas regarding our Blessed Lord Himself and His work in the world must take their colour from our notions as to the original state and destiny of man, whose nature He has taken upon Him, it is not wonderful that false opinions as to the latter should ultimately issue in false practical

doctrines as to the former, or that an age which has to so great an extent cast aside the Christian truth as to the state of man before and after his fall should welcome the most erroneous views concerning the mighty and farreaching work of man's redemption and restoration. That man was placed by God, at the instant of his creation, in an order above that of his nature-that is, that he was destined to an end and a felicity far higher than what was proportioned to his natural powers, which could reach no further than an indirect and reflected knowledge of God, such as may be gained from His creatures-and that, in order that he might arrive at that higher and nobler beatitude, the direct and intuitive knowledge of God, man was endowed with that marvellous appanage of gifts and prerogatives beyond and above nature which formed the condition of his state of innocence, and which he forfeited when he fell-this is the great truth, the ignorance or the denial of which constitutes the foundation of Naturalism. The second falsehood on which Naturalism is built is the denial of the restoration of man to the privileges of the supernatural order by means of Jesus Christ and Hist Church. The sin of Adam had shattered the connection between human nature and the gifts and destiny above itself to which the grace of the state of innocence had raised it; the Precious Blood once again cemented the union. Humanity was raised again to a new and higher life. The dawn of this life is the call to the faith of Christ, the issue and end of it is the eternal and beatific vision of God. Between this starting point and this ultimate goal lies stretched the whole of man's earthly existence and life, itself elevated by Christian grace, enriched with gifts and endowed with capacities proportioned to the exalted destiny which has been conferred upon it, and every part of it, material as well as spiritual, lying within the range, glowing with the light and strength, and subject to the laws, of the supernatural order to which that destiny belongs. Naturalism, as we have said, consists in the denial of all this, and in the consequent rupture between the natural and supernatural orders which the will of God has combined. Naturalism looks to an end proportioned to