Repost: George Orwell – Pleasure Spots (1946)

Some months ago I cut out of a shiny magazine some paragraphs written by a female journalist and describing the pleasure resort of the future. She had recently been spending some time at Honolulu, where the rigours of war do not seem to have been very noticeable. However, “a transport pilot ... told me that with all the inventiveness packed into this war, it was a pity someone hadn't found out how a tired and lifehungry man could relax, rest, play poker, drink, and make love, all at once, and round the clock, and come out of it feeling good and fresh and ready for the job again.” This reminded her of an entrepreneur she had met recently who was planning a “pleasure spot which he thinks will catch on tomorrow as dog racing and dance halls did yesterday.” The entrepreneur's dream is described in some detail:

His blue-prints pictured a space covering several acres, under a series of sliding roofs-for the British weather is unreliableand with a central space spread over with an immense dance floor made of translucent plastic which can be illuminated from beneath. Around it are grouped other functional spaces, at different levels. Balcony bars and restaurants commanding high views of the city roofs, and ground-level replicas. A battery of skittle alleys. Two blue lagoons: one, periodically agitated by waves, for strong swimmers, and another, a smooth and summery pool, for playtime bathers. Sunlight lamps over the pools to simulate high summer on days when the roofs don't slide back to disclose a hot sun in a cloudless sky. Rows of bunks on which people wearing sun-glasses and slips can lie and start a tan or deepen an existing one under a sunray lamp.

Music seeping through hundreds of grills connected with a central distributing stage, where dance or symphonic orchestras play or the radio programme can be caught, amplified, and disseminated. Outside, two 1,000-car parks. One, free. The other, an open-air cinema drive-in, cars queueing to move through turnstiles, and the film thrown on a giant screen facing a row of assembled cars. Uniformed male attendants check the cars, provide free aid and water, sell petrol and oil. Girls in white satin slacks take orders for buffet dishes and drinks, and bring them on trays.

Whenever one hears such phrases as “pleasure spot”, “pleasure resort”, “pleasure city”, it is difficult not to remember the oftenquoted opening of Coleridge's “Kubla Khan”.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But it will be seen that Coleridge has got it all wrong. He strikes a false note straight off with that talk about “sacred” rivers and “measureless” caverns. In the hands of the above-mentioned entrepreneur, Kubla Khan's project would have become something quite different. The caverns, air-conditioned, discreetly lighted and with their original rocky interior buried under layers of tastefully-coloured plastics, would be turned into a series of tea-grottoes in the Moorish, Caucasian or Hawaiian styles. Alph, the sacred river, would be dammed up to make an artificially-warmed bathing pool, while the sunless sea would be illuminated from below with pink electric lights, and one would cruise over it in real Venetian gondolas each equipped with its own radio set. The forests and “spots of greenery” referred to by Coleridge would be cleaned up to make way for glass-covered tennis courts, a bandstand, a roller-skating rink and perhaps a ninehole golf course. In short, there would be everything that a “lifehungry” man could desire.

I have no doubt that, all over the world, hundreds of pleasure resorts similar to the one described above are now being planned, and perhaps are even being built. It is unlikely that they will be finished-world events will see to that-but they represent faithfully enough the modern civilised man's idea of pleasure. Something of the kind is already partially attained in the more magnificent dance halls, movie palaces, hotels, restaurants and luxury liners. On a pleasure cruise or in a Lyons Corner House one already gets something more than a glimpse of this future paradise. Analysed, its main characteristics are these:

1. One is never alone.
2. One never does anything for oneself.
3. One is never within sight of wild vegetation or natural objects of any kind.
4. Light and temperature are always artificially regulated.
5. One is never out of the sound of music.

The music-and if possible it should be the same music for everybody-is the most important ingredient. Its function is to prevent thought and conversation, and to shut out any natural sound, such as the song of birds or the whistling of the wind, that might otherwise intrude. The radio is already consciously used for this purpose by innumerable people. In very many English homes the radio is literally never turned off, though it is manipulated from time to time so as to make sure that only light music will come out of it. I know people who will keep the radio playing all through a meal and at the same time continue talking just loudly enough for the voices and the music to cancel out. This is done with a definite purpose. The music prevents the conversation from becoming serious or even coherent, while the chatter of voices stops one from listening attentively to the music and thus prevents the onset of that dreaded thing, thought. For

The lights must never go out.
The music must always play,
Lest we should see where we are;
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the dark
Who have never been happy or good.

It is difficult not to feel that the unconscious aim in the most typical modern pleasure resorts is a return to the womb. For there, too, one was never alone, one never saw daylight, the temperature was always regulated, one did not have to worry about work or food, and one's thoughts, if any, were drowned by a continuous rhythmic throbbing.

When one looks at Coleridge's very different conception of a “pleasure dome”, one sees that it revolves partly round gardens and partly round caverns, rivers, forests and mountains with “deep romantic chasms”-in short, round what is called Nature. But the whole notion of admiring Nature, and feeling a sort of religious awe in the presence of glaciers, deserts or waterfalls, is bound up with the sense of man's littleness and weakness against the power of the universe. The moon is beautiful partly because we cannot reach it, the sea is impressive because one can never be sure of crossing it safely. Even the pleasure one takes in a flower-and this is true even of a botanist who knows all there is to be known about the flower is dependent partly on the sense of mystery. But meanwhile man's power over Nature is steadily increasing. With the aid of the atomic bomb we could literally move mountains: we could even, so it is said, alter the climate of the earth by melting the polar ice-caps and irrigating the Sahara. Isn't there, therefore, something sentimental and obscurantist in preferring bird-song to swing music and in wanting to leave a few patches of wildness here and there instead of covering the whole surface of the earth with a network of Autobahnen flooded by artificial sunlight?

The question only arises because in exploring the physical universe man has made no attempt to explore himself. Much of what goes by the name of pleasure is simply an effort to destroy consciousness. If one started by asking, what is man? what are his needs? how can he best express himself? one would discover that merely having the power to avoid work and live one's life from birth to death in electric light and to the tune of tinned music is not a reason for doing so. Man needs warmth, society, leisure, comfort and security: he also needs solitude, creative work and the sense of wonder. If he recognised this he could use the products of science and industrialism eclectically, applying always the same test: does this make me more human or less human? He would then learn that the highest happiness does not lie in relaxing, resting, playing poker, drinking and making love simultaneously. And the instinctive horror which all sensitive people feel at the progressive mechanisation of life would be seen not to be a mere sentimental archaism, but to be fully justified. For man only stays human by preserving large patches of simplicity in his life, while the tendency of many modern inventions-in particular the film, the radio and the aeroplane-is to weaken his consciousness, dull his curiosity, and, in general, drive him nearer to the animals.

1946

THE END

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Source: http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/spots/english/e_spots

____BD____
George Orwell: ‘Pleasure Spots’
First published: Tribune. — GB, London. — January 11, 1946.

Reprinted:
— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.
____
Machine-readable version: O. Dag

Repost: G.K. Chesterton – The Evolution of Emma

[502] Among the many good critical tributes to the genius of Jane Austen, to the fine distinction of her humor, the sympathetic intimacy of her satire, the easy exactitude of her unpretentious style, which have appeared in celebration of her centenary, there is one criticism that is naturally recurrent; the remark that she was quite untouched by the towering politics of her time. This is intrinsically true; nevertheless it may easily be used to imply the reverse of the truth. It is true that Jane Austen did not attempt to teach any history or politics; but it is not true that we cannot learn any history or politics from Jane Austen. Any work so piercingly intelligent of its own kind, and especially any work of so wise and humane a kind, is sure to tell us much more than shallower studies covering a larger surface. I will not say much of the mere formality of some of the conventions and conversational forms; for in such things it is not only not certain that change is important, but it is not even certain that it is final. The view that a thing is old-fashioned is itself a fashion; and may soon be an old fashion. We have seen this in many recurrences of female dress; but it has a deeper basis in human nature. The truth is that a phrase can be falsified by use without being false in fact; it can seem stale without being really stilted. Those who see a word as merely worn out, fail to look forward as well as back. I know of two poems by two Irish poets of two different centuries, essentially on the same theme; the lover declaring that his love will outlast the mere popularity of the beauty. One is by Mr. Yeats and begins: "Though you are in [503] your shining days." The other is by Tom Moore and begins: "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms." The latter language strikes us as ridiculously florid and over-ripe; but Moore was far from being ridiculous. Believe me (as he would say) it was no poetaster who wrote those hackneyed words about the silent harp and the heart that breaks for liberty. And if English were read some day by strangers as a classic language, I am not sure that "endearing" would not endure as a better word than "shining"; or even that (after some repetition and reaction) it might not seem as strained to say "shining" as to say "shiny." Yet Mr. Yeats also is a great poet. Similarly, when one of Jane Austen's heroines wants to say that the hero is a good fellow, she expresses confidence in what she calls "his worth." This goads her younger modern readers to madness; yet in truth the term is far more philosophic and eternal than the terms they would use themselves. They would probably say he was "nice," and Jane Austen would indeed be avenged. For the best of her heroes, Henry Tilney, himself foresaw and fulminated against the unmeaning ubiquity of that word, a prophet of the pure reason of his age, seeing in a vision of the future the fall of the human mind.

Negatively, of course, the historic lesson from Jane Austen is enormous. She is perhaps most typical of her time in being supremely irreligious. Her very virtues glitter with the cold sunlight of the great secular epoch between mediaeval and modern mysticism. In that small masterpiece, "Northanger Abbey," her unconsciousness of history is itself a piece of history. For Catherine Morland was right, as young and romantic people often are. A real crime had been committed in Northanger Abbey. It is implied in the very name of Northanger Abbey. It was the crucial crime of the sixteenth century, when all the institutions of the poor were savagely seized to be the private possessions of the rich. It is strange that the name remains; it is stranger still that it remains unrealized. We should think it odd to go to tea at a man's house and find it was still called a church. We should be surprised if a gentleman's shooting box at Claybury were referred to as Claybury Cathedral. But the irony of the eighteenth century is that Catherine was healthily interested in crimes and yet never found the real crime; and that she never really thought of it as an abbey, even when she thought of it most as an antiquity.

But there is a positive as well as a negative way in which her greatness, like Shakespeare's, illuminates history and politics, because it illuminates everything. She understood every intricacy of the upper middle class and the minor gentry, which were to make so much of the mental life of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is said that she ignored the poor and disregarded their opinions. She did, but not more than all our Governments and all our Acts of Parliaments have done. And at least she did consistently ignore them; she ignored where she was ignorant. Well it would have been for the world if others had ignored the working-class until they understood it as well as she did the middle class. She was not a student of sociology; she did not study the poor. But she did study the students—or at least the social types which were to become the students of the poor. She knew her own class, and knew it without illusions; and there is much light on later problems to be found in her delicate delineation of vanities and snobberies and patronage. She had to do with the human heart; and it is that which cometh out of the heart that defileth a nation, philanthropy, [504] efficiency, organization, social reform. And if the weaker brethren still wonder why we should find in Baby Week or Welfare Work a dangerous spirit, from which its best adherents find it hard to free themselves, if they doubt how such a danger can be reconciled with the personal delicacy and idealism of many of the women who work such things, if they think that fine words or even fine feelings will guarantee a respect for the personality of the poor, I really do not know that they could do better than sit down, I trust not for the first time, to the reading of "Emma."

For all this that has happened since might well be called the Evolution of Emma. That unique and formidable institution, the English Lady, has, indeed, become much more of a public institution; that is, she has made the same mistakes on a much larger scale. The softer fastidiousness and finer pride of the more gracious eighteenth century heroine may seem to make her a shadow by comparison. It seems cruel to say that the breaking off of Harriet's humbler engagement foreshadows the indiscriminate development of Divorce for the Poor. It seems horrible to say that Emma's small matchmaking has in it the seed of the pestilence of Eugenics. But it is true. With a gentleness and justice and sympathy with good intentions, which clear her from the charge of common cynicism, the great novelist does find the spring of her heroine's errors, and of many of ours. That spring is a philanthropy, and even a generosity, secretly founded on gentility. Emma Woodhouse was a wit, she was a good woman, she was an individual with a right to her own opinion; but it was because she was a lady that she acted as she did, and thought she had a right to act as she did. She is the type in fiction of a whole race of English ladies, in fact, for whom refinement is religion. Her claim to oversee and order the social things about her consisted in being refined; she would not have admitted that being rich had anything to do with it; but as a fact it had everything to do with it. If she had been very much richer, if she had had one of the great modern fortunes, if she had had the wider modern opportunities (for the rich) she would have thought it her duty to act on the wider modern scale; she would have had public spirit and political grasp. She would have dealt with a thousand Robert Martins and a thousand Harriet Smiths, and made the same muddle about all of them. That is what we mean about things like Baby Week—and if there had been a baby in the story, Miss Woodhouse would certainly have seen all its educational needs with a brilliant clearness. And we do not mean that the work is done entirely by Mrs. Pardiggle; we mean that much of it is done by Miss Woodhouse. But it is done because she is Miss Woodhouse and not Martha Muggins or Jemima Jones; because the Lady Bountiful is a lady first, and will bestow every bounty but freedom.

It is noted that there are few traces of the French Revolution in Miss Austen's novels; but, indeed, there have been few traces of it in Miss Austen's country. The peculiarity which has produced the situation I describe is really this: that the new sentiment of humanitarianism has come, when the old sentiment of aristocracy has not gone. Social superiors have not really lost any old privileges; they have gained new privileges, including that of being superior in philosophy and philanthropy as well as in riches and refinement. No revolution has shaken their secret security or menaced them with the awful peril of becoming no more than men. Therefore their social reform is but their social refinement [505] grown restless. And in this old tea cup comedy can be found, far more clearly appreciated than in more ambitious books about problems and politics, the psychology of this mere restlessness in the rich, when it first stirred upon its cushions. Jane Austen described a narrow class, but so truthfully that she has much to teach about its after adventures, when it remained narrow as a class and broadened only as a sect.

---

Source: G.K. Chesterton, "The Evolution of Emma," The Living Age 194 (August 1917): 502–505.

Repost: American Catholicity (1891)

[396] Under a name often many errors are concealed. It is not true that a name is of little consequence; for while the name may be perfectly good, and, properly understood, may embrace no error, still, improperly understood, it may encourage grave errors or lead to consequences which are seriously injurious to the best interests of mankind. We Americans are naturally proud of our country and its institutions. We are proud of its material success, and we who are Catholics have the most devoted love for our fatherland. We yield to no one in patriotism and love of country. We are thankful every day for the privileges which we enjoy in the freedom which our institutions give us in many respects. We are also thankful to God that our government does not in many things attempt to interfere with the freedom of worship or the best interests of our divine religion. Catholics are ever ready, and are among the first, to give their talents, and even their lives, in the service of their country. There is, perhaps, a boastful spirit which is contagious among us, leading many to exaggerate when comparing our own nation with the other nations of the earth. This spirit, when not carried to an undue excess, so as to violate truth or equity, is pardonable and even praiseworthy. We do not easily see defects in those we love or in institutions to which we are attached.

Nevertheless, our love for the country must not in any way blind us to errors which are serious; which, although they be widely circulated and have many adherents, are contrary to the law of God, and, therefore, to the best interests of society. Our first duty is to God and our divine religion. Our faith comes to us from God. It cannot be changed by any condition of man or by any kind of social progress. In discharging our duty faithfully towards God, in maintaining, as we are bound to do, the truths which He has revealed, and the integrity of faith, we subserve in the best possible manner the interests of our country, the preservation of true liberty and the perpetuity of our free institutions.

God is true, if every man be a liar. No one can doubt, who believes in the existence of God, that our first obligations are to Him, and no one can doubt that obedience to His law is the source, and the only source, of all true happiness.

"A nation and a kingdom that will not serve Him shall be destroyed."

[397] To revert to our first remark in regard to the use of a name, we have heard in some quarters the term American Catholicity covering a multitude of errors, and falsely representing that one true religion which we are bound to defend and profess. It has been said that in this country there is a peculiar kind of Catholicity which is in advance of the old nations of the world, which has taken to itself the wings of progress, which is more consonant with the spirit of the age, less hostile to those who differ from us in faith or morals, which puts upon itself a mantle of expediency, and loses the stern attributes of our unflinching creed. We have heard it said, as a mark of the peculiarities of American Catholicity, that we do not pretend to judge between error and falsehood as far as others are concerned; that we embrace them all, no matter what they believe or profess, as really one with us in the profession of a conservative Christianity. It is also said that our differences are not so great as has been supposed; that we are willing to meet all our fellow-citizens on an open platform of a wide Christian belief; that we are willing to yield to the majority, or even to the State, the education of our children, provided we are allowed the liberty of teaching them privately the principles of our faith. It is also maintained that the rights of the Sovereign Pontiff, especially in his temporal principality, may in this country be waived, and that those Catholics are more truly American in their sympathies who look upon the temporal power of the Supreme Pontiff as a thing of the past; who are willing to let it die, and feel no obligation to do anything in their power to restore it.

According to the prevailing doctrine in the world, "Might makes right. The Holy Father, as a matter of fact, has lost his temporal principality. Such is the providence of God, and we are not bound either to maintain its necessity or to do anything actively for its restoration. We will simply let it go as a thing that once was, and which is now dead."

Another feature of American Catholicity, as we have seen it in some quarters, is to maintain "that our form of government is the best possible, and most suited to our religion; that in respect of government we are far beyond the nations of the old world."

Undoubtedly, our own form of government is the best for us and most suited to our people. Nevertheless, it belongs to the Americanism of which we are speaking, to seek to propagate it elsewhere; to deny the rights of those who rule by the providence of God; to justify rebellion without proper cause; to forget that he who rules, rules by the ordinance of God; that God is the supreme king among the nations of the earth, and that "he who resisteth the ordinance resisteth the power of God." In other words, it is sometimes held as a principle of true Americanism that "power [398] comes from the people and ascends to the ruler; that the people make their own government and their own ruler, and therefore, without any cause except their own will, they have a right to change them or to destroy them." Now, we humbly submit that such Americanism is not the true spirit of our institutions, that it is not Catholicity in any sense of the word, and cannot usurp for a single moment, justly, the title which we have placed at the head of this article.

For the illustration of all that we have said we shall proceed to prove that the errors which we have indicated, which are sometimes classed under the term of American Catholicity, are contrary to our faith, and therefore cannot be held by Catholics.

In the first place, the doctrine that "all religions are good, and may conduce to the salvation of men, while the Catholic religion is only better and more complete," is liberalism, condemned by the Holy See.

Reason teaches us that there is one God, and as God is the Author, and the only Author, of His divine religion, creeds which contradict each other cannot all be true. While we are bound in charity to judge no man—not to enter into the supreme tribunal where each one stands alone before God, and will be judged for all his deeds and all his intelligent acts—we are bound to judge his errors, and also to condemn them, and this for the love of God and for true charity toward our neighbor. The proposition that every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, by the light of his own reason, he shall have considered to be the true one, is condemned by the Catholic Church. As far as Protestantism is concerned in all its various and contradictory forms, it cannot be a species of the true Christian religion. We quote from the syllabus of Pius IX.

"Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which by the light of reason he shall consider true."[1]

"Protestantism is nothing else than a different form of the same Christian religion in which equally as in the Catholic Church one can please God."[2]

"Man in the observance of any religion can find the way of eternal salvation and also attain it."[3]

These propositions have been condemned by the supreme authority of the Church, and the doctrine contained in them cannot [399] be held by any one who calls himself a Catholic. A man is not free to follow any religion which his reason may teach him to be true. Men cannot obtain eternal salvation and find out the way of life by virtue of any false religion. If they do find salvation through invincible ignorance, or through any truths which may be taught them, mixed with many errors, they find their salvation by graces which come to them, entirely independent of the system which they follow. Their system of religion, if followed, would lead them astray. Protestantism, which, as we all know, embraces all kinds of contradictory errors, cannot be held to be a form of the true religion in which equally, as in the Catholic Church, one can please God. We are not denying here, that there are those out of the visible fold of the Church who will be saved by virtue of invincible ignorance or their obedience to the law of God, as far as they know it. But it is a very grave error, condemned by the Church, to hold that those outside of the pale of the Church are in a safe way, and still more so, that in some respects, they are better off than Catholics. We do not believe that this is true Americanism. We know it is not Catholicity. Americans love consistency. They are generally in earnest, and feel the power of sincerity. We shall never lead our erring brethren to a knowledge of the truth by making light of the differences which exist between them and ourselves, or by mitigating the doctrine that out of the Church there is no salvation. Almighty God, having instituted a way of salvation, has instituted no other.

Another grave error, which sometimes takes to itself the shield of the name of Catholicity, is what may be called the doctrine of intellectual or social progress. we make progress in many things; in material affairs; in the discoveries of science; in the application of these discoveries to the needs of mankind. But we can make no progress whatever in the faith which God has revealed to us and which comes to us perfect from His hands. We may study it and understand it better, and learn better to apply it to our daily life, and to the life of nations; but we cannot make any progress in the matter of the divine revelation. The doctrine, that we have greater light in our age; that we better understand the truths of our revelation than the ages before us; that we have theologically taken upon ourselves the wings of human progress, is not simply an empty boast, it is a serious error. By it we are led to look down upon the masters of theology, the great teachers of the Church, the doctors of the spiritual life; to think that in our age we have made such advance that we can get loose from the restraints which the great doctors of the Church, following the instincts of the faith, have placed upon the human reason. This doctrine of progress, applied to matters of faith, has been distinctly condemned by the [400] Holy See, and therefore cannot be considered to be the teaching of any kind of Catholicity.

We quote again the propositions condemned by Pius IX. in the Syllabus:

"The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman Congregation impede the true progress of science."[4]

"The methods and the principles by which the scholastic doctors of former ages cultivated theology do not at all agree with the necessities of our time and the progress of the sciences."[5]

The decrees of the Apostolic See and of the Roman Congregations must be observed by every Catholic, an they do not impede any true human progress. Disobedience to them is the reverse of human progress. It is returning into the darkness, instead of going forward into the light. We can never sufficiently value the ancient doctors of the Church, and especially the schoolmen, whose teachings are adapted to all times, and especially to this rationalistic age which, following the doctrines of human pride rather than those of reason, would lead to independence in matters revealed, and therefore to liberalism and latitudinarianism.

There is always in every age a species of socialism or communism which threatens the best interests of society. It is the denial of the Catholic faith and its teachings which allows men to be blinded by such errors.

The holy Church, anxious in all things to preserve the best welfare of society, and to mitigate as far as in her power the sufferings of the poor, has often declared that socialism, while contrary to the law of God, is the enemy of the very poor whom it seeks to benefit. The following is the language of Pius IX. in his allocution to the consistory of April 20, 1849: "Evil men foment agitation among the people in order that all the principles of justice, of virtue, of honesty, of religion, may be utterly destroyed, and that the horrid and grievous system of socialism—or even of communism, as they call it—may everywhere be propagated and reign to the greatest evil and even the destruction of all human society."

We cannot, therefore, in any way countenance the principles which destroy the rights of property and which overturn the foundations of civilized society. Such errors, in any form, are too grave to be trifled with, and they are not the fruit of what may be properly so-called Americanism, while they are distinctly contrary to the Catholic faith. The Roman Pontiff cannot reconcile himself [401] nor compromise with progress, with liberalism, with socialism or with what may be called recent civilization. The doctrine that our republican form of government—good in itself, fitted to our state of society, and, in reality, having its source in the application of the principles of or religion—is the best form of government for all the nations of the earth, or the only correct form of government, cannot be held by any Catholics, whether they be Americans or of another nationality. We yield to no one in devotion to our own country; nevertheless, we cannot hold that the best form of government is that in which the Church is entirely separated from the State and the State from the Church. Such a proposition is condemned by the Holy See in the Syllabus of Pius IX., Proposition 55 declares:

"The Church should be separated from the State and the State from the Church."[6]

Undoubtedly, that form of government which does not interfere with the Church in any way is better tan the form which persecutes the Church, which deprives it of its rightful liberty, which imprisons its priests and its ministers; but this does not make it the very best form of government. The governing authorities in any nation are as much bound to obey the Catholic religion as any individual. And nations, as such, are as much under the obedience of God as are individuals. The best form of government is that where all believe in the true religion, or where the government supports the Church in the discharge of its high office, in leading men to their salvation. This, although perhaps at the present time existing nowhere, is, nevertheless the best form, and although we do not ask a government like our own to interfere in any ecclesiastical matters—while, on the contrary, we deny its right to interfere in matters purely religious—nevertheless we cannot hold, as Catholics, that a Christian or a Catholic State should not work in harmony with the Church of God, to which are committed the highest interests of man. We cannot call our own form of government religious in any sense. There is a bare recognition of God and also an implicit recognition of many precepts of the natural law; still, we cannot call it a Christian government in the true sense of the word.

And it leads to a grave error to say that the State should always be separated from the Church and the Church from the State, as if they were different bodies, each one moving in its different sphere, and the spiritual having no authority, even indirectly, over the temporal.

The State has already, not only here but in the old world, interfered [402] with the observance of the law of God, and has sanctioned that which, according to the divine law, is positively wrong. For example, the State has sanctioned divorce, thereby destroying the sacred character of Christian matrimony and allowing parties properly married to be separated, so as to annul the bond of matrimony. The Christian law teaches us, on the word of our Lord Himself, that the tie of matrimony, properly contracted, can only b severed by death. When the State undertakes in any way to favor the liberty of human passion and sin, to separate that which God has bound together, to assume the authority it has no power to assume, the very act is invalid before God. For God, at least, is the Supreme Ruler of the universe. The evils which follow, and which will follow to a much greater extent, in the disregard of Christian marriage are too great to escape the notice of any fair-minded and intelligent person. The sacredness of the family depends upon the sacredness of Christian marriage, and the perpetuity of the State depends on Christian families, of which, to a great extent, the State is composed. It is not always wise to attack the evils of society openly, although sometimes it is our duty; but it is a sin to compromise with them or to allow them to pass as if they were indifferent matters.

Another most grave error which concerns the very foundation of Christianity is that which, unfortunately, is widespread, the error that religion and education can be separated without vital injury to the Commonwealth. It is a prevalent doctrine now in our country that the State has the right to take to itself the whole question of education, to disregard the rights of parents and guardians to whom, by God's providence, children are committed. And inasmuch as the State is made up of those who hold widely diverse and contradictory beliefs, it is said to be the American system that no religion whatever must be taught in the popular schools. These popular schools, which are free to every one—in which, consistently, no principles of Christian ethics can be taught—have been called "the palladium [italics original] of our civil liberties."

To a Catholic mind, to one who believes in Christianity, and to one who has studied at all the lessons of history, it is evident that education without religion is the source of infidelity, and therefore is destructive of human liberty, properly so-called. Catholics cannot approve of any system of education which is separated from religion or from the strict teaching of the principles of their faith. We are not by any means willing to hold that Americanism is infidelity, so therefore we do not understand why any of our fellow-citizens favor the separation entirely of religion from common education.

Protestants, who are bigoted in their notions, may find that [403] such a system of education leads Catholic children to forget or deny their religion, and in this sense they may approve of such a system of popular education; but we deny that it is Americanism, or that it is in any sense a feature of our peculiar form of government. The Holy See has distinctly condemned the separation of education from religion, and no Catholic can for a moment defend or permit it.

We quote from the Syllabus, propositions 47 and 48:

"The best constitution of civil society demands that popular schools which are open to all children of whatever class, ad public institutions which are destined to more severe studies and to the education of youth, should be free from all the authority of the Church, from its moderating and governing power, and subjected wholly to the civil and political authority according to the pleasure of the rulers and the general opinions of the age."[7]

"The plan of instructing youth which is separated entirely from the Church and which primarily regards only the ends of earthly social life and the knowledge of natural things may be approved by Catholics."[8]

The teaching of our own Councils and of our own Prelates in union with the Holy See, has distinctly defined the Catholic doctrine on this subject. We are obliged, therefore, in conscience, to establish our own schools, inasmuch as we have no right to as permission to teach our doctrines in the popular schools. The right to have our own schools is permitted to us by our government; nevertheless, scarcely a year passes without some proposition in some legislature, or in the Congress of the United States, tending to abridge our rights and to deprive us of the full liberty of Christian worship which we have under the Constitution. And in all the States, so far as we know, every man is taxed for the support of the popular schools, although in conscience he can make no use of them. If this be the highest form of civil liberty, we have not the power to see it.

In almost every country of Europe, denominational schools are not only permitted, but are even maintained at the expense of the State, and the denominational system, while it satisfies the conscience of every one, is much less expensive to the State, and produces [404] harmony and peace according to the testimony of Protestants as well as Catholics. On this subject there can be surely no difference of opinion among American Catholics. No one worthy of the name of Catholic can so far compromise himself as to look with favor upon popular schools in which no principles of morals or religion can be taught.

A most important question in our day, which deeply concerns the interests of our religion, is that of the temporal principality of the Supreme Pontiff. All Catholics are bound o believe that he is the supreme pastor, teacher and infallible doctor of the universal Church; that in matters spiritual and moral there is no appeal from his decision. His temporal principality is not an open question. It cannot be looked upon as a thing of the past. Catholics, and especially American Catholics, who are free at least to think and say what they will, can never agree to look upon it as a question which has passed out of our day. They can never consent to hold that the temporal power of the popes has been taken from them by justice, or that the principality of the Supreme Pontiff has not conduced to religion and is not necessary to the free exercise of his high office. Much less can it be held that it is an open question in regard to which Catholics may differ, or that the abrogation of this principality is sanctioned by the observance of ages, or would conduce to the liberty and happiness of the Church. We have heard of some Catholics saying, that "the Pope is much better off without his temporal power; that at all events it is no question of ours, and that we are not called upon to say or to do anything in regard to it." Such views are not Catholicity, and we do not think that they are American Catholicity. Indeed we are certain that the majority of American Catholics believe in the necessity of the temporal principality of the Pope, and will always be found in the front ranks for the maintenance of his rights, both civil and spiritual. We quote the false opinions condemned in the Syllabus in regard to this matter, propositions 76 and 80.

"The abrogation of the civil power which the Apostolic See possesses would greatly conduce to the happiness and liberty of the Church."[9]

"The Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself with progress, with liberalism and with modern civilization."[10]

The Supreme Pontiff, who in this, as in all other matters, is our teacher and guide, has never consented to the unjust usurpation of his temporal rights, nor has he ceased to warn the faithful by  [405] his protests against the injustice which, although tolerated for a short time, can never be accepted by the Catholic Church nor regarded as just. The present Pontiff, Leo XIII., has more than once spoken to the Christian world on this subject, and in a letter of the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation of bishops and regulars, July 18, 1889, warned all patriarchs, archbishops and bishops, and other superiors of the Catholic people, that the injury done to the Holy See should be kept before their minds. They are directed to warn their flocks of the obligation by which they are bound to avoid the snares of secret societies and other enemies of the Holy See, to defend the faith, and by every legitimate means to maintain the rights of the Roman Pontiff, understanding that with his liberty is closely bound the liberty of all states and all peoples. In this connection we quote the words of a pastoral of the Most Rev. Archbishop of New York, addressed to the clergy and faithful of his diocese on October 2, 1889.

"Now it is the common teaching of theologians that when the Vicar of Christ and the Episcopate throughout the world unite in teaching a doctrine which regards the universal government of the Church, then they have that special assistance promised them by Jesus Christ, and their doctrine is to be received by the faithful as undoubtedly true and certain. Again and again, in Encyclicals and Allocutions, the Sovereign Pontiff has declared the temporal independence of the Holy See to be necessary for the good and free government of the Church, and this same truth is proclaimed by the whole Catholic Episcopate. As good children of the Church it is our duty to incline our ears to the teaching of Christ's Vicar, and to give it the homage of our minds and our hearts."

While, therefore, no one is allowed to attack the rights of the Holy See, or to defend the usurpation of his temporal power, every good Catholic is bound by every legitimate means to labor for its restoration. Many times during the history of the Church have the Supreme Pontiffs been placed in a worse position than that which now imprisons our Holy Father. Popular opinion has with many great weight, but we contend that such an opinion, if popular among those outside the bosom of the Catholic Church, can never be popular with sincere Catholics. They cannot even be silent in regard to the matter when time and opportunity permit them to speak plainly, and all their influence, whatever it is, must always be cast on the side of truth and right and justice.

From our knowledge of the American people we are inclined to believe that those grave errors to which we have alluded, which cannot be favored by any true Catholic, are not consistent with [406] the honesty, the sincerity and earnestness which distinguish our race.

True American Catholicity is honest, sincere and earnest. We have always been distinguished for our devotion to the Holy See. We believe the Supreme Pontiff to be the Vicar of our Lord, to represent Him to us and to speak with His voice to us in all questions of faith and morals. Therefore we are united, those of us who are sincere Catholics, in loyalty to Him, in devotion to his interests and in defence [sic] of all his rights. The rights of the Holy See are really the rights of the Church, and they are our rights. In every land devout Catholics are the best citizens, those most loyal to the government under which they live; and naturally so, because the principles which sustain the true Catholic are essentially principles of justice and equity, which are the only firm foundation of any commonwealth. When the rights of the Holy See are violated and disregarded, where shall we look for any foundation on which may rest a well-ordered civil society? "By Me," says the Holy Ghost, "kings reign and princes decree justice." Might does not make right, nor does the lapse of time make the evil a good. The points upon which we have touched so briefly seem to us of the very highest importance. They concern the true progress of our religion in this country, and therefore the perpetuity of our institutions. We maintain in their integrity the only principles upon which Christian society can rest. There is no enemy which we have to fear so much as liberalism in politics, and especially in religion. Liberalism in religion is a contradiction, inasmuch as religion depends upon a revealed faith which must be maintained in its entirety as it comes to us from God. With the divine law it is true that he who sins in one point implicitly breaks the whole law, since all precepts of the law are equally binding, and the disposition to break one precept leads directly to the transgression of all God's commandments. The same principle applies to our creed. The whole creed rests on the veracity of God, and infidelity in one point involves, implicitly at least, disbelief in the whole creed. The great danger to which our country is exposed is infidelity, which is advancing every day, denying, point by point, the precepts of the Christian religion, and even boldly advancing to the denial of the existence and government of God. Nothing can stay the tide of infidelity in our land except our divine faith. We Catholics are the best friends of our free institutions, since we are the only conservatives who maintain the principles of justice and equity on which alone they can securely rest. It is our duty always to protest against every kind of infidelity. Right is always right, and wrong is always wrong, under whatever specious appearance it may be seen. The foes of the [407] Catholic Church are really the foes of true liberty and of real progress. Knowing full well that the Catholic Church alone is able to stand against the arts of the adversary of man, they attack our religion consciously or unconsciously, knowing that thereby they advance in the surest way the denial of God, of His revelation and of His reign upon earth. Various are these attacks—sometimes under the appearance of progress in things material, sometimes under the false claims of freedom, and sometimes with an open and avowed purpose of destroying the only creed which stands on immovable foundations, because it is divine.

Well-meaning men, who would disavow atheism or infidelity, who call themselves Christians in some sense, are often the dupes of the one great enemy of religion and society. The adversary of man, who is wiser than those whom he deceives, bids them in various ways to attempt to deprive Catholics of their rights before the State, in public meetings, in the legislatures of different States, and even in the United States Congress, to propose laws which, while they deprive us of our equal liberties, strike deadly blows at the order of society. They treat us as if we were a foreign colony in the land, where, to say the least, we are their equals in the land which is our earthly home, and for which we have given our talents and our lives. Nothing could be so suicidal to our faith or to true progress as to compromise with such enemies in any point of faith or morals. The moment we compromise, the moment we yield in any particular where our divine religion and its teachings are concerned, we give up the whole ground to the enemies of society.

We sacrifice the trust reposed in our hands, and under the plea of liberty, we reatly [sic] turn traitor to God and to our country. Not for our merits did God give us the priceless treasure of Christian faith. He hsa reposed it in our hands that we may maintain it, and well discharge our duty to the good of man and to His glory. We can make no admission to what is falsely called progress. We cannot admit that there is any difference between the creed of the Catholic Church of this day and its creed in former ages. We must maintain that the laws which were binding upon the ages preceding us, which have been properly called the Ages of Faith, are binding upon us; and while the admission of any compromise in the teaching of our religion would really be the sacrifice of our whole creed, we shall gain nothing from our Protestant fellow-citizens in return for such a sacrifice. They who are sincere, respect only those whom they believe to be sincere. They will lose their regard for us, and we shall lose our influence among our fellow-men. The restrictions which Almighty God has imposed on His one way of salvation cannot be removed by man, and if in our intercourse with our fellow-citizens we allow them to think [408] that we do not fully believe that the Catholic Church is necessary for the salvation of men and of nations, they will never be drawn to embrace it, nor to make the sacrifices which are necessary for its profession. We speak feelingly on this subject, but we speak from knowledge and experience. While we are bound, according to the true spirit of our religion, to be courteous and kind and gentle in all the relations of life, while we do not approve of any unnecessarily offensive word or action, we shall best subserve the interests of those who differ from us, and surely best discharge our duty to God, by maintaining, without compromise, the precepts of our religion. There is no more dangerous disposition, if it should ever become popular, than the belief that there is an American Catholicity which is in advance of past times, which differs materially from the faith once delivered to the Church and always preserved by her, which boasts of a freedom from restrictions which bind the ages of the past. Let us, then, in our humble sphere, wherever God has placed us, be true to the faith which He has revealed to us. The perpetuity of our government depends entirely, according to our mind, on the perpetuity and the progress of the Catholic religion. If our religion fails in this country, true Americanism will fall with it; and we believe that those are the only true American Catholics who, while they maintain the rights and the liberties which our constitution guarantees to us, are obedient to the divine voice which speaks to man through the Catholic Church.

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Footnotes:

1. "Liberum cuique homini est eam amplecti ac profiteri religionem, quam rationis lumine quis ductus veram putaverit.

2. "Protestantismus non aliud est quam diversa verae eiusdem christianae religionis forma, in qua acque ac in Ecclesia Catholica Deo placere datum est.

3. "Homines in cuiusvis religionis cultu viam aeternae salutis reperire aeternamque salutem assequi possunt."

4. Apostolicae Sedis, Romanarumque Congregationum decreta liberum scientiae progressum impediunt.

5. Methodus et principia, quibus antiqui doctores scholastici theologiam excoluerunt, temporum nostrorum necessitatibus scientiarumque progressui minime congruunt.

6. "Ecclesia a Statu, Statusque ab Ecclesia sejungendus est."

7. "Postulat optima civilis societatis ratio, ut populares scholae, quae patent omnibus cuiusque e populo classis pueris, ac publica universim instituta, quae litteris severioribusque disciplinis tradendis et educationi juventutis curandae sunt destinata, eximantur ab omni Ecclesiae auctoritate, moderatrice vi et ingerentia, plenoque civilis ac politiciae auctoritatis arbitrio subiiciantur ad imperantium placita et ad communium aetatis opinionum amussim."

8. Catholicis viris probari potest ea juventutis instituendae ratio, quae sit a Catholica fide et ab Ecclesiae potestate sejuncta quaeque rerum dumtaxat naturalium scientiam ac terrenae socialis vitae fines tantummodo vel saltem primario spectet."

9. "Abrogatio civilis imperii quo Apostolica Sedes potitur, ad Ecclesiae libertatem felicitatemque vel maxime conduceret."

10. Romanus Pontifex potest ac debet cum progressu, cum liberalismo et cum recenti civilitate sese reconciliare et componere."

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Source: Right Rev. Thomas S. Preston, D.D., V.G., "American Catholicity," The American Catholic Quarterly Review 16 (January–October 1891): 396–408.