The Modern Regime Volume II Part 10

[Footnote 5313:. (But today, around 1990, there are only 5 nuns per 10,000 inhabitants. SR.)]

[Footnote 5314: emile Keller, ibid., pa.s.sim.--In many communities of men and of women the personal expenses of each member are not over 300 francs per annum; with the Trappists at Devielle this is the maximum.--If the value of the useful labor performed by these 160,000 monks and nuns be estimated at 1000 francs per head, which is below the real figures, the total is 160 millions per annum; estimate the expenses of each monk or nun at 500 francs per head and the total is 80 millions a year. The net gain to the public is 80 millions per annum.]

[Footnote 5315: "La Charite a Nancy," by Abbe Girard, p. 245.--The same judgment is confirmed by the Rev. T. W. Allies, in a "Journal d'un voyage en France," 1848, p. 291. "The dogma of the real presence is the centre of the whole religious life of the Church (Catholic): it is the secret support of the priest in his mission, so painful and so filled with abnegation. It is by this that the religious orders are maintained."]

[Footnote 5316: This question is examined by St. Thomas in his Summa Theologica.]

[Footnote 5317: For the past twenty years, owing to the researches of psychologists and physiologists, we have begun to know something of the subterranean regions of the mind and the latent processes taking place there. The storing, the residue and unconscious combination of images, the spontaneous and automatic transformation of images into sensations, the composition, disa.s.sociations and splitting into dual personalities of the ego, the alternate or simultaneous coexistence of two, or more than two, distinct persons in the same individual, the suggestions accomplished later and at fixed dates, the chock of the return from the inside to the outside, and the physical effect on the nervous extremities of the mental sensations, all these late discoveries have resulted in a new conception of mind, and psychology, thus renewed, throws a sharp light on history.]

[Footnote 5318: See in "Herodiade," by Flaubert, the depicting of these "kingdoms of the world or of the century," as they appeared to Palestinian eyes in the first century. For the first four centuries we must consider, confronting the Church, by way of contrast and in full relief, the pagan and Roman world, the life of the day, especially in the baths, at the circus, in the theatre, the gratuitous supplies of food, of physical enjoyments and of spectacles to the idle populace of the towns, the excesses of public and private luxury, the enormity of unproductive expenditure, and all this in a society which, without our machines, supported itself by hand-labor; next, the scantiness and dearness of available capital, a legal rate of interest at twelve per cent, the latifundia, the oberati, the oppression of the working cla.s.ses, the diminution of free laborers, the exhaustion of slaves, depopulation and impoverishment, at the end the colon attached to his glebe, the workman to his tool, the curiale to his curie, the administrative interference of the centralized State, its fiscal exigencies, all that it sucked out of the social body, and the more strenuously inasmuch as there was less to be sucked out of it. Against these sensual habits and customs and this economic system the Church has preserved its primitive aversion, especially on two points, in relation to the theatre and to loaning money at interest.]

[Footnote 5319: See St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, ch. I., 26 to 32; also the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. XIII.]

[Footnote 5320: The First Epistle of John, II. 16.]

[Footnote 5321: Acts of the Apostles, ch. IV.,32, 34 and 35.]

[Footnote 5322: I cannot help but conclude that the two world wars, started by Christian Governments, led to socialism and religious decay.

How large a role television played in removing the need for clerical guidance and comfort is hard to determine, the fact is that the Churches in Europe stand mostly empty and Taine's description fits rather will on today's society. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5323: Saint Athanasius, the princ.i.p.al founder of Christian metaphysics, did not know Latin and learned it with great difficulty at Rome when he came to defend his doctrine. On the other hand, the princ.i.p.al founder of western theology, Saint Augustin, had only an imperfect knowledge of Greek.]

[Footnote 5324: For example, the three words which are essential and technical in metaphysical speculations on the divine essence, have no real equivalent in Latin, while the words by which an attempt is made to render these terms, verb.u.m, substantia, persona, are very inexact.

Persona and substantia, in Tertullian, are already used in their Roman sense, which is always juridical and special.]

[Footnote 5325: Sir Henry Sumner Maine, "Ancient Law," p. 354. The following is profound in a remarkable degree: "Greek metaphysical literature contained the sole stock of words and ideas out of which the human mind could provide itself with the means of engaging in the profound controversies as to the Divine Persons, the Divine Substance, and the Divine Natures. The Latin language and the meager Latin philosophy were quite unequal to the undertaking, and accordingly the western or Latin-speaking provinces of the Empire adopted the conclusions of the East without disputing or reviewing them."]

[Footnote 5326: Maine, "Ancient Law," p.357 "The difference between the two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in pa.s.sing from the East to the West, theological speculation had pa.s.sed from a climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law." Out of this arose the Western controversies on the subject of Free-will and Divine Providence. "The problem of Free-will arises when we contemplate a metaphysical conception under a legal aspect."]

[Footnote 5327: Ibid. "The nature of Sin and its transmission by inheritance; the debt owed by man and its vicarious satisfaction; the necessity and sufficiency of the Atonement; above all the apparent antagonism between Free-will and the Divine Providence-these were the points which the West began to debate as ardently as ever the East had discussed the articles of its more special creed." This juridical fashion of conceiving theology appears in the works of the oldest Latin theologians, Tertullian and Saint Cyprian.]

[Footnote 5328: Ibid. Among the technical notions borrowed from law and here used in Latin theology we may cite "the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of the obligations established by Contract or Delict," the intercession or act by which one a.s.sumes the obligation contracted by another, "the Roman view of Debts and of the modes of incurring, extinguishing and transmitting them, the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by Universal Succession,"]

[Footnote 5329: Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, "La Gaule Romaine," p.96 and following pages, on the rapidity, facility and depth of the transformation by which Gaul became Latinized.]

[Footnote 5330: The Church of England, in its confession of faith, makes this express declaration.]

[Footnote 5331: As called by Joseph de Maistre, referring to the Greek church.]

[Footnote 5332: Duke Sermoneta-Gaetani has shown in his geographic map of the "Divine Comedy" the exact correspondence of this poem with the "Somme" by Saint Thomas.--It was already said of Dante in the middle ages, Theologus Dantes nullius dogmatis expers.]

[Footnote 5333: Cf. "L'Empire des tsars et les Russes," by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, vol. III., entire, on the characteristics of the Russian clergy.]

[Footnote 5334: Bossuet, ed. Deforis, VI., 169. The Meaux catechism (reproduced, with some additions, in the catechism adopted by Napoleon).

"What works are deemed satisfactory?"--"Works unpleasant to us imposed by the priest as a penance."--"Repeat some of them."--"Alms-giving, fastings, austerities, privations of what is naturally agreeable, prayers, spiritual readings."]

[Footnote 5335: Ibid. "Why is confession ordained?"--"To humble the sinner.. . "--"Why again?"--"To submit one's self to the power of the Keys and to the judgment of the priests who have the power to punish and remit sins."]

[Footnote 5336: Bossuet, ibid., Catechisme de Meaux, VI., 140-142.]

[Footnote 5337: "Manreze du pretre," by Father Caussette, I., 37.

"Do you see that young man of twenty-five who will soon traverse the sanctuary to find the sinners awaiting him? It is the G.o.d of this earth who sanctifies him... Were Jesus Christ to descend into the confessional he would say, Ego te absolvo. He is going to say with the same authority, Ego te absolvo. Now this is an act of the supreme power; it is greater, says Saint Augustin, than the creation of heaven and earth."--T. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France," 1845, p.97.

"Confession is the chain which binds all Christian life."]

[Footnote 5338: "Manreze du pretre," I., 36. "The Mother of G.o.d has undoubtedly more credit than you, but she has less authority.

Undoubtedly, she accords favors, but she has not given one single absolution."]

[Footnote 5339: Could one imagine that Stalin, that that apostate former student expelled from the Tiflis Theological Seminary, would, on reading Taine's text, have conceived the idea of having communist missionaries, directed by the KGB in Moscow, direct an army of agents inside the capitalist world? (SR.)]

[Footnote 5340: Like a central committee of the communist party? (SR.)]

[Footnote 5341: Praelectiones juris canonici, I., 101. "The power entrusted to St. Peter and the apostles is wholly independent of the community of believers."]

[Footnote 5342: Here Lenin pretended to install the Proletariat and announced its (his own) dictatorship. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5343: Here we have a clear model for an International Communist Party, tasked with the creation of a visible organization whenever this is possible, but with an invisible structure of missionaries, recruiters, controllers, policemen and agents, since any bourgeois state must, once it discovers the party's true aims, forbid it and drive it underground. To the Christian dream of an eternal life in heaven or h.e.l.l, the communist movement has its promise of a millenary on earth contrasted by the immediate annihilation of any traitor or dangerous opponent. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5344: "Cours alphabetique et methodique du droit canon," by Abbe Andre, and "Histoire generale de eglise, vol. XIII., by Bercastel et Henrion. The reader will find in these two works an exposition of the diverse statutes of the Catholic Church in other countries. Each of these statutes differs from ours in one or several important articles; the fixed, or even territorial, endowment of the clergy, the nomination to the episcopate by the chapter, or by the clergy of the diocese, or by the bishops of the province, public compet.i.tion for curacies, irremovability, partic.i.p.ation of the chapter in the government of the diocese, restoration of the officialite; return to the prescriptions of the Council of Trent (Cf. especially the Concordats between the Holy See and Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, the two Hesses, Belgium, Austria, Spain, and the statutes accepted or established by the Holy See in Ireland and the United States.)]

[Footnote 5345: The brothers Allignol, "De l'etat actuel du clerge en France," p.248. "The mind of the desservant is no longer his own. Let him beware of any personal sentiment or opinion!... He must cease being himself and must lose, it may be said, his personality."--Ibid., preface, XIX. "Both of us, placed in remotes country parishes,... are in a position to know the clergy of the second cla.s.s well, to which, for twenty years, we belong."]

[Footnote 5346: The princ.i.p.al means of action of the State is the right of appointing bishops. The Pope, however, installs them; consequently, the Minister of Worship must have an understanding beforehand with the nuncio, which obliges it to nominate candidates irreproachable in doctrine and morals, but it avoids nominating ecclesiastics that are eminent, enterprising or energetic; once installed and not removable, they would cause trouble. Such, for example, was M. Pie, bishop of Poitiers, nominated by M. de Falloux in the time of the Prince-President, and so annoying during the Empire; in order to keep him in check, M. Levert, the cleverest and most adroit prefect, had to be sent to Poitiers; for many years they waged the most desperate war under proper formalities, each playing against the other the shrewdest and most disagreeable tricks. Finally, M. Levert, who had lost a daughter and was denounced from the pulpit, was obliged, on account of his wife's feelings, to leave the place. (This happened to my own knowledge, as between 1852 and 1867 I visited Poitiers five times.) At the present day, the Catholics complain that the government nominates none but mediocre men for bishops and accepts none others for cantonal cures. (Today, in 1999, we can look back on a century of quarrelling, even war, between Rome and Paris with the separation of the Catholic Church and the State in 1905, sequestration of all church property, impoverishment of the clergy, interdiction of the different orders, papal bulls, ending in 1914 when the State had to concentrate all effort towards winning the war. Today the church is allowed to operate but its influence is much reduced as it the case for all the religions since the advent of the consumer society with television etc. SR.)]

[Footnote 5347: "The Ancient Regime," pp 171, 181, 182. (Ed. Laffont I., p. 129 to 139.)]

[Footnote 5348: M. de Vitrolles, "' Memoires," I., 15. (This pa.s.sage was written in 1847.) "Under the Empire, readers were to those of the present day as one to a thousand. Newspapers, in very small number, scarcely obtained circulation. The public informed itself about victories, as well as the conscription, in the articles of the 'Moniteur,' posted by the prefects."--From 1847 to 1891, we all know by our own experience that the number of readers has augmented prodigiously.]

[Footnote 5349: I wonder what Taine would have said of television, that system which allows its producers to make all mankind believe that the lies and figments of the imaginations put in front of them show the true and real world as it is. (SR.)]

[Footnote 5350: An expression by Renan in relation to Abbe Lehir, an accomplished professor of Hebrew.]

[Footnote 5351: Th. W. Allies, rector of Launton, "Journal d'un voyage en France," p.245. (A speech by Father Ravignan, August 3, 1848) "What nation in the Roman church is more prominent at the present day for its missionary labors? France, by far. There are ten French missionaries to one Italian." Several French congregations, especially the "Pet.i.tes Soeurs des Pauvres" and the "Freres des ecoles Chretiennes," are so zealous and so numerous that they overflow outside of France and have many establishments abroad.]

[Footnote 5352: "Manreze du pretre," by Father Caussette, II.,419: "Now that I have placed one of your hands in those of Mary let me place the other in those of Saint Joseph.... Joseph, whose prayers in heaven are what commands to Jesus were on earth. Oh, what a sublime patron, and what powerful patronage!... Joseph, a.s.sociated in the glory of divine paternity;... Joseph, who counts twenty-three kings among his ancestors!"

Along with the month of the year devoted to the adoration of Mary, there is another consecrated to Saint Joseph.]

[Footnote 5353: "etat des congregations," etc. (1876). Eleven congregations or communities of women are devoted to the Holy Family and nineteen others to the Child-Jesus or to the Infancy of Jesus.]

[Footnote 5354: One of these bears the t.i.tle of "Augustines de l'interieur de Marie" and another is devoted to the "Coeuragonisant de Jesus."]

[Footnote 5355: At Bourron (Seine-et-Marne), in 1789, which had 600 inhabitants, the number of communicants at Easter amounted to 300; at the present day, out of 1200 inhabitants there are 94]

[Footnote 5356: Th. W. Allies, "Journal d'un voyage en France," III., p.

18: "M. Dufresne (July 1845) tells us that out of 1,000,000 inhabitants in Paris 300,000 attend ma.s.s and 50,000 are practising Christians."--(A conversation with Abbe Pet.i.tot, cure of Saint-Louis d'Antin, July 7.1847.) "2,000,000 out of 32,000,000 French are really Christians and go to confession."--At the present day (April 1890) an eminent and well-informed ecclesiastic writes: "I estimate the number of those who observe Easter at Paris at about 100,000."--"The number of professing Christians varies a great deal according to parishes: Madeleine, 4,500 out of 29,000 inhabitants; Saint Augustin, 6,500 out of 29,000; Saint Eustache, 1,750 out of 20,000; Bellancourt, 500 out of 10,000; Grenelle, 1,500 out of 47,500; and Belleville, 1,500 out of 60,000 inhabitants."]

[Footnote 5357: Abbe Bougaud, "Le Grand Peril," etc., p.44: "I know a bishop who, on reaching his diocese, tried to ascertain how many of the 400,000 souls entrusted to his keeping performed their Easter duties. He found 37,000. At the present day, owing to twenty years of effort, this number reaches 55,000. Thus, more than 300,000 are practically unbelievers."--"Vie de Mgr. Dupanloup," by Abbe Lagrange, I., 5'.

(Pastoral letter by Mgr. Dupanloup, 1851.) "He considers that he is answerable to G.o.d for nearly 350,000 souls, of which 200,000 at least do not fulfill their Easter duties; scarcely 45,000 perform this great duty."]

[Footnote 5358: "The Revolution," II.,390. (Ed. Laff. I., p. 177.)]