Sacred Cow Punchers : The Sacred Cow Punchers

Welcome to The Sacred Cow Punchers blog!

2008-05-05T13:50:53Z

'

Welcome all Liberals an' other�scum of the earth. Step into the light so's we can have us�a look at'cha. Ya'all been a' hidin' under the cover of darkness all these years, but we been a' watchin' ya anyhow. 'T were easy! Even when we couldn't see ya, we could smell ya!

Come on in, now. Don't make us use the rope. Not yet anyways! Ain't no corrupt media here to�speak fer�ya. No Communist ACLU to defend ya neither. Nope. Here yo got no friends, no spies, no one to cover yo ass up.�Yo is as naked as a jay bird an' we gonna make sure the whole world can sees jus' what ugly coyotes ya'all are.

Jus' so's yo don' think we ain't friendly though,...after we finishes peelin' the hides off'n yore carcasses, we is gonna wax yo asses for ya. Give 'em a nice hard shine! That's mighty nice o' us, ain't it?

And NO...you ain't allowed to post none o' yore�leftwing, Commie comments. Welcome to the tannery! BWUAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!

Thank you, Senator McCarthy. Yo was right! We knowed it all along too! But yo jus' rest in peace now, sir. We gonna take it from here.

Head 'em up! Move 'em out!

�

The Evolution of the Cow-Puncher

from Harper's new monthly magazine (1895)

by Owen Wister

TWO men sat opposite me once, despising each other so heartily that I am unlikely to forget them. They had never met before -- if they can be said to have met this time -- and they were both unknown to me. It happened in a train by which we journeyed together from Leamington to London. The cause of their mutual disesteem was appearance; neither liked the other's outward man, and told him so silently for three hours; that is all they ever knew of each other. This object-lesson afterward gained greatly by my learning the name and estate of one of these gentlemen. He was a peer. He had good rugs, a good umbrella, several newspapers -- but read only the pink one, -- and a leather and silver thing which I took to be a traveling-bag beside him. He opened it between Banbury and Oxford, and I saw, not handkerchiefs and ivory, but cut-glass bottles with stoppers. I noticed further the strong sumptuous monogram engraved here and there. The peer leisurely took brandy, and was not aware of our presence. But the point of him is that he garnished those miles of railroad with incomparably greater comfort than we did who had no rugs, no cut glass, no sandwich-box, no monogram. He had understood life's upholstery and trappings for several hundred years, getting the best to be had in each generation of his noble descent.

�� The enemy that he had made, as a dog makes an enemy of a cat by the mere preliminary of being a dog, sat in the other corner. He wore a shiny silk hat, smooth new lean black trousers, with high boots stiff and swelling to stove-pipe symmetry beneath, and a tie devoid of interest. I did not ascertain if the pistol was in his hip pocket, but at stated intervals he spit out of his window. By his hawk nose and eye and the lank strength of his chin he was a male who could take care of himself, and had done so. One could be sure he had wrested success from this world somehow, somewhere; and here he was, in a first-class carriage, on a first-class train, come for a first-class time, with a mind as complacently shut against being taught by foreign travel as any American patriot of to-day can attain or recommend, or any Englishman can reveal in his ten-day book about our continent and people. Charles Dickens and Mark Twain have immortalized their own blindness almost equally; and the sad truth is that enlightenment is mostly a stay-at-home creature, who crosses neither ocean nor frontier. This stranger was of course going to have a bad time, and feel relieved to get home and tell of the absence of baggage-checks and of the effete despot who had not set up the drinks. Once he addressed the despot, who was serenely smoking.

�� "I'll trouble you for a light," said he; and in his drawl I heard plainly his poor opinion of feudalism.

�� His lordship returned the drawl -- not audibly, but with his eye, which he ran slowly up and down the stranger. His was the Piccadilly drawl; the other made use of the trans-Missouri variety; and both these are at bottom one and the same -- the Anglo-Saxon's note of eternal contempt for whatever lies outside the beat of his personal experience. So I took an observation of these two Anglo-Saxons drawling at each other across the prejudice of a hundred years, and I thought it might come to a row. For the American was, on the quiet face of him, a "bad man," and so, to any save the provincial eye, was the nobleman. Fine feathers had deceived trans-Missouri, whose list of "bad men" was limited to specimens of the cut of his own jib, who know nothing of cut-glass bottles. But John gave Jonathan the light he asked, and for the remainder of our journey ceased to know that such a person existed.

�� Though we three never met again, my object-lesson did not end when we parted at Paddington. Before many seasons were sped the fortunes of the nobleman took a turn for the scandalous. He left cut glass behind him and went to Texas. I wish I could veraciously tell that he saw the stranger there -- the traveller between whose bird-of-freedom nostrils and the wind his luxurious nobility had passed so offensively. But I do know that his second and more general skirmish with democracy left both sides amicable. In fact, the nobleman won the Western heart forthwith. Took it by surprise: democracy had read in the papers so often about the despot and his effeteness. This despot vaulted into the saddle and stuck to the remarkably ingenious ponies that had been chosen with care to disconcert him. When they showed him pistols, he was found to be already acquainted with that weapon. He quickly learned how to rope a steer. The card habit ran in his noble blood as it did in the cowboy's. He could sleep on the ground and rough it with the best of them, and with the best of them he could drink and help make a town clamorous. Deep in him lay virtues and vices coarse and elemental as theirs. Doubtless the windows of St. James Street sometimes opened in his memory, and he looked into them and desired to speak with those whom he saw inside. And the whiskey was not like the old stuff in the cut-glass bottles; but he never said so; and in time he died, widely esteemed. Texas found no count against him save his pronunciation of such words as bath and fancy -- a misfortune laid to the accident of his birth; and you will hear to-day in that flannel-shirted democracy only good concerning this aristocrat born and bred.

�� Now, besides several morals which no pious person will find difficult to draw from the decline and fall of this aristocrat, there is something more germane to my democratic contemplation: after all, when driven to flock with Texas, he was a bird of that wild feather. That is the object-lesson; that is the gist of the matter. Directly the English nobleman smelt Texas, the slumbering untamed Saxon awoke in him, and mindful of the tournament, mindful of the hunting-field, galloped howling after wild cattle, a born horseman, a perfect athlete, and spite of the peerage and gules and argent, fundamentally kin with the drifting vagabonds who swore and galloped by his side. The man's outcome typifies the way of his race from the beginning. Hundreds like him have gone to Australia, Canada, India, and have done likewise, and in our own continent you may see the thing plainer than anywhere else. No rood of modern ground is more debased and mongrel with its hordes of encroaching alien vermin, that turn our cities to Babels and our citizenship to a hybrid farce, who degrade our commonwealth from a nation into something half pawn-shop, half broker's office. But to survive in the clean cattle country requires spirit of adventure, courage, and self-sufficiency; you will not find many Poles or Huns or Russian Jews in that district; it stands as yet untainted by the benevolence of Baron Hirsch. Even in the cattle country the respectable Swedes settle chiefly to farming, and are seldom horsemen. The community of which the aristocrat appropriately made one speaks English. The Frenchman to-day is seen at his best inside a house; he can paint and he can play comedy, but he seldom climbs a new mountain. The Italian has forgotten Columbus, and sells fruit. Among the Spaniards and the Portuguese no Cortez or Magellan is found to-day. Except in Prussia, the Teuton is too often a tame, slippered animal, with his pedantic mind swaddled in a dressing-gown. But the Anglo-Saxon is still forever homesick for out-of-doors.

�� Throughout his career it has been his love to push further into the wilderness, and his fate thereby to serve larger causes than his own. In following his native bent he furthers unwittingly a design outside himself; he cuts the way for the common law and self-government, and new creeds, polities, and nations arise in his wake; in his own immense commonwealth this planless rover is obliterated. Roving took him (the Viking portion of him) from his Norse crags across to Albion. From that hearth of Albion the footprints of his sons lead to the corners of the earth; beside that hearth how inveterate remains his flavor! At Hastings he tasted defeat, but was not vanquished; to the Invincible Armada he proved a grievous surprise; one way or another he came through Waterloo -- possibly because he is inveterately dull at perceiving himself beaten; when not otherwise busy at Balaklava or by the Alma, he was getting up horse-races, ready for sport or killing, and all with that silver and cut-glass finish which so offends our whistling, vacant-minded democracy. Greatest triumph and glory of all, because spiritual, his shoulders bore the Reformation when its own originators had tottered. Away from the hearth the cut-glass stage will not generally have been attained by him, and in Maine or Kentucky you can recognize at sight the chip of the old rough block. But if you meet him upon his island, in the shape of a peer, and find him particular to dress for dinner seven days of the week, do not on that account imagine that his white tie has throttled the man in him. That is a whistling Fourth-of-July misconception. It's no symptom of patriotism to be unable to see a man through cut glass, and if it comes to an appraisement of the stranger and the peer, I should say, put each in the other's place, and let us see if the stranger could play the peer as completely as the nobleman played the cowboy. Sir Francis Drake was such a one; and Raleigh, the fine essence of Anglo-Saxon, with his fashionable gallant cloak, his adventure upon new seas, and his immediate appreciation of tobacco. The rover may return with looted treasure or incidentally stolen corners of territory to clap in his strongbox (this Angle is no angel), but it is not the dollars that played first fiddle with him, else our Hebrew friends would pioneer the whole of us. Adventure, to be out-of-doors, to find some new place far away from the postman, to enjoy independence of spirit or mind or body (according to his high or low standards) -- this is the cardinal surviving fittest instinct that makes the Saxon through the centuries conqueror, invader, navigator, buccaneer, explorer, colonist, tiger-shooter; lifts him a pilgrim among the immortals at Plymouth Rock, dangles him a pirate from the gallows on the docks of Bristol. At all times when historic conditions or private stress have burst his domestic crust and let him fly out naturally, there he is, on Darien's peak, or through Magellan, or across the Missouri, or up the Columbia, a Hawkins, a Boone, a Grey, or a nameless vagrant, the same Saxon, ploughing the seas and carving the forests in every shape of man, from preacher to thief, and in each shape changelessly untamed. And as he has ruled the waves with his ship from that Viking time until yesterday at Samoa, when approaching death could extract no sound from him save American cheers and music, so upon land has the horse been his foster-brother, his ally, his playfellow, from the tournament at Camelot to the round-up at Abilene. The blood and the sweat of his jousting, and all the dirt and stains, have faded in the long sunlight of tradition, and in the chronicles of romance we hear none of his curses or obscenity; the clash of his armor rings mellow and heroic down the ages into our modern ears. But his direct lineal offspring among our Western mountains has had no poet to connect him with the eternal, no distance to lend him enchantment; though he has fought single-handed with savages, and through skill and daring prevailed, though he has made his nightly bed in a thousand miles of snow and loneliness, he has not, and never will have, the "consecration of memory." No doubt Sir Launcelot bore himself with a grace and breeding of which our unpolished fellow of the cattle trail has only the latent possibility; but in personal daring and in skill as to the horse, the knight and the cowboy are nothing but the same Saxon of different environments, the nobleman in London and the nobleman in Texas; and no hoof in Sir Thomas Mallory shakes the crumbling plains with quadruped sound more valiant than the galloping that has echoed from the Rio Grande to the Big Horn Mountains. But we have no Sir Thomas Mallory! Since Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Cooper were taken from us, our flippant and impoverished imagination has ceased to be national, and the rider among Indians and cattle, the frontiersman, the American who replaces Miles Standish and the Pathfinder, is now beneath the notice of polite writers.

�� From the tournament to the round-up! Deprive the Saxon of his horse, and put him to forest-clearing or in a counting-house for a couple of generations, and you may pass him by without ever seeing that his legs are designed for the gripping of saddles. Our first hundred years afforded his horsemanship but little opportunity. Though his out-of-door spirit, most at home when at large, sported free in the elbow-room granted by the surrender of Cornwallis, it was on foot and with an axe that he chiefly enjoyed himself. He moved his log cabin slowly inward from the Atlantic, slowly over the wooded knolls of Cumberland and Allegheny, down and across the valley beyond, until the infrequent news of him ceased, and his kinsfolk who had staid by the sea, and were merchanting themselves upwards to the level of family portraits and the cut-glass finish, forgot that the prodigal in the backwoods belonged to them, and was part of their United States, bone of their bone. And thus did our wide country become as a man whose East hand knoweth not what his West hand doeth.

�� Mr. Herndon, in telling of Lincoln's early days in Illinois, gives us a complete picture of the roving Saxon upon our continent in 1830. "The boys .... were a terror to the entire region -- seemingly a necessary product of frontier civilization. They were friendly and good-natured.... They would do almost anything for sport or fun, love or necessity. Though rude and rough, though life's forces ran over the edge of their bowl, foaming and sparkling in pure deviltry for deviltry's sake, ... yet place before them a poor man who needed their aid, ... a defenseless woman, ... they melted into sympathy and charity at once. They gave all they had, and willingly toiled or played cards for more... A stranger's introduction was likely to be the most unpleasant part of his acquaintance.... They were in the habit of 'cleaning out' New Salem." Friendly and good-natured, and in the habit of cleaning out New Salem! Quite so. There you have him. Here is the American variety of the Saxon set down for you as accurately as if Audubon himself had done it. A colored plate of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham should go on the opposite page. Nothing but the horse is left out of the description, and that is because the Saxon and his horse seldom met during the rail-splitting era of our growth. But the man of 1830 would give away all that he had and play cards for more. Decidedly nothing was missing except the horse -- and the horse was waiting in another part of our large map until the man should arrive and jump on his back again.

�� A few words about this horse -- the horse of the plains. Whether or no his forefathers looked on when Montezuma fell, they certainly hailed from Spain. And whether it was missionaries or thieves who carried them northward from Mexico, until the Sioux heard of the new animal, certain it also is that this pony ran wild for a century or two, either alone or with various red-skinned owners; and as he gathered the sundry experiences of war and peace, of being stolen, and of being abandoned in the snow at inconvenient distances from home, of being ridden by two women and a baby at once, and of being eaten by a bear, his wide range of contretemps brought him a wit sharper than the street Arab's, and an attitude towards life more blase than in the united capitals of Europe. I have frequently caught him watching me with an eye of such sardonic depreciation that I felt it quite vain to attempt any hiding from him of my incompetence; and as for surprising him, a locomotive cannot do it, for I have tried this. He relishes putting a man in absurd positions, and will wait many days in patience to compass this uncharitable thing; and when he cannot bring a man to derision, he contents himself with a steer or a buffalo, helping the man to rope and throw these animals with an ingenuity surpassing any circus, to my thinking. A number of delighted passengers on the Kansas Pacific Railway passed by a Mexican vaquero, who had been sent out from Kansas City to rope a buffalo as an advertisement for the stock-yards. The train stopped to take a look at the solitary horseman fast to a buffalo in the midst of the plains. Jose, who had his bull safely roped, shouted to ask if they had water on the train. "We'll bring you some," said they. "Oh, I come get," said he; and jumping off, he left his accomplished pony in sole charge of the buffalo. Whenever the huge beast struggled for freedom, the clever pony stiffened his legs and leaned back as in a tug of war, by jumps and dodges so anticipating each move of the enemy that escape was entirely hopeless. The boy got his drink, and his employer sent out a car for the buffalo, which was taken in triumph into Kansas City behind the passenger train. The Mexican narrated the exploit to his employer thus: "Oh, Shirley, when the train start they all give three greata big cheers for me, and then they give three mucha bigger cheers for the little gray hoss!"

�� Ah, progress is truly a wonder! and admirable beyond all doubt it is to behold the rapid new square miles of brick, and the stream rich with the contributions of an increased population, and tall factories that have stopped dividends just for the present, and long empty railroads in the hands of the receiver; but I prefer that unenlightened day when we had plenty of money and cheered for the little gray hoss. Such was the animal that awaited the coming of the rail-splitter. The meeting was a long way off in 1830. Not the Mexican war, not the gold on the Pacific in '49 (though this, except for the horse, revealed the whole Saxon at his best and worst, and for a brief and beautiful moment waked once more the American muse), not any national event until the war of the rebellion was over and we had a railroad from coast to coast, brought the man and his horse together. It was in the late sixties that this happened in Texas. The adventurous sons of Kentucky and Tennessee, forever following the native bent to roam, and having no longer a war to give them the life they preferred, came into a new country full of grass and cattle. Here they found Mexicans by the hundred, all on horses and at large over the flat of the world. This sight must have stirred memories in the rail-splitter's blood, for he joined the sport upon the instant. I do not think he rode with bolder skill than the Mexican's, but he brought other and grittier qualities to bear upon that wild life, and also the Saxon contempt for the foreigner. Soon he had taken what was good from this small, deceitful alien, including his name, Vaquero, which he translated into Cowboy. He took his saddle, his bridle, his spurs, his rope, his methods of branding and herding -- indeed, most of his customs and accoutrements -- and with them he went rioting over the hills. His play-ground was two thousand miles long and a thousand wide. The hoofs of his horse were tough as iron, and the pony waged the joyous battle of self-preservation as stoutly as did his rider. When the man lay rolled in his blankets sleeping, warm and unconcerned beneath a driving storm of snow, the beast pawed through to the sage-brush and subsisted; so that it came to be said of such an animal, "A meal a day is enough for a man who gets to ride that horse."

�� The cow-puncher's play-ground in those first glorious days of his prosperity included battle and murder and sudden death as every-day matters. From 1865 to 1878 in Texas he fought his way with knife and gun, and any hour of the twenty-four might see him flattened behind the rocks among the whiz of bullets and the flight of arrows, or dragged bloody and folded together from some adobe hovel. Seventy-five dollars a month and absolute health and strength were his wages; and when the news of all this excellence drifted from Texas eastward, they came in shoals -- Saxon boys of picked courage (none but plucky ones could survive) from South and North, from town and country. Every sort and degree of home tradition came with them from their far birthplaces. Some had known the evening hymn at one time, others could remember no parent or teacher earlier than the street; some spoke with the gentle accent of Virginia, others in the dialect of baked beans and codfish; here and there was the baccalaureate, already beginning to forget his Greek alphabet, but still able to repeat the two notable words with which Xenophon always marches upon the next stage of his journey. Hither to the cattle country they flocked from forty kinds of home, each bringing a deadly weapon.

�� What motlier tribe, what heap of cards shuffled from more various unmatched packs, could be found? Yet this tribe did not remain motley, but soon grew into a unit. To begin with, the old spirit burned alike in all, the unextinguished fire of adventure and independence. And then, the same stress of shifting for self, the same vigorous and peculiar habits of life, were forced upon each one: watching for Indians, guarding huge herds at night, chasing cattle, wild as deer, over rocks and counties, sleeping in the dust and waking in the snow, cooking in the open, swimming the swollen rivers. Such gymnasium for mind and body develops a like pattern in the unlike. Thus, late in the nineteenth century, was the race once again subjected to battles and darkness, rain and shine, to the fierceness and generosity of the desert. Destiny tried her latest experiment upon the Saxon, and plucking him from the library, the haystack, and the gutter, set him upon his horse; then it was that, face to face with the eternal simplicity of death, his modern guise fell away and showed once again the mediaeval man. It was no new type, no product of the frontier, but just the original kernel of the nut with the shell broken.

�� This bottom bond of race unified the divers young men, who came riding from various points of the compass, speaking university and gutter English simultaneously; and as the knights of Camelot prized their armor and were particular about their swords, so these dusty successors had an extreme pride of equipment, and put aside their jeans and New York suits for the tribal dress. Though each particle of gearing for man and horse was evoked from daily necessity, gold and silver instantly stepped in to play their customary ornamental part, as with all primitive races. The cow-puncher's legs must be fended from the thorny miles of the Rio Grande, the thousand mongrel shrubs that lace their bristles together stiff over the country -- the mesquite, the shin-oak, the cat's claw, the Spanish-dagger; wide-preading, from six inches to ten feet high, every vegetable vicious with an embroidery of teeth and nails; a continent of peevish thicket called chaparral, as we indiscriminately call a dog with too many sorts of grandfathers a cur. Into this saw-mill dives the wild steer through paths and passages known to himself, and after him the pursuing man must also dive at a rate that would tear his flesh to ribbons if the blades and points could get hold of him. But he cases his leg against the hostile chaparral from thigh to ankle in chaps -- leathern breeches, next door to armor; his daily bread is scarcely more needful to him. Soon his barbaric pleasure in finery sews tough leather fringe along their sides, and the leather flap of the pocket becomes stamped with a heavy rose. Sagging in a slant upon his hips leans his leather belt of cartridges buckled with jaunty arrogance, and though he uses his pistol with murderous skill, it is pretty, with ivory or mother-of-pearl for a handle. His arm must be loose to swing his looped rope free and drop its noose over the neck of the animal that bounds in front of his rushing pony. Therefore he rides in a loose flannel shirt that will not cramp him as he whirls the coils; but the handkerchief knotted at his throat, though it is there to prevent sunburn, will in time of prosperity be chosen for its color and soft texture, a scarf to draw the eye of woman. His heavy splendid saddle is, in its shape and luxury of straps and leather thongs, the completest instrument for night and day travel, and the freighting along with you of board and lodging, that any nomad has so far devised. With its trappings and stamped leather, its horn and high cantle, we are well acquainted. It must stand the strain of eight hundred sudden pounds of live beef tearing at it for freedom; it must be the anchor that shall not drag during the furious rages of such a typhoon. For the cattle of the wilderness have often run wild for three, four, and five years, through rocks and forests, never seeing the face of man from the day when as little calves they were branded. And some were never branded at all. They have grown up in company with the deer, and like the deer they fly at the approach of the horseman. Then, if he has ridden out to gather these waifs from their remote untenanted pastures and bring them in to be counted and driven to sale, he must abandon himself to the headlong pursuit. The open easy plain with its harmless footing lies behind, the steep valley narrows up to an entering wedge among the rocks, and into these untoward regions rush the beeves. The shale and detritus of shelving landslides, the slippery knobs in the beds of brooks, the uncertain edges of the jumping-off place, all lie in the road of the day's necessity, and where the steer goes, goes the cow-puncher too -- balancing, swaying, doubling upon his shrewd pony. The noose uncoiling flies swinging through the air and closes round the throat -- or perhaps only the hind leg -- of the quarry. In the shock of stopping short or of leaning to circle, the rider's stirrups must be long, and his seat a forked pliant poise on the horse's back; no grip of the knee will answer in these contortions; his leg must have its straight length, a lever of muscle and sinew to yield or close vise-like on the pony's ribs; and when the steer feels that he is taken and the rope tightens from the saddle horn, then must the gearing be solid, else, like a fisherman floundering with snapped rod and tangled line, the cow-puncher will have misfortunes to repair and nothing to repair them with. Such a thing as this has happened in New Mexico: The steer, pursued and frantic at feeling the throttle of the flung rope, ran blindly over a cliff, one end of the line fast to him, the other to the rider's saddle horn, and no time to think once, much less twice, about anything in this or the next world. The pony braced his legs at the edge, but his gait swept him onward, as with the fast skater whose skate has stuck upon a frozen chip. The horse fell over the mountain, and with him his rider; but the sixty-foot rope was new, and it hooked over a stump. Steer and horse swung like scales gently above the man, who lay at the bottom, hurt nearly to death, but not enough to dull his appreciation of the unusual arrangement.

�� It is well, then, to wear leathern armor and sit in a stout saddle if you would thrive among the thorns and rocks; and without any such casualty as falling over a mountain, the day's common events call for uncommon strength of gear. Not otherwise can the steer be hooked and landed safely, and not otherwise is the man to hoist resisting beeves up a hill somewhat as safes are conducted to the sixth story, nor could the rider plunge galloping from the sixth story to the ground, or swerve and heavily lean to keep from flying into space, were his stirrup leathers not laced, and every other crucial spot of strain independent of so weak a thing as a buckle. To go up where you have come down is another and easier process for man and straps and everything except the horse. His breath and legs are not immortal. And in order that each day the man may be hardily borne over rough and smooth he must own several mounts -- a "string"; sometimes six and more, either his own property, or allotted to him by the foreman of the outfit for which he rides. The unused animals run in a herd -- the ramuda; and to get a fresh mount from the ramuda means not seldom the ceremony of catching your hare. The ponies walk sedately together in the pasture good as gold, and eying you without concern until they perceive that you are come with an object. They then put forth against you all the circus knowledge you have bestowed upon them so painfully. They comprehend ropes and loops and the law of gravity; they have observed the errors of steers in similar cases, and the unattractive result of running inside any enclosure, such as a corral, they strategize to keep at large, and altogether chasing a steer is tortoise play to the game they can set up for you. They relish the sight of you whirling impotent among them, rejoice in the smoking pace and the doublings they perpetrate; and with one eye attentive to you and your poised rope, and the other dexterously commanding the universe, they will intertangle as in cross-tag, pushing between your design and its victim, mingling confusedly like a driven mist, and all this with nostrils leaning level to the wind and bellies close to the speeding ground. But when the desired one is at last taken and your successful rope is on his neck, you would not dream he had ever wished for anything else. He stands, submitting absent-mindedly to bit and blanket, mild as any unconscious lamb, while placidity descends once more upon the herd; again they pasture good as gold, and butter would not melt in the mouth of one of these conscientious creatures. I have known a number of dogs, one crow, and two monkeys, but these combined have seemed to me less fertile in expedient than the cow-pony, the sardonic cayuse. The bit his master gave him, and the bridle and spurs, have the same origin from necessity and the same history as to ornament. If stopping and starting and turning must be like flashes of light, the apparatus is accordingly severe; and as for the spurs, those wheels with long spikes cease to seem grotesque when you learn that with shorter and sharper rowels they would catch in the corded meshes of the girth, and bring the rider to ruin. Silver and gold, when he could pay for them, went into the make and decoration of this smaller machinery; and his hat would cost him fifteen dollars, and he wore fringed gloves. His boots often cost twenty-five dollars in his brief hour of opulence. Come to town for his holiday, he wore his careful finery, and from his wide hat-brim to his jingling heels made something of a figure -- as self-conscious and deliberate a show as any painted buck in council or bull-elk among his aspiring cows; and out of town in the mountains, as wild and lean and dangerous as buck or bull knows how to be.

�� As with his get-up, so it went with his vocabulary; for any manner of life with a rule and flavor of its own strong enough to put a new kind of dress on a man's body will put new speech in his mouth, and an idiom derived from the exigencies of his days and nights was soon spoken by the cow-puncher. Like all creators, he not only built, but borrowed his own whenever he found it. Chaps, from chapparajos, is only one of many transfers from the Mexican, one out of (I should suppose) several hundred; and in lover-wolf is a singular instance of half-baked translation. Lobo, pronounced lovo, being the Spanish for wolf, and the coyote being a sort of wolf, the dialect of the southern border has slid into this name for a wolf that is larger, and a worse enemy to steers than the small coward coyote. Lover-wolf is a word anchored to its district. In the Northwest, though the same animal roams there as dangerously, his Texas name would be as unknown as the Northwest's word for Indian, siwash, from sauvage, would be along the Rio Grande. Thus at the top and bottom of our map do French and Spanish trickle across the frontier, and with English melt into two separate amalgams which are wholly distinct, and which remain near the spot where they were moulded; while other compounds, having the same Northern and Southern starting-point, drift far and wide, and become established in the cow-puncher's dialect over his whole country. No better French specimen can be instanced than cache, verb and noun, from the verb cacher, to conceal. In our Eastern life words such as these are of no pertinent avail; and as it is only universal pertinence which can lift a fragment of dialect into the dictionary's good society, most of them must pass with the transient generation that spoke them. Certain ones there are deserving to survive; cinch, for instance, from cincha, the Mexican girth. From its narrow office under the horse's belly it has come to perform in metaphor a hundred services. In cinching somebody or something you may mean that you hold four aces, or the key of a political crisis; and when a man is very much indeed upper-dog, then he is said to have an air-tight cinch; and this phrase is to me so pleasantly eloquent that I am withheld from using it in polite gatherings only by that prudery which we carry as a burden along with the benefits of academic training. Besides the foreign importations, such as arroya and riata, that stand unchanged, and those others which under the action of our own speech have sloughed their native shape and come out something new, like quirt -- once cuerta, Mexican for rawhide -- is the third large class of words which the cowboy has taken from our sober old dictionary stock and made over for himself. Pie-biter refers not to those hailing from our pie belt, but to a cow-pony who secretly forages in a camp kitchen to indulge his acquired tastes. Western whiskey, besides being known as tonsil varnish and a hundred different things, goes as benzine, not unjustly. The same knack of imagery that upon our Eastern slope gave visitors from the country the brief, sure name of hayseed, calls their Western equivalents junipers. Hay grows scant upon the Rocky Mountains, but those seclusions are filled with evergreens. No one has accounted to me for hobo. A hobo is a wandering unemployed person, a stealer of rides on freight-trains, a diner at the back door, eternally seeking honest work, and when brought face to face with it eternally retreating. The hobo is he against whom we have all sinned by earning our living. Perhaps some cowboy saw an Italian playing a pipe to the accompaniment of the harp, and made the generalization; oboe may have given us hobo. Hobo-ken has been suggested by an ingenious friend; but the word seems of purely Western origin, and I heard it in the West several years before it became used in the East. The cow-puncher's talent for making a useful verb out of anything shows his individuality. Any young strong race will always lay firm hands on language and squeeze juice from it; and you instantly comprehend the man who tells you of his acquaintances, whom you know to be drunk at the moment, that they are helling around town. Unsleeping need for quick thinking and doing gave these nomads the pith of utterance. They say, for instance, that they intend camping on a man's trail, meaning, concisely, "So-and-so has injured us, and we are going to follow him day and night until we are quits." Thus do these show his unpremeditated art of brevity, varying in aptness, but in imagination constant; and with one last example of his fancy I shall leave his craft of word-making.

�� It is to be noted in all peoples that for whatever particular thing in life is of frequent and familiar practice among them they will devise many gradations of epithet. To go is in the cattle country a common act, and a man may go for different reasons, in several manners, at various speeds. For example:

�� "Do I understand you went up the tree with the bear just behind you?"

�� "The bear was not in front of me."

�� Here the cowboy made ordinary words suffice for showing the way he went, but his goings can be of many sorts besides in front of and behind something, and his rich choice of synonyms embodies a latent chapter of life and habits. To the several phases of going known to the pioneer as vamose, skip, light out, dust, and git, the cowboy adds, burn the earth, hit, hit the breeze, pull your freight, jog, amble, move, pack, rattle your hocks, brindle, and more, very likely, if I knew or could recall them; I think that the observer who caught the shifting flicker of a race or a pursuit, and said brindle first, had a mind of liveliness and art.

�� It may be that some of these words I have named as home-bred natives of our wilderness are really of long standing and archaic repute, and that the scholar can point to them in the sonnets of Shakespeare, but I, at least, first learned them west of the Missouri.

�� With a speech and dress of his own, then, the cow-puncher drove his herds to Abilene or Westport Landing in the Texas times, and the easy abundant dollars came, and left him for spurs and bridles of barbaric decoration. Let it be remembered that the Mexican was the original cowboy, and that the American improved on him. Those were the days in which he was long in advance of settlers, and when he literally fought his right of way. Along the waste hundreds of miles that he had to journey, three sorts of inveterate enemies infested the road -- the thief (the cattle-thief, I mean), who was as daring as himself; the supplanted Mexican, who hated the new encroaching Northern race; and the Indian whose hand was against all races but his own immediate tribe, and who flayed the feet of his captives, and made them walk so through the mountain passes to the fires in which he slowly burned them. Among these perils the cow-puncher took wild pleasure in existing. No soldier of fortune ever adventured with bolder carelessness, no fiercer blood ever stained a border. If his raids, his triumphs, and his reverses have inspired no minstrel to sing of him who rode by the Pecos River and the hills of San Andreas, it is not so much the Rob Roy as the Walter Scott who is lacking. And the Flora McIvor! Alas! the stability of the clan, the blessing of the home background, was not there. These wild men sprang from the loins of no similar father, and begot no sons to continue their hardihood. War they made in plenty, but not love; for the woman they saw was not the woman a man can take into his heart. That their fighting Saxon ancestors awoke in them for a moment and made them figures for poetry and romance is due to the strange accidents of a young country, where, while cities flourish by the coast and in the direct paths of trade, the herd-trading interior remains mediaeval in its simplicity and violence. And yet this transient generation deserves more chronicling than it will ever have. Deeds in plenty were done that are all and more than imagination should require. One high noon upon the plains by the Rio Grande the long irons lay hot in the fire. The young cattle were being branded, and the gathered herd covered the plain. Two owners claimed one animal. They talked at first quietly round the fire, then the dispute quickened. One roped the animal, throwing it to the ground to burn his mark upon it. A third came, saying the steer was his. The friends of each drew close to hear, and a claimant thrust his red-hot iron against the hide of the animal tied on the ground. Another seized it from him, and as they fell struggling, their adherents flung themselves upon their horses, and massing into clans, volleyed with their guns across the fire. In a few minutes fourteen riders lay dead on the plain, and the tied animal over which they had quarrelled bawled and bleated in the silence. Here is skirmishing enough for a ballad. And there was a certain tireless man in northern New Mexico whose war upon cattle-thieves made his life so shining a mark that he had in bank five thousand dollars to go to the man who killed the man who killed him. A neighborhood where one looks so far beyond his own assassination as to provide a competence for his avenger is discouraging to family life, but a promising field for literature.

�� Such existence soon makes a strange man of any one, and the early cowpunchers rapidly grew unlike all people but each other and the wild superstitious ancestors whose blood was in their veins. Their hair became long, and their glance rested with serene penetration upon the stranger; they laughed seldom, and their spirit was in the permanent attitude of war. Grim lean men of few topics, and not many words concerning these; comprehending no middle between the poles of brutality and tenderness; indifferent to death, but disconcerted by a good woman; some with violent Old Testament religion, some avowing none, and all of them uneasy about corpses and the dark. These hermited horsemen would dismount in camp at nightfall and lie looking at the stars, or else squat about the fire conversing with crude sombreness of brands and horses and cows, speaking of humans when they referred to men.

�� To-day they are still to be found in New Mexico, their last domain. The extreme barrenness of those mountains has held tamer people at a distance. That next stage of Western progress -- that unparalleled compound of new hotels, electric lights, and invincible ignorance which has given us the Populist -- has been retarded, and the civilization of Colorado and silver does not yet redeem New Mexico. But in these shrunk days the cow-puncher no longer can earn money to spend on ornament; he dresses poorly and wears his chaps very wide and ungainly. But he still has three mounts, with seven horses to each mount, and his life is in the saddle among vast solitudes. In the North he was a later comer, and never quite so formidable a person. By the time he had ridden up into Wyoming and Montana the Indian was mostly gone, the locomotive upon the scene, and going West far less an exploration than in the Texas days. Into these new pastures drifted youths from town and country whose grit would scarcely have lasted them to Abilene, and who were not the grim long-haired type, but a sort of glorified farm hand. They too wore their pistols, and rode gallantly, and out of them nature and simplicity did undoubtedly forge manlier, cleaner men than what our streets breed of no worse material. They galloped by the side of the older hands, and caught something of the swing and tradition of the first years. They developed heartiness and honesty in virtue and in vice alike. Their evil deeds were not of the sneaking kind, but had always the saving grace of courage. Their code had no place for the man who steals a pocket-book or stabs in the back.And what has become of them? Where is this latest outcropping of the Saxon gone? Except where he lingers in the mountains of New Mexico he has been dispersed, as the elk, as the buffalo, as all wild animals must inevitably be dispersed. Three things swept him away -- the exhausting of the virgin pastures, the coming of the wire fence, and Mr. Armour of Chicago, who set the price of beef to suit himself. But all this may be summed up in the word Progress. When the bankrupt cow-puncher felt Progress dispersing him, he seized whatever plank floated nearest him in the wreck. He went to town for a job; he got a position on the railroad; he set up a saloon; he married, and fenced in a little farm; and he turned "rustler," and stole the cattle from the men for whom he had onced worked. In these capacities will you find him to-day. The ex-cowboy who set himself to some new way of wage-earning is all over the West, and his old courage and frankness still stick to him, but his peculiar independence is of necessity dimmed. The only man who has retained that wholly is the outlaw, the horse and cattle thief, on whose grim face hostility to Progress forever sits. He has had a checkered career. He has been often hanged, often shot; he is generally "wanted" in several widely scattered districts. I know one who used to play the banjo to me on Powder River as he swung his long boots over the side of his bunk. I have never listened to any man's talk with more interest and diversion. Once he has been to Paris on the proceeds of a lengthy well-conducted theft; once he has been in prison for murder. He has the bluest eye the longest nose, and the coldest face I ever saw. This stripe of gentleman still lives and thrives through the cattle country, occasionally goes out into the waste of land in the most delicate way, and presently cows and steers are missed. But he has driven them many miles to avoid live-stock inspectors, and it may be that if you know him by sight and happen to be in a town where cattle are bought, such as Kansas City, you will meet him at the best hotel there full of geniality and affluence.

�� Such is the story of the cow-puncher, the American descendant of Saxon ancestors, who for thirty years flourished upon our part of the earth, and, because he was not compatible with Progress, is now departed, never to return. But because Progress has just now given us the Populist and silver in exchange for him, is no ground for lament. He has never made a good citizen, but only a good soldier, from his tournament days down. And if our nation in its growth have no worse distemper than the Populist to weather through, there is hope for us, even though present signs disincline us to make much noise upon the Fourth of July.

(End.)

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/gaslight/evolcowp.htm

Liberalism Is A Sin

2008-05-08T14:06:15Z

LIBERALISM IS A SIN

Englished and Adapted from the Spanish of Roman Catholic Priest,

Dr. Don Felix Sarda Y Salvany

ByConde B. Pallen, Ph.D., LL.D.

Catholic Monarch Queen Isabella of Spain

Glorious Promoter of the Inquisition

INTRODUCTION

Few errors have so firmly entrenched themselves for so long a time as has the Error of Liberalism. Few sins have been so misunderstood as has been the Sin of Liberalism. In reprinting this timely book, first printed in English in 1899, we hope to enlighten Catholics as to the causes and effect of and remedies for Liberalism.

We dedicate this reprint to the Virgin Mother, Destroyer of all heresies.

San Diego Catholics for Better Libraries

P.O. Box 17034

San Diego, California 92117

Liberalism is a Sin

Englished And Adapted

From

The Spanish of Dr. Don Felix Sarda Y Salvany,

By

Conde� B. Pallen, Ph.D., LL.D.St Louis, Mo. 1899

Published By B. Herder,

17 S. Broadway.

PREFACE

In 1886 there appeared in Spain a little work under the title El Liberalismo es Pecado: �Liberalism Is A Sin,� by Don Felix Sarda y Salvany, a priest of Barcelona and editor of a journal called La Revista Popular. The book excited considerable commotion. It was vigorously assailed by the Liberals. A Spanish Bishop, of a Liberal turn, instigated an answer to Dr. Sarda�s work by another Spanish priest. Both books were sent to Rome praying the Sacred Congregation of the Index to put Dr. Sarda�s work under the ban. The following letter, under date January 10, 1887, from the Sacred Congregation itself, explains the result of its consideration of the two volumes:

Most Excellent Sir:

The Sacred Congregation of the Index has received the denunciation of the little work bearing the title �El Liberalismo es Pecado� by Don Felix Sarda y Salvany, a priest of your diocese; the denunciation (pg. iii) was accompanied at the same time by another little work entitled �El Proceso del Integrismo,� that is �a refutation of the errors contained in the little work El Liberalismo es Pecado.� The author of the second work is D. de Pazos, a canon of the diocese of Vich.

Wherefore the Sacred Congregation has carefully examined both works, and decided as follows: In the first not only is nothing found contrary to sound doctrine, but its author, D. Felix Sarda merits great praise for his exposition and defense of the sound doctrine therein set forth with solidity, order and lucidity, and without personal offense to anyone.

The same judgement, however, cannot be passed on the other work by D. de Pazos, for in matter it needs corrections. Moreover his injurious manner of speaking cannot be approved, for he inveighs rather against the person of D. Sarda, than against the latter�s supposed errors.

Therefore the Sacred Congregation has commanded D. de Pazos, admonished by his own Bishop, to withdraw his book, as far as he can, from circulation, and in future, if any discussion of the subject should arise, to abstain from all expressions personally injurious, according to the precept of true Christian charity; and this all the more (iv) since Our Holy Father Leo XIII., while he urgently recommends castigation of error, neither desires nor approves expressions personally injurious, especially when directed against those who are eminent for their doctrine and their piety.

In communicating to you this order of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, that you may be able to make it known to the illustrious priest of your diocese, D. Sarda, for his peace of mind, I pray God to grant you all happiness and prosperity and subscribe myself with great respect,

Your most obedient servant,

Fr. Jerome Scheri, O.P.

Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of the Index.

To the Most Rev. Jacobo Catala et Alboso, Bishop of Barcelona.

The following short chapters on Liberalism are mainly and substantially Dr. Sarda�s book, put into English, and adapted to our American conditions. Their need and their use will be best understood and appreciated by their perusal. (v)

Note: Numbers in parenthesis throughout the text are the page numbers of the original reprint in 1963.

The press has grown so omnipresent nowadays that there is no escape from it. It is therefore important to know exactly how to steer our course amidst the many perils that beset Catholics on this score. How then are we to distinguish between journals that merit or do not merit our confidence? Or rather, what kind of journals ought to inspire us with very little and what with no confidence? In the first place it is clear that such journals as boast of their liberalism have no claim to our confidence in matters that Liberalism touches on. These are precisely the enemies against whom we have constantly to be on guard, against whom we have to wage perpetual war. This point then is outside of our present consideration. All those who, in our times claim the title of Liberalism, in the specific sense in which we always use the term, become our declared enemies and the enemies of the Church of God.

But there is another class of journals less prompt to unmask and proclaim themselves, who love to live amidst ambiguities (151) in an undefined and indefinite region of compromise. They declare themselves Catholic and saver their detestation and abhorrence of Liberalism, at least if we credit their words. These journals are generally known as Liberal Catholic. This is the class which we should especially mistrust and not permit ourselves to be duped by its pretended piety. When we find journals Catholic in name and in profession strongly leaning to the side of compromise and seeking to placate the enemy by concessions, we may rest assured that they are being drawn down the Liberal current, which is always too strong for such weak swimmers. He who places himself in the vortex of a maelstrom is sure in the end to be engulfed in it. The logic of the situation brings the inevitable conclusion.

The Liberal current is easier to follow. It is largely made up of proselytes, and readily attracts the selflove of the weak. The Catholic current is apparently more difficult, it has fewer partisans and friends, and requires us to constantly row against the stream, to stem the tide of perverse ideas and corrupt passions. With the uncertain, the vacillating and the unwary the Liberal current easily prevails and sweeps them away in its fatal embrace. There is no room, therefore, for confidence in the (152) Liberal Catholic press, especially in cases where it is difficult to form a judgement. Moreover in such cases its policy of compromise and conciliation hamper it from forming any decisive or absolute judgement, for the simple reason that its judgement has nothing decisive or radical in it; on the contrary it is always overweighed with a preponderating inclination towards the expedient. Opportunism is the guiding star.

The truly Catholic press is altogether Catholic, that is to say, it defends Catholic doctrine in all its principles and applications, it opposes all false teaching known as such always and entirely, opposita per diametrum, as St. Ignatius says in that golden book of his exercises. It places itself on the frontier arrayed with unceasing vigilance against error, always face to face with the enemy. It never bivouacs with the hostile forces, as the compromising press loves to do. Its opposition is definite and determined, it is not simply opposed to certain undeniable maneuvers of the foe, letting others escape its vigilance, but watches, guards, and resists at every point. It presents an unbroken front to evil everywhere, for evil is evil in everything, even in the good, which, by chance, may accompany it.

Let us here make an observation to explain (153) this last phrase, which may appear startling to some, and at the same time explain a difficulty, entertained by not a few. �

~EACH CHAPTER IS POSTED AS A SEPARATE ARTICLE~

Note: Numbers in parenthesis throughout the text are the page numbers of the original reprint in 1963.

CONTENTS

I. What Begets Liberalism 9

II. What Liberalism Is 16

III. Liberalism A Sin 22

IV. The Gravity Of The Sin Of Liberalism 27

V. The Degrees Of Liberalism 31

VI. Catholic Liberalism Or Liberal Catholicism 36

VII. Intrinsic Causes Of Liberal Catholicism 40

VIII. Shadow And Penumbra 46

IX. Two Kinds Of Liberalism 50

X. Liberalism Of All Shades Condemned By The Church 53

XI. The Solemn Condemnation Of Liberalism By The Syllabus 60

XII. Like Liberalism But Not Liberalism, Liberalism but not Like It 64

XIII. The Name Liberalism 69

XIV. Liberalism And FreeThought 76

XV. Can A Liberal Be In Good Faith 80 (vii)

XVI. The Symptoms Of Liberalism 86

XVII. Christian Prudence And Liberalism 92

XVIII. Liberalism And Literature 97

XIX. Charity And Liberalism 103

XX. Polemical Charity And Liberalism 107

XXI. Personal Polemics And Liberalism 115

XXII. A Liberal Objection To Ultramontane Methods 119

XXIII. The "Civilta Cattolica's" Charity To Liberals 123

XXIV. A Liberal Sophism And The Church's Diplomacy 128

XXV. How Catholics Fall Into Liberalism 133

XXVI. Permanent Causes of Liberalism 137

XXVII. How To Avoid Liberalism 141

XXVIII. How To Distinguish Catholic From Liberal Works 146

XXVIV. Liberalism And Journalism 151

XXX. Can Catholics And Liberals Ever Unite 155

XXXI. An Illusion Of Liberal Catholics 160

XXXII. Liberalism And Authority In Particular Cases 164

XXXIII. Liberalism As It Is In This Country 170 (viii)

What Begets Liberalism

2008-05-08T20:56:48Z

WHAT BEGETS LIBERALISM

Physical science tells us that floating through the atmosphere are innumerable disease germs seeking a suitable nidus to settle and propagate; that we are constantly breathing these germs into the lungs; if the system be depleted or weakened the dangerous microbe takes up its abode with us, and, propagating its own kind with astonishing rapidity, undermines and ravages our health. The only safeguard against the encroachments of this insidious enemy, which we cannot escape, is a vigorous and healthy body with adequate powers of resistance to repel the invader.

It is equally true that we are subject to like infectious attacks in the spiritual order. Swarming into the atmosphere of our spiritual lives are innumerable deadly germs ever ready to fasten upon the depleted and weakened soul, and, propagating its leprous (9) contagion through every faculty, destroy the spiritual life. Against the menace of this ever-threatening danger, whose advances we cannot avoid in our present circumstances, the ever-healthy soul alone can be prepared. To escape the contagion, the power of resistance must be equal to the emergencies of the attack, and that power will be in proportion to our spiritual health. To be prepared is to be armed; but to be prepared is not sufficient; we must posses the interior strength to throw off the germ. There must be no condition in the soul to make a suitable nidus for an enemy so insidious and so efficacious as to need only the slightest point of contact whence to spread its deadly contagion.

It is not only through the avenues of disordered passions that this spiritual disease may gain an entrance; it may make its inroad through the intellect, and this under a disguise often calculated to deceive the unwary and incautious. The Trojans admitted the enemy into their walls under the impression that they were actually securing a valuable acquisition to their safety, and today their fatal experience has come down to us in the proverb: "Beware of the Greeks when they bring gifts." Intellectual torpidity, inexperience, ignorance, indifference, complaisance, or even virtues (10) such as benevolence, generosity, and pity may be the unsuspecting way open the foe, and lo! We are surprised to find him in possession of the citadel.

That we may know our danger we must appreciate the possible shapes in which it may come. Here is just the difficulty; the uniform of the enemy is so various, changeable, sometimes even of our own colors, that if we rely upon the outward semblance alone we shall be more often deceived than certain of his identity. But before laying down any test by which we may distinguish friend from foe in a warfare so subtly fought within the precincts of our own souls, let us first reconnoiter the respective positions of either camp, and to best do this, we will consider the origin and sources of the danger which surrounds us, for we may be asked: Where is this foe described as so intangible as scarcely to be apprehended by ordinary mortals? Or it may be urged: Is the danger as proximate, as frequent, and fearful as you allege? Whence is it anyhow? Point it out! If we know from what direction the enemy comes, we may better appreciate the peril.

As we are addressing ourselves to those who live amidst the peculiar circumstances of our American life, and as the spiritual and moral conditions which obtain in this (11) country, make up the moral and spiritual atmosphere in which we have our being, it is in the relation of our surroundings to ourselves as well as ourselves to our surroundings, that we shall find the answer to our question. Let us then consider these surrounds in a general way for the moment. First as to some patent facts. The population of this country is at present something over sixty three millions (1890 census). Of these ten millions are Catholics, and according to their claim, twenty millions Protestants, leaving a population of thirtythree millions or more who do not profess any form of Christianity at all. Amongst the twenty million Protestants every shade and variety of belief in the Christian dispensation finds easy lodgment, from the belief in the Incarnation and Consubstantiation to the rejection of the Divinity of Christ altogether in the vacuous creed of Unitarianism. In this scale of heresy the adjustments of creeds are loose and easy. Lack of any decisive authority renders any exact standard of belief impossible.

A Protestant may freely range from one end of the scale to the other and still be considered orthodox according to Protestant estimates. A lose, indefinite belief in Christ, either as God redeeming the world (12) or even as a great ethical teacher, not God Himself though sent by God, suffices to place the Protestant within the compass of his own standard of orthodoxy. Any specific expression of dogma or of particular truths, bound up in the acceptance of by any one sect or denomination, can find no authoritative exaction, for the differences between the sects, in the last resort, become mere differences of private opinion, dependent upon nothing but the caprice or choice of the individual.

Outside of these various bodies of loosely professed Christians, stands a still larger mass of our population who are either absolutely indifferent to Christianity as a creed or positively reject it. In practice the distinction is of little moment whether they hold themselves merely indifferent or positively hostile. In other words we have here to reckon with a body, to all practical purposes, infidel. This mass comprises over half of our population, holding itself aloof from Christianity, and in some instances virulently antagonizing it. In distinctly religious opposition to this mass of infidelity and to Protestantism, Catholics find themselves sharply and radically opposed. Heresy and infidelity are irreconcilable with Catholicity. "Who is not with me is (13) against me are the words of Our Lord Himself, for denial of Catholic truth is the radical and common element of both heresy and infidelity. The difference between them is merely a matter of degree. One denies less, the other more. Protestantism with its sliding scale of creeds is simply an inclined plane into the abyss of positive unbelief. It is always virtual infidelity, its final outcome open infidelity, as the thirty-three millions of unbelievers in this country stand witness.

We live in the midst of this religious anarchy. Fifty-three millions of our population is anti-Catholic. From this mass, heretical and infidel, exhales an atmosphere filled with germs poisonous and fatal to Catholic life, if permitted to take root in the Catholic heart. The mere force of gravitation, which the larger mass ever exercises upon the smaller, is a power which the most energetic vigor alone can resist. A deadly inertia under this dangerous influence is apt to creep over the souls of the incautious and is only to be overcome by the liveliest exercise of Catholic faith. To live amidst an heretical and infidel population without enervation requires a robust religious constitution. And to this danger we are daily exposed, ever coming into contact in a thousand ways, in almost every (14) relation of life, with anti-Catholic thought and customs. But outside of this spiritual inertia, a danger rather passive than active in its influence, our nonCatholic surroundings beget a still greater menace.

It is natural that Protestantism and infidelity should find public expression. What our sixty million non-Catholic population think in these matters naturally seeks and finds open expression. They have their organs and their literature, where we find their current opinions publicly uttered. Their views upon religion, morality, politics, the constitution of society are perpetually marshaled before us. In the pulpit and the press they are reiterated day after day. In magazine and newspaper they constantly speak from every line. Our literature is permeated and saturated with non-Catholic dogmatism. On all sides do we find this opposing spirit. We cannot escape from it. It enfolds and embraces us. Its breath is perpetually in our faces. It enters in by eye and ear. It enswathes us in its offensive garments from birth to death. It now soothes and flatters; now hates and curses, now threatens and now praises. But it is most dangerous when it comes to us under the form of "liberality." It is especially powerful for seduction in this guise. It is under this aspect we wish (15) to consider it. For it is as Liberalism that Protestantism and Infidelity make their most devastating inroads upon the domain of the Faith.

Out of these unCatholic and anti-Catholic conditions, thus predominating amongst us, springs this monster of our times, Liberalism.

WHAT LIBERALISM IS

2008-05-08T21:01:31Z

CHAPTER 2

WHAT LIBERALISM IS

Protestantism naturally begets toleration of error. Rejecting the principle of authority in religion, it has neither criterion nor definition of faith. On the principle that every individual or sect may interpret the deposit of revelation according to the dictates of private judgement, it gives birth to endless differences and contradictions. Impelled by the law of its own impotence, through lack of any decisive voice of authority in matters of faith, it is forced to recognize as valid and orthodox any belief that springs from the exercise of private judgement. Therefore does it finally arrive, by force of its own premises, at the conclusion that one creed is as good as another; it then seeks to (16) shelter its inconsistency under the false plea of liberty of conscience. Belief is not imposed by a legitimately and divinely constituted authority, but springs directly and freely from the unrestricted exercise of the individual's reason or caprice upon the subjectmatter of revelation. The individual or sect interprets as it pleases, rejecting or accepting what it chooses. This is popularly called liberty of conscience. Accepting this principle, Infidelity on the same plea rejects all revelation, and Protestantism, which handed over the premise, is powerless to protest against the conclusion; for it is clear that one, who under the plea of rational liberty has the right to repudiate any part of revelation that may displease him, can not logically quarrel with one, who on the same ground repudiates the whole. If one creed is as good as another on the plea of rational liberty, on the same plea no creed is as good as any. Taking the field with this fatal weapon of Rationalism, Infidelity has stormed and taken the very citadel of Protestantism helpless against the foe of its own making.

We find as a result amongst the people of this country (excepting Catholics of course) that authoritative and positive religion has met with utter disaster, and religious beliefs or unbelief's have come to be (17) mere matters of opinion, wherein there are always essential differences, each one free to make or unmake his own creed or no creed.

Such is the mainspring of the heresy constantly dinned into our ears, flooding our current literature and our press. It is against this that we have to be perpetually vigilant. The more so as it insidiously attacks us on the grounds of a false charity and in the name of a false liberty. Nor does it appeal only to us on the ground of religious toleration.

The principle ramifies in many directions, striking root into our domestic, civil, and political life, whose vigor and health depend upon the nourishing and sustaining power of religion. For religion is the bond which unites us to God, the source and end of all good, and Infidelity, whether virtual as in Protestantism or explicit as in Agnosticism, severs the bond which binds men to God, and seeks to build human society on foundations of man's absolute independence. Hence we find Liberalism laying down as the basis of its propaganda the following principles:

XXXIII. The absolute sovereignty of the individual in his entire independence of God and God's authority.

XXXIV. The absolute sovereignty of society in its entire independence of everything which does not proceed from itself. (18)

XXXV. Absolute civil sovereignty in the implied right of the people to make their own laws in entire independence and utter disregard of any other criterion than the popular will expressed at the polls and in parliamentary majorities.

XXXVI.Absolute freedom of thought in politics, morals, or in religion. The unrestrained liberty of the press.

Such are the radical principles of Liberalism. In the assumption of the absolute sovereignty of the individual, that is, his entire independence of God, we find the common source of all the others. To express them all in one term in the order of ideas, they are RATIONALISM or the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of human reason. Here human reason is made the measure and sum of truth. Hence we have individual, social and political Rationalism, the corrupt fountain head of liberal principles: absolute freedom of worship, the supremacy of the State, secular education repudiating any connection with religion, marriage sanctioned and legitimatized by the State alone, etc.; in one word, which synthesizes all, SECULARIZATION, which denies religion any active intervention in the concerns of public and of private life (19) whether it orate or assassinate; whether it call itself Liberty or Government or the State or Humanity or Reason, or what not, its fundamental characteristic is an uncompromising opposition to the Church.

Liberalism is a world complete in itself; it has its maxims, its fashions, its art, its literature, its diplomacy, its laws, its conspiracies, its ambuscades. It is the world of Lucifer, disguised in our times under the name of Liberalism, in radical opposition and in perpetual warfare against that society composed of the Children of God, the Church of Jesus Christ.

LIBERALISM IS A SIN

2008-05-08T21:04:42Z

CHAPTER 3

LIBERALISM IS A SIN

Liberalism, whether in the doctrinal or practical order, is a sin. In the doctrinal order, it is heresy, and consequently a mortal sin against faith. In the practical order it is a sin against the commandments of God and of the Church, for it virtually transgresses all commandments. To be more precise: in the doctrinal order Liberalism strikes at the very foundations of faith; it is heresy radical and universal, because (22) within it are comprehended all heresies. In the practical order it is a radical and universal infraction of the divine law, since it sanctions and authorizes all infractions of that law.

Liberalism is a heresy in the doctrinal order, because heresy is the formal and obstinate denial of all Christian dogmas in general. It repudiates dogma altogether and substitutes opinion, whether that opinion be doctrinal or the negation of doctrine. Consequently it denies every doctrine in particular. If we were to examine in detail all the doctrines or dogmas which, within the range of Liberalism, have been denied, we would find every Christian dogma in one way or the other rejected, from the dogma of the Incarnation to that of Infallibility. None the less is Liberalism in itself dogmatic; and it is in the declaration of its own fundamental dogma, the absolute independence of the individual and the social reason, that it denies all Christian dogmas in general.

Catholic dogma is the authoritative declaration of revealed truth, or a truth consequent upon revelation, by its infallibly constituted exponent. This logically implies the obedient acceptance of the dogma on the part of the individual and of society. Liberalism refuses to acknowledge this rational obedience and denies the authority. (23) It asserts the sovereignty of the individual and the social reason, and enthrones Rationalism in the seat of Authority. It knows no dogma except the dogma of selfassertion. Hence is it heresy fundamental and radical, the rebellion of the human intellect against God.

It follows, therefore, that Liberalism denies the absolute jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, who is God, over individuals and over society, and, by consequence, repudiates the jurisdiction which God has delegated to the visible head of the Church over each and all of the faithful, whatever their condition or rank in life. It moreover denies the necessity of divine revelation and obligation of every one to accept that revelation under pain of eternal perdition. It denies the formal motive for faith, viz., the authority of God revealing, and admits only as much of revealed doctrine as it chooses or comprehends within its own narrow capacity. It denies the infallible magistracy of the Church and of the Pope, and consequently all the doctrines defined and taught by this divine authority. In short it sets itself up as the measure and rule of faith, and so really shuts out revelation altogether. It denies everything which it itself does not proclaim. It negates everything which it itself does not 24) affirm. But not being able to affirm any truth beyond its own reach, it denies the possibility of any truth which it does not comprehend. The revelation of truth above human reason it, therefore, debars at the outset. The divinity of Jesus Christ is beyond its horoscope. The Church is outside its comprehension. The submission of human reason to the Word of Christ or its divinely constituted exponent is to it intolerable. It is, therefore, the radical and universal denial of all divine truth and Christian dogma, the primal type of all heresy, and the supreme rebellion against the authority of God and His Church. With Lucifer its maxim is: "I will not serve."

Such is the general negation uttered by Liberalism. From this radical denial of revealed truth in general, naturally follows the denial of particular dogmas in whole or in part, as circumstances present them in opposition to its rationalistic judgement. Thus, for instance, it denies the validity of faith by baptism, when it admits or supposes the equality of any or all religious cults; it denies the sanctity of marriage, when it sanctions socalled civil marriages; it denies the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, when it refuses to accept as laws his official commands and teachings, and (25) subjects them to the scrutiny of its own intellect, not to assure itself of their authenticity, as is legitimate, but to sit in defiant judgement upon their contents.

When we come to the practical order, Liberalism is radical immorality. Morality requires a standard and a guide to rational action; it postulates a hierarchy of ends, and, therefore, order, within whose series there is a subordination of means to the attainment of an ultimate purpose. It therefore requires a principle or fundamental rule of all action, by which the subject of moral acts, the rational creature, determines his course and guides himself to the attainment of his end. In the moral order the Eternal Reason alone can be that principle or fundamental rule of action, and this Eternal Reason is God. In the moral order the created reason, with power to determine its course, must guide itself by the light of the Uncreated Reason, who is the beginning and end of all things.

The law, therefore, imposed by the Eternal Reason upon the creature, must be the principle or rule of morality. Hence obedience and submission in the moral order is an absolute requisite of morality.

But Liberalism has proclaimed the absurd principle of the absolute sovereignty of human reason; it denies any reason beyond itself and asserts its (26) independence in the order of knowledge, and hence in the order of action or morality. Here we have morality without law, without order, freedom to do what one pleases, or what comes to the same thing, morality which is not morality, for morality implies the idea not only of direction, but also essentially demands that of restraint and limitation under the control of law. Liberalism in the order of action is license, recognizing no principle or rule beyond itself.

We may then say of Liberalism: in the order of ideas it is absolute error; in the order of facts it is absolute disorder. It is therefore, in both cases a very grievous and deadly sin, for sin is rebellion against God in thought or in deed, the enthronement of the creature in the place of the Creator.

THE GRAVITY OF THE SIN OF LIBERALISM

2008-05-08T21:05:38Z

CHAPTER 4

THE GRAVITY OF THE SIN OF LIBERALISM

Liberalism is a mortal sin. But Catholic theology teaches us that all sins are not equally grave, that there is even a distinction of degree in venial sins. There are also degrees in the category of mortal sin, (27) just as there are in the category of meritorious works. The gravity of sin is determined by the object at which it strikes. Blasphemy, for instance, which directly attacks God Himself, is a sin of much graver character than theft, which directly attacks man. With the exception of formal hate against God, which constitutes the deadliest of all sins and of which the creature is rarely culpable unless he be in Hell, the gravest of all sins are those against faith. The reason is evident.

Faith is the foundation of the supernatural order, and sin is sin in so far as it attacks this supernatural order at this or the other point; hence that is the greatest sin which attacks this order at its very foundations. To destroy the foundations is to destroy the entire superstructure. To cut off the branch of a tree will not kill it; but to lay the ax to the trunk or the roots is fatal to its life. Henceforth it bears neither blossom nor fruit. St. Augustine, Cited by St. Thomas, characterizes sin against faith in these words: Hoc est peccatum quo tenentur cuncta peccata. "This the sin which comprehends all other sins."

The Angel of the Schools expresses himself with his usual clearness on this point: "The gravity of sin is determined by the interval which it places between man and (28) God; now sin against faith, divides man from God as far as possible, since it deprives him of the true knowledge of God; it therefore follows that sin against faith is the greatest of all sins."

When sin against faith is simply a culpable privation of the knowledge of God, it has not the same gravity as a direct and formal attack upon dogmas expressly defined by revelation. In this latter case sin against faith, so grave in itself, acquires that degree of gravity which constitutes heresy. It then contains all the malice of infidelity, and becomes an express protestation against the teachings of faith or an express adhesion to a teaching which is condemned as false and erroneous by the faith itself. Besides the deadly sin against faith itself, it is accompanied by hardness of heart, obstinacy, and the proud preference for one's own reason over the reason of God Himself.

Hence heretical doctrines, and works inspired by them, constitute the greatest of all sins with the exception of the formal hate against God, of which only the demons in hell and the damned are capable. Liberalism then, which is heresy, and all the works of Liberalism, which are heretical works, are the gravest sins known in the code of the Christian law. (29)

Liberalism is, therefore, a greater sin than blasphemy, theft, adultery, homicide, or any other violation of the law of God, save in such case as where one acts in good faith, in ignorance, or thoughtlessly.

It is true that modern naturalism does not so regard or understand the case. But the law of the Church in matters of morals and doctrine is unchangeable; it ordains today as it did yesterday, and heresy is always heresy no matter what the shape it takes. Appearances may be fair, and the devil may present himself as an Angel of light. The danger is the greater as the outward show is more seductive. Heresy has never been so insidious as under its present form of Liberalism. Its range is so wide that it touches upon every note in the scale, and finds an easy disguise in its protean facilities. But its most fatal shaft is in its plea for "liberty of mind." This in its own eyes is its cardinal virtue. "Intellectual freedom from dogmatism" is its boast, a boast in reality the mask of ignorance and pride. To meet such an enemy requires no ordinary courage guarded by a sleepless vigilance. When encountered it is obligatory upon the Catholic conscience to resist it with all the powers of the soul. Heresy and all its works are sins; Liberalism is the root of heresy, the tree of evil in whose branches (31) all the harpies of infidelity find ample shelter; it is today the evil of all evils.

THE DEGREES OF LIBERALISM

2008-05-08T21:06:18Z

CHAPTER 5

THE DEGREES OF LIBERALISM

As a system of doctrines Liberalism may be called a school; if we regard it as an organization of adepts for the purpose of spreading and propagating its doctrines, it may be called a sect; inasmuch as it is a group of men seeking the political enforcement of its doctrines, it may be called a party. But in whatever aspect we consider it, whether as a school or sect or party, it presents itself in various degrees or shades; yet none the less liberalism because variant; for with specific and logical unity there may be a multitudinous variety.

Now the unity of Liberalism is not positive but negative; it has no unity of its own; it is by virtue of its opposition to truth, which is essentially one, that Liberalism becomes accidentally one. As the visavis of truth it possesses the unity of opposition. The different degrees of its denial will constitute the degrees of its opposition, and so give us the varieties in (31) the negative unity of its denial. Denial is its unity in general, and this ranges through the entire realm of negation, the degree of denial being determined by the degree of truth denied. If men were absolutely logical and followed the premises which they lay down, to their ultimate conclusions, they would become angels or devils in working out the consequences according to the goodness or badness of their first principles. But men are not always logical; they often stop short of the consequences logically flowing from the premises preceding. We, therefore, as a rule, see the good only half good and the bad not altogether bad. Hence we find few outandout Liberals. Not many go the full length of their principles. They are nevertheless true Liberals, that is, veritable disciples, partisans or followers of Liberalism, ranging themselves under the banner either as a school, sect, or party.

There are Liberals who accept its principles, but reject the consequences, at least those most repugnant or extreme. For instance, there are men who believe that the Catholic Church is the great enemy of modern progress, the one great object in the way of the triumph of their principles. Why not then openly persecute the Church, and endeavor to wipe her from off the face of (32) the earth as Nero or a Domitian sought to do? No; they would not go to this extreme, although it is the practical consequence of their premise. Or again, if they shrink from the terrors of bloodshed and the horrors of assassination, why do they not close our Catholic Schools, the nurseries of the faith?

�

To permit the existence of these schools is to allow the active and rapid propagation of the faith. If Catholicity be the evil they affirm it to be, would they not be perfectly logical in nipping it in the bud, that is, in the school room? But no, they would not go so far. Yet the suppression of the Catholic parochial school is the surest means to strangle the faith in our midst. Why should there be any compunction in rooting out the greatest evil, in their estimation, which afflicts our age, the one great dike against the flood of human "liberties", now rising almost to the level of the opposing barrier? It is because these Liberals are inconsequential; they shrink from the logic of conclusions.

Again, there are Liberals who accept such and such conclusions or their application, but scrupulously repudiate the principles whence they flow. They believe, for instance, in absolutely secularizing education, and yet reject the doctrine of atheism, which is the only soil congenial to its (33) growth. They applaud the result, while they repudiate the cause.

Some would apply Liberalism only to education; others only to the civil order, and others still, only to political life.

It is the most advanced alone who seek to apply it to everything and for every thing. The attenuations and mutilations of the liberal Credo are as many as the interests advanced or balked by its application. It is generally supposed that men think with their heads; but their intelligence often has less to do with it than their hearts, and not infrequently their stomachs determine their conclusions. Liberalism is thus often measured out by the dose according to the taste of the consumer, as liquors are to drinkers according to the appetite of each. This one, in comparison to his more advanced neighbor, who appears to him a brutal demagogue, is no Liberal at all, while his less advanced neighbor is, in his eyes, an outandout reactionary, rooted in a stagnant past. It is simply a question of degree, whose grades slide variously along the liberal scale, some nearer some farther from the abyss.

From the Baptized or even surpliced Liberal, who boasts his breadth of mind in his easy toleration of error, to the avowed atheist who hurls his open defiance against God, the difference is only one of (34) degree. One simply stands on a higher rung of the same ladder than the other.

Observe when pushed to the wall, how all alike claim the same denomination of liberal. They may even regard each other with aversion, but all invoke the same appellation as finally descriptive of each. Their common criterion is "liberality" and "independence of mind;" the degree of application will be measured by the individual disposition, the more or less in the matter depending upon the variety of elements in the makeup of the individual and his surroundings; selfinterest with one, temperament with another, education with a third impeding a too rapid gait on the road to absolute Liberalism; human respect may moderate another, serving as a balance weight to his rashness; family or school or business relations may clog the footsteps of a fourth. A thousand and one things may serve as a break to a too accelerated descent, not to mention that satanic prudence which counsels a conservative advance in order not to alarm the timid.

This last fashion of procedure often serves as a mask to the most advanced Liberals, who hide their designs under the appearance of a frank demagoguery. Sometimes Liberalism stalks along in the careless trappings of an easygoing good nature, or a (35) simplicity of character which invites our affection and allays our suspicion. Its very candor in this guise is an aggression difficult to resist. It does not appear responsible and excites our compassion before it has awakened our aversion. We seem to forgive it before we accuse it. But all the greater is the danger when it appears least possible.

Such are the various fashions of Liberalism. Its disguises are many, its degrees various. Withal, however, it is the same evil, though motley be its trappings. Liberalism is one, while Liberals, like bad wine, differ in color and taste.

CATHOLIC LIBERALISM OR LIBERAL CATHOLICISM

2008-05-08T21:09:09Z

CHAPTER 6

CATHOLIC LIBERALISM OR LIBERAL CATHOLICISM

Peace in war is an incongruity. Foes in the midst of battle cannot well be friends. Where the pressure of conflicting forces is intensest there is little opportunity of reconciliation. Yet this absurdity and contradiction we find in the odious and repulsive attempt to unite Liberalism with Catholicism. The monstrosity resulting is what is known as the Liberal Catholic or the (36) Catholic Liberal. Strange as it may seem, Catholics with good intentions have paid tribute to this absurdity and indulged the vain hope of peace with the eternal enemy.

This fatal error has its source in the vain and exaggerated desire of reconciling and harmonizing in peace doctrines utterly incompatible and hostile by their very nature.

Liberalism is the dogmatic affirmation of the absolute independence of the individual and of the social reason. Catholicity is the dogma of the absolute subjection of the individual and of the social order to the revealed law of God. One doctrine is the exact antithesis of the other. They are opposites in direct conflict. How is it possible to reconcile them?

Opposition here necessarily means conflict, and the two can no more harmonize than the square can be made one with the circle.

To the promoters of Catholic Liberalism the thing appears easy enough. "It is admirable," they say, "for the individual reason to be subject to the law of God if it so wishes, but we must distinguish between the public and the private reason, especially in an age like ours. The modern State does not recognize God or the Church. In the conflict of different religious creeds the public reason must stand neutral and impartial. Hence the necessary independence (37) of the public reason. The State as State can have no religion. Let the simple citizen if he wishes, submit to the revelation of Jesus Christ, but the statesman and the man in public life must comport himself as if no revelation existed."

Now all this means civil or social atheism. It means that society is independent of God, its Author; that while individuals may recognize their dependence on the divine law, civil society should not; a distinction whose sophism is founded on an intolerable contradiction.

It is clear that if the individual reason is obliged to submit to the law of God, the public and the social reason cannot logically escape the same duty without falling into an extravagant dualism, by virtue of which men would be forced to submit to the law of two contrary and opposed consciences. Privately men would have to be Christian, publicly men would have to be free to be atheistic.

Furthermore the road is open to an odious tyranny; for if the public conscience were independent of the Christian law and ignored it, there would be no public recognition of the obligation to protect the Church by the civil arm in the exercise of her rights. Nay, more; the civil power would readily become the means of persecution, the rulers hostile to the Church, condemning divine law, could actually, under (38) cover of authority, legislate against Christianity.

Nor is this a fanciful picture, for France and Italy, legislating today on the basis of the sovereign independence of the social and public reason have enacted odious laws which hold the Church in those countries in distressful legal bondage. And the Holy Father himself is now a prisoner within the walls of the Vatican on account of the violent usurpation of his domains by an atheist government. But the results of the fatal distinction does not stop with the functions of legislation and administration subjecting the Church to social and civil persecution; in modern times it has gone further still and extends its baneful influence to the school room, propagating itself by placing the education of youth under its dominating influence. It forms the conscience of youth not according to the divine law which acknowledges the will of God, but upon a premeditated and careful ignorance of that law. It is as secular education that it seizes upon the future and breeds atheism in the hearts of the coming generations.

The Catholic Liberalist or the Liberal Catholic admitting the fatal distinction between the private and the public reason, thus throws open the gates to the enemies of the faith, and, posing as a man of (39) intellect with generous and liberal views, stultifies reason by his gross offense against the principle of contradiction. He is thus both a traitor and a fool. Seeking to please the enemies of the faith he has betrayed his trust, the faith itself; imagining he is upholding the rights of reason, he surrenders it in the most abject way to the spirit of denial, the spirit of untruth. He has not the courage to withstand the derision of his cunning foe. To be called intolerant, illiberal, narrow, Ultramontane, reactionist, is gall and wormwood to his little soul. Under this epithetical fire he gives way and surrenders his birthright of faith and reason for a mess of Liberal pottage.

INTRINSIC CAUSES OF LIBERAL CATHOLICISM

2008-05-08T21:10:04Z

CHAPTER 7

INTRINSIC CAUSES OF LIBERAL CATHOLICISM

Strange as may seem that anomaly called Liberal Catholicism, its reason is not far to seek. It takes its root in a false conception of the nature of the act of faith. The Liberal Catholic assumes as the formal motive of the act of faith, not the infallible authority of God revealing supernatural truth, but his own reason deigning to accept (40) as true what appears rational to him according to the appreciation and measure of his own individual judgement. He subjects God's authority to the scrutiny of his reason, and not his reason to God's authority. He accepts revelation not on account of the infallible revealer, but because of the "infallible" receiver. With him the individual judgement is the rule of faith. He believes in the independence of reason. It is true he accepts the magisterium of the Church, yet he does not accept it as the sole authorized expounder of divine truth. He reserves, as a coefficient factor in the determination of that truth, his own private judgement.

The true sense of revealed doctrine is not always certain, and human reason has something to say in the matter, as for instance, the limits of the Church's infallibility may be determined by human science. Within lines thus prescribed the declarations of the Church are infallible, but these limits are not to be determined by herself. Science will do that for her. She is of course infallible, they say, but we will determine when and in what she shall speak infallibility. Such is the absurdity which the Liberal Catholic falls into by placing the formal motive of faith in human reason.

The Liberal Catholic calls himself a (41) Catholic because he firmly believes Catholicity to be the veritable revelation of the Son of God; he calls himself a Liberal Catholic because he believes that no one can impose upon him any belief which his individual judgement does not measure as perfectly rational. What is not rational he rejects. He is intellectually free to accept or reject. What appears good he assents to, but he is intellectually bound to no one. Thus unwittingly he falls an easy victim to the snare set by the Devil for the intellectually proud. He has substituted the naturalistic principle of free examination for the supernatural principle of faith. As a consequence he is really not Christian, but pagan. He has no real supernatural faith, but only a simple human conviction.

In the acceptance of the principle that the individual reason is thus free to believe or not to believe, Liberal Catholics are deluded into the notion that incredulity is a virtue rather than a vice. They fail to see in it an infirmity of the understanding, a voluntary blindness of the heart, and a consequent weakness of will. On the other hand they look upon the skeptical attitude as a legitimate condition wherein intellectual freedom is preserved, the skeptic remaining master of himself to believe or deny. They have a horror of any coercive element in matters of (42) faith; any chastisement of error shocks their tender susceptibilities, and they detest any Catholic legislation in the direction of what they are pleased to call intolerance.

The Syllabus of Pius IX is a nightmare to them, a most inopportune, dominating, harsh and peremptory document, calculated to offend the sensibilities of the Protestant and modern world; it need not be accepted as an infallible utterance, and if accepted, must be taken in a very modified sense. The Ultramontane interpretation is violent and extreme, and does much more harm than good by driving back the well disposed at such a show of illiberality.

Close upon this squeamishness in regard to the pronouncement of Catholic doctrine, follows an abhorrence to antagonize the convictions of others, no matter how directly opposed to revealed truth, for with Liberal Catholics the most erroneous are as sacred as the truest convictions, being equally founded upon the principle of intellectual liberty. Thus they erect into a dogma what is called the principle of toleration. The differences of belief are, after all, they complacently argue, due to differences of temperament, education, etc.; we will not exactly approve them, but we should at least condone them.

The first conception of faith being (43) naturalistic, in the development and application of that conception either to the individual or to society, the same naturalistic element evolves itself. Hence it follows that the Liberal Catholic's appreciation of the Church has no foundation in its supernatural character. The Church does not address herself to his sympathies as a supernatural society whose first and supernatural end is the glory of God and the salvation of souls. It is on her social and human side that he regards her with affection. It is as the great civilizing, and humanizing power which has lifted so many people from a state of barbarism, the guardian of the ancient arts and letters, the promoter of learning that she wins his applause and approbation. She is first, not because she is first in herself by divine right, but first in virtue of the approval of his own great intellect.

Under this false conception apologies have been written in our times, and with strange inconsistency the Church is often lauded as the great promoter and preserver of civilization in the past, while her regressive tendencies are deplored in the present; as if an institution, which alone by divine constitution has the perennial force of progress, could ever weaken or fail in her mission of human regeneration.

Under the glamour of an advance towards the (44) mirage of a false happiness in the desert of this life, our Liberal Catholics are proclaiming the shadow while rejecting the substance. True progress, which can only be through an advance to God, can never be effected save through that agency divinely appointed to lead us to God. This the Church of Jesus Christ alone can do, for she, under His institution, is as He Himself, the way, the truth, and the life.

Forgetting the divine and supernatural character of the Church, and she is nothing if not divine and supernatural, Liberal Catholics talk and write about her as a simple human development, accepting in the blindness of their false conception the naturalistic definition of faith. They thus eviscerate the Church, making her the mere husk of what she really is.

Piety itself does not escape the action of this pernicious naturalistic principle; it converts it into pietism that is to say, into a parody of true piety, as is painfully seen in the pious practices of so many people who seek in their devotions only the sentimental emotions of which they themselves are able to be the source. They are devout over themselves, worshipping their own little sentiments and offering incense to idols graven after their own image. This is simply spiritual sensualism, and nothing else. (45) Thus we see in our day in so many souls the degeneration of Christian asceticism, which is the purification of the heart by the repression of the appetites, and the falsification of Christian mysticism, which is neither emotion, nor interior consolation, nor any other Epicurean foible of human sentiment, but union with God through a supernatural love for Him and through absolute submission to His holy will.

Therefore is it that the Catholicity of a great number of people in our times is a Liberal Catholicity, or, rather, a false Catholicity. It is really not Catholicity, but mere naturalism, a pure rationalism; it is in a word paganism disguised in Catholic forms and using Catholic language.

SHADOW AND PENUMBRA

2008-05-08T21:11:19Z

CHAPTER 8

SHADOW AND PENUMBRA

When we retrospect the field of history in the vast stretch of time from the beginning of Christianity to our own day, the various heresies that have from time to time appeared, seem clearly and distinctly marked off from the environment of the orthodox faith. We seem to be able to (46) draw a geometrical line around about their respective areas, sharply dividing the camp of truth from that of error, separating the light from the darkness. But in this we are deceived; it is an illusion caused by distance. The distinction appears so clear, so definite only because we stand on the eminence of the present, from whose vantage ground we see, in large outline, the massed movements of peoples in the vast panorama of the past.

A closer study, placing us in intellectual contact with these epochs, enables us to observe that never, in any period of history, were the dividing lines between truth and error defined with such geometrical exactness; not that truth in reality was not clearly and distinctly formulated in the definitions of the Church, but because in its acceptation and its exterior profession by the generations interested in these definitions, more or less confusion and looseness characterized their manner of taking them.

Error in society is like a stain upon some precious tissue. It is easily distinguished, but it is very difficult to define its limits. These limits are as indefinite as the twilight which merges the departing day into the coming night or the dawn which blends the shadows of the spent darkness with the newborn light. So do the limits between (47) error and truth in the actual affairs of men mingle in shadowy confusion. Error is a somber night; its limits fringe away from it like a huge penumbra, which is sometimes taken for the shadow itself, faintly brightened by some reflections of the dying light, or rather by the luminary yet enveloped and obscured by the first shades of evening.

So all error clearly formulated in Christian society is, as it were, surrounded by an atmosphere of the same error, but less dense, more rarefied and tempered. Arianism had its SemiArianism, Pelagianism its SemiPelagianism, Lutheranism has its SemiLutheranism, which is nothing else than Catholic Liberalism. This is what the Syllabus terms modern Liberalism, that is, Liberalism without the boldness of its unvarnished first principles and stripped of the horrors of its last consequences; it is the Liberalism of those who are still unwilling not to appear to be Catholics or at least not to believe themselves Catholics. Liberalism is the baneful twilight of the truth beginning to be obscured in their intelligence, or heresy which has not yet taken complete possession.

On the other hand we should not fail to (48) note that there are those who are just emerging from the darkness of error into the twilight of truth. This class has not fully penetrated into the domain of truth. That they will ever enter the city of light depends upon their own sincerity and honesty. If they earnestly desire to know the truth in its fullness and seek it with sincere purpose, God's grace will not fail them. But they are in a dangerous position. On the border land between the realms of light and darkness the Devil is most active and ingenious in detaining those who seem about to escape his snares, and spares nothing to retain in his service a great number of people who would truly detest his infernal machinations if they only perceived them.

His method in the instance of persons infected with Liberalism is to suffer them to place one foot within the domain of truth provided they keep the other inside the camp of error. In this way they stand the victim of the Devil's deceit and their own folly. In this way those whose consciences are not yet entirely hardened, escape the salutary horrors of remorse; so the pusillanimous and the vacillating, who comprise the greater number of Liberals, avoid compromising themselves by pronouncing themselves openly and squarely; so the shrewd, calculating according to the measure of (49) expediency how much time they will spend in each camp, manage to show themselves the friends and allies of both; so a man is enabled to administer an official and recognized palliative to his failings, his weaknesses, and his blunders. It is the obscurity that rises from the indefiniteness of clearly defined principles of truth and error in the Liberalist's mind that makes him the easy victim of Satan. His boasted strength is the very source of his weakness. It is because he has no real solid knowledge of the principles of truth and error that he is so easily deluded into the belief of his own intellectual superiority. He is in a mental haze--a fog which hides from him the abyss into which his vanity and pride, cunningly played upon by Satan, are invariably drawing him.

TWO KINDS OF LIBERALISM

2008-05-08T21:12:34Z

CHAPTER 9

TWO KINDS OF LIBERALISM

Philosophy and theology teach that there are two kinds of atheism, doctrinal or speculative, and practical. The first consists in an open and direct denial of the existence of God; the second consists in acting and living without denying the existence of (50) God, but yet as if He did not really exist. Those who profess the first are called theoretical or doctrinal atheists; those who live according to the second, practical atheists: the latter are the more numerous.

It is the same with Liberalism and Liberals. There are theoretical and practical Liberals. The first are the dogmatizers of the sect philosophers, the professors, the controversialists, the journalists. They teach Liberalism in books, in discourses, in articles, by argument or by authority, in conformity with a rationalistic criterion in disguised or open opposition to the criterion of the divine and supernatural revelation of Jesus Christ.

Practical Liberalists are by far in the greater majority. Like a flock of sheep, with closed eyes, they follow their leaders. They know nothing in truth of principles and systems, and, did they perceive the perversity of their instructors, would perhaps detest them. But, deceived by a false cry or shibboleth, they troop docilely after their false guides. They are none the less the hands that act, while the theorists are the heads that direct. Without them, Liberalism would never pass beyond the narrow bounds of speculation. It is the practical Liberalists that give it life and exterior movement. They constitute the first (51) matter of Liberalism, disposed to take any form, ready for any folly or absurdity proposed by the leaders.

Amongst Catholic Liberals many of them go to Mass, even make novenas, and yet when they come in contact with the world lead the lives of practical Liberals. They make it a rule "to live up to the times," as they call it. The Church they believe to be somewhat outofdate, an old fogy; that she is held back by a certain set of reactionaries, Ultramontane; but they have hopes that she will in the course of time catch up with the modern spirit of progress, of which they are the van. The barnacles of medievalism still encumber the bark of Peter, but time, they believe, will remedy this. The straw of medieval philosophy and theology they hope before long to thrash out by the introduction of the modern spirit into her schools. Then will a new theology be developed more in conformity with the needs of the times, more in harmony with the modern spirit which makes such large demands upon our "intellectual liberty." So they believe (or imagine they believe) that all is well. Is their responsibility before God, therefore, lessened? Assuredly not. They sin directly in the light of faith. They are less excusable than those Liberals who have never been within the pale of the Church. In short they sin with their eyes open.

Amongst Liberals we must not forget to include those who manage to evade any direct exposition or expression of the Liberal theory, but who never the less obliquely sustain it in their daily practice by writing and orating after the Liberal method, but recommending Liberal books and men, measuring and appreciating everything according to the Liberal criterion, and manifesting on every occasion that offers, an intense hatred for anything that tends to discredit or weaken their beloved Liberalism. Such is the conduct of those prudent journalists, whom it is difficult to apprehend in the flagrant advocacy of any proposition concretely Liberal, but who nevertheless in what they say and in what they do not say, never cease to labor for the propagation of this cunning heresy. Of all Liberal reptiles, these are the most venomous.

LIBERALISM OF ALL SHADES CONDEMNED BY THE CHURCH

2008-05-08T21:13:49Z

CHAPTER 10

LIBERALISM OF ALL SHADES CONDEMNED BY THE CHURCH

Liberalism of every degree and all forms has been formally condemned; so much so (53) that outside of the motives of its intrinsic malice, it stands under the formal ban of the Church, which is sufficient for all faithful Catholics. It would be impossible for an error so widespread and so radical to escape condemnation.

Upon its appearance in France at the time of the Revolution, the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man, which contains in germ all the follies of Liberalism, was condemned by Pius VI. Later the baneful doctrine infected all the countries of Europe. In Spain it first took the name of Liberalism, under which it has since been known everywhere.

Upon the occasion of the appearance of the first errors of De Lamenais, Gregory XVI., in his Encyclical Marari Vos explicitly condemned Liberalism, as it was then understood, taught, and practiced by the constitutional governments of Europe. Later on, when the full tide of the deplorable deluge had submerged all Europe, carrying all before it, God raised up to His Church Pius IX., who has justly passed into history as the Scourge of Liberalism. Liberal error under all its forms, shapes, and shades has been unmasked by this Pope. That his words might carry, as it were, more authority on this question, Providence has willed that these reiterated condemnations (54) of Liberalism should fall from the lips of a Pontiff who, at the beginning of his pontificate, was hailed by Liberalists as their own. But he left no refuge to which their error might have resort. The numerous Briefs and Allocutions of Pius IX have clearly shown to Christian peoples what this baneful heresy is, and The Syllabus has put on the final seal of condemnation. Let us see the principal contents of some of the Pontifical documents. Amongst all that we might place before our readers, we will cite only a few.

On the 18th of June, 1871, responding to a deputation of French Catholics Pius IX spoke thus:

"Atheism in legislation, indifference in matters of religion and the pernicious maxims which go under the name of LiberalCatholicism are the true causes of the destruction of the States; they have been the ruin of France. Believe me: the evil I denounce is more terrible than the Revolution, more terrible even than The Commune. I have always condemned Liberal Catholicism and I will condemn it again forty times over if it be necessary."

In a Brief, 6th of March, 1873, addressed to the Circle of St. Ambrose of Milan, the Sovereign Pontiff thus expresses himself:

"People are not wanting who pretend to (55) form an alliance between light and darkness, and to associate justice with iniquity in favor of those doctrines called LiberalCatholicism, which based on the most pernicious principles, show themselves favorable to the intrusion of secular power upon the domain of spirituals; they lead their partisans to esteem, or, at least, to tolerate iniquitous laws, as if it were not written that no one can serve two masters. Those who thus conduct themselves, are more dangerous and more baneful than declared enemies, not only because, without being warned of it, perhaps even without being conscious of it, they second the projects of wicked men, but also because, keeping within certain limits, they show themselves with some appearance of probity and sound doctrine. They thus deceive the indiscreet friends of conciliation and seduce honest people, who would otherwise have strenuously combated a declared error."

In the Brief of the 8th of May of the same year speaking to the Confederation of the Catholic Circle of Belgium, the same Holy Father said:

"What we praise above all in your religious enterprise is the absolute aversion which, as we are informed, you show towards the principles of LiberalCatholicism and your intrepid determination to root them (56) out as soon as possible. In truth you will extirpate the fatal root of discord and you will efficaciously contribute to unite and strengthen the minds of all in so combating this insidious error, much more dangerous than an open enemy because it hides itself under the specious veil of zeal and of charity, and in so endeavoring to protect the people in general from its contaminating influence. Surely you who adhere with such complete submission to all decisions of this Apostolic Seat and who know its frequent reprobations of Liberal principles, have no need of these warnings."

In the Brief to the La Croix, a Belgium journal, on the 24th of May, 1874, the Pope thus expresses himself:

"We cannot do less than to praise the design expressed in this letter, which we know your journal will satisfactorily fulfill, the design to publish, to spread, to comment on and inculcate in all minds all that the Holy See teaches against the perverse or at least false doctrines professed in so many quarters, and particularly against LiberalCatholicism, bitterly striving to conciliate light with darkness and truth with error."

On the 9th of June, 1873, Pius IX wrote to the president of the Council of the Catholic Association of Orleans, and without (57) mentioning its name, depicts pietistic and moderated Liberalism in the following terms:

�

"Although you have not, strictly speaking, to combat impiety, are you not perhaps menaced on this side by as great dangers as those of the group of friends deceived by that ambiguous doctrine, which, while rejecting the last consequence of error, obstinately retains the germs, and which, not willing to embrace the truth in its fullness, and not daring to abandon it entirely, exhausts itself in interpreting the traditions and teachings of the Church by running them through the mold of its own private opinions."

In an address to the Bishop of Quimper, and speaking in reference to the general assembly of the Catholic Association of that diocese, the Pope said:

"Assuredly these associations are not wanting in the obedience due to the Church, neither on account of the writings nor the actions of those who pursue them with invectives and abuse; but they might be pushed into the slippery path of error by the force of those opinions called Liberal; opinions accepted by many Catholics who are otherwise honest and pious, and who, even by the very influence which gives them their piety, are easily captivated and induced (58) to profess the most pernicious maxims. Inculcate, therefore, Venerable Brother, in the minds of this Catholic assembly that, when we have so often rebuked the sectaries of these Liberal opinions, we have not had in view the declared enemies of the Church, whom it would have been idle to denounce, but rather that those, of whom we are speaking, are such as secretly guard the virus of Liberal Principles which they have imbibed with their mother's milk. They boldly inoculate this virus into the people's minds, as if it were not impregnated with a manifest malice, and as if it were as harmless to religion as they think. They thus propagate the seed of those troubles which have held the world in revolution so long. Let them avoid these ambuscades. Let them endeavor to direct their blows against this perfidious enemy, and certainly they will merit much from their religion and their country."

With these utterances from the mouth of the Vicar of Jesus Christ our friends as well as our enemies must see that the Pope has said in divers briefs, and particularly in the last citation, in a general way all that can be said on this question, which we are studying in its details. (59)

THE SOLEMN CONDEMNATION OF LIBERALISM BY THE SYLLABUS

2008-05-08T21:15:51Z

CHAPTER 11

THE SOLEMN CONDEMNATION OF LIBERALISM BY THE SYLLABUS

Liberalism has been condemned by the Pope in many and various documents. From these let us select a few epithets which stigmatize it with unsparing emphasis. They will bring out in striking relief the perfidious character of this cunning heresy. In his brief to Mgr. De Segur in regard to the latter's well known work "Hommage Aux Catholiques Liberaux" the Pope calls it a perfidious enemy; in his allocution to the Bishop of Nevers, the present real calamity; in his letter to the Catholic circle of St. Ambrose of Milan, a compact between injustice and iniquity; in the same document he speaks of it as more fatal and dangerous than a declared enemy; in his letter to the Bishop of Quimper, a hidden poison; in the brief to the Belgians, a crafty and insidious error; in another brief to Mgr. Gaume, a most pernicious pest. All these documents from which we quote may be found in full in Mgr. Segur's book "Hommage, etc."

But Liberalism is always strategically cunning. It rejected these very plain condemnations (60) on the ground that they had all been made to private persons; that they were, therefore, of an entirely private character, by no means ex cathedra, and, of course, not binding. Heresy is always sophistically obstinate; it clings to the least pretext, seeks every excuse to escape condemnation. Barricading itself behind these technical defenses, Liberalism practically defied the authority of the Church. Its perfidy was shortlived. A solemn official public document of a general character and universally promulgated would sweep away the cobwebs with which Liberal Catholics had endeavored to bind the authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. The Church could not refuse a formal and decisive word to relieve the anxiety of her children. That word was spoken; it was the Syllabus of December 8, 1864.

All faithful Catholics hailed it with an enthusiasm only equaled in intensity by the paroxysm of fury with which the Liberals received it. Liberal Catholics thought it more prudent to strike at it covertly by overwhelming it with artificial interpretations. The Liberals denounced it with unsparing bitterness; the Liberal Catholics whittled it away by all manner of emasculating explanations. It was a document fatal to both; they had reason to fear it, (61) the one execrating it, the other seeking with desperate subtlety to parry the blow, for the Syllabus is an official catalogue of the principal errors of the day in the form of concrete propositions placed under the formal ban of the Church. In it will be found, succinctly formulated, the various errors which are met with in the current literature of the times. The Syllabus crystallizes all these errors and stamps them with the seal of the explicit and formal condemnation of the Church. Here we have in detail all the Liberal dogmas. Although Liberalism may not be expressly named in any one of the propositions, most of its errors are there placed in pillory. From the condemnation of each of the Liberal errors results a condemnation of the whole system. Let us briefly enumerate them.

Condemnation of liberty of worship (propositions 15, 77, and 78); of the placet of governments (propositions 20 and 28); of the absolute supremacy of the State (proposition 38); of the secularization of public education (proposition 45, 40 and 48); of the absolute separation of Church and State (proposition 15); of the absolute right to legislate without regard to God (proposition 56); of the principle of nonintervention (proposition 62); of the right of insurrection (proposition 63); of civil (pg. 62) marriage (proposition 73 and others); of the liberty (license) of the press (proposition 79); of universal suffrage as the source of authority (proposition 60); of even the name of Liberalism (proposition 88).

There have been books, pamphlets, and articles innumerable written on the proper interpretation of the propositions of the syllabus. But the most authoritative interpretation ought to be that of its radical enemies, not of course in the absurdities of their misunderstandings or perversions, like Mr. Gladstone's unfortunate attempt to distort some of its propositions into a sanction of civil disloyalty, a position from which he has since withdrawn, we are glad to be able to say. But outside of such patent misconstructions we may rely upon the interpretation given by Liberals of all shades, especially in those points wherein we see them wince under its uncompromising phraseology. When Liberals regard it as their most detestable enemy, as the complete symbol of what they term Clericalism, Untramontanism and Reaction, we may rest assured that it has been well interpreted in that quarter. Satan, bad as he is, is not a fool, and sees clearly enough where the blow falls with most effect. Thus he has set the authority of his seal, which after god's is most reliable, on this great work, (63) the seal of his inextinguishable hate. Here is an instance in which we can believe the father of lies. What he most abhors and defames possesses an unimpeachable guaranty of its truth.

LIKE LIBERALISM BUT NOT LIBERALISM, LIBERALISM BUT NOT LIKE IT

2008-05-08T21:16:42Z

CHAPTER 12

LIKE LIBERALISM BUT NOT LIBERALISM, LIBERALISM BUT NOT LIKE IT

To effect a confusion of ideas is an old scheme of the Devil. Not to understand clearly and precisely is generally the source of intellectual error. In time of schism and heresy, to cloud and distort the proper sense of words is a fruitful artifice of Satan, and it is as easy to lay snares for the intellectually proud as for the innocent. Every heresy in the Church bears testimony to Satan's success in deceiving the human intellect by obscuring and perverting the meaning of words. Arianism was a battle of words and owed its longcontinued success to its verbal chicanery. Pelagianism and Jansenism showed the same characteristic, and today Liberalism is as cunning and obscure as any of its heretical predecessors. (64)

For some, Liberalism consists in certain political forms; for others, in a certain tolerant and generous spirit opposed to despotism and tyranny; for others again it means simply civil equality; for many it becomes a vague and uncertain sentiment which shapes itself into opposition to all arbitrary government. Although already defined it will not be amiss to define Liberalism again.

In the first place no political form of any kind whatsoever, whether democratic or popular, is of itself (ex se) Liberalism. Forms are mere forms and nothing more. Forms of government do not constitute their essence. Their forms are but their accidents. Their essence consists in the civil authority by virtue of which they govern, whether that authority be in form republican, democratic, aristocratic, monarchical; it may be an elective, hereditary, mixed or absolute monarch. These various forms of themselves have nothing to do with Liberalism. Any one of the may be perfectly and integrally Catholic. If they accept beyond their own sovereignty the sovereignty of God, if they confess that they derive their authority from Him, if they submit themselves to the inviolable rule of the Christian law; if they hold for indisputable in their parliaments all that is defined by this law; if they acknowledge as the (65) basis of public right the supreme morality of the Church and her absolute right in all things within her own competency, they are truly Catholic governments, whatever be their form; and the most exacting Ultramontanism cannot reproach them.

History offers the repeated example of republican powers which have been fervently Catholic. Such was the aristocratic republic of Venice, such the merchant republic of Genoa, such in our day are certain Swiss Cantons; as examples of mixed monarchies truly Catholic, that of Catalognia and Aragon, the most democratic and at the same time the most Catholic of the Middle Ages; the ancient monarchy of Castile up to the advent of the House of Austria; the elective monarchy of Poland up to the time of the iniquitous dismemberment of that most religious realm. To believe that monarchies are of themselves (ex se) more religious than republics is an ignorant prejudice. The most scandalous example of persecution against Catholicity in modern time, have been given by monarchies, for instance by Russia and by Prussia.

A Government, whatever be its form, is Catholic, if its constitution, its legislation and its politics, are based on Catholic principles; it is Liberal if it bases its constitution, its legislation and its politics on (66) rationalistic principles. It is not the act of legislation by the king in a monarchy, by the people in a republic or by both in a mixed form of government, which constitutes the essential nature of its legislation or of its constitution. What constitutes this is whether it does or does not carry with it the immutable seal of the Faith, and whether it be or be not conformable with what the Christian law imposes upon States as well as individuals. Just as amongst individuals, a king in his purple, a noble with his escutcheon or a workman in his overalls can be truly Catholic, so States can be Catholic, whatever be the place assigned them in the scale of governmental forms. In consequence the fact of being Liberal or antiliberal has nothing whatever to do with the horror which every one ought to entertain for despotism and tyranny, nor with the desire of civil equality between all citizens; much less with the spirit of toleration and of generosity, which, in their proper acceptation, are Christian virtues. And yet all this in the language of certain people and certain journals is called Liberalism. Here we have an instance of a thing which has the appearance of Liberalism and which in reality is not Liberalism at all.

On the other hand there exists a thing which is really Liberalism, and yet has not (67) the appearance of Liberalism. Let us suppose an absolute monarchy like that of Russia, or of Turkey, or better still one of the conservative governments of our times, the most conservative imaginable; let us suppose that the constitution and the legislation of this monarchy or of this government is based upon the principle of the absolute and free will of the king or upon the equally unrestricted will of the conservative majority, in place of being based on the principles of Catholic right, on the indestructibility of the Faith, or upon a rigorous regard of the rights of the Church; then this monarchy and this conservative government would be thoroughly Liberal and antiCatholic.

Whether the freethinker be a monarch with his responsible ministry, or a responsible minister with his legislative corps, as far as consequences are concerned, it is absolutely the same thing. In both cases their political conduct is in the direction of freethought and therefore it is Liberal. Whether or not it be the policy of such a government to place restraints upon the freedom of the press; whether, no matter under what pretext, it grinds its subjects, and rules with a rod of iron, a country so governed though it will not be free, will without doubt be liberal. Such were the ancient Asiatic monarchies, such are many of our modern monarchies, such was the government of Bismarck in Germany; such is the monarchy of Spain, whose constitution declares the king inviolable but not God.

Here then we have something which without seeming to resemble Liberalism is really Liberalism, the more subtle and dangerous precisely because it has not the appearance of the evil it is.

We see then what care must be used in treating questions of this kind. It is of great importance above all that the terms of the discussion be carefully defined and that equivocations be studiously avoided which would favor error more than the truth.

THE NAME LIBERALISM

2008-05-08T21:17:34Z

CHAPTER 13

THE NAME LIBERALISM

May a good Catholic take the term Liberalism in good part and may he regard it creditable to be a Liberal? What harm, it may be urged, is there in the usage of these terms as long as there is no actual acceptance of the Liberal creed. Why should not Catholics use the terms with a (69) good sense injected into them? Let us see if there be validity in this claim.

It is certain that the word Liberalism signifies in the present age something not entirely in accord with true Catholicity. It cannot be said that we describe the situation in exaggerated terms. It must be admitted that in the current acceptation of the word, Liberalism and Catholic Liberalism have been explicitly condemned by Pius IX. Leaving aside for the moment those who pretend to profess a certain Liberalism without wishing it to be known as such, there is no doubt that the Liberalist current in Europe and America is antiCatholic and rationalistic. Pass the world in review; what is meant by the Liberal party in Belgium, in France, in Germany, in Holland, in Austria, in Italy, in the South American Republics? Are they not anticlerical, antiCatholic? What is meant by their current language when they speak of the Liberal criterion: a Liberal atmosphere, Liberal thought, etc.? Look at the leaders of these parties both in Europe and America; do not ninetynine per cent of them understand by Liberalism the application of a pure and mild rationalism, at least to social science? Do they not regard as their sole and most potent enemy what they contemptuously term Clericalism, Ultramontanism, and (70) describe the Church as medieval, reactionary, the opponent of progress and the nurse of superstition? When then the term is so intimately associated with a Rationalism so radically opposed to the Church, how may Catholics use it with any hope of separating it from its current meaning?

In vain may some half dozen people imagine that they have given a different signification to a thing currently understood to bear the unmistakable stamp of antiCatholicity. Beyond all dispute, common usage, the arbiter and judge of language, persists in regarding Liberalism as the implacable foe of Catholicity. In spite then of a thousand distinctions, exceptions and subtleties you cannot fashion for yourself alone a Liberalism which has nothing contrary to the Faith in the opinion of most people, nor can you call yourself Liberal in any sense without being classed with all the other Liberals of that great family of Liberalism such as the world understands it.

The journal that seeks to be Catholic and at the same time has the name or reputation of Liberal becomes in the general opinion an ally of those who, under the Liberal banner, combat the Church in front and rear. Vainly will the editor of such a journal explain himself; his excuses and his explanations grow wearisome. To profess (71) to be Catholic and yet subscribe himself Liberal is not the way to convince people of the sincerity of his profession. The editor of a journal purporting to be Catholic must be Catholic not only in the profession he makes, but in spirit and in truth. To assume to be Liberal and then to endeavor to appear Catholic is to belie his faith; and although in his own heart he may imagine that he is as Catholic as the Pope (as several Liberals vaunt themselves), there is not the least doubt that his influence on current ideas and the march of events is thrown in favor of the enemy; and, in spite of himself, he becomes a satellite forced to move in the general orbit described by Liberalism.

And all this comes of a foolish desire to be estimated Liberal. Insane illusion! The usage of the word Liberal makes the Catholic, who accepts it as his own, one with all that finds shelter in its ominous shadow. Rationalism is the toadstool that flourishes in its dark shades, and with Rationalism does such a journalist identify himself, thus placing himself in the ranks of the enemies of Jesus Christ!

Moreover there is little doubt that the readers of such journals are little prepared to distinguish the subtle limitations drawn by editors of this character between Liberalism (73) and Liberalism. Most readers know the word in its common usage and class all things Liberal in a lump. When they see an ostensibly Catholic journal practically making common cause with the Liberal creed by sanctioning its name, they are easily led into the dangerous belief that Liberalism has some affinity with their faith, and, this once engrafted in their minds, they become ready adepts of Rationalism.

Let us illustrate. There is in our day a sect which calls itself "The Old Catholics." Suppose that we who are in the true sense of the word an old Catholic, for our Catholicity dates from Calvary and the cenacle of Jerusalem, which are proofs of its antiquity, suppose we should establish a journal with the equivalent title: Review of the Old Catholics Could it be said that this title is a lie? No; for we are old Catholics in the best sense of the words. But could it not be properly objected that this is a false sounding title, in as much as it is in our day the cunning device of a schismatical sect?

Certainly it would give occasion to well informed Catholics to believe that we were a schismatic and to the schismatics, who style themselves oldCatholics, occasion to welcome us as a new comrade in their rebellion against the Church. Why thus scandalize the faithful? But we use the (73) word in a good sense so be it; but would it not be much better to altogether avoid the use of a term in so important a matter, which, under existing circumstances, is readily interpreted in a bad sense?

Now this is exactly the situation with those who consider the term Liberal, reprobated by the Pope, inoffensive. Why should they take particular pains to employ a term requiring confusing explanations, and which cannot but excite suspicion and cause scandal? Why rank themselves, for the sake of a term, with the enemy, and carry his device if, at bottom, they are Catholic? But it may be said that words are of little importance why quibble in this way of the meaning of a term?

�

We protest; words are of paramount importance, especially in our own day, when intellectual confusion so obscures fundamental truths in the modern mind. Words represent ideas. That is their value and their use. Modern error largely owes its success to its use of terms of an ambiguous character, or, rather, by injecting a meaning into its words which hitherto carried a different signification. Agnosticism and Positivism have thus retained a Christian phraseology without the Christian meaning. They speak of God and sanctity and holiness and duty and freedom, but they have eviscerated the Christian (74) meaning. Still these terms pass current in the public mind with their former meaning, and so halfdisguise the fatalism and paganism of the agnostic and positivist schools. Socialism has adopted the terms liberty, equality, and fraternity, as its watchwords, where in reality they mean revolution, destruction, and despotism. Yet it deceives the simple by thus disguising its real intent.

So has it always been. All heresies have begun in verbal disputes and ended in sanguinary conflicts of ideas. St. Paul exhorts Timothy to be on his guard not only against false science (oppositiones falsi nominis scientie) but also against profane novelties of words (profanas vocum novitates). What would the great apostle of the nations say if, today, he saw Catholics decorating themselves with the title of Liberal, when that term stands in such violent and open antithesis to all that is Catholic? It is not merely a question of words, but of what words represent. It is a question of truth and salvation. No; you cannot be a Liberal Catholic; incompatibles cannot be reconciled. You cannot assume this reprobated name although you may be able by subtle sophisms to discover some secret way of reconciling it with your faith.

Christian charity will not defend you, (75) although you may repeatedly invoke it and would make it synonymous with the toleration of error. The first condition of charity is not to violate the truth, and charity cannot be the snare to surprise faith into the support of error. While we may admit the sincerity of those who are not Catholic, their error must always be held up to reprobation. We may pity them in their darkness, but we can never abet their error by ignoring it or tolerating it. Beyond dispute no Catholic can be consistently called Liberal.

Most, however, to be feared is not he who openly boasts his Liberalism, but who eschews the name and, vehemently denying it, is yet steeped to the lips in it and continually speaks and acts under its inspiration. And if such a man be a Catholic by profession all the more dangerous is he to the faith of others, for he is the hidden enemy sowing tares amidst the wheat.