" AMERICANISM " AND THE FRENCH CLERGY. year." But taking
counsel of his love of peace and of his desire to advance the cause of religion, nothing seems to him better than silence. It is this preference, doubt- less, that is the cause why his speech gives us so little in- formation. Where your ambition is to say nothing, and a too inquisitive editor is at your heels, it is a permissible subterfuge to make what you do say convey as little as possible to the reader.
Americanism, says M. Nchenard, implied during the short space of time for which it existed " a certain bend- ing in the matter of dogmatic affirmation, a separatist tendency with respect to the central ecclesiastical authority, a. claim to a larger individual independence, and a minimising in the practices of the Christian, and especially the religious, life." This is all that he gives us by way of definition, and the criticism it obviously invites is that it is characterised by excessive vague- ness. To make it mean anything it must be assumed that no difference of opinion whatever is permitted to Catholics on any one of these points. There must be no questioning of the de fide character of any statement put forward at any time by lawful ecclesias- tical authority, for that would be a " bending in the matter of dogmatic affirmation." No two opinions are permissible as to the extent of the Papal power, for that would imply " a separatist tendency with respect to the central ecclesiastical authority." In every instance in which a Catholic is at issue with his spiritual superiors he is condemned in advance, else the Church would be tolerating a "larger individual independence." There must be no relaxation in any of the rules of monastic Orders, however unsuited they may be to modern conditions, for any such softening would be "a minimising in the practices of the Christian, and especially the religious, life." We do not know that so sweeping a series of claims has ever been set up by any Catholic writer. Very strong things indeed have been said by Ultramontanes, and very unflattering opinions expressed as to the theological soundness of those who protested against these opinions. But we have never, so far as we can remember, seen it taken for granted that no bending in the matter of dogmatic affirmation is permissible, that every assertion of the central ecclesiastical authority is to pass unchallenged, that individual independence is a thing in which there can be no degrees, and that every particular of a monastic rule is stereotyped for all time to come.
When once we understand the length to which M. Pechenard is willing to go, we cease to wonder at his complacent adoption of the most questionable of the many questionable positions taken up by the victors in the Jansenist controversy. The ecclesiastical authorities of that day were not content with exacting a specific denial of certain heretical propositions. They went further, and insisted that the Port-Royalists should acknowledge that these heretical propositions were contained in Jansen's book. This is precisely what M. Pechenard demands of the sympathisers with Americanism. This pestilent delusion could under no circumstances, he thinks, have found a footing in France, because it would have en- countered on the part of the French clergy "a firm and resolute opposition, resulting from their long education in opposite views." Happily, however, their orthodoxy was never put to the test. While minds grew heated, some siding with, others against these opinions, the Pope "suddenly raised his voice, and spoke as Supreme Pontiff.
Beneath the influence of his word the system of Americanism fell shattered, the waves remained agitated for a moment beneath the debris, and almost immediately calm was restored and silence ensued." When the supreme authority had intervened in this decisive way, it was only natural that good Catholics should be anxious to show that they, at all events, were not included in its censure. And, indeed, there were not wanting those who thought that the Papal condemnation had purposely been made indefinite in order to leave open as many ways of escape as possible. But M. Pechenard knows nothing of such devices. "The chief Ameriean supporters of these novelties "—in France, apparently, they had no supporters —had, he says, the nonchalance to declare " that they had never had anything in common with" the errors con- demned by the Pope. There was no need for them to renounce the condemned propositions, for they had never made them their own. But this, according to M. Pechenard, is an impossible contention, for otherwise " what were the meaning and the purport of the Pontifical decision? Could it be that it had struck at phantoms and condemned imaginary errors ? " M. Pechenard will not admit that such an explanation is possible. A Pontifical Klecision does two things. It declares, first., that such-and-such a statement is heretical, and, next, that such-and-such person made it. In this instance, at all events, infallibility steps outside the province commonly attributed to it, and disposes of a question of fact. Probably, were the need to arise, the Pope would be asked to declare infallibly who was the real author of a statement published without a name.
It is fair to say, however, that M. Pechenard does but express the mind of some very high ecclesiastical digni- taries. That " the errors condemned by the Holy Father" were really professed in America, and professed in the very terms in which they are condemned, "is incontest- able." M. Pechenard does not put the error as con- demned by the Pope side by side with the error as pro- fessed by the teachers of Americanism. He brings forward what he evidently regards as much stronger evidence. The identity of the statements made in America and the statements condemned at Rome is incontestable because many Bishops have said so. Arch- bishop Corrigan praises the Pope for " embodying in one document the manifold and fallacious doctrines put forward under the specious title of Americanism."
The Bishops of the Province of Milwaukee could not " suppress their grief and indignation " at the presump- tion of those American Catholics who maintain that " scarcely any Americans have shared these errors." When Archbishop Ireland came to France last May to preach the panegyric of Joan of Arc, he " understood "- perhaps we should rather say, was made to understand— that he must say nothing about Americanism. That had first been described and then condemned, and if those Catholics against whom the condemnation is directed can- not recognise in it any doctrines that they themselves have ever held, this is only an indication of the extent to which their heresies have taken hold of them. This, at all events, is " the state of mind of our people on this subject."
Considering the profound satisfaction with which M. Pechenard views this state of mind in the French clergy, it would have been generous in him to have recognised its real author. The French Church, he says, had sunk before the Revolution into a Gallican particu- larism. "But in our age she opened her eyes turned resolutely toward Rome, and by a liturgical and dis- ciplinary revolution without precedent she re-established herself in the closest communion with the centre of Catholicity." We have no quarrel with M. Pechenard's statement of the ecclesiastical changes which French Catholicism underwent at the beginning of this century.
It is quite true that the ancient hierarchy of France, and the missals and breviaries which that hierarchy had ordered to be used, were swept away by the mere expression of the Pope's will, and that in their place were set up new bishoprics, which in their turn were filled by new Bishops. But at whose instance was the change effected?
At the instance of the first Napoleon, and as part of his scheme for making the Catholic Church, from the Pope down to the meanest cure, the executive of his omni- potent will. No doubt the plan failed. The Pope became for a time the slave of the French Emperor, but he bided his time, and the French Emperor passed away and left the changes he had devised for the increase of his own power the mainstay of the authority which he had meant to make his creature. But the credit of the change, such as it is, belongs to Napoleon I., not to the Church, which when it was wrought was a passive instrument in his hands.
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