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The American Republic

b >> by O. A. Brownson >> The American Republic




The United States being dialectically constituted, and founded on
real catholic, not sectarian or sophistical principles, presents
none of these obstacles, and must, in their progressive
development or realization of their political idea, put an end to
this warfare, in so far as a warfare between church and state,
and leave the church in her normal position in society, in which
she can, without let or hindrance, exert her free spirit, and
teach and govern men by the Divine law as free men. She may
encounter unbelief, misbelief, ignorance, and indifference in
few, or in many; but these, deriving no support from the state,
which tends constantly to eliminate them, must gradually give way
before her invincible logic, her divine charity, the truth and
reality of things, and the intelligence, activity, and zeal of
her ministers. The American people are, on the surface,
sectarians or indifferentists; but they are, in reality, less
uncatholic than the people of any other country because they are,
in their intellectual and moral development, nearer to the real
order, or, in the higher and broader sense of the word more truly
civilized. The multitude of sects that obtain may excite
religious compassion for those who are carried away by them, for
men can be saved or attain to their eternal destiny only by
truth, or conformity to Him who said, "I am the way, the truth,
and the life;" but in relation to the national destiny they need
excite no alarm, no uneasiness, for underlying them all is more
or less of catholic truth, and the vital forces of the national
life repel them, in so far as they are sectarian and not
catholic, as substances that cannot be assimilated to the
national life. The American state being catholic in its organic
principles, as is all real religion, and the church being free,
whatever is anticatholic, or uncatholic, is without any support
in either, and having none, either in reality or in itself, it
must necessarily fall and gradually disappear.

The sects themselves have a half unavowed conviction that they
cannot subsist forever as sects, if unsupported by the civil
authority. They are free, but do not feel safe in the United
States. They know the real church is catholic, and that they
themselves are none of them catholic. The most daring among them
even pretends to be no more than a "branch" of the catholic
church. They know that only the catholic church can withstand
the pressure of events and survive the shocks of time, and hence
everywhere their movements to get rid of their sectarianism and
to gain a catholic character. They hold conventions of delegates
from the whole sectarian world, form "unions," "alliances," and
"associations;" but, unhappily for their success, the catholic
church does not originate in convention, but is founded by the
Word made flesh, and sustained by the indwelling Holy Ghost. The
most they can do, even with the best dispositions in the world,
is to create a confederation, and confederated sects are
something very different from a church inherently one and
catholic. It is no more the catholic church than the late
Southern Confederacy was the American state. The sectarian
combinations may do some harm, may injure many souls, and retard,
for a time, the progress of civilization; but in a state
organized in accordance with catholic principles, and left to
themselves, they are powerless against the national destiny, and
must soon wither and die as branches severed from the vine.

Such being the case, no sensible Catholic can imagine that the
church needs any physical force against the sects, except to
repel actual violence, and protect her in that freedom of speech
and possession which is the right of all before the state. What
are called religious establishments are needed only where either
the state is barbarous or the religion is sectarian. Where the
state, in its intrinsic constitution, is in accordance with
catholic principles, as in the United States, the church has all
she needs or can receive. The state can add nothing more to her
power or her security in her moral and spiritual warfare with
sectarianism, and any attempt to give her more would only weaken
her as against the sects, place her in a false light, partially
justify their hostility to her, render effective their
declamations against her, mix her up unnecessarily with political
changes, interests, and passions, and distract the attention of
her ministers from their proper work as churchmen, and impose on
them the duties of politicians and statesmen. Where there is
nothing in the state hostile to the church, where she is free to
act according to her own constitution and laws, and exercise her
own discipline on her own spiritual subjects, civil enactments in
her favor or against the sects may embarrass or impede her
operations, but cannot aid her, for she can advance no farther
than she wins the heart and convinces the understanding. A
spiritual work can, in the nature of things, be effected only by
spiritual means. The church wants freedom in relation to the
state--nothing more; for all her power comes immediately from
God, without any intervention or mediation of the state.

The United States, constituted in accordance with the real order
of things, and founded on principles which have their origin and
ground in the principles on which the church herself is founded,
can never establish any one of the sects as the religion of the
state, for that would violate their political constitution, and
array all the other sects, as well as the church herself, against
the government. They cannot be called upon to establish the
church by law, because she is already in their constitution as
far as the state has in itself any relation with religion, and
because to establish her in any other sense would be to make her
one of the civil institutions of the, land, and to bring her
under the control of the state, which were equally against her
interest and her nature.

The religious mission of the United States is not then to
establish the church by external law, or to protect her by legal
disabilities, pains, and penalties against the sects, however
uncatholic they may be; but to maintain catholic freedom, neither
absorbing the state in the church nor the church in the state,
but leaving each to move freely, according to its own nature, in
the sphere assigned it in the eternal order of things. Their
mission separates church and state as external governing bodies,
but unites them in the interior principles from which each
derives its vitality and force. Their union is in the intrinsic
unity of principle, and in the fact that, though moving in
different spheres, each obeys one and the same Divine law. With
this the Catholic, who knows what Catholicity means, is of course
satisfied, for it gives the church all the advantage over the
sects of the real over the unreal; and with this the sects have
no right to be dissatisfied, for it subjects them to no
disadvantage not inherent in sectarianism itself in presence of
Catholicity, and without any support from the civil authority.

The effect of this mission of our country fully realized, would
be to harmonize church and state, religion and politics, not by
absorbing either in the other, or by obliterating the natural
distinction between them, but by conforming both to the real or
Divine order, which is supreme and immutable. It places the two
powers in their normal relation, which has hitherto never been
done, because hitherto there never has been a state normally
constituted. The nearest approach made to the realization of the
proper relations of church and state, prior to the birth of the
American Republic, was in the Roman Empire under the Christian
emperors; but the state had been perverted by paganism, and the
emperors, inheriting the old pontifical power, could never be
made to understand their own incompetency in spirituals, and
persisted to the last in treating the church as a civil
institution under their supervision and control, as does the
Emperor of the French in France, even yet. In the Middle Ages
the state was so barbarously constituted that the church was
obliged to supervise its administration, to mix herself up with
the civil government, in order to infuse some intelligence into
civil matters, and to preserve her own rightful freedom and
independence. When the states broke away from feudalism, they
revived the Roman constitution, and claimed the authority in
ecclesiastical matters that had been exercised by the Roman
Caesars, and the states that adopted a sectarian religion gave
the sect adopted a civil establishment, and subjected it to the
civil government, to which the sect not unwillingly consented,
on condition that the civil authority excluded the church and all
other sects, and made it the exclusive religion of the state, as
in England, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, and the states of
Northern Germany. Even yet the normal relations of church and
state are nowhere practicable in the Old World; for everywhere
either the state is more or less barbaric in its constitution, or
the religion is sectarian, and the church as well as civilization
is obliged, to struggle with antagonistic forces, for
self-preservation.

There are formidable parties all over Europe at work to introduce
what they take to be the American system; but constitutions are
generated, not made--providential, not conventional. Statesmen
can only develop what is in the existing constitutions of their
respective countries, and no European constitution contains all
the elements of the American. European Liberals mistake the
American system, and, were they to succeed in their efforts,
would not introduce it, but something more hostile to it than the
governments and institutions they are warring against. They
start from narrow, sectarian, or infidel premises, and seek not
freedom of worship, but freedom of denial. They suppress the
freedom of religion as the means of securing what they call
religious liberty--imagine that they secure freedom of thought by
extinguishing the light without which no thought is possible, and
advance civilization by undermining its foundation. The
condemnation of their views and movements by the Holy Father in
the Encyclical, which has excited so much hostility, may seem to
superficial and unthinking Americans even, as a condemnation of
our American system--indeed, as the condemnation of modern
science, intelligence, and civilization itself; but whoever looks
below the surface, has some insight into the course of events,
understands the propositions and movements censured, and the
sense in which they are censured, is well assured that the Holy
Father has simply exercised his pastoral and teaching authority
to save religion, society, science, and civilization from utter
corruption or destruction. The opinions, tendencies, and
movements, directly or by implication censured, are the effect of
narrow and superficial thinking, of partial and one-sided views,
and are sectarian, sophistical, and hostile to all real progress,
and tend, as far as they go, to throw society back into the
barbarism from which, after centuries of toil and struggle, it is
just beginning to emerge. The Holy Father has condemned nothing
that real philosophy, real science does not also condemn;
nothing, in fact, that is not at war with the American system
itself. For the mass of the people, it were desirable that
fuller explanations should be given of the sense in which the
various propositions censured are condemned, for some of them are
not, in every sense, false; but the explanations needed were
expected by the Holy Father to be given by the bishops and
prelates, to whom, not to the people, save through them, the
Encyclical was addressed. Little is to be hoped, and much is to
be feared, for liberty, science, and civilization from European
Liberalism, which has no real affinity with American territorial
democracy and real civil and religious freedom. But God and
reality are present in the Old World as, well as in the New, and
it will never do to restrict their power or freedom.

Whether the American people will prove faithful to their mission,
and realize their destiny, or not, is known only to Him from whom
nothing is hidden. Providence is free, and leaves always a space
for human free-will. The American people can fail, and will fail
if they neglect the appointed means and conditions of success;
but there is nothing in their present state or in their past
history to render their failure probable. They have in their
internal constitution what Rome wanted, and they are in no danger
of being crushed by exterior barbarism. Their success as feeble
colonies of Great Britain in achieving their national
independence, and especially in maintaining, unaided, and against
the real hostility of Great Britain and France, their national
unity and integrity against a rebellion which, probably, no other
people could have survived, gives reasonable assurance for their
future. The leaders of the rebellion, than whom none better knew
or more nicely calculated the strength and resources of the
Union, counted with certainty on success, and the ablest, the
most experienced, and best informed statesmen of the Old World
felt sure that the Republic was gone, and spoke of it as the late
United States. Not a few, even in the loyal States, who had no
sympathy with the rebellion, believed it idle to think of
suppressing it by force, and advised peace on the best terms that
could be obtained. But Ilium fuit was chanted too soon; the
American people were equal to the emergency, and falsified the
calculations and predictions of their enemies, and surpassed the
expectations of their friends.

The attitude of the real American people during the fearful
struggle affords additional confidence in their destiny. With
larger armies on foot than Napoleon ever commanded, with their
line of battle stretching from ocean to ocean, across the whole
breadth of the continent, they never, during four long years of
alternate victories and defeats--and both unprecedentedly
bloody--for a moment lost their equanimity, or appeared less
calm, collected, tranquil, than in the ordinary times of peace.
They not for a moment interrupted their ordinary routine of
business or pleasure, or seemed conscious of being engaged in any
serious struggle which required an effort. There was no hurry,
no bustle, no excitement, no fear, no misgiving. They seemed to
regard the war as a mere bagatelle, not worth being in earnest
about. The on-looker was almost angry with their apparent
indifference, apparent insensibility, and doubted if they moved
at all, Yet move they did: guided by an unerring instinct, they
moved quietly on with an elemental force, in spite of a timid and
hesitating administration, in spite of inexperienced,
over-cautious, incompetent, or blundering military commanders,
whom they gently brushed aside, and desisted not till their
object was gained, and they saw the flag of the Union floating
anew in the breeze from the capitol of every State that dared
secede. No man could contemplate them without feeling that there
was in them a latent power vastly superior to any which they
judged it necessary to put forth. Their success proves to all
that what, prior to the war, was treated as American arrogance or
self-conceit, was only the outspoken confidence in their destiny
as a Providential people, conscious that to them is reserved the
hegemony of the world.

Count de Maistre predicted early in the century the failure of
the United States, because they have no proper name; but his
prediction assumed what is not the fact. The United States have
a proper name by which all the world knows and calls them. The
proper name of the country is America: that of the people is
Americans. Speak of Americans simply, and nobody understands you
to mean the people of Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile,
Paraguay, but everybody understands you to mean the people of the
United States. The fact is significant, and foretells for the
people of the United States a continental destiny, as is also
foreshadowed in the so-called "Monroe doctrine," which France,
during our domestic troubles, was permitted, on condition of not
intervening in our civil war in favor of the rebellion, to
violate.

There was no statesmanship in proclaiming the "Monroe doctrine,"
for the statesman keeps always, as far as possible, his
government free to act according to the exigencies of the case
when it comes up, unembarrassed by previous declarations of
principles. Yet the doctrine only expresses the destiny of the
American people, and which nothing but their own fault can
prevent them from realizing in its own good time. Napoleon will
not succeed in his Mexican policy, and Mexico will add some
fifteen or twenty new States to the American Union as soon as it
is clearly for the interests of all parties that it should be
done, and it can be done by mutual consent, without war or
violence. The Union will fight to maintain the integrity of her
domain and the supremacy of her laws within it, but she can
never, consistently with her principles or her interests, enter
upon a career of war and conquest. Her system is violated,
endangered, not extended, by subjugating her neighbors, for
subjugation and liberty go not together. Annexation, when it
takes place, must be on terms of perfect equality and by the free
act of the state annexed. The Union can admit of no inequality
of rights and franchises between the States of which it is
composed. The Canadian Provinces and the Mexican and Central
American States, when annexed, must be as free as the original
States of the Union, sharing alike in the power and the
protection of the Republic--alike in its authority, its freedom,
its grandeur, and its glory, as one free, independent,
self-governing people. They may gain much, but must lose nothing
by annexation.

The Emperor Napoleon and his very respectable protege,
Maximilian, an able man and a liberal-minded prince, can change
nothing in the destiny of the United States, or of Mexico
herself; no imperial government can be permanent beside the
American Republic, no longer liable, since the abolition of
slavery, to be distracted by sectional dissensions. The States
that seceded will soon, in some way, be restored to their rights
and franchises in the Union, forming not the least patriotic
portion of the American people; the negro question will be
settled, or settle itself, as is most likely, by the melting away
of the negro population before the influx of white laborers; all
traces of the late contest in a very few years will be wiped out,
the national debt paid, or greatly reduced, and the prosperity
and strength of the Republic be greater than ever. Its moral
force will sweep away every imperial throne on the continent,
without any effort or action on the part of the government.
There can be no stable government in Mexico till every trace of
the ecclesiastical policy established by the Council of the
Indies is obliterated, and the church placed there on the same
footing as in the United States; and that can hardly be done
without annexation. Maximilian cannot divest the church of her
temporal possessions and place Protestants and Catholics on the
same footing, without offending the present church party and
deeply injuring religion, and that too without winning the
confidence of the republican party. In all Spanish and
Portuguese America the relations between the church and state are
abnormal, and exceedingly hurtful to both. Religion is in a
wretched condition, and politics in a worse condition still.
There is no effectual remedy for either but in religious freedom,
now impracticable, and to be rendered practicable by no European
intervention, for that subjects religion to the state, the very
source of the evils that now exist, instead of emancipating it
from the state, and leaving it to act according to its own
constitution and laws, as under the American system.

But the American people need not trouble themselves about their
exterior expansion. That will come of itself as fast as
desirable. Let them devote their attention to their internal
destiny, to the realization of their mission within, and they
will gradually see the Whole continent coming under their system,
forming one grand nation, a really catholic nation, great,
glorious, and free.

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