The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte

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      Unfortunately, the Assembly, in this as in other matters, being preoccupied with principles, fails to look at practical facts; and, aiming to remove only the dead bark, it injures the living trunk.—For many centuries, and especially since the Council of Trent, the vigorous element of Catholicism is much less religion itself than the Church. Theology has retired into the background, while discipline has come to the front. Believers who, according to Church law, are required to regard spiritual authority as dogma, in fact attach their faith to the spiritual authority much more than to the dogma.—

Catholic Faith insists, in relation to discipline as well as to dogma, that if one rejects the decision of the Roman Church one ceases to be a Catholic; that the constitution of the Church is monarchical, that the ordaining of priests and bishops is made from above so that without communion with the Pope, its supreme head, one is schismatic and that no schismatic priest legitimately can perform a holy service, and that no true faithful may attend his service or receive his blessings without committing a sin.—It is a fact that the faithful, apart from a few Jansenists, are neither theologians nor canonists; that they read neither prayers nor scriptures, and if they accept the creed, it is in a lump, without investigation, confiding in the hand which presents it; that their obedient conscience is in the keeping of this pastoral guide; that the Church of the third century is of little consequence to them; and that, as far as the true form of the actual Church goes, the doctor whose advice they follow is not St. Cyprian, of whom they know nothing, but their visible bishop and their living curé. Put these two premises together and the conclusion is self-evident: it is clear that they will not believe that they are baptized, absolved, or married except by this curé authorized by this bishop. Let others be put in their places whom they condemn, and you suppress worship, sacraments, and the most precious functions of spiritual life to twenty-four millions of French people, to all the peasantry, all the children, and to almost all the women; you stir up in rebellion against you the two greatest forces which move the mind, conscience and habit.—And observe the result of this. You not only convert the State into a policeman in the service of heresy, but also, through this fruitless and tyrannous attempt of Gallican Jansenism, you bring into permanent discredit Gallican maxims and Jansenist doctrines. You cut away the last two roots by which a liberal sentiment still vegetated in orthodox Catholicism. You throw the clergy back on Rome; you attach them to the Pope from whom you wish to separate them, and deprive them of the national character which you wish to impose on them. They were French, and you render them Ultramontane.2268 They excited ill-will and envy, and you render them sympathetic and popular. They were a divided body, and you give them unanimity. They were a straggling militia, scattered about under several independent authorities, and rooted to the soil through the possession of the ground; thanks to you, they are to become a regular, manageable army, emancipated from every local attachment, organized under one head, and always prepared to take the field at the word of command. Compare the authority of a bishop in his diocese in 1789 with that of a bishop sixty years later. In 1789, the Archbishop of Besançon, out of fifteen hundred offices and benefices, had the patronage of one hundred, In ninety-three incumbencies the selections were made by the metropolitan chapter; in eighteen it was made by the chapter of the Madeleine; in seventy parishes by the noble founder or benefactor. One abbé had thirteen incumbencies at his disposal, another thirty-four, another thirty-five, a prior nine, an abbess twenty; five communes directly nominated their own pastor, while abbeys, priories and canonries were in the hands of the King.2269 At the present day (1880) in a diocese the bishop appoints all the curés or officiating priests, and may deprive nine out of ten of them; in the diocese above named, from 1850 to 1860, scarcely one lay functionary was nominated without the consent or intervention of the cardinal-archbishop.2270 To comprehend the spirit, discipline, and influence of our contemporary clergy, go back to the source of it, and you will find it in the decree of the Constituent Assembly. A natural organization cannot be broken up with impunity; it forms anew, adapting itself to circumstances, and closes up its ranks in proportion to its danger.

But even if, according to the maxims of the Assembly, faith and worship are free, as far as the sovereign State is concerned, the churches are subjects.—For these are societies, administrations, and hierarchies, and no society, administration, or hierarchy may exist in the State without entering into its—departments under the title of subordinate, delegate, or employee. A priest is now essentially a salaried officer like the rest, a functionary2271 presiding over matters pertaining to worship and morality. If the State is disposed to change the number, the mode of nomination, the duties and the posts of its engineers, it is not bound to assemble its engineers and ask their permission, least of all that of a foreign engineer established at Rome. If it wishes to change the condition of "its ecclesiastical officers," its right to do so is the same, and therefore unquestioned. There is no need of asking anybody's consent in the exercise of this right, and it allows no interference between it and its clerks. The Assembly refuses to call a Gallican council; it refuses to negotiate with the Pope, and, on its own authority alone, it recasts the whole Constitution of the Church. Henceforth this branch of the public administration is to be organized on the model of the others.—In the first place2272 the diocese is to be in extent and limits the same as the French department; consequently, all ecclesiastical districts are marked out anew, and forty-eight episcopal sees disappear.—In the second place, the appointed bishop is forbidden "to refer to the Pope to obtain any confirmation whatever." All he can do is to write to him "in testimony of the unity of faith and of the communion which he is to maintain with him." The bishop is thus no longer installed by his canonical chief, and the Church of France becomes schismatic.—In the third place, the metropolitan or bishop is forbidden to exact from the new bishops or curés "any oath other than that they profess the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion." Assisted by his council he may examine them on their doctrine and morals, and refuse them canonical installation, but in this case his reasons must be given in writing, and he signed by himself and his council. His authority, in other respects, does not extend beyond this for it is the civil tribunal which decides between contending parties. Thus is the catholic hierarchy broken up; the ecclesiastical superior has his hands tied; if he still delegates sacerdotal functions it is only as a matter of form. Between the curé and the bishop subordination ceases to exist just as it has ceased to exist between the bishop and the Pope, and the Church of France becomes Presbyterian.—The people now, in effect, choose their own ministers, as they do in the Presbyterian church; the bishop is appointed by the electors of the department, the cure by the district electors, and, what is an extraordinary aggravation, these need not be of his communion. It is of no consequence whether the electoral Assembly contains, as at Nîmes, Montauban, Strasbourg, and Metz, a notable proportion of Calvinists, Lutherans, and Jews, or whether its majority, furnished by the club, is notoriously hostile to Catholicism, and even to Christianity itself. The bishop and the curé must be chosen by the electoral body; the Holy Ghost dwells with it, and with the civil tribunals, and these may install its elect in spite of any resistance.—To complete the dependence of the clergy, every bishop is forbidden to absent himself more than fifteen days without permission from the department; every curé the same length of time without the permission of the district, even to attend upon a dying father or to undergo the operation of lithotomy. In default of this permission his salary is suspended: as a functionary under salary, he owes all his time to his bureau, and if he desires a leave of absence he must ask for it from his chiefs in the Hôtel-de-Ville.2273—He must assent to all these innovations, not only with passive obedience, but by a solemn oath. All old or new ecclesiastics, archbishops, bishops, curés, vicars, preachers, hospital and prison chaplains, superiors and directors of seminaries, professors of seminaries and colleges, are to state in writing that they are ready to take this oath: moreover, they must take it publicly, in church, "in the presence of the general council, the commune, and the faithful," and promise "to maintain СКАЧАТЬ