Religious revolution

“ But herein lies the great difference, that the Protestants effected their political revolution simultaneously with the ecclesiastical and religious revolution, whereas in Catholic countries revolutions have remained purely political, have at most in the religious sphere brought about some loosening of the bonds between church and state, so that their influence upon religion has been indirect merely. ”

“ But although there are close analogies between the genesis of a religious revolution, such as the Reformation, and that of a great political revolution like our own, their remote consequences are very different, which explains the difference of duration which they display. In religious revolutions no experience can reveal to the faithful that they are deceived, since they would have to go to heaven to make the discovery. In political revolutions experience quickly demonstrates the error of a false doctrine and forces men to abandon it. ”

“ This revolution in the social world assisted the revolution in the religious; and the educated classes rapidly abandoned their nature worship in favour of the idea of an infinite and everlasting Godhead, which soared far above the feeblenesses and sins of humanity. ”

“ The sword is drawn between the religious and the political power: if I were not a Frenchman before being a royalist, and a Catholic before a Frenchman, I should find much to rejoice at in this check to the hopes of a certain part of the episcopate who honestly believed in the reign of religious freedom, on the word of the revolutionists. But, good people! if revolution were not despotism, it would not be revolution. ”

“ A political revolution which inspires proselytes, which is preached as passionately to foreigners as it is accomplished at home: consider what a novel spectacle was this.''
The religious side of the Revolution being granted, the accompanying fury and devastation are easily explained. History shows us that such are always the accompaniments of the birth of religions. The Revolution was therefore certain to provoke the violence and intolerance the triumphant deities demand from their adepts. ”

“ Divine right in the State must be restored through the Church. The Catholic apologetic saw the Revolution as only the logical conclusion of the premises of the Reformation. The religious revolt of the sixteenth century, the philosophical revolt of the seventeenth, the political revolt of the eighteenth, the social revolt of the nineteenth, are all parts of one dreadful sequence. As the Church lifted up the world after the first flood of the barbarians, so must she again lift up the world after the devastations made by the more terrible barbarians of the eighteenth century. ”

“ The first decade succeeding the Revolution was marked by a serious demoralization which found expression in an increase of vice and crime; and as never a crime wave sweeps state or nation that great reformers do not arise to combat it, so now Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian preachers, enjoying at last a provident religious emancipation; preaching a gospel of law and retribution rather than of love, worked zealously and courageously combating the condition. ”

“ Revolt against the mediæval Church implied a general revolution.
To revolt against the Church was to inaugurate a fundamental revolution in many of the habits and customs of the people. It was not merely a change of religious belief, for the Church permeated every occupation and dominated every social interest. For centuries it had directed and largely controlled education, high and low. Each and every important act in the home, in the guild, in the town, was accompanied by religious ceremonies. The clergy of the Roman Catholic Church had hitherto written most of the books ”

“ Protestantism was at the first the expression of a great moral revolution. The religious and moral nature of man rose in rebellion against a distorted faith, and an immoral system which seemed incapable of reform. ”

“ There is a deep principle underlying not only the miscarriage of the Revolution of 1848, but of all the popular movements toward independence which occur at a time when the people are involved in religious doubt. ”

“ In spite, however, of so many temporary divergences from the straight path, it is already easy to recognize the direction toward which the Revolution tends, and to affirm that this direction is not religious. ”

“ In the early days of the French revolution, the leading members of the convention endeavoured to suppress all religion, except the worship of their tutelary goddess Liberty; and for this purpose they shut up the churches, abolished the Sabbath, and inscribed upon the burying grounds, "Death is an eternal sleep." ”

“ All Religious systems in the world, outside of the Christian, will gravitate toward, and finally be wholly absorbed by it; and while this is taking place, there will be a quiet revolution occurring in that system itself ”

“ In the department of conscience, see what a love of justice developes itself in all Christendom; see the results of this for the last hundred years ; in the reform of laws, of constitutions, in the great political, social, and domestic revolutions of our time. Men have clearer ideas of justice; they would have a church without a bishop, a State without a king, society without a lord, and a family without a slave. From this troublesome conscience comes the uneasiness of the Christian world. A revolution is a nation's act of penitence, of resolution, and of prayer,—its agony and bloody sweat. ”

“ When we project this great revolution upon the whole history of the Christian Church, we cannot look upon it as introducing a new principle into human life. For good or for evil, it was a great transformation of religion ”

“ It is the struggle of truth against error, of right against might, of civilization against barbarism, of duty to God, Christ, and his church against impiety, blasphemy, and injustice. The revolution means the renewal among men of the revolt of Lucifer and his angels; the Catholic associations are the faithful cohorts of God and his Christ. ”

“ Must a revolution be equally necessary in the case of two sorts of Government, and two sorts of Religion, which are the very reverse of each other? opposite in their genius, unlike in their fundamental principles, and widely different in each of their component parts.
That despotism, priestcraft, intolerance, and superstition, are terrible evils, no candid Christian it is presumed will deny; but, blessed be God, though these mischiefs are not yet entirely banished from the face of the earth, they have scarcely any existence in this country. ”

“ What, then, are the grounds of the irreconcilable repugnance of the Revolution for theology? Nothing is more easy than to distinguish and enumerate the principal ones. First may be ranked the political ground, that is, the intimate connection in which they find theology standing to the political system they are laboring to overthrow. Twice in modern Europe it has been possible to discern the interdependence of the reigning political with the reigning theological system. Modern history is filled with two great movements, the Reformation and the Revolution. ”

“ It is so, however; and this new era which is before us has actually been likened to the social transformation, or rather restoration, achieved by Christianity—as if anything could be more flagrantly antagonistic to the great transformation worked by the Christian idea than this pretended transformation dreamed of and sung by the prophets of the socialist idea; as if a revolution brought about by force and violence could ever be compared to a restoration accomplished through love and self-sacrifice! ”

“ Hence, the great and damning charge against the church in our day is that by her unchangeableness, her immovable doctrines, her influence on the minds and hearts, and hold on the consciences of the faithful, she is the great supporter of law and order—despots and despotism, in the language of the liberal journals—and the chief obstacle to the enlightenment and progress of society, in the same language; but radicalism and revolution in ours. ”

“ Little by little, while the aspect of the globe changed, a great revolution was taking place in the spirit of the ancient Christian civilisation in Europe, which from being dictatorial and traditionalist became free and progressive. Religion, which for so many centuries had been a kind of severe moral discipline, a life of prohibitions, scruples, rules, precepts, ceremonies, and rites, changed into a kind of free contemplation of the Deity in which the individual conscience had full play. ”

“ Si la Réforme acquit une si grande importance, au point que les esprits superficiels y virent l’origine des libertés actuelles, c’est qu’auparavant avait éclaté une révolution sociale et économique, dont les luttes religieuses ne furent que les arrière-maux. ”

“ Above all, religion must be restored. Before 1789, the ignorant or indifferent Catholic, the peasant at his plough, the mechanic at his work-bench, the good wife attending to her household, were unconscious of the innermost part of religion; thanks to the revolution, they have acquired the sentiment of it, and even the physical sensation. It is the prohibition of the mass which has led them to comprehend its importance; it is the revolutionary government which has transformed them into theologians. ”

“ An inevitable revolution, of which we all recognise the beginnings and signs, but which has already spread, perhaps, farther than most of us think, is befalling the religion in which we have been brought up. In those countries where religion has been most loved, this revolution will be felt the most keenly ”

“ The Reformation of the church, as well as the French Revolution, proves the existence of this law.... Revolution is a crisis necessary to development.”
The Révélations says: “The poison must be neutralized by means of its antidote, revolution must succeed to obedience, vengeance follow upon effeminacy, power must grapple with power, and the reign of superstition yield before that of the one true natural religion.” ”

“ The question is not whether the church will be reconciled with modern civilization. The real question is whether modern society will follow the principles of eternal justice and right, and reject these false teachers; whether it will legislate in accordance with the rules of right reason and the divine truths of Christianity, and turn its back upon revolution, anarchy, and atheism; whether it will act in harmony with God’s church in upholding modern civilization and in 28spreading God’s kingdom upon earth, or return to paganism, barbarism, and savagery. ”

“ What we are foes to, is Anarchy! At the Reformation you gave the right of deciding on the deepest religious questions to every ignorant man that chose to discuss them, and the seamless robe of Christianity was rent into a hundred pieces! ”

“ For Christianity is revolutionary, and its very aim is to turn the world upside down, since the wrong side is uppermost at present, and Jesus, not Caesar, or any king or emperor or czar, is the true Lord and ruler of men. But the revolution which He makes is the revolution of individuals, turning them from darkness to light ”

“ They aim to reclaim for God the obedience which is his due, the honor which belongs to Christ, the rights taken from the church; to give true liberty—the liberty of the Gospel—to all; [655] to draw men away from the carnal happiness proposed to them by the revolution; and to make them seek that beatitude which every rational Christian should desire. The revolution threatens everything—religion in society and among individuals; the Catholic associate declares himself their champion.
Such is the noble aim of Catholic associations; hence the nobleness of the conflict in which they are engaged. ”

“ It was religion, which, by teaching men their near relation to God, awakened in them the consciousness of their importance as individuals. It was the struggle for religious rights, which opened their eyes to all their rights. It was resistance to religious usurpation, which led men to withstand political oppression. ”

“ And when the desire for reform took a social turn there was the same influence to be fought. For while the Roman Catholic laid the chief insistence on obedience to the Church, the Protestant laid as strong insistence on obedience to the State, and made disobedience to its orders a matter of almost religious revolt. The whole force of religion was thus used to induce contentment with the existing order, instead of to the creation of an intelligent discontent which would lead to continuous improvement. ”

“ It was for the sublime principle of a religious democracy and the regeneration of human society that, in an age of tyranny, oppression and bloodshed, the early Christian martyrs laid down their lives. ”

“ When I remember how long it has taken Christianity to establish itself; how many centuries it has taken to bring about a purely moral revolution which surely ought to have been accomplished peacefully, the thought of the horrors of a revolution, in which material interests are concerned, makes me shudder, and I am for maintaining existing institutions. ‘Each shall have his own thought,’ is the dictum of Christianity; ‘Each man shall have his own field,’ says modern law; and in this, modern law is in harmony with Christianity. ”

“ The writers of recent text-books on general history, as well as in particular fields, recognise the revolution and try to make amends for the sin of omission by giving the Church a prominence never recognised before by secular historians. ”

“ All this was a good preparation for the rehabilitation of religion. And we must not forget the intellectual force, the valuable ally, which the church gained by suddenly, as it were, finding itself able to appropriate the fundamental principle of the Revolution, and in its name win new supporters. The whole situation was altered from the day when the church, hostile to liberty up to the last possible moment, finally, vanquished by necessity, inscribed liberty on its banner. ”

“ The Social Revolution will compel all churches, Christian, Hebrew, Buddhist, Confucian, or what you will, to drive out their formalists and traditionalists. If there is any church that refuses so to adapt itself, the swift progress of enlightenment and freedom will leave it without followers. But in the great religions, which have a soul of goodness and sincerity, we may be sure that reformers will arise, prophets and saints who, as of old, will preach the living word of God. ”