Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866]

[Stone]

The Liberal Illusion

Chapter XXIX

The revolutionary sphinx, under the name of the modern mind, propounds a series of riddles with which the liberal Catholics occupy themselves a great deal more than befits the dignity of children of Christ. Not one of them, however, answers the riddle in a way calculated to satisfy either the sphinx, or themselves, or anybody else, and it is a matter of record, that the monster devours soonest just those who flatter themselves on having guessed its meaning best.

Scant is the self-respect and scant the faith that remains in these last! They come, not without arrogance, to ask, in the name of the sphinx and in their own name, how “intolerant” Catholics can get around the “conquests” of the dissenting mind with its rights of man, its liberty of religions, its constitutions grounded on these principles, etc., etc. Nothing could be easier to answer.

To begin with, the dissenting mind invariably starts off with an unwarranted assumption of its own superiority, which we flatly refuse to recognize. Error is never the equal, much less the superior, of truth, neither can it hope to overawe truth, or ever to prevail legitimately against it, and, by consequence, the disciples of error, infidels, unbelievers, atheists, renegades and the like, are never the superiors nor even the legitimate equals of the disciples of Jesus Christ, the one true God. From the standpoint of unalterable right, the perfect society that constitutes the Church of Christ is by no means on a level with the gang that collects around error. We know right well to whom it has been said: Going therefore, teach — a word, we may remark in passing, like the great Increase and multiply, which was spoken at the beginning of things; and these two words are living words despite the ruses and triumphs of death — error has nothing to teach by divine right, neither has it the divine right to increase and multiply. Truth is at liberty to tolerate error, but error is obliged to grant to truth the right of liberty.

In the second place, now that the partisans of error have gotten the upper hand and have enthroned in the world certain sham principles that are the negation of truth and therefore the destruction of order, we leave to them these false principles until they swallow them and die of them, while we hang on to our truths by which we live.

In the third place, when the time comes and men realize that the social edifice must be rebuilt according to eternal standards, be it tomorrow, or be it centuries from now, the Catholics will arrange things to suit said standards. Undeterred by those who prefer to abide in death, they will re-establish certain laws of life. They will restore Jesus to His place on high, and He shall be no longer insulted. They will raise their children to know God and to honor their parents. They will uphold the indissolubility of marriage, and if this fails to meet with the approval of the dissenters, it will not fail to meet with the approval of their children. They will make obligatory the religious observance of Sunday on behalf of the whole of society and for its own good, revoking the permit for free-thinkers and Jews to celebrate, incognito, Monday or Saturday on their own account. Those whom this may annoy will have to put up with the annoyance. Respect will not be refused to the Creator nor repose denied to the creature simply for the sake of humoring certain maniacs, whose frenetic condition causes them stupidly and insolently to block the will of a whole people. However, like our own, their houses will be all the more solid and their fields all the more fertile on that account.

In a word, Catholic society will be Catholic, and the dissenters whom it will tolerate will know its charity, but they will not be allowed to disrupt its unity.

This is the answer that Catholics can, on their part, make to the sphinx; and these are the words that will kill it outright. The sphinx is not invulnerable; against it we have just what is required in the way of weapons. The Archangel did not overcome the Rebel with material weapons, but with this word: Who is like unto God! And Satan fell, struck as by a bolt of lightning.