Louis Veuillot: The Liberal Illusion [1866]

[Stone]

The Liberal Illusion

Chapter XXX

To sum up, the liberal Catholic party accepts the separation of civil society from the society of Jesus Christ. The separation of the two is in their eyes a good thing and they desire it to be definitive. They believe that as a result the Church will gain peace, and, eventually, even a great triumph. Nevertheless, the prospects of triumph are mentioned to the “intolerant” Catholics alone, and to the latter only in undertones. Let us stick to the peace: can we hope for such a result?

For one thing, this liberal church, a church altogether “of its time,” in order to clear itself of all reasonable suspicion of being obedient to Rome, will have to stop irritating or frightening those generous souls who are resolved, come what may, to cauterize “the Pontifical cancer.” After that, seeing that the Catholics would have thus become indistinguishable from the rest of the world, why should they not enjoy the benefit of contempt! They will be despised, they will live in peace; they can attend to their religion just as they attend to their other affairs: the Siecle will have no more occasion to hurl the epithet “clerical” at the parishioner of St. Sulpice than it would at the emancipated sheep of Pastor Coquerel.37

To be nothing, utterly nothing in order to live at peace with all the world, such a hope might seem to be rather modest! Nevertheless, it is hoping too much. Even were the liberal Catholics to succeed, either by way of seduction or by way of pressure, in suppressing the integral Catholics, I assure them that they will never live to see themselves despised so much as they aspire to be. A few considerations will serve to convince them of the solid reasons for this prediction, and to make them appreciate for themselves the illusion they have come to entertain.

I simply pass over the mad and unheard-of notion of creating an atheistic government, in the absence of atheists from the very society that said government is supposed to conduct. I say nothing either about the hardihood of attempting so completely to alienate peoples from the equity, the meekness and venerableness of the scepter, as Christianly conceived, that such rulers as sainted kings should never be seen again. I waive the disdain certain teachers show for the lessons of history and religion which condemn governmental indifference to good and evil and prove such an attitude to be absolutely preposterous.

The illusion of the liberal Catholics goes further than that. It has the power not only to falsify history, the Bible and religion, to discolor with its false hues human nature itself; it even deprives its victims of their appreciation of the present as it likewise strips them of their knowledge of the past and their foresight of the future. They cease to see what really happens, they no longer hear what is actually said, they no longer know what they themselves have done; they misread their own hearts as they misread everything else.

37. Of the three Pastors Coquerel, who made quite a stir under the Empire, the one of whom Louis veuillot speaks here is evidently Athanasius Coquerel, who in consequence of a defense of the Vie ae Jesus was dismissed with much ado by the Protestant Consistory in 1864.