LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: HERESY??

     Yes, this meditation is inspired by this weekend’s celebration (in France, anyway) of Bastille Day, the beginning of the French Revolution. La Marseillaise was their anthem, and the title above was their battle cry--such a noble one! Why was the Catholic Church so opposed to this, including into the debates at Vatican II?

     The French Revolution led, sadly, to the Reign of Terror, hundreds of clergy and religious being martyred for refusing to take the new Oath. Then came Napoleon, and in his wide range of conquests kidnapped Pope Pius VI (who died in captivity) and tried to manipulate Pope Pius VII (he succeeded at first but failed in the end). Napoleon finally was overcome in large part thanks to his foolhardy invasion of Russia. And in 1815 the Congress of Vienna deposed Napoleon, exiled him, and declared that all previous royal heads of state must be returned to their thrones—and this included the pope.

What followed was a period of tremendous political and social repression. Anything that smacked of returning to revolution was quashed. Mail was opened; conversations were overheard and reported. In Vienna, it seemed that only Beethoven could run his mouth and get away with it, but then, he was Beethoven. This, by the way, was the set of social conditions that led to the uprising in Les Miserables…

In Italy, in 1848, there was an attempted coup in the Papal States, directed against the governance of the pope. It was started in the name of ending repression, bringing freedom, and ultimately the unification of all Italy. Pope Pius IX actually had to flee for his life, leaving Rome for Gaeta, near Naples. The result of all this (needless to say, this summary is barely adequate to the events!) was a loathing for the mottos of the revolution. There would be no place for democracy in the Church or in predominantly Catholic countries, so far as Pius IX was concerned. He was the Supreme Monarch as well as the Supreme Pontiff, ruling the Papal States as well as the Catholic Church. When Rome was captured in 1870 in the drive for unification of all Italy, Pius IX declared himself a “prisoner of the Vatican,” and even forbade Catholics to vote in elections held by the new government. [It is in this light that one can understand the rise of radical “Ultramontanism,” arguing that the pope was infallible in everything he might say or do. Thanks be to God, when the pope’s infallibility was defined at Vatican I, it was in a modified form.]

But in America the working out of democracy was different from that of the 19^th century European liberals. It took much persuasion to get the bishops at Vatican II to grasp this. For most of them, “democracy” meant anti-papal and anti-Catholic revolution. Finally, though, they began to perceive the differences, and ultimately the “American experiment” was accepted as valid. Looking to our own country now, we can see that the noble sentiments of the Declaration of Independence is still being worked out—we’re still struggling to have all people as equals, respecting everyone’s rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But Catholics have their role to play, their voices to be heard in the public square, especially in its defense of the “least of these.” And we can play that part with the full blessing of the Church.                                                                                               -Fr. David