Today we present
our “Man Bites Dog” feature: what happened when Pope Gregory XVI in the
encyclical Mirari Vos corrected the
hero of our story, the Abbé de Lamennais.
Some authorities consider de Lamennais the forerunner of liberal or
social Catholicism (see, e.g., J.W.
Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European
Thought, 1848-1914. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2000, 225-226).
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| Cardinal Pacca (with a letter) |
Mirari Vos caught up with de Lamennais
in Munich. It was accompanied by a
letter from Cardinal Pacca chastising de Lamennais in Gregory XVI’s name for
publicly discussing matters best confined to the proper authorities, and that
should have remained confidential, at least until the situation could be
straightened out. While intended as
fraternal correction in private, the letter did not soothe de Lamennais's
outraged feelings.
Nevertheless, de
Lamennais declared that he would cease publication of l’Avenir permanently out of deference to the pope’s wishes,
dissolved l’Agence Générale, and returned to La Chênaie, the family estate,
where he went into seclusion. At first
maintaining a discreet silence, he soon began communicating his anger and
bitterness in letters made public by their recipients — a rather shoddy way
some people have of manipulating others by making private communications
public.
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| Pope Gregory XVI (also with a letter) |
Concerned at this
turn of events, Gregory XVI sent de Lamennais a letter demanding that he submit
to Mirari Vos without qualification. Possibly because he lost his temper at the
people who had made his letters public, de Lamennais did so immediately. This convinced the pope that the matter had
been settled satisfactorily. As Gregory
XVI later recounted,
[De Lamennais’s] response to those things which cause Us so much
concern and anxiety was gratefully received.
His statement sent to Us on December 11 of last year [1833] distinctly
confirmed that he would follow solely and absolutely the teaching transmitted
in Our encyclical letter and that he would not write or approve anything which
differs from it. In that matter We
opened Our heart in paternal love to the son who was moved by Our warnings. We also trusted that he would produce more
brilliant writings in time to confirm his compliance in word and deed with Our
decision. (Singulari Nos, § 1.)
Ironically in
light of what happened next, on Gregory XVI’s receipt of his oath of
submission, de Lamennais was in a truly enviable position. He had direct access to a pope anxious to
receive proofs of his orthodoxy, and ready, willing, and able to make him the
point man in the struggle against indifferentism and Gallicanism — de
Lamennais’s principal religious concerns.
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| Alexis de Tocqueville (without a letter) |
He chose instead
to brood over his wrongs, and began reconsidering the submission he made so
quickly and possibly only to spite his correspondents for making his letters
public. Within days of sending his
submission to the pope, de Lamennais renounced his priesthood, and soon afterwards
the profession of Christianity.
As de Tocqueville
would comment years later, if de Lamennais could not be the master of
something, he would be nothing. He had,
the author of Democracy in America
declared, “a pride great enough to walk over the heads of kings and bid
defiance to God.” (Alexis de Tocqueville, The
Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville.
Cleveland, Ohio: The World Publishing Company, 1959, 191.)
Henceforth the
universal religion of humanity, a sort of socialist secular humanism, would be
the only faith de Lamennais recognized.
His creed was the amelioration of the poor, the welfare of the people as
a whole, and the defense of human liberty.
He would no longer be the Apostle of the Catholic Church, but the
Apostle of the People.
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| Félicité de Lamennais (with lots of letters) |
His anger boiling
over, in May of 1834 de Lamennais in a fury published Les Paroles d’un Croyant. In apocalyptic terms the pamphlet spewed a
psychotic rage against what he decided was a conspiracy of kings and priests
against the people. Virtually everything
he had condemned as a Catholic he now endorsed as a secular humanist, and vice versa. Translated into many languages, the vitriolic
denunciation of the established social order enjoyed a huge circulation among
anti-Catholics.
Gregory XVI,
already shocked at the speed and ferocity with which de Lamennais violated his
oath of submission, was now appalled at the former priest (former, that is,
according to de Lamennais; the Catholic Church holds that the priesthood is
forever) making what was supposed to be a confidential matter so spectacularly
— and disastrously — public. A month
later the pope issued Singulari Nos,
“On the Errors of Lamennais.”
In strong yet
measured terms the brief encyclical explained the situation, expressed
amazement at de Lamennais’s actions, condemned Les Paroles d’un Croyant (characterized as “small in size, [but]
enormous in wickedness”), and warned the hierarchy to be on guard against ideas
that undermine truth. It closed with the
hope that de Lamennais could be brought to see the error of his ways and be
reconciled to the Church.
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| Pope Leo XIII (he's got a letter, too) |
Perhaps the most
noteworthy thing about the otherwise obscure encyclical was that Gregory XVI
specifically referred to the social and philosophical theories behind the
attacks on truth and reason — the theory of certitude that replaces God with
man and provides the basis of socialism — as rerum novarum, “new things.” A little over half a century later Leo XIII
would hearken back to the term to underscore the continuity of his social
thought with that of earlier pontiffs and emphasize the seriousness of the
continuing problem of socialism, and what would soon become known as modernism
and the New Age.
Scandalized
equally by his casting off the Church and the manner of it, de Lamennais’s
friends abandoned him. In an effort to
justify himself to them and further expose what he claimed was the perfidy of
Gregory XVI, de Lamennais published Les
Affaires de Rome (1836) a self-serving and biased apologia that took liberties with the facts.
Like a tune with
only one note, and with little if any originality, from then on until his death
de Lamennais, with one exception, confined his writing to reiterating the
themes expressed in Les Paroles d’un
Croyant. As if to demonstrate that
he had lost his mind as well as his faith, the brilliant career Gregory XVI had
planned for de Lamennais degenerated into reiterating humanitarian platitudes
enlivened occasionally with softheaded socialist clichés.
The exception
among the works that appeared after he rejected Christianity was Esquisse d’une Philosophie, which
contained some of de Lamennais’s best writing.
Published from 1841 to 1846, the plan of the work and the bulk of the
writing clearly date from before de Lamennais’s break with the Church.
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| Père la Chaise, where the paths of glory lead, with or without letters |
A comprehensive
metaphysical treatise, Esquisse d’une
Philosophie looked at God, man, and nature from the standpoint of pure
reason. Much of the four-volume work
presented opinions fully in conformity with Catholic thought, but some portions
were obviously rewritten or added to conform to his new religion of
humanity. Rejecting the supernatural
order altogether, de Lamennais denied the divinity of Jesus, the fall of man,
and the possibility of eternal punishment.
He also published a translation of the Gospels, carefully annotated with
anti-Christian discussions and notes.
From 1835 on,
articles and pamphlets flowed in profusion from the pen of de Lamennais. He also defended the revolutionaries arrested
that year for disturbing the peace. In
1840 he published Le Pays et le Gouvernement,
which earned him a year in prison. While
incarcerated during 1841, he wrote Une
Voix de Prison, a jeremiad he published in 1846 written in the style of Les Paroles d’un Croyant.
Determined to be
a martyr to humanity, de Lamennais resisted all attempts to bring him back to
the faith, despite continual efforts by Church authorities and the friends whom
he had alienated. When he died after
rejecting the last rites or any other religious ministration, his body was carried
on his orders directly to the cemetery of Père la Chaise without religious
ceremony, “being mourned by a countless concourse of democratic and literary
admirers,” as the Encyclopedia Britannica
put it.
#30#
