As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, if
there was one thing that both the Catholic Church and the Church of England had
in common in the early nineteenth century, it was “religious
indifferentism.” Although it stemmed
from different causes in each country, the widespread neglect of religious
duties and the belief that all religions are essentially the same was a serious
problem in both France and England.
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| Félicité de Lamennais |
England’s religious indifferentism had been building up
for more than two centuries as ordinary people gradually became alienated from
society by the growing concentration of capital ownership and the drift of the
clergy away from the people whose spiritual needs they presumably served. That of France had been thrust upon the
people by the Revolution. In both cases
it paved the way for the adoption and spread of socialism.
This was not obvious at first, especially in France, where
the most damaging of the “new things” — “Neo-Catholicism” — began as a program
to counter religious indifferentism! It
started when after a somewhat checkered path back into the Catholic Church and a
somewhat equivocal entry into the religious life, the Abbé Félicité de
Lamennais and his older brother, Jean-Marie de Lamennais
(1780-1860), also a priest, took as their personal mission the revival of the
Catholic Church after the shambles left by the Revolution.
An acknowledged leader of the “Ultramontanes” — people who
have a highly exaggerated notion of the role of the papacy — de Lamennais
carried even the extreme ultramontane position to extremes, especially after
the death of Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre (1753-1821). What to other Ultramontanes was a deeply held
conviction became in de Lamennais a virtual pathology, sometimes crossing over
into actual hysteria. He had the goal of
conforming the teachings of the Church to the
needs of the world, founding a truly universal religion, and establishing a
terrestrial paradise under the ultimate rule of the pope as both temporal and
spiritual leader of the world.
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| Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre |
Some authorities consider de Lamennais the forerunner, even founder of liberal or
social Catholicism. His work did in fact lay the foundations of
today’s climate of dissent. It provided
many people with the rationalizations they sought to shift away from the
traditional mission of the Catholic Church to an
exclusive focus on the so-called “social gospel.”
In 1817 de Lamennais published the first volume of Essai Sur l’Indifférence en Matière de
Religion — “Essay on Indifference in Matters of Religion.” It was an immediate bestseller, with 40,000
copies sold within a month or so. A
number of high profile conversions followed, and de Lamennais became possibly
the best-known clergyman in all of France and parts of western Europe.
It would not be too
much to say that the attention went straight to his head. Additional volumes of the Essai appeared over the next six years
and proved very popular with younger priests anxious to try and integrate French
type liberalism and socialism into Catholic theology.
Older clergy proved to be less enthusiastic, especially
those who tended toward “Gallicanism,” that is, the belief that civil authority
over the Catholic Church is on a level with that of the pope. At the other end of the spectrum from ultramontanism,
Gallicanism is similar to the state establishment of religion as in the Church
of England but does not go so far as to deny papal authority completely. Strictly speaking, “Gallicanism” applies only
to France — Gaul — and goes by other names as well, such as Erastianism,
Febronianism, and Josephinism.
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| Plato |
The basic problem with de Lamnennais was a complex hypothesis
he had developed called “the theory of certitude.” The idea was that truth resides only in the
general reason of all of humanity as the result of direct revelation from
God. Truths such as the existence of God
and the content of the natural law cannot, therefore, be known by the operation
of individual reason on the evidence of the senses guided by faith, but only by accepting on
faith the authority of humanity as a whole.
The theory of certitude was in
essence a restatement of Plato’s error that ideas exist
independently of the human mind. It also
led directly to the socialist idea that God grants rights to the man-made
abstraction of the collective, which then grants them to actual human beings as
expedient.
De Lamennais’s contribution to socialist theory — and thus the basis of “social
Catholicism” — was to insist on the exaggerated ultramontane belief that the
Catholic Church in the person of the pope, not the State,
should decide what rights people should have.
This belief has continued to pervade various forms of religious
socialism down to the present day, with the leaders or prophets of different cults,
sects, and faiths substituted for the pope as required. Paradoxically, it also evolved into the idea
that Catholic social doctrine should conform to the needs of the modern world,
as democratically determined either by the people or their leaders.
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| Pope Leo XII |
With a great deal of truth, critics claimed de Lamennais’s
thought was not only contradictory, it fostered skepticism by denying
individual reason, confused the natural and the
supernatural orders, and reduced religious faith to human opinion. Insulted and outraged, de Lamennais whipped out Défense de l’Essai (1823). In
1824 he traveled to Rome, where he presented his case to Pope Leo XII (Annibale Francesco Clemente Melchiorre Girolamo
Nicola Sermattei della Genga, 1760-1829, elected 1823).
While in Rome, de Lamennais submitted the Essai for review. Not
realizing the implications of the theory of certitude on which
the priest based his philosophical system or the consequences of the socialist trend of his thought, Leo XII formally approved the book for its strong (if
ultimately doctrinally unsound) defense of the Church.
Even though de Lamennais’s theories were eventually
disproved, this does not involve the doctrine of papal infallibility. What even many Catholics misunderstand is
that papal infallibility — in reality the infallibility of the teaching office
of the pope — relates only to matters
involving faith and morals, not science, that is, facts (empirical validity) or
reason (logical consistency) — and theology and philosophy are sciences,
theology being in Catholic terms “the Queen of All Sciences.”
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| Heraclius I, "The First Crusader" (sort of) |
Further, infallibility is a power of discernment, not
creation. When speaking infallibly, the
pope says something because it is true, it does not become true because he says
it.
Thus, it can be very easy at times to “fool” the pope with
a complex theological or philosophical theory outside the pope’s personal area
of expertise. This is what happened, for
example, with Pope Honorius I (625-638) and his hurried approval of the
convoluted Monotheletist formula proposed by the Emperor Heraclius I (610-641).
Monotheletism was an attempt to unify the Empire
politically by resolving the dispute the Orthodox and Catholics (no real
distinction at that time) had with the Monophysites over Christ’s nature. Not unexpectedly, by interfering in religious
affairs, Heraclius only succeeded in creating yet one more faction to tear
apart the Empire.
In any event, being impressed with de Lamennais’s obvious talents and his
extraordinary zeal in opposing religious indifferentism and Gallicanism, Leo XII considered making him a cardinal. He soon realized, however, that de Lamennais’s excitable temperament,
immoderate language, and perfectionism would have made his elevation a serious
mistake.
As the pope said of de Lamennais, “He is an esaltato, a distinguished man of
talents, knowledge, and good faith. But he is one of those lovers of perfection
who, if one should leave them alone, would overthrow the whole world.” (Dudon, Lamennais et le Saint-Siège (Paris,
1911), p. 29; quoted in Heinrich Rommen, The
State in Catholic Thought: A Treatise in Political Philosophy. St. Louis,
Missouri: B. Herder Book Co., 1947, 436n.)
Fortunately, however, Church officials only granted the imprimatur to Défense de l’Essai. This confirmed
de Lamennais’s right to express his
opinions without judging the opinions.
Evidently under the impression that he had some kind of
official sanction for his activities, de Lamennais returned to France. His language and activities became
increasingly immoderate, even outrageous in his readiness to accuse anyone who
disagreed with him, civil or religious, of heresy or dissent. Now the acknowledged leader of the
Neo-Catholic movement, he wrote books and pamphlets, founded a religious order
to “Catholicize liberalism” (suppressed by the civil authorities after four
years), started a civil organization to act as a watchdog to expose violations
of religious liberty, and established the short-lived yet influential journal l’Avenir, “the Future.”
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| Charles Forbes René de Montalembert |
De Lamennais’s new magazine demanded complete freedom for
the Catholic Church from any form of civil domination or control. It was
also dedicated to promoting extreme, atomistic democratic views on civil rights
and a socialist economy.
As de Lamennais’s lay associate Charles Forbes René de Montalembert (1810-1870) noted later after his break
with the renegade priest,
To new and fair practical notions, honest in themselves,
which have for the last twenty years been the daily bread of Catholic polemics,
we had been foolish enough to add extreme and rash theories; and to defend both
with absolute logic, which loses, even when it does not dishonour, every cause.
(Montalembert, from his Life of Lacordaire, quoted by John Henry
Cardinal Newman, “Note on Essay IV., The Fall of La Mennais,” Essays
Critical and Historical. London:
Longmans, Green, and Co., 1897, 173-174.)
Having outraged both liberals and conservatives, and
financially exhausted both by normal operating expenses and a series of
expensive lawsuits, de Lamennais suspended publication of l’Avenir. De Lamennais’s
fellow priest, Jean-Baptiste Henri Dominique Lacordaire (1802-1861), suggested that they journey to
Rome to put their case before Pope Gregory XVI (Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari,
1765-1846, elected 1831). Wanting
to present his case in person to the pope, from whom he hoped to obtain an
endorsement similar to the one he was under the misimpression he had received
from Leo XII, de Lamennais agreed, and the trio set out for Rome in November of
1831.
#30#
