The Sun.
London, England, 1868-05-05 00:00:00

ANTI-CATHOLIC PREJUDICE.

From a letter which the Archbishop of
Westminster recently addressed to the Rev.
Mr. Lockhart, it would appear that his Grace
has the intention of some day giving us an
account of the queer notions held by our Pro-
testant countrymen concerning Catholics and
their religion. It would be difficult to imagine
a more useful, and, in. a certain sense, more
amusing, work than such a book must inevi-
tably prove. Few, indeed, amongst us could
form an adequate idea of the helpless and dense
ignorance of English Protestants as to all that
concerns Catholicism. Even among the Ritual-
ists, that section of the Anglican Church which
devotes itself to the study of our dogmas and
the imitation of our rites, the most ludicrous
errors and misconceptions prevail widely. Bat
in regard to the more numerous section of
non-Catholics, taught simply to hate and de-
spise us as a body given up to the grossest
superstitions, they have been hitherto only too
ready and willing to credit any wild and ab-
surd assertions as to the religious practices
and belief of Catholics. In fact, men who in
the ordinary run of affairs may be held to be
of sound judgment and good common sense—
men who are not at all given to accept idle
rumours, or, indeed, anything but well-ascer-
tained or highly probable matters—will, never-
theless, credit any absurdity, provided only it
be set down to the account of Catholics.
Indeed, the strangely-distorted ideas of the
Romans concerning the doctrines and rites of
Christianity in its first age were scarcely farther
removed from the truth than are many of the
notions held of us even at the present day by
hundreds of our fellow-countrymen. Take one
of the most intelligent men from among those
who are most active in their denunciations of
Catholicism, and question him about those
doctrines which he so violently condemns, and
his ignorance of the very first and elementary
principles of our religion will astonish you—
if, indeed, you were not convinced ,of it be-
forehand.

Of course such a state of things is deplor-
able ; but it serves to set out in strong relief
one of the ruling characteristics of the nation
—its susceptibility to blind unreasoning preju-
dice. For centuries past Englishmen have
been brought up in determined hatred of every-
thing Catholic. From their earliest years they
were taught to look upon Rome and the Pope
as the centre and head of nearly all evils ;
and the notions thus justified into their minds
in early youth were increased and deepened in
manhood by all the influences of interest and
association. Such a course of training as this,
acting upon material as stolid and stubborn
as that of the average Englishman, could only
result in that incarnation of stupid and persist-
ent prejudice of which so many specimens are
unfortunately to be found around us. To im-
press natures of this kind with the truth, or
eves possibility of truth, of the views of
their opponents, is wellnig,b. impossible. To tell
them that after all, perhaps, the Catholics and
their religion were neither so bad nor so
absurd as they are generally represented to be,
is in their eyes to suggest a plot for the de-
struction of the constitution of the kingdom.
Almost with the air they breathe theyhave im-
bibed an irrefragable conviction that Catho-
licism, of the nature and doctrines of which
they are entirely ignorant, is the worst of
all mundane e7ils ; and they resolutely close
their ears to all argument or evidence which
could endanger their darling prejudice, only
to open them widely and credulously to slan-
ders and falsehoods which they would not even
believe of their worst enemies.
To a certain extent this state of feeling as
to Catholics pervades all classes, from the
highest and so-called educated to the poorest
and most ignorant. But, unfortunately, it
reaches its highest development in that class
of persons who are precisely in the most favour-
able position for making the weight of their
aversions felt by all kinds of petty, indirect
persecutions. It is the misfortune of our sys-
tem of local self-government that it places so
large a share of power in the hands of that
section of the community which, both by edu-
cation and career in life, is least fitted to use
it in a public-spirited and beneficent manner
—bucolic magnates and retired shopkeepers.
Any one who will for a moment realize to him
self the mental condition which must be super-
induced by the business avocations or other
associations of these classes will find no diffi-
culty in understanding the incredible narrow -
mindedness which characterizes all the pro-.
ceedings of bumbledom and visiting justices
aveobviouslypa
much to expect that men
whoi
n pettifogging
greater part of their lives
transactions, and bamboozling
It i s
hss e
d toot
he
the public to their own great profit, should,
at the eleventh hour, as it were, adopt wide
and generous views. The whole business of
their lives has been passed in a routine which
could only tend to narrow their views and
contract their sympathies. To resist, to ob-
struct, to assert their petty authority in a hun-
dred irritating ways, has become their second
nature ; and it is only to be expected that
Catholics, a small and somewhat feeble minority
in the country, and, therefore, one of their
safest objects, should be made specially to feel
the weight of their bigotry and prejudice,
which they conceal beneath the guise of a
Quixotic devotion to the imperial Protestant
interests of the country.
It is satisfactory, however, to feel that this
state of things is giving way. Protestantism
is fast losing its hold upon the nation, and
with it the anti-Catholic prejudices which
have been fostered as its essential foundation
in the national mind. A certain section of Pro-
testants are fully aware of this, and alive to
its consequences, and hence the frantic but
unavailing efforts of the Whalleys, Brock-
mans, and their troop of hired slanderers to
arrest the current of public opinion. But the
tide has set in too strong for them, and by some
curious fatality they and the whole band of
prejudice-mongers fail to see that their labours
are but hastening their own final discomfiture.
—Westminster Gazette.

RELIGION IN FRANCE UNDER LOUIS

PHILIPPE.

I have shown how religion, chained down
by the Concordat, as the King by the Charter,
had no power to curb the revolutionary spirit
which in 1830 was still as anti-religious as
in 1792. The Concordat, by the malicious in-
terpolation of the organic articles, was made
a handle by the Liberal party to keep religion
in subjection, which was every year exposed
to the most disgraceful attacks in the Cham-
bers on the occasion of voting the subsidies for
public worship. These attacks resembled not
a little in their abusive bitterness the annual
debates that used to take place in the Eng-
lish Parliament in voting
the Maynooth grant.
Although the Ministers, according to the Char-
ter, were alone responsible, yet every fault they
committed was imputed by the so-called Liberal
party and by the public press to the King, who
thus became the cons `ant target for the dis-
graceful attacks of a
misguided faction. The
Revolution of July, 1830, was carried in Paris
with the cry of " Vive la Charte. A tri.
coloured flag, hoisted on every mail and stage-
coach, conveyed the intelligence to every de-
partment. The Church shared the unpopu-
larity of the King, and religion was attacked
and insulted in Paris; but the working classes
respected the Sister of Charity ; they regarded
the bonne sceur in something the same light
as they are accustomed to regard the mere
of their trade guilds. In France every' guild
or corporation of artisans and workmen is
placed under the tutelage of a mere. She is
to the trade guild what the vivandiere is to the
regiment, only held in even greater respect and
honour. The Sister of Charity, the bonne sceur,
like the famous Sister Rosalie, was treated even
in. the heat of the Revolution with the greatest
reverence by the working men of Paris. She
was in their eyes, if not invested with a re-
ligious characters at least to Do respected as

the mere of the moral and charitable institutions
of the country. And though the people had been
taught by the public press to hate religion, the
sight of so many devoted Sisters of Charity
taking care of the wounded in the hospitals,
victims of the three glorious days, made them
perceive that religion was not altogether use-
less. It was the habit of the devoted Sister of
Charity that saved the soutane of the priest.
Besides, as every child had been taught the
Catechism in order to make his first commu-
nion, so the great majority were in the habit
of calling in the priest on their death-bed.
The priest was, therefore, a necessity, and it
was that necessity also which prevented, in
1830, every priest from being murdered as in
1792. It is a very remarkable fact, that in
that circle of forty miles round Paris, called
by the world the most enlightened portion of
France, in which nobody attends church even
on a Sunday, no sooner is a man taken ill than
he calls in the priest. This fact shows at
least that the belief in the immortality of
the soul, in a future world, in the judgment
of God, survives even in the worst part of
France. It also shows how fashion and
human respect work upon the better judgment
of men. The influence of the infidel press is,
indeed, the real cause of much of the anti-
religious feeling ; for these impious papers are
to be found on the table of every country-inn,
and the people do not dare to contradict what
is read to them in print. The Catechism and
the fruits of their first communion were, there-
fore, the only barrier left to keep up that
sense of religion which, when once obtained,
never dies; God cannot visit, by a worthy com-
munion, the heart of a child without leaving
in it an eternal benediction.

Although at first the voice of the people was
in favour of a republic, that honest voice was
soon put down by the traitors of the day. The
great schemer of the day, Lafayette, was in
league with the Palais Royal ; he and many
othr noted charpcters of the time were leagued
together for the purpose of getting the Go-
vernment of France into their own hands.
They pleaded how useful it was to have a
King subjected to the power of the Chambers;
and in the name of liberty and of the charter,
they proposed the Orleans family. They had
little difficulty to prove to the people that a
King was a necessity, and the people in their
simplicity thought they were going to have a
King with unlimited power. Kingship in
France accords with the genius of the nation
—a nation of heroes mustliave a King. There
is no gradation or glory in rank without a
King to award the recompense. The younger
branch of the Bourbons, in spite of being
Bourbon, was proposed to the. people, and the
Orleans family, previously prepared by the
conspiracy which had been for some years at
work at the Palais Royal, accepted, in spite of
their oaths and family connection, the crown
of France. From that moment France fell
into the hands of perjurers and unbelievers,
who had the, effrontery to require an oath
from every official ; they thought that they
could only be safe in the hands of as great per-
jurers as themselves. The consequence was
that every place-man who had any regard for
honour and conscience was obliged to resign
his post, and France was abandoned to the
guidance of freethinkers. The people felt the
disgrace they had fallen into ; partial revolts
took -plabe every six months ; the sovereign
was called the King of barricades ; his life
was many time 3 attempted. Religion was more
than ever restricted. The civil Government
found fault with the bishops for having too
many pupils in their seminaries ; no religious
order was allowed to open a house of educa-
tion; the persecution was such that Catholic
families had to send their sons to the col-
lege of the Jesuits at Brugelette in Belgium,
and to Fribourg in Switzerland. With one or
two exceptions it was impossible to get a
Catholic education in France, and those houses
which did escape the fury of the persecution
were not allowed to obtain for their pupils
university degrees.
The centre of this evil was the University
of Paris, which enjoyed a monopoly of the edu-
cation of the country. It was in the hands of
Deists and Materialists ; it was the great seat
of the propagation, not of faith, but of unbe-
lief. Materialism was openly taught from its
chairs. The consequence was, as might have
been expected, that year by year it sent out
into the world its students corrupted in faith
—teachers of infidelity and materialism. The
University of Paris was not merely the centre
—and that would be bad enough—of ration-
alism and unbelief, but it was a monopoly which
held in bondage the whole of the higher edu-
cation of the country. Against this monstrous
evil Montalembert fought his glorious fight;
he rallied round his standard " freedom of
education," all that was still sound and free
in France. The Catholic party in the Champ
hers and in the Press kept up a prolonged and
noble struggle for freedom of education. They
knew that religion in France, the safety of the
State, public morality, depended upon freeing
the education of the country from the dis-
graceful bondage under which it suffered.
.. Louis Veuillot, in the Univers, for nearly
seventeen years, waged this war of freedom of
education without cessation, and yet with won-
derful intellectual fertility and vigour. The
evil effects of this monopoly of education on
the part of the godless University of Paris
was everywhere visible. I might recount
from my own experience innumerable in-
stances of its corrupting influence. I will,
however, content myself with one or two illus-
trations. Crossing one day in 1831 the Place
du Carrousel, I met the head master of the
University Lycee of Nantes. He was a good
Catholic :—" Well, sir," said I, " were you able
to hold your post after the revolution of 1830?"
" I was. I thought I might do some good, so
I kept my place; but later, finding things were
getting even worse than you knew them, I was
so disgusted •that I have sent in my resigna-
tion." " Well, sir, I often repeat that out of
the 800 boys and masters only about twenty
went to their Easter Communion." "In my
opinion," he answered, " if you exaggerate at
all, it is in saying more went than fewer.
What good could I possibly do in such deep'
iniquity ?" I was a student in Paris in 1830,
where I met many of my old school-fellows,
some from the Jesuit college of St. Anne,
near Auray ; most of them had abandoned
the virtuous lessons of the good fathers ;
they had been led astray by human re-
spect and the bad example they had con-
stantly before their eyes. They dared not go
to church on Sunday, nor abstain from flesh
meat on Fridays in the public restaurants.
Vice was allowed to walk in the open day, the
vilest pictures were exposed in shop windows,
the most abominable romances were sold, and
religion, in a word, was regarded as only fit
for idiots. Some priests even did not venture
to appear in the streets in their soutane ; the
livery of religion was looked down upon with
disgust by the free thinkers; there was scarcely
a man who went to church on Sunday to be
found in the administration or in official circles.
In the army there were many men of. honour,
or at least men of integrity ; their example
offered a great contrast to the shameless pecu-
lation which was going on at the time in every
other Government department ; but as to reli-
gion, the army of France at that time, even in
its highest grades, knew nothing of it. Offi-
cers and soldiers alike were practical unbe-
lievers.

Every man who had respect for religion
and virtue, and considered perjury as a stain
on his honour, had retired into private life.
Many of the gentry or noblesse who had coun-
try seats, were engaged in agricultural pur-
suits ; now and then, in the midst of their re-
tirement from public life, some of them gave
expression to their indignation by pamphlets,
exposing the depth of the general corruption
and predicting its necessary consequences.
Religion was never so. powerless as during
that immoral period of 1830 to 1848 ; Eng-
lish newspapers had lavished the greatest
praises on the Constitutional King ; the recep-
tion of the Queen of England at the Chitteau
cl'Eti, cannot be forgotten, A Protestant was

Prime Minister; the eldest son of the King had
been married to a Lutheran ; there was every
hope on the part of Protestants that France
was about to adopt the so-called reformed re-
ligion. But whatever may be the amount of
irreligion and infidelity in France, common
sense remains. The people know that if there
be any truth in religion, that it is only to be
found in the Catholic Church—that all other
sects have worldly motives, or motives of self-
interest in view. Every Frenchman has a keen
sense of the absurdity of the system of pri-
vate judgment which pretends that every indi-
vidual is capable of safely interpreting the
often mysterious and mystical language of the
Bible ;—they know that to be a lawyer or a
doctor it is necessary to study for three years
at the faculty of law or medicine at the 'Uni-
versity. of Paris, and they think it the height
of unreason to believe in a self-taught theo-
logy, and to reject the authority of the Church.
Fortunately, for France, there were no tithes
and church estates held, as in England, by a
hostile establishment, whose worldly interest it
is to oppose, as it has done, by a long conspi-
racy against truth and common sense, the
Catholic Church, and to support by its ill-
gotten estates, church and abbey lands, a false
system of religion. France, more fortunate
than England in this, escaped the great danger
of a systematic perversion of truth. It is true
that freethinkers in France and worldly men
heap every kind of slander and abuse upon
the clergy ; they have political interests to
gain, passions to gratify ; but such abuses do
not bear lasting fruits, as every day they are
contradicted.by the saintly lives of the clergy,
whose good example the people of France have
ever before their eyes. It is not so in England,
where the clergy of the Established Church are
themselves most interested in keeping up pre-
judices against the Catholic priesthood. They
can be moved to revenge, even to bloody deeds,
as during the great revolution, for the sake of
correcting more or less crying evils, or for the
sake of following the craving of their worldly
appetites. But those deeds carry with them
their own remedy in the disgust vice always
awakens, and in the reaction which it invari-
ably produces. But, even in the corrupt days
of Louis Philippe's reign, there was no danger
of France falling a victim to Protestantism.
Since the first outburst of the Reformation
Catholic nations, Lord Macaulay says, have
become infidel, and have become Catholic
again, but have never lapsed into Protestant-
ism.—Correspondent of the Westminster• Gazette.