Donahoes Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 | Page 9

this design. Laws, the administration
of States, the teaching of youth unaccompanied by religion, the
spoliation and destruction of religious orders, the overturning of the
civil principality of the Roman Pontiffs, all have regard to this end; to
emasculate Christian institutes, to narrow the liberty of the Catholic
Church, and to diminish her other rights.
Natural reason itself convinces us that such opinions about the ruling of
a State are very widely removed from the truth. Nature herself bears

witness that all power of whatever kind ultimately emanates from God,
that greatest and most august fountain. Popular rule, however, which
without any regard to God is said to be naturally in the multitude,
though it may excellently avail to supply the fires of many
blandishments and excitements of many forms of covetousness, yet
rests on no probable reason, nor can have sufficient strength to ensure
public security and the quiet permanence of order. Verily things under
the auspices of these doctrines have come to such a pass that many
sanction this as a law in civil jurisprudence, to wit, that sedition may
rightly be raised. For the idea prevails that princes are really nothing
but delegates to express the popular will; and so necessarily all things
become alike, are changeable at the popular nod, and a certain fear of
public disturbance is forever hanging over our heads.
But to think with regard to religion, that there is no difference between
unlike and contrary forms, clearly will have this issue--an
unwillingness to test any one form in theory and practice. And this, if
indeed it differs from atheism in name, is in fact the same thing. Men
who really believe in the existence of God, if they are to be consistent
and not ridiculous, will, of necessity, understand that the different
methods of divine worship involving dissimilarity and conflict, even on
the most important points, cannot be all equally probable, equally good,
and equally accepted by God. And thus that faculty of thinking
whatever you like and expressing whatever you like to think in writing,
without any thought of moderation, is not of its own nature, indeed, a
good in which human society may rightly rejoice, but, on the contrary,
a fount and origin of many ills.
Liberty, in so far as it is a virtue perfecting man, should be occupied
with that which is true and that which is good; but the foundation of
that which is true and that which is good cannot be changed at the
pleasure of man, but remains ever the same, nor indeed is it less
unchangeable than nature herself. If the mind assent to false opinions, if
the will choose for itself evil, and apply itself thereto, neither attains its
perfection, but both fall from their natural dignity, and both lapse by
degrees into corruption. Whatever things, therefore, are contrary to
virtue and truth, these things it is not right to place in the light before

the eyes of men, far less to defend by the favor and tutelage of the laws.
A well-spent life is the only path to that heaven whither we all direct
our steps; and on this account the State departs from the law and
custom of nature if it allows the license of opinions and of deeds to run
riot to such a degree as to lead minds astray with impunity from the
truth, and hearts from the practice of virtue.
But to exclude the Church which God Himself has constituted from the
business of life, from the laws, from the teaching of youth, from
domestic society, is a great and pernicious error. A well-regulated State
cannot be when religion is taken away; more than needs be, perhaps, is
now known of what sort of a thing is in itself, and whither tends that
philosophy of life and morals which men call civil. The Church of
Christ is the true teacher of virtue and guardian of morals; it is that
which keeps principles in safety, from which duties are derived, and by
proposing most efficacious reasons for an honest life, it bids us not
only fly from wicked deeds, but rule the motions of the mind which are
contrary to reason when it is not intended to reduce them to action. But
to wish the Church in the discharge of its offices to be subject to the
civil power is a great rashness, a great injustice. If this were done order
would be disturbed, since things natural would thus be put before those
which are above nature; the multitude of the good whose common life,
if there be nothing to hinder it, the Church would make complete, either
disappears or at all events is considerably diminished, and besides, a
way is opened to enmities and conflicts--how great the evil which they