Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866]

[Stone]

The Liberal Illusion

Chapter XXV

The doctors of Catholic liberalism flatter themselves that they explain the famous slogan: “The Church free, in a free State,” in saying that by this they mean “the freedom of the Church founded upon the public liberties.”

That was not the way our forefathers looked at the matter. In promoting the liberties of the Church, as Cardinal Wiseman observes, they believed themselves to be promoting the progress of civil liberties; there is scarcely a charter that does not base its system of emancipation upon the liberty of the Church and the unlimited exercise of her rights. Are we to invert the ancient order of things, and instead of grounding these public liberties upon the Christian social order, make political liberty the foundation of religious liberty? That would be to base the unchangeable upon the changeable. Let us be on our guard against accustoming a whole generation to tolerate ambiguity in matters of vital importance. By praising so extravagantly the fairness with which our enemies are minded to apply certain untenable principles, we are giving our youth anything but the right preparation to fight the good fight and to face persecution.

The contention that the Church can only be free in the bosom of general liberty is ambiguous. But what else can it be intended to convey except that the Church’s liberty depends upon extrinsic causes? And yet the Christian society, existing as it does by the Divine will, and having for its head Jesus Christ, who has guaranteed it an imperishable duration, must of necessity be free by virtue of its very nature or essence; and this liberty it imparts to every society on which it exerts influence, permeating the latter with its own spirit, like leaven in dough, like the soul in the body.

It is inconceivable that slavery could exist in any society where the Church is truly free; while a society that allows the Church to be bound, will, however free it may appear to be, live to see itself bound hand and foot and, though libertine, will not be really at liberty. The police license many things that responsible liberty would forbid, or rather, refrain from doing, but the licenses given by the police should not be confounded with liberty; they are not and never will be liberty. In a society which restricts the liberty of the Church, the individual will, perhaps, be free to do whatever he wants with his body, and will want to do with it, we may be sure, nothing good; but he will no longer be able to call his soul his own, and presently not even charge of his body will be left to him.

To say that the Church cannot be free, except in the bosom of general liberty, is the same as saying that she cannot be free except on condition of seeing arrayed against her full liberty to give her the lie and to attack her with all the legalized weapons and tactics of offense that such an order of things would put in the hands of her enemies. And inasmuch as it is urged upon her, over and above all this, to relinquish her “privileges” — without which there would have been no such thing as general liberty at all — it follows that she would thus lose the power to impose upon men that interior restraint by virtue of which they become fit for liberty and feel themselves worthy of it. After that, as night follows day, political restraint will increase, and soon the evil hour will be at hand when society shall hear Caesar, with the consent of the “general liberty,” declare himself once more pontiff and god: Divus Caesar, imperator et summus pontifex — “Divine Caesar, Emperor and Supreme Pontiff.”

And thus, thanks to the “general liberty” and its invariable corollary, the “suppression of privilege,” religion will come to occupy an even lower position in the world than the one it holds at present.